Menu
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Podcast
      • Slice of SciFi 966: The Devil Below“The Devil Below”: Bradley Parker and adventure horror
      • Slice of SciFi 965: Keith Thomas, "The Vigil"“The Vigil”: Holding onto grief, trauma, and the past for too long
      • Slice of SciFi 964: Universal Monsters and HellblazerUniversal Monsters and Hellblazer
      • Slice of SciFi 963: PG Psycho Goreman“PG: Psycho Goreman”: Making horror-scifi fun again
    • View all
  • Movie Reviews
      • Promising Young Woman (2020)“Promising Young Woman” and the harsh truths of trauma and justice
      • Review: Parallel (2020)“Parallel” takes on the mental and moral tolls of using parallel worlds
      • Review: I'm Your Woman (2020)“I’m Your Woman” shines with a different take on the mobster’s wife
      • Review: Archenemy (2020)“Archenemy”: Working with the Superhero You Find
    • View all
  • TV Reviews
      • "Project Blue Book"“Project Blue Book” explores the threads of UFO reports
      • Manifest Season 1: 5 Episodes In5 Episodes In: “Manifest”
      • 5 Episodes In: Reverie5 Episodes In: “Reverie”
      • 5 Episodes In: Marvel's Cloak and Dagger5 Episodes In: “Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger”
    • View all
  • DVD Reviews
      • Blu-ray Review: Archenemy (2020)“Archenemy” sparkles in sight & sound
      • The Dark and The Wicked (2020)“The Dark and The Wicked” and the Monstrous Weight of Grief
      • Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection“What’s Up Doc?”: A Look at 80 Years of Bugs Bunny
      • Batman: Death in the Family (2020, animated)“Batman: Death in the Family” makes alternate timelines fun
    • View all
  • Columns
  • News
      • TV News
      • Film News
      • DVD News
      • Interviews
      • Events
      • Geeky, Funny & Weird
      • Online Entertainment News
      • Music News
      • On Stage
      • Space News

Slice of SciFi

This is How We Geek Out: Interviews, Reviews & More

  • Writers, After Dark
  • Horror Happenings
  • The Babylon Podcast
  • SciFi Shop Talk
  • Slice of SciFi TV
  • Contact Us

Totally Frakked: Battlestar Galactica -Million-Dollar Battlestar Babies

December 6, 2006 By Sam Sloan 11 Comments

meevee logo Using the sport of boxing as a metaphor, members of the Battlestar Galactica crew step into the ring to settle private personal conflicts by beating the frak out of one another. Gods, say it isn’t so — not another Sci-Fi sports-themed episode!

Forget that there’s a war going on, and that murderous robots are stalking the last remnants of the human race. The crew sure has! Smack-dab in the middle of one of Galactica‘s flight decks, a boxing ring miraculously appears. It’s the perfect forum, we’re told, for the battle-weary troops to let off some steam.

In this corner, we’ve got Helo, who pounds the fleet’s CAG into a bloody stupor. Next on the card is a hilarious and embarrassing match pitting Starbuck against Hot Dog, who looks like anything but. Another top pilot goes down for the count, unconscious after a few love taps. (Luckily for the civilian populace, the Toasters are lying low this week.) For no good reason, Admiral Adama — fresh from saving mankind from the Cylon occupation of New Caprica (and, lest we forget, with two open heart surgeries under his belt) — hops into the ring to take out his aggressions on Chief Tyrol. The main event, however, is reserved for Starbuck and Apollo. Seems they’ve got some unfinished business — the business of mad, crazy love. They express it by smacking each other around the ring. Apparently, there just aren’t enough targets out there in the desolation of deep space for our heroes to shoot.

