3-1
Four months into the Cylon occupation of New Caprica, the human settlement is a bleak and paranoid place. President Baltar and a newly created human police force are mere tools of the all-powerful Cylon Occupation Authority. But the planet's oppressed residents cling to two frail hopes: that their resistance movement will weaken the Cylons, and that Admiral Adama and his fleet will return to rescue them all.
Kara Thrace has been a prisoner of the Cylon named Leoben since the occupation began. He has confined her to an apartment and treated her with unusual civility. Although she resists him violently, he calmly downloads to a new body whenever she kills him. Her surreally domestic surroundings and his maddening immortality drive her to desperation. For his part, Leoben confidently believes that, with the help of his God, he can win over his prisoner's mind - and heart.
Col. Tigh, by contrast, languishes in a barren cell until his wife, Ellen, secures his release by sleeping with the Cylon leader Cavil. Now missing an eye because of Cylon torture, Tigh swiftly reunites with the insurgency's leaders, Tyrol and Anders. Tyrol has obtained security plans for a police graduation ceremony, and a disillusioned police trainee, Duck, volunteers to blow himself up at the event. Horrified, Tyrol argues that this act crosses a moral line. Tigh, however, insists that it's just a military tactic, like sending a soldier out to die on a traditional battlefield. He approves the plan, and Duck begins preparations for his suicide mission.
Far out in space, Admiral Adama presides over a diminished and dispirited fleet. His son, Lee, commander of the Pegasus and new husband of Lt. Dualla, resents his father's obsession with rigorous training for a rescue mission to New Caprica. Lee refuses to believe the mission can succeed; his father doesn't dare believe that it can't. At odds with his son, the Admiral's closest confidant has become the Cylon prisoner Sharon, who has slowly earned his respect and trust.
Then, in a major breakthrough for their cause, the insurgents successfully radio a hidden Raptor that Adama has ordered to observe New Caprica. Through this tenuous contact, Adama and Tigh reaffirm their determination to rescue the planet's human population. But this glimmer of hope is overshadowed as Tigh's grimly determined suicide bomber takes his place among the police graduates - and ignites a tragedy.
Precipice
3-2
The Cylon leaders are frustrated by Duck's horrific suicide bombing, which they perceive as a setback to their noble experiment of living peacefully with humans. As a result, they order the human police to arrest hundreds of suspected insurgents in a major crackdown. Though the insurgency's leaders - Tyrol, Anders and Tigh — miss the round-up because they're radioing the Galactica from their hidden headquarters, Tyrol returns home to the agonizing sight of his baby, abandoned and crying. His wife, Cally, has disappeared into a Cylon prison.
Laura Roslin urges Tigh to stop the suicide bombings. He refuses, and soon another insurgent blows herself up at a power substation. In retaliation, the Cylon leaders force President Baltar to sign a death warrant for two hundred suspected insurgents, including Cally, Tom Zarek and Roslin. At this, both Gaeta and Jammer, former Galactica officers who have collaborated with the Cylons, develop serious second thoughts about their new allegiances. But second thoughts won't be enough to save their fellow humans from the firing squad.
Elsewhere on New Caprica, Leoben brings a special guest to visit Kara Thrace: a little girl named Kacey. He insists that Kacey is his and Kara's biological daughter, a product of Cylon fertility experiments. Kara resolutely ignores Kacey until the toddler is accidentally injured. Then, as Kacey hovers near death, Leoben is glad to see that Kara's maternal concern awaken.
Meanwhile, on the Galactica, Adama dispatches a small team to meet up with Tigh's resistance fighters on New Caprica. Lee objects to such a risky mission, especially because Sharon Agathon, a Cylon, is to lead it. Adama concedes that Lee and the Pegasus must lead the remainder of the civilian fleet deeper into space for their safety, while he and the Galactica will attempt to rescue those on New Caprica. Adama reinstates Sharon as a lieutenant in the Colonial Fleet, and she departs.
Back on New Caprica, Ellen Tigh has another tryst with Cavil. He threatens that Tigh will be arrested and tortured again unless Ellen provides the Cylons with significant information about the insurgency. Terrified, Ellen tells the Cylons about the planned rendezvous between Anders and the reinforcements arriving from the Galactica. With their Centurions about to execute two hundred prisoners and an ambush set to gun down Anders and Sharon, the Cylon leaders are poised to cut out the insurgency's heart.
Exodus Part:1
3-3
To the Cylons' dismay, the humans have anticipated their latest deadly plans. At her rendezvous with Anders and his team of insurgents, Sharon Agathon predicts the Cylons' ambush and plants one of her own instead; her people kill the Cylons as soon as they attack.
Similarly, Tyrol gets wind of the Cylons' plan to execute hundreds of insurgents, including his wife, Cally. With a small team he attacks just as the firing squad is set to begin. His people kill the Cylons and free the prisoners, including Cally, Laura Roslin, and Tom Zarek. These successes, coupled with the news that the Galactica is standing by for a rescue mission, bring new hope to the beleaguered humans.
Still, uncertainty reigns among humans and Cylons alike. Gaius Baltar wrestles with personal and political impotence while his Cylon overlords, realizing that they might never be able to control the humans, debate whether they should destroy the troublesome colony with a nuclear weapon.
Meanwhile, the insurgents discover Ellen Tigh's complicity with the Cylons; Kara Thrace comes to terms with her new role as mother of baby Kacey; and the usually self-possessed Cylon D'Anna succumbs to a series of bizarre dreams about the precious human-Cylon baby, Hera. These dreams inspire D'Anna to believe that the child, contrary to everything she has heard, is still alive, and she becomes determined to find her.
