Customer Reviews

Battlestar Galactica - Season Three

5 star:		(148)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Battlestar Galactica's new incarnation is superb entertainment. The first two seasons were the best show on television, SciFi or otherwise. Huge themes, such as an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world born of the robot servant's revolt (the Cylons); or a theory of human genesis that posits sister worlds, is interwoven with minute intimate personal detail of fascinating charaters. Characters are explored - their pasts delved into to reveal their evolving natures. These individual threads are picked up and engage the main threads and build towards exciting conclusion after exciting conclusion. The central plot - humanity's struggle against the robot Cylons is nuanced as well. There are moments of savagery on the part of the humans, and moments of odd tenderness, vulnerability, and spirituality on the part of the Cylons. Like life, there is little black or white. Hated characters become humanized, then loved. Characters evolve and change. They are scarred by their experiences (physically and psychically) - and are never again the same. This all increases the sense of reality and our (the viewer's) sense of involvement. Many of the plots echo current events - New Caprica looks like Iraq, for example. The writing, on the whole, is exemplary.

Battlestar's staging succeeds as well. The special effects advance the state of the art for television. As others have noted, technology does not dominate. In fact, many key technologies are familiar - or even retro: they use telephone handsets with intermittent audio problems; guns shoot bullets; space fighters look like 1960s jet fighters; "Dradus" looks like contemporary radar; books are on paper (albeit with a trapezoid shape); their computers are not networked by design. Like the rest of the writing, even these small details are explained and woven into the plot - the anti technology slant is a reaction to the Cylon's revolt. This allows the plotting and writing to remain in the fore - transcending the SciFi genre. I didn't even mention the subtle and addictive language "Galactica speak" that you will soon be talking (if you don't already). This is some 'frackin' good stuff indeed.

Season 3 starts where season 2 left us - with the Cylons occupying the human settlement on New Caprica and oppressing the humans. The humans react with armed resistance and acts of insurrection including a suicide bombing. This depiction of armed insurrection as a basic human response to oppression is bold, and extremely brave considering the political environment at the time those episodes were written and filmed. These early episodes in Season 3 are controversial, thus, and as hard to watch emotionally as anything in the series. To folks who feel that this means the writers of this show have joined Al Qaeda, I'd refer them to read history, including the history of the American Revolutionary War. Americans have behaved this way before (not that the humans of Battlestar Galactica's world are Americans, of course, but they represent us - unavoidably. The 1984 film "Red Dawn" is all about American citizens engaging in insurrection to fight the Russians for example). The resolution of the New Caprica crisis involves a space battle that contains the most thrilling special effects sequence I have ever seen on the small screen. The finale is also extraordinary - involving a mind blowing confluence of events impossible to even remotely characterize without spoilers but involving brilliant plotting, emotional power, and fantastic special effects too.

So why not 5 stars? Season 3 has a tough time exceeding the high bar set by the first two seasons. Other than the New Caprica beginning and that crackling ending, the focus on Gallactica and the Colonial Fleet becomes absolute for much of the remainder of the season and the show loses sight of the Cylons. This is a shame. The battles with the Cylons - both physical and psychological, are the wellspring of the show's crackling tension. Without the Cylons in view, the show sags. We have an airlock crisis, a whole show about Admiral Adama's memories of his troubled marriage, a long show trial of Gaius Baltar - that while dealing with great issues and having great moments lacks the life or death slam of events in the first two seasons. Season 3 is more cerebral, and less action packed than the first two. Is it still worth watching? There are many great moments even in the slower episodes. If you've come this far you've probably fallen in love with the characters and will not mind some psychological background story. Plus, you're crazy if you don't watch the first two seasons and if you do you'll absolutely need to wait on tenterhooks for season 4 with the rest of us - and you'll need to have watched season 3 for continuity alone. Make no mistake, season 3 is still great television - just not quite up to the heart pounding level of the first two seasons, that's all. The finale to season 3 is incredible, and will leave you panting for more. So say we all!

Consistently the best thing about the ongoing BATTLESTAR GALACTICA series has been in its intellectual ambitions. While its predecessor and namesake, the Glen Larson series from the late 1970s, was largely a space opera, this series is actually a study in war, and attempts to cover such difficult ethical problems as loyalty, violence, torture, religion and class in a war-torn society (except this happens to be a society in outer space). But you often find yourself applauding the series more for its intentions than for its execution, particularly in this, its third season.

