BSG S1E3 - One Bad Taco Tuesday

Hey listener, just a quick content warning on this episode. There is a implied physical assault that may be of a sexual nature. So if you don't want to hear us talk about that, just go ahead and skip this one. We'll Hello, and welcome to Who Are You? This is a reasonably well done sci fi watchcast hosted by two friends who are currently watching 2004's Battlestar Galactica. I'm Jafar,

and I'm Laura

and we're here today with Season 1, Episode 3. Bastille Day. just gonna go ahead and note. I don't know if you're gonna ever hear this listener. I know we had said Scott was gonna, from Gray17, was gonna be on this episode. We're recording this as a contingency plan because there were some travel issues. So, if this never, if you don't hear this, none of this matters. But if you are hearing this, just wanted to give a shout out to Scott still. We're gonna get him back on later at some point.

yeah. Everybody dropping a new Deep Space Nine podcast for the uh, anniversary this year?

I'm here for it. I'm living it. I

what is it? One of the big anniversaries?

31. I

Well, sometimes you just gotta celebrate on the prime numbers.

Yeah, I think it's 31 or it's got to be more than that. Cause I think Voyager is 30 this year. It would have overlapped. Okay. 31. So 32

Mm hmm. Mm

Well, regardless, Scott, if you happen to be listening, hope everything worked out. And listener, if you're listening, we hope you hope the same for Scott, because he's a good dude and deserves your well wishes.

Yeah, and I really, really do want to talk to Scott about this episode because I feel like he is much more qualified than I to have thoughts on this episode.

I literally have parts of my notes where I'm all like, and Scott's gonna fill this in for you, so don't talk about it too much.

Yeah, no, I feel,

down.

I feel way out of my depth as a person who has studied silly things like music and business and not the human condition and how to. put together a good society.

If I needed to, like, if I'm in the chair on who wants to be a millionaire, and the topic is how to help create and run an efficient political system that enables you know, like good voting practices or something about 70s sci fi. Those are the two topics I'm calling Scott for, and we hit both of them in this episode.

For sure. Yes. I feel a little out of my depth. I mean, I say business is a silly thing, but I do think there are things about business that are important to the functioning of a good society. And I don't know that we're doing it all great at this moment. We're not. Spoiler.

It's bad.

But yeah, Bastille Day. Uh, I also wish I had a better historic understanding of actual Bastille Day. I feel like I should understand it, but there's so much history that, a lot of it blends together in my mind, and it's weird, but a lot of history I have kind of landmarked by what was happening in music at that time, because you had to study so much music history in my degree. But that's not necessarily useful to, like, understanding social stuff all the time.

Commemorates the storming of the Bastille on July 14th, 1789, and the unity of the French people a year later.

And the Bastille was a prison,

Yeah. Yeah, the Bastille was not a good place.

And it was like for political prisoners.

Yeah, it was political prisoners during the, uh The French Revolution. I think that's how they say it.

Sure. Don't, at us French people. I put my Duolingo French down a little bit ago and I haven't picked it up. So,

yeah.

so that's one thing that I feel is kind of ambiguous in this episode and we can get into the nitty gritty details of the episode in just a minute, but. We're told that these prisoners on the Astral Queen are dangerous. They're, you know, hardened criminals murderers, et cetera. But they were all on their way to parole hearings.

Yeah.

And then we get

interesting little fact because like how often do you have prisoners in media? where literally the entire group of prisoners being portrayed was on their way to a parole hearing. Like, the fact that that's the entire imprisoned population was all due for parole

yeah,

hearings. I'm not sure if that due for parole, due for parole hearings, I'm not sure if there's a difference there in the terminology

yeah, I mean, I believe it was the hearing, so, like, they could be turned down, I guess, is the sticky point there. And we're not totally clear whether they're all actually dangerous people or, you know, You know, some of them might be politically motivated, like the gentleman we meet later.

Yeah. it's a very interesting situation though. And so, They are, they're talking about a couple of things. Lee kind of soft pitches his freedom points thing.

Oh, no, I think we should start at the beginning, because we did not actually talk about why we're needing to talk about the Astro Queen.

Oh, my first note is his tie gained whiskey.

That's where we open, is him checking out his whiskey.

