'Battlestar Galactica' Retro Recap: 'Fragged'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

It really did seem for a moment there in season two of Battlestar Galactica that things were looking up. The Cylons aboard the ship were defeated, and Saul Tigh looked like a capable leader for a change. But the third episode of this season, 'Fragged', was quick to remind us that sometimes old habits die hard, especially when it comes to the Colonel and there were plenty of loose ends to be tied up when it came to the survey team still stranded on Kobol.

If anything this episode was a crash course when it comes to the stress of leadership because it took the time to focus on two key characters, Crashdown and Tigh as their worlds began to crumble as the pressure started to mount. For Crashdown, his jitters came about from the fact that two men had been lost on his watch along with the discovery that the Cylons were preparing a little surprise for any rescue team coming to Kobol by way of an anti-aircraft missile battery. That pressed everyone into service for an all out assault on the Cylon garrison, something that really only Crashdown was mentally prepared for since everyone else left in the group were deck jockeys and a Vice President.

While the Lieutenant dealt with that mess, Tigh had new fires to put out aboard the Galactica. Because as it turns out, Adama's surgery was not a success, there was still plenty of internal bleeding going on and while Doc Cottle's return was a welcome sight, it meant more surgery for the Commander and that Saul was still in charge of the boat. Which is quite the problem when the press want a statement and the Quorum of Twelve want to see the President. All the little details of having to run a Battlestar quickly put him in a snippy or drunken place and it's something that the crew quickly noticed and heartily mocked at just about every single turn.  

The immense pressure on these two men leads to a pair of pivotal moments wherein Crashdown essentially snaps and points a gun at Cally when she refuses to fight, leading to his untimely demise before the survey team is rescued at last and Tigh's attempts to discredit President Roslin, since she's searching for a fix of her potent cancer medication, backfires when she secretly gets said medication and is coherent and prophetic in front of the Quorum when she reveals her diagnosis and that she is more or less the dying leader that will lead mankind to salvation. Unfortunately, her stunning counter move makes Saul look like a fool and it leads to his most boneheaded move to date, when he announces that he is dissolving the Quorum of Twelve and declaring Martial Law throughout the fleet.

The man simply can't hack it and while Adama's second major surgery is a success, that kind of wear and tear on the body can only mean he'll be out of commission longer and well...that's downright terrifying since it's clear that Saul simply cannot handle the stress of command, nor does he have the tact for diplomacy. Regardless, this episode deserves some serious credit. After all, it is a bit of a mop up episode, yet it still managed to be filled to the brim with action and tense moments, especially when it came to everything that went down on Kobol and it managed to put together an impromptu cliffhanger by way of Tigh's stupidity and it should be interesting to see what kind of fallout awaits us in the next episode from his poor decision making. Until next time. 

---