Before I dive into this week’s episode, I have to comment on what has become a growing (and disturbing) trend on television – overlay graphics. I’ve learned to live with the station identifier. After all, the Sci-Fi channel has a right to watermark “Battlestar Galactica” to give themselves some publicity if the show is recorded and traded over the internet. But this week, above the “Sci-Fi” overlay, there was another graphic – “The Lost Room: Premieres Monday” – that was there the entire episode. I’m not fond of advertisements during the actual episode, but I’ve also learned to live with the occasional in-show advertisement promoting another program, but this graphic was there for the entire show. Combined with the channel identifier, the two took up the bottom sixteenth of the screen, and that is simply too distracting to the eye.
Now, back to business. I had a feeling we were watching Kat’s epitaph once her storyline started and after Apollo explained how those radiation badges worked. At that point, I figured someone was going to die (or be on the brink of death), and it might as well be her. I’m not sure why she decided to basically commit suicide. It wasn’t to avoid telling the Admiral about her shady past, because she was willing to do just that when she was on her deathbed. Anyway, I’ve grown to like her character. She was the one person who could really get under Starbuck’s skin and she wasn’t afraid to call Cara out when she was being irresponsible. We’ll miss ya, Kat.
This episode was Gritty (with a capital “G”). Hunger, vomit, losing hair to radiation poisoning – you never saw this subject matter on Star Trek. I do wish that they had touched on the food shortage leading up to this episode. Last week, everyone looked pretty nourished as they punched each other over and over in the ring. I’m assuming more than a week passed between episodes, but it was still a little jarring to go from the boxing episode to a “gotta feed the fleet” episode.
Dr. Baltar returned this week and seems hell bent on discovering if he’s a Cylon. Xena keeps killing herself over and over so she can experience the time between death and rebirth, but all she has to show for it are a few Picasso-like sketches. Obviously, those scenes were just a setup for a future episode, so it will be interesting to see how that pays off.
It looks like next week is the “Fall Finale,” and the series will pick up again in late January and run thru March. The creators have always done a nice job with the season breaks, so it should be a good episode.