So, we're talking about the difficulties that lay before the remaining human population here. They've found a source of water. The liquid water they found is saltwater, but the ice is pure. And it's going to take a lot of dangerous manual labor in order to harvest this ice and melt it so that it can be used by the fleet. And that's going to be significantly easier than taking a bunch of salt water on and trying to purify it.

It can handle everything but salt?

yeah, like, one bad Taco Tuesday in the mess hall and the entire water supply is fucked? Like, I refuse to accept that.

Yeah, that's interesting. And they keep referring to JPs, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't know what a JP of, I think it's a unit of water that they're referring to?

I don't think it's a real unit of water, but it might

Okay. I was like, I don't know.

I, just assumed that it was made up

Yeah. Okay. So this is just a touch of like the world building jargon of we're just going to keep using our acronyms and we don't necessarily need to explain them to the audience right away. Like the CAG.

Yeah. Like we're not going to bother explaining most of this stuff.

Cause you're just dropped into our world. We're not doing this for your benefit.

Yeah, if you search JP's of water, the first five things are all references to this episode of Battlestar

Hilarious. Yeah. They, they referenced it in the earlier previous episode when we blew the water tanks or whatever, but yeah.

Wiki says that JP is never fully defined.

Okay. I feel better now.

Mm hmm.

But yeah, we have not enough people on Galactica to do this and Our civilian fleet presumably doesn't have a bunch of, like, tough guy, 1, 000 of them,

No construction cruise ships made it. Yeah.

Yeah, the oil riggers are, we're all in Caprica.

Yeah. man, what a weird, like, thinking about hard labor. In. In their society, because they had replaced it with robots, famously, and that went

Didn't work out so well.

Um, so like, the reversion that would happen then, I would think, would be very interesting. And this is all within their lifetimes,

Mm hmm. 40 years, right? That's since the war. Yeah.

So, it's like, That's a bunch of like skilled intense labor that not a lot of people can do that you would have no one trained how to do because robots had been doing it. I guess we don't know how long the Cylons were around before they rebelled. That might be important for that because if it's like the Cylons were around for like five years,

then there's still people who know what to do and they can at least train the next generation

yeah, well they've only been out of work for a couple of years before the Cylons rebelled. Um, If they ever

They go back to work.

Yeah. cause I think in Caprica, the prequel show that is both pre Cylon, it starts pre Cylon at least. And also has commander Adama as like a child in it.

Oh,

So if it's all within his lifetime.

That they take over a whole bunch of things and then they rebel and then we do the war and then we do second war all in the life of Adama. Yeah, that's,

So

know, that's potential that you can at least train people on what to do.

yeah. Cause if he's like a child then, and he's like 20 in the first war, cause he's young in blood and chrome. So. Yeah, there'd be people to train. It's just interesting to think about.

it's interesting to think about too, if you had all those robots taking over, even if it was only five years or whatever, and we get in this war, we get rid of all the robots the people that can do that technical hard labor would be getting paid a lot. And I mean, they are now for things like being on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean or whatever. You would have to incentivize people to go take that dangerous work again. An economic shock for sure.

Yeah. I wonder if this is what's going to end up happening. in our society with things like AA art as it becomes apparent that it cannot replace anything useful or be used instead of, um, or hopefully that's the case and not it just gets shoved down our throats for the rest of our lifetime because it's miserable and cheaper.

Yeah. I feel like I have people on both sides. I hate to say both sides because it's such a loaded phrase these days, but you know, I have friends who are like, Oh, I want to do this creative thing, but I don't have enough of my own skill and I don't have any money to help have someone help me. So I use the machine. But on the other hand, like, this is why artists exist. And also. AI uses a lot of power that we could be using for other things, and you're using it to make memes or whatever.

So that's actually a bit of a misnomer. It's not that AI uses a lot of power to make the things or to generate your prompts or like do whatever you're talking about. It's that AI used a lot of power six months ago when they trained the thing that is answering your questions or building your images.

Okay.

Um, which is I know it's like, it's, it's a sunk cost fallacy, right? we've already paid for it though. Know, we've already done the, the time to train the think we've already burned all the water out of the lake to, to run the heat sinks.

the more we utilize these things, though, won't people train more of these

Exactly. Yes. No, exactly.

Right.

yeah, it's just, it's more nuanced than a uh, typing something into chat. GPT burns a bottle of water, which also is a gross exaggeration. but regardless.

