Battlestar Galactica.COM: Episode Guide for the NEW Battlestar Galactica

EPISODE GUIDE: BATTLESTAR 2005

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA : TV SEASON 1

The Miniseries - Part One & Part Two

A military officer is sitting alone at his desk at Armistice Station, looking over documents from the first Cylon war. There's a picture of his son Boxey on his desk. Then two mechanical Cylons show up along with a Number Six model. She asks him, "Are you alive?" "Yes." "Then prove it."

Read More: Miniseries - Part 1 Read More: Miniseries - Part 2

Episode #101 - "33"

Review

The Cylons have found a way to track the humans and have been following them ever since they left Ragnar Anchorage. Every 33 minutes after the Colonials complete a jump, the Cylons arrive and the fleet is forced to initiate another jump. At the beginning of this episode the Colonials have already made 236 jumps without any rest.

Read More : Ep101 - "33"

Ep102 - "Water"

Review

Sharon wakes up in her bunk dripping wet, looks into her duffel bag, finds a G4 detonator and panics. She then goes to the small arms locker on deck 15, pulls out the G4 case, returns the detonator, and discovers six of the twelve devices still missing. "Oh my gods... Where are the rest of them?"

Read More : Ep102 - "Water"

Ep103 - "Bastille Day"

Review

The episode starts out with a shirtless Tigh, drinking in his quarters. The next scene he's in a briefing room with Tyrol. Tyrol tells him they've found an entire subsurface ocean on the ice moon. "We've registered temperatures of 180 and below. Venting of methane of CO2. It's gonna be a bitch to work down there, sir." Tigh informs him that the Galactica's down to 10,000 JPs of water.

Read More : Ep103 - "Bastille Day"

Ep104 - "Act of Contrition"

The episode begins the way it ends, with Kara's Viper spinning out of control, as it enters a moon's atmosphere. All the events in the episode lead up to that point. Interspersed throughout this narrative, there are also numerous flashbacks, including scenes of a love scene with Zak and Kara, and Kara's first meeting with Adama after his death, and Zak's funeral.

Read More : Ep104 - "Act of Contrition"

Ep105 - "You Can't Go Home Again"

Sharon's Raptor rescues Hot Dog from his damaged Viper and radios Galactica. "No sign of Starbuck. He says she was hit. Still in the fight when he lost track of her." Search and rescue operations are now currently under way for Kara.

Read More : Ep105 - "You Can't Go Home Again"

Ep106 - "Litmus"

Sharon and Tyrol are having a clandestine meeting. "Anybody see you?" "No, I went through the hatchcombing on C causeway." At the time of the meeting, an Aaron Doral Cylon model climbs through that hatch and into the hallway. Tigh spots him, recognizes him right away and phones security. "Send an armed detail to meet me in the midpoint promenade deck causeway, C level.

Read More : Ep106 - "Litmus"

Ep107 - "Six Degrees of Separation"

Baltar is working in the lab, and frustration and boredom are mounting. He points out before Number Six the absence of God in the cell samples before him. She replies, "What is it that drives you to blasphemy, Gaius? A need to tempt fate?" "Every waking hour is spent in what some might say has become my own impersonal religion, the Church of the Mystic Cylon Detector

Read More : Ep107 - "Six Degrees of Separation"

Ep108 - "Flesh and Bone"

Laura dreams she is in a forest at night. She's dressed in a white slip, and she sees the Leoben, the gun-dealer philosopher the Colonials found at Ragnar. He shouts at her from a distance, "Cylon, Cylon, Cylon." There are armed guards looking for him, but they do not find him. He makes some hand signals to her from a distance, and hides with her behind a tree.

Read More : Ep108 - "Flesh and Bone

Ep109 - "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down"

Gaeta hands Adama Dr. Baltar's report in CIC, and he meets with Laura Roslin upstairs. "Madam President, we are the proud owners of the universe's first bona fide Cylon detector... Dr. Baltar would like to start widespread testing as soon as possible, but there are some serious limitations. He can only do one preson at a time, and verification takes hours." Laura asks Adama, "So, who's going to go first?"

