Season 1, Episode 01:
33
Onboard Colonial One, Gaius Baltar is having a dream where Head Six is explaining to him that God has a plan for everyone, including him, and expresses a desire to have children. Meanwhile, the weary crew of Galactica sends out its compliment of Vipers as a Cylon Basestar FTL-jumps into their vicinity. The Colonial Fleet jumps out and, after recalling the Vipers, Galactica follows as well. Commander Adama resets a countdown on one of the ship's monitors, ticking down to the Cylon's next attack. Meanwhile, Baltar preoccupies himself with another dream about Head Six, as she mentions how the Colonial Fleet will eventually make a mistake…
Onboard the Galactica, Adama and Colonel Tigh discuss how the Fleet is beginning to feel the strain of the repeated FTL-jumps: computers and engines are starting to malfunction and break down. Elsewhere, Anastasia Dualla walks through the Battlestar's corridors and sees a makeshift memorial that has been built for missing loved ones.
On Galactica's flight deck, Lee Adama and Kara Thrace are checking their Vipers when he asks if she has been taking her stimulants. Kara snaps at him, but they both realize that the stress has been getting to them. In her Raptor, Sharon "Boomer" Valerii is also trying to adjust to her new co-pilot, "Crashdown", and lamenting how she left Karl "Helo" Agathon behind on Caprica in order to save Baltar.
President Roslin is combing through paperwork when she receives a message from Billy Keikeya that a Dr. Amarak would like to speak with her, and has information on how the Cylons breached the Colonial defenses. Realizing that he won't have time to be transported from the ship he's on, the Olympic Carrier, Roslin orders him be brought over after their next jump. Baltar overhears the conversation and becomes worried, as he realizes that Amarak was a fellow colleague of his and could implicate him in the Cylon attack.
On Caprica, Helo is still alive, and has been on the run for six days. He makes his way through a forest being pursued by two Cylon Centurions, and then uses an explosive trap to destroy them. A short time later, while injecting radiation medicine into his neck, he is distracted by a Six wearing a white coat, and is suddenly surrounded and captured by more Centurions.
The Galactica and the Fleet execute their 237th jump, but the Olympic Carrier is nowhere to be found. Baltar breathes a sigh of relief as Head Six tells him it is because God is watching out for him. Onboard the Galactica, Tigh gives a speech to motivate the crew as they blame themselves for the loss, but when they prepare to jump again, the Cylons don't attack. Adama orders the Fleet to stand down from their immediate alert.
As Adama and Tigh take a few moments to collect themselves and talk, the Olympic Carrier reappears after jumping. Fearing the worst, Adama orders an air patrol led by Lee to investigate the ship, while simultaneously ordering the jump countdown to be reset. As the squad of Vipers near the ship, Adama also orders the Battlestar to cut communications with the carrier and communicate with it through signal lamps.
Meanwhile, Boomer and Crashdown are flying near the Olympic Carrier when a radiological alarm goes off, revealing a nuclear weapon onboard the latter ship. The Olympic Carrier begins moving quickly towards the Fleet, just as the countdown expires. A Cylon Basestar appears in the distance as the Olympic Carrier accelerates and heads on a collision course with the Battlestar.
Adama and Roslin argue over whether or not to destroy the craft, while Lee tries to look into the Olympic Carrier and doesn't see anyone. Meanwhile, Baltar is frightened by what could happen if Amarak reveals what happened on Caprica. Head Six asks Baltar to "repent" before God, and as he does, Roslin agrees to destroy the Olympic Carrier. Still conflicted over what he must do, Lee and Kara open fire and destroy the Olympic Carrier just before it impacts with Galactica.
Back on Caprica, a captive Helo is giving the Six his name, rank and serial number when she's shot and killed by… Sharon Valerii, who unties Helo and leads him away as another Six and two Centurions walk out from the woods and watch.
Galactica realizes a short while later that the Cylons are no longer pursuing them, and that the Olympic Carrier was broadcasting the Fleet's coordinates so they could attack. Onboard Colonial One, Roslin copes with what has happened, but receives an unexpected bit of good news: a baby has been born and she can increase the survivor count for the first time.
