Season 0, Episode 02:
Miniseries, Part II
After the apparent death of his son, Bill Adama orders the fleet to jump to Ragnar Anchorage.
As the pilots recoup from the battle with the Cylon fighters, Kara Thrace looks over her Viper while Chief Tyrol looks at the damage in shock. Kara complains that one of the ship's specialist is overdue to fix her ship, but Tyrol says the specialist—and Lee Adama—are dead. Kara also asks where Sharon “Boomer” Valerii is, but Tyrol reports he hasn't heard from her yet. Meanwhile, the Galactica FTL-jumps into range of Ragnar, which is located near a dangerous gas cloud.
Elsewhere, President Laura Roslin wakes up along with the crew of Colonial One, and realize that the ship wasn't destroyed. As they check the ship, they discover Lee knocked out next to his ship and wake him up. He then explains that he used the ship's electric pulse generators to initiate an EMP blast, which disabled the missiles and fooled the Cylons into thinking they were destroyed by the impact. Roslin is happy to hear the news, and orders all of the passengers from the surrounding civilian ships to be evacuated to Colonial One.
The Raptor with Boomer, Baltar and the Caprican refugees is floating in space broadcasting a communication signal when Colonial One finds her. When the ship docks, Baltar and the other refugees are offloaded, and Boomer tells Lee that the Cylons shut down most of the fleet with a virus.
Meanwhile, Galactica enters the storm cloud surrounding Ragnar Anchorage, and docks at the station. As Chief Tyrol and a group of mechanics access the station, they discover a wild-eyed man onboard pointing a gun at them. Tyrol talks the man down and takes his weapon, then asks for Bill to come aboard.
On Colonial One, Lee asks Baltar to meet with Roslin, and he tries to figure out how his Command Navigation Program could have been used to compromise the fleet. However, he's distracted by the now-constant visions of "Head Six", who appears to him frequently.
On Ragnar, Bill comes aboard and sees the mechanics transporting crates of supplies, munitions and weapons to Galactica. He speaks with the station's lone occupant, who calls himself Leoben Conoy, and discovers that the man is an arms dealer who has no knowledge of the attack on the Colonies. Suddenly, a munitions shell falls off one of the crates and drops to the ground. Bill grabs Leoben and jumps into a hallway before the shell explodes, blocking off their path to the loading bay. Bill orders Tyrol to continue moving the supplies while he and Leoben look for an alternate path back to them.
Back on Colonial One, Roslin is directing Boomer to find and bring in civilian ships. As such, the Colonial Fleet has grown to 60 ships. Roslin listens as a captain tells her that she has to help his ship, a botanical cruiser. Elsewhere, Boomer finds a tylium fueling ship, but is forced to direct the ship back quickly when a Cylon fighter spots them.
Roslin meets with Lee, who tells her that to protect the fleet, all of the ships should jump to Ragnar Anchorage. Others, including Aaron Doral, are horrified when they realize that 20 of the ships don't have FTL capacity and will have to be left behind. Doral pleads for Roslin to evacuate everyone from those ships to the FTL-capable ones, but Lee points out that priorities have changed and they need to ensure the survival of humanity. Roslin reluctantly orders the jump.
In her cabin, Roslin tells her aide, Billy Keikeya, that she has cancer. He remarks that he already thought so. Soon after, the FTL-capable ships jump away, leaving the 20 remaining ships to be destroyed by a volley of nuclear missiles from Cylon fighters.
In the corridors of Ragnar, Bill and Leoben make their way towards the supply bay. Leoben looks physically ill, and tells Bill that he's not sure if humanity deserves to survive. Bill eyes him warily as they continue on.
On Galactica, Anastasia Dualla and Felix Gaeta detect multiple DRADIS contacts incoming, only to realize they are civilian vessels. Roslin hails Galactica and requests clearance to come aboard.
Soon after, Roslin heads to Galactica's CIC and orders Colonel Tigh to help the civilian vessels, but Tigh refuses until Lee appears and asks for disaster assistance. Tigh assigns Lee the role of Commander, Air Group and gives him the needed support. Elsewhere on the ship, Tyrol reunites with Boomer and kisses her, while Dualla sees Billy in the halls and impulsively kisses him before leading him and Baltar to the CIC. In the hangar bay, Lee walks up to Kara and surprises her. She's happy to see him alive, and shocked to learn that he's become the ship's new CAG.
In Ragnar's boiler room, Leoben has another physical reaction to the steam, which makes Bill realize that Leoben is a Cylon that is being affected by EM radiation from the gas cloud. As Bill tells him this, Leoben suddenly attacks him, and the two fight in the boiler room. Although Leoben seems to have the upper hand, Bill uses his flashlight to bludgeon the Cylon to death.
