BSG S1E4 - Space Nebraska

Hello, and welcome to Who Are You? We're a reasonably well done sci fi watch cast and currently watching 2004's Battlestar Galactica. We're A couple of former strangers now friends, and we're sharing a show that Jaffer has watched before, but I have not. So I'm Laura,

I'm Ja'far.

and today we have Season 1, Episode 4, Act of Contrition.

So, this is a surprise two parter.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting it. I said in the last episode that I feel like everything has been kind of cliffhanger y, like making me beg for the next episode, but this episode they took that very literally.

They did. Um, I was wondering if you have already watched the next one. If you were able to hold back or not.

I have not had the time, and I told you about I spent New Year's Eve actually very sick from a stomach virus, so that sort of, like, destroyed my couple of days.

Fair enough.

It's really exciting though. I wrote at the top of my notes here, if we're just jumping into the episode, that Starbuck is having a vision of burning up, but now I'm realizing that I guess this whole episode is told through flashbacks. Like, there were some very obvious flashbacks, but she's doing the thing. At the beginning of episode that she is also doing at end of episode and so the whole time she's just flashing back to different points. That's such a neat device.

100%. Yep, that is 100 percent what is going down. Um, the entire episode is a framing device of Starbuck crashing at the end of the episode.

Yeah,

It's so good, because you don't know what's going on at first. It's to the point where the first time it happens, it's like so quick that like, I rewound it. And was all like, was that part of last episode's recap? Cause it feels like it was part of last episode's recap, but it wasn't. And that was all by design. How well made this show is.

yeah, we're just in media like falling the whole episode.

Yeah. So we get this brief little quick falling and then we open truly on Flattop's Thousandth Landing,

Yeah, a big

that everyone should be aware of, and they do this so great because. How we find out this is what's going on, because everyone's just doing stuff, right? It's very in media still, like, you get the shock of the, the Starbuck crashing and then this, right, immediately. And how we find out this is what's going on is the chief is pissed nobody told him,

Oh, yeah.

Flattop's 1000th landing and nobody told me? We need a wagon! Like, we gotta do the thing! And If this were not as well written of a show, the first scene would have been Lee and Starbuck talking about his thousandth landing while trying to paint his helmet, which is what we find out that they're doing. They're setting up

Oh, yeah. They have the red paint.

Yeah. And a lesser show would have just had them be all like, Can't believe it's Flattop's thousandth landing! Wow, what a celebration! But that's not this show. This show's better than that. This show's going to show and tell in a much subtler way. You know, by having it be the chief be upset. And that is like, that is what makes this show so good. It's stuff like that. That decision is such a good fucking decision. I

It's, it's very real life. And it's like, you know, Tyrell is like the co worker who loves birthdays, who just found out about the co worker who's been kind of hiding their birthday. It's like, Oh my God, we have to, I need to go right now to get the cake and the candles and we have to do the song. And

it's time.

it's beautiful, especially, I think in this episode we get, you know, a day counter again. I think it's 14 days.

Yeah,

So like, we haven't had anything normal in those 14 days for sure, but we're having more normalcy, the new normal, perhaps. And we've just been given a reason to like, have a little party. And it's really cute and human, and I love it. Of course, nothing is going to stay happy in this show, it seems like.

uh, No, just give up on that now.

Yeah.

just just just trust me. Give up on all of that immediately.

Yeah. We have, like, the humanness of like, Oh, we spilled the red paint and Adama's coming in and he's like, Oh, I'm unhappy. You kids have got to clean up that red paint. And,

yeah,

they're like, No, we got to do the helmet right now. This is the thing. Like,

yeah. They're so excited, they're so happy. Um, and it keeps cutting to this missile rack ominously.

Yeah.

Um, is one of the straps is slowly breaking as we learned that when Bill Adama did his thousandth landing, he used it as an opportunity to make a fart joke.

I mean, why not? If you've got

you. I didn't know he was a host of this podcast, so that's fun.

anytime you want to hop on. Yeah.

Yeah. Did make some Dick and fart jokes. We're here for it. Uh, Edward James Olmos.

Right.

Famous actor and incredibly well, well spoken man.

