Friday, September 16, 2005

Battlestar Galactica: Flight of the Phoenix

Finally getting back into the swing of things and watching new episodes. Tonight's episode was Flight of the Phoenix, refering to the movies in which a crew crashed their airplane and was forced to rebuild it. That was one of a couple storylines going through tonight's episode.
The storyline in which the title gains it's name is similar. The Chief decides to build a new Viper, after we see in the opening scenes where he's forced to scrap an older viper. At first, the crew scoffs at his attempts, but one by one begin their own work on the ship.
The second and more alarming plot line is that a Cylon computer virus, from the first episode when they linked up the computers. It's an AI, and it begins learning the ship systems and finding ways to destroy the crew, by suffocating or electrocuting them. No one's killed, but it's generally being a pain in the ass. The other, overall plotline is the general mood of the crew. Everyone's frustrated by their situation, which ties in with the viper's construction. But as Adama said, everything is beginning to sink in, that they're on the run and that their situation is quite frankly hopeless.
This was a great episode to watch. The multiple storylines worked extremely well together, and the production team did a good job splicing everything together.
The main thing I think is the frustrations- it's finally starting to surface, and I'm pretty surprised that it hasn't come to a head until now. We see the crew members getting pissed off at each other, fighting, arguing and yelling, even crew members that have thus far been pretty level headed, like Lt. Gaeta. It's something that has been a long time in coming, in my opinion. The new viper storyline was also pretty cool, because I and a couple others in my viewing group have been wondering what they're going to do about the number of vipers that they have left. The result is pretty cool, the Blackbird. Kara's playing around was pretty funny, as well as Roslin's pretending to smash a bottle of alcohol on it, prompting the entire crew to jump. The computer virus storyline was also interesting, but not terribly surprising, considering that Stargate Atlantis ran an identical storyline during the opening of the second season. The Cylon fighter fleet being destroyed was an awesome scene as well. Overall, outstanding episode. Can't wait for next week's, Pegasus.

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