Season 2 ended extremely thrillingly with a leap forward in time of a year in the final episode when the fugitive fleet, after settling on an Earth-like planet, found themselves invaded and conquered by their Cylon nemeses. This season begins four months after that during the ongoing Cylon occupation; although the show's creators remark repeatedly on their pride concerning these first four episodes (which involve the humans having to escape the Cylons yet again) in their somewhat gaseous podcast commentaries provided as extras on their DVDs, these actually some of the least enjoyable and least original episodes of the series so far. The creators of the show seem to have tried too hard to push for contemporary analogies to Iraq and Afghanistan. The cinematography replicates the gritty stock and overexposed lighting of recent international problem films (such as RENDITION and BABEL), and the tone goes from the darkness of the previous seasons a bit too far into out-and-out bleakness. There are too many fancy torture scenes here (and in other episodes during the season), and it's a big relief when the fleet gets back into space. The succeeding episode, "Collaborators," is one of the best of the series, and some of the other stand-alone episodes are quite intelligently done. But by the end of the season, when the show has bizarrely become an endless courtroom drama (with Apollo a defending attorney!) you feel like the writers have become a bit bored by the premise and don't know where to go next. It may be the best thing for the series that it ends next season.

The acting on this series can be absolutely first-rate, and Grace Park, Alessandro Juliani and Katee Sackhoff continue to turn in terrific performances episode after episode. Some of the other actors seem a bit hampered by the fact their characters seem caught in a creative revolving door: yet again we have to see Colonel Tigh descend into alcoholic sprees and depressive bitterness, Laura Roslin struggle with cancer, and Apollo and Starbuck have another fling. The special effects are sometimes heartstoppingly beautiful, as with a flight through a bullseye -colored planetary storm system and a battlestar falling through clouds towards the ground of a planet below; at other times, such as in the scenes set on the Cylon basestars, the sets seem cheaply furnished courtesy of a Seventies mall headshop. The whole season is worth seeing despite its wild unevenness: you always feel at the very least the creative team is trying at something, even when they don't quite succeed.

Having grown up as a kid totally addicted to the original campy/glossy BSG I must say when I heard they were beginning the whole thing anew in a new big way I was excited! I remember all the hoopla and hubbub regarding the direction of the new series and treatments of characters and can safely say I love BOTH series with equal veracity.

Allow me to state however that the modern BSG is fast becoming for me one of THE greatest works of film making art I have ever had the privilege to witness. The story arc of the modern BSG series is beyond superlative. Unlike some other reviews I have been gripped equally by each season and have also been totally immersed in it's emotive and deeply powerful story line. To be quite honest the story line of BSG makes Star Wars seem like a cartoon by comparison and I love the Star Wars series as well.

I am not going to bother giving away ANY plot spoilers as it's the last thing any new viewer needs - all you need to know is that with each season that passes I find I can't get no frackin relief! It was an agonizingly long period to have to wait in Australia between Season 2 and Season 3, so much so I feared we'd never see it at all. Now I have literally just finished watching my edition all in the one hit in the space of 2 days ... after the final scene I HAD to jump online and read the reviews I had been deliberately avoiding!

This show kills me! So now I find out there is a new Mini Series prequel about Pegasus called RAZOR! When can I get this and when will it be released in Australia? If any Aussies out there care to fill me in I will be eternally grateful. All I can say is that I am totally spent after Series 3 and yet I NEED more already. Those who have watched this season already will know exactly what I mean when I say ...

"I can't get no relief"

BSG reigns supreme and I would love this to run to 10 seasons! So say we frackin all!

Some of the best writing in TV is in Battlestar Galactica. As well as some of the best acting.

All seasons have been great, but this one is particularly excellent - the characters and the people are truly struggling and striving to survive. Not a season of space battles, like the previous ones, but a season of introspection and character development. As well as a fair number of plot twists and "Whoa! I didn't see that coming!" moments.