The Galactica resonates with personal and formal good-byes as the ship and Admiral Adama launch their dangerous rescue mission to New Caprica, leaving behind Lee Adama, the Pegasus, and the civilian fleet. Lee and his father hope to meet at a rendezvous point in eighteen hours to celebrate the mission's success. But they are also painfully aware that they might never see each other again.
As the insurgents plan a massive assault to coordinate with the Galactica's arrival, Roslin makes special preparations to ensure that Hera and her adoptive mother, Maya, will be escorted to safety when the evacuation begins. Meanwhile, Sharon steels herself for an essential mission: to go undercover among her fellow Cylons and retrieve all the launch keys to the Colonial ships that are grounded on New Caprica. Without the keys, the ships can't take off and carry evacuated humans to safety when the Galactica attacks. The Galactica's crew and the resistance fighters on New Caprica, poised to strike, can do nothing but wait and hope for her success....
Exodus Part:2
3-4
Standing watch over the civilian fleet, Lee Adama confides to his wife that his father and the Galactica cannot hope to survive their rescue mission to New Caprica. Dualla comforts him with the knowledge that the civilian fleet will live on to preserve the memory of such great heroes.
On New Caprica, the insurgents count down the final minutes until the uprising begins. Ellen Tigh and her husband share a tender moment before he poisons her. The insurgents can't allow her to live after the betrayals she has committed. She dies in his arms, and he weeps, heartbroken, over her body.
At the sound of the first explosions, the Cylon leaders rush to the windows of Colonial One and look out on a city that is bursting into flame. Outside, human civilians race for their designated evacuation points as Anders, Tyrol and Tigh lead the insurgents into battle. Anders assaults the detention center while Tyrol and Tigh fight toward the shipyard. For her part, Laura Roslin guides a small group to reclaim her old home, Colonial One.
Amid the confusion, the Galactica Jumps into low atmosphere and launches Vipers to cover the insurgents on the ground. When the Galactica returns to space, however, four powerful Cylon base ships quickly surround it. Utterly outmatched, Adama and his crew prepare to go down with their ship. Then Lee and the Pegasus arrive, weapons blazing. That surprise buys the Galactica's crew just enough time to repair their faster-than-light drive and escape. But the Pegasus, overwhelmed by the base ships, is doomed. Lee puts the Pegasus on a ramming trajectory with a base ship and gives his crew the order to abandon ship.
On the planet, liberated prisoners join the evacuation as Anders storms through the detention center. He finds Starbuck lying unconscious from an assault by Leoben. Anders carries her to safety, but she awakens and insists on returning to her prison for baby Kacey. There, she finds Leoben and Kacey waiting for her. Leoben will give up the child only if Starbuck meets one unnerving condition: she must tell Leoben that she loves him.
The Cylons know that they've lost control of the colony. They evacuate, but leave D'Anna behind to detonate a nuclear bomb in their wake. Thus, despite the selfless courage of the insurgents and the crews of Galactica and the Pegasus, the lives of all humans on the planet might unexpectedly depend upon the only man who can stop D'Anna: Gaius Baltar.
Collaborators
3-5
Three days after the rescue of the colonists from New Caprica, Tigh, Tyrol, Anders and three other former insurgency leaders convene in the bowels of the Galactica. With them is a bound prisoner, Jammer, whom they have convicted of treason for his membership in the colony's Cylon-controlled police force. Jammer pleads for mercy, but his judges remain implacable. They eject him into space, making him the latest in a series of enemy collaborators whom they have tried, convicted and executed without the knowledge of Admiral Adama or Laura Roslin.
Roslin is busy negotiating with Tom Zarek, who, as Gaius Baltar's vice president, has now become President in Baltar's absence. Lacking military support for his leadership, Zarek offers to cede the highest office to Roslin if she'll appoint him vice president once again. She agrees, and they schedule the power exchange for three days hence. Roslin has no idea that Zarek has authorized the secret tribunal aboard Galactica to execute all the worst collaborators before his brief presidency ends.
Tigh embraces Zarek's orders with a zealot's dedication, but the tribunal's atmosphere of revenge soon grows too stifling for Anders. When his fellow members urge him to convict Felix Gaeta of treason merely because Gaeta worked for Baltar, Anders quits. The tribunal easily finds a willing replacement for him: his wife, Starbuck, who votes to convict Gaeta. While she is eager for this deadly vengeance, Anders longs for an end to the bloodshed he's witnessed as a resistance fighter. The couple's resulting conflict, springing from the separate traumas they endured during the occupation, threatens to split them apart.
Far away, Gaius Baltar awakens to find himself confined aboard a Cylon baseship. Like the collaborators on the Galactica, his fate now hangs on the vote of an unsympathetic jury: the Cylon leaders. In the end, with the jury deadlocked, the decision comes to rest with Six, who must finally choose between her people and the human she loves.
Having convicted Gaeta of treason, the tribunal members aboard the Galactica swiftly and ruthlessly switch roles from jury to executioners. They seize Gaeta and drag him to an airlock. But they don't know — and might refuse to hear — a critical truth. Gaeta was the mysterious informant who passed classified information to Tyrol throughout the occupation, enabling not only the insurgency's survival, but also its triumph. The secret tribunal is about to execute a secret ally.
