2.14 Black Market

An Apollo-centric episode this, with him trawling the dark heart of himself as was prompted by his near-death experience. The episode showed him lying around with another woman, one with a kid, and at first that all seemed leftfield until she asked for money – and then it became clear. Apollo was turning to prostitutes – and as became apparent later on this was an attempt to try and get back the relationship with the woman he made a mess of a relationship with back on Caprica.

So Apollo’s got some skeletons in his closet and some demons to exercise, so he goes on something of a crusade to uncover the ringleaders controlling the black market shipments of supplies around the fleet.

There were some good elements in this, for me, and some not so good. On the not so good front I didn’t know where the hell Admiral Adama was in this episode. He pops up, sends his son out on a frakking Sherlock Holmes investigation, and appears oblivious and carefree about where it all goes.

I mean, seriously, the commanding officer of the Pegasus was brutally murdered by the criminal underworld and Adama seemed just a little casual about that for my liking. Wouldn’t he have been more inclined to send the full force of the Galactica and the Pegasus to rout them all out? (They tried to cover this over by claiming the black market was an essential element within the fleet but, like President Laura, I am dubious about that statement.)

So it felt like a weird episode, but I guess a character focus now and then doesn’t hurt. And Apollo certainly needed that shading of darkness – in the first series especially he had a righteousness and heroic stature that wasn’t quite three-dimensional enough (and not convincing either). If he’s ploughing the low roads of his soul at the moment then that’s fine – though I am unclear about how dark they are going to go with him.

Still, without a Cylon attack or any mention of the journey to Earth this did feel like something of a filler episode. And once more Tom Zerek popped up to confuse the issue, with a very unclear finish showing him hanging around the black marketers. Am I to assume that Tom was up to his neck in it all along? I’m all for shades of grey, but point blank ambiguity is no help to me!

So, in conclusion, nice enough – but in terms of propelling the momentum of the series this episode kind of stopped it dead. (I am getting a sense that BSG isn’t overly-skilled (or concerned) with over-arching dramatic plot movements. Usually stringing two or three episodes together as high points before sloping back down in episodes like this before the next climactic point.)