Galactica, the last battlestar, is determined to join the fight against the Cylons that attacked the Twelve Colonies. But the faces of the Cylons are changing, and the odds are against the last battlestar's survival.
The second and final night of the miniseries shows Kara Thrace looking over her Viper after her first Cylon sortie. Chief Galen Tyrol is aghast at the heavy damage, while Thrace is rather nonplussed from the experience. When she complains about Prosna's overdue work, Tyrol tells him of his death, and that of Lee Adama. She asks about the missing Sharon Valerii as well; there is no news.
Elsewhere, Valerii and her civilian passengers float in space. She launches a communication drone to extend communication range from Cylon jamming.
Commander William Adama, unaware that his son is alive, orders his battlestar, Galactica, to jump to Ragnar. The jump is successful, and Galactica enters the tenuous upper atmosphere of the gas giant, where Ragnar Anchorage awaited with needed supplies and munitions.
Adama explains that he caused a EM burst that disabled the missiles as well as emitting enough energy to convince the Cylons that the missiles detonated. Happy to be alive, Roslin directs the immediate evacuation of passengers from the disabled civilian ships they encountered before the attack and leaving before the Cylon realize the deception.
Galactica enters the storm cloud and eventually docks with Ragnar Anchorage, located deep inside the upper atmosphere. In that time, Kara Thrace prays quietly for Lee Adama while Aaron Kelly somberly monitors the collection of the dead on the unused starboard hangar deck.
Inside Ragnar Anchorage, Chief Tyrol discovers an unauthorized occupant. He eventually calms him down and disarms him.
Boomer's Raptor is found by Colonial One. She lands inside the ship's cargo bay and offloads her survivors, including Baltar. She tells of the massive shutdowns of most of the Fleet to Captain Adama, who directs Baltar to see President Roslin.
Baltar tries to figure out the means of how his CNP program was compromised while the virtual Six speaks to him.
Commander Adama visits the station while supplies and weapons are gathered up. The hideaway, Leoben Conoy, admits to being an arms dealer, and is apparently unaware of the events that have transpired in the Twelve Colonies.
A munitions shell accidentally falls and detonates in the station, narrowly missing Adama and Conoy, who escape into a recessed hallway.
Act 2
Commander Adama saves himself and Conoy from the blast but are trapped inside a corridor. Adama orders his crew to continue offloading the supplies while he and Conoy seek an alternate way back to the supply area.
President Roslin's caravan of stranded ships has grown immensely to about 60 ships. It now includes a mixture of 20 sublight and 40 FTL-capable ships.
The captain of a Botanical Cruiser pleads with President Roslin for help, which she promises. Roslin speaks briefly with a young girl, Cami, who innocently looks forward to meeting her parents at the Caprica City spaceport, to some chicken pie and bed.
In a briefing with Roslin and others, Captain Adama recommends immediate escape for all FTL-capable ships to Ragnar Anchorage. When Aaron Doral and the captain of Colonial One want to evacuate as many people from the sublight ships before an attack, Adama reminds everyone that the war has changed to the survival of the human race: taking time to evacuate the sublight ships could leave the entire caravan open to nuclear destruction.
Roslin orders the jump. Afterwards, she tells her aide, Billy Keikeya, that she has cancer. Billy tells Roslin that he had already guessed that she had cancer and then tells her that Cami will be killed because the Botanical Cruiser is not FTL capable. Roslin is upset.
The sublight ships are left behind as the rest of the fleet jumps and subsequently destroyed by Cylon nuclear missiles. Cami remains sitting in the gardens of the Botanical Cruiser completely unaware of what is going on as a missle strikes, destroying the ship in a bright flash.
Act 3
Deep in the station's bowels, Conoy speaks to Commander Adama, talking philosophically of mankind, its flaws, and questions if humanity deserved to survive. Conoy now appears in some kind of physical distress, which he dismisses to Commander Adama as "allergies."
The loading of ordnance from the station is proceeding well, when DRADIS detects incoming vessels. Luckily, they are friendly spacecraft.
Roslin's caravan arrives at Ragnar Anchorage. Later, aboard Galactica, Roslin orders Tigh to help the stranded colonists, but he refuses the order. Lee Adama requests two disaster pods to help the colonists. Tigh relents, knowing how happy his father will be that his son has survived. Captain Adama is assigned the role of CAG by Tigh.
Tyrol reunites with Sharon Valerii, to Boxey's consternation at their affection.
