Hero

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"Hero" An episode of the Re-imagined Series
Episode No.	Season 3, Episode 8
Writer(s)	David Eick
Story by
Director	Michael Rymer
Assistant Director
Special guest(s)	Carl Lumbly
Production No.
Nielsen Rating
US airdate	2006-11-17
CAN airdate	{{{CAN airdate}}}
UK airdate
DVD release
Population	? survivors
Additional Info
Episode Chronology
Previous		Next
A Measure of Salvation	Hero	Unfinished Business
Related Information
Official Summary
R&D Skit – View
[[IMDB:tt{{{imdb}}}|IMDb entry]]
Listing of props for this episode
Related Media
			@ BW Media
Promotional Materials
Online Purchasing
Amazon: Standard Definition | High Definition
iTunes: [{{{itunes}}} USA]

Overview

A figure from Adama's past returns to haunt him. His return raises questions about why the Cylons launched their initial attack against the Twelve Colonies.

Summary

On Galactica

• Galactica detects three raider`s. Much to the surpise of the CIC crew, two raiders are pursuing a third raider. Starbuck and Kat are dispatched. After destroying the pursing raiders, they pursue the third.
• In CIC, Adama orders Kat and Starbuck to escort the raider to Galactica, after hearing Bulldog's communication squaks.
• Kat and Starbuck escort the raider in. In the hangar bay, Adama and the party that meets the raider, surprised at the fact that a human appears to have piloted the craft. A visibly weak Bulldog salutes Adama; Adama returns the salute.

Questions

• Did humans taken prisoner well before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies provide the original genetic pool for the humanoid Cylons?
• What class of Battlestar is the Valkyrie?
• Why would Bulldog have been compelled to lie about the manner in which he escaped the basestar, and what motivated him to say what he did??
• Why would Starbuck go to Tigh about her findings, rather than report to Lee Adama, her superior officer?
• Was the Valkyrie's mission the only one the Admiralty undertook or were there others?
• Was Laura Roslin right in speculating that the Admiralty might have sent the Valkyrie in order to provoke a war?

Analysis

• At the end of the episode, Saul Tigh appears to be attempting to try and deal with his guilt over his wife, but he does not seem to want his job as XO back, at least not any time soon.
• Adama's feelings of guilt over his actions during the Valkyrie's mission seem to shed new light on the motivation for his speech at Galactica's decomissioning ceremony at the begining of the series.
• The Cylons seem to have been able to detect and destroy an advanced stealth fighter that had only entered two kilometers into their space. This seems suspicious given the fact that they were unable to detect the Blackbird, presumably a far less sophisticated design. Either the Cylons had more advanced detection equipment on the Armistice Line, or they had advance knowledge of Bulldog's mission.
• Bulldog's story is even less believable given the fact that it took Kara Thrace several hours to gut a raider and learn how to fly it. Granted, the raider Kara captured was damaged, but it would still have taken Bulldog some time to adapt the raider for his own use.

Notes

• A revelation about something truly egregious and illegal that Admiral William Adama was guilty of doing during the days leading up to the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, and how he has kept the revelation of that incident from rearing its head. An event transpires that brings it all home with a vengeance, and the ramifications are significant. (David Eick revealed this in an interview with iFMagazine .)

• According to an interview with David Eick, this is probably episode 7 of Season 3. A contemporary of Adama's and Tigh's from the past arrives on Galactica with a very dark secret about Adama.

• In another interview with Eick, he revealed that this episode "involves a human POW who's been trapped on the Cylon base ship for the last four years, and when we meet him we realize it's a great homecoming for him because he was one of Adama's pilots. But by the middle of the episode you realize the reason why this guy was taken prisoner was because Adama shot his ship down. And it becomes sort of an episode about why such a thing would have happened and how Adama begins to believe that on some level he might have been responsible for provoking the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies."

• According to Ron Moore at the BSG Comic-Con panel, Carl Lumbly will guest star in this episode as "Bulldog", an old pilot of Adama's who was taken as a POW in the war.

Official Statements

• A video blog gives an insight to this episode during filming.

Guest Stars

• Barry Kennedy as Admiral Corman
• Lucy Lawless as Number Three
• Carl Lumbly as Lt. Daniel Novacek
• Donnelly Rhodes as Doctor Cottle
• Matthew Bennett as Number Five
• Rekha Sharma as Tory Foster

Re-imagined Series definition: nerve center or "bridge" of a battlestar, see: Combat Information Center

Re-imagined Series definition: Executive Officer, e.g. Saul Tigh

Re-imagined Series definition: Battlestar Group (TRS: "Water"). It also doubles as an acronym for the television series itself.