Well, if he ever wants to work a dick and fart joke, look us up, man.

to call. No one, because we're never putting our phone numbers on the internet. You can send an email to whoareyoub5 at gmail. com like everyone else.

Yeah, yeah, and we will ignore it because it's surely a scam. Hahaha.

we cut back to uh, the landing here, the celebration, as the missile falls and launches straight for flattop the wagon.

It's spinning in the wagon. We're just like making this guy sick round and round. And, ahhhhh, so, that's Tethyme.

Yep. When we come back from theme, Starbuck is spinning out of control briefly. As we go back to the master at arms who fills us in. 13 dead pilots, more injured, and it's just fatigue of the old equipment.

Yeah, metal fatigue. And this is begging the question again, is it Cylon or is it stupid?

Yeah,

we just have a ship that was being decommissioned, and the stuff is old. Probably not sabotaged this time, but who knows.

yeah. Lee is in his CAG briefing giving the details for the memorial service when Husker walks in. Husker is his old call sign. Commander Adamus.

Oh, I didn't realize.

think, we've only seen it painted on the side of his old Viper at this point.

Yeah, and I certainly was like, overwhelmed by other things and didn't notice.

I like to call him that when he's in the pilot room.

So is he from Nebraska?

Well, Space Nebra

they? I don't know. Space Nebraska, yeah.

And actually, no, I think he grew up in, he grew up in Caprica and I think his parents were 1920s mobsters. Anyways.

And so we Get a different Starbuck flashback at this point as he takes over.

Starbuck recalls meeting Commander Adama for the first time right before Zack's funeral. And we cut back and forth between Zack's funeral and the one that's happening on Galactica. At Zack's funeral, I'm surprised they didn't use Lee's real name.

Oh, I didn't even notice they called him by his call sign.

They called him Lee.

Just Lee.

Just Lee. Not his actual first name.

Wait, Lee is not his first name.

Not entirely.

Oh, what is his first name?

Leland.

Oh, I had no idea,

Yeah, they never say it. It's, of like, of all the times to say it, you'd think this would be the time.

Yeah, when so and so is survived by formal names, right.

Yeah, 100%.

Oh, weird. Okay, I had no idea. I could have gotten a whole other episode not knowing his full name was Leland.

I don't know when they tell us. I don't know if they ever tell us. They, they must. They must if I know it. Ha ha

It's gonna be Leland Watch, just like we had Lockley Watch on

When we'll, When we'll, likely show up on Crusade.

Leland Watch 2025. Yeah, I really like their dress uniforms with the sash. I think it's a nice touch.

it's slick. It also has big Earth Force uniform vibes. So,

I just, I had space force in my head for a second. And not Babylon 5 Earthforce. Okay. Yes, it does have big Earthforce vibes. I was like, man, does Space Force have a dress uniform? Damn!

they do.

I'm sure they do. I hope it has a sash.

yeah, it should. All good space uniforms have sashes.

Exactly. puts the flags on the 13

yeah.

bodies. We have 13 pilots that we've lost.

Yep. Man, that seems to be a number that keeps coming up.

Huh.

After the service, the commander asks Kara to resume her previous post of flight instructor. She's the only non civilian one left. Kara is apprehensive, but ends up accepting it as Adama unknowingly twists the knife with his professionalism comments.

Yeah, this comment about There are two civilian flight instructors also stuck out to me a little bit because I was like, man, if I'm Roslyn, I would be thinking really hard and quick about getting some more pilots in general, not just Galactica pilots, like you need somebody to be able to pilot every single ship. You need a lot of redundancy.

Yes. and I mean, who knows, like they might need more pilots because they could decide to build a ship. They could decide they could end up finding like a ship that got lost at some point,

A derelict. Yeah. We, we need more pilots and we need to be thinking about this. I would have loved to see in parallel if Rosalind was also like, huh. We need to get a training program going with these two civilian flight instructors right away, you know,

there is an implication that that is happening. Uh, Later in the episode So Kara rejects everyone in a little bit, right? And then Lee goes, The next batch have never been in a cockpit before. They're about to start basic flight.