Torn
3-6
Baltar remains a prisoner within the Cylon fleet, alive only because his captors believe that he can lead them to a new home: Earth. Indeed, hoping to find the mythical planet for himself, Baltar has pinpointed a nebula that might have been a navigation point for the thirteenth tribe on their ancient journey to Earth. The Cylons send a base ship to investigate. Meanwhile, aboard the Galactica, Gaeta deciphers Baltar's abandoned research notes and also locates the nebula. Eager to resume the quest for Earth, Roslin orders Adama to explore it.
As the humans and the Cylons unsuspectingly hurtle toward a rendezvous, the Galactica's crew struggles to resume everyday life after the harrowing events on New Caprica. Helo helps Sharon pick a new callsign: Athena. The Viper pilots, now commanded by Apollo, dogfight against each other for practice. After Starbuck carelessly risks her ship, Apollo grounds her.
Col. Tigh is also at loose ends because Helo has unofficially replaced him as Adama's right-hand man. Tigh and Starbuck - both angry, traumatized survivors of the occupation - soon join forces, deriding everyone who didn't suffer as they did and insinuating that their comrades are too weak-minded to resist the Cylons. They don't suspect how far Adama is willing to go to win them back to his side.
Far away, Caprica Six tells Baltar about her people's power of projection, which enables Cylons to see the universe as they wish. For example, where Baltar sees a bleak Cylon hallway, Caprica sees a beautiful forest. Disenchanted with her former lover, Caprica arrogantly assumes that Baltar can't understand the experience, but Baltar — who still has a vivid relationship with the Six in his mind - understands it all too well. He's struck by a secret, devastating suspicion: if his daydreams of Six are actually caused by projection, then he might be a Cylon.
Having reached the nebula, the Cylon scout ship transmits back a garbled distress call. It has been infected with a virus that kills all Cylon life. Horrified, the Cylons realize that they can't even resurrect their dying comrades, because the virus will then be transmitted to the rest of their fleet. They don't know what to do until Baltar volunteers to investigate. By hunting down the virus's source aboard the dying ship, he'll either prove his worth to the Cylons or die of the infection - proving that he's a Cylon himself.
A Measure of Salvation
3-7
The Galactica's scout ships find a Cylon baseship in the Lion's Head nebula, adrift and helpless. Apollo and Sharon (now flying under her new callsign, "Athena") lead a team onto the ship to explore. Among a multitude of dead Cylons, they find only five who are still, but only barely, alive.
Apollo and Athena hurry back to the Galactica with these prize prisoners. Doc Cottle quarantines them all for study and identifies the virus that has infected the Cylon ship. Humans are immune to this particular pathogen - and so is Athena, as the mother of a half-human child. All other Cylons, however, aren't so lucky. While Cottle can design a vaccine that will halt the virus's effects, special antibodies in the Cylons' blood will soon destroy the vaccine. In other words, if the prisoners don't receive frequent new injections, they'll die.
Tempted by hope of receiving this dubious cure, the Cylon prisoner Simon tells the humans everything he knows. He explains that the virus can be transmitted through the Cylon resurrection process, then mentions that Dr. Baltar is alive and assisting the Cylons in their quest to find Earth. Adama and Roslin are stunned by this revelation.
In fact, deep in the heart of the Cylon fleet, D'Anna and Caprica Six have turned against Baltar. They believe that he knew about the virus all along and led them to the nebula in order to kill them. To make him confess, they torture him. Wracked with pain, Baltar flees to the comfort of the Six in his mind, who might offer his only hope for salvation.
Back on the Galactica, Lee Adama has a chilling brainstorm: if they maneuver the Galactica within close range of a Cylon resurrection ship and kill their Cylon prisoners, the infected prisoners will then download to new bodies, spreading the virus to the Cylon fleet in the process. The disease will then rage freely throughout Cylon civilization, eventually wiping out the entire race.
Shocked, Helo argues that the act is morally wrong. Admiral Adama shares his doubts. Athena grieves at the thought of her people's demise but tells Helo that she must remain loyal to her human comrades. Roslin, her duty to safeguard the survival of humanity foremost in her mind, believes that the genocidal attack might be justified. But as she prepares to make her decision, it is humanity's collective soul rather than its survival that is at stake....
Hero
3-8
When three Cylon Raiders Jump into the middle of the fleet, the Galactica braces for a fight. But two of the Raiders are actually chasing the third. Taking advantage of their enemies' preoccupation, Starbuck and Kat gun down the two pursuing ships. Then a man calling himself "Bulldog" sends a desperate radio signal from the third Raider. Hearing it, Adama orders the craft escorted onto the Galactica. A haggard man disembarks. DNA comparisons confirm that he is Lt. Daniel "Bulldog" Novacek, who once served under Adama.
Novacek and Adama tell Roslin that they conducted a mission together about a year before the Cylons attacked the Colonies. While investigating illegal mining near the Cylon armistice line, Novacek was shot down by the miners. Adama gave him up for dead, but Novacek ejected and was picked up by the Cylons. For three years, they held him in a cell aboard a baseship, but he finally escaped, stole a Raider, and fled to the human fleet.
Roslin suspects that this simple narrative is not the whole truth, but Adama just asks her to trust him. Later, he confides the true story to his son, Lee. The admiralty actually ordered Adama to spy on the Cylons, not on renegade miners. While he observed aboard the battlestar Valkyrie, Novacek, his best pilot, flew a small stealth ship over the armistice line to hunt for evidence of Cylon military preparations. There, an unknown vessel attacked Novacek. As more mystery spacecraft circled in for the kill, Adama ordered Novacek's ship destroyed by a missile to cover up the spy mission. Having endured guilt about that decision for years, now he must face the additional fact that, despite his actions, the Cylons discovered and captured Novacek. Indeed, Adama now believes that this failed spy mission provoked the Cylons' massive attack on the Colonies.
