Battlestar Galactica 3.14: "The Woman King"

Written by Michael Angeli
Directed by Michael Rymer

Writing is always an organic process. This is definitely true when dealing with a medium like television. Long-range plans are changed based on external factors and the realization that certain ideas don’t necessarily pan out as one might have hoped. In the case of “Battlestar: Galactica”, we happen to be witness to one such situation.

As Ron Moore and others have already mentioned in podcasts and elsewhere, the original plan was to center the upcoming trial of Gaius Baltar on a messy situation involving a group of Sagittarons on New Caprica. Gaeta, Zarek, and others would be implicated. Scenes had been filmed in earlier episodes to develop and lead into the circumstances of the trial. However, when the time came to work out the details, the writers realized that the Sagittaron subplot wasn’t panned out as intended.

This led to an interesting revision of existing, completed episodes. For example, in “Taking a Break From All Your Worries”, Baltar confronts Gaeta with something in his cell; this was originally supposed to be related to the Sagittaron subplot. Similarly, this episode contains a number of references to Sagittarons that seem out of place, as if the issues had been gathering steam over time.

In fact, many of the scenes in the recap in the teaser related to Helo’s current assignment and the bigotry towards Sagittarons never made it into previous episodes. This tactic is quite annoying, because it doesn’t play fair with the audience. It creates the impression that the issues in this episode were developing over time, when they were purposefully cut out of the story. That starts the audience off on the wrong foot.

All of that said, the episode itself manages to recover from this lack of context. Sure, the negativity towards religious Sagittarons feels like something out of left field, because in essence, that’s what it is. Why there would be an influx of Sagittaron refugees this long after the flight from New Caprica is never explained. More to the point, the most religious colony had previously been Geminon. All we know about Sagittara is that Zarek and Dualla come from that colony. (For that matter, it should be interesting to go back to the first issue of the recent “Zarek” comic mini-series to see if the details are remotely similar.)

The Sagittarons in this episode are similar to extreme versions of Christian Scientists who reject modern medicine. As mentioned already, the venomous bigotry that results is a bit awkward because this detail was never discussed in previous episodes. But this does present Helo with a particularly simple case of right vs. wrong, a situation where his unpopular moral fortitude can be justified. As someone clearly sidelined for violating orders in previous situations, Helo gets a simple opportunity to play the hero and uncover something to restore his standing in the fleet.

Because of all the changes to the overall story arc, the episode seems a bit out of place. Bereft of any real connections with the overall progression of the story, it becomes an isolated character piece for Helo. His character development doesn’t particular go anywhere, either, since the story relies on a fairly conventional plot about exposing hidden prejudices. It’s interesting enough to see that applied along religious or ideological lines rather than simple racial or gender lines, but it does come across as overdone. Ultimately, the episode has some interesting and worthwhile scenes, but the end effect of too many rewrites left it less than satisfying.

Writing: 1/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 1/4

Final Rating: 6/10