When Dualla sees Billy Keikeya in the hallway, who approaches her for directions, she impulsively kisses him, then leads him and Dr. Baltar to CIC.
Lee Adama greets Kara Thrace, who is both surprised and thrilled that Adama is alive. They speak awkwardly about his promotion to CAG.
Later, Conoy has another of painful attack from his "allergies." Commander Adama realizes that Leoben Conoy is some sort of new Cylon that looks like a human, but still relies on silica pathways and other Cylon technologies that, as the Colonial Fleet discovered, would be disrupted by the EM radiation emitted by Ragnar's cloud.
Conoy appears to collapse from the radiation, then attacks Adama, throwing him about the dank, dark room filled with pipes and valves. Adama recovers long enough to fight Conoy off, eventually bludgeoning the Cylon to death with a flashlight that Adama carried.
Gaius Baltar, now aboard Galactica, is tasked with finding any ships that are using the tainted CNP he created and erasing the tainted program. Galactica received the CNP, according to Lieutenant Gaeta, however, as the CNP required a network (which Galactica does not have), the program was never installed in any system on the battlestar. Baltar continues to be haunted by a virtual image of Number Six, who points out a curious device mounted on the DRADIS console. The discovery leads Baltar to realize that there is a humanoid Cylon agent aboard Galactica.
Act 4
Baltar watches Aaron Doral in CIC, believing him to be a Cylon agent on the premises that Doral is a civilian, an outsider who has been on the ship for weeks.
Commander Adama returns to Galactica with Leoben Conoy's now lifeless Cylon body. While he ponders that problem, Tigh gives him the good news about his son. The two Adamas meet, and share a moment of closeness that they haven't experienced since Zak Adama's death.
Tigh, Adama, and Baltar discuss the findings of Conoy's autopsy and the implication that any one of them could be a Cylon. Adama asks Baltar to begin work on a means of distinguishing humanoid Cylons from real humans.
Starbuck begins preparations for a reconnaissance mission to check for any enemy presence. As she preps, Thrace admits to Lee Adama that her former fiancee, Zak Adama, failed basic flight training, but as his flight instructor, she passed him anyway. Adama is stunned, realizing that his father didn't pressure his brother as much as he believed.
Doral is arrested. In the brig, Baltar makes up a fake, yet matter-of-fact sounding argument for Doral's guilt as Colonel Tigh orders the Cylon device found by Baltar on the DRADIS console removed and studied.
Starbuck's reconnaissance mission to the edge of Ragnar's EM cloud reveals danger. She spots at least two basestars, hundreds of Raiders and a handful of other support ships. The Cylons choose not to enter the cloud, preferring to wait out the Colonials trapped inside.
Act 5
Commander Adama meets with the new President. She tries to convince Adama that she and the ships of her caravan are all that is left of humanity, and that taking one battlestar off to fight against such odds is suicide. She says, "We need to get out of here and we need to start having babies," but Adama dismisses her advice.
As Commander Adama, Captain Adama, Gaeta, and Tigh discuss their offensive options, Commander Adama sees Billy Keikeya and Dualla, talking ostensibly about anything except business. Adama remembers (out loud) President Roslin's last words to him: "We'd better start having babies."
Adama changes his mind, realizing that a counterattack is hopeless, and that all that left of humanity may be in his hands. He decides that Galactica will take the civilians with her, towards the Prolmar Sector, leaving the solar system of the devastated Colonies, never to return.
Lee Adama concurs, but the commander has to determine a way to save everyone from a direct Cylon attack.
Not wanting to take chances with their captive, Tigh leaves Aaron Doral marooned with basic rations inside Ragnar Anchorage.
He chooses to bring the now-fully armed Galactica just outside the cloud boundary and provide a shielding cover fire while the civilian ships jump to safety behind the battlestar.
The Battle of Ragnar Anchorage begins. The Fleet escapes, while Galactica desperately retrieves its Vipers (scrambled to aid in point defense) as quickly as possible. Apollo's Viper is struck, but Starbuck continues racking up Cylon kills while defending Apollo.
Apollo's Viper loses all power. Commander Adama uses his personal greeting with Starbuck to break her fighting trance and order her to the battlestar. Refusing to leave Apollo despite his orders to do so, she creatively rams the noses of the Vipers, locking them together, and flies both fighters into the flight pod of the battlestar just before they close completely in preparation for the jump.
During the service for the dead, Commander Adama addresses the assembly of his crew. He uses Elosha's knowledge about the Thirteenth Tribe, telling the crew that he knows the location of Earth. The crew's hopes are revived.
