Battlestar Galactica

Episode #105 - "Act of Contrition"

This document is ©2005, John Larocque. All rights reserved.

The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They look human. Some are programmed to think they are human. There are many copies. And they have a plan.

Synopsis

Flat Top has just made his 1000th landing and the Viper pilots and the deck crew are celebrating the event. They wheel him around the Hangar Bay in a wagon, and are singing a military marching cadence. Elsewhere, Commander Adama catches Kara and Lee painting "1000" on Flat Top's helmet. Lee drops the paint can, and then they go for a walk. In Commander Adama's presence, Kara is telling Lee an anecdote of Adama's 1000th landing, when she is interrupted -- there's a fire in the hangar deck. A communication drone had shaken itself loose, fired and aimed itself at Flat Top's wagon.

The sergeant at arms later reports back what happened. "Metal fatigue, old equipment, worn strap fails, drops a million cubit drone to the deck. Kills thirteen pilots, lands seven more in sickbay. It's hard to hear this I know but we got lucky. If that had been a missile instead of a comm drone, it'd have taken out the side of the ship." According to Tyrol, "Never had a death on my hangar deck. Accidents, never death."

In the Ready Room, Lee has taken the podium. "I wish I knew what to say. Words cannot make this better." Commander Adama takes over and tells them, "You're the guardians of the fleet. [People] need to know that they can count on you, even at a time like this." The pilots all touch a picture as they leave the room and then join the funeral service in dress grays on the forward hangar deck. As Elosha is speaking, Kara is having a flashback to Zak's funeral from two years earlier, with the priest invoking the same words as Elosha. In her memory, Lee is standing next to his mother, while Kara is next to Commander Adama, holding his hand.

In his quarters, Adama tells Kara they need to start training new pilots. Kara replies, "I don't know if I'm the right person for this... There's almost 50,000 people out there. Trying to tell me that there's not one flight instructor?" "There's two, civilians both. I need someone to teach combat tactics." Adama knows why Kara is avoiding this new responsibility. "This is about Zak. It was not your fault. You had nothing to do with what happened. It was an accident." There is a flashback to her confession to Lee from the pilot episode that Zak failed basic flight. "Zak passed basic flight. He was trained and ready to sit in that cockpit. What happened to him could have happened to any qualified pilot." He pressed further. "I need good pilots and I want you to train them." Kara replied, "I can do that." "Just give 'em the attention and professionalism that you gave my son, and they'll be one hell of a squadron." We now flash forward to Kara's falling Viper.

There's a card game with Crashdown, Sharon, Gaeta, Kara and Baltar. "Ten cubits she takes him this time." Crashdown asks Gaeta, "How are you and the doc here doin' on your Cylon detector? Rumor has it that Cylons look like people and you guys are workin' on a way to weed 'em out." "If there were such a program it would be classified and I wouldn't be able to talk about it." Kara is having a flashback to a love scene with Zak. "You passed. By the skin of your teeth, but you passed." "I don't want any special treatment. Not from my father. Certainly not from you." "Zak, I am a flight instructor. I'm not going to send you to Vipers if I don't think you've got the chops, OK?" At this point in the game, Kara is completely distracted, picks up her cubits and leaves. On Caprica it's Day 14 and Helo and Sharon enter a restaurant. The signal they were tracking led them to a fallout shelter underneath. A Number Six model looks through the window upstairs.

Dr. Cottle asks Laura, "Would you mind explaining to me why you waited five years in between breast exams?" "I was busy." "Your doctor on Caprica was right. It's too damn late to operate, the cancer's too far advanced. All we can do now is try to shrink the tumor with gamma treatments and follow it up with IV, CS and diloxin. Did he explain to you the side effects of diloxin?" "Hair loss, nausea, muscle degeneration. I watched my mother endure two years of diloxin before she died. I would like to explore alternative treatments... Have you heard of chamalla extract?" "Oh gods, you're one of those." "What if it works?" "All the evidence on chamalla is anectotal. It's nothing but a bunch of loose talk and false hope." "I'll take that as a yes." "I'll put out a med request to the civilian fleet. Maybe there's some other wide-eyed dreamer out there with a secret hoard of chamalla extract in their luggage." He also makes another recommendation. "And for what it's worth, I would seriously consider prayer."

