By Nancy Matthews
I was looking forward to this episode. After the Apollo-centric Lost Warrior I was ready for a little quality time with my sweet Starbuck. Leave it to Apollo to screw it up by hogging up screen time. No wonder he grew up to be a terrorist.
Adama and crew are preparing to send out one of the warriors on a scouting mission. They have outfitted a Viper for the trip (the Chief’s stealth ship was way cooler). They’ve reached the end of their galaxy and want to send someone ahead to see what they’re heading into. Starbuck has bravely volunteered for the mission, but of course, being Starbuck, he has ulterior motives, such as jumping the waiting list for a dinner reservation at the Rising Star’s newly re-opened restaurant. Athena mentions to her father that she turned down the invite to join him for evening since she was on duty, but Daddy tells her to go ahead. He’ll cover her with Colonial Tigh.
Starbuck replaces Athena with Cassiopeia and the two enjoy themselves on the Rising Star. He slips the maitre d’ a few credits and gets them a private dining room and sprang for some rare ambrosia. Cassie takes powder room break, I assume it’s to put her diaphragm in, and in walks Athena. Always quick on his feet, Starbuck drops some more credits and gets yet another private room. He runs back and forth for awhile, but mercifully is called to duty.
He suits up and enters the flight deck. The mission calls for him to go incognito. Adama doesn’t want him spotted as a colonial warrior. Apollo explains the modifications to the ship. They’ve doubled the range, and the speed. They’ve also installed a voice activated computer…oh yeah and they’ve removed the weapons. If he runs into any Cylons, he’s going to have to run because he can’t fight and he can’t head back to the fleet. It’s a one way trip.
He takes off after a few minutes of flying around he turns on C.O.R.A, the onboard navigational computer. Turns out she’s way more seductive than either of his ladies back at home. They run into an old fighter chasing a shuttle. It offends Starbuck’s sensibilities to have a fighter chasing an unarmed shuttle so he gets involved. He does a few hot dog moves and the shuttle gets away. After ditching the fighter, Starbuck heads down to the surface of a nearby planet to find the shuttle.
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He finds the pilot of the shuttle and discovers his cargo is cases and cases of 500 year old ambrosia. This of course is impossible since the colonies haven’t had ambrosia shipments since before the war. He ends up smacked on the head for his trouble as the pilot steals his Viper. Robber, as he was called by the man chasing him, flies off with C.O.R.A’s help (that slut – at least she asks where Starbuck went). He begins sending a long range signal toward the galaxy that the colonies were in. This is a big no, no as Adama had ordered Starbuck not to communicate in this manner so the Cylons wouldn’t be alerted to their presence. Galactica picks up the signal and attempts to decode it but fail. They assume Starbuck has been captured or killed and Adama sends Apollo and Boomer to destroy the recon Viper.
Cylons pick up the signal and send ships to investigate.
Starbuck finally wakes up and tries to figure out how to fly the shuttle. He ends up picked up by the guy in the fighter, the “pirate” as Robber called him. Turns out he is actually a guard for a penal colony long abandoned by the colonies. The people in the cells are actually the descendants of the original prisoners – or “original sinners” as the inhabitants call them. They are known only by the crime they committed, Assault 9, Forger &, Embezzler 10, and my personal favorite, Adulteress 58. Starbuck wakes up in one of the cells, with only a bottle of ambrosia for company. The other prisoners, Adulteress 58 in particular, want to know what “Starbucking” is (as would I). They explain to Starbuck that they don’t mind staying prisoners because they make ambrosia that is sent to the colonial warriors to support them in the war.
Meanwhile on Galactica, Athena is kind enough to call Cassie to the bridge to tell her of Starbuck’s fate. While there Cassie sees the code that is being sent from the recon Viper. She recognizes it as an Aryan merchant code. They decipher it just in time. Apollo and Boomer are pulled off the attack just in time. They follow the Viper to the surface and discover Robber and his family. He explains that he escaped from a penal colony and stole the ship to rescue his family. They didn’t want to raise their daughter in the prison.
Apollo sympathizes with their plight since he’s been a father for a whole week or so now.
The Cylons haven’t discovered the Galactica, but they are heading right for the planet. Adama orders the fleet to put as much space as possible between the fleet and those fighters.
Starbuck is looking at the paintings on his cell wall. The guards call out to him, “Bootlegger 137″. He goes to argue with the guard and discovers that the cells aren’t even locked. The other prisoners explain that they’ve been broken for years. He explains to the prisoners that the colonies forgot about them years ago. He explains that the ambrosia has been sitting on the loading docks for all these years. He leads the prisoners outside and shows them all the ambrosia sitting there.
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Apollo and Boomer arrive. Starbuck explains how they’re rich now because of all this ambrosia. They tell him there are Cylon ships on the way, so the three musketeers head up to defend the planet. Of course one of them doesn’t have weapons, but that doesn’t stop him from taking one of the ships out. He forces it to crash into the planet. Unfortunately for him, it lands right where the ambrosia was stored. It lights up like a Christmas tree.
They take the prisoners (and I assume the jailers) with them when they leave. Robber and his family are the only ones to have dinner with the Adamas though, lucky dogs. Boxey shows everyone a picture that he drew after hearing Commander Adama’s story about Earth. Starbuck looks at it and tells him the blue planet is in the wrong place. It seems the picture is similar to the one in his cell. Robber tells them all about “the silent one”. He was a prisoner in that cell who never spoke, he only drew those pictures. Hmm. . . an astronaut from Earth perhaps?
What did we learn this week?
- The end of the human race has been greatly exaggerated. The damn things are everywhere, like roaches.
- Adama will leave your ass in a second.
- Even AI units love Starbuck.
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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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