This episode starts off with video footage of the Galactica marines killing civilians try to get supplies from a few episodes back. The newscaster is saying this event has been dubbed the Gideon Massacre and that thus far no charges have been filed against anyone involved in the incident. We pull back to a shot of the newscaster and her crew looking at the footage when two marines come in and say that they have to take her, but it’s not to put her under arrest.
They bring her on board Colonial One to talk to president Roslin and Adama. Adama cuts to the chase and immediately asks where the got the tape of the shootings. He tells her that if she doesn’t go forward with the Massacre story she can have unlimited access to the Galactica to do a story on them. They demand it be a balanced story, not propaganda for either side of things.
On the command center, Tigh gets a call saying something is wrong with his wife. Someone wrote on her mirror in what looks like blood that “From the Darkness you must fall”
Opening credits
47,853 survivors and counting
We come back to a video camera filming Adama looking through a magazine. Dualla takes the camera crew through the Galactica showing off the oxygen recyclers, and probably oodles of other stuff, don’t know because then we cut to Apollo and Starbuck
They’re talking about how there’s a shortage of pilots and that Starbuck better get used to pulling 15 hour rotations until they get more from the fleet. Then Starbuck jokes around about wanting to be a suspect for the writing on his bedroom mirror.
Back to Dualla giving them the tour, the newscaster is starting to get annoyed at the pointless footage, then a man and the woman run by, scantily clad playfully chasing each other, she follows. They run into the bunks of the pilots, we see Starbuck, Helo, Apollo, Kat all joking around, Kat decides to laugh and have some fun with the film crew. Apollo tells her to cut it out. This has all obviously been filmed. Apollo shoos them away.
Biers, the newscaster, is now interviewing Dualla about why she enlisted. Her parents thought she was nuts for doing it, but she did it anyway because she wanted to believe in something.
Gaius is bitching about not being involved in the president’s decisions, he has no idea why there’s a film crew on board Galactica. Biers sees him and calls him over asking for an interview, he tells them that right now he’s busy, but says that he might be able to later if she talks to one of his aides to schedule thing in a tiny window of time that he’s free. Biers than calls him a funny little man. (note: Biers is played by Lucy Lawless… pretty much everyone is little in relation to her)
Now an interview with Apollo. She asks him if he feels the pilots deserve special treatment, he tells her he does. He feels that while everyone has lost their homes, their loved ones, their former lives, his pilots have all that but also have to put their lives on the line every day for a group of people that only seem to care about what they do wrong.
On the flight deck, the Chief is inspecting a pilots ship, it looks like Kat, she’s getting pissy about it taking too long, but the Chief is not letting her go because something doesn’t “feel” right. He finds a problem in some hose, Kat says that it’s because his “knuckle draggers” don’t spend enough time on maintenance. The Chief obviously takes offense, unfortunately their argument is happening in front of the cameras. Starbuck is there to cool down the situation. Starbuck wants to take Kat out of rotation until she can get her head back on straight. Apollo tells her he can’t do it with the damned pilot shortage. Man I just noticed, even the video footage they shoot is in that stupid 8 corner-cut-off rectangle format. I have no idea why all the books, photos, paper, everything is a freaking octagon. Probably a throwback to the old school series where it would’ve been “cool”. It makes no logical sense though.
One of the marines involved in the “Massacre” is being interviewed now. He lets slip that someone has threatened Tigh, he shows the scars showing that they were actually under attack from civilians and says it was a f*ck up from command more than anything. After he lets the news about Tigh slip, someone (maybe Apollo) comes by and cuts the interview off and pulls him away.
On the command center Adama and Tigh are being filmed talking about the current situation in the fleet, there’s been no Cylon contact for 10 days, there’s some “bitch session” on one of the ships going on with representatives from every ship. Adama has nominated Tigh as the delegate from Galactica. Tigh obviously doesn’t like it, but he has no choice in the matter.
The video crew are filming Tigh leaving when there’s a massive problem with the Raptor, turns out someone beat something with a hammer which if it had malfunctioned in space would’ve killed everyone on board.
Ellen is digging into Tigh again about being a wuss in her eyes, damned power-hungry bitch. She strokes his ego a bit and tries to make him feel that what happened in the Gideon wasn’t his fault.
Now some interview with a pilot named Margaret. When asked if she’s afraid when she goes to fight, she replies with no “The first thing they tell is is that we should act like we’re already dead”. The interview Helo and ask what’s been the hardest for him so far. He says that it’s cutting the human part of him off when he’s in battle.
Helo goes to talk to Sharon, she looks sick and is bleeding. He tells the guard to go get Dr. Cottle immediately.
Interview with Gaeta, apparently his first name is Felix, heh. He’s talking about how his entire life all he worked towards was being an officer on a Battlestar, and when the Cylons hit he realized that all he knows in life are tech-manuals, procedures and tactics. He’s not saying he’s unhappy, he just wants to know if there is something more out there.
Now a sit down interview with Tigh. She asks him about the rumours about death threats for him. He says that being a military vessel they have rumours for every occasion. Then she asks about how it was being in command, and about the controversial actions that happened while he was in charge. He says he knows this is about the Gideon, and it was a military action, and if the same circumstances presented themselves again he’d do the same thing. When asked if he had no regrets he knocks his glass of the table and says that she’s trying to set him up. She then asks why there was no official investigation into the events. He shoves her to the side and storms out of the room. Obviously, all on camera.