I am constantly amazed at the depth of the writing in this series. It is filled with creative and complicated plot lines; many plot twists; and terse writing that is so efficient, that I often have to rewind and listen to a part of a scene again to get all the words. This series has the least amount of exposition of any show I remember seeing. It can make following what's happening difficult, but it makes for far more exciting and interesting story telling.

If you are new to Battlestar Galactica, I suggest that you start with the movie and then work your way through the seasons. The episodes don't exist very well on their own, since they are all intertwined in one grand narrative that one needs to watch from the beginning.

I think this series is brilliant. And not just as a science fiction fan, but also as a fan of writing and story telling in general. Technically, Battlestar Galactica is excellent. The story line is also compelling, watching a small group of human beings trying to find their way back to their ancestral planet of earth while they deal with issues of religion, mythology, lost and altered history, and fight their own mechanical creations which are more fundamentalistically religious than the human who created them.

Great stuff!

I loved the initial mini-series and most of the first two seasons (although the second half of the second season had a few clinkers). The first four episodes of the third season, as the New Caprica story arc from the second season was completed, were also very good. Then the series fell apart. The amount of action dropped sharply, with whole episodes going by without any sign of the Cylons. Instead we were treated to soap opera. Most episodes involved exploring the emotional state of one or more characters. There were endless arguments and emotional outbursts and lots and lots of crying. Adama cries, Laura cries, Lee cries, Starbuck cries, Adama cries some more, Laura cries some more, and on and on and on. The plot of the series is hardly advanced at all. You could skip from episode four to the last episode and have missed very little. What happened? I have three theories:

1. The executive producers ran our of ideas and just filmed whatever scripts were handed in to complete their obligations to Universal.
2. The budget was cut so that special effects had to be kept to a bare minimum.
3. They decided to refocus the series to appeal to new -- read "women" -- viewers.

I'm inclined to think that 1. is the correct theory. The producers had some good ideas about how this series could be "reimagined," but they blew through them in the first two seasons, leaving very little to fall back on in season three. If their objective was 3., then they might have considered that the intersection of the people attracted by the action-oriented sci-fi of the first two seasons and the people attracted by the soap opera of the third season is probably the null set.

Unfortunately, the first episodes of the fourth season are, if anything, worse than the third season. The best we can hope for now is that they have an interesing finale waiting if we can just last through the rest of this season.

BSG has had something of a sordid history with video quality on dvd. my motivation for writing this review is to let others know what the quality of the product is, as opposed to the quality of the show. if you're a fan, you're going to want to buy this, we already know that. but what exactly are you getting for your money?

a brief history of BSG on DVD
with the release of the miniseries on dvd, fans were treated to a digital quality copy of the source material. this dvd was far from perfect though, suffering from excessive grain in every shot.

with the release of the seasons 1-2.5 box sets, audiences were treated to a much better visual experience. the show itself is shot on HD, so these transfers benefited from much better source material. on a 42' HD set, these DVDs looked fantastic.

the BSG season 1 HDDVD release held a lot of promise, as it's only logical that a show shot in HD should be viewed in it's native format. sadly this version BSG season 1 looked arguably worse than its standard def counterpart. this version suffered from excessive grain, low contrast, a lack of delineation of fine detail in dark scenes, and a blown out color palate. the HD release looks even worse than the universal HD broadcasts, which suffers from its fair share of problems.

being familiar with the hit or miss quality of BSG on disc, it was with some anxiety that i picked up this boxed set. sadly my fears have been borne out, as season 3 is one of the worst presentations of BSG available.

the details:
20 episodes are packed onto 6 dual layer discs, which would appear to provide ample space for a high video bitrate and any commentary/subtitle tracks. unfortunately the video quality is beyond sub-par, the biggest complaint here being rampant grain in almost every single scene. for the record, i've viewed every episode in the set (although i have yet to work my way through all of the commentaries). i know people are thinking "grain", all this guy talks about is film grain, well it's film get used to it. no, i won't. well-lit scenes look great, but the darker a scene gets the worse the detail gets. since so much of the show takes place in dimly lit interiors of various spacecraft, this deficiency hits BSG particularly hard. this version of season 3 is definitely a step up from the standard def broadcast versions, but if you've seen any BSG on sci-fi HD or universal HD you're going to feel cheated.

