2.9 Flight Of The Phoenix

Frakking marvellous episode! I am not ashamed to admit that the closing stages of it had me choking up a little, as Chief Tyrell’s efforts at building a ship came to fruition and the thing flew, with stealth, and there was a ceremony where the craft was honoured to ‘Laura’. After all the animosity and mistrust and danger the episode was rife with, this emotional payoff worked wonders.

I’ve always liked Tyrell’s character; tough, smart yet not overly-intellectual nor burdened with major plot morality – he’s a good character to gauge the temperament of a regular viewer against, I think. So his opening fight with Helo – two men torn between the same woman who’s not quite the same – pitted two characters that have very similar readings for the audience; Helo is another character that is easily likable for his simplicity.

(That Helo also came good towards the end with his idea for carbon casing giving the ship its stealth properties was a nice touch, too.)

The issue pushing the plot this episode was the Cylon virus potentially gaining control of the Galactica and turning it against itself. So it required Cylon Boomer to be called on, to be trusted enough, to prevent the mass fleet of Cylon ships from destroying the rest of humanity. And this she did, with some weird shit of injecting a fibre optic cable into her veins. Don’t even begin to ask how that managed to send a virus back to the Cylons to render their ships immobile. I can’t fathom the logic, but it made for a satisfactory sequence where the fighters could shoot the Cylons freely and get some payback.

So, yeah, I really liked this episode. There wasn’t much of Gaius and, more tellingly, when he was there he was not bothered by Six. I really think it’s the combination of both of them that has my grievance more than anything. So him hanging around in the background was fine (though still indicates that he’s due a focused episode soon).

The big news for President Laura was that she was given little more than weeks to live. I wonder about that. I don’t know if she stays in the show at all, so I have to consider the possibility that she very well might be in her last stint. But part of me, a big part of me, isn’t quite ready to concede that point yet. Unless the show, when it was originally aired, was split into two halves. . . and maybe the end of this first half will conclude with her death.

That might be the case. And given the prophecy indicated that the leader of the people to Earth would be dying, it stands to prophecy reason that she has to actually die. And whilst her part in the show is never the most exciting, her departure would certainly leave a major void. So maybe there are some plot twists and prophecy loop holes and miracle cancer cures on the horizon. . .?