While Adama confesses this to Lee, Novacek hears the same story from Col. Tigh, who was also aboard the Valkyrie that day. Novacek never knew that the missile strike which sent him into enemy hands was ordered by his own commanding officer. He's appalled to learn the truth.
Meanwhile, as Starbuck reviews film of the Raiders' high-speed chase, she notices that the pursuing Cylon ships deliberately fired their weapons past Novacek's craft, missing him. She can only conclude that the Cylons wanted their prisoner to escape. Whatever the reason for that, it can't bode well for the human fleet. Then, without warning, Novacek violently ambushes Adama. Betrayed and furious, he'll be satisfied only when Adama is dead.....
Unfinished Business
3-9
After walking out on her estranged husband Sam Anders, Starbuck attends a below-decks boxing tournament in which Tigh referees and rank is forgotten. She watches Apollo suffer a tough loss to Helo, then singles Apollo out, challenging him to fight her. Apollo accepts, and, with a strange tension simmering between them, the two wait their turn.
Laura Roslin, a closet boxing fan, joins Adama ringside. The Admiral explains that boxing is an old fleet tradition for blowing off steam and settling grudges. In fact, the fights tonight are haunted by memories of New Caprica - especially memories of dreams and relationships lost and found as the ill-fated settlement was just beginning.
On the 123rd day of New Caprican coloniziation, President Baltar hosted a groundbreaking ceremony in hopes of a bright future for the young colony. At the party that followed, Tigh and his wife Ellen enjoyed a rare bright spot in their difficult marriage; Adama and Roslin bonded over hopes and concerns; and Tyrol and Cally worried that their jobs aboard the Galactica would deprive their newly conceived son of a childhood spent in the colony's fresh air. As the evening's drinking and dancing wore on, Starbuck and Apollo caught each other's eyes over the shoulders of their new lovers, Anders and Dualla. Despite - or because of - their long, troubled history, the two old friends felt irresistibly drawn together.
By the next morning, Adama had decided to allow members of his crew, including Tyrol and Cally, to leave the Galactica and join the new colony. And Starbuck and Apollo had shared a secret experience that sent Starbuck rushing into marriage with Anders and provoked Apollo to propose to Dualla.
Now, at the boxing match, Adama himself challenges Tyrol to a bout, goading the man to pull no punches until Tyrol unleashes a flurry of blows, leaving his commander bloodied. Adama seizes the moment to warn his crew that he accepts the rigors of war and will never again put humanity's survival at risk by being too soft-hearted, as he did when he allowed so many of them to leave their posts and settle on New Caprica.
With that as a climax, Tigh declares the boxing over. But after Adama, Tigh and Roslin leave the room, the night's real main event begins. Starbuck and Apollo enter the ring to settle scores that only they understand - and their spouses, left out, can do nothing but watch.
The Passage
3-10
When the fleet's food supply becomes contaminated, everyone is in danger of starving to death. In a daring exploratory mission, Sharon discovers a planet teeming with edible algae - but it's on the far side of a massive star cluster. Flying around the cluster will take too long, and flying through it will expose the unshielded civilian ships to intense, deadly radiation.
Admiral Adama decides that the radiation-shielded Galactica will shuttle groups of civilians through the cluster. Simultaneously, the shielded Raptors will each shepherd a civilian ship, empty except for a skeleton crew, along the same route. They'll have to make five trips of two Jumps each to transport the entire fleet to the far side. The journey's midpoint, when the ships emerge into real space in the center of the cluster, will be the most dangerous part. There, disoriented by blinding starlight, the Raptor pilots must each establish the exact location of their civilian ships and transmit Jump coordinates to them before they can move on.
As civilians board the Galactica, a man named Enzo confronts pilot Capt. Louanne "Kat" Katraine. She dismisses him, but he pursues her, warning her that she can't deny her former life forever. As Kat runs away from her old identity, Gaius Baltar, still far away with the Cylon fleet, searches for a new one. With D'Anna's help, he tries to discover if he's one of the five human-form Cylons whose faces have never been seen. The clues he finds, however, lead him instead toward another rendezvous with the humans he has betrayed.
Back at the star cluster, the first group of ships Jumps away. At the journey's midpoint, one civilian ship, the Adriatic, is lost forever amid the glaring starlight and deadly radiation.
Later, on the fourth trip, Kat also loses the ship she was assigned to guide. With only one trip left to make, she and her fellow pilots are heartsick and weakened by radiation exposure. Enzo resurfaces, and Kat argues with him. Then Starbuck corners Kat and demands an explanation for the fight. Kat finally confesses that she used to be a drug-runner; Enzo was her supplier. She lied about everything - even her real name - to become a pilot aboard the Galactica.
Now burdened by Starbuck's disgust as well as by radiation sickness, Kat embarks on her fifth passage through the cluster. To prove herself worthy of her honorable new identity, she'll risk everything to ensure that her final trip succeeds.
Eye of Jupiter
3-11
As Colonial forces assist civilian teams gathering food on the algae planet, Starbuck and Apollo enjoy a liaison behind the backs of their spouses, Anders and Dualla. When Apollo suggests that they each get divorced, however, Starbuck refuses. She doesn't mind bending the rules of marriage, but she believes that divorce is sacrilegious. Because Apollo thinks that secretive cheating is equally wrong, they're at an impasse.
