Written by Michael Angeli
Directed by Michael Rymer
“For the last 3,000 years, medicine’s been the great curse.”
“That’s because they’re a bunch of stubborn root-sucking jackasses holding onto traditions that are a thousand years old.”
It’s nice to have a Helo-focused show. He’s the one character on Galactica who’s come further than any other…starting out as an-apparently one-off character, and transforming into someone who’s path has taken him on quite a different route from many of the others in the fleet.
I enjoyed the character focus because it allows the first glimpse, in a long time, of life in the fleet – messy, complicated, crowded, irritating — just as it would be in real life. There’s very little that is contrived, unlike the less than stellar Black Market from the previous season. Here, we see Dogsville’s cattle-car conditions for the multitude of refugees, aboard a ship that wasn’t designed for such a task. This is accompanied by a surprisingly realistic & burnt-out group of people, trying desperately to unwind in the bar, without getting at each other’s throats. We then see Cottle at near breaking point – the pressures of being the chief medical officer of an entire fleet finally getting to him. We see Helo and Sharon, trying hard to live a life as a family, haunted by her Cylon complications, and the pressures of trying to live a normal life in the fleet…
Best of all, we see Helo stressed out about where he has ended up in the fleet hierarchy. Is he really good as a manager and leader? Or is he being punished for constantly going against the grain…against the received wisdom of the rest of the fleet. Why is he always the outsider? Does he actually enjoy being a social pariah? As we watch the answers to these questions unfold, we’re rewarded with Tamoh Penkiett’s finest performance.
It comes to a head in an absolutely beautiful-yet-savage confrontation between Helo and Tigh – a scene where Tigh reminds us why he can be the most hateful son-of-a-bitch humanity has ever produced…only to turn around in the climax and admit that he was wrong, and once more demonstrate that last vestige of humanity that sits within the core of his being. Although it’s Helo at the centre of the action, the ensemble gets a chance to showcase some powerful character moments…culminating in Adama’s forthright apology.
It’s the quite moments that make The Woman King such a great episode. The Sagitarons might seem to be a contrived mix of Jewish/Romany ghetto culture on the surface, but we’re allowed to sketch out their nature through visuals and off-hand dialogue, without any extraneous exposition or annoying info dumps. We can see the parallels, but we can infer the new details for ourselves…and it’s all based on quality performances.
Another performance to note is Richard Hatch’ brief return as Tom Zarek, blatantly foreshadowing what is to come regarding Baltar’s trial…and curiously counter-pointed in Caprica Six’s haunting by her mental Baltar. There are terrible things waiting to be unleashed…and these scenes go a long way to setting up future events with graceful simplicity.
Graceful simplicty: I’d say that’s the best way to describe this low key but provocative episode of Galactica. We even get a happy ending that isn’t about sugary sweetness, and all about overcoming adversity…which could very well be the motto of 21st century Battlestar Galactica.
An easy 9…if, for nothing else, than Zarek’s disturbing prediction of what is to come…
“Baltar will get his trial and this is what you’ll get: a hurricane. The media will descend on you and watch and scrutinize and question your every move. You will have sectarian violence. You will have assassination attempts. You will have civil unrest on a scale we’ve never seen. Work, labor, everyday routine in this fleet will come to a complete halt. This trial is going to bring this entire fleet down.”