It's tough. It's really tough.

and there are a lot smaller scale ones that are a lot more eco friendly. That's a whole other thing too.

Yeah. But, I mean, going back to your original point,

yeah. It's an interesting comparison that I'm sure was present in Ron Moore's mind when he was making this show. Is that like, how far are we actually from this stuff? I don't know if he foresaw it being in 20 years.

Right.

But it's kind of interesting to come back to this show. Now, I have a feeling like we did Babylon five and a lot of our stuff was all like, Oh, great. You did a really great job of predicting fascism. Great job, Joe

yeah. Responses to pandemic, yay.

Yeah, exactly. And I wonder if that's going to be the big takeaway at the end of this for us is. Okay, cool. Well, AI and stuff that's here now too. So, well, it's not AI. It's a machine learning model. There are big, big differences.

But the colloquial term, unfortunately, is sticking.

As someone who builds some of this stuff professionally, like, I have a very strong understanding of how all this stuff works. It is not a thinking machine, I promise you. No matter what your brain tells you, no matter how empathetic you may feel, it is just math. I promise.

was math all along.

It was math all along. All right, so, after we talk about what needs to be done possible solutions come up, the labor doesn't exist, so the Astral Queen is looked to as all like, Hey, everyone here was sentenced to hard labor, we got some hard labor for them to do. And then Lee's all like, well, maybe they'll earn their freedom. Hey. And Adam is all like, Whoa, we're not releasing hardened criminals into the population. And he's all like, Whoa, most people are here legally, dude.

yeah.

Like well, you're clearly out of the structure now son, so make your bed and sleep in it and it's just all like wait This is a lot different than what Lee directly Explicitly asked for last episode at the end where he's all like, I'm still going to be in the chain of command. I'm still going to report to my dad. I'm still just a major. She's all like, no, you're not in the cabinet. You're going to help me understand military stuff and how quickly that has changed.

Yeah, well, Commander Adama rejected the premise. He was not here for it.

Yeah.

And he's got that Big Dad energy, so he's not gonna just let this go by.

Yeah.

So, we have a thousand prisoners ish, is that right? Was it fifteen hundred? Why do I have that number in my head?

Somewhere around 1, 000 and under 2, 000 prisoners.

okay. If we agree, can agree upon those boundaries. I'm wondering about genetics. Because we think we have forty something thousand humans left. Forty five ish,

Yeah, I think we're at like 47 on the big board right now.

And I don't know enough about genetics, but I'm wondering if Lee has a good point of some of these people must be rehabilitated just purely for genetics reasons.

I don't think they're there yet.

Okay.

I won't get too spoil y, but this is a plot point later in the show.

Okay.

Do we, have enough people genetically to maintain the human race, is a question that will be asked by this show. So,

It seems like that has to come up at some point, and these people Might have to be involved in that in some way. Like, we might have to figure out how to reintroduce somebody, at least some of this population.

At one point, one of the more science y people in the show does the math and comes up with a hard number.

Yeah. It feels like Gaius should have already been thinking about that, but it's

I mean, Gaius can just see it as an excuse to fuck around, I'm sure. That's his way.

Gaius sucks.

Um, so, uh, they're talking about this officer, Billy gets Juwalla assigned to it,

Yeah. Weird. Weird.

got a little crush. and uh, Commander Adama tells Captain Adama how he really feels as they walk out of there. Lee goes to the Astral Queen for some volunteers and Tom Zarek, known terrorist, steps out to decline the offer. Now, do you know this guy?

I don't know this guy.

This is Richard Hatch. He played Apollo in the original Battlestar Galactica. So I did a little bit of research on the OG Galactica. There were only 24 episodes of the original Battlestar Galactica show.

Oh, wow. I had in my head that it ran for a few seasons,

It, it ran for one season in 1978 to 1979. Went off the air, was 80, um, which is where they land on Earth, because it was much cheaper to produce, because the reason it was cancelled so quick is because it was so expensive.

Fair. Okay.

Hatch was in all kinds of 80s TV, after Battlestar Galactica. It really kicked his career off. He worked with all kinds of famous actors.

you didn't happen to see if he was credited an airwolf at all, did you?

Um, I should have checked. Uh, And then after this bit, we finally hit our credits. We are 20 percent of the way through this episode. And we just hit our theme song.

