Customer Reviews

Battlestar Galactica: Lost Warrior [VHS]

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Battlestar Galactica's The Lost Warrior is one of the most notorious episodes in sci-fi history, an episode most easily cited as an example of inferior sci-fi writing. I think what makes the episode so maddening to fans is that Richard Hatch, Lance LeGault, and the rest of the cast pull it off with superlative performances under excellent direction by Rod Holcolm.

Purused by Cylon raiders, Apollo must lure them as far away from the Galactica as he can - this answers the question often posed of why he strays so far from the Fleet. He lands on a planet that is populated only by a small town and some scattered farmers, all under the boot of landowner LaCerta and his gunman, a damaged Cylon centurion named Red Eye (for the centurion's crimson eye scanner). Apollo believes Red Eye is part of a larger Cylon garrison nearby and thus refuses repeated pleas that he defeat the Cylon, until he learns that Red Eye was the sole survivor of a crashed Cylon raider.

The episode's subplot revolves around Starbuck and Boomer, who both want to go find Apollo and also keep his adopted son Boxey (Noah Hathaway) from learning the truth about his dad's disappearence. "Boxey's lost one parent," Starbuck pointedly says (referring to the death of Serina in Lost Planet Of The Gods), "and he's not going to lose two." Though at times sappily handled (Cassiopeia throws a petulant tantrum when she finds Boxey playing cards with the other warriors) this subplot is superb.

Warts and all, this is an entertaining episode.

Let's face it, the character of Apollo, as written, is too stilted and goody-goody to be of much interest to the general public. This episode doesn't help matters much, placing Apollo (conveniently out of fuel, with no wingmates, tracking, or support vessels) on a planet run by a third-rate slimebag and a malfunctioning Cylon. Naturally, a somewhat useless female and her son need Apollo to defend them. This entire episode is basically a vehicle to show what a nice guy Apollo is, a point that needs no further pounding into BG fans' skulls. "Inept" is the operative word here.

This is a story of the old west, uh, I mean outer space. Apollo runs out of fuel (Why he would be dumb enough to fly so far out as to run out of fuel is never explained) and lands on a planet where a Cylon named "Red Eye" is terrorizing an old shanty town. He eventually has a duel with Red Eye and you probably can guess who wins.

This episode is enjoyable, but the story is too much of a cliche.

I was very disappointed with this one. At the start of the series, they go and rip off a western story that has been done countless times before. They should have been trying to establish something unique at this point, trying to prove they were original. Instead, they did the opposite.

I recently saw this episode for the first time and enjoyed it.

I expected it to be poor, because I'd heard the show is at its weakest when the Fleet encounters inhabited human planets, which violates the basic premise of the show. I would counterargue that the fleet starts meeting humans beyond the main Colony worlds as early as the second episode, when they visit the Ovion casino on Carellon. Indeed, considering that the Colonies were starfaring civilizations, it would be odd if the fleet did not encounter small "island" socities of humans like this. Presumably, the reason they keep trudging along towards Earth rather than stopping in such places is that 1) they don't want to lead the Cylons to such tiny undefended worldlets, and 2) they assume Earth to be a much bigger, major colony that can both accept a huge influx of refugees and defend itself against Cylon attack. (Heh heh, are they ever in for a nasty surprise. Alas, Galactica 1980...)

A second strike against this story is the rather silly "wild west" aesthetic (metal cowboy hats, sigh). But again, is that really any more unlikely than the disco-themed casino on Carellon? If one is okay, the other is okay. Personally, I found the forced wild west stuff in this episode sufficiently understated that I could overlook it. It's just a tiny and fairly low-tech human society. That's good enough for me.

I thought the basic plot was a good one. Apollo runs into some Cylon fighters while on patrol. He successfully leads them away from the Fleet, but after doing so runs low on fuel, so he has to set down on the nearest planet. To his surprise, he finds a tiny human settlement there. To his greater surprise, he finds that they are being terrorized by a single Cylon centurion the locals call Redeye. It baffles him why a Cylon would be oppressing and extorting from humans rather than simply killing them, and moreover cannot believe that a single Cylon would be here acting completely alone. Although he could kill the centurion (he has a laser pistol, while the locals only have weak pneumatically powered guns), he is afraid that doing so would draw the wrath of the larger Cylon force which he assumes must be nearby. Meanwhile, the Fleet must try to locate him. All good stuff. And, as another reviewer pointed out, this episode has some of the best acting performances of the series.