In the ready room, Kara is briefing the new recruits. "Get on your feet, nuggets! ... Pilots call me Starbuck, you may refer to me as God... We don't have any flight simulators on board so we're putting you in the cockpit, today. This is a Viper Mark II. It's as maneuverable as a jackrabbit and can flip end for end in .35 seconds." During her talk, Constanza talks to another recruit and Kara gives him a new callsign, Hot Dog. "When God speaks, Hot Dog, you listen. Maybe if you learned that at the Academy you wouldn't have washed out." They fail to land their ships properly and were permanently grounded. "This was only our first day." "No, it's your last. It would be criminal to let any of you near a Viper again. So pack your gear, get the hell off my ship. You're done." Lee took issue with this. "What are you doing, Kara? You can't wash 'em out on the first day. I got 40 Vipers and 21 pilots. That's it." "I will not pass another student who isn't ready." "So that's what this is about. It's not them, it's Zak." Lee orders her to reinstate the flyers and she refuses. We again flash forward to Kara's falling Viper.

Lee then takes up the issue with Commander Adama. "I think she's letting her personal feelings cloud her judgment." "And what are those feelings?" "About Zak." "We've talked about Zak... We've been aboard this ship for over two years, we know each other very well. When I asked her to be the instructor, I knew it was gonna release a lot of loose baggage. She acknowledged it. She's professional, she'll do her job." "She's walkin' around with a lot of emotion. She almost decked me in the rec room." "I'll talk to her." "Thank you. Personally, I think she's trying to work out her guilt over what she did for Zak. I think she's trying to make up for it by beating up on these guys." "Guilt? Over what? What did she do for Zak?" Lee discovers that the Commander doesn't actually about Kara's role in Zak's death and refuses to answer. "It's not my place to say, and I've already said more than I should've. You'll have to ask her." He leaves, and then the Commander has a meeting with Kara. "[Lee] said you might have been feeling guilty over something you did for Zak. What did you do for him?" She fumbles a reply. "Don't fence with me, Kara. I love you like a daughter, I don't deserve that." Then Kara confesses.

"Zak failed basic flight. He wasn't a bad pilot. He just had no feel for flying. And when it came to his final check ride, he busted three of the test maneuvers. And I should have flunked him but I didn't. The bottom line is that your son didn't have the chops to fly a Viper, and it killed him." Kara has a flashback to her first meeting with Adama, which was right after Zak died. "You did it because you were engaged." "Because I made a mistake. Because I was so in love with him, and I let that get in the way of doing my job. And he just wanted it so much, and I didn't want to be the one who crushed him." She is in tears and Adama is very angry. "Reinstate the trainees to flight status. Do your job. And walk out of this cabin while you still can." We again flash forward to Kara's falling Viper.

Kara tells the trainees in the locker room they've all been returned to flight status. "We're gonna try this again. Those of you who can be trained to safely fly the Viper Mark II will pass. Those of you who cannot will be cut... Kat, Chuckles, Hot Dog, you're up first." During the practice runs, she instructs Hot Dog (who had just performed a solo maneuver), "Never leave your leader... You never wanna out here alone." Tigh at CIC offers backhanded praise. "I'll be damned. What's got into Starbuck? She actually sounds like a real instructor for a change. She may actually make Viper pilots out of those nuggets after all." Then the Cylons show up.

"Holy frak, we've got incoming." Eight Cylon fighters are pursuing four Vipers. Starbuck radios the Galactica, "We're gonna need you to send the calvalry. Nuggets, punch it for home." The alert fighters are late and won't be there for two minutes, so Starbuck takes on all eight fighters by herself, and Hot Dog follows after her. "Hot Dog, I thought I told you to get your ass home." "You said never to leave your leader." "I also said never disobey an order." Together they go after the incoming ships. Hot Dog's Viper is hit and put out of action, and now there is now only one Cylon fighter left. On CIC, Dualla informs Adama, "Starbuck's wireless and transponder just cut out." The disabled Cylon fighter collides with Starbuck's Viper, and both tumble towards the moon below.