Qqqq “Unfinished Business” sinks to a lower low than even last season’s abysmal “Black Market” — it could just be the worst episode of the entire series. Filler episodes like this usually present us with the chance to explore the inner workings of a show’s main characters, but by the time the bell tolls, there isn’t much that’s likable about Galactica’s. In flashbacks, we see the early days of New Caprica’s settlement. Tigh still has both eyeballs, not to mention his wife Ellen. Baltar throws a Bacchanalian soirée to celebrate groundbreaking on the new Presidential offices, in which everybody gets drunk and dances. Adama and Roslin smoke locally grown wacky-weed behind the bleachers, and the following morning, he suffers a serious case of the munchies. Apollo and Starbuck gleefully forsake their relationships with Dualla and Anders and declare their love for one another before awkwardly frakking the night away. Their limerence proves short-lived — Apollo wakes alone and discovers that Starbuck has run off to marry Anders. Thus, we finally learn the catalyst behind Apollo’s morbid weight gain aboard the Pegasus.

To this point, Galactica’s third season has been a roller coaster ride of high marks. We had the rescue from New Caprica, which kicked off with the breathtaking sequence of the battlestar FTL’ing into the planet’s atmosphere, only to drop like a fiery rock while launching waves of rescue Vipers. (For those keeping count, the Toasters are down four — count ’em, four — basestars since the liberation.) Even the unforgivable act of sacrificing the mighty Pegasus was done in honor of the men and women we’re cheering for to win this war. Now, “Unfinished Business” threatens to spur many viewers to switch sides and root for the Cylons to finish the job.

Sci-Fi/sports episodes aren’t a new fusion of genres, but rarely do the two seem to mix well. In 2000, Star Trek: Voyager brought The Rock onboard for “Tsunkatsi,” an episode about… well, wrestling. (The ep provided a way for UPN to capitalize on its new wrestling deal.) A year later, the production staff hit the NASCAR circuit with “Drive,” written by Michael Taylor — coincidentally, the scribe responsible for “Unfinished Business.” In a rare exception to the rule, Rod Serling successfully blended boxing and science fiction TV in a famous episode of The Twilight Zone. But Michael Taylor is no Rod Serling, and “Unfinished Business” is no “Steel.” This one leaves a taste on the tongue as tinny as the gore-drenched mouth guards repeatedly spat out from between our heroes’ split and bloodied lips.

Next up: The crew takes desperate measures to replenish the food supply as famine sweeps through the fleet.

Related Links and Stories:

  • Battlestar Galactica
  • Totally Frakked: Battlestar Galactica — Cylon Threesome Good; Adama Retcon Bad
  • Totally Frakked: Battlestar Galactica — So What is the Plan, Exactly?

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on Email

Filed Under: TV Reviews Tagged With: Battlestar Galactica

Related Posts

Science of BSG
Slice of SciFi #291: An Interview With Patrick Di Justo and Kevin Grazier, Authors of The Science of BSG
High School Students Build “BSG” Viper Simulator
“BSG” Movie Will Take Place In An Alternate Universe

Comments

  1. Matthew says

    December 6, 2006 at 5:08 am

    I completely disagree. I really liked this episode…its called character development… *shakes head*

    Reply
  2. fred says

    December 6, 2006 at 8:57 am

    How much I like this ep depends a lot on what follows next. If this one’s about bury the axe between Apllo and Starbuck, then I’m all for it. But if it’s a setup for more love angst and second guessing of marriage commitments, then not so much.

    Adama and the chief’s fight was the highlight of the show for me, and of course, the one hell of a speech he delivered afterwards.

    Reply
  3. J. Marcus Xavier says

    December 6, 2006 at 10:14 am

    Totally missed the mark on this one. This was a good episode, that had a lot of emotional investment in it. It made me sick at Starbuck and Lee–and it also kept me glued to the screen through the whole episode. I find it amusing that you point to the sequence about the battlestar FTLing into the atmosphere while firing vipers . . . it was great eye-candy, and something different and fresh, but let’s face it: it was a SFX sequence, a geek moment. I hardly would define that as the paragon of BSG’s recent success.

    Reply
  4. Sam says

    December 6, 2006 at 2:31 pm

    I have to also disagree with the reviewer – this was one of the finest episodes yet. However, working in nuclear cardiology for over 30 years, I do agree with the Adama in the ring not that long after his trauma chest surgery. For me as a medical professional, that part was not believable, especially considering the beating he took from the chief – but it’s scifi, so I can put that one little mishap aside for the greater good of the entire story.
    Adama’s speech from the ring was exactly what I would expect from a man of his high caliber and honor – great stuff!