Yeah,

me, tells me that is that that's those civilian guys running basic flight training now for everyone who is capable, eligible, interested.

yeah, you might be right. Yeah, that would be super important, but our focus here is not, like, on the nitty gritty logistics of the, you know, what the president needs to be doing with civilians, it's focused on, like, the past trauma and uh, Adama just forgiving her, or telling her she doesn't even need forgiveness. Like, Zach's death is not your fault. You just uh, need to go back and train more pilots. And he even gives her the dad hug. Oh, no. So then we're, we're falling again.

Yeah. we cut back to a triad game between Starbuck and Baltar with Crashdown and Boomer taking side bets on the game. Fun fact here. Due to a research error on the original Battlestar Galactica, the games of Triad and Pyramid Both of which feature in Galactica 78. Their names got flipped for the 04 series. So the card game was Pyramid, and the sports ball game was Triad. And in this, the sports ball game is Pyramid, and the card game is Triad.

Oh, weird.

It was literally a clerical error. Someone was like making notes about stuff to bring back, and they just wrote it down in the wrong order. And so, That carried through to it making it to air, and the names of the game just got flipped.

We just got to run with it. Especially in that, that day and age. yeah,

Triad, slash Old Pyramid from the original game as well. They actually sell this deck of cards to play Triad with,

Oh, fun.

But they're like a promo item from the release of the show, and they're all like a hundred dollars on eBay now. I should check on Etsy. I bet you someone's got them on Etsy for super

Yeah. that'd be fun. So in this crash down, ask Gaeta about the Cylon detector, which apparently people aren't supposed to know about.

Yeah, but Crashdown knows.

If crash down knows, probably everybody knows. Right?

We get some like, hot and heavy flashbacks in here too. Some

Yeah.

flashbacks.

She's just like dissociating hard. She's, she's gone a full Gaius, like,

Yeah. Yeah, in the flashback to them playing cards, she's flashing back to having sex with Zack.

It's flashbacks all the way down.

yeah. Uh, In a sequence that I could only describe as directed by Werner Herzog, we cut between present, past funerals, and fuckin

Yeah, and especially Zach telling Starbuck that he doesn't want any special treatment as as they're uh, in a compromised position together.

Yeah, mid coitus.

yeah, that's uh, where she loses it and bows out of the triad game.

Over on Caprica, we are 14 days since C Day. Helo and Sharon track down the military signal they got at the end of last ep two episodes ago, at this point to a diner with a bookcase in front of a door that is filled with books.

Uh Huh.

Weird choice.

I don't know, maybe you've got customers who come in solo and want to read some stuff.

I mean, no, the bookcase makes sense. It's just like, you could never go into this door without knocking down that bookcase

Yeah.

if the point is hiding it,

you need the, the bookcase door that apparently they're selling at Home Depot now and that I really want one.

am, so I've been thinking about like redoing a room, finishing a room in my basement. And uh, Beth's parents were over yesterday and convinced me on taking down a couple of walls and finishing my entire basement and just redoing it and 100 percent you can bet I'm gonna have a bookcase door in that bitch.

I want one so bad. I, I think that would be so cool.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's how you make your fallout shelter a little more You uh, make the bookcase into a door. You probably have to have two doors though, right? Because you got to have one that's like lead lined or something. Yeah,

I've been in bunkers. I've seen some shit.

you've, you've got to have an airlocky kind of situation, you know?

for sure.

So this fallout shelter has a bunch of food and other supplies.

Yeah, crazy that this doomsday prepper just went through all this trouble and then didn't make it to the shelter, right Sharon? Nothin suspicious about that at all. Huh. Huh.

Yeah. She doesn't want to think about that too hard. That's, that's depressing.

Yeah. it's depressing, and not that they found this guy and killed him. And then restocked his uh, his shelter. For sure.

And definitely, there's not a Six skulking around ominously outside.

for sure. That'd be

Definitely, probably not.

We finally meet Doc Coddle.

Galactica's not got the best of medical personnel on board, do they? Like, is this the best that the, the fleet had to offer? I don't think so.

Easily yes. Doc Coddle is one of my favorite characters.

Oh, really? Okay. He's sure smoking a lot.

Do you mind? Yes, I do.

I was just like, you know, it makes sense because Galactica's on its way out, right? At the beginning of this whole thing. It's being decommissioned. It's going to be a museum. You probably don't have, like, your The youngest most ambitious doctor personnel on this ship, right? He's giving, like, retirement vibes.

for sure. Dot Coddle smokes cigarettes, by the way, because he is directly meant to counterpoint Baltar.

