I was hoping that Galactica would be the ship that got destroyed, just because you'd never see that coming. Next season? Battlestar Pegasus, Season 1.

I think it was about as plausible of a re-exodus as could be expected, and now the show can get back on track. Earth or bust!

So true.
Tigh really solidified this episode for me. He was pure genius, and while I don't know that I could have done what he did, I'm not him. I didn't even like Ellen, and yet, my heart went out to her. Maybe I'm too soft.

It was a fantastic rescue mission. The Admiral's a genius, and it was great to see Lee get some of his purpose back.

While I think the scene with Dee was abit contrived, I think you're going to see alot of internal conflict in Lee about Starbuck, as the Kara-Anders relationship dissolves.

All in all, very happy with the quality of the season so far. And more importantly...

The Dark Times are over. All is right with the Universe.

Yeah, not sure what wasn't to love about that episode. Outstanding, and it sets the stage for a great season. There's so much to resolve, and be resolved.

Baltar's finally with the Cylons
Starbuck's child isn't hers.
Tigh, well jeez!
Hera in the hands of the cylons

My cup runneth over.

(you're insane Rat Boy. I'm shocked that there's complaining)

If only there was a way for him to be, what's the word, reincarnated, so that in the future we may ask him...

Damn you Moore for not thinking of that!

Anyway, I thought it was as clear as it could be without being heavy-handed. They're obsessed with discovering "love", and of the possibilities of a fusion of Cylon and human, and haunted by prophetic dreams.

New Craprica was never going to be the direction the series was going in. It was getting old, and they were wise to only dedicate, what, half a dozen episodes to it. Events there led to Boomer finding out her kid was still alive, said kid being delivered into the Cylon's hands, and further schisms between the different Cylon factions forming. If it were a "return to the status quo", something like "opposing Cylon factions" wouldn't even exist. Ellen is dead, killed by Tigh, who is MISSING AN EYE. Gaius is with the Cylons, and not just a collaborator.

So is your complaint that they're on the run again? How would having two battlestars change that? I think the quest for Earth and the question of human/cylon hybrids have been the main plotlines for awhile now, and if only they had somehow foreshadowed any of the events we may expect in the future. If only. What should they have done? Stayed on the planet to become a stationary target for a foe that outnumbers them by a large margin? Wait for the Cylons to get bored of conversion and nuke them, the intergalactic equivalent of smallpox blankets? Would that be a more logical conclusion? And the question of why the Cylons changed their mind was always vague, and still is, and can easily be continued in regards to how doggedly they pursue Adama and crew. Could there still be a Cylon civil war? More defectors like Boomer? Who are the remaining models to be shown? What happens if they actually find Earth?

Actually, didn't they answer the occupation question last season? 6 and Boomer somehow staged a coup and convinced the Cylon's destroying humanity was a mistake, meaning they felt guilty. By the end of season 2 they were going to take their ball and go home and leave humanity to its own devices, but the exploding nuke changed that. So instead they were attempting to bring the "one true god" to humanity. But were at extreme odds over how to do so. And I said it before, but what do they do now? Continue to pursue? Continue to go off on their own? Both because they can no longer agree as one body?

And for another new element, there are now penalties to Cylon skinjobs dying. Or maybe there always have been, but now we know about them.

I was thinking the same thing the second time Babylon 4 showed up in the Babylon 5 TV series.

Very true. If nothing else, the Pegasus was a high cost paid for rescuing most (?) of the population. Galactica was the smaller and older of the two.

I disagree with you Rat Boy, but hey, that's the beauty of opinions. I will give you that that opening scene between Lee and Dee (hee hee) was the worst scripting I've ever seen on the show. Doesn't help that I hate both characters, too.

But you know what? I think we're all missing the big picture here: Skanky toasterboinking Lady Macbeth is dead. I'm gonna miss Ellen. Love to hate that woman, but more love than hate. Poor Captain Ahab Tigh.

I'm relieved that Kacey turned out to not be a Cylon as I predicted. That would have been some Desperate Housewives turn of events, and this was a much more plausible explanation.

However, I did notice that everything Leoban predicted two episodes ago came true. He said, "God told me that you would take me willingly into your arms, and you would tell me that you love me." And he was right! Starbuck did take him willingly into her arms (when she choked him from behind as he was leaving to fight insurgents); she did tell him that she loved him (right before stabby-mcstabbydeath). Too bad it wasn't quite how Leoban thought it would be. In fact, didn't the same sort of truth-but-not-truth happen last season, when Starbuck was interrogating him? I'm interested to see what goes on in later episodes with Leoban's soothsaying.

And did anyone else notice that, for the past three episodes, Leoban was nowhere to be seen in the planning committees in Baltar's office? Not sure what that tells us, but I think it's probably important. At the very least, it means that the Leoban copy with Kara may be the only one running around on the planet (notice how he always appears alone, too?)

