Battlestar Galactica: Episode 103, ‘Bastille Day’

As you know, I’ve been re-watching the first season of Battlestar Galactica on Universal HD since they started up again a few weeks ago.

The third episode of the series is called Bastille Day, or episode 103. The title refers to the French holiday that celebrates the Storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution.

This was my second viewing of the episode, and after seeing all that happens in season 2 and 3, it’s actually a very pivotal point in the mythology of the series.

There are two big events that happen here.

The first is the terrorist Tom Zarek, played by Richard Hatch (the original Apollo in the old series). When the need for water is urgent and for men who can work a necessity, President Roslin turns to a prisoner ship with 1,500 incarcerated souls.

Not realizing Zarek was a part of those 1,500, Lee heads over with a few crew members to plead with them to help out and earn points towards their freedom. Little do they know it’s a trap that had been set awhile ago, Zarek was just waiting for the right bargaining chip to come along. That chip was Lee.

Zarek demands that President Roslin resigns immediately and that elections take place so that a true choice can be made among the people for a leader.

What ends up happening is that Lee and Zarek compromise and at the end of the episode, Lee has secured his crew and Zarek gets a portion of his demands.

The deal was that the prisoners would be set free and put in control of the ship in exchange for helping retrieve the water. And secondly, Zarek will get his elections in a year.

This is a huge moment as Zarek now enters the picture and will have a huge impact as the series progresses. In fact, his rise is so startling that it’s amazing how pivotal this episode truly was.

And the second huge event is Lee himself. At the start of this episode, his father asks him why he hasn’t chosen a side yet between the military or the government. A question that Lee answered “I didn’t know there were sides.”

But in coming to the compromise he came to with Zarek, Lee took a giant step forward in decision making and leadership that would become even more evident during season 3 with the trial of Baltar.

This was a great episode, one of the best from the first season and it’s so interesting to see the huge events that come from it now that their paths have been fully seen.