bit rates hang around a very average 4Mb/sec. for comparison the seasons 1-2.5 box sets hover around 8Mb/sec, which (math time!) means these dvds check in at roughly half the quality. so it's not just me being picky here, there's a quantifiable difference in video quality between this release and earlier box sets. the main difference, as far as the human eye is concerned, is that these dvds lose much of the fine detail inherent in the source material. look at virtually any scene aboard the galactica and you'll see what i mean. the BSG interior design is filled with clean lines and deep shadows, none of which comes through on this release. at first i wasn't convinced that these dvds could really be so bad. i figured that maybe the discs were suffering because of upconversion to 1080p, courtesy of my ps3, so i turned off upconversion. even at 480p these dvds look every bit as awful as i had feared. bottom line, this is most visually disappointing presentation of what is otherwise a visually stunning show.

extras:
included in this set are some deleted scenes, an extended cut of the episode unfinished business, and some web-released content that is now being billed as a "special feature". the deleted scenes don't change anything major throughout the season, and would appear to be largely cut for time. the extended episode is easily the best bonus feature, as it just feels like you're really getting something extra, whereas most of the material i could do without. the podcast commentaries are by far the weakest of the bonus features. they are every bit as cheap sounding as one might imagine a podcast to sound, and lack the thoughtful introspection i'm accustomed to hearing on commentary tracks produced after the on-air run of an episode. there are only two proper commentary tracks included in the set, and they are what one would expect. i completely bypassed the video blog and webisodes, since i've no interest in the former and have already seen the latter. if you're a fan of youtube quality video on dvd, by all means spend your time watching these.

my big beef with this release is that it seems to pack a lot of special features, but does so at the expense of the main attraction; the episodes themselves. yes i like special features, but good ones, why not use more of that valuable storage space to up the quality of video?

the bottom line here is this; if you, like me, want to brush up on season 3 before season 4 airs this is really your best option unless you've tivo'ed the HD episodes. the video quality of this set is superior to the standard def broadcast and itunes downloads, but beyond that there's not much to be said about quality here. if you're gifted with more patience than i, i would suggest waiting for a blu-ray release. given the quality of the first HD BSG release though, i still hold a fair amount of skepticism. in the end, it gets two stars simply for being BSG.

I continue to be amazed at how much I love "Battlestar Galactica." I usually don't enjoy science fiction, but this show is unlike any other sci-fi series I've seen before. In fact, "BSG" just may be my favorite television show of all time, which says a lot!

Season Three of "BSG" picks up right where Season Two left off. The majority of people have been living on New Caprica for more than a year and are trying to build new lives for themselves. Unfortunately, the cylons eventually managed to track the humans down. After invading New Caprica, the cylons convinced President Gaius Baltar to cooperate with them. Now people live in constant fear of the cylon occupation. Resistance leaders including Chief Tyrol and Colonel Tigh continue to fight the cylons and attempt to come up with an escape plan, which is a very hard thing to do since both Adamas and their respective ships jumped away from New Caprica as soon as the cylons invaded. Obviously, the Adamas and their small crew can't just abandon the rest of humanity, and an elaborate rescue attempt is planned.

I don't want to reveal too many details about the season and spoil things for people who may not have seen it yet. However, there's a lot that goes on in Season Three, especially where Tyrol, Tigh, Tory, Anders, and Starbuck are concerned. If you thought the Season Two finale was shocking, just wait until you see what happens at the end of Season Three!

There are a few small issues I have with this season. First of all, I think there are too many "one-shot episodes" that don't really seem to advance the main plot of the show at all. Having a few episodes like that is fine, but I think there were an abundance of them this time around. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the way certain music served as a major revelation during the season finale. Hopefully Season Four will do a good job of explaining things.

Overall, though, this was a great season. I'm very sad that there's only one more season left, but I can't wait for it to start up again in March.

I will say that Battlestar Galactica is the best sci-fi series currently on TV. However, this most recent season feels much more defined by its bookends. Battlestar's third season started off with a bang, logically taking up the overarching plot from the end of the second season, and wrapping it up with four strong episodes. However, the season takes a nosedive from there.

