BSG: The Passage

This is the first Battlestar Galactica episode written by Jane Espenson (primarily of Buffy fame, but at this point it'd be easier to list the sci-fi/fantasy shows that she hasn't written for in the last 15 years).

...and, frankly, I was expecting more. Now, to her credit, she does get the funniest joke of the season ("paper shortage"), but it's not quite as funny as Adama and Tigh seem to think it is.

Anyway, this episode is a pretty good case study as to why the standalone episodes of the show don't really measure up. And for the record, I'd be willing to bet that she was given most of the plot and told to work it into something useable while the regular staff focused on the developing love quadrangle.

So first of all, I'd better explain what a standalone episode is (or at least, what I consider a standalone episode to be). It's exactly that: an episode that stands alone, has a self-contained story with a beginning, middle and end. The closest we got to that in Season 1 were "Act of Contrition" and "Colonial Day." "Act of Contrition" starts with an explosion and focuses on Starbuck training new pilots, but the episode is really about her guilt over the death of Zak Adama, and that was introduced back in the Miniseries. "Colonial Day" is a bit more clear-cut of an example, because the Qurorum of Twelve, the Vice-Presidency, and Wallace Gray are all introduced in that episode. But, most of those plot threads reappear later on. Making Baltar your Vice-President doesn't come without consequences. Furthermore, "Colonial Day" is open-ended on the assassin issue, even if that never got resolved (it went to the Ship of Abandoned Plotlines, along with Boxey, Novacek, Lee's flab, Demand Peace, etc).

Then Season 2 has a massive culprit in the form of "Black Market," but as I argued when I reviewed it, I felt that "Black Market" was flawed because it was a standalone episode, since it dropped eight zillion new things in our lap with absolutely no prior notice. Lee being in a relationship with a hooker isn't so much out-of-character as it is a revelation of a dark side that has only been hinted at once before (at the end of "Resurrection Ship, Part II").

Then there was "Hero," which contorted the entire continuity of the show in order to give Adama reason to believe that he'd started the war. Said feelings of guilt had never been hinted at before - unless you count that moment in the Miniseries when Leoben tells him that he can't hide from the things he's done (but I could write an entire blog post on the discrepancies between the Miniseries and the series proper).

Now, is "The Passage" as bad as either of those two episodes? No, of course not. I vehemently disagree with the notion that "Black Market," "Hero" and "The Woman King" are the worst three episodes of the show, but that's only because for whatever reason "Epiphanies" isn't on that list. (And as an aside, I am much more forgiving of a standalone like "Black Market," whose various players are never mentioned again, than I am of "Epiphanies," which garbles its technobabble so badly that you're left wondering why Laura doesn't stick a needle in Hera once her cancer returns. "Black Market" wrecked one episode. "Epiphanies" wrecked an entire plotline.)

So there's suddenly a crisis without any warning. Last time this happened ("Water"), a Cylon was responsible. But there are no sleeper agents left in the fleet. How do I know this? Because the Cylons would never have resorted to a scheme as insane as the one in "Hero" if they had an infiltrator or a sleeper agent they could just contact. Besides, any known Cylons would have gotten off at New Caprica. (Yes, yes, I know about the Final Five, but it becomes clear later on that they have no sleeper programming, only blocked and altered memories.) But, hey, after three years in space, it's only natural that stuff might start to fail (gee, this just might become a major frakking plotline in Season 4.5... why they didn't have everything break down, instead of doing the Luddite thing, remains a mystery to me).

The food has all been contaminated, and there's a scene where the pilots have to eat crumbs. It's a nice and effective scene, provided that you like Kat.

And that's another problem with this episode. I know she's Starbuck's own personal Starbuck (and yeah, I mean that in every way possible; look at how close their faces are during their confrontations in both this and "Scar"). It's just that we know Starbuck is a hyperpowered Viper jock, because we've seen it. Kat just seems like someone who's made it their personal mission to antagonize Starbuck as much as humanly possible. Not that I disapprove of antagonizing Starbuck (anyone who calls herself a "two-timing bitch of a wife" needs a good kick in the ass from time to time - and frankly, the "make Starbuck's life hell" episodes are some of the best in the show), but that seems to be Kat's sole reason for existing. We don't really get to see her in combat all that much. We find out more about her personal life in this episode, but we also find out that she's running from her personal life.

So I'm just going to come out and say it: until this episode, I didn't like Kat very much, and even afterwards, my feelings were somewhat mixed. But I'll get into that later.

First of all, let me talk about what I do like in this episode. Number one, the music. If you're reading this but don't have the Season 3 soundtrack, order it right now. Bear McCreary composed an awesome little theme for Kat that only ever gets heard in this episode. It's called "Kat's Sacrifice," and it could have easily been the title theme for another show.

Number two, I like the message the story tries to tell. See, as they make these dangerous trips through a radiation-filled star cluster (because the plot demands it), Kat's personal life begins to catch up to her. We learn that she was a smuggler named Sasha who stole the name of a dead girl to get through the background checks and end up as a Viper pilot. But the message of the story is that it doesn't matter who you were or what you did before; what matters is what you're doing now, and Kat's fighting the good fight. Good for her.

Number three was just something that amused me. Raptors can be flown from either the right or the left seat in the cockpit. If you watch the Raptor scenes closely enough, you'll notice that the only person driving from the left is Apollo, the only pilot played by a British actor. That just struck me as funny.

Okay, so now back to griping. Aside from the fact that this is a standalone, which means all the exposition needs to come fast and furious in order to get to the actual meat of the story, the main problem comes in the ending. Starbuck finds out about Kat's past. Kat begs Starbuck to let her, Kat, tell the Admiral herself. Starbuck, no stranger to having to confess awful secrets to Adama, agrees. Then Kat goes on a mission she knows she won't come back from because she's already recieved too much radiation poisoning. To me, that's less of a heroic sacrifice and more a glorified suicide. (But if I'm going to gripe too much about suicide, I'd be a hypocrite if I turned around and showered praise on "Sometimes a Great Notion," and since that's precisely what I'm going to do when I finally get there, I'll stop complaining.)

Anyway, "Flawed, but Watchable" (also known as "Average") is my verdict on "The Passage." I'm not going to do to Jane Espenson what I did to Robert Holmes in my Doctor Who reviews, and hold her to a higher standard than the other writers. This isn't as good as, say, Firefly's "Shindig," but it's better than any other standalone episode this season. As far as where it ranks in the season, it's competing for the #10 slot along with "The Eye of Jupiter" and "Rapture," because the first four, last four, and "Unfinished Business" have the other top nine pretty much locked up.