Read More : Ep109 - "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down"

Ep110 - "Hand of God"

President Roslin is holding a news conference aboard Colonial One. "I can assure you, the fuel shortage is our number one priority. Galactica has ships scouring the nearby star systems, and we can anticipate they will soon find Tylium." She also confirms that the fleet has only enough fuel for two more jumps. One of the reporters asks her what they would do if they ran out of Tylium. "If that were to happen, we would use our last fuel to jump to the nearest planetary system." Playa adds, "And pray we're lucky enough to find a habitable planet.

Read More : Ep110 - "Hand of God"

Ep111 - "Colonial Day"

News reporter James McManus is on the Cloud Nine Luxury Liner on his talk show Colonial Gang, joined by journalists Playa Palacios and Sekou Hamilton. They are discussing the first meeting of the interim Quorum of the Twelve, which coincides with Colonial Day, the 52nd anniversary of the signing of the articles of Colonization. McManus dubs Wallace Gray the power behind President Roslin's throne and takes aim at "Roslin's lackeys."

Read More : Ep111 - "Colonial Day"

Ep112 & 113 - "Kobol's Last Gleaming

Lee Adama is boxing with his father, and loses the match. The Commander gives his son some advice. "You gotta lose control. Let your instincts take over." "I thought we were just sparring." "That's why you don't win." Elsewhere, Kara is making love with Baltar and fantasizes it's Lee Adama, as she cries out, "Lee... Lee." She leaves Baltar's apartment and he feels dejected. In Sharon's quarters, she's cocking a gun and points it at her mouth.

Read More: Ep112 - Part 1 Read More: Ep113 - Part 2

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA : TV SEASON 2

Ep201 - "Scattered"

The roots of this story, even before the cliffhanger, this idea that there would be a jump and the fleet would be scattered across a vast expanse, is actually something that predates season two. It was in one of the first loglines for the series way back when I was sending up a list of potential storylines to the network. This is slightly different, in that instead of all the ships of the fleet being scattered and lost, it's essentially that Galactica is really the one that's been lost. Galactica has jumped to a different location than the rest of the fleet.

Read More : Ep201 - "Scattered"

Ep202 - "Valley of Darkness"

Scattered" in its initial draft was just much too big to sustain one episode, so we essentially divided it into two and created another action storyline for part two, which is "Valley of Darkness," which as you'll see at the end of this show, the Cylons are on the ship. The Cylons have boarded Galactica, and that's our cliffhanger ending for episode one. And that becomes the primary action storyline of part two.

Read More : Ep202 - "Valley of Darkness"

Ep203 - "Fragged"

"Tom Zarek is challenging Tigh's authority and leadership, and his declaration of Martial Law. The storyline speaks to the huge issue of balancing individual freedom with survival, something those of us in the United States are all familiar with right now. And even though Zarek's highly competitive with Laura Roslin, he has tremendous respect for her, and in this case it's civilian vs. military, so I'll let you guess where he falls in that struggle."

Read More : Ep203 - "Fragged"

Ep204 - "Resistance"

Due to a bad decision on the part of Colonel Tigh, a group of Marines are put in an untenable situation and a tragedy occurs. It would not be the first time, nor the last, that a group of soldiers are sent into a bad situation by a commander and people are killed, and I see nothing wrong with exploring that.

Read More : Ep204

Ep205 - "The Farm"

This episode in all honesty was probably the most controversial episode of the season, second only, maybe, to "Valley of Darkness" for much the same reasons. This episode is dark. This is a dark tale, this is a dark show many times. And the controversy on this show is how dark is too dark? How much is too much? Will this episode and episodes like it scare the audience away?

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Ep206 - "Home, Part 1"

This couple of episodes now is the culmination of all the arcs that began in season one. And in a very real sense, "Home" is the completion of the entire first season. After the conclusion of "Home, Part 2" you'll see that we begin different stories, there's more self-contained episodes, different story arcs begin. This is where it all comes to a conclusion, and there was just too much material to wrap up.

Read More : Ep206

Ep207 - "Home, Part 2"

There's a tremendous amount of information actually about the Cylons, what they know, what the mythos is in the show that comes out in these two episodes. And a lot of it are things that we've talked about for a couple of years and just never really brought out. This was a really good opportunity to do that.