I'm gonna need some more explanation

so Baltar smokes cigars, right? Coddle smokes cigarettes, and they are both men of science,

Okay.

Um, different types of sciences, but they are two different things. Very bright scientific minds.

Okay.

they are meant to represent two extremes of science. Like, Baltar is a man of no faith and pure science, and Kottel is a man of faith and science.

Yeah. And I would also say Gaius is kind of a little bit of a techno jerk.

sure, yeah, like, like, Baltar is meant to be a zero morality kind of person, and Kottel is very much meant to be pure science. The opposite, but Baltar puts on a smiling face and everyone loves him and Cottle doesn't bother. And a lot of people dislike him.

Yeah.

They are really opposite characters in a lot of fun ways. And the fact that he's like even brought in and established in subtle and not subtle ways as that person, like when, when Rosalind's talking about holistic medicine, he scoffs. You're one of those, you know, like he's very much rooted in science. Very clear for initially, but also it's just, it's such a good dichotomy and they, I'm sure they interact a couple of times, but I don't remember when.

Mm hmm.

And even if I did, I wouldn't say anything. But, just like, having that frame in mind for those two characters going forward is meant to be

Okay.

at this point.

Yeah. It's certainly not a flattering first impression for Doc Cottle. you know, he's hassling Rosalind about like, well, why didn't you go do your breast exams, silly? And then immediately lights up a cigarette in her face. And it's just like, the hypocrisy, my man. Oh, it's so strong.

Mm hmm.

The, the big hypocrisy vibes was, was a lot. And so he offers her something called deloxan, I think. I wasn't quite 100 percent sure when I wrote it down. but she talks about watching her mother having wasted away on deloxan.

Yeah.

And she wants to consider this Kamala extract. I'm a little nervous about this because we live in a time now of wellness influencers who want to convince people that they can manage their cancer through their particular brand of snake oil. So I don't know where that's going with this show. But boy, evidence based medicine, uh. um, but he also tells her, that at this point she might want to also add prayer in her follow up care.

Worth considering.

Interesting interaction. I am curious about how this is going to resolve. I sure hope that we're not going to go too far down the snake oil route. Hope there's no snake oil.

Eh, we'll find out. Um. Heh Heh Lee. Uh, Hans Starbucks. A list of washouts would have been, and anyone otherwise who's left to train up to pilot. And since there are no flight simulators on board, they're flying today.

Immediately.

My notes state, I'm sure this will go well.

Yeah. She's not impressed already. She's very biased. We know that this is some of, you know, trauma influenced reaction on Starbucks part. But I cannot imagine being a civilian drafted from a fleet and being told, Oh, by the way, this is the first day and we're just going to go get out there. And in the. Vehicle with all the mass and inertia and go for it.

We're just doing it.

So at least one of them fails the landing. I think they all must fail the landing, but we see one of them really blow it, right?

Yeah, Cat blows it real bad, and Starbuck washes the whole class. But Lee objects, as Starbuck ejects, as we flash back to our framing story.

Yeah.

Lee goes to Dadmander and lets it slip that That Zach was given his wings when he shouldn't have been a domicile starbuck to his quarters to get the rest of this puzzle together. Kara admits that she let her feelings for Zach cloud her judgment and he is furious.

Yeah. Dad is mad and disappointed.

yeah, it's a rough combo. And the one person that she probably needs most to be there for her can't because he is the one that she has wronged. Well, Zach, It's

Yeah. It's complicated. Adama starts out really admirable here. Um, having Starbucks back with Apollo being like, no, this is her call. If she said they're not good enough, they're not good enough. I'm going to let her do the thing. And Adama even opens the door accidentally for Lee to. almost step over that line and tell him the whole thing because he says, I know about Zach and this isn't about that. And she's very competent. We've talked about it.

as she emotionally spins out here Kara physically spins out. As we go back to our flashback we see the nuggets get reinstated.

Yeah, this is cute. I like that we call them nuggets. That's probably a real thing in the military, right?

Yeah.