While the episodes that follow fluctuate from entertaining and meaningful to mediocre and pointless, all of them share some common weaknesses. All of them are standalone episodes. Standalone episodes are only good if they are qualitative enough to justify a character study, small story, etc. or if they still contain small bits of the C-plot of where the series is going story-wise. However, due to Battlestar's very strange oil and water relationship between its standalone and overarching stories, the latter strategy is never implemented. What we get is a plethora of disjointed episodes that provide flash in the pan moments of exquisite acting and writing, but barely seem to make sense in the big picture, a balance which the previous two seasons were able to meet at higher degrees.

Throughout most of the season, you're waiting for something to happen. You're waiting for them to find a marker to Earth...you're waiting for more details into the final fates of certain characters. When those payoffs are hindered, even by relatively astounding standalone episodes, you're going to feel a bit cheated and a bit impatient. I would definitely say that Battlestar's third season is a "bookend season," where the first four and the last two episodes are really all that truly mattered to the premise and plot of the series itself. With some amazing episodes, this season's rating is only hurt by its poor layout and meager story offerings.

Season three of Battlestar Galactica was just as the pundits panned it...a drag! I kept hoping that the next episode or next disc would wake my feet up, but in the end I just gave up and plugged in season one "the mini series" for relief. I also wanted to remember what the damn thing was all about again.

I hope season four is "back on course", so to speak. Season three left me longing for the 1970s series (frightening as that might sound).

Warning! The following contains spoilers. If you haven't seen Season Three and want to remain spoiler free, do not read this review.

Season Three of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA was the most debated and controversial yet. Much of the controversy stemmed from the number of hot button political topics it addressed. What other show would take several major characters we know and love and have them execute another character we had known from the beginning of the series for collaborating with the enemy, demonstrating in the process the extreme danger to justice inherent in independent military tribunals (disturbingly similar to the ones that the Bush administration has advocated)? What other show takes up the logic and ethics of suicide bombing by having "us" attack "them" by the death of another semi-recurring character in an effort to kill recruits for the local police force? Many of the episodes outraged those on the political right, as the parallels with the situation in Iraq was, despite efforts to minimize the resemblance by references by creator Ron Moore in interviews to Vichy France, became increasingly blatant. To his credit Moore, a member of the left but a self-admitted Rush Limbaugh listener, has not had the show lean too heavily to the left for most of the show's run, but in the season's first several episodes that balance fell away. And in the most controversial episode of the season (debated on Internet boards more passionately than I can ever remember any episode of any show) the question of whether genocide against a murderous enemy is justified, pitting several of the major characters on the show against each other.

On the other hand, Season Three had several surprisingly uninspired episodes. All of these were of the "stand alone" variety. All of the "mythology" episodes (to use the X-FILES terminology that Ron Moore himself often uses) were outstanding. In posts on boards, podcasts, and interviews Moore has said that most of these episodes are produced by the insistence of the network. The thinking is that having nothing but arc episodes intimidates potential viewers. But the brute fact is that at this point in the series it is a sheer impossibility for anyone to start watching at this point. This is the beauty of DVDs. Anyone who wants to watch BATTLESTAR GALACTICA can by buying the DVDs, borrowing them from a friend, downloading them from iTunes, or renting them from Netflix or their local DVD rental store. Bizarrely the networks don't seem to have comprehended the ways that viewing patterns have changed.

Season Three is structured around the Cylon occupation of New Caprica and the ongoing effects of that occupation following the rescue of the humans by Galactica. Many of the characters on the show never quite get over their experiences there, in particular Tigh and Kara. Interpersonal conflicts that were created on New Caprica, especially between Kara and Lee, take much of the season resolve, and the whole New Caprica experience doesn't really come to an end until the close of the trial of Baltar in the season finale. In one way or another the experiences there color almost everything that happens during the season.

Instead of summing up individual episodes or talking about the major story arcs, I would like to highlight my ten favorite moments of the entire season.

1. The Adama Maneuver: During the rescue on New Caprica Adama gets crucial Vipers into the fray by jumping into the upper atmosphere of the planet. Since Galactica cannot fly in an atmosphere, they launch the Vipers as the ship plunges in a fiery ball towards the surface, jumping again just a couple of hundred feet before smashing into the earth. It is - and I say this with little fear of contradiction - the most extraordinary special effect in the history of TV. No one who has seen it has been able to forget it. It is inconceivable that the show won't win the Emmy this year for Best Special Effects (but then, it is impossible to see how they lost to LOST and its black smoke effect last year) and when it does, this is the special effect sequence they will show at the awards.