Wow.

you know, It's just like nine minutes to theme this

Yeah. So interesting.

after this, Billy and D give us some backstory on Tom Zarek.

Yeah. Not enough, though. I feel like I don't know enough about him yet, but it seems like you indicated he would this is a recurring person.

he is a recurring character. Um, Honestly, I figured you would have a lot more to say about this situation.

gosh. I don't have any opinions, honestly

yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's a lot Given Tom Zarek is a terrorist who bombed a government building,

right? Yeah, no, I mean, the problem I have with having an opinion about Tom Zarek easy to have an opinion about Timothy McVeigh because I have a ton of context, right?

yeah. No, that's fair.

I have no context about Tom Zarek Billy and Douala are clearly of opposite opinions, uh. like, Billy kind of admires him somehow, and it's funny because Billy is part of the current establishment,

Yes.

Presumably that Tom Zarek is unhappy with, and Billy is kind of looking up to him, whereas Duala has, you know, It's the feeling of the person on the ground who was sort of subjected to the terror and says no, this is, no,

Yeah.

no circumstances is acceptable. But I really don't know enough about this government. To feel any sort of way about what he was doing, or

Mm hmm.

I don't know, man, because I feel like there's little seeds planted everywhere to me that this human society is not what it appears, or You know, there's a shine on it that if you just scratch the surface, it's, it's rotten underneath. So I don't know, actually, how I feel about Tom Zarek.

No, that's fair. I just don't feel like I have any space to comment on it.

I know it's, it's one of the, this whole episode, I feel like I don't have any space to comment on it. It's so complicated and I don't feel like I've put the work in to understand some of these human issues.

Fair enough.

It's very interesting though. I'm happy to talk about it. I just don't want to be an ass about it either.

yeah. Well, that's the line. Callie's like, we should probably just give up on this, but Lee wants to go talk to Zarek. We go back to Caprica after this. It is day 12 since C Day.

Yeah. Does that mean it's day 12 for Galactica as well?

Yeah,

So they are running in concurrent time,

Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, they're running into current time. And Hilo left right after the initial attack.

yeah.

they knew what

so, how many days did we spend just jumping?

5 and a half.

So, if it's 12 days, we've had about a week of, quote, normalcy.

yep.

I don't feel like anybody is going to be doing their best for a while.

Nor should they be, it's, it's fucked, yeah.

Okay, but anyway, so Hilo and Sharon are looking for people and we see 6PT and Doryl. Or do we want to call her 6PT if she's on Caprica?

I have been saving the 6PT to be exclusively the 6 that only interacts with Baltar.

with Gaius.

It's the one who helps him do his homework, so she's 6PT.

Oh, good. I like that.

So yeah, Adoral and A6 are watching in an empty city here.

Again, six is a little bit sad and sympathetic, I think. And Doral is much more pragmatic. Six is talking about humanity as their parent. And Doral is saying that parents must die for children to thrive.

I mean, that's, that's an attitude.

It's an attitude. I don't know. Sometimes I feel that way about our government filled with. Octogenarians.

Mm. Mm.

maybe die is too strong a word, but you understand the poetic license.

Yeah.

For

Lee talks to Tom, who is clearly trying to guilt Lee with every action here. Lee mentions reading Tom's banned book, while something else starts to happen around them. The prisoners take control, and Lee fights off a few before getting tackled. While this is going on, Billy and Dee are talking about. Uh, How large Billy's mouth must be to be able to fit his giant feet inside of them. Heh

Yeah. Billy is not good with women. I think I said that in a previous episode and I stand by this statement. I'm getting vibes though from Tom Zarek a little bit about like chaos is a ladder from Peter Baelish in the Game of Thrones, like he sees this as like, well, this is my opportunity to wreak havoc and change things. But I'm pretty sure that's how more people die, Tom, and we kind of need all of them.

Gonna need most of them, for sure.

So I don't feel like that's very smart. I'm not getting like. sharpest knife in the drawer off of Tom Zarek.

yeah.

I'm getting a lot of confidence.

hmm.

Not necessarily the brains.

