Valley of Darkness

And we pick up with the Cylons now on the ship. I'm glad we see some Centurions again. I still don't really buy how they walk and such because their top-heavy design makes it look like they don't walk with enough weight. But disregarding that, it's good to see some fighting again with them. The early parts with the pilots in the corridor play out the typical horror convention; the people fooling around suddenly getting attacked by the monster.

What's up with Baltar? In this episode, he's having dreams about the future baby that can't possibly exist. It's like Six is working overtime to brainwash him. 

There were human sacrifices on Kobol?? For what purpose? Didn't man live with the gods or whatever? And why does it always seem there are more skulls than other bones in these sorts of scenes? I'm also curious how Six knows any of this. If the humans don't know their own history, how can Cylons know it? And here we are being told that "the scriptures are lies", yet doesn't Six quote scripture last season? I guess it's true about the devil quoting scripture too.

I am so glad that they realize how stupid that "motherfrakker" line was. Good to hear them laugh about it because it is ridiculous and sounds stupid.

So that whole trek out to the med kit was a total waste. The guy still dies, and we lost another guy in the process. It feels to me like the med kit story was just added to drag out the tension so that he dies in this episode rather than the last. Part of it that feels wrong to me is that they know there's an emergency and this med kit is all that stands between life and death, yet they just sort of stroll through the forest. There's no urgency to getting it back. The death scene is decent though. And at least we learn that it was Cylons who shot at them.

I hate that we get that silly conflux of story threads where everyone decides the only place to go is Aft Damage Control. Why even have that stupid scene with the President? "Where do we go? This is your ship!" "Well, the only other way in is Aft Damage Control". It just sets it up too obviously. Why not just have them go that way to begin with? The shootout is pretty good.

The stuff in Kara's home is okay. I realized today that it seems smoking on TV is making a comeback. People believe cigarettes are evil, but if it's cigars it's okay. So you see a lot of cigars these days. (The original Starbuck smoked cigars too, but there were a few anti-smoking lines in there to counter them.)

I'm not sure how to feel about Kara and Helo driving off in a truck. In Galactica 1980, Troy and Dillon had never seen or driven cars, though they were familiar with wheels turned by axles and shafts. It might be that the Colonies had something similar at one point. Should it be futuristic? I'm not certain. But when you've seen one car, you start expecting there to be more cars. It opens all kinds of questions up, like why nobody tries to drive away from the attacks in the miniseries. Maybe it's something of a "classic" that Starbuck had special, and most people don't drive.

A pretty good episode. I like that exchange between Apollo and Tigh at the end. I don't know how long the Caprica story can be dragged out though.