GWC Rewatch Frak Party: The Captain's Hand

Frak Party Archives BSG Frak Party Archive
#1

It’s week twenty-eight of our planned off-season re-watch of the entire “re-imagined” BSG canon, and it’s time to move on to the season 2.5 episode “The Captain’s Hand.” So why not join us here for the GWC online frak party? There’s room for everyone, though you’ll have to bring your own snacks…
Feel free to jump in at any point with your comments on this week’s episode as the re-watch is by definition spoiler free. We’ll be in and out, but we’ll definitely take a look at your comments before we start next week’s podcast.

Note: Some readers/listeners asked us to leave comments open on the frak party blog post as they enjoy commenting more than forums. So if you have the time, keep an eye on the blog post every now and then, too, so we don’t leave 'em out in the cold.

http://www.galacticawatercooler.com/2007/10/07/gwc-re-watch-frak-party-the-captains-hand/

#2

Wondering if in Razor, you see Lee with the watch. He seemed to hang on to it a lot at the end of Captains Hand, and it’d be a shame to drop it so quickly.

#3

This was a great episode… especially since I have been craving some good old fashioned viper fighting, nuclear missile launching, and cylon bases jumping into dradus ccontact. Lots of character development as well.

First off, Commander Garner. I really like his character, and wish they had done something different with him. He portrayed in this episode as a complete moron, with no regard for command. I also gained some respect for Lee, when he gave a favorable report to Adama about Garner. It would have been easy to take the Starbuck road and allow his personal issues with Garner to cloud the fact that he really was a good man put in a a position that he should never have been in in the first place.

I loved Baltar in this episode too. Such a snake. Waiting to blast Roslin like that, and then announce his candidacy… Brilliant. Getting in bed, politically speaking, with Zarek was also interesting. There has been a lot of growth in he character at this point. In the first few episodes, a man like Zarek would have made him go hide in his lab, but in this episode you really get the sense that he not only is not afraid of him, but is actually planning on how he is going to play him when the time comes.

Tori… I always liked her. I know everyone misses Billy (well, except for Dee), and I agree, but I really really thought that Tori brought more to the table for Roslin then Billy did. If Roslin had trusted her a little more and allowed her to be a bit more sneaky, things would have been much different…

Lee and Dee, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…, First comes love, then comes settling for someone else, and then comes the baby in baby carriage… I wonder if they will name their firstborn Billy…

All in all, a great ride …

#4

…cold, dude. Cold

#5

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve gotten a chance to post. School gets in the way of life far too often… Anyway, I like the shiny new forum, though I really enjoyed posting on the blog and have to post messages there for old times sake every once in awhile.

My thoughts:

  1. I love how BSG not only maintains the big arcs over the entire series, but it references lots of little details from previous episodes and seasons, too. This episode had a lot of that, including Adama remembering Roslin’s statement all the way back in the miniseries that to save the human race, “we need to have babies,” which turns out to be a major plot point here.

  2. The Law of Starbuck’s ability to function being proportional to her time in a Viper shooting at things holds true here. She may have all sorts of troubles with Garner when she’s on Pegasus, but did you see how happy she was when she got to fly and shoot down Cylons?

  3. Ditto to darthweef’s observations about Garner. Not a bad guy, just not prepared for the role he’s been placed in. He’s also too defensive to take advice from people who do have experience, which may stem from the feeling he has that the commanders and “flyboys” don’t value the work of his engineers as highly as they should.

  4. I love Doc Cottle’s look after he “offhandedly” mentions Rya might be able to seek asylum. “Did I just say something? Nope, don’t think I did. Hmm, I think that X-Ray over there needs looking at…”

#6

Good point on Cottle. I’ve noticed he’s one of those plot-movers. He doesn’t say much, but it’s all important.

#7

I agree abotu Cottle. When the girl wanted to have and abortion and Adama was tryign to subtly talk her out of it, Cottle just pipes up “well, you could request asylum”
Adama’s face was like “THANK you…you are SOOOO helpful” LOL :slight_smile:

#8

There’s some good stuff in this episode. Roslin’s pound of flesh speech, Baltar entering the election and Six’s slow clap, the Pegasus stuff, and the conversation between Lee and Kara. The Lee/Dee stuff just annoyed me. Poor Billy.

I guess Razor will flashback to right after this episode?

#9

No. I don’t think so.

Razor will be the storyline from the attack on the colonies, up till, and likely including when Pegasus meets up with Galactica, from the viewpoint of the Pegasus crew.

