Battlestar Galactica season 2 episode 4 review: Resistance
Colonel Tigh has to keep things running in the rag-tag fleet with Adama out of the picture...
2.4 Resistance
Resistance is another episode where Commander Adama spends the vast bulk of the time out of action, and another episode where Colonel Tigh does his leadership credentials little good whatsoever. We discover him reaping the controversies of his decision to declare martial law, as fractions in the fleet come to the fore. Some of those loyal to President Roslin refuse to resupply Galactica, and this leaves hard-line Tigh without too many options. The ramifications of his decision are closing in all around him.
Furthermore, he doesn’t make a friend of The Chief, either, as when Tyrol lands back on Galactica after his adventures on Caprica, Tigh makes his belief known to him that he thinks he’s a Cylon. It’s his relationship with Galactica Boomer, who we now seem to be calling Sharon, that throws the light of suspicion on him, and he’s eventually thrown in the brig, where he shares the same cell as Boo.., sorry, Sharon. At this stage, I was hardly expecting The Chief to head off to Clinton’s and buy Sharon a card, and he makes his feelings about her perfectly well known.
Cally, meanwhile, is a character gradually coming more and more to the fore, and pleased about the treatment of The Chief she absolutely isn’t. It’s good to see her showing a bit more feist, and she tells Baltar that if he doesn’t get Tyrol free, then she’ll tell the world that he shot Crackdown down on Caprica.
There’s a bit more from Baltar to come, too. Firstly, he bullshits Tigh when the Colonel wants to know why his Cylon detector didn’t pick Sharon up. And then he asks if he should be President, given that Roslin is ‘incapacitated’. Tigh, for some odd reason, doesn’t take this very well. Through a bit of good old-fashioned blackmail, he also gets out of Sharon that there are eight more Cylons hidden in the fleet. Yikes. I still reckon I’ve got one of them for certain – Ellen Tigh – but my theories for the rest are fluctuating from episode to episode.
Meanwhile, the continued arc for Colonel Tigh of a man who struggles under extreme pressure has been revealing, and as usual, leaves a good number of threads free for the show to pick up in the future.
Before that happens, there’s another problem for him, though, as Apollo well and truly chooses which side his bread is buttered. With his father still out of action, he nails his flag to President Roslin’s mast, and becomes a part of a plan to break her out of Galactica, and to get her safely to another ship in the fleet. This plan then takes in the returning face of Tom Zarek, the man who knows all the places to hide.
If you want an example of just how Battlestar‘s characters exist in the grey areas, then Zarek is one of many examples you can choose. Here’s the terrorist, the criminal, and yet his arguments consistently come across as reasonable, and he garners more and more support. I don’t doubt that there’s something up his sleeve, but Roslin – primarily through circumstance – has had to go from outright hatred to a grudging acceptance. It’s one of many pressure cookers bubbling away on the proverbial stove. A terrible metaphor, but you get the gist.
There are more human casualties this episode too, and that number in the opening credits continues to fall. This time, they’re caused by a riot between the humans, when Marines try to take by force the supplies they need.
I find episodes such as this one, where the Cylons are kept mostly out of the way, to be among the most interesting. It’s the conflicts between humanity that are regularly exploited, and you struggle from episode to episode to pinpoint just who the biggest threat happens to be.
Two more things in this episode, one setting things up, one quite pivotal. Down on Caprica, Starbuck discovers a group of resistance fighters, and starts to get attracted to its leader, Anders. But it’s on Galactica where, once more, the tensions are overflowing. And the Jack Ruby/Lee Harvey Oswald moment duly arrives, as Cally shoots down Boomer as she’s being transferred to her new holding cell. Just what effect is that going to have on the other Boomer, I wonder?
There was an element, for me, of moving pieces around the board with this episode, which is no bad thing. And the continued absence of Adama from command is demonstrating how, like him or loathe him, he’s managed to hold the disparate group of survivors in some kind of order. Whether that hold lasts into the next episode, The Farm, with the fleet seemingly dividing into two camps, remains to be seen…
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