Ron Moore's Commentary

4/2/2004 -- We will be introducing a medical doctor, but I don't know if he'll be a strong, regular character at this point. Right now, I'm thinking of him in a recurring role. (source: Robert Falconer)

2/19/2005 -- Question: I love the smoking doctor! Does he have a name? Isn't sickbay a little small considering the size of Galactica?

I love the doctor too. The character's name is Major Cottle and I think we're only seeing one part of one Sickbay on the ship. It's worth keeping in mind that while Galactica is an enormous ship and was built to be manned by a very large crew, that she had only a skeleton complement on board at the time of the Cylon attack. That explains in large part why we see so few officers and why people like Kara are pressed into service in roles other than their primary one. There are probably several (unused) Pilot Ready Rooms aboard Galactica and possibly other Sickbay facilities as well. Dr. Cottle is our only physician onboard, but if she were fully staffed, Galactica would probably have a large medical staff and would have a sizable hospital facility.

Commentary

This episode marks the first appearance of Dr. Cottle, a recurring character. He is referred to as Major Cottle in the previous episode.

Hot Dog is played by Bodie Olmos, who is son of Edward James Olmos.

This episode employs a plot element from the original series episode "Lost Planet of the Gods." In the original, inexperienced female pilots were trained to replace those whose lives were lost in the pilot episode.

The hangar bay accident with the comm drone is similar to the falling explosive device that went off at Ragnar Anchorage in the pilot episode.

This is the first episode which mentions the chamalla extract therapy. In later episodes, Laura attributes chamalla as the source of her visions and premonitions.

Kara is guilty of the very same thing as Adama. Adama pulled strings to get Zak into flight school. Kara passed him even though he had failed basic flight. She did this because she loved Zak and because he wanted very much to be a Viper pilot. Since Zak's death, she's been stationed with Adama for the last two years, and he's grown to love her like a daughter. Her confession, therefore, was a blow to him. Kara was, in effect, admitting that she was responsible for killing one of his sons and deeply alienating him from the other.

During the practice run, Kara tells the nuggets, "We're gonna try a little maneuver called the Thorch Weave."

In the funeral flashback, the priest describes Lieutenant Zak as "son of William and Carole-Anne Adama, brother of Lee." In the season 2 episode "Resistance", the name of Adama's wife is Anne.

The Sky One episode guide, based on the original script, notes that "the explosion has killed 20 pilots -- more than half of the entire air force."

Deleted Scenes

Sgt. Hadrian questions Chief Tyrol (#1 on the SciFi site) -- Hadrian asks Tyrol some questions in the tool room. This concerns the missing G4 device that he found in Sharon's Raptor. Tyrol tries unsuccessfully to diffuse the situation.
Hadrian: "So you've said that you were checking out the ejection pyros in the Raptor and that's when you came across the detonator."
Tyrol: "Yeah, right."
Hadrian: "Why were you checking it?"
Tyrol: "The lieutenant asked me to."
Hadrian: "Why?"
Tyrol: "She said that she had a short in the system."
Hadrian: "Did she?"
Tyrol: "No."
Hadrian: "So, she imagined it."
Tyrol: (laughs) "No. She's a pilot. Pilots see a flashing light, or hear a beep and they automatically think they have a short."
They walk into the hangar area.
Hadrian: "A witness said she asked you check it personally. Now, I find that a little odd. Ask the Chief of the deck to run down a short?"
Tyrol: Officers. Let me tell ya, to them we're all just a bunch of knuckle draggers."
Hadrian: "Why didn't you delegate the job to someone else?"
Tyrol: "Ah... It's an ejection seat. It's a tricky thing. Ya gotta know how to handle it."
Hadrian: "But you said false alarms happen all the time, no big deal."
Tyrol: "I know, but it wasn't, it was a false alarm, but still, you don't know that at the time, you gotta take 'em all seriously."
Hadrian: "So you check all ejection systems personally?"
Tyrol: "No I don't. Look, I don't know why I checked that one personally that day, OK? Why is this so important?"
Hadrian: "It's not."
Tyrol: "Is that it?"
Hadrian: "For now."