Battlestar Galactica Rewatch (Part 4)

Battlestar Galactica Rewatch

Gun on Ice Planet Zero (Parts 1 and 2)

The fleet once more is fleeing a Cylon force made up of mainly fighters with at least one
basestar trailing behind. A long range probe mission is launched to scout the upcoming space
which as we found out is an area of space the colonials have supposedly never been
to which begs the question why is there a human with colonial knowledge on a small
planet with a weapon almost designed to take out the remnants of the colonies?
That aside the red shirt scouts are either killed or captured and a decision is made
to send in a strike force to take out this super weapon and allow the fleet to escape
from the well laid trap created by Baltar.
To spice things up the majority of this strike team is made up of prisoners who have the
skills in arctic warfare and demolition and if that wasn't enough they find the planet
houses a colony of clones who are pretty much slave workers to the Cylons and they have
appropriated a human scientists creation and turned it into a weapon.

Ok even my brief synopsis will have many a reader identifying the plots of The Dirty
Dozen and The Guns of Navarone so if you are going to cherry pick ideas those
are not bad places to fish from.
I did notice that there was a lack of female viper cadets/trainees, then again they were going
to the slaughter so maybe the producers thought killing off the women was a bad idea but again
we saw rank disobedience from subordinates during a mission which seems to be the norm
for the Galactica. We can also question the incredible stupidity of a planetary based
fixed point energy weapon which has to deal with a huge area of three dimensional space,
there is no reason why the fleet could not slip past the planet or simply vector away.
This is television of it's era though, these sort of plot holes would kill a show today
but back then not that big a problem after all in naval history fixed point cannons were ideal
for defending ports and straits against shipping.
I was clawing my hair out at how Boxey and his mechanical mutt slipped onto the flight deck,
onto a shuttle, hide away and then surprise everyone, this is why I tend to hate the inclusion of
kids into shows purely for dramatic effect or to aide a plot point.

Still honour amongst prisoners.

The prisoner angle was pretty well done though, a little hard to accept these were the only ones
in the fleet that were capable of completing the mission but it did add some tension and of
course some excellent guest stars. The same goes for the clones on the planet, an interesting idea
which really wasn't important except to allow for a large "human" settlement who would not be
questioning the appropriation of the pulsar for military use.
It's always good to see Britt Ekland on television as well:)
Baltar and Lucifer were fantastic, their interaction was entertaining and the back and forth of the
cylon fighter squadrons like something out of Benny Hill and I would have so liked to have seen
the look on the Theta clone who fathered the first child, the world changed that day for the males:)

Starbuck rocks the Clone fashion scene.

Gun on Ice Planet Zero isn't a bad story, it was a little stretched to fill a double episode but there
were some good ideas many of which were implemented well but ultimately there were too many
plot holes to really let yourself enjoy the story. A nice cast list, good use of stock footage but too
many flaws for even Britt to save:)
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