This episode is why I watch this show. I thought it was excellent on every front. I can understand where Rat Boy is coming from with regard to the reset button, but this show is and has always been about the characters. And, as has been noted before, a good number of the characters are going to be different (don't forget to include Gaeta in this list).

I had several "jaw-dropping moments" during this one. Galactica falling through the atmosphere, Gaeta's emotions coming to the surface, the nice twist with Starbuck's "child" (I don't remember any speculation that she could be an abducted human child), and the reemergence of the Six in Baltar's head. Each of these events were very well done. I can't wait to see how the fallout is handled.

Having slept on it I think I need to go back and say something ...

...

Galactica plummeting through the atomosphere and launching ground-support vipers was my favorite moment thus far on the show.
That is all.

You never know... she could've been a Cylon... And he might not have killed her. It would really suck to wake up and find New Caprica abandoned, but it beats being dead though.

I think I was a giddy as a kid at Christmas when that happened. Thanks to the modern miracle that is Tivo, I watched that whole sequence three times with a big grin on my face.

Also, was it just me or do the CGI ship effects look really polished this season. Everything, especially the Raptors and Pegasus seemed to pop off the screen with detail and sharpness.

To further expand upon my problems with the episode and I'll try not to use the words "reset button:"

* The aforementioned opener with Lee and D in the commander's cabin. I even like the characters and thought the scene was a bit clumsy and told us nothing we couldn't have picked up on our own.

* Ellen Tigh's death; saw that one coming since last week. If Saul wasn't going to do it, then I had money on either the Cylons or Anders taking her out.

* The Pegasus's arrival and subsequent destruction. Also something one could have seen coming a mile away, and I'll disagree with Elysium that the best effect of the night was the damaged battlestar colliding with one basestar and its two pods knocking out two more. But, again, predictable.

* The evacuation seemed too...clean, too successful. Save Hera getting taken by the Cylons, everything appeared to swing completely in the Colonials favor. Might have been nice (figuratively) to see one of the civilian ships take a hit and crash back down on the surface, make the battle appear more desperate than it was. Also predictable.

* Kacey. Oh how nice and tidy that ended up being. Wonder if she'll just fade into obscurity like Boxey or the still unamed woman in Apollo's life who was hinted at in "Black Market" (easily the worst episode of the past season) and still hasn't been heard from. Sorry, but that felt like a cop-out, like "Yes, we were only messing with her mind and you'll probably have to wait until the mid-season finale to find out why."

* Hera. Again, another opportunity lost. If she hadn't been lost, then Adama and company would be forced to admit the truth to Sharon. Instead, it's another thing that can be put off. However, the one thing I haven't seen mentioned (which could save this piece of the story), is that in a way the Head-Six's prophecy about "her" (Caprica-Six) and Baltar raising her might in fact come true, assuming they can rip the kid out of Three's hands.

All in all, this episode completely lacked any tension or suspense, feeling more like a badly-edited 90 minute episode than anything else. You knew Ellen was going to pay a price, you knew Lee would use the Pegasus on a one-way trip. This arc wrapped up too quickly, too neatly and wasn't nearly as satisfying as the end of the early Season 2 arc or the Pegasus trilogy. And, like the aforementioned "Black Market," I get the sense that things will naturally go back to the status quo; we've seen that already with Adama and the infamous 'stache. Lee will hit the treadmill and squeeze back into a Viper, Tigh will hit the sauce before work every morning, Starbuck will become pissy again and punch people, and Roslin's already become president in what seems tantamount to a palace coup.

My problems with this episode are ironically very similar to the recent episodes of LOST, albeit in two opposite directions. In LOST, they've done nothing over the last three shows to advance things past the events of last season finale, where BSG has just rushed into moving on and restoring the bulk of the cast back to square one. It feels like, in retrospect, at the beginning of the season that they dropped us in on part three of a six part arc, which explains why the ending feels so rushed. If I seem bitter, it's because this show just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. For all the buildup and hype, "Exodus Part 2" falls well short of the mark. One can only hope that what'll save this bad turn in direction is the new Cylon angle, because I don't see the return to normalcy on Galactica doing it.

So your major problem is that you could predict certain story outcomes? If I hated every movie or show I could lay out the storyline for, I'd never feel I my 8 bucks were well-spent. Inside Man was a great movie, but I called every plot twist.

As for the destruction of the Pegasus, I didn't know that was coming until someone said it was in a preview, because I don't watch them. And even with that knowledge, for a second I thought they'd let Galactica blow up, just as a thumbing your nose to the audience.

I will agree the evacuation seemed very clean, except for the fact that the cylons didn't have much in the way of ground forces, the base stars were busy with Galactica, and at one point they decided to give up and evacuate themselves.

And as for the kid, I'm not the first one to point out that the numbers on the kid didn't add up. It was a weird powerplay by Leoben, and it worked. Does it matter if it goes anywhere? But even so, you could still work with it. Does Starbuck refuse to believe the woman? Maybe the woman's just crazy, lost her baby, and wants any random one. How does it affect Starbuck's own desire for children? Can you really afford to have pregnant expert viper pilots at this stage of the game?