In Galactica's CIC, Baltar tries to figure out how many ships were using the modified Command Navigation Program in order to erase it from their systems. Gaeta tells him that Galactica received a CNP, but never installed it because the ship didn't have networked systems. As Gaeta talks, Head Six appears to Baltar and tells him that a Cylon device is mounted on the ship's DRADIS console, and he realizes there is a Cylon agent aboard the Battlestar.
Bill returns to Galactica with Leoben's body, and is overjoyed when Tigh tells him that Lee is alive. The father and son meet and reaffirm their happiness at seeing other.
Baltar is standing in the CIC when he notices Doral watching the other crew members, and realizes that he may be a Cylon agent. Soon after, an autopsy is performed on Leoben's corpse, and Bill, Tigh and Baltar discuss the fact that any one of them could be a Cylon. Bill asks Baltar to work on a way to discover who is a Cylon agent and who is a human.
Baltar points out that Doral has been seen in Galactica for weeks and that he may have been the one to plant the mysterious device on the DRADIS console, which lead the crew to arrest Doral on the spot. Tigh orders the device removed, while Baltar makes up a fake argument supporting his claim.
In the hangar bay, Starbuck preps for a reconnaissance mission, and tells Lee that her former fiancee (and his brother), Zak Adama, failed flight training but she passed him anyway, which led to his death. When she heads out for her mission, she discovers a large fleet of Cylon ships that are waiting for the Colonial fleet to come out.
On Galactica, Bill meets with Roslin, and she tells him that going off to fight the Cylons is suicide. She orders him to protect the civlian fleet, and mentions that they are all that is left of humanity. Adama dismisses her advice, but soon after, as he works to develop an offensive strategy in the CIC, he sees Dualla and Billy flirting with each other. Realizing that Roslin was right and that the fate of the civilians is in his hands, he tells Lee and Tigh that the only way to survive is to leave the Colonies behind and take their chances elsewhere. Lee agrees, but says they still need to figure out a plan to escape first.
Bill, Tigh and Lee map out a plan to use the Galactica as a barrier against the Cylon attack while the civilian ships jump out behind it. Before they leave, Tigh maroons Doral on Ragnar with some supplies.
Galactica pulls out of the gas cloud and deploys its squadrons against the assembled Cylon Basestars, while the civilian ships begin to jump out. As the civilian fleet finishes jumping out, Lee's Viper is damaged, but just before a Cylon Raider destroys the defenseless Viper, Starbuck arrives and blows the enemy away. Lee's Viper loses power, and he orders her to leave, but she continues to destroy Cylon fighters.
Bill orders her to return to the ship, and she complies, but not before ramming her Viper into Lee's and "pushing" it into Galactica's flight pod before the doors close. The battlestar jumps out just before a salvo of Cylon nuclear missiles hit.
Some time later, Galactica and the civilian fleet travel through space. Onboard the Battlestar, Bill gives an impassioned speech about the survival of humanity, and that he knows where the location of Earth (where the Thirteenth Tribe originated) is, before leading the crew in a battle chant. Afterwards, Roslin approaches him and says that no one knows where Earth is, making her confused as to why he would tell his crew a lie. Bill reasons that he had to give the crew something to live for.
Roslin agrees to give Bill military responsibility for the fleet, while she handles government and civilian matters. As he retires to his room, Bill discovers a typewritten note that states there are 12 Cylon models.
Onboard Ragnar, the marooned Doral is greeted by several copies of himself, Number Six, and another Leoben. The group agrees to find and destroy the fleet, but they are soon interrupted by one more Cylon…
…Sharon Valerii.
Tropes:
- Battle Chant: Commander Adama leads the troops in a chant of "So say we all!".
- Book Ends: The miniseries begins and ends with the Cylon Centurions entering a Colonial facility. Adama and Starbuck also bookend it with their "Morning, Starbuck. What do you hear?" interactions.
- Coming in Hot: The Viper pilots all have to make "Combat Landings" during the battle at Ragnar Anchorage so Galactica can jump away. The last ones down are Starbuck and Apollo.Lee: (as Kara pushes both of their Vipers towards Galactica's hangar bay) We're coming in a little hot, don't you think?!
Kara: No… not really… (eyes widen in fright) - Curb-Stomp Battle: The entire war is over in the several hours it takes for Galactica just to get rearmed.
- Delaying Action: Galactica has no intention of destroying the Cylon Basestars, even if they could. Their entire mission is to Hold the Line long enough for the refugee fleet to exit Ragnar Anchorage and make their jumps.