Biers comes to talk to Starbuck, asking what she looks for in a new recruit. She says coordination, good reflexes, total commitment, but most of all, someone crazy enough to follow her into combat.
Biers shows Adama footage of what happened between her and Tigh. Adama apologizes for Tigh’s actions. When asked why no one has been charged with the Gideon Massacre, he tells her they’re at war and he can’t lose any men at all, even guilty ones with the odds they have against them.
Kat is trying to land her Viper, but she’s coming in fast and seems to be having a hard time focusing on what’s going on. She gets waved of from landing, Starbuck comes in and asks what the problem is, as it’s the 3rd time she’s been waved off so far. We see an excerpt of an interview with Kat where she’s freaking out about all the things to keep track of just in order to survive. Starbuck tried to talk Kat through the landing. Starbuck tells her she’s got to go full throttle in, she’s not going to be waived off this time. I have a hunch Kat is going to crash into the ship. (note: I’m writing this while watching it for the first time, I don’t actually know). Cut to another interview excerpt with Kat, saying how when everything works it’s better than almost anything, including sex. Back to now, Kat is saying she can’t do it, over and over while she flies into the landing bay. She bumps off the ground, missed the landing track. Starbuck, Apollo and the camera crew run down. They pull Kat out of the ship, Kat’s freaking out and they find stimpills on her. They rush Kat off to sick bay. When they get to sick bay we briefly see Sharon being operated on before the camera crew gets shoved away.
Adama is in Biers’ quarters asking for the tape back. Biers says that the woman she saw on it looks exactly like Sharon Valeri. She gives it to him, they talk about how dangerous it would be if this gets out. It looks like Adama gives her the tape back, I’m not sure yet. Biers pulls a tape out of her bra, I guess he didn’t give it back, she just gave him a copy.
Now she’s interviewing Gaius. He’s yammering and rambling. Number 6 tells him to suck it up. He begins talking about hos he learned he had leadership qualities he didn’t know about while he was stranded on Kobol. Before he can say more an alarm goes off, there are some Raiders that have found them. Biers asks Dualla if she should be scared, Dualla tells her that she is.
In an interesting twist, instead of showing the actual fight in space, they show the film crews filming the reactions of the crew on board listening to it. The vipers manage to destroy the two raiders, Adama tells the people on board that everything is ok now. Biers asks Dualla if it ever gets any easier. Dualla tells them that no, it gets harder.
Tigh goes down to his quarters and sees Ellen tied and gagged. He gets clubbed over the back of the head.
Biers is watching her footage, not sure if she’s got a story in all of it. She sees a book that one of the pilots has, and sees that its by the same writer who wrote the saying that was written on Tigh’s mirror. She doesn’t know what was written but I guess he’s a famous writer, maybe a former rebel or something.
The pilot that she spotted on the footage is now seen standing over Tigh and Ellen, looks like he’s the one that’s been trying to kill him, or at least scare him. He was one of the people on board the Gideon, he says it was hell and now he can’t eat, can’t sleep. He wants to kill Tigh because he feels Tigh’s to blame. Tigh tells him to fire away if he really feels that Tigh’s responsible. The camera crew gets there in time to see Tigh reassure the lieutenant with the gun and see him taken away, when he goes to untie Ellen he asks them to leave and get out of his face.
Biers is interviewing Kat about why she was taking the stims. Kat talks about how she felt she was losing her edge but that there was no one to talk to because there’s no replacements coming up, she can’t take any time off, so she’s always tired, always a wreck. She felt there was no other option but to take the stims. Kat gives a very good speech about how she feels ashamed, because the rest of the fleet are just as bad off as she is but she’s the only one that was too weak and took the stims.
Biers shows them the piece she did, Tigh thinks it’s a hatchet job, showing them with their asses hanging out. Adama on the other hand thinks it’s great. She managed to put a human face, warts and all on the people defending the fleet. He tells her to show it to the entire fleet, both Roslin and Adama want to watch it again.
Now we see the piece, Biers narrates over it saying how she thought she had the story before going over. It was one of an arrogant military who’s let the power go to their heads. It turned out that they weren’t all machines blindly polishing their boots, there were all human, deeply flawed, but deeply human. They never give up no matter how bad things are at the time. Their doing their jobs, for no pay, no rest, no thought of ever not doing their job. The people on Galactica are all they have to protect them against the Cylons, there is no one else. Gaeta told her an astonishing statistic. Not one member of Galactica’s crew has asked to resign even after everything that has happened. The story of Galactica is not that people make bad mistakes under pressure, it’s that those mistakes are the exception. Most of the time everyone gets it right, and the proof is that they’re all still alive. With Galactica on their side they will persevere.
We see Cylons on Caprica watching the video, remarking how resilient the humans are. Obviously we still only see the faces of Cylon models we know, damn. They somehow have footage that was cut. They see Sharon on the operating table. Caprica-Sharon is happy to see that she’s still alive. We hear a voice saying that the baby survived, a voice with an Australian accent. Damn that Biers! Pull back, yep it’s Biers alright. Well we know another Cylon and we know how they got the footage.
