Battlestar Galactica (TV Series) Home: Part 2 (2005) User Reviews

Reunited

[Tweekums · 9/10 · 24 November 2010]

As this second episode of a two-part story starts off President Roslin and the rest of her followers are heading to the Tomb of Athena on Kobol with Sharon Valerii acting as their guide. When Sharon is alone Zarek's friend Meier approaches her and tells her how Boomer was killed and her killer went virtually unpunished in an attempt to recruit her into his plot to kill Apollo. It looks like this scheme will have to be abandoned when Commander Adama and a group from Galactica finds them; Meier decides to continue against Zarek's instructions hoping to kill both Adama and his son. At first it looks as though Sharon will help him but she uses his plot as a means of proving her loyalty. Once this confrontation is over they manage to enter the tomb of Athena and this does indeed show them the direction they must head if they are to find Earth; it will be a long journey though. While this was happening on Kobol Baltar is having problems with 'Head Six'; she has told him that there is no Cylon chip in his head and is thus a sign that he is insane, this sends him off to see the less than sympathetic Dr. Cottle.

This was a good conclusion to this story, it was nice to see the fleet reunited and Roslin back as president; I was never too happy with the idea of martial law in the fleet even though it made the story interesting and set up some nice conflicts. Once again Grace Park put in a fine performance as Sharon, I was constantly changing my mind as to what she would ultimately do the first time I watched this episode. It was also fun watching James Callis and Tricia Helfer sparring as Baltar and 'Head Six' back on Galactica as he started to believe he might be going insane.

The series finds a centre

[grantss · 10/10 · 30 October 2023]

The rival human forces - Commander Adama's and President Roslin's - are heading for a showdown as they both land on Kobol. Roslin and co seem to have stolen a march on Adama and are within sight of what they think is the Tomb of Athena. Meanwhile on Galactica Dr Baltar gets some startling news from Number 6.

The episode where everything at last comes together and the series finds a centre. Until now we've had some great adventures, most spanning an episode, some longer, but no real long-term arc. This episode gives the series its long-term arc, gives the fleet a purpose and gives the viewer something to aim at.

Some great use of astronomy and physics in getting there, some good action scenes and a stirring conclusion.

Home: Part 2

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 15 October 2021]

Home: Part 2 is more about Adama's odyssey to reunite his fleet.

He finds his son on Kobol, makes peace with President Roslin and finds Sharon Valerii, the clone of Boomer who tried to kill him.

There is understandable tension and distrust between Adama and Sharon. At least she exposes Meier and indirectly Zarek's intentions.

The martial law aspects of the story needed to be put to bed sooner than later.

The bits with the arrow and the tomb of Athena was ever so cheesy. At least Galactica has a route map to Earth. It was just puzzling that the constellations could only be visible from Earth.

At least they're consistent...

[delnegro-IMDb · 3/10 · 21 April 2015]

Galactica's plots got progressively worse (and the characters' behaviour progressively more illogical) as time went by and as new writers were called in to "pad" the series to the number of episodes the network requested, but one thing still made me have faith in the original writers.

The really memorable plot twists are the ones that have been hiding in plain sight since the beginning. The recording in Coppola's "The Conversation", Keyser Söze in "The Usual suspects", or Onoff's real circumstances in Tornatore's much-imitated "Una Pura Formalità".

And since it was revealed that Apollo's arrow was the key that would unlock the map to Earth, I was secretly hoping that Ronald D. Moore (who wrote the excellent pilot episodes, as well as this one) was getting ready to pull one of those.

The physical object that Starbuck had retrieved from the museum would turn out to have the Caprican equivalent of "Made in Hong Kong" printed on the bottom, it would prove completely useless, and everyone would be disappointed and frustrated.

And then Starbuck would do the kind of thing she does. She'd get mad, she'd shout something about all the fraking people who had fraking died for that fraking piece of fraking plastic, she'd punch through some fake wall, and the map would be revealed

And everyone would suddenly realise that she (the best pilot in the fleet, Lee Adama's greatest weapon, the one who always hits the target) was Apollo's arrow. That she was part of the prophecy. That the answer had been hiding in plain sight all along.

But no. She got a bejewelled goldish arrow from a museum, put it in a statue's hand, and everyone got magically teleported to a room showing a nonsensical "map" that ignores the most basic principles of astronomy.

It's official: Galactica's writers aren't just bad at science and logic, they're also bad at drama.