A look back on Battlestar Galactica’s incredible episodes and arcs
By Matthew Martin| July 2, 2020 TV Blogs
We’re looking back on the legacy and greatness of Ronald D. Moore’s reimagined Battlestar Galactica series (2003-2009). Already we’ve considered its place among the greatest sci-fi shows ever produced, as well as its continued relevance even fifteen years since it launched. Now let’s look at the episodes that comprise the show.
It’s here where I must ask you to turn away if you’ve never watched the series.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Miniseries parts one and two – 10/10 = BSG kicks off with a stunning reboot, featuring everything that would make the show-to-come great: Acting, music, gravitas, atmosphere, action, and surprises. This is how you launch a series.
33 – 10/10 = The “first episode” rightly won the HUGO award, sci-fi’s greatest achievement. It’s a tour de force short film that lays all the show’s themes and allegories to bear.
Water – 9/10 = A great character study, showing us the danger lurking within the ship’s resident sleeper agent, hinting at the struggle that will come to define this character for the remainder of the series.
Bastille Day- 9/10 = Tom Zarek is introduced and will become one of the show’s most nuanced characters. The episode’s plot is fairly run of the mill, but it’s the characters that elevate it, something that will be a recurring theme during the show’s run.
Act of Contrition – 10/10 = DS9 alums Thompson & Weddle will be BSG’s version of Moore & Braga, penning some of the most memorable and best episodes, starting with this one, which mixes drama and suspense better than almost every other episode to follow.
You Can’t Go Home Again – 10/10 = The companion-episode to the previous, with another by the numbers plot (a search and rescue that seems hopeless) that is elevated by absolutely stunning performances.
Litmus – 8/10 = A weaker entry than what’s come before maybe, but I’ll say this for it: You’ll be emotionally invested, angry, and might even fist-pump. This was the episode that convinced me that BSG wouldn’t always have the most original “plots’ but it would have the best characters making the mundane into something you can’t take your eyes off. I sound like a broken record, but that’s the calling card of the show. I’ll say it again soon, I’m sure.
Six Degrees of Separation – 8/10 = Also known as the “No more Mr. Nice Gaius!” episode. An episode as tension-packed as it was humorous, and remarkably the source of both is the same plotline. The show’s ability to make you both root for Baltar to weasel out of every predicament while also loathing how he manages to pull it off is one of BSG’s underappreciated strengths.
Flesh and Bone – 9/10 = An episode that becomes more important the longer the show goes. On the first watch, it’s a very good and very creepy watch. Later, you realize how many seeds are planted here that get watered in seasons 2, 3, and 4, all the way up to the final minutes of the series.
Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down – 7/10 = The weakest entry of the season. Every season has one episode that just totally failed to stick the landing, but at least this one has great relevance to the series’ mythos and overall plot. The biggest detractor to the episode is the tone, which never really feels at home with the rest of the show.
Hand of God – 10/10 = One of BSG’s greatest accomplishments is how it manages to have so many episodes in the middle or later part of a season (where most shows tend to let off the gas) that would be good enough for a season finale. Hand of God is a showpiece episode for Kara, Baltar, and especially Lee. It’s also a showcase for series’ composer Bear McCreary, whose music really is the heart and soul of Battlestar Galactica.
Colonial Day – 8/10 = The thing about this episode is, 90% of its plot would have been better served being peppered throughout a bunch of episodes, instead of having to carry a whole 45-minute block of time. There’s nothing I dislike about it, but it feels like what it is: Moving pieces in place before the big season one finale.
Kobol’s Last Gleaming parts one and two – 10/10 = TNG had The Best of Both Worlds, with a cliffhanger ending that’s among the very best in TV history. Kobol’s Last Gleaming is a masterpiece of a two-parter, and its ending is breathtaking. What I love the most about it is that it’s not actually a cliffhanger. It’s a “what now?” A cliffhanger is “the character points a gun at you…the screen goes to black…to be continued…” That’s not this. BSG has a fair number of those, but not here. Here the gun isn’t just shown, it’s shot, and the show fades to black without any “to be continued,” leaving the viewer to wonder how what on earth is going to happen next…or how on earth they’re going to get out of the mess they’re in.
