As always, the episode jumps off on the heels of the previous week. President Roslyn, worried that Adama might be a Cylon as Leoben warned her, has her assistant Billy pumping his girlfriend Dualla for information about him (always the basis for a lasting relationship). It turns out that Adama has been making secret phone calls and has appeared distracted of late, implying he's got a secret of some kind. Roslyn is clearly terrified Adama truly is a Cylon, to the point where she ham-handedly suggests he be the first person to undergo testing with Baltar's newly-completed Cylon-detector. (Given Adama's time spent at Ragnar Station, where it was established that the Cylons break down, with no ill-effects, apparently the concept is that the Cylons have managed to replace Adama at some point since then.)
It quickly turns out that Adama's disappearances (one of which happens to coincide with the arrival of another Cylon Raider) are not due to his Cylon proclivities, but because he's located Colonel Tigh's wife. And so the festivities begin.
Not only does this episode allow some good character development between Roslyn, Tigh and Adama, but it also gives us some good insight into the Cylons. It's becoming quite clear that the Cylons are not interested in exterminating humanity, at least not yet. On Caprica, Boomer and Helo are fleeing the Cylons (who are now actually trying to capture them, but without success thus far) after Boomer went native on the other Cylons. After realizing that Boomer and Helo have escaped for the time being, Number Six and Doral wonder what it would be like to feel so intensely, another hint the Cylons are trying to learn from humanity. In a similar vein, the Raider stalks the fleet acting erratically, spurring the Galactica to try and learn from its actions, but it turns out the ship was simply trying to see what the humans would do.
I see Jim Henley (who has a nifty new site design) beat me to continuity error number one, the fact Baltar's Cylon-detector, which took some 10-15 minutes to determine Boomer was a Cylon last week, now requires 11 hours to do the same thing. But I've got number two all to myself: when the Raider attempts to ram Galactica, it is destroyed just short of the ship, spurring Adama to congratulate Tigh for having saved the ship. Now this is a ship that took a direct hit from a thermonuclear missile on the first day of the war without flinching (granted, it took damage, but the hull held and the landing bays are still functional). Now we're to believe that a single Raider would have destroyed the ship? Please. In the spirit of admitting that nobody is perfect, I'll give Adama the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was just trying to puff Tigh up after suggesting that his wife might be a Cylon. But still, that's the kind of thing that adds unnecessary melodrama to the show. Tigh did a good thing, and Adama recognized that. The fact the good thing didn't save the ship doesn't mean it wasn't a good thing.
Also of great interest was the continued development of Baltar. Last week, it appeared he was simply keeping Boomer's secret because he feared she would kill him. Now, however, it appears that his inner traitor has come to the fore, as he has apparently rigged his Cylon detector to read everyone as human. No doubt that makes his life easier, but it's bound to come back and haunt the Colonials at some future date. Although it can be argued that this does explain the continuity error: by claiming that the test takes eleven hours, Baltar guarantees that he has a steady job for the foreseeable future.
All in all, very well done. The cast is a little large for the short format (@40 minute episodes), but they're doing a remarkably good job with the screen time they get.
Posted at March 5, 2005 01:26 PM
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Tracked on March 22, 2005 09:04 AM
On reflection, the 11 hours may not be completely unreasonable. We know that Starbuck <tacitus>aggressively interrogated</tacitus> Loeven for "eight hours," and that the Boomer-Baltar arc ran in rough parallel to it. So that particular incident was certainly more than a few minutes, as I erroneously claimed initially, and may have been as much as 2/3 of the 11 hour figure given this week.
I think the big problems with the "Cylon detection device" include the lack of confirmed Cylon genera to test (unless they scraped some of the suicide bomber from the previous week off the bulkhead) and no on-screen awareness of the problem of false positives, though here perhaps they are merely taking their cue from our own legal regime's stance on breathalyzers and drug tests.
(Admittedly, the slide of Boomer's blood that Baltar loaded into the machine looked bifurcated, so maybe each single test is really two tests. But once you got a positive result, you'd probably want to quarantine the subject for a period of time - a week? - and do an entire second test.)
Speaking of the title, I never saw the Almodovar movie that inspired it. Did you? I'm curious whether the episodes allusions to it go beyond the title pun or not.
Posted by: Jim Henley at March 5, 2005 10:24 PM
I seem to recall Boomer showing up for her test well after the capture of Leoben, but perhaps I'm misremembering. As I said, it sounds to me like Baltar's claiming the test takes a long time as much to keep people out of his hair as because it actually takes that much time.
We did see that they do have a confirmed Cylon to test: the first Leoben's body is still in the Galactica's morgue. Now how they test for false positives is beyond me. Unless they can recreate the radiation produced at Ragnar Station and put suspected Cylons in it to see what happens.
Posted by: Andrew at March 6, 2005 08:31 AM
The wounded bird was headed straight for Galactica's only window, a feature conveniently established in the opening minutes of the episode. The ship took the nuclear missile on its heavily armored flank. Would the raider have done enough damage to result in the loss of the ship? Probably not. But Adama's dialogue is not unreasonable. Which sounds better? "You saved our ship," or, "You prevented us from being damaged, not severely, but in a way that would have resulted in significant loss of civilian life and a lot of inconvenience for everybody involved?" I vote for A.
The reason false-positive results aren't an issue is that the whole process for identifying cylons is a big fraud. It's a complete lie cooked up by Baltar out of desperation. Remember, Baltar is a malignant narcissist, and so his biggest fear is that he's going to be found out. He fakes everything he does. It's just a testament to the fact that he really is a genius that he's able to get it right pretty often. This becomes a major plot point in next week's episode.
Posted by: Jeff Harrell at March 6, 2005 02:23 PM
I recall the window at the opening, but I was under the impression that was a civilian vessel, but I'll take your word for it. As for A/B, that's a false choice. Having spent the last decade and change in the military, I've learned that it's a lot better to tell the truth than to puff things up. Adama could simply have told Tigh that he did well, which would have been the truth. It's a minor point, but speaking as a military man it rings false with me.
As for Baltar, didn't he correctly identify Boomer as a Cylon last week? I got the impression he was simply refusing to identify anyone as a Cylon because he feared for his safety.
Posted by: Andrew at March 6, 2005 04:34 PM
Another gap - the Galactica previously used large batteries of 'AAA'. They weren't in evidence this time - if they aren't capable of blasting a single ship on a collision course, then they might as well be scrapped.
Posted by: Barry at March 7, 2005 08:08 AM
IMDb calls ep. 9 “Secrets and Lies” so I guess “Tigh Me Up…” is an affectation of somebody who thought the U.K. episode name wasn’t clever enough for the U.S. distribution.
Posted by: Lori (aka Camera Obscura) at March 9, 2005 10:15 PM
Apparently so; I got the title from the SciFi Channel's site. I prefer "Secrets and Lies," myself. It's a better description of the episode. "Tigh Me Up..." is just a silly play on Tigh's name with minimal relevance to the episode.
Posted by: Andrew at March 9, 2005 10:27 PM
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