2. Leoben has imprisoned Kara in a living situation that parodies that of a married couple. As they dine Leoben stands beside her and tells her how beautiful she looks. She smiles and rams a pair of skewers through his neck, kicks him back and falls on his chest stabbing him repeatedly. She returns to the dining table, takes a bite, then daintily dabs at her mouth with a napkin, oblivious to the blood that covers one of her hands.

3. The death of Jammer: In "Collaborators" several characters we've known and loved kill Jammer for being a collaborator during the Cylon occupation of New Caprica. We've known Jammer since Season One when he, Cally, and Socino tried to make a still. But that doesn't prevent him from being shot out an airlock. Nearly as good was the near execution of Gaeta later in the same episode.

4. Five great Sharon moments. This is a total cheat, but here are five great moments involving Sharon in Season Five. 1) The last time we saw Sharon in Season Two she was deeply distrusted from not having told Galactica about Cavil being a Cylon. She had told Helo that she wanted nothing to do with him or anyone on Galactica. Our first shot of her in Season Three, her cell door is open and we see it filled with comfortable furniture: a desk with books, an end table and coffee table, wall hangings and curtains, a comfy chair, and a large and extremely comfortable leather couch. Adama is sitting beside her drinking tea and he tells her that he feels all alone, except for her. Clearly in the previous year, somehow Sharon had become just about Adama's closest friend. 2) Because of the new trust Adama has in Sharon, she becomes an officer in the colonial fleet. Through the rest of the season she repeatedly tells others - whether human or Cylon - that she has given the fleet her word and she intends to keep it. Though some doubt her, Adama's faith in her is repaid repeatedly in the season. 3) Sharon enters the Cylon Detention Center on New Caprica to recover the launch keys that are crucial if the humans are to escape from New Caprica. She gets interrupted by D'Anna Biers, who tries to tempt her into coming back to the Cylons with the news that Hera is still alive. Sharon responds by putting a bullet into both her D'Anna's knees. She walks away, saying "Adama wouldn't lie to me" (and it turns out he didn't, since he didn't know that Laura stole Hera and faked her death). 4) Sharon and Boomer come face to face. One of the season highlights had to be the show's two major Number Eight's meeting. The irony is intense, since at the beginning of the series Sharon was completely on the side of the Cylons and Boomer was with the fleet, unaware that she was a Cylon sleeper agent. Now, however, Boomer like D'Anna before her tries to convince Sharon that she doesn't belong with the humans. Her reply is to the point: "I made my decision and I know where my loyalties lie." 5) Boomer does, however, tell Sharon that her daughter is still alive and is on the nearby Cylon basestar. After Adama confirms with Roslin that Boomer's story is true, Sharon rescues Hera by talking her husband Helo into killing her so that she will resurrect on the Cylon resurrection ship. Only seconds after reaching Hera she plots her return to Galactica. The irony is that only a few minutes earlier Roslin was dressing down both Helo and Adama for their faith in Sharon. Knowing that Sharon is downloading into a new body she tells them, "And now all of our lives are in the hands of Sharon Agathon. All we can do is hope that your wife is worthy of the unconditional trust you place in her, Captain. And you as well, Admiral." What is wonderful is that Laura states all this as if it is in doubt. But less than an hour later Sharon is back on Galatica with Hera. Oh, and Sharon is given her own handle: Athena, a nod to the original series in which Athena was Adama's daughter. And in this one Sharon has become one of his surrogate daughters.

5. "Exodus, Pt. 2": I said I wouldn't summarize any episodes and I will resist doing that here. But this episode, which contained "The Adama Maneuver" I mentioned above, is easily one of the two or three most unforgettable episodes in all of BSG. At the end of 2006 the well-known Internet TV website The Futon Critic issued its annual list of the Top Fifty episodes of the year. With total justification they named "Exodus, Pt. 2" the number one episode of 2006, not just of BSG but of all television shows combined. It was that good. Four beats made it stand out. First, Saul Tigh's killing of his wife Ellen for collaborating with the Cylons, second the Adam Maneuver, third, the rescue of Galactica by Pegasus and its destruction, and fourth, Kara learning that Leoben had lied to her by telling her that Kacey was her daughter.

