Great Cylon Turkey Shoot

Battle before: Battle of Kobol
Battle after: Not yet determined

Great Cylon Turkey Shoot
Conflict	Second Cylon war
Date	Day 89
Place	Interstellar space, specific location unknown
Result	Decisive Colonial victory
Combatants Remnants of the Colonial Fleet Cylons Commanders Commander William Adama Unknown Strength Battlestar Galactica 34-42 Vipers Over 200 Raiders dozens of Heavy Raiders, exact number unknown Casualties None whatsoever Complete destruction of entire Cylon force

Battle in which Battlestar Galactica turned the Cylon's own logic bomb computer virus against them to completely power down a massive fleet of hundreds of Raiders and Heavy Raiders in a reverse of the Cylon's use of it in the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.

Galactica began to suffer system failures and malfunctions throughout the ship. Watch Officer Lieutenant Gaeta and Dr. Gaius Baltar determined that the Cylon virus which infected the ship shortly after the fleet reunited (Scattered) and downed several ship functions for a time (Valley of Darkness) had returned. Apparently the virus had a latent element that hid itself, slowly emerging throughout ship computers, testing and probing for weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Gaeta and Baltar determined that this logic bomb may be a prelude to a Cylon attack. They determined a way to remove the bomb by erasing all ship computer hard drives, then reloading the computers from backups made before the war. The complication was this would leave the ship completely vulnerable for several minutes. If the logic bomb was "detonated", the virus would turn Galactica against itself and her fleet.

Commander Adama elected to use the incarcerated Caprica copy of Sharon Valerii to aid them. She interfaced her body to the ship's mainframe and communication systems via a fiber-optic link placed inside her left forearm. A massive Cylon force arrived to attack, and all Vipers were scrambled. As Galactica erased her hard drives, Valerii apparently copied the logic bomb code into herself and began manupulating it. She released the altered code through the comm channels, transmitting it to the Cylon force. In an amazing turn of historic events, the entire Cylon fleet lost all power as Valerii's version of the virus shut them down in the same way that Colonial ships were shut down during the Fall of the Colonies.

Many out-of-control Cylon ships were destroyed as they crashed into each other.

Commander Adama and Colonel Saul Tigh then ordered Galactica's Vipers to kill each of the Cylon fighters. Galactica's Vipers proceeded to tear through the jumbled Cylon formations, destroying the entire disproporationately larger Cylon force while not losing a single Colonial ship in the process (Flight of the Phoenix).

Notes

• The "Turkey Shoot" scene was first mentioned by that name in installment five of David Eick's second-season Video Blog. With that in mind, the article title "Great Cylon Turkey Shoot" is a reference to the famous "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" of World War II, a decisive and incredibly lopsided American victory over the Japanese carrier fleet, in which four Japanese planes were destroyed for ever one American plane.
• Ron D. Moore's podcast for "Flight of the Phoenix" was delayed from being released when the episode aired due to technical mishaps; it was not released until a week after the episode aired. As it turns out, Moore specifically referred to this battle as being inspired by the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" of World War II. However, Battlestar Wiki developed the name of the battle independently of Moore; great minds think alike.
• Number of Cylon Raiders present was given on the Scifi.com official site's episode description.
• Visually, there are at least 42 Vipers on screen, but there is a strong possibility that this is a visual effects mistake: Apollo said in "Act of Contrition" that there were only 40 Vipers left. On top of this, several Vipers have been lost since then (see Galactica). The current count leaves only 34 Vipers: 1 lost in "Act of Contrition", 4 lost in "The Hand of God", and 1 lost in "Final Cut". This doesn't take into account Tyrol's retirement of unserviceable craft, worn down by ware and tear. Furthermore, Galactica is severely limited by the number of pilots they have on hand - in this episode, no more than 25.