Season 2, episode 16: "Sacrifice"

Fenster

Well the last few episodes have all been pretty weak, so lets hope this one is an improvement!

Rosser

I don't think you could classify 'Scar' in the weak column, I'd say it's one of the best episodes ever.

User45701

scatr was a good episode so was this one now its a question of is b illy not the cylon or will they run into billy again sometime

jor el

Wouldn't an autopsy show if he's a cylon? It'd be interesting if he was, though with the resurrection ship gone, surely he couldn't come back even if he is a cylon.

This was a good episode, though still not as good as has been on. Only four more left so I'd imagine it'll be very good from here on in.

No Baltar this episode, and no mention of the nuke that the resistance have. I wonder will all that only come back at the end. It'd be nice to have some reference to it in the mean time.

User45701

human cylons are humans in every way there is no way to know if tyhey are a clyon or not i thought

but ue ur right no baltar probbley means that 17 or 18 will be a all baltar epiosde and then 19/20 will the season clifhanger

Haruspex

Was sorry to see Billy Keikeya (great surname) go, although he has been criminally underused in season two. In fact it seemed to me from this episode that while Roslin may have lost the cancer internally, externally she is suffering greater losses. Her spiritual guide, Elosha, is gone; Apollo hasn't been her military liaison since returning from Kobol; she has alienated Baltar and reignited his desire to compete politically with her; and now Billy, her confidante (and once rumoured possible future President of the Colonies) won't be there to provide a sounding board for her ideas. Is Zarek paradoxically now the only one she could possibly turn to?

Wasn't suprised to see Sharon withhold the information on the other Cylons - she knows full well what fate would await them should she reveal their identities. It will be interesting to see if she settles down to play happy families with Helo following the birth or reverts to her default setting.

I really hope the payoff from these standalone episodes comes in the season finale. There's been a lot of scene setting and character development which I like but sometimes I feel BSG is at its best when it narrows the focus on the well-established characters in conflict with one another. All in all, a well executed episode but could have done with more time to develop the characters of the hostage takers and their motivations.

User45701

i actually thought that myself but then i realised there motivations where porttly clear revenge its that simple no need to get overley detailed on why they wanted revenege

ButcherOfNog

almost 100% sure billy is a cylon now, bet he shows up in the last episode of this series

Dunners

I was thinking the same as you ButcherOfNog my main reasoning being the Downloaded episode, I thought that was next week so it would have made a logical leap but that episode is a couple of weeks down the line so I'm not so sure. I think we may have seen the last of him.

The next four episodes are looking pretty good, definitely thought this one continued a decent trend set by Scar. It was slow to start but the ending was great and I'd like to see how they capitalise on the Starbuck/Apollo sub-plot.

jor el

Haruspex wrote:

Wasn't surprised to see Sharon withhold the information on the other Cylons - she knows full well what fate would await them should she reveal their identities. It will be interesting to see if she settles down to play happy families with Helo following the birth or reverts to her default setting.

I've been wondering is this a Cylon fail-safe, that in the event of one of them being captured and possibly tortured for information, that they self-destruct if they try and give information on the other models. Sharon wouldn't be able, even if she wanted, to give up the other Cylons. It'd be nice to see some some sort of explanation on why Sharon won't tell them about the other models. I think it's got to be that either it will kill her (and her baby) or she's playing them.

User45701

shes done allot of dammage just to play them the bonly reason i canb think of is that the cylons dont know where earth is and they want the humans to find it

but remember the other cylon models on capracia say that charons model has always been week so mabe she reley does want to help them

angelofdeath

seemed like more filler to me, good episode just seems like the overall story is going very slow, i like the way they killed off a major character, didn't see it coming

User45701

u can say the overal lstroy is slow the first 5 episodes of this season where not filler and neither was episodes 209-214 and scar wasent a filler and if they kill a mjor charactor then its not a filler either so the last 2 episodes where not filler either.

i hate people who call things filler that are not i al3ays argue with one of my friends for ever show he calls every single episode a filler except season clifhangers

Syth

Sharon could be withholding the information on the other cylons as a final bargining chip. If the President or Adama deciedes to kill her, she could trade that information for her life.

It's interesting to see the humans getting drained from the war and the civilians losing faith/trust in the government. Sounds realistic, and makes a change from everyone being hppy families.

madrab

thought it was a good episode

good to see tigh's wife is still slutty as ever

starbuck seems to be heading down a bad road, & that was a real sloppy job she did trying to take down the hostages, have they never heard of flash bangs? or smoke grenades? & did she never see aliens? "watch your fire & chech your targets!"

Nuttzz

Good Ep, voted grear because there was no good and it was better than ok.

An improvement on the last ep and way ahead of the black market ep. Interesting that billy got killed off, who does el pres turn to now?

