'Battlestar Galactica' Retro Recap: 'Valley of Darkness'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

It's amazing the things you discover when you rewatch your favorite television series and well, one thing that I am truly forgetting when it comes to Battlestar Galactica is just how dark the story was willing to go at any given time. This show really pushed some serious envelopes and that was never more evident than it was in the second episode of season two, 'Valley of Darkness'.

Now this is a story that I think we all expected to be brutal the first time around since Cylons were aboard the Galactica and no good can come of that, but settling it in to watch this one again, well in all honesty I needed a couple of minutes after this story was done to clear my head because of the dark places it went. Case in point, basically everything that happens on Kobol this go round since the chief has to put down one of his own or watch him die a slow and terrible death, plus there's that whole awful dream that Baltar has where he envisions a rescue party, led by Adama, where the Commander meets the mystery child that the series was toying with up to this point, and promptly drowns the baby in the river nearby. 

But that was all merely a taste of the dark places this story was prepared to go, because the plot line unfolding on board the Galactica was quite frankly...the stuff of terror. In fact I couldn't help but notice that this story did something that the series rarely ever did as a whole; borrow from another genre, because this tale, was all about horror. There is a distinct lack of actual light in this episode, and bone chilling sounds surrounding our characters, raising the tension and leaving the audience to wonder when by chance a Cylon will pop out of the darkness and well...this all worked like a charm. With the Cylons running free on the ship after escaping that Heavy Raider, they sent chills down my spine for certain and their first solid appearance in this episode made me jump in my seat.

Oddly enough, it is the Cylons, and the force of nature that they always are that made this episode so chilling, because their plan was to reach two key areas of the Galactica where they could depressurize the ship and eject its crew into space before turning the ship's mighty guns onto the rest of the fleet and in their wake...they left nothing but devastation and what made the bloodshed so poignant is that aside from Tigh and Adama really, no one on this boat has ever really seen what horrors the Cylons are capable of and the shock and awe that the crew goes through as they pass their slaughtered shipmates speak to that and it was truly a nice touch to focus on the fact that many of these kids signed up to serve in the Colonial Fleet, without a clue as to what the people that served before them were witness to.

Of course, the day is saved in this episode as one might expect, but not until after we are put through an emotional gauntlet, one that saw Lee and Tigh finally settle their differences for the time being with some harsh honesty and despite the happy-ish ending, a lot of good people died in that brief Skirmish with the Cylons, plus the away team on Kobol is slowly being whittled down, and the Old Man is still in critical condition. If anything, the only bright spot in this one was Kara and Helo taking a breather in her old apartment to enjoy the silence of a life gone by, and seeing as to how season two has started off in intense and ugly fashion, I have a bad feeling the next episode will find a way to give us another harrowing story as the fleet tries to put the pieces back together while the Commander recovers in sickbay. Until next time.

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