    Reply
  5. Wiz says

    December 6, 2006 at 4:56 pm

    Sorry, Marjorie, this is one of the best episodes yet. Not much in the special effects department, but filling in a lot of back story and some of the questions that have been open for a while.

    Meanwhile, we’re left with a whole range of possibilities for the future of the story arc, and the characters’ individual stories, especially considering that this Friday’s ep. is the mid-season cliff-hanger.

    I have to agree with whoever it was on the last SoSF VM show who said that Starbuck has some real issues, and it would be very hard to be friends with her for any length of time.

    Reply
  6. Winter Wolf says

    December 6, 2006 at 8:39 pm

    I have to agree with the rest of the people posting here. This was a great episode. I have always respected they way that BSG treats the military being a veteran myself. What Adama said was so true for a man in his position and the message he got out to the crew is what they needed to hear and was worth what he did. In some ways I think this has been one of the better episodes this season.

    Reply
  7. John from Jersey says

    December 6, 2006 at 9:10 pm

    I completely disagree. I’d link to my review if I didn’t think I’d catch hell for it. But someone up-thread put it best: it was all about the character development. To make the big moments work, you have to have context, and this provided context.

    Reply
  8. Summer Brooks says

    December 6, 2006 at 9:27 pm

    Why do you think you’d catch hell for it? Not from Sam and me, you wouldn’t.

    I say link to it. If Sam says go, then add another comment with the link so we can all share in the fun 🙂

    Reply
  9. Shane Hannafey says

    December 6, 2006 at 10:25 pm

    Totally missed the mark! This episode was a feat of brilliant script writing! Using boxing as the center piece worked, no matter how exploitive the author of that article thought it was! I thought it was a brilliant way of bringing out those conflicts between crewmates!

    Reply
  10. Sam says

    December 7, 2006 at 3:08 am

    to John from Jersey:

    GO!

    Reply
  11. John from Jersey says

    December 7, 2006 at 5:03 pm

    The Goddess and Sam have spoken!

    Here’s the link:

    http://entil2001.com/blog9/2006/12/04/episode-39-unfinished-business/

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Search in posts
Search in pages
Filter by Categories
Audio Productions
Awards News
Book News
Book Reviews
Columns
Comics News
DVD News
DVD Reviews
Entertainment Business News
Events
Fan Films
Fan Productions
Film News
Film Reviews
Gaming News
Geeky, Funny & Weird
Human Interest
Interviews
Music News
On Stage
Online Entertainment News
Science News
Slice of SciFi
Slice Video News
Space News
Specials
Technology News
TV News
TV Reviews

Subscribe to Podcast

Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsAndroidiHeartRadioStitcherTuneInRSS

Listen to Slice of SciFi

iTunes
iHeart Radio
Player.FM
RSS
 

Keep Up With Slice of SciFi

  • Movie & TV Reviews

Recent Comments

  • Lou Tambone on Universal Monsters and Hellblazer: “Thank you, Summer. It was great talking to you again.”
  • dutch on “Parallel”: Isaac Ezban, Martin Wallström and Mark O’Brien: “If you pass this film up by saying, “Ugh, another parallel universe flick.”, you did not ask the right question.…”
  • Summer Brooks on “Near Dark”: Stacey Abbott on teaching vampire lore: “I hadn’t remembered until I was making the graphic for this episode that I own a copy of READING ANGEL…”
  • Joyce Gravino on “Near Dark”: Stacey Abbott on teaching vampire lore: “Thank you for this episode. I now have to to look for the reading angel book and the x-files one…”
  • Daniel M on Giveaway: “2067” on DVD: “back to the future”
Tweets by @sliceofscifi
death to humans 160x600
Save 10-50% on in-stock toys at TFAW.com.

Slice of SciFi
1121 Annapolis Rd PMB 238
Odenton MD 21113
602-635-6976

Artwork:
Slice of SciFi spiral logo designed by Tim Callender

Theme Music:
Slice of SciFi music and themes
courtesy of Sci-Fried

Sister Sites:
Writers, After Dark
Horror Happenings
SciFi Shop Talk
Slice of SciFi TV

Copyright © 2005–2021 · Magazine Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in