Don't remember Tom Zarek being a dumb guy, um,

I'm not saying he's like a dum dum, but yeah.

but also like his role and character evolve a lot over the course of the show. Um, so a little bit of outside of the series backstory, Richard Hatch spent most of the late nineties trying to convince. NBC or anyone who would listen to do a Battlestar Galactica sequel, not a reboot but a sequel to the uh, 79 series that would erase Battlestar 80 from Cannon,

Okay. I haven't heard anything good about 80. So

to the point where he mortgaged his house to fund the production of a trailer to try and drum interest.

that's belief.

and so he does all of this work, and then NBC, who has the TV rights, announces that they're doing a reboot, and they're putting Ron Moore in charge. And Richard Hatch was initially not chill about this. Not that he should have been, to be clear. He was definitely fucked by the studio.

He was a true believer too.

I will never, you know, urge you to give sympathy to a megacorporation listener. I don't think anyone who's listened to more than 30 minutes of me talking would feel that way. Um, but he did, he did kind of get screwed there. Um, but Ron Moore made a point of kind of reaching out and trying to make it right. Um, and bridge the gap.

Yeah. I admire Ron more. Making that connection then and also I feel like this role is really written to his strengths and maybe even a little therapeutic

You're not wrong There's definitely shades of that of like we need to tear whatever's going on down You We need to follow the will of the people. Like it rings with a slightly different voice with that backstory.

I love that context. I love it. Can I tell you what I wrote about the next scene? So we go over back to Galactica

Mm hmm.

and Starbuck roasts Gaius. Then she roasts Flattop. Tai is not amused. She roasts him too.

Yep.

Those are my notes.

Yep. I wrote Ty is a dick and Kara is spicy about it.

Yeah, yeah. So, Flattop, I guess, has been coming in a little hot on his landings, right?

Yeah.

And she gives him some shit about that since, you know, Apollo's off doing other things, so she's in charge of this meeting, I guess. I don't know. And, Flattop gets kind of, like, joked about, but, yeah. I think he also gets the point. Like, sometimes it's okay to just, like, give somebody a little shit to lightly tell them, like, knock it off. And uh, Tai wants it to be all business all the time, except in his personal time when he is drinking a bunch.

Yeah. Zarek tells Lee it's time to talk about his daddy issues, as Baltar gets grilled by the commander about the lack of a Cylon detector.

It's about time somebody called him on his bullshit.

yeah, he tries to get out of it here,

Yeah.

But is immediately rebuked, and 6PT to the rescue, Or maybe not because she urges him to ask for a nuke in order to build the Cylon detector.

She gets scary.

she gets scary. now we've been talking about what exactly is going on with Baltar in 6PT, right? We haven't really come up with anything definitive. You know, I feel like it's been kind of like I could see it going either way. Um,

could be friend, could be foe, could be internal manifestation, could be microchip in brain.

yeah. I've been trying to devil's advocate a little bit on that too. Whenever you'd say one thing I would try to be all like, well maybe it's the other thing. Um, do you have, as a first time viewer of the series, with this scene in particular, Does this scene change your opinion at all on what is going on with Baltar and 6BT watching 6 manipulate him so easily into getting a nuclear warhead?

It sure seems sinister at this point. It sure seems like microchip in brain rather than his subconscious trying to help him figure stuff out. I mean, he does bullshit a quick, thing about, well, you know, the warheads have plutonium and we know Cylons have a problem with radiation. And so I need the plutonium in order to, you know, use in the detector thing. And that seems almost plausible, like maybe.

Yeah, it could really go either way with this scene and that's what makes it so fucking good.

Yeah, you can talk yourself into anything at this point.

I think this scene is really designed in a way where It's meant to make you change your mind about it. And it does it so well, so cleverly that it doesn't matter what your opinion was before going into this. It's designed to make you go, Oh, well, this is okay. Well, I thought it was a subconscious, but that's a really weird request. And this is bad or, or I really thought it was a chip, but also he actually has the answer without her.

Yeah. No. I haven't thought hard enough about anything to do that.

Yeah,

Yeah. No, it is really masterful. Like, I think the only reason I am not sure still. I'm trying not to anchor to anything. Uh, and I think part of it is just like starting this program this last semester. I feel like it's a mistake to ever think I know anything for sure. so I don't know if I would have had the same skepticism a year ago where I'm there going, I can't call it yet. You know?

Zarek asked the wedge. How the driving the commander and the president apart is going. And Lee is a lot less fun to Tom when he isn't being a selfish bitch. Bombing that government building is okay, but when I'm the hostage, I'm going to take the high ground. Okay. Lee.