Read More : Ep207

Ep208 - "Final Cut"

This episode is the first of a few standalone episodes that we're doing here in season two. This is the first episode after "Home, Part 2", where we wrapped up many different plotlines. Instead of launching into a brand new giant arc of longterm storytelling, we decided to tell some standalone episodes...

Read More : Ep208

Ep209 - "Flight of the Phoenix"

"Flight of the Phoenix" began life very early in the season. We were talking about initial story ideas for this season. I had this image of Tyrol waking up in the middle of the night, going down into the hangar deck, taking a big piece of tape, laying out a pattern on the floor, and deciding, "I'm going to build a Viper." There was something about it psychologically that I liked for the character. There was something about the series and the mythos of the show and how the fleet operates that I liked about dealing this bit of the reality of the situation. They are losing Vipers and losing pilots and none of these things are being replaced from home. They all have to make do with what they got. And so I really liked the notion of doing a show that was centered around that concept. If not addressing all the needs of the fleet, in all the many ways, let's just do a show that talks about the difficulty of building one fighter...

Read More : Ep209

Ep210 - "Pegasus"

I opted not to include Sheba aboard our Pegasus (and for those of you who aren't fans of the original series, Sheba was the daughter of Cain, who commanded the Pegasus in the episode "Living Legend"). I did think about it, however, and we discussed her character at length in the writers' room before deciding against it.

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Ep211 - "Resurrection Ship, Part 1"

It is in large part a result of his near-death experience, but also it's partly from the evolution of the relationship between him and [President] Laura [Roslin]. They're in a completely different place now, at one point Adama moved a coup against her, he put her in jail. Then [it became], "We need to put the family back together." His understanding now is that she has a take on things that are worth listening to. At first blush [what Roslin suggests in part one of `Resurrection Ship'] is antithetical to everything he believes. But they both have to grapple with the uniqueness of their relationship. There is no other authority out there. There is no judicial system. There is no backup. It's just the two of them and what they believe is right and wrong. They have to evaluate each decision and make each decision for the remainder of the human race, and balance that with what they think is right. (source: Chicago Tribune)

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Ep212 - "Resurrection Ship, Part 2"

The destruction of the resurrection ship impacts the way the Cylons deal with Galactica and the Colonial fleet the rest of the season. It alters their tactics. They stop trying to make full-blown, all-out assaults on the fleet, they retreat and go into a hit-and-run mode while they figure out a way to replicate the ship

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Ep213 - "Epiphanies"

-- Laura's health comes to a crisis point in ["Epiphanies"]. It opens on her being rushed into sick bay. Her time is almost up and Doc Cottle says she's not going to make it. This gave us the chance to do some flashbacks to Caprica before the attacks. We see the president she worked for and there are some surprising revelations about their relationship. We see where she gets some of her philosophy of governing.

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Ep214 - "Black Market"

One thing that has become apparent in recent days is just how committed we are around here to maintaining the quality of the show and our incredible dissatisfaction when those goals are not met. I found myself not only dissatisfied last night, but positively angry with myself at something I knew in my bones had fallen well below the bar I set for myself and for the show in general.

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Ep215 - "Scar"

We do an episode that's really about fighter combat. There's a Cylon raider that keeps coming, just keeps coming. He kills a bunch of pilots. It's their dark shark in the water, he keeps coming to get people

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Ep216 - "Sacrifice"

The biggest thing about this episode is the death of Billy and the exit of Paul Campbell from our main cast, and Paul's been there since the very beginning, established in the miniseries. He's been one of my favorite characters and he's certainly one of my favorite actors and one of the favorite cast members. Paul's very popular, very well liked, and was a really important part of the family.

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Ep217 - "The Captain's Hand"

There's an episode where Lee has to deal with the new commander of the Pegasus. It turns out the guy who had been in charge [Fisk] was deep into the black market. Another guy is put in charge [Garner], he's a bit paranoid. And he's really not up to the task of command.

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Ep218 - "Downloaded"

We'll also be delving more into the Cylons and starting to do some stories from their point of view. It's going to add a brand new dimension to how we view the Cylons, to the characters we have so far regarded as the enemy, and which side you are supposed to be rooting for.

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Ep219 - "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 1"

Lee is rejecting the old-fashioned ways his father espoused, which he has been brought up to follow unquestioningly and which cost him his parents' marriage and his brother's life. He therefore rejects the military rigidity that has, in his eyes, so scarred his family.

