Tuesday, December 05, 2006

IGN Review: Unfinished Business

IGN has posted up the following review for last week's episode, Unfinished Business:

Battlestar Galactica: "Unfinished Business" Review
An interesting but flawed episode finds members of the Galactica crew boxing each other, sleeping together and getting stoned.
December 4, 2006 - Well, the new Battlestar Galactica can now definitively state something else the original 1970's version couldn't: Apollo and Starbuck did it! This week's episode was essentially a character study, with the modern day scenes taking place over the course of just a few hours, while flashbacks filled in some key moments from New Caprica we hadn't been privy to before.

A big question lingering since last season's finale was what exactly caused such a big estrangement between Starbuck and Apollo during the missing year of time the series skipped over. The answers were found here, as we saw the events surrounding a ground breaking ceremony on New Caprica, in the earlier days of the occupation.

Some strong material occurred here, as we saw the Galactica crew in a state we rarely see them in; Optimistic. The jump ahead in time picked up with most of the characters already in one form of doldrums or another, and then the Cylon occupation made things all the worse. But here, we saw that even those against settling on the planet had dared to hope for the best at first, or as Roslin and Adama discuss, had at least decided to try to enjoy this time away from war as long as they could.

But for Kara and Lee, things get very messy, as a drunken encounter leads to them finally sleeping with each other, even though Kara & Anders and Lee & Dualla are in the midst of serious relationships at the time. In the afterglow of sex, Lee joyfully (and nakedly) screams that he is in love with Kara, and gets her to do the same; albeit one could wonder about her turning it into a third person statement, by yelling, "Kara Thrace is in love with Lee Adama." The two decide they will tell their respective lovers about what has happened and that they have decided to be together.

Except the next morning Lee wakes up alone, walks back into camp and receives some stunning news from his father; Kara and Anders just got married. With Anders unaware of what occurred, Lee, hurt beyond belief, storms off, and back to Dualla. And thus a rift is born…

In the present, the story followed boxing matches between the Galactica crewmembers, which brought a lot of bad feelings to the surface. In a powerful sequence, Adama challenged Chief Tyrol to fight. As we learned, Adama had gone against his initial misgivings and granted Tyrol and Cally permission to leave Galactica when their baby was on the way. Adama had his own anger issues over Chief wanting to leave in the first place, and more so, he wanted to get a point across to the crew, which he delivered in a speech, after Chief rather brutally beat him, thanks to Adama goading him on and sucker punching him. As Adama explained, it's one thing to feel like the crew is family, it's another to let them get so close that you aren't doing what is best for everyone's safety, and he wouldn't let it happen again, as he did when he allowed people to leave Galactica on New Caprica.

Full review here.

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