We're gonna go right back in the cockpits. But it, she's, she's taking, she's, Adama's suggestion, seriously, that she needs to do her job. And instead of a big group, she's going to take them out a few at a time, give them more individualized attention. You know, maybe taking them out in the big group was just a, a problem waiting to happen because you know, you've got too much on your plate. That makes sense to me.

it does.

Like maybe you were setting yourself up to just have them all fail by the way you designed it instead of actually doing a good course.

hmm.

It's, it's a pedagogy thing, I think.

For sure. During this flight exercise, a group of Cylon Raiders without a base ship show up. It's a small patrol.

Interesting.

And Starbuck goes to fight the Raiders as she sends everyone back to the barn. Um, Hot Dog pulls a hard six and goes to assist. And he does get a kill before getting disabled.

yeah, I think that Hot Dog's justification here is actually, like, pretty good Starbuck did say, I don't remember if it was in the first training session or in the second training session she says, you don't want to be alone out here and don't leave your leader. As these raiders show up, she says you guys go back to the barn.

I will refrain from comment. Um, yeah, so, uh, Starbuck goes to fight these, was it, eight Raiders herself? Hot Dog gets one, Starbuck gets the other seven.

Yeah. Well, one on your first day out, I'm,

hey,

job, Hotdog.

that's more than most of the people who Cylons.

for sure, he does wind up losing all engines, which is, you know, not great, not ideal.

Yeah.

But one kill.

Starbuck takes some damage here including they, whatever, like her transponder or something, so they lose her dratus contact.

Right.

Which doesn't make sense because they can't hear her, but I wouldn't think you'd lose Tratus because that's the

Yeah, it should just be like visual kind of

right? You should know where she's at still. Cause you're just seeing the ship. It might not identify as a Viper anymore, but I would think that you would, you'd know where it is.

Yeah. I kind of wrote it off that like, maybe we're too close to the planet, because obviously we are close to a planet. She gets like, wanged by the last Cylon fighter. Does that take it out when they, they collide?

Yeah. It drifts off into space to, Starts heading into the gravity well of the planet that Starbuck is being pulled into and It's very apparent that this is the same Atmosphere that we've seen her spinning around in it's got kind of a unique coloring like it's that this is the place

And we're reusing a little bit of shots, like, and as we should, we need to make it clear that she wasn't, like, flashing back earlier to an earlier problem. I wondered at first when we're doing these flashbacks if this had something to do with Zach's accident, like if she had actually been or something at the time. But it all became clear in this moment here at the very end that, like, this is an active problem.

we've caught up to the frame of our story And as soon as we're caught up, we're to be continued.

Ugh. It just hurts so much. I think this was very of the time, though, to like, make everything a You you Have an incentive to come back for the next episode.

Yeah.

We were talking about the, the shows that were set around this time with, you know, we've discussed the lost problem, I think in one of the first episodes we talked about, but lost had this feel a lot of the time of like, Oh, we've just uncovered the next thing that you want to know more about.

Yeah. We've answered a question with a question

uh,

have more questions.

gosh it hurts. It hurts.

that's, that's the app.

Yeah. So exciting.

it's, it's very action packed if it moved very quickly.

and it gives me another question, and you don't have to have an answer for it, but I wonder if this show is a little bit also telling us that, hey, this military actually isn't very good. Because, you know, you think about the just gross failure. That it is that there was no sort of fail safe in place that we had an, a instructor involved with a student able to override atrocious flight scores apparently without any sort of fail safe in place.

Yeah,

And I, gosh, that just seems like a bad, bad business.

I mean, I wonder how much of it is not necessarily On Starbuck there. like like this is,

system.

Oh, I mean, this is war Hill hero, Bill Adama's son. Of course he passes flight school, like a little nepotism maybe, maybe not from Adama directly, but From

From people around her, yeah. That are like, well

Kara said he's okay. And we know who this is, so does anyone doubt that the son of the fighter ace of the first Cylon War is gonna get his wings? No, I think everyone was expecting that. So, of course he gets his wings. And also it's very low stakes, like for a group of people whose parents fought in a war, they sure seem impervious to the idea as a society that they will ever be at war again.

sure. Yeah. Forty years of peace, or relative peace, I suppose, because we still have people out there like Tom Zarek who are disturbing the peace. Just not to the magnitude of silence. Uh, But yeah, it speaks to like an inexperience and, you know, maybe a decay.

mm

the systems and the, the culture. interesting. I don't know. It, I just wondered. I was like, this military doesn't seem that great. A lot of things about pre Cylon society seem to have little cracks in the foundation.