Tyrol, meanwhile, feels an inexplicable inspiration to leave the algae worksite and hike alone over the scrubby hills to a strange rock structure. Inside it, he discovers the lost, ancient Temple of Five, where the Eye of Jupiter - a mysterious object that points the way to Earth — is supposedly hidden.
Before the humans can find the Eye, however, four Cylon baseships arrive. Baltar and D'Anna, also inspired by potentially divine means, have guided their fleet here, and they want the Eye for themselves. After the rest of the human fleet Jumps to safety, the Galactica hosts D'Anna, Boomer, Cavil, and Baltar for negotiations. There, Boomer tells her counterpart, Athena, that Athena's daughter, Hera, is alive in the Cylon fleet — revealing that Roslin lied about her death. Adama shuts down the negotiations by declaring that if the Cylons make any aggressive moves, he'll launch nuclear strikes on the planet so that no one can have the Eye.
Secretly, however, D'Anna has already sneaked a Centurion raiding party onto the planet's surface, the moment her fleet arrived in the system. Speculating that just such an ambush is possible, Apollo mobilizes his people on the ground to defend the Temple - or destroy it, if they must. Even though he already guesses the truth about Apollo and Starbuck's affair, Anders grudgingly helps Apollo organize the civilians into a fighting force.
Then they receive an urgent message from Starbuck in her Raptor: she has spotted the raiding party of Centurions headed their way. Before she can say more, the Centurions shoot her down. Frantic to rescue her, Anders tries to leave the Temple, but Apollo can't spare the personnel and refuses to let him go.
Hemmed in by growing threats from all sides - and from above — the two men's furious standoff is only the prelude to a much bigger fight. Worse, aboard the Galactica, Gaeta discovers that the planet's sun is poised on the brink of a supernova. It could explode at any moment, with enough fury to vaporize humans, Cylons - and the entire solar system.
Rapture
3-12
The human-Cylon standoff over the mysterious Eye of Jupiter has reached a breaking point. On the algae planet, D'Anna, Baltar, Brother Cavil, and a team of Centurions prepare to assault the Temple of the Five, where the Eye supposedly lies hidden.
Blocking their way are Apollo and Anders, who must defend the Temple long enough for Tyrol to find the Eye and escape to the Galactica. Tyrol has no idea exactly what he's looking for; he knows only that it's hidden in this sacred building. At the same time, Apollo and Anders are preoccupied with Starbuck, whose Raptor has crashed among the distant hills.
Realizing that Dualla's observation post is fairly close to the crash site, Apollo orders his wife to risk her life to save the woman who may tear their marriage apart. Dualla, furious and sad but ever the good soldier, obeys. She sets out through Cylon sniper fire to reach the downed Raptor, where she finds Starbuck conscious but painfully burned. Dualla must administer first aid and then, with Starbuck's help, repair the Raptor and fly them to safety. Neither woman misses the irony of this forced collaboration.
Meanwhile, on the Galactica, Athena resolves to infiltrate the Cylon fleet and rescue her daughter Hera. She persuades Helo to shoot her, allowing her to die and then resurrect in a new body aboard the Cylon resurrection ship. Helo is left behind to hope not only that his wife returns safely with their child, but also that she remains loyal to the human race no matter what torture or temptations she faces from her own people.
On the planet, the Centurions strike the Temple defenders. In a pair of bloody skirmishes, Apollo and Anders buy all the time they can, but soon that time's up. Apollo orders Tyrol to retreat to the evacuation point and blow up the Temple. Tyrol, reluctant to commit sacrilege, hesitates to comply. His delay allows D'Anna, Cavil, and Baltar to enter the Temple and detach the explosives' detonators. Now the Cylons hold the Temple and the humans are shut out.
At that moment, the sun lets out a helium flash, the prelude to a supernova that will obliterate the planet in less than an hour. Tyrol is stunned to realize that the star looks exactly like an elaborately colored image that he studied inside the Temple. Somehow, the supernova and the Eye are connected - but now D'Anna and Baltar, not Tyrol and Apollo, are in a position to decipher that last, vital clue to Earth's location.
Taking A Break From All Your Worries
3-13
Gaius Baltar, captured on the algae planet and now imprisoned aboard the Galactica, stealthily knots a makeshift noose as the fleet sleeps around him. Then, urged on by the Six in his mind, he hangs himself. Losing consciousness, he imagines awakening in a new body aboard a Cylon resurrection ship, proving that he was a Cylon all along. The Sixes who greet him there, however, declare that he is human after all - and then they try to kill him. He revives back aboard the Galactica to find that unexpected visit by Felix Gaeta exposed his suicide attempt and saved his life. He's back in his cell, facing interrogation about his knowledge of Cylon operations.
Hoping to make Baltar talk, Roslin pretends to lose her temper and orders him summarily executed for treason. Although Roslin's fury is uncomfortably sincere, Baltar only begs for a fair trial; he doesn't confess Cylon secrets. Adama and Roslin then order Doc Cottle to inject Baltar with a dangerous experimental cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs that the military once tested for use in interrogations.
Meanwhile, Apollo and Tyrol discuss their marriages over drinks at a makeshift bar aboard the Galactica, but later, when Apollo returns drunk to his quarters, he balks at having the same discussion with Dualla. Certain that Apollo loves Starbuck, Dualla believes that her marriage is over.
Starbuck and Anders also confront their similarly dysfunctional marriage. Anders still believes that they fought so hard to be together because they were meant to be together. Nonetheless, he gives Starbuck his permission to go to Apollo - if she truly loves Apollo.