Roslin, aware President Adar neither knew Earth's location nor believed in its existence, privately asks Adama in his quarters why he told the crew a lie. Adama admitted that it was not enough for his crew to live, but gave the notion of Earth as something to live for.
The two agree to share leadership responsibilities; Adama is to handle all military matters, and Roslin will manage civilian and government duties for the new spacefaring civilization.
After Commander Adama retires for the night, he finds a printout in his room with the message, "There are only 12 Cylon models."
Later, inside Ragnar Anchorage, several copies of Number Six, Leoben Conoy and Aaron Doral rescue Galactica-based Doral. Baltar's guess was correct: Doral was indeed a Cylon. The group discuss their current strategy and agree to chase the Fleet down.
One final Cylon arrives, who looks exactly like Galactica's Sharon Valerii.
Notes
Adama's speech at the end of this night was one of the first sequences shot, at Edward James Olmos' request.[1] He also improvised the repeated use of "So say we all".
An edited, three-hour version of the Miniseries was aired on NBC on 8 January 2005, prior to the airing of Season 1 in the United States on the SciFi Channel.[1]
A notable continuity goof occurs during Galactica's first FTL jump - the shot of the ship jumping away shows it's flight pods to be extended, despite the fact they were shown retracting just moments before. Later in the series, jumping the ship with it's flight pods extended is shown to exert extreme, possibly even catastrophic stresses on the ship's hull.
See the series article, Battlestar Galactica (RDM), for analysis of the miniseries and the central differences between the Re-imagined miniseries and the Original Series.
If the Cylons hate humanity with the passion that they do, why did they mimic human form? Was it for strategic purposes or was there something greater? (Partial Answer, Full Answer).
Who left the note in Commander Adama's quarters about the 12 Cylon models? (See Official Statements below)
What was Six doing with a Cylon transmitter in the first place? (Answer)
Why do the Leobens, Dorals, and Sixes seem to establish that the Sharon present is higher ranked with the phrase "by your command"?
Is the copy of Sharon Valerii who appears on Ragnar Anchorage the same one who later "rescues" Helo on Caprica and poses as Boomer as part of a Cylon experiment, or another one?
We didn't want to do a big action scene. We wanted to do a brutal, ugly Martin-Scorsese-circa-1970s murder. The network actually wanted a bigger fight scene originally. Neither Michael, Eddie nor I wanted to do that, because we didn't think it was about that. So we shot a few additional hits and misses and the steam pipe breaking, and they allowed us to keep everything else the way it was. I think it turned out great.[2]
I shouldn’t keep admitting this, but I didn’t know. In my defense, it’s because I originally went out for Starbuck, and I didn’t really understand the weight of ‘By your command,’ which was said at the very end of the mini-series, which outed Sharon. When I read it again I did a double-take and I went to Ron Moore and said, ‘Why did you switch this?! Is it something about me that made you think you could do this?’ and he said, ‘No, it was always like this.’[3]
In the podcast, the producers state that the original intention of the script was for Gaius Baltar to be the person who left behind the note saying "There are only Twelve Cylon Models". However, the way it was filmed allowed for more ambiguity. The Plan reuses material from the miniseries, but edits it to heavily support this statement.
Adama's speech at the funeral services on Galactica:
Adama: Are they the lucky ones? That's what you're thinking, isn't it? We're a long way from home. We've jumped way beyond the Red Line, into uncharted space. Limited supplies, limited fuel. No allies, and now, no hope? Maybe it would have been better for us to have died quickly, back on the Colonies with our families, instead of dying out here slowly, in the emptiness of dark space. Where shall we go? What shall we do? Life here began out there. Those are the first words of the sacred scrolls, and they were told to us by the Lords of Kobol, many countless centuries ago. And they made it perfectly clear that we are not alone in this universe. Elosha, there's a thirteenth colony of humankind, is there not?
Elosha: Yes. The scrolls tell us a Thirteenth Tribe left Kobol in the early days. They traveled far and made their home upon a planet called Earth, which circled a distant and unknown star.
Adama: It's not unknown. I know where it is! Earth. The most guarded secret we have. The location was only known by the senior commanders of the fleet, and we dare not share it with the public. Not while there was a Cylon threat upon us. For now we have a refuge to go to. A refuge the Cylons know nothing about. It won't be an easy journey. It'll be long, and arduous. But I promise you one thing: on the memory of those lying here before you, we shall find it, and Earth shall become our new home. So say we all!
2003-12-09
2004-01-17
2004-02-17