I don’t think we will see too many of the cast regulars, with the exception of Six. It will be all Admiral Caine and her crew.

I would be interested to see if they are going to deal with the sequence where she has the Marines execute the families of the people that do not want to leave the ship…

#10

This will be part of it. According to Scifi,

The special two-hour episode “Razor”, which will serve as a backdrop for the events of season four of Battlestar Galactica, tells the story of Lee Adama’s first mission as the commander of the battlestar Pegasus — and the harrowing tale of that ship’s desperate fight for survival in the immediate aftermath of the Cylon’s genocidal siege of the Twelve Colonies.

Lee Adama’s new XO, Major Kendra Shaw, is plagued by memories of her service and sacrifices under Admiral Helena Cain, who was able to save her ship during the Cylon attack — but only by making Shaw and her fellow officers rationalize suicidal battle tactics and brutal war crimes against their own people.
The full description is at http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/razor/

My understanding was his first mission is soon after the events in this episode, though I could be wrong.

#11

Ahh, the episode where Scotty the engineer (no, his actual name in the show doesn’t matter, since he gets offed at the end, so I’m calling him Scotty) gets to be cmdr of the Pegasus. NOOOOOOO bucket and beast references! I COMPLETELY forgot all about that (did I just force myself to forget it?). I am SO glad that never caught on. I’d hate to have to worship and enjoy watching the stories from a frakkin bucket!

WOW, that’s quick, in the course of 3 eps, Dee goes from standard issue uniforms, to a slinky dress to completely naked in Lee’s bunk. She certainly looks good.

The engine crew being called snipes, battlestars being called bucket and beast, did this turn into the stupid lingo show?

This is the ep with the arrival of Torre. It’s weird seeing her all prim and proper after the disheveled mess she turned into at the end of season 3, which I got used to.

Doc Cottle to the rescue to the rescue, subtly dropping the idea of asylum. I completely agree with Kappa, Pike and Davidj0207.

My main problem with Scotty is that he’s too close minded to even hear Kara’s theory before sending her to her quarters. Then, when talking with Adama trying to pass off his unilateral opinion as something that is agreed upon by most of the other major players he’s been consulting with. Altogether bad in my eyes.

I forgot just how spectacular the space battlezone was with the 3 base stars nuking Pegasus, that was some firefight.

It’s great when Lee gets cmd of the ship when Scotty goes down below deck and looks completely over his head for the first few seconds before his leadership instincts kick in, but the best line comes when Starbuck reports back that the vipers are all out of ammo and the communications officer relays that they have resorted to throwing rocks at enemy raiders! That had me cracking up.

No one ever said he was completely incompetent, Scotty in the end, goes and does what he does best, going directly into the engine room to do all the repairs himself when no one else could/would.

This is a jarring ep for Lee, he gets bumped first to Major, then scrapes with the new Cmdr of the Pegasus, but in the end, gives him a favorable report (not unlike what Baltar did when he got back from Kobol for Crashdown), then being upped to Cmdr all in the same episode, not to mention him being fully intertwined in the triangle with Dee and Starbuck (being between those two doesn’t seem like such a bad place for any guy to be in actually).

#12

I dunno - just rewatched this episode, and on reflection, it really twangs my suspension of disbelief glands.

  1. Adama already seemed to be a bit desperate to use existing Pegasus officers so he could show how touchy feely he is about the hurt feelings of the Pegasus crew, which seemed a little out of character for him, but… after Fisk… surely he’d think more about who he gives command to
  2. actually more of the above… surely Garner would not have gone through his military career and nothing ever shown up in his record about complete incapability to be a leader of men, rather than an expert engineer?
  3. Garner’s saving his image in the eyes of the viewers by doing a truly Scotty style piece of wrench and hammer engineering… maybe I had the red mist down by then, but I don’t recall anything which really got me bought into turning a big-assed wheel meaning the FTL drives would start up

Other thoughts :-

Oh yes… normally Dee doesn’t do much for me, but in this episode, there’s only one thing to say there… damn!

Baltar… this episode… big E Evil. Enormous fracking E evil. His move into the presidential race 100% is the move of a stone cold bastard.

Zarek… certainly not good for sure, and there’s definitely an ‘e’ there but I’m not sure if its big or small. Giving Baltar the push over the edge to going for the presidency… not good, but its not like its any surprise that he wants to have power.

My overall conclusion though… Doc Cottle for President