Reminder: if you’re on the Tigh Maneuver, these are the two episodes you should be watching this week before the mid-season finale!!
Final Cut
Lucy “Mother Fraking” Lawless… enough said.
Okay, in all seriousness though, this is a super fun episode that still manages to drop in some critical plot points while giving us some fun moments and callbacks which is a much needed pause from all of the first half of the season’s dramatic tension. For example, D’Anna’s report constructed during the episode was meant to critique Tigh’s command, specifically how he handled the deaths on the Gideon (“Resistance” episode), but she also uses it to dive deeper into Galactica’s culture.
By doing so, this episode provides a great critique of Adama’s command as well as the interaction between the colonial military, government, and media, showing parallels of how Cylons operate vs how the fleet operates. As audience members, we’ve made our own assumptions or decisions, but this episode asks you re-examine those in a newer, lighter lens.
Flight of the Phoenix
It’s another resource episode!!
I’m kidding though. It does touch on a few dynamics previously unexplored in the series. Like, just how do you continue to repair ships in space? If you lose ships, can you replace them? Let’s also add in some additional consequences for Tigh and Gaeta’s plan from earlier this season: How do you fight a Cylon virus? How crippled will the fleet be if Galactica is out of commission. As I’ve repeatedly said, this show does a great job of using previous threads and this episode does this in fantastic ways that lays some critical groundwork for the next three episodes.
Content Warning for the next three episodes:
“Pegasus” and the two-part episode, “Resurrection Ship,” do contain some of the heaviest content in the series. “Pegasus” in particular has a sexual assault scene towards the end of the episode and the other two episodes deal with the aftermath of that. For those watching ahead, we want you to be aware of this before jumping in.