- Depopulation Bomb: The Cylons' attack reduces the human population to less than 50,000 people.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- A woman asks about her husband, who is in the Colonial Fleet "in" Gemenon. This is a holdover from an early draft in which the twelve colonies were nations on a single planet instead of twelve separate planets.
- Billy says the Astral Queen has 500 prisoners in their cargo hold, even though there are actually 1500 and it's a prison ship. This can be explained away as Billy having to process a lot of information at once. It wouldn't be until the next episode that the population count is confirmed.
- Gaeta uses "mark" instead of "carom" when describing the position of the Cylons.
- This episode prominently features Boxey, a child character retained from the original series. The miniseries ends with the implication that Tyrol, Boomer, and Boxey are going to become an impromptu family unit. However, Boxey's appearances in subsequent episodes were mostly cut for time, and after a brief appearance in "Bastille Day," he is never seen again.
- Excessive Steam Syndrome: Ragnar Station. Justified, as Leoben had just ripped a steam pipe. The rest of the station wasn't really steamy at all.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Pause in the first shot of Galactica with the fleet and you'll see the original USS Enterprise in the upper right-hand corner.
- Just in Time: Dramatically averted. A portion of the civilian fleet led by Roslin and Apollo are in the midst of a dramatic countdown that would abandon the ships without FTL to their deaths at the hands of the Cylons. You would think that this would be a set up for the Galactica to show up at the last moment and save everyone. You would be wrong.
- Liar Revealed: Laura calls out Bill on not having a secret map to the location of Earth, but goes along with the lie since it gives the survivors hope and direction.
- Living Is More than Surviving: Adama justifies his Motivational Lie this way. The survivors need something to live for as they flee the Cylons and the belief that they're headed for the safety of Earth will provide that.
- Meaningful Echo: When Adama needs to get Starbuck's attention during the pitched battle, we get a Call-Back to one of their first bits of dialogue:Adama: Morning, Starbuck, what do you hear?
Starbuck: [as a cloud of debris from destroyed Cylon raiders clatters on her canopy] Nothin' but the rain. - More Dakka: The Defensive Suppression Barrage, which puts up a wall of defensive fire to keep the Cylons away. While it does not successfully keep all of the Cylons' missiles from hitting Galactica, it does prevent them from getting in close and overwhelming them.
- Motivational Lie: Adama uses the story of searching for Earth as this.
- Orphan's Ordeal: Briefly, with Boxey. He is forced to leave his aunt to die when there is limited space on Boomer's Raptor, and the family photo in the intro shows that Boxey's father was the officer assigned to Armistice Station.
- Pardo Push: During the final battle, Starbuck doesn't so much push Apollo's ship as she does forcibly ram his ship with her own, locking them together before afterburning back to the ship, barely making it into the hangar bay in time.
- Point Defenseless: Averted. Once the railgun turrets have ammo, the Galactica—albeit briefly—shows just how efficient a capship's point defenses are. The ammo isn't enough to keep them firing for long, but Adama makes it count.
- Shout-Out: The scene of the little girl abandoned while onboard a non-FTL ship is more or less a shot-for-shot reference to the infamous "Daisy"
presidential campaign commercial. - The Reveal: This is the first episode where characters initially introduced as human are revealed to be Cylons. The first one to be revealed is Leoben Conoy, whom Adama confronts, battles and kills after deducing that his Cylon biology is having an adverse reaction to the surrounding radiation. The second is the Galactica tour guide, Aaron Doral, whom Baltar correctly accuses of being a Cylon spy through sheer guesswork. The third and last to be exposed (to the viewer only) is Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, although in her case she's still a sleeper unaware of her true identity; the reveal happens via the appearance of a lookalike model who's shown to be actively working with the Cylons.
- Techno Babble: Lee tech-techs a way to neutralize the Cylon warheads with an EMP before they destroy Colonial One, while making it look like they detonated. Roslin replies by saying they have learned not to ask followup questions, but merely thank him for saving their asses. It helps establish the show as not relying on technobabble to solve problems, which was one of Ron Moore's criticisms for Star Trek: Voyager.
- Unexpected Successor: Secretary of Education Roslin becomes President of the Colonies after everyone else in the presidential cabinet is killed.
- Wham Shot: The penultimate shot of the episode shows a copy of Sharon Valerii walking into Ragnar Anchorage, revealing that Boomer is actually a Cylon and a sleeper agent.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Several pilots call out Colonial One for leaving the sub-light ships behind to be killed by the Cylons.
- You Are in Command Now: Given the death of the CAG in the previous episode, Lee is appointed senior pilot of Galactica's Vipers.