I’m going to condense a lot of these reviews because the show is so strongly serialized in chunks it’s easier to review them as “arcs” rather than episodes. As before, SPOILER WARNING for those who haven’t yet watched the show…
SCATTERED ARC – 10/10
Scattered – 10/10
Valley of Darkness – 10/10
Fragged – 9/10
Resistance – 10/10
Farm – 8/10
Home part one – 10/10
Home part two – 10/10
Let’s call this the “scattered” arc, as it depicts the aftermath of Kobol’s Last Gleaming. The fleet is separated, Roslin and Adama are as divorced as they’ll ever be, there are so many pieces lying in ruins it doesn’t seem possible to mend them all. For the first half, Adama hangs near death, leaving Tigh to, as he says “frak everything up.” I love the scene where he admits his own failures to an unconscious Adama, then leaves from there to declare martial law. The Caprica storyline—which I didn’t even mention in my season one bite-sized review —drags a bit, but still has its fair share of fun moments. Still, it’s the drama on Galactica and Kobol that take the cake here, and make this such an incredible season-opening (it’s a third of the season in fact) arc. The reunion on Kobol between Bill and Laura is, in my opinion, the moment they fall in love, whether either of them realizes it yet. From here on, they may disagree a time or two, but for the rest of the show they are inseparable; two halves of the same coin. It’s a merging of once-rivals that is earned after blood and toil, unlike the quick-integration seen on Star Trek Voyager. The tease of Earth opens potential plot holes later, but I’ll get to that later.
Final Cut – 7/10 = It’s hard to come back to normal after such an incredible string of episodes and this one had the hardest task on the show, arguably. It had to be “normal” after nine straight killer episodes. There’s plenty to like but really, its only crime is that it’s not part of the “scattered” arc.
Flight of the Phoenix – 8/10 = Another stand-alone episode, but still one that ties into the greater mythos of the show. It also makes itself worthwhile by adding to the character of Sharon, particularly her still-tenuous relationship with Bill. The plot involving the Blackbird is fine but that’s about it.
PEGASUS ARC – 10/10
Pegasus – 10/10
Resurrection Ship part one – 10/10
Resurrection Ship part two – 10/10
The Pegasus arc is “tension personified.” As incredible as Kobol’s Last Gleaming’s final moments were, it wasn’t a cliffhanger, so it can’t be judged on its merits as a cliffhanger. Pegasus, however, has, in my opinion, the greatest cliffhanger in TV history. It builds and builds and builds its story at a perfect pace. It begins with elation, but even then we the viewers know, instinctively, this will not end well. Very quickly the layers start peeling and by the end of it…well, I can’t even do it justice…
The music, the acting, the cinematography, the camera movements: It’s all beyond words. Show me anything in Star Trek that has that level of intensity and artistry, and I say that as a thirty-year fan of the franchise.
The two-parter follow-up obviously couldn’t match the intensity but it succeeds by not trying to. It resets the table slightly and tells its own story. The ending is satisfying, earned, and has lasting consequences. This is BSG’s version of Voyager’s Equinox, only this has after-effects that matter. Special commendation to TNG alum Michelle Forbes (Ensign Ro), who plays the character of Admiral Cain perfectly. This is a great example of what the reboot did better than the original. In the 1978 show, the Pegasus commanding officer was not an admiral. Here, Cain outranks Adama, heightening the drama and limiting what he can do (or what he’s trained to do). The fact that she’s so much younger than him (described as someone who worked the system, played politics, and took a fast-track to the top) makes her the perfect foil for the aged, wise, lower-ranked Adama.
By the way, as with all of these, whenever there is an extended version of an episode, as there is with Pegasus, you have to watch the longer version. There’s always precious details that were cut for TV release that makes the episode so much richer and more rewarding.