Tropes
- Actually Pretty Funny: As a result of the constant stim usage, Kara is slightly loopy while flying the Viper, and doesn't quite appear to be taking the situation with the Olympic Carrier seriously. When Lee asks her to fire a shot across the Carrier's bow, she is smiling and responds in a upbeat tone when she carries out the order. She drops this attitude a few moments later when the gravity of the situation becomes clear.
- Ascended Extra: Helo, an otherwise-unimportant character in the miniseries whose main contribution is giving up his seat on Boomer's Raptor to Baltar, reappears here, having survived on his own for five days (and hinted at being of great importance to the Cylons, given they initiate a plan to pair him with Sharon Valeri). Helo wasn't originally intended to survive the miniseries, but the showrunners were impressed by Tahmoh Penikett's performance.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Olympic Carrier is destroyed and 1,300 people are killed, but the Fleet has finally freed themselves of the continual pursuit from the Cylons, while Roslin receives word that a baby was born in the Fleet.
- Bottled Heroic Resolve: The Viper pilots use stimulants to keep themselves alert while fighting the Cylons. Later discussed when Kara claims she doesn't need them because they make her reflexes bunch up.
- The Bus Came Back: Helo, who is shown to have been surviving on Caprica ever since he gave up his spot on the Raptor for Baltar.
- The Cavalry: Subverted; Helo thinks Boomer (who shot down the Six and the Cylons who were preparing to kill him) came back to Caprica to rescue him and find a way off the planet. In actuality, this is a different version of Sharon Valeri who is ushering him elsewhere for unknown reasons.
- Continuity Nod: The Six on Caprica greets Helo in the same... unique fashion as her counterpart did on Armistice Station, i.e. asking him "Are you alive?" and then kissing him.
- Cryptic Conversation: Head Six's conversations with Baltar.
- Dramatic Irony: During a patrol Apollo mentions that, according to Doc Cottle, Boomer is handling the sleep deprivation better than anyone else. Starbuck jokes that it's because Boomer's secretly a Cylon, unaware that Boomer actually is a Cylon sleeper agent.
- Dramatic Pause: When the Olympic Carrier returns.Tigh: Thank the Gods.
Bill: [stares at the screen for a few moments] Action stations. Put the Fleet into condition one. - Early-Installment Weirdness: Baltar tells Roslin to cut off radio communications, even though the Colonials use the term "wireless." Strangely enough, Baltar does use the correct term earlier in the same speech, indicating this may have been a mistake by James Callis.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: It's subtle, but when Apollo and Starbuck are looking closely at the Olympic Carrier, the light coming from some of the windows briefly flickers, as though occluded by people walking around inside. This was something of a defiant Easter Egg by the writers after being forced to soften the impact of the ship's destruction by showing it to be empty of passengers.
- Gut Punch: The destruction of the Olympic Carrier, which (supposedly) had 1,300 people aboard, and is destroyed by Lee as it makes a kamikaze run at the Fleet.
- Hyperspeed Escape: The Fleet pulls it a whopping 237 times while fleeing from the continual Cylon pursuit.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Lee to his father after destroying the Olympic Carrier, which may or may not have had civilians still onboard.
- Innocuously Important Episode: The line "God has a plan, for everything and everyone," is said here by Head-Six, while Baltar chalks it up to religious ramblings that have no place in reality. While later events in the series will flirt with the concept (via "divine" coincidences), the large bulk of it strays grounded in reality... until the series finale suggests that everything we saw in the series, including the Distant Finale, was preordained by a higher power that both Head-Six and Head-Gaius are aware of, who has been presumably influencing things behind the scenes.
- Macross Missile Massacre: The Cylons try this against Galactica in the opening sequence, but the latter jumps before the missiles impact.
- Mission from God:Head Six: God has a plan for everything and everyone.
- No Endor Holocaust: Enforced. Lee and Starbuck are ordered to destroy one of the fleet's own ships, Olympic Carrier, on the suspicion that the Cylons are using it to track the fleet. The original script called for the Olympic Carrier to be fully manned, forcing them to knowingly kill their own people, but the network vetoed this and the episode went to air with the ship visibly empty.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: Adama and Roslin grapple with whether or not to destroy the Olympic Carrier, as there may still be people onboard who haven't been killed or captured by the Cylons who hijacked the ship. With only a moment's notice, Roslin reluctantly agrees with Adama that it has to be destroyed in order to save the Fleet, and Apollo opens fire despite protests from Starbuck (who then reluctantly joins in). Word of God from the showrunners confirms there were living people on the ship when it was destroyed.
