The 2nd half of this story is almost exhausting to sit thru. There's so much going on, it barely leaves you time to catch your breath. It's like the BG equivalent of the movie "MIDWAY".
Baltar escapes near-destruction and begins to come to terms with suddenly having to fight TWO Battlestars instead of one. A small strike force consisting of Apollo, Starbuck, Sheba & Bojay are sent on an extremely dangerous mission into the heart of a Cylon CITY to knock out defense batteries, so as to allow the fleet access to fuel desperately needed by the entire fleet. As Baltar's 3 Cylon Base Ships approach, Cain is sent to "lead them off", while actually planning to use the opportunity to take out Baltar once and for all. And just to add to the confusion, The Cylon Imperious Leader arrives on Gamorray to re-dedicate the capitol city in the name of "Cylon Culture".
In all this, writer Glen Larson & director Vince Edwards (the star of BEN CASEY!) manage to cram in loads of "personal" stuff as well. Like Cassiopeia insisting on joining the assault team as their med-tech, and Sheba slowly coming to terms that the "lady" her father cares so much for isn't a bad person after all. Or Starbuck, worried about losing the woman he loves, telling her "Everyone's entitled to a little confusion in their lives. I practically thrive on it." It's amazing how in a story this "big", the characters are NOT lost among the action.
Especially amusing is the interplay between Baltar & Lucifer, as each new twist keeps him off-balance. Like suddenly having to send his fighters to defend the Imperious Leader, although it will leave him without any. Then, after feeling so clever that he's figured out the "diversionary" tactic of The Pegasus, suddenly realizing its commander appears bent on a suicidal attack against him personally-- forcing him to RECALL his fighters. The moment he realizes WHO he's up against, you can just feel the FEAR building up in him, because obviously, he KNOWS Cain, and he knows that Cain is NOT Adama.
I still recall the first time I watched this (first-run), wondering how this was all going to wind up. Although "problem-based" shows had been done to death by the late 70's, it was practically unheard of for any series with one "big" storyline to actually ADVANCE the story much over the course of its run. So when a character like Cain appeared, from the start, I naturally wondered, would he DIE by the end of the story, or just disappear? It would have been unthinkable for him to actually STICK AROUND after this story. After all, major changes of this sort just did not happen on network shows in the 70's.
So imagine my shock when 2 members of his crew-- Sheba and Bojay-- DID just that. Although Bojay was only ever seen in one more episode (there were already too many characters on this show as it was), Sheba (Anne Lockhart) became a regular and a big focus of several stories to come. Along the way, she became my favorite female character on the show, especially as her initial hard-and-harsh exterior was softened (beginning already in this episode). It also gave me hope that Adama was right about Cain, and that we WOULD eventually see him return in some future story.
That he DIDN'T is purely down to the show being canceled at the end of the season, not because of low ratings, as it happens, but simply because "the suits" at ABC felt it was "too expensive". How bigger might their profits have been had the show lived long enough to gain a bigger audience, both in first run and in eventual syndication? It's criminal this show ended when it did, and it was really the beginning of a long, unbroken trend at all 3 networks to sabotage potential greatness by jumping the gun and being in too much of a hurry for "the quick buck". (As one person I know put it the other day, "Capitalism gone mad.")
I've long felt this show would have been much better had it focused as much on soap-opera, to take advantage of its unusually large cast, as it did on action. HILL STREET BLUES proved this out only a few years later, as have many shows since, including the Sci-Fi Channel's BG redo. Looking back, it's amazing the series was as good as it was, considering everything it was up against (networks, censors, scheduling, often-dodgy writing). Something with THIS many great characters deserved better. Episodes like THIS one stand as a testament to that.
Baltar escapes near-destruction and begins to come to terms with suddenly having to fight TWO Battlestars instead of one. A small strike force consisting of Apollo, Starbuck, Sheba & Bojay are sent on an extremely dangerous mission into the heart of a Cylon CITY to knock out defense batteries, so as to allow the fleet access to fuel desperately needed by the entire fleet. As Baltar's 3 Cylon Base Ships approach, Cain is sent to "lead them off", while actually planning to use the opportunity to take out Baltar once and for all. And just to add to the confusion, The Cylon Imperious Leader arrives on Gamorray to re-dedicate the capitol city in the name of "Cylon Culture".
In all this, writer Glen Larson & director Vince Edwards (the star of BEN CASEY!) manage to cram in loads of "personal" stuff as well. Like Cassiopeia insisting on joining the assault team as their med-tech, and Sheba slowly coming to terms that the "lady" her father cares so much for isn't a bad person after all. Or Starbuck, worried about losing the woman he loves, telling her "Everyone's entitled to a little confusion in their lives. I practically thrive on it." It's amazing how in a story this "big", the characters are NOT lost among the action.
Especially amusing is the interplay between Baltar & Lucifer, as each new twist keeps him off-balance. Like suddenly having to send his fighters to defend the Imperious Leader, although it will leave him without any. Then, after feeling so clever that he's figured out the "diversionary" tactic of The Pegasus, suddenly realizing its commander appears bent on a suicidal attack against him personally-- forcing him to RECALL his fighters. The moment he realizes WHO he's up against, you can just feel the FEAR building up in him, because obviously, he KNOWS Cain, and he knows that Cain is NOT Adama.
I still recall the first time I watched this (first-run), wondering how this was all going to wind up. Although "problem-based" shows had been done to death by the late 70's, it was practically unheard of for any series with one "big" storyline to actually ADVANCE the story much over the course of its run. So when a character like Cain appeared, from the start, I naturally wondered, would he DIE by the end of the story, or just disappear? It would have been unthinkable for him to actually STICK AROUND after this story. After all, major changes of this sort just did not happen on network shows in the 70's.
So imagine my shock when 2 members of his crew-- Sheba and Bojay-- DID just that. Although Bojay was only ever seen in one more episode (there were already too many characters on this show as it was), Sheba (Anne Lockhart) became a regular and a big focus of several stories to come. Along the way, she became my favorite female character on the show, especially as her initial hard-and-harsh exterior was softened (beginning already in this episode). It also gave me hope that Adama was right about Cain, and that we WOULD eventually see him return in some future story.
That he DIDN'T is purely down to the show being canceled at the end of the season, not because of low ratings, as it happens, but simply because "the suits" at ABC felt it was "too expensive". How bigger might their profits have been had the show lived long enough to gain a bigger audience, both in first run and in eventual syndication? It's criminal this show ended when it did, and it was really the beginning of a long, unbroken trend at all 3 networks to sabotage potential greatness by jumping the gun and being in too much of a hurry for "the quick buck". (As one person I know put it the other day, "Capitalism gone mad.")
I've long felt this show would have been much better had it focused as much on soap-opera, to take advantage of its unusually large cast, as it did on action. HILL STREET BLUES proved this out only a few years later, as have many shows since, including the Sci-Fi Channel's BG redo. Looking back, it's amazing the series was as good as it was, considering everything it was up against (networks, censors, scheduling, often-dodgy writing). Something with THIS many great characters deserved better. Episodes like THIS one stand as a testament to that.