Epiphanies – 8/10 = It’s a comedown from the Pegasus arc, obviously, but still has great stakes. Roslin’s cancer is handled here, in the middle of the second season. Once again, BSG shows it’s not afraid to address major moments throughout the show instead of saving it all for the final episodes of each season.
Black Market – 6/10 = Skippable. The only episode that is entirely skippable, not just because the plot is expendable but because it’s boring. Other episodes have plots that add nothing to the overall mythos (there are four by my count, which is an amazingly small number), but this one doesn’t even bring anything to the characters. If you never watched this episode, you’d miss nothing. And yet, it’s still a 6/10 because it’s still BSG, so it’s still really well-made nothing.
Scar – 8/10 = Skippable, but at least compelling and with a more exciting plot propping it up. Also, it digs into the character of Starbuck and illustrates how she’s no longer interested in just being the hotshot pilot. That’s a young (wo)man’s game, as Kat demonstrates. Starbuck gets the upper hand, though, demonstrating maturity in the episode-ending toast, showing how different the two pilots are, and how much she’s grown. It may have a skippable plot, but it’s a worthy forty-five minutes.
Sacrifice – 7/10 = It’s a “hostage situation” episode, so it loses points for tiredness right off the bat. That said, it features a notable death, some relationship seed-plantings, and plenty of good acting moments to carry it to a passable rating.
The Captain’s Hand – 9/10 = A really solid stand-alone, with a great one-off guest actor, a plot that doesn’t feel contrived, and an ending that adds to the ongoing plot of the series. It might not be as mythos-expansive as what was soon to come, but it’s a great forty-five minutes, that’s for sure.
Downloaded – 10/10 = Awesome premise, awesome visuals, awesome world-building. The sad story of Boomer adds a new chapter here, but there are plenty more twists and turns in her tale still to come. Without realizing it on a first watch, this episode is a great prelude to the season two finale…
NEW CAPRICA ARC – 10/10
Lay Down Your Burdens part one – 9/10
Lay Down Your Burdens part two – 10/10
Occupation – 10/10
Precipice – 10/10
Exodus part one – 9/10
Exodus part two – 10/10
Collaborators – 10/10
The end of season two and the first quarter of season three constitute the “New Caprica” arc, one which features surprising story decisions, including the election of Baltar as President, a shocking time-jump, a new Cylon plan, the realigning of various characters’ relationships, and most of all: Lee Adama getting fat. Let it never be said that BSG didn’t dare to have bold shake-ups. Shooting the old man and taking him out for multiple episodes was shocking. Introducing a second Battlestar was shocking. Everything about the New Caprica arc is beyond shocking. What’s best about it, though, is that it doesn’t forget to be allegorical. It doesn’t forget to explore the human condition. At the same time, while it’s debating the ethics of things like “suicide bombing” and “collaborating with the enemy to help the allies,” it also doesn’t forget to be riveting drama and pulse-pounding action. The famed “bucket drop” scene (also known as “The Adama Maneuver”) is the cherry on top of one of the most intense sequences in the show (or any show for that matter)…
Maybe my favorite thing to come out of this arc is how it solidifies Tom Zarek as a man of principle. Even if you don’t like all of his principles all of the time, if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself on his side more than twice. He went from being Baltar’s VP to being a prisoner because he refused to strike a deal with the Cylons. He’s not just a villain in it for power, or glory, or anything else so two dimensional. More on him later. The arc ends with everyone back on Galactica, but also everyone forever changed by the horrors they experienced on the planet. The focus on Gaeta as the scapegoat for the survivor’s rage and desire for justice is a wonderful seed planted that won’t be watered until the show is nearly ended. But when that seed sprouts, hoo baby. More on him later.