- Riddle for the Ages: Was the Olympic Carrier still staffed and had civilians onboard at the time of its destruction? The question haunts several characters, notably Lee and Kara, through later episodes and seasons. During this episode, Roslin suggests that the civilians could have already been moved off-ship by the Cylons prior to it reappearing after jump #238, and that the "pilot" they heard speaking was a Cylon agent. Executive interference meant that visible civilians who would have been seen in the windows of the Carrier looking out at Lee and Kara were removed, with any inference of people still being onboard limited to vague shapes moving around. A later episode will reference the incident, having Lee state that (while reviewing footage of the incident) that he could indeed see people moving around in the ship before it was destroyed, though Kara still isn't convinced.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Baltar begins to lose it when the Olympic Carrier reappears, outright yelling at Roslin to scramble the ship's wireless communications in order to prevent the Cylons from sending over another computer virus, as they did to the Colonial Fleet in the pilot episode (an argument both Roslin and Adama agree with him on). What they aren't aware of is that Baltar is trying to save his own skin, as he believes Dr. Amarak is going to accuse him of being the one who disabled the Colonial defenses, allowing the Cylons to destroy the Twelve Colonies in the first place.
- Right on the Tick: The Cylons catch up with the Colonial fleet every 33 minutes on the nose. By 200+ repeats of this, the crew have set up a timer on the command deck to eye nervously.
- Running Time in the Title: Most hour-long shows are forty-two minutes without commercials. As such, subtract the nine-minute teaser and the body of the episode is thirty-three minutes.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Played With. Dr. Amarak and the occupants of the Olympic Carrier are introduced as being potential new characters (the former of whom is willing to provide intel on Baltar). Then, it's revealed that the ship was taken over by the Cylons and used in an attempt to detonate a nuclear device as it crashed into Galactica. However, it's unclear if anyone was actually on the ship to begin with, although flickering lights and moving shadows can be seen onboard when Lee is flying near it.note
- Sensor Suspense: The crew waiting to see if the sensor will appear during the opening sequence, and later, the reappearance of the Olympic Carrier causes Adama to reset the jump countdown.
- Shown Their Work: Since the Fleet has been on the run for almost five days, sleep deprivation is an issue, and is portrayed realistically here. Instead of yawning constantly and saying "I'm so tired" as is commonly shown in movies and TV shows, characters are short-tempered, irritable, fall asleep at their stations and are forgetful of simple things, all real signs of sleep deprivation.
- Shrine to the Fallen: The Galactica crew set up a memorial for lost and missing crew members, while the Viper crew all touch a photograph of a soldier kneeling under a flag as they leave their briefing.
- Spotting the Thread:
- Subverted with Boomer. Doc Cottle and her fellow pilots have indeed noticed that Boomer is the least tired member of the squadron, but don't make the connection that she's a Cylon. Justified as humanoid Cylons are only a subject of rumor at this point (like Crashdown mentions to Boomer about Doral), but they don't keep this fact in mind after their existence is officially confirmed in "Litmus", either.
- The Olympic Carrier fails to catch up with the fleet on time, and so do the Cylons, clueing Captain Adama in that the Cylons are tracking it somehow, and with it, the fleet.
- Stock Footage: The Viper/Cylon fight seen in the opening jump sequence is reused from the miniseries.
- Tired of Running: Discussed. The Fleet has been on the run for several days, and characters do bring up the issue of getting slow enough to be open to an attack and having to stand their ground. In the end, the destruction of the Olympic Carrier (which was taken out by Lee after it attempted to suicide-bomb the Fleet) solves the issue of the pursuing Cylons.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Tigh accuses Dee of making fatal calculations that led to the loss of the Olympic Carrier and chews her out in front of the rest of the bridge staff, though Bill is able to smooth over the situation by noting that everyone's been pushed to their limits and are bound to make mistakes.