Apollo and Starbuck try to discuss their plight and end up arguing. Though they remain drawn to each other, they aren't able to trust that their future together will be worth destroying two marriages. If they can't commit to a decision soon, however, their uncertainty will cost them both their spouses and each other.
Baltar, lost in a drug-induced hallucination, finds himself struggling to stay afloat in a dark, watery abyss. His only lifeline is Adama's voice. The Admiral stands over Baltar's hospital bed and promises to save him from drowning if he shares information about the Cylons. Terrified, helpless, and physically near death from his suicide attempt and the drugs, Baltar talks.
Freed from the drug-induced stupor, he is taken to a clean, well-lit room for a friendly conversation with Gaeta, his friend and former adviser. Unfortunately for Baltar, he still doesn't say exactly what Gaeta needs - or wants - to hear - and he might find out only too late that Gaeta is no longer his friend at all.
The Woman King
3-14
Assigned to supervise a burgeoning civilian refugee camp housed on the Galactica's starboard hangar deck, Capt. Karl Agathon faces a restive population, including many Sagittarons. Considered insular and backward by their fellow Colonial citizens, the Sagittarons are used to discrimination - and to fighting back. Worse, the civilian doctor overseeing the refugees, Dr. Mike Robert , diagnoses a number of the Sagittarons with Mellorak sickness . The disease is curable if it's treated within 48 hours. Untreated, it's fatal - and the Sagittarons don't believe in medical care.
To Agathon's frustration, the sickness spreads and refugees start dying, all because the Sagittarons refuse treatment. Then a distraught Sagittaron mother, Mrs. King, tells Agathon that her grown son died even after she allowed Dr. Robert to treat him. Mrs. King believes that Robert murdered her son.
As Agathon ponders the woman's claim, he grows increasingly sympathetic to the Sagittarons' plight — and thus increasingly alienated from his own comrades. Soon, another sick Sagittaron dies after being treated - against his will - by Robert. A riot erupts in the hangar bay as angry, frightened refugees insist that Robert is murdering them out of ethnic hatred.
After breaking up the fight, Agathon takes the Sagittarons' case directly to Colonel Tigh and Admiral Adama. He denounces Robert as a disruptive man and, possibly, a killer. Adama rejects those allegations. Tigh, who came to trust Robert in the resistance movement on New Caprica, then pursues Agathon into the corridor and accuses him of always taking the wrong side in any fight. Agathon, disgusted, strikes his superior officer.
Soon afterward, his daughter Hera falls ill, and Robert cures her successfully. At this, even Agathon's wife Sharon suspects that her husband is overreacting to the Sagittarons' paranoia.
Agathon, however, can't put Mrs. King out of his mind. He secretly inspects Robert's medical files and discovers evidence that, on New Caprica, the doctor discriminated against certain groups: higher percentages of Picons and Sagittarons died under his care than did Capricans. Doc Cottle catches Agathon with the files and dismisses his concerns, even after Agathon begs him to perform an autopsy to see how Mrs. King's son really died.
Stonewalled, Agathon returns to his quarters. In the middle of the night, however, Mrs. King awakens him. She has come to tell him that Lt. Dualla, herself a Sagittaron by birth, is sick - after being treated by Dr. Robert. With his friend's life now on the line, Agathon must take drastic action to stop the doctor — even if it means the end of his own career.
A Day In The Life
3-15
On the forty-ninth day since the Cylons were last seen, the fleet awakens to a quiet morning. Tyrol volunteers himself and Cally to do maintenance on a damaged airlock, disregarding Cally's plan to spend the day with their infant son, Nicholas. As they work, Cally and Tyrol argue about how to balance the demands of their jobs and family. Then, suddenly, the airlock's systems sense a pressure change caused by a small leak into space. The doors automatically slam shut, locking Cally and Tyrol in. To escape, they must repair the leak - if they can.
Today is also the anniversary of Admiral Adama's wedding to Carol Anne, Lee and Zak's mother. Though he and his wife loved each other, their marriage failed long ago. Haunted by these memories, Adama struggles to focus on his duties for the day. Most important, President Roslin asks him to assign Lee to supervise a committee of lawyers devising an unprecedented trial for Gaius Baltar.
Adama finds Lee berating his pilots for careless flying - a lecture borrowed verbatim from Adama. Afterward, Lee tells his father that he's too busy to take on Roslin's assignment. He admits, however, that before the military took over his life, he once wanted to be a lawyer like his grandfather, Joseph. Surprised, Adama is forced to consider how little he knows about his son - and how easy it is for personal and familial dreams to die beneath the demands of duty.
Both men are called to their duties moments later when the leak threatening Tyrol and Cally defies repair and starts to expand. With the locked chamber now hemorrhaging atmosphere, the young parents have less than half an hour before suffocation, depressurization, and hypothermia combine to kill them.
Lee, Starbuck and Athena quickly fly a Raptor outside of the ship to the airlock doors. Inside, Adama watches gravely from an observation window as Tyrol and Cally, facing death, renew their commitment to their marriage and son. Then Adama orders the outer doors blasted open. Tyrol and Cally are vented into space, retrieved by the waiting Raptor, and rushed to sickbay.
As Tyrol and Cally cling to life, Lee is debriefed by his father. Adama, who has spent the day meditating on his broken family, is in an unusually open mood. As father and son talk, secrets buried by time and silence arise. This conversation will either widen the rift between the only surviving members of the Adama family - or help to heal it.
