Battlestar Galactica – The Lost Warrior

by Nancy Mathews

I really wanted to title this one My Heroes Have Always Been Colonial Warriors but I restrained myself. I would accuse BSG of ripping off Firefly, but being that it was on the air 24 years before Firefly, that would be impossible. Yet, there it was. Out on the rim, outside of the Cylon empire we have a small western town where humans survive by raising cattle and shoot with pneumo-guns. The women are pretty and the men… well they’re male at least.

Apollo is on the run with Cylons on his tail. He’s transmitting back to Galactica begging for Blue Squadron to come help him. Starbuck and Boomer come running onto the bridge ready to go. Adama stops them, explaining that it’s part of a cunning plan to draw the Cylons away from Galactica. Dad seems quite sure of himself, so I breathe a sigh of relief. I thought Apollo was just being a big whiner again.

He lands on a nearby planet, out of fuel and therefore stranded. We see a young boy talking to his pony. Except his pony is growling like a jaguar. Weird. The larger horses are striped like them too. I can’t quite figure out why that is. I’m guessing it’s to make the planet seem alien. The boy comes upon Apollo and his ship. He’s never seen a ship before, although he admits his uncle has told him tales of people who “fly in the stars”. Mom shows up in short order with a gun (the aforementioned “pneumo”) and tells the boy, Puppis, to stay away from the stranger. Apollo assures her of his good intentions and she takes him back to her house.

I’m figuring it’s been a while for her, any passably hot male stranger is going to make it back to the house.

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Starbuck and Adama are trying to distract Boxey from realizing he may be an orphan, again. This kid is the kiss of death for a parent. Starbuck and Boomer take him to the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters where they teach him about the important things in life, such as gambling, drinking, and smoking.

On the planet, Apollo is trying to make nice with the super suspicious mom, Vella, while Puppis tells him about a guy named Lacerta who takes tribute from the people, leaving them enough to survive. Lacerta has an enforcer named Red Eye.

Mom’s got major gun issues. Charlton Heston isn’t getting anywhere near her house. She admits to Apollo that her husband was killed by a blaster like his. Apollo understands since his wife (of all of 15 minutes) was, too. They bond.

Red Eye pays a visit to the ranch and he’s a…wait for it…Cylon! You’re surprised right? Me neither, but Apollo seems to be. He’s kind of an odd, domesticated Cylon, though. He’s there to investigate a noise that was heard in town, probably the sound of a viper crashing. They get him to leave without seeing Apollo.

Puppis’ uncle Bootes has arrived in the middle of the confrontation. After Red Eye leaves, Bootes asks his sister, what’s up? She takes him inside, and once Bootes sees Apollo he recognizes him as a Colonial Warrior.

Vella comes clean and admits she got hot and heavy with the last colonial pilot who crashed on the planet and he is/was her son’s father. At some point Red Eye showed up and the pilot, Martin, flipped out and tried to attack him. He ended up being killed by his own blaster.

Apollo decides to play Inch High Private Eye to figure out where Red Eye came from and if there are more hanging around. He also hopes this will lead him to fuel so he can get off this tumbleweed of a planet. He goes to town dressed up as an “Oviner”, which appears to be the lowest of the low in this social milieu. He gets himself noticed by Lecerta and tells the mob boss that he wants to work for him.

Starbuck and Boomer decide to go after Apollo. They have no idea what planet he landed on, but they hope by staying close to the area where they last heard from him they’ll spot him and lead him back to the fleet. Adama initially refuses until Tigh reminds him that if it was any pilot other than his son he would let them go. Adama won’t slow the fleet but he agrees to let the dynamic duo go wander around a bit to try to find him.

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Apollo and Vella are sitting around talking kids. Vella’s cousin, Jason (yeah, seriously, just Jason) comes in saying that Red Eye took half of Bootes’ herd . Bootes then proceeded to get drunk and head into town where, after making a scene in the bar, he challenges Red Eye and ends up dead.

Apollo and his surrogate family arrive just in time to see him go down. Puppis points his pneumo at Red Eye but Apollo talks him down since the Cylon is clearly willing to kill the kid. Puppis gets pissed (no one ever lets him play with guns!) and runs out.

A hot little bar wench calls Apollo aside once he’s outside. She explains that the head henchman of Lecerta has been feeling left out since they found Red Eye and now sees Apollo as a threat, so plans to kill him. Apollo latches on to the part when she says they “found” Red Eye. She explains that they found him in the mountains after his ship crashed. There were two others like him but they were destroyed. Red Eye was only damaged. The first thing he said was, “By your command,” and he’s worked for Lecerta ever since.

Upon hearing this, Apollo pulls his balls, uh ahem, his blaster out of his saddle bag and challenges the enforcer. Once he sees Apollo’s blaster he backs off and Red Eye steps up. In good old fashioned gunslinger style Apollo dispatches him post-haste. Lecerta makes himself scarce.

Once they get back to the ranch, Puppis is extolling the virtues of Apollo and his mad blaster skillz. It’s obviously upsetting his mother and Apollo tells him to stop, that he was scared and all that “guns are bad!” stuff.

Maybe I had it wrong - the episode should have been called, Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to be Colonial Warriors. Convinced now of Apollo’s worthiness, Vella tells him she knows where Martin’s ship is. It won’t fly, but there is fuel in it.

Now she tells us!?!

Up in orbit, Starbuck and Boomer are about to give up the search and go home. Then along comes Apollo and the gang heads home.

On the planet, Vella and Puppis lie on the ground looking up at the sky, hoping Apollo will return one day as he promised.

What did we learn this week?

• Apollo is quite the sanctimonious bastard – no wonder I always loved Starbuck.

• Apollo also has a James T. Kirk-like love of attractive women he’s just met.

• There are other planets with humans on them, but we don’t care. We only care about Earth.

• Boxey is easily distracted by wine, women and song. A bad, bad sign.

Next up – The Long Patrol

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Nancy Mathews works very hard at masquerading as a grown up to go to work and raise her two sons. Once the sun goes down she reverts to the 10 year old that she actually is. You can follow her plans for world domination through the formation of an army of knitters on her blog, Bronxgirlknits.

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