6. The fight between Kara and Lee in "Unfinished Business." In the Season Two finale we learned that somehow Lee and Kara had fallen out with each other so completely that they were barely able to talk to one another. In this episode we get that back story. Adama has called for a series of boxing matches to air out grievances that crew members feel towards one another. We see Lee and Kara's story intercut with their pounding on each other in the boxing ring, learning of the night of passion that they spent with each other and their declaring their love for one another, and of Kara's sneaking off and marrying Anders the next morning. As Kara and Lee (who she is able to fight evenly partly because Helo beat up on him in an earlier fight and partly because Kara resorts to dirty fighting) collapse into each other's arms, their faces bloody messes, she tells him, "I missed you." His mouth filled with blood, he is barely able to say, "I missed you too." Her face buried in his shoulder, you can see her smile broadly as the episode ends. One of the best episodes in the show's run.

7. In a stunning scene on a Cylon basestar, D'Anna Biers tortures Baltar while he manages to project to a beach where Six makes love to him to get him through the ordeal. As he tells Six "I love you" D'Anna hears the words as addressed to her and although torturing him feels deeply moved. It is a sequence that has to be seen to be believed.

8. Adama and Laura's intimacy. Through Season Three Adama and Laura grow closer and closer, as intimate as two people can be while remaining completely Platonic. They still have conflicts. When Laura tries to justify stealing Hera and faking her death Adama walks away without even listening to her. And in the finale Roslin feels betrayed by his vote of Not Guilty in Baltar's trial. But you get the sense that they have moved to a new level. That they have an intimacy that can't be affected by mere disagreement. The highpoint of their intimacy might be their smoking dope on New Caprica and cuddling while gazing up at the stars. It is so wonderful to see two people who have shouldered so much in order to save the remnants of humanity to get a few minutes of peace/

9. Lee Adama's moment on the stand. During Baltar's trial Romo Lampkin (magnificently portrayed by Mark Shepard) calls Lee onto the witness stand even though he is serving as co-counsel. Jamie Bamber's performance is one of the season highlights and perhaps the best moment in a season finale stuffed to overflowing with truly great moments.

10. The last ten minutes of the season: In the final few minutes of the season we learn the identify of four of the Final Five: Tigh, Tyrol, Samuel T. Anders, and Tory (the four T's--giving additional credence to the thought of some that Kara "Starbuck" Thrace is the fifth member) by their response to a song that they keep hearing in their heads, which turns out, almost impossibly, to be Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" (leading some to refer to them as the Dylons). Then the Cylons attack. The four new Cylons ponder what to do before Tigh magnificently tells the other three: "The ship is under attack, we do our jobs. . . . My name is Saul Tigh. I am an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be. But those lines are rivaled by the last of the season, as Lee pursues "a bogie at my ten" in his Viper and discovers none other than Kara Thrace, who had died spectacularly three episodes earlier. She looks at Lee, assures him that it really is her (a fact confirmed by executive producer Ron Moore, who also confirmed that the four Cylons really are Cylons), and tells him, "It's gonna be okay. I've been to Earth. I know where it is. And I'm gonna take us there." The camera pulls up over their two Vipers and then rapidly pulls back through the colonial fleet, through the pursing Cylons, back through the nebula and an arm of the Milky Way, and then rushes across the galaxy to our solar system, focusing on earth as the season ends. It is an utterly breathtaking moment.

This is absolutely essential television. If you care for great television, this is the kind of stuff you have to care about. The tragedy is that while every major television critics has passionately praised the show and while a host of major publications from TV Guide to Time to Rolling Stone have proclaimed it the best show on TV, it has struggled to find viewers. The irony is that many Sci-fi fans don't watch it because it doesn't resort to the clichés that dominate the genre and make it in most cases completely unchallenging television and many mainstream TV fans don't watch it because they mistakenly think it will only appeal to Sci-fi fans. It is what it is: the best show on TV. You need to watch this.