With Commander Adama unconscious, things were bound to get really crap at some point. As the title suggests, this is when things become really crummy. When Lee told Tigh last episode that he wasn’t fit to wear the uniform, it seemed a bit harsh. After this episode, I’m inclined to agree. Tigh’s a lazy bastard, and wherever he can minimise effort, he does so. I can sympathise. However, as he’s commanding a 47,862 strong¹ fleet, and isn’t just a bum uni student, this has somewhat larger consequences.

For a start, he’s got issues with his captive President. Without her precious Kamalah extract, she’s going a bit loopy. Ellen pops in and sees her, notices her extreme out-of-it-ness, and advises Tigh to let the rather disgruntled Quorum of Twelve see her. Words can’t express how much I hate Ellen, but there’ll be plenty of opportunities to vent my frustrations with her later. She’s not so irritating this week, as her advice turns out to be accidentally wrong; due to a slightly religious guard, Laura gets her yummy extract, and is fighting fit and raring to go when the Quorum get to her. She makes a good, if worryingly religious,² speech, and Tigh gets a bit panicky. So he declares martial law.

As you do. Idiot. And he’s drinking, heavily. And making important decisions while doing so. I’m not a military expert, but I’ve got a theory that drunkenly ordering your subordinates about on the phone from your quarters is frowned upon in well-thinking circles.

There’s an idiot on Kobol too — his name’s Crashdown. Today, he’s decided that the five survivors have to launch an assault on an anti-aircraft gun that the Cylons are creating. It’s reasonably sound logic up to a point; the rescue party is on its way, and the guns would shoot them up pretty bad. But when he starts telling cute little Cally to run into the middle and create a distraction, I feel less like he’s making sense.³ Plus, he’s getting all sweaty and clearly going insane. The only person who can take a stand is the only man on Kobol possibly more insane than him, Mr Vice-President Gaius Baltar. It’s good to see him show some kind of backbone.

Will Mr Adama please wake up? Hellloooooo! It’s no good lying about while everything’s getting fragged, Commander. Lazy bastard.

1. I hadn’t mentioned yet that season two’s title sequence actually counts the number of survivors each episode, and keeps up to date. This is a cute touch. In ‘Scattered’ there were 47,875 survivors, one person died by the start of ‘Valley of Darkness’, and now we’re down to 47,862 — meaning that twelve people at least bought it during the Cylon attack last episode. Or, thirteen people died and one person was born, etc. With almost 50,000 people, there’s probably a decent amount of shagging going on. ↩
2. This religion thing is getting out of hand. There’s a definite mixing of church and state going on. However the scene last episode ‘exposing’ the Kobol myths as a cover-up for brutal sacrifices was pretty cool. I forgot to mention it so I thought I’d just slip it in here. Does anyone mind? ↩
3. Cally reminds me of Alyson Hannigan on Buffy. Whenever she’s in danger, I’m on the edge of my seat in concern. She reveals this week that she only joined the military to pay for medical school. I had a picture of her for this episode but she had a gun to her head and it was too disturbing. ↩

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Sunday, February 19th, 2006. It concerns such pressing issues as Battlestar Galactica, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.