Yeah, Lee, Lee has got a lot of growing to do and I, don't love patriarchy as we know and Adama is kind of giving the whole scene, the whole vibe, the whole patriarchy just in his thing.

Yeah.

And so I am a little more inclined to be empathetic to Apollo. But also, he is very inexperienced and it is very obvious.

Yeah.

also, back on Galactica, Ty catches Tyrell and Boomer and orders her to knock it off. She is Tyrell's superior and, uh, shouldn't be doing this.

Yeah, she's an officer. He's enlisted. This is a no no.

I honestly hadn't paid enough attention to, like, titles and ranks and other things And she was so, like, submissive and scared in the last episode, I thought it was the other way around.

nope. Uh, He is Miles O'Brien, effectively.

Okay.

He is Chief Petty Officer. Unenlisted. Didn't go to the Academy.

Yeah.

Always suffers. He really is just Gaelic, Valy Irish, like Ron Moore wrote on both shows, like,

Oh, that is true. Yeah.

putting this all together in my head right now. Verbal processing. Yeah. Huh.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I hadn't, she was so like, Oh, I just don't know what's going on and jet bombs and I, I'm really not impressed with Boomer and Tyrell at all.

Yeah. I will say Tyrell is among my favorite characters in the show.

Okay.

At least from the initial viewing.

Mm hmm.

And we get to meet one of my other favorite characters next episode, but we'll talk about that. Later. Like, next week. So, uh, Zarek makes his demands known. He wants free and open elections immediately. As we said before, it has been one week, seven days since the fleet was jumping every 33 minutes.

Right. And I said normalcy with air quotes around it. One week of normalcy where we lost a whole bunch of water and we had to shoot down a possibly enemy combatant ship filled with nukes, like it has not been a very normal week. Crisis is not over. And crisis time is not election time.

Typically, no.

If it's not on a normal schedule, like, I mean if you're having a crisis but you have a normally scheduled election, I think you should probably go through with that. But I don't know.

I mean, crisis time, historically speaking, with election time is not good for the elections. It, it, it never really works out in the best interest of the people.

And this is why you have, in the law, set up a succession plan. Like, everything was legal. It was predetermined that like, this is how this is going to go if something goes bad. And then you get back on the schedule.

Yeah.

Zarek just wants chaos as a ladder at this point.

I wish Scott were here to ask about the logistics of an election for 50, 000 people.

Yeah, me too.

That was actually something I was really looking forward to talking to him about.

Yeah, in this environment.

yeah. The President and the Commander discuss the situation, and we won't be negotiating with these terrorists since there's no political gain for us this time. Fuck you, Ronnie.

I mean, I would hate to be Laura Roslin. Like, this is just the worst. She's in the worst position of anyone, I think, on the show.

Yeah, and it wasn't bad enough, so they gave her cancer.

Huh.

It's bad.

Yeah. I mean, she's right to be concerned about destabilization and terrorism, but I don't know how you make any right decision in this context. I have no idea what's right. And I don't think anybody does until they're done. Till it's already happened.

Hindsight is 20 20. Starbuck is also a sniper? Yeah.

Crack pilot. Apparently she was also a great teacher, which, you know, we can talk about next week uh, and a sniper.

Yeah, it's a bit much. Yeah. The, the overlap of flying a plane and shooting it and firing a gun separately, I don't believe that that's, like, I would

There's not enough in that Venn diagram to like,

like, okay, so you are really good at horseback archery, hypothetically, right?

hmm. Yeah.

Would you be good shooting a pistol?

Yeah,

When we say it like that!

yeah. I have to wonder.

Um, but, so she's going in with the Marines. I do believe that she's probably the best marksman alive at the moment. That's fair to me. I don't know if she was actually

yeah.

And if she's just using bravado here.

Yeah, yeah,

So we go back to the Astral Queen here. And Duala is all talking heads, asking Billy, how did I get here?

yeah. He admits that he's the source. He volunteered her for this. Callie starts getting shit from a prisoner. I think we get his name, but

I just wrote his name as Creepy Motherfucker. And my exact note is some creepy motherfucker is motherfuckin creepy to Callie.

yeah.

Yep, fuck this guy.

Yeah, this isn't really lending toward the political prisoners argument this guy actually seems violent and dangerous.

Yes.

And the fact that he's also so close to Zarek doesn't really speak well for Zarek.