Sharon knows. She knows her kid is still alive, and a confrontation is bound to happen. Is it a cycle of betrayal, even now that everyone trusts her again, like with Baltar's character? And if you saw the other story elements coming, you didn't see Hera ending up with 6 and Baltar coming? Here's a hint, every prophecy, ever, comes true in Battlestar Galactica. If someone predicts Galactica will become a gigantic piece of interstellar cheese that will be consumed by a planetoid shaped like a mouse, I will wait for the wormhole that rips apart reality and makes that happen.

I don't think "knowing" things were going to happen is a valid reason to write off the show. I also don't think comparing episode 5 of season 3 to the mid-season finale, which was at least ten episodes in to the storyarc, is fair. If anything, the "satisfying" Pegasus trilogy was more unsatisfying in the way they dealt with the "evil" new commander, and her death was the clunkiest scripting in the show to date (the series of events that led to the other 6 killing her is guilty of all the things you claim to hate about this episode, just as "convenient" and predictable), not to mention an additional battlestar made their life easier, which since the essence of drama is heaping sh*t onto the shoulders of your characters until they can't take no more, was not as "risky" as it seemed. And another humorous thing is that the "more satisfying" conclusion of the Pegasus trilogy is directly responsible for the events in your least favorite episode, Black Market. Which was followed by THAT commander "nobly dying" to save the ship, all events which are more guilty of "restoration of the status quo" than the ones being blamed in Exodus.

The funny thing is, a year ago when I used to constantly trash LOST, everyone disagreed. Now it comes up in every thread as a synonym for bad storytelling, usually when it's not warranted. It's the 2006 television equivalent to calling something "French" two years ago. Especially since for any of this to actually matter, the "status quo" would have to truly be restored to season 1 levels, something you can't know until the next episode, so at the very least it's jumping the gun, and at the most it's ignoring a long chain of events that had lasting consequences. Ever see "A History of Violence". A family dinner at the end might feels like a "restoration of the status quo", but what about all the crazy sh*t that went down and is swimming about in their heads? If the writers of Battlestar Galactica haven't earned a little viewer trust by now, I don't know what will. I can't agree with the reasoning, and I think they've delivered some of the best television I've watched in the past two years, and even though I liked Exodus part II, even if I hadn't I wouldn't be up in arms over what I felt to be a single episode's missteps.

Curse you rabbit. You shame me with your brevity. I actually agree with everything in both of your posts. Except for your heresy at claiming there was anything wrong at all with Firefly, even in a complementary manner. The venerable Joss Wedon is incapable of error or misstep, and all those who disagree will be drawn, quartered, and also that thing where the pirates drag you behind their boat.

I just think that it has now become a matter of being unable to please everybody. In the Heroes thread, the built up tension and uncertainty, as well as the cliffhangers, are driving people crazy. In this episode, the most tense moment for me was which ship was going to be destroyed, and yes, the rest of it progressed at a good clip, but I think that was, if anything, a wise decision. If they took any longer at all they ran the risk of never being able to satisfactorily pull the series off the planet. They'd have "no exit strategy", if you will.

As for the tension/predictability argument, I saw it coming. I saw Apollo becoming commander coming, I saw the cop-out killing of Cain coming, and everything short of the 1 year jump coming, but that didn't bother me, because they did it well. So I'm agreeing with you, the pacing in Exodus II was extremely fast, and they glossed over a lot of potential problems, but it doesn't bother me. Maybe they were sweeping New Caprica under the rug. Hell, I hope that's exactly what they were doing, and I think there was nowhere for that part of the story to go, and any more time wasted on it would be time that could be spent better on something, anything, else.

And of course our emotional investment in the series influences our judgement. That's part of the magic. And it's another reason why I feel you're wrong. If I wasn't emotionally invested in Galactica, I couldn't care less about pacing, or predictability, or anything remotely related to the show, because I wouldn't still be watching. And because of that, yes, in my book they've earned the right to break with standard rules of pacing, in a way that other shows lacking Battlestar's skill in writing and production haven't. And if it ends up paying off, three episodes from now, will it really matter that they condensed 90 minutes of storyboarding into 60 minutes of show?

Actually, I had no idea that they were going to kill Ellen, or that Lee planned on using the Pegasus on a one-way trip. I figured Ellen was too good of a character to kill off, and I figured a substantial portion of the coming season would be Galactica trying to find Pegasus and the Civilian fleet again. To be honest, I had no idea any of the major plot twists were going to occur. The BSG writers continue to surprise me by taking the show to darker levels that I never would have dared to do. Then again, this might be why I don't write fiction. I think you're pretty good, maybe Leoban-good, to have predicted that stuff. Rat Boy, are you a Cylon?

You mentioned Laura Roslin taking over the Colonial One. You really think Zarek's going to let her? After all, he is the rightful president now, since he was Baltar's VP. All those warm and fuzzy feelings he has for her are probably going to disappear once he realizes she has no plans to give up Colonial One.