Lemming

I thought it was a good episode. I've rarely considered an episode of BFG to be filler because they always manage to come back to something that happens in an episode later on in the series.

anyway,

It's interesting seeing the toll that is being taken on Starbuck, who looks like she's starting to slowly fall apart given the events in 'Scar', the order she was asked to carry out onboard the Pegasus (and didn't in the end), and her fractured friendship with Lee given her obsession about the resistance fighter guy left back on Caprica. Also interesting to see what happens to el.presidente now that Billy's gone. I didn't see that coming.

MarkR

Is it just me, or did Billy's wound seem non-leathal? It looked like he was shot in the left arm below the elbow. I was surprised to see the patent pending blood from corner of mouth coupled with glazed eyes:eek:.

Peace

MarkR wrote:

Is it just me, or did Billy's wound seem non-leathal? It looked like he was shot in the left arm below the elbow. I was surprised to see the patent pending blood from corner of mouth coupled with glazed eyes:eek:.

I think it was a dum dum wound.

MarkR

Would take the arm off him, sure. I suppose it was a hail of bullets rather than a single shot, so maybe they just didn't show the impact as bloodily as with his arm.

Goodshape

Best episode in weeks I thought. Very sorry to see Billy go... as someone else said, he seemed woefully underused this season and I was really enjoying his character and performence in this episode -- only to have it be his last (erm.. as a good guy at least. maybe.)

Some good character development in this one anyway; and not too heavy handed as I thought the last few were. El Pres definitely seems to be having a hard time of it... and there's some sort of election coming up isn't there?

Ivan

Billys wound seemed to be very left-handed side focus. Not completely outside the realm of possibility to say it would have directly pierced his heart, killing him almost instantly.

I too believe this almost certainly confirms the fact that he is a cylon. However I would take the fact that Sharon wouldnt give information on other cylons as proof that she is not playing with them. I mean, they have no possible method of cylon detection so she could just accuse 5-6 random people of being cylons and let the carnage begin. Would be exactly the type of behaviour we'd expect from cylons too.

Though, on that note, I'm not entirely convinced that the cylons are the bad guys in all this. Call me an alien lover (and I'm sure some people will, nevermind private joke) but the point about "Humans never asking themselves if they deserved to life" has struck me as incredibly insightful, not only to the human race portrayed in BSG but also us humans, in general.

Anyway, I thought the episode was quite slow on the whole but pretty decent all the same. I thought it was a bit of a cop out that they were going to kill billy and Tigh's wife but as a result of Adama's actions only billy died. This meant that he actually saved at least one life by giving the go ahead. Whereas, if they were going to kill someone else, instead of billy then it could be seen as his last act of a noble man and also lead to some actual conflict when it comes to adama wondering if billys life was worth the life (lives) of others. As it was, it was just a slam dunk episode.

The only actual repercussion are the loss of billy and starbucks fúck up.

Zombrex

MarkR wrote:

Is it just me, or did Billy's wound seem non-leathal? It looked like he was shot in the left arm below the elbow. I was surprised to see the patent pending blood from corner of mouth coupled with glazed eyes:eek:.

From what I can tell in slow-mo it hit him in the chest just below the heart and lungs. Easily a quick kill shot

Anyone else think they were making it all too complicated with all the love triangles going on. The freedom fighter and Starbuck, Starbuck and Lee, Lee and yer one, yer one and Billy, back to Lee and pretty much every girl in the fleet.

They need to expand out a bit, it was a bit like a bunch of hill billy cousins.

Over all I though the episode was good, even if the tension wasn't really there. With a show like this you know its all going to end badly for someone, and they were hardly going to kill Lee now were they. That guy has more lives than a cat. How many near death experiences can the human body sustain. It was interesting what they set up between Lee and Starbuck in this episode, and since it wasn't finalised you know its going to be a major issue in the next few espisodes. I can see Starbuck losing it somewhere doing the line, doing a suicide mission or something.

And I still think

Tighs wife

is a cylon

Goodshape

Wicknight wrote:

And I still think

Tighs wife

is a cylon

Hope not. That character annoys me too much.. don't want to see her become that important.

How long have they been maried anyway? Do the Cylons make copies of existing people?

Fenster

I think Billy's character was killed off as the actor (Paul Campbell) had other work on his plate.

Hmm, I finally got around to finishing the episode. Great episode on the whole. Some interesting moments between Tigh and Adama, concerning Sharon.

Nuttzz

is it not a bad sign if characters are being killed off becuase of their work commitments rather than as long term plot ideas? I thought after El Pres told Billy that he could some day become president and the triangle between adam, billy and dee was developing that we would have seen more character development of him (e.g. a battle between him and baltar for succession for example) rather than just kill him off because he was busy

Johnny Storm

Ivan wrote:

...
Though, on that note, I'm not entirely convinced that the cylons are the bad guys in all this. Call me an alien lover (and I'm sure some people will, nevermind private joke) but the point about "Humans never asking themselves if they deserved to life" has struck me as incredibly insightful, not only to the human race portrayed in BSG but also us humans, in general.
......

I thought that too during season 1 but they seem to be playing it a bit safer this season (unfortunately). I'm still hopeful that there will be some big twists in store. Maybe when they get to Earth....