For sure, it's meant to be a detractor. It does it's job, uh, well, for the story there. Um,

And then we get Tom Zarek being all buttery emails about Rosalyn,

yep.

And hassles Apollo about his call sign. I didn't realize that Apollo was considered one of the gods.

Yes, so, in Battlestar, most of their gods are just the Greek gods.

Okay. The lords of Kobol.

Yeah, the Lords of Kobol are just the Greek gods, effectively. Same names, same stuff. If there's any differences, there might be, but I don't recall them offhand.

So Adama calls in as like, the Stahl technique, right?

yeah. Zarek knows what's going on though, this is a play by play to buy some time for troops. Callie gets grabbed by Creepy McFuckface. As Lee figures Derek is doing all of this just so that he can die a martyr. And the Marines roll in.

Yeah, I don't know if I was totally convinced on the martyr thing. I thought more of, like, the Peter Baelish angle. Like, I'm using disruption to claw my way to the top. But, okay, sure.

Yeah.

It, martyr, why not? I mean, who wants to be around for all this Cylon shit anyway? Like,

Not wrong.

might as well. Um, yeah. So, Creepy McFuckface is definitely giving the rapey vibes, yes.

Yeah. Um, nothing is shown explicitly or really explained. off.

Fair.

And he shot Callie for it.

Yeah. He did have a gun, but I understand. Cali's definitely, like, tougher than she had led on to this point.

Yeah. But uh, before he can shoot Callie again here, Lee grabs a gun, kills him, and gets Zarek. And then he tells Tom what's gonna happen. Tom Zarek won't be a martyr. The prisoners will work for their freedom, and there eventually will be elections, because the government needs the consent of people to be legitimate.

Sure.

The Astral Queen is going to remain with the prisoners, so they can fuck off if they want. And Zarek agrees, Starbuck finally gets her shot, but Lee notices and saves him.

Yeah. I think that Tom Zarek is incredibly short sighted in this, like, trying to get himself killed and cause this more chaos in the name of, like, getting better government or whatever. Because the stakes here aren't presumably the stakes that you and I would be operating under. They're the fact that there is a boogeyman chasing us throughout the galaxy, trying to kill us all.

Yeah.

So I don't think Tom Zarek's plan is good. And I think Apollo is coming up with, like, the best compromise he can at this point.

And also, it's like, worth mentioning, how much does Tom Zarek know about what's actually going on right now? Like, as a prisoner on a ship, you probably know about all the jumping. You probably know the Cylons attacked.

Uh Huh.

Uh, He clearly knows Rosalyn is the president. He knows that For some reason he knows that it's the Galactica out there saving them and who the commander of the Galactica is and that Lee is his son. I would not expect civilians to know that.

Yeah, it makes you wonder, like, how much did the general population know about the Galactica? Like, if the Galactica is just that famous, and, you know, So, okay, yeah, I know for sure that Adama is in charge of the Galactica. I know, kind of, that it was a historical thing because we were turning it into a museum. And does he know about Apollo through that knowledge or does he just see this guy and be like, oh, that's definitely his son, you know?

Yeah, like, well I mean it's also just like, how famous is Adama? Right? Because he was a war hero. In the first war, like people know him is he like equivalent to level famous of like a Douglas MacArthur in like the fifties or sixties, like, you know, is he a full on like Eisenhower?

Yeah. Great question.

and we will never know because I guess it's too far removed from the reality of the show at this point, you know? But it is curious to know that he would know Lea Dama and go, Oh, well you're Commander Dama's son, and that he's the captain of the Galactica, And, like, it's just, It's

Yeah. I, I guess I'm not, I'm not put off by it. I can headcanon pretty easily that like, the captain of the astral queen talks to the guards about what's going on and the guards are in an unprecedented situation and so they jab with the prisoners a little bit and kind of like, hey, this is so wild. Like, you know, we're all shell shocked and here's what's going on. So, I mean, I can squish it around. Um, really quick to like, okay, here's why he knows everything.

Uh, We got over to Colonial One, Lee reports to the President and Commander, and they are both pissed at him.

Yeah. Mom and dad are so mad.

Right. There's gonna be an election in seven months, when there should have been one.

Yeah. So he's saying we've got to stick to the schedule.

Yeah.