Yeah.

Interesting.

All right. Well, what's all that said? We should probably rate this episode

Yeah, it's so, raiding is so hard in the show for me.

Well, it's this first season. It's just so fucking good

Yeah. Okay. It's not just me then.

It's not just you this season is I would like without pulling up a list in front of me I think if I were to Google the best single seasons of television That the first season of Battlestar Galactica would probably be on the majority of the lists that I saw.

Okay. I did notice, you know, we have a nice spreadsheet where we keep track of those who would like to be a guest consultant on our episode. And season one is pretty full.

Yeah, I mean, it helps that season one is half of the length of the other seasons. And also, I haven't asked anyone about season two yet. So,

Right. Right. But it, it's pretty much like everyone we have had as a guest so far was excited and wanted to be in on something in the first season.

Well, and just like, people that we haven't had as guests that are In the podcast fam, we're all like, hey, BSG, get me on. no, it's exciting, um, to uh, to see. I mean, it's a very well regarded season of a very well regarded show.

Mm hmm. Yeah. All of that was me obfuscating because it's hard to uh, rate this episode, but I feel like perhaps this is a step down from the previous for me. part of that is I hate watching Starbuck, like, dither around on something this important. And letting her past, like, not dealing with her past until she is forced to do so.

Mm hmm.

So I guess I would have to, like, Bump this one down to a nine from the previous ten, uh, but it's not a bad episode.

I put this one at a nine.

Yeah.

that's a good rating.

I mean, I, I understand the dithering. I think it's extremely well written, but it's so hard to watch. It, it's, it's uncomfortable and it's supposed to be and have you, but I'm

when Chara's like, about to cry, and Adama's like, holding back every ounce of fury behind his professionalism as much as he can. Like, that scene is so well acted.

Yeah. Like, he has clearly been established as kind of like, her dad, we don't know what her family situation was like, but he brought her in when Zach died, because like, Zach had intended to make her his daughter, and he He lived up to that promise, and in that moment, he's no longer dad. He is just a boss. And that's so gutting. It's so horrid.

Alright,

Do tell me the description for the next episode where we resolve being cliff hung.

Um, Oh, I wouldn't go that far, but we've got season one, episode five. You can't go home again. When Lieutenant Cara Thrace goes missing in action after encountering a Cylon patrol while on a training mission, Commander Adama feels responsible, especially in light of her recent admission that she blames herself for his son, Zach's death.

Yeah. Okay.

Not a whole lot there, but that's. That's how I like these episode descriptions. I remember the original source I was pulling from was Everything is Spoiled Forever. I think if when I pulled the first, the first description I looked at for the miniseries part two even ruined the Sharon reveal. Like, it's just like, come the fuck on guys.

Yeah. Stop. Stop. Stop. I have a whole bunch of questions about this planet. Like, we were just kind of doing a thing, like, that's probably not an, as Star Trek would say, an M class planet down there. Uh, Hopefully They have enough protection from their suits and such, and I wonder if she's going to be grappling with more demons on the ground. Probably. Uh, yeah.

All right, well, that's for next week. But before we go, we have to say thank you to Jeremy Siegel for composing our lovely theme music. Thanks so much, Jeremy. You can find more of Jeremy's work at jeremysiegel42. bandcamp. com or on streaming services as Nuclear Jaguar.

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

Aaron, thanks so much for editing this episode, and editing all of our episodes, and making sure our episodes release on time, and doing so much fucking admin work. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

And thanks, listener, for being here with us as we end another just edge of our seat episode of Battlestar Galactica. I hope you are having Just on the edge of your butt for the next week, waiting to hear the next episode. and if you can't wait to talk about it with someone, make sure to join us in the discord, check out the

Yeah. Yeah, jump on the Discord. We have a hidden spoiler channel that Laura can't see.

Yeah. It's apparently quite popular and I feel very left out.

The FOMO is real. But, yeah. Yeah, we'll see you over there, and uh, we'll see you next week, Internet.

bye.