Torn – 9/10
A Measure of Salvation – 9/10
In the aftermath of the New Caprica arc, it’s not just the humans who have to come to grips with what happened. The Cylons do too, and their new chapter begins with this two-parter, focused on a virus that threatens to wipe them out. The plot allows the story to ape TNG’s “I, Borg” but in this case, the decision is to go ahead with genocide, albeit with the President and Admiral knowing it’s wrong and being willing to bear the guilt of it. That’s a nice spin on the story, and marks their obvious difference from someone like Picard, who proudly refused to wipe out the Borg with Hugh and went on with his life without any thought for the ramifications. Of course, the plan fails because Helo plays the role of Picard, proudly refusing to go along with the orders because it’s not right. What I love the most is that Helo suffers no consequences. Adama knew genocide was wrong, he just didn’t have the courage to do what Helo did.
Hero – 6/10 = Pass. Unfortunately, you can’t skip this one entirely because, while the A-plot featuring Bulldog is bad and even mildly infuriating with how it tries to rewrite Adama’s history, the B-plot with the Cylons is both intriguing and critical to the upcoming Eye of Jupiter arc. If there were a way to take the B-plot and attach it to “The Passage” you could skip this one with no repercussions.
Unfinished Business – 9/10 = As with “Pegasus,” the extended version of the episode is the way to go. This is an oft-debated show in the series, with some hating it and others loving it. I’m in the latter category because I love the way it closes the door officially on New Caprica, shows a glimpse of the kind of happy life that was almost had, and lets our characters come to grips with how their hopes were cruelly ripped away from them. That’ll happen again soon enough, but here at least there’s enough life left in the fleet for some catharsis to occur.
EYE OF JUPITER ARC – 9/10
The Passage – 8/10
The Eye of Jupiter – 9/10
Rapture – 10/10
The “Eye of Jupiter Arc” is another big, mythos-advancing arc in the show, albeit the weakest of them all. Nothing here is bad, mind you, but it lacks a lot of the sense of urgency that the Kobol arc or the New Caprica arc had. The Passage introduces us to the Algae planet, though the focus is on the journey to get there and the sacrifice of Kat to make it possible. I enjoyed her moments with Starbuck and the Admiral and her need to prove herself. What I didn’t enjoy was the contrived backstory. It was too much like Hero. Cut that out, replace it with the B-story from Hero, and you improve the quality of season three big time. As for the two-parter than follows, it works to plant the seeds relating to the Final Five, and really sets the stage for the final season. As world-building goes, it’s really good stuff. Rapture in particular is excellent. There are great parts here, but the sum of them are just a hair underwhelming.
Taking a Break from All Your Worries – 6/10 = The episode is a mess. Edward James Olmos directed both this and “Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down,” and both suffer from the same problem: Good ideas lost to bad tone. The Baltar interrogation is bizarre. The subplot with the bar is listless. The dissolving of Lee and Kara’s marriages plays out without much to react to, despite caring so much about the characters involved.
SOLO STORIES ARC – 7/10
The Woman King – 7/10
A Day in the Life – 7/10
Dirty Hands – 8/10
Okay, so these three aren’t an arc by any stretch, but they go together, ironically, for that very reason. These three are stand-alone stories that each focus on a particular character (Helo, Adama, Tyrol). Their quality is not up to the standard of the rest of the show, largely because the stakes in each episode are non-existent. I like all three, but I also recognize that all three are expendable for the most part. We already know Helo is a man of conscience. We don’t need “The Woman King” to spend 45 minutes telling us that. Likewise, we don’t need to get to know Adama’s dead wife, go back over their failed marriage, and see how much he’s found something better with Laura (though neither are prepared to admit it yet). And we don’t need to spend a whole episode on worker’s rights, though I would argue of the three that’s the most needed, as it at least offers a good allegory for viewers to reflect on. This is still science-fiction. The fact is, though, these three episodes exist because the Sci-Fi Network ordered twenty episodes for the third season. Had this been on HBO or a streaming network (years later) the season would have been 10-15 episodes, leaner, meaner, better overall. That being said, all three are good one-offs. I can’t say that about “Black Market” or half of “Hero.” I’m not going to complain about “just good” BSG episodes.
