TV show - "Battlestar Galactica - Baltar's Escape" (1979) **

A potentially good episode - Baltar and various rogues on the prison barge, including the Eastern Alliance and the Borellian Noman, try to escape - ruined by some hideous fascist military ideology in the first half. The Council of the Twelve have the audacity to try and regain civilian control. Just so we know how evil they are, they try and get Adama to resign, have a council member look over Adama's shoulder while he does his job and counter-act his orders (and of course they're all wrong), and then the Council act cowardly when they are taken prisoner, and the Council security guards are uppity to warriors... ugh! It's awful stuff. A potentially rich, dramatically complex situation (civilian vs military) is turned into military = good, civilian = bad, which not only runs counter to what the Colonials are about, it doesn't strike true. I believed the peace loving Council of the Twelve in the first episode but not here - at least, not all of them. Why make all the Council idiots? they have been at war for a long time, there would be plenty of hawks arond the civilian population. Why not have some of the military go overboard? But no, they don't. The Eastern Alliance are shown to be especially inflexible - but they're not that different from how the Colonials are shown to operate. OK, on the postivie side, once the escape happens it picks up and the last half is quite exciting, especially once the pro-military stuff takes a back seat to the action. It's fun to see Baltar lead a rag-tag alliance of Colonial enemies (all of whom are refreshingly smart and none of whom trust him), and the ending really works. Sheba is shown giving Boomer a sort of neck massage in this scene - with her pining for Apollo and chasing after Count Iblis and now rubbing Boomer, I get the feeling Sheba was hungry for love! The female councillor (Ina Bolin) is established as an idiot and gets a chance to redeem herself and emerges as a strong character; Col Tigh also overrules Adama, in a satisfying scene.