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Ep220 - "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2"

We knew we were going to have to deliver an election, but elections tend to be boring things to watch on TV and they are usually sort of pat. I knew that I liked the idea of Baltar winning the election, but it seemed like if Laura really thought he was going to win it, she wouldn't just stand idly by.

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BATTLESTAR GALACTICA : TV SEASON 3

Episode #300 - "The Resistance"

Episode #301

Episode #302

Episode #303

Episode #304

Episode #305 -

Episode #306

Episode #307

Episode #308

Episode #309

Episode #310 -

Episode #311 - "The Eye of Jupiter"

Episode #312 -"

Episode #313 - "

Episode #314 -"The Woman King"

The impetus in part to do this Helo story was to follow-up what Helo had done back in episode six when he had prevented Galactica from using the biological weapon against the Cylons, and part of the backstory and subtext of the episode was Helo having been exiled ever since. That essentially Adama knew that it was Helo, didn't really wanna do a formal investigation into it, but had essentially sidelined him. He was given the "shit jobs." Colonel Tigh was back at the XO and Helo was assigned to deal with the civilians down in Dogsville.

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Episode #315 -"A Day in the Life"

I always liked the idea that Galactica gave you an opportunity to present the life of being aboard a warship, especially an aircraft carrier, which are incredibly dangerous ships. They're very dangerous places to work and they have accidents and fatalities in the best of times. So to do a day in the life episode aboard Galactica, it was easy to say there would be an accident that day, and this is just one of many things that happens on Adama's "day in the life."

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Episode #316 -"Dirty Hands"

Initially the Sagittarion problem was set up in "The Woman King", and how they were an outsider faction within the Fleet and the Twelve Colonies. We were gonna continue that storyline into this episode, which was going to open with two civilian ships in the Fleet having an argument over the wireless and ultimately one of them actually firing on the other and having civilian casualties and that prompting a crisis with the Quorum and Laura and Galactica and everyone else. The old divisions within the Colonies were starting to reemerge after the New Caprica experience

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Episode #317 -"Maelstrom"

Killing Kirk was a great concept and had the potential to resonate throughout the Star Trek franchise, but the execution (no pun intended) was flawed and the impact was not what we'd hoped for on any level. Killing off a main character in this show is somewhat different because Galactica is more of an ensemble piece than Trek ever was, but I'd still take the lessons I learned from Generations into account if I were going down that road.

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Episode #318 -"The Son Also Rises"

I agree with the idea that the Colonial government is outmoded as a practical matter and that sooner or later, they will have to form a system more in keeping with the realities of their current situation. However, I also think that as a political matter, Laura & Adama are struggling to hold together a desperate population living under constant threat of annihilation and that the attempt to make wholescale changes to the government would more likely end up in a chaotic situation in which Adama becomes the arbiter of the body politic by virtue of his military power rather than through any popular mandate.

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Episode #319 -"Crossroads, Part I""

The fan was actually something of a widow, i.e. a remnant in the script of something cut from a previous draft. Early drafts had Tyrol walking the corridors late at night to find some way of getting his son to go to sleep. In his nocturnal wanderings, he found that there was a specific resonant hum in the ship on a particular neck that seemed to lull Nicky to sleep in the way that driving around a child will sometimes help them to fall asleep (a truly southern California way of parenting, I'm sure).

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Episode #320 -"Crossroads, Part II"

Yes, we will [see the remaining five Cylons]. I can't even really tell you when it will happen, but I can tell you it will definitely happen... The final five Cylons are different than the other Cylons, but I don't want to give away if they are newer or older or what their relationship is to the other Cylons. That's one of the mysteries we are teasing out over the course of a lot of episodes. (source: EOnline)

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Episode #400 -"Season 4 Bonus Episodes DVD"

It's really a bonus episode. It's not really official. [NBCU] home video is very interested, the DVDs of 'Battlestar Galactica' do very well. At this point we're talking about what the story would be, how the logistics of it would work [in terms of when it would be shot]. It's a lot of vague talk right now because we don't have an order for a fourth season. Until there is a fourth season, the DVD release won't be something concrete either. (source: Chicago Tribune)

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