Remember that episode about half way through the first series of McGyver where his plane crashed, so he climbed into the body of a dead albatross and squeezed its organs to make it fly, after explaining that birds only have four muscles? No? You don't remember that episode? That's probably because it doesn't exist. McGyver's writers took some liberties with reality, but they didn't treat their audience like complete idiots.
But if you ever wondered what such an episode would look like, you're in luck, because that's exactly what Galactica's writers and producers decided to give us.
To make a long and painful story shorter (and slightly more bearable), Starbuck shoots down a Cylon ship and then crashes near it herself. Since her ship is destroyed and her oxygen is running out, she climbs into the Cylon ship (which is inexplicably still in one piece), hoping to fly it home. This, in itself, makes no sense (because Cylon raiders were supposed to be autonomous drones, without a cockpit or physical controls, but let's ignore that - it gets worse).
She finds that the spaceship is in fact a kind of cybernetic creature, part living organism and part machine. The organic tissues are also inexplicably intact, despite having just fallen from orbit onto solid ground. But let's ignore that too, because it gets worse.
Starbuck then explains that "all flying things have the same controls: pitch, yaw, roll, and power", so she just needs to find those. I guess she has never seen a balloon. Or an insect. Or a bird. Or a helicopter. Or indeed one of Galactica's own fighters, which have six-axis movement (i.e., they can rotate around three axes and also move independently along three axes).
Armed with this piece of "knowledge" she climbs into a mass of bloody organs and veins and starts squeezing things "because there has to be a throttle somewhere". You know, like every flying organism has. I love roasted chicken's throttle, and I'm sure you do, too.
She also concludes that "living things have to breathe, so there has to be oxygen around here somewhere". Yes, surely a fighter designed to operate IN SPACE must require oxygen to breathe, and must continue to pump it even after a) being shot and b) crashing down on a planet. And, guess what, she finds a gas coming out of one of those random tubes. So what does she do? She removes her helmet (despite being on a planet that has no viable atmosphere) and sucks on the tube. At this point, it probably won't surprise you to know that her face doesn't explode, and that the space fighter built by robots is indeed full of exactly the right mix of gases for humans to breathe.
What are the odds, eh? 100%, as it turns out.
She then squeezes a couple more random organs and, in a matter of seconds, has the alien spaceship under full control. Undeterred by the bullet holes in its fuselage (yes, it can resist atmospheric re-entry and impact, but not bullets), she flies it back to space, manages to easily outmanoeuvre one of her fleet's best pilots by squeezing pieces of meat, and lands safely aboard Galactica.
Not only is the "plot" a series of insultingly nonsensical events, but there isn't even any sense of danger or uncertainty, because all this is happening to one of the four main characters of the show, and it's obvious that she isn't going to die half way through the first series. The only doubt hanging in the air is what level of stupidity the next scene will manage to attain. To describe the outcome as "deus ex machina" is probably blasphemy; it's more a case of stercus ex scriptor.
Meanwhile, the rest of the characters are behaving in their usual irrational and illogical ways, but the main plot is so amazingly bad that you don't even notice them. I guess that's the silver lining.
I can only hope that the episode's title is what the writer's family told her after watching this.
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