Written by David Weddle & Bradley Thompson
Directed by Jeff Woolnough
“Captain Adama and Colonel Tigh are working on the plan now and I need some serious out-of-the-box thinking.”
“Out-of-the-box is where I live.”
It’s all about the bag pipes.
It’s the first time they’ve been used as a musical backing in the series, and they seemed…wrong. At least, they did at first. But as the show progressed, the energy, pace and sheer thrills of the episode suddenly made the tooting pipes the perfect background theme to an episode that finally gives the rag tag fleet its first major victory.
It also made for a sweet theme to the father and son scene between Adama and Apollo, which made me cry.
Actually, now that I think about it, the episode might be all about the love for Star Wars…
Yes, the set pieces were eerie mirror images of the Battle of Yavin at the end of Star Wars - A New Hope. First we have the new strategic war room set, complete with visual table, communications staff, and radio broadcasts to a tense, silently listening crowd. At any minute I expected to hear the words “The Death Star will be in range in five minutes…”
We also get the failed first attack on the base, the failed first attempt to hit the target (although no one was saying “stay on target!”), and finally Apollo making an unbelieveable run down a trench, dropping his missiles into the right spot with prodigious skill, escaping the mammoth blast, and returning home in triumph.
But this being Battlestar Galactica, they simply did all of this better than George Lucas. 
There’s also the matter of this episode being an eerie anti-Star Trek-DS9 story. We have conflicting prophecies, conflicting religious discussions, and two of the most important people in the fleet succumbing to the delusion that they might be the instrument of God.
Oh, and on Caprica, Boomer seems to be having morning sickness. Do machines have morning sickness? Oh dear…
Wow! Not the deepest of episodes, but who needs depth when it races along like this. The Hand of God is simply wonderful!
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