KARA THRACE AND HER SPECIAL DESTINY ARC – 10/10
4 Maelstrom – 10/10
The Son Also Rises – 9/10
6 Crossroads part one – 10/10
6 Crossroads part two – 10/10
While season three might have dragged a bit in the second half, when comparing it to the first two seasons, the final four episodes of the year close things out with a bang and lay the foundation for the final season to come. The trial of Gaius Baltar serves as the big picture story, while the death of Kara Thrace and the torturous struggle of Lee Adama to come to grips with it provide the meaty character stuff. Once again BSG goes big before a finale. The Hand of God had a finale-sized battle in season one, then Epiphanies cured Laura’s cancer in season two, but here…Killing Starbuck with three episodes to go before the finale takes the cake. Keeping her dead for the remainder of the season (but for the last minute) was the boldest of bold moves. They played it perfectly. Bring her back to start season four and you look desperate. Bring her back the next episode after she dies and it’s just a stunt. Wait till the final moments of the season and it’s a perfectly played hand. As for the trial, credit to the writers for giving Jaime Bamber a speech that convinced me (who knows all Baltar’s secrets) that he deserved to be set free. Credit Bamber for delivering it perfectly, too. That final moment of part two is what will stay with me, though. The whole two-part finale was magical, really, with All Along the Watchtower being such a bizarre idea that worked better than it ever should have, followed by the zoom out and discovery of earth. What a…not a cliffhanger, but a “what now?” ending.
Here cometh the end.
SPOILERS AHEAD
FINDING EARTH ARC – 10/10
He That Believeth in Me – 9/10
Six of One – 10/10
The Ties that Bind – 9/10
Escape Velocity – 9/10
The Road Less Traveled – 9/10
Faith – 10/10
Guess What’s Coming for Dinner – 10/10
Sine Qua Non – 8/10
The Hub – 10/10
Revelations – 10/10
The final nineteen episodes of the show can neither be viewed individually nor as individual arcs. The plotlines sort of bleed together throughout each half of the season, forming two large arcs with a lot of little arcs woven throughout. The first ten are the strongest series of episodes since “Kobol’s Last Gleaming” kicked off the arc that ended with “Home part two.” These ten episodes bring confusion, spectacle, shock, tension, action, euphoria, and finally devastation.
It was the online reaction to “Revelations” that made me want to watch this show. Fortunately, I avoided what was so shocking about the last episode of the half-season. When the moment actually came, when the long lost planet earth was finally found, I bought in. I didn’t even care that there was a whole second half of the season to go. I was right there with them, cheering and crying that they finally made it. Then they go down to the planet…and it’s a nuclear wasteland. What an ending. It’s the ultimate “now what” ending of the show, leaving everyone seemingly completely directionless, setting the stage for the horrors that would come in the next half.
A special word of praise goes to Guess What’s Coming to Dinner. It’s season four’s finale-worthy episode right there in the middle of the run, featuring a tremendous score by Bear McCreary, and a final few moments good enough to end a season on.
THE FINAL ARC – 10/10
Sometimes a Great Notion – 10/10
A Disquiet Follows My Soul – 9/10
The Oath – 10/10
Blood on the Scales – 10/10
No Exit – 10/10
Deadlock – 8/10
Someone to Watch Over Me – 10/10
Islanded on a Stream of Stars – 10/10
Daybreak – 10/10
The final nine episodes (including a near-three hour finale) function much like the first half of the season: There are several little arcs woven across multiple episodes, all building to the finale. In the middle of that, and most noteworthy is the Mutiny arc with Gaeta and Tom Zarek. Before that, though, there’s a two-part follow-up to Revelations. This is the aftermath…and it’s ugly. Adama roams a trash-filled ship with FRAK EARTH spray-painted on the walls, Dee—precious, innocent Dee—commits suicide, the Cylons are lost, Starbuck discovers her own corpse, Roslin burns her Bible. Hope is completely gone.
And what brings everyone back? Not good news, but worse. Gaeta and Tom Zarek stir up what seems to be half the ship against Adama. The set-up is some of the best tension in the show since Pegasus. You know something is stirring and you sit nervously waiting for the shoe to drop. When it finally does, everything explodes. The follow-up episode features great spectacle, and when the dust settles, everyone on the ship that’s left alive has a purpose and a drive again.
