GALACTICA

I just finished watching the Star Trek episode “The Naked Time” on the SciFi channel. In this episode, the crew members pick up a strange disease after beaming down to a planet. Luckily Dr. McCoy is able to cure the disease before everyone on the ship dies. Somehow, Captain Kirk’s shirt got partially ripped off during the course of events.

Sound familiar? That’s because it was the plot of several Star Trek episodes. Luckily, Battlestar Galactica didn’t overuse this plot the way they did on Star Trek. The only disease episode was the “Lost Planet of the Gods.” That was only the second episode of the Battlestar Galactica. Jolly and Boomer contract a disease while visiting a Cylon controlled asteroid, and they infect all of the Galatica’s Viper pilots.

This was a lot more than just a disease episode, there was a whole lot more going on. In fact, this was probably the most complicated episode of the entire series, because it established much of the framework for the rest of Battlestar Galactica’s limited run. But the Star Trek episode I mentioned before was pretty much just a run of the mill disease episode.

One thing different between the two shows was the Galactica’s superior medical discipline. In the Galactica’s sickbay, all of the medical personnel have their bodies completely covered in disease resistant suits, while in the sickbay of the Enterprise, Dr. McCoy and nurse Chapel are just wearing their regular Starfleet uniform, and as a result nurse Chapel catches the disease, along with another one of Dr. McCoy’s medical technicians.

One other notable thing about watching Star Trek: the SciFi Channel is now airing ads for the new Battlestar Galatica series coming in January.