The first thing you’ll notice is that it takes almost as long as the Cylon war before the actual episode starts (okay, 5 minutes to be honest), the remainder being previews, themes, studio bumpers. Chop another number of minutes off for a really, really boring scene between Baltar and Lucifer. They bicker so much you’d think they were married. Eww.

This episode was more entertaining than the last. Not because of any momentous plot movement. Please, don’t be asking so much! No, this entire episode accomplishes one thing: to slam Isusa into the side of the Rag Tag Fleet. There, I just saved you 20 minutes of your life. Why she needed to be turned into Rag Tag Debris is left unexplained and leaves you scratching your head, and not in a good way. Instead of having you go “Oh, no, now how are they going to “, you’re left thinking “why did they do that???”. Not a good way to hook the audience.

Of course, the episode does give you a really nice space battle, and good use of stereo effects for it. An improvement over the previous effort.

On a technical note, the radio transmissions between colonial pilots are hard to understand. Cylon transmissions are downright impossible. I wonder if that was where were were supposed to learn why they toasted Isusa.

The episode has one cringeworthy moment: The Cylonator. Really?

Overall, we’re still looking at a whole lot of time with a whole lot of Not Much Happening. But it does have a nice battle to break things up. And there’s no question that a LOT of effort went into it. That battle scene (see how I keep (almost having) to go back to it?) certainly demonstrates it.

On to episode three! Something has to start happening soon.