“Hero”

“Hero” is an example of the problems plaguing BSG at this point. They are writing the stories from the outside-in. When BSG was at it’s most successful, they took the characters and let the situations develop naturally creating an amazing overall arc of a story. Now, they’ve changed and instead are writing situations or plotlines they want to write and shoehorning the characters into them. So people act completely out of character.

Another two pronged storyline with the main thrust taking place aboard Galactica. The secondary part which I’ll discuss first, involves a Three model, who is now also sleeping with Six and Baltar…lucky traitor. She has dreams of trying to avoid marines, who shoot her when she reaches a locked door that says, End Of Line. She believes that death could be beautiful in her own twisted way.

She orders a Centurion to shoot her in the head and then delete the memory of the incident. In between her death and her resurrection, she visualizes five shining ghostly forms and she has an almost religious experience.

It’s alright, I guess, but it seems a waste of time overall to be honest. I have nothing overly bad to say about it, it just did nothing really for me.

The main thrust though is pretty offensive overall.

Three Raiders are detected and amazingly two of them are chasing the last one. Kat and Starbuck shoot off the two in pursuit Cylons, and chase the third until the Cylon contacts the Galactica with a call-sign and voice that Adama recognizes, Bulldog.

Daniel “Bulldog” Novacek collapses out of the Raider before standing and saluting. Adama returns his salute and takes him to quarters for an informal debriefing over some pasta. Bulldog informs Adama that he escaped due to some infectious disease that the Cylons had caught, sickening them. They left the door open in their weakened state and he took advantage of it after he killed one.

Bulldog is next debriefed by Roslin. Bulldog and Adama tell a somewhat implausible tale of Tauron mining facility too close to the armistice line. Roslin doesn’t buy it but let’s it go until Bulldog has left. She presses Adama about it but he remains close lipped, saying it was his mess, he’d clean it up. After she left, he kicks a table over in frustration…or is that overdramatizing. I can’t say which.

We are finally told the backstory via conversations between Adama and Tigh, Adama and Apollo and Bulldog and Tigh.

It seems that the Fleet Admiralty ordered Adama, then in charge of the Battlestar Valkyrie, to send a stealth vehicle beyond the armistice line to search for any sign of the Cylons massing an army for invasion. He send Bulldog over and it is not too long before the Cylons come after the Fleet vessel for incursion into their space. Adama, under orders to maintain the secrecy of this mission at all costs, orders the Valkyrie to shoot down Bulldog in the fighter, in order to cover their trail.

Tigh tells Bulldog who is shocked and disgusted. He storms off in anger.

Meanwhile Adama confesses to his son, that he believes that it was because of his ordering Bulldog in that the Cylons attacked the Colonies in the first place. It forced the Cylons to view the humans as war-mongerers that they had to attack first before it was too late. Adama gets very shaken as he talks, causing Apollo to try to justify his father’s actions, blaming the admiralty, etc.

This is what I meant before when I discussed shoehorning characters into storylines. This isn’t the Bill Adama I know from BSG. Bill is much to pragmatic to blame himself for this situation. It weakens the character and almost singlehandedly destroys this episode.

But it had help.

Starbuck discovers through watching the footage that the Cylon Raiders missed Bulldog on purpose. She brings this fact up to Tigh, who agrees with her theory. Now I know they recently bonded over their suffering on New Caprica, but I still don’t see Starbuck bringing anything to Tigh…oh unless the story needs her to.

Tigh theorizes that the Cylons let Bulldog escape to kill Adama. Wait a second, the Cylons plan was to let this prisoner of three years go, find Galactica, because he’d definitely then learn the truth of his imprisonment, and that would definitely anger him enough to want to kill Admiral Adama. What? That’s a Lassie like jump to conclusion, if I’ve ever seen one.

So of course it’s correct.

Bulldog calls for Adama and when the Admiral arrives, Bulldog starts beating on him like a rented mule. In his anger, we see that the Cylons actually let him go, so they must have worked some story about the infectious disease in there because with the recent basestar infection, the Fleet would buy it.

Tigh breaks in and stops Bulldog from killing Adama. If it was written better it could have been a sort of redemption for Tigh, saving the Admiral, despite his recent bout of bitterness, but it’s too lazy to click. It works slightly better when they share a drink and discuss Ellen’s death.

Adama presents his resignation to Roslin in a scene so stupid, I can’t watch it again. Adama acts like a five year old and it is just sad. Roslin won’t let him and instead gives him a medal of distinction as his penance, so that Fleet Morale is boosted.

Overall, it’s a tired episode, with very little redeeming value.

D-

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