Dirty Hands
3-16
Mid-flight, a Raptor catches fire and crashes into Colonial One. No one is killed, but when impurities in the craft's tylium fuel are discovered, Roslin and Adama demand answers from Zeno Fenner , the foreman on the tylium refinery ship Hitei Kan. Fenner has shut down his ship's production, insisting that broken machinery, unsafe conditions, and sheer exhaustion make it impossible for his workers to do their jobs well.
Although the fleet's fuel supply is now dangerously low, Fenner threatens to disrupt production further if these problems aren't solved. Then he quotes from a subversive new manifesto about class conflict that Gaius Baltar has written and had smuggled out of his cell. In response, Roslin orders Fenner arrested. Adama sends Galen Tyrol to the Hitei Kan to replace Fenner and get the tylium flowing.
Tyrol can't help but empathize with the disgruntled refinery workers. One of his working-class deckhands, Seelix, was recently denied elite pilot training for suspiciously arbitrary reasons; his wife, Cally, even agrees with Baltar's declaration that a new aristocracy of privileged Capricans is systematically oppressing the fleet's working poor. But Tyrol also understands that someone has to do the dirty jobs for the fleet to survive at all.
Torn between these positions, Tyrol coerces the refinery's crew to resume work, but also negotiates with Roslin on their behalf. She proposes that everyone in the fleet with the correct skills should be drafted to take shifts aboard the Hitei Kan so that no one gets trapped forever in an intolerable job.
This solution inevitably creates new problems. One of the draftees, Danny, is a young man who has been chosen only because he briefly worked on a farm to earn money for college. He's understandably scared and angry about his new forced employment.
Seeking better answers, Tyrol reads Baltar's book and visits the imprisoned ex-President. Despite himself, he ends up considering Baltar's subversive ideas. Soon afterward, aboard the Hitei Kan, the rickety gears of a conveyor belt jam, nearly causing a deadly disaster. Danny saves the day, worming his body into the machine to fix the jam. But as the gears clank into motion, Danny is snagged and seriously injured.
Seeing this young man - who once dreamed of a college education - bleeding on the floor of the refinery jolts Tyrol into action. He shuts down the Hitei Kan and declares a strike. His workers cheer, but Adama immediately arrests Tyrol for mutiny - and declares that all mutineers will be shot. This time, Tyrol must negotiate not just for his workers' rights, but also for their lives.
Maelstrom
3-17
Kara Thrace is unraveling. While asleep, she dreams that she's in her old Caprican apartment with Leoben, struggling to cover up the colorful mandala that she painted long ago. While awake, she hallucinates that a little girl - her younger self - is with her aboard the Galactica.
In desperation, Kara visits a religious oracle, but the woman frightens her by saying that Leoben and even Kara's abusive mother are all part of Kara's great destiny. Indeed, Socrata Thrace, a hard-edged former soldier, had always justified her abuse of her daughter by claiming that she was raising Kara to be a special warrior.
Haunted by these memories, Kara joins Hotdog on patrol. Over a planet swathed in clouds and radiation, she spots a Cylon Heavy Raider. The fleet mobilizes to back her up, but the Raider doesn't appear on dradis and Hotdog never sees it. Undaunted, Kara pursues it toward the planet, straight down into a dangerous swirling storm - which looks exactly like the mandala. Kara gives up the chase and turns back only seconds before her ship breaks up in the dense, turbulent atmosphere.
Later, although some of Kara's fellow pilots doubt that the Cylon ship existed at all, Lee Adama puts his faith in her and refuses to ground her for the incident. Kara struggles to pull herself together, but her hallucinations of her childhood and the mysterious mandala grow worse. Finally, she tells Lee that she doesn't trust herself to fly. Lee insists that she's capable and promises to fly as her backup until she regains her confidence.
On patrol with Lee, Kara again sees the Cylon Raider and again dives toward the mandala-shaped maelstrom. Lee follows, desperate to stop her, but Kara plunges straight into the turbulent heart of the storm.
As the crushing atmospheric pressure begins to rip apart her ship, Kara passes out. She returns as if in a dream to her old apartment, where Leoben greets her and leads her into a vision of her past.
Six years ago, on the day that Kara became a Fleet officer, she learned that her mother had terminal cancer. When Socrata answered her daughter's sympathy with harsh cruelty, Kara fled from her, never to return.
Kara believes that her true reason for running away then was her fear of facing death. Now, with her body trapped in a doomed Viper and her mind lost in visions, she must overcome that fear if she is to be whole.
The Sun Also Rises
3-18
The aftermath of Kara Thrace's Viper crash is a time of mourning for her husband and friends, but the business of the fleet grinds on despite their grief. Most significantly, Gaius Baltar's trial is approaching. Admiral Adama is chosen by lottery to serve as one of five officers on the judges' tribunal, and, as Racetrack prepares to ferry Baltar's lawyer home from a meeting on the Galactica, a bomb explodes aboard her Raptor. She survives, but the lawyer doesn't.
Laura Roslin refuses to let terrorism derail a fair trial for Baltar. She assigns him a new defense attorney: the eccentric Romo Lampkin, who, accompanied by his cat, coolly declares that he was born to handle this case. Admiral Adama reassigns Lee from the pilot squadron to lead Lampkin's security detail. With Kara's death haunting them both, Adama isn't comfortable with his son flying a Viper.
Lee is irritated by his new job until Lampkin mentions that Lee's grandfather Joseph, a prominent defense attorney, was his mentor. Intrigued, Lee supervises Lampkin's first meeting with Baltar, then agrees to accompany the lawyer to Colonial One to collect case files. When the landing signal officer, Aaron Kelly, reminds Lee that his father has forbidden him to fly, Lee rebelliously boards the Raptor anyway.