Makes me really wonder if Mr. Zarek is going to be our. Opponent for Laura Roslin.

We'll find out if the election happens.

I was like, oh, are we setting that up? That he's gonna like, get himself a following and try to take her down? Except that he is a felon. I don't know what the rules are about that in this society, so.

They're not really pert important in our society. We'll see.

We won't let you vote. but you can run for things.

Yeah. Mm hmm.

Yeah. Anyway. Oh

Kara goes to see Ty and gives him some water and a flask. She tries to kind of mend things here, but he's not receptive.

He's, this is where he says it, that his flaws are personal, not professional. And I take exception with that.

Yeah, you should. It's bullshit. Yeah.

mean, as a, Like, chartered professional, certified by the state of Oklahoma, I have some personal standards I have to maintain, or I will lose my certification, sir. Just because you're in the military, you get an exception from that, you think? Hmm. I don't know. not into it, Mr. Tye.

after this we see Callie in the ER, she's recovering.

Uh Huh. She's a hero. I feel weird about Tyrell patronizing her here. He gives her like a, that's my girl or something. And I'm like, fuck off.

yeah, it's, it's a lot.

I was not impressed with that.

Lee and Rosalind talk, he apologizes if she felt betrayed. And he affirms that he will be voting for her in the coming election.

Oh, cool. Sure. Great. You have one vote.

Yeah, I mean,

she feels.

I get it, like, of the principles to stand on. That's A

not bad. She does admire his commitment to the law. Like, she's got a lot on her plate, but it is nice to know that the people around you have standards. Did you love her cool book she's reading?

What book was it? I missed

She's just reading a book, but it had the corners cut.

Oh, yep, they all do.

This is great. I love the corners. So she finally comes clean to Lee that Well, you've committed me to an election in seven months, but I might not be here in seven months.

Yeah, I've got Cancer. She, she tells him he's the second person in the fleet to know. It's just him and Billy right now.

Oh, yeah, I was struggling for a second to remember who the first was, but it would be Billy, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

so she swears him to secrecy and says, like, That's why I need to see Galactica's doctor, like, soon.

Yep, and that's the episode.

I feel like Every episode is a cliffhanger. Every episode is leaving me needing another one.

That show's real good.

Yeah.

So, on a scale of 1 to 12 colonies, Or would you rate this one? Hehehehe

It left me with so many things that it was like, I, I don't know how to have an opinion about this. I'm not smart enough to have an opinion about this. But it's stuff we need to think about and I'm worried about and You know, if you can put it into our modern context, it's scary as fuck, right?

Hehehehe For sure

Um, you know, just thinking about the problems that we have today with the prison system and justice and maybe elections, who knows? I, I'll give it I mean, it's certainly above average. Um, well, I don't even know what average is for this show yet. Uh, but for my standards of like all shows, this is above average. so I think I could give this like a 10.

This does a lot of really good world building Um, it does a lot of good setting the stage for the rest of the season, and there's some stuff in here that's very apparent that it's table setting for the rest of the season, and we're given timelines on things. But there's other things that are more innocuous that are also table setting for future plotlines. And that's the kind of stuff I always appreciate. And I always really feel good about in an episode.

Okay.

good app.

Yeah. Really good. A lot of thinking material in there and it's uncomfortable.

Speaking of uncomfortable, next week we've got Season 1, Episode 4, Act of Contrition. A crisis forces Commander Adama, Lea Adama, and Cara Thrace to finally face a ghost from the past, the late Zack Adama. Ope, indeed. Well, we'll be talking about that one next week. But we have to say a couple of thank yous before we Shuff off the podcast coil and retreat from your ears for seven days. And the first of those thanks, as always, is to Jeremy Siegel for composing our lovely new theme music.

Yeah.

much.

And thank you to Angry Duck Time Machine on Instagram for the podcast artwork.

Aaron, thanks so much for editing this episode. Probably. Um, yeah, I don't know if you're going to edit this episode or a different one of the same coverage, but you know, thank you.

We put you through a lot. We appreciate it. Yeah, and thank you to you, the listener, for being here. I hope you're enjoying Battlestar as much as I am so far.

Yeah.

And uh, if you want to find us, I hope that we've gotten the discord up in more places. I think we were working on making sure we had the right kind of link to go on the show notes, but it is on the website now if you need that.

Cool. And we'll see you next week, internet.

Bye!