GALACTICA

Part 1 of this two part episode remains the best episode of what was a lousy season. Part 2 was only a mediocre followup.

The quality of the trial deteriorated. Last week, I praised the writers for creating a trial that actually followed the rules of procedure of American courts. This ended when Apollo was allowed to "testify" about what an unfair deal Baltar was getting.

Now, it was acceptable for Lampkin to put Apollo on the stand to testify about the senior Adama's impartiality, beause Apollo is the only one who had personal knowledge of the Admiral's statements. But he never testified about that, and instead was allowed to, essentially, give a closing argument from the witness stand.

Another thing I wonder about is why Lampkin didn't put Baltar on the witness stand? Now, the usual rule of defense attorneys is to never put their clients on the stand, but this is because 99% of the time their clients are guilty, so the client can't do anything to help his cause without committing perjury, and whatever jokes people like to make about lawyers, most of them are honest enough to not condone perjury.

Not calling Baltar as a witness makes him look guilty. Baltar the witness could have explained how Gaeta was lying, how the Cylons were running everything and they had a gun pointed to him.

One reason not to have even an innocent defendant testify is that the prosecution would be able to bring up additional evidence to impeach his testimiony. But I don't know what that evidence might have been. Roslyn's remembering of seeing Baltar and Six together on Caprica would not be admissible if it weren't already admissible as part of the prosecution's case. And no one besides Baltar seems to know about him giving a nuclear bomb to a Six (a crime that he is guilty of and ought to be convicted of--it continues to be strange that no one investigated that incident).

Why was Lampkin such a genius last week in figuring out that Tigh murdered his wife, yet seemed completely incapable of cross examining Gaeta? At least he could have brought up the fact that Gaeta went all psycho on Baltar in the brig. Gaeta truly does hate Baltar enough to perjure himself in order to see Baltar convicted.

And this brings up the usual issue of hypocrisy coming from the characters. It was not so many episodes ago that Gaeta was unfairly tried at a Star Chamber and almost executed. So you would think that, after what he went through, he would want to uphold justice. But instead, he commits the crime of perjury by lying about the incident where Baltar was handed the order to execute the humans.

The outcome of the trial shouldn't be especially surprising. First of all, Baltar truly is not guilty of the "crime" he's being charged with. Secondly, if he were executed, that would be the end of the show's best character, giving people one less reason to tune in next season.

Let's go back to Gaeta. What was Gaeta's motiviation for lying at the trial? Up until he tried to kill Baltar, he always seemed like the choir boy of the show, always following the rules. He's the last person you'd expect to lie on the witness stand.

Could Gaeta be a Cylon? There are certainly a lot of hints:

(1) He has a fascination, or even an obsession, with Gaius Baltar, something that seems to be shared by all of the Cylons. The fascination turned from following him around like a puppydog to now hating him, but the constant is that Gaius Baltar is someone that Gaeta is always awed by.

(2) Gaeta is especially good with computers, the best computer person in the fleet after Baltar. Does his propensity to understand computers have something to do with him being a Cylon?

(3) We know nothing about Gaeta's background. So there's no evidence that he's not a Cylon.

(4) Gaeta seems to be asexual, at least compared to the hypersexuality of the rest of the crew. One thing we observe about the Cylons is that the female models seem to all be nymphomaniacs, but the male models have a lot of sexual hangups. (Typical of a race created by geeky sci-fi writers?) Gaeta being a Cylon would explain his behavior.

(5) Gaeta was the chief architect in getting the fleet to its current location, where there was a Cylon fleet waiting. Coincidence?

Could Romo Lampkin also be a Cylon? This would explain why he refused to cross-examine Gaeta. Because of honor among Cylons. Also, this explains his motivation in defending Baltar. As I wrote above, all the Cylons have a strange fascination with him. (Then there is the issue of the sunglasses, which suddenly come back on after he walks away from Apollo after telling him that he's honest, unlike his grandfather. Do the sunglasses have anything to do with Lampkin being a Cylon? Probably he just wears them to intimidate people, and he didn't wear them during the trial because that would make him seem dishonest.)

But wait, if Lampkin and Gaeta are both Cylons, and if you then add in the foursome of Tigh, Anders, Tyrol, and Tori (the only one of the four who goes by her first name), then that makes a final six rather than a final five.

Actually, we have no clue right now as to whether or not the four are Cylons. All we know is that they've been hearing strange music, and now they think they are Cylons. Gaius Baltar also thought he was a Cylon, but as far as we know he's not.

Finally, let me comment about Starbuck's return. With all the weird music being played, the final scene had a very surreal quality which could easily lead me to think it was a dream and wasn't really happening. But the end of the previous season (where the Cylons invaded new Caprica), also had a surreal quality, and that also really happened. So this probably just continues the trend of Ron Moore and the guys getting too cutesy with the last episode of the season. I can only assume that, by some strange miracle, Starbuck really is alive and she really has been to earth

I have to give kudos to the people who wrote the trial script. It's pretty rare to see a trial on TV that actually resembles the real thing. But in this trial, the lawyers behave like real lawyers and not TV characters. Whomever wrote the script obviously observed real courtroom criminal trials. In fact, I'd go as far to say that this is the most realistic trial I've ever seen on TV.

These days, Apollo and Romo Lampkin seem like the only sane people aboard the entire fleet. The old Bill Adama from Season 1 would not have acted like the raging lunatic we see today.

What's the deal with that radio in the bar? Some kind of Cylon device that makes people go crazy?

This has nothing to do with Battlestar Galactica, but if you work in IT then you will want to read about how a career in computer programming sucks.

Apollo is the son of Bill Adama. He rises to the occasion. Got it. Has nothing to do with Jesus.

* * *

There were around fifty news reporters in the press conference at the beginning of the episode. Why does a fleet of less than 50,000 need so many reporters? How many reporters would be working in a small town in the United States with only 50,000 residents? Two or three at the most?

Early on, people hypothesized that there wasn't much to do aboard the fleet, so lots of people got to do fun jobs like being a reporter. But two episodes ago we learned that aboard the sci-fi equivalent of the coal mining ship, they haven't had a day off in 18 months. There seems to be a misallocation of resources aboard the fleet, no doubt becaue it's a centrally planned economy where the central planners are doing a crap job. The guys in charge of the Soviet Union did a better job planning an ecomomy of 300 million people. The incompetent people running the fleet can't even plan an economy of less than 50,000.

* * *

What's with Romo Lampkin's sunglasses, his weird Scottish sounding accent, and all the dark closeup shots of his head? This has to be the dumbest visual stunt since they've been shooting this series.

This week, Admiral Adama cries because Kara "Starbuck" Thrace is dead.

Last week, Admiral Adama was going to execute Callie because Tyrol was being disobedient in demanding that the slaves in the mines get some time off.

Consistent? I think not.