It's only because Lampkin's cat escapes that Tyrol, pursuing the animal beneath the Raptor, spots another bomb attached to the craft's underside. Lee and Lampkin have barely escaped another attack. Furious, Admiral Adama berates his son for taking irresponsible risks.
Clues indicate that the bomber is a member of the crew, which provokes tension and suspicion among the pilots and deckhands. The only person seemingly unconcerned about the attempt on Lampkin's life is Lampkin himself. He's absorbed in a devious plan to win supporters for Baltar.
First, he meets with Caprica Six and manipulates the Cylon prisoner into confessing her love for Baltar. Next, he confides in Lee, saying that his entire plan is rooted in lessons he learned from Joseph Adama. This conversation cements Lee's increasing desire to walk in his idolized grandfather's footsteps.
The bomber strikes again, and this time, Lampkin doesn't escape the blast. He survives, but he's temporarily confined to a hospital bed. Officially, Lee's job is to find the bomber hidden in his crew. Unofficially, and in defiance of his father, he now believes that he has another calling: to help the injured Lampkin defend the most hated man in the fleet.
Crossroads Part 1
3-19
As the fleet Jumps toward the Ionian Nebula, a mysterious landmark on the way to Earth, a strange mood settles over its citizens. Roslin dreams vivid dreams, Tigh and Anders inexplicably struggle to hear a static-laced song on the radio, and a few lost souls turn to Gaius Baltar with a devotion that borders on religious worship.
Amidst all this, Baltar's trial for treason begins. William Adama sits on the judges' tribunal, while his son, Lee, assists attorney Romo Lampkin on Baltar's defense team.
Then Racetrack returns from a scouting mission with the chilling news that a Cylon force is secretly pursuing the human fleet. As Adama, Tigh, and Roslin confer about this crisis, Lee notices an apparent triviality: there's something peculiar about the special tea that Roslin is drinking.
Tigh interrogates the prisoner Caprica Six about the pursuing Cylons. She confesses that the human fleet's fuel ship emits a quirky radiation signature that the Cylons can track. Oddly, she then torments Tigh with questions about his dead wife, Ellen.
Rattled, Tigh shows up drunk for his testimony at the trial. On the witness stand, his inebriation is obvious. Sensing easy prey, Lampkin pounces, his lawyer's intuition leading him to ask how Tigh's wife died. Tigh admits that he himself killed Ellen. His credibility is destroyed.
By contrast, Laura Roslin's testimony against Baltar is so damning that Lampkin calls a recess to consult with Lee and his client. They must discredit Roslin. Lee admits that he knows something useful, but he hesitates to enter the moral gray area of exposing a good woman's secret to defend an accused traitor.
Then Adama accuses Lee of tipping off Lampkin to the truth about Ellen Tigh's death. Adama is wrong — Lee never even knew Tigh's murderous secret. But when Adama refuses to believe that, father and son explode into anger and Lee resigns his commission.
Now a civilian, Lee chooses to conduct Laura Roslin's cross-examination himself. Mercilessly, he extracts her secret: as he noticed earlier, her tea is laced with the herb chamalla, which can cause hallucinations. This casts suspicion on her testimony, and Lee's first dirty job as a defense attorney is done. Roslin, however, adds that she's taking the drug because her cancer has returned.
As the effects of this devastating revelation ripple outwards, the mood of the fleet darkens. Relationships fracture, tension builds, and all the while the Ionian Nebula grows closer....
Crossroads Part 2
3-20
Tigh, Anders, Tyrol and President Roslin's assistant Tory Foster are all now hearing - or hallucinating - a strange song aboard the Galactica.
Roslin, meanwhile, is recovering in the ship's infirmary after her first major cancer treatment. There, she experiences another vision of the opera house through which she, Athena and Six pursue the toddler Hera.
Waking with a start, Roslin is shocked to discover that Six, Athena and Hera have shared the identical vision. Like those hearing music, none of these women can find an answer for their perplexing experience.
At Baltar's trial, the defense is teetering on the edge of defeat. To save his client, Romo Lampkin moves for a mistrial because Lee Adama has heard his father — a judge — make biased statements against Baltar in private.
Lee reluctantly takes the witness chair. Instead of admitting his father's prejudice, however, he makes a compelling speech on behalf of his client, arguing that President Roslin has forgiven countless misdeeds since the fleet's long journey began, and Baltar should be treated no differently.
Lampkin rests his case after this eloquent statement, and soon, the judges determine by a vote of three to two that Baltar cannot be considered guilty. The courtroom erupts into chaos. The last duty that Lee and Lampkin perform for their client is to whisk him away from the mob to safety. After that, Baltar is a free man — but he's also on his own in a hostile fleet.
Roslin is disgusted with the verdict, and her relationship with Adama is shaken when she learns that he voted to release Baltar. They must set aside their conflict, however, when the fleet finally arrives at the Ionian Nebula.
As the Galactica scans this waystation on the route to Earth, the entire fleet abruptly loses power. In the darkness and confusion that follow, Tigh, Tyrol, Tory and Anders are nearly overcome by the insistent song, and they each follow it to an obscure workout room on the Galactica. When they lock eyes with each other, they guess the obvious but horrifying explanation for the mental summons that they've obeyed: they must all be Cylons.
At that moment, a massive Cylon armada bursts onto the scene. Lee Adama joins his old Viper crew and flies out in defense of the Galactica. In the light of the mysterious nebula, to his shock, Kara Thrace appears in a Viper next to him. Seemingly back from the dead, she has come bearing a message of cosmic importance....