Gaeta’s character arc over the four seasons, from the doe-eyed kid to naïve Presidential chief of staff, to the frustrated officer, to, finally, a bitter mutineer is one of the finest arcs for a “secondary” character I’ve ever seen on a TV show. As for Zarek, some people complained about his actions in this arc, thinking it betrayed the nuance his character had in the previous seasons. I disagree. I think he stayed consistent from Bastille Day to the end. Shooting the Quorum might seem out of step with him as an idealistic revolutionary, but in his mind, revolutions are bloody. He even says that to Felix when he sees the bloody aftermath. This is what a coup looks like. It’s messy but justifiable as long as you’re the ones left to write the history. There’s a reason he was in jail at the start of the show. He was always violent and willing to use violence to accomplish what he sincerely believed to be right. He’s not like Baltar, whose primary character trait is an ability to say or do anything to survive. Zarek was an idealist, albeit one more than willing to get blood on his hands to see his ideals win the day. In the end, he lost, and he did so with his head high. Two great characters, there.
After the mutiny, the story shifts to the slow decline and eventual death of Galactica herself. The ship has been through a lot, and she’s breaking down before our eyes. You come to love the ship over the course of four years, so when her skeleton groans and whines as it slowly buckles under too much pressure, you feel it as much as you feel it to see Roslin lying in a bed, dying just the same. Adama’s stubborn refusal to accept that either his ship or his love are dying just makes it all the more poignant. When the time comes to strip the ship and say goodbye, Adama decides to send her out, not with a whimper but with a bang, organizing a volunteer-only rescue mission to bring little Hera back.
That sets us up for the finale, where we flashback to Caprica (before the fall) and see how many of our core characters made their way to the ship that would become their destiny. Adama refused to retire to a desk job. He looked up at the stars at night and pined for them. Tigh refused to divorce himself from the old man. He owes his life to him, and that means forever. Lee and Kara had sexual chemistry from the start but Zach was the original wall that separated them. Later, Lee reflected on Kara as “the one that flew away” while Kara confesses that she is afraid of a lot of things, just not dying. Laura discovered her sisters and father were all killed by a drunk driver a year or so before the Cylons attacked. In a lot of ways, her world was over then, a year before everyone else’s. It explains her steely resolve by the time we meet her in the miniseries. And finally Baltar: He struggles with a cantankerous old father he’s embarrassed by, and of the humble life he tried to run away from.
After rescuing Hera, Starbuck jumps the ship for the final time. The significance of this jump and how it plays into the series’ larger mythos (particularly Starbuck’s) is a masterclass in paying off an idea. They reach their last stop, a habitable planet today called earth. It’s not the earth they found before, the nuclear wasteland. This is a different planet, named in honor of the dream rather than the original destination. How does that square up with the constellations that pointed them to the original earth? I dunno. I suppose stellar drift could be used to explain it. The hand of God, too. Maybe we just have to accept the fact that the story was written on the fly and some things had to be tweaked along the way. I wasn’t sweating it; the sight of our little planet for the first time brings tears to my eyes every time I watch the show.
Everyone gets a bittersweet ending. Roslin dies but not before seeing earth—our earth—filled with “so much life” as she says. Adama gets to retire, but without the life with Laura that he wanted. Lee gets closure with his dad, his life, and with Kara, who ascends out of sight like the Christ-allegory she is. Baltar comes to terms with his life, his whole life, in one of the most touching moments of the series: “I know about farming” he says, before breaking down. It’s so pure and real, and it only works because we spent four seasons watching this character grow and evolve from an arrogant atheist to a humble believer. Then we fast forward to the present day, to the “human” race (unbeknownst to us, a mix of human and Cylon), as we race to develop the smartest, bestest forms of AI and robotics.
All this has happened before, we’re warned. Whether or not it happens again, is up to us.