So far we’ve had episodes that were
Space Westerns,
War Adventures, and even a
Disaster Movie based one, and now with
Murder on the Rising Star we get a Murder Mystery episode. Sadly this episode does not include a Space Jessica Fletcher or a Galactic Ben Matlock.
In the last episode
The Man With Nine Lives
we spent a great deal of time aboard the luxury space cruiser The
Rising Star, so it’s strange that we’d be back again so soon. Once again
we are treated to the joys of Triad, the goofy-ass sport the Colonies
invented that combines baseball and football.
Question:
The sport is played by two teams of two players each and is a
combination of two different sports, so why in the hell is it called
Triad? Makes no sense, there is nothing to do with three in it, unless
maybe it was invented by a Galactic Organized Asian Crime
Syndicate. Of
course the name isn’t the dumbest thing about this sport, that'd be the
costumes.
This episode should have been about the murder of the costume designer.
Two rival players Lt. Starbuck (
Dirk Benedict) and Flight Sgt. Ortega (
Frank Ashmore)
do not seem to get along. Ortega takes several cheap shots after each
goal until Starbuck can’t take it anymore and tackles the jerk. They are
both tossed out of the game and sent to the showers. In the hallway
Cassiopeia (
Laurette Spang)
runs to catch up with Starbuck as he is again tustling with Ortega. She
urges them to calm down, but Starbuck is really, really pissed and
wants it out with Ortega. She threatens to report both of them and have
their flight status suspended. The two part but Starbuck tells
Cassiopeia that she has, “
Only delayed the inevitable.” Turns
out these two have had it in for each other since they were cadets.
Ortega takes off and Cassiopeia tells Starbuck that if he doesn’t meet
her at the shuttle in ten centons he needn’t try and see her later.
“Be there on time or your Booty Call privileges are revoked.”
Meanwhile
Ortega has just finished cleaning up when the door to his locker room
is opened and he is confronted by a figure we can’t see. Ortega doesn’t
look surprised and quips,
“I always knew it would come to this,”
and then goes for his blaster. He’s not fast enough and is killed by a
laser blast. His body is soon found by a Pyramid dealer named Chella (
Ben Frank),
who had just passed a running Starbuck in the hallway. A crowd quickly
gathers and suspicion immediately falls on Starbuck. Apollo (
Richard Hatch) and Boomer (
Herbert Jefferson Jr.)
rush off to find him to verify that his laser pistol had not been
recently fired. Unfortunately it had. Starbuck is incensed about being
accused of murder, claiming that he’d been at the range earlier that
day, but things get even hotter when Dr. Wilker (
John Dullaghan)
runs some kind of laser energy ballistic test that confirms, without a
doubt, that Starbucks pistol is the murder weapon. Sire Solon (
Brock Peters)
the Fleet's Chief Opposer (That's prosecuting attorney to us non space
people) is ready to lock up Starbuck and throw away the key, that is
unless Starbuck pleads self-dense, then he’ll just be forced to leave
the Colonial Forces and most likely get a suspended sentence, but if
this goes to trial and he loses then he will spend the rest of his days
on the Prison Barge.
Note: Brock Peters later played the traitorous Admiral Cartwright in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Apollo
volunteers to be Starbuck’s Protector/Defense Attorney even though he
graduated the Academy as a warrior and not a Protector. Apollo, with
Boomers help, has to mount a dense, and be ready to present evidence
before the Tribunal, in just ten centars. Now a centar is basically one
Earth hour so in this wacky universe a person has just ten bloody hours
from when he is arrested to when he stands up in court to defend
himself. That’s insane. No wonder this fleet has a prison barge with
that kind of legal system. So Apollo and Boomer leap into action, they
first track down Ortega’s wingman Lieutenant Barton (
W.K. Stratton)
who confirms that Ortega was a real asshole and that pretty much anyone
who knew him would have like to see him dead. Barton did remember
during one patrol when he told Ortega to change his attitude or someone
would end up killing him before the Cylons got a chance to, and Ortega’s
response was, “
There is only one person in the fleet with nerve enough to try. Karibdis.”
"Forget it, Apollo. It's Chinatown."
The rest of the episode is Apollo and Boomer trying to track down Karibdis. Commander Adama (
Lorne Greene)
recognizes the name as to that of one of Baltar's co-conspirators, and
this man was the one who sabotaged the colonial defense grid preceding
the Cylon ambush. Unfortunately, there are no photo-records of Karibis
and so the only person who can identify Karibdis is Baltar (
John Colicos).
Of course Baltar is more than willing to help as long as he is freed
from the brig when he does. Apollo storms out of the cell in disgust,
but as he leaves Baltar calls out, “
Think about it Apollo. There is
more than one prisoner on this barge who would love to have Lieutenant
Starbuck here. He won’t live long enough to reach his cell!”
If the Prison Barge is so dangerous how is Baltar, one of the orchestrators of the Colonial Holocaust, still alive?
Um…what?
Is Starbuck some kind of space cop and we just haven’t been told, that
the prison barge is chock full criminals he’s brought to justice? Or are
there just a lot of prisoners in the Prison Barge who in the past
Starbuck has cheated them at cards or slept with their wives? Either way
it’s a bizarre thing for Baltar to spout off. Needless to say this
doesn’t help Starbuck’s case. The next stop for Apollo and Boomer is The
Rising Star to interrogate Chella the pyramid dealer, who Barton told
them let Ortega win more than seemed the norm at the pyramid table.
Turns out Chella was being blackmailed by Ortega because he bribed
Ortego to get onto the last ship during the mass exodus from Caprica.
Unfortunately he can’t be the murderer because his alibi is rock solid,
but there were two other people Ortega was blackmailing, Elias (
Newell Alexander) and Pallon (
Lyman Ward). So Apollo and Boomer arrest the three and take them on a shuttle back to the Galactica
One of these blackmailies is not like the other; one of these blackmailies doesn’t belong.
Apollo
has no way to prove which one of these men is Karibdis, so he tells
them that he’s sorry for the inconvenience, that they just learned that
the killer is a man by the name of Karibdis, and once they land on the
Galactica he’s going to head over to the prison barge to get Baltar who
can identify the man. This is a dangerous gambit, hoping that the killer
will expose himself trying to kill Apollo and Baltar, with much of the
success of the plan hinging on Baltar not throwing in with Karibdis. But
Apollo puts great stock in Baltar’s sense of self-preservation and in
the end Baltar helps subdue Karibdis, and Starbuck is cleared of all
charges…except maybe one or two. You see earlier in the episode, while
he was in the brig waiting to be tried, Starbuck actually tricked a
guard into coming into his cell, assaulted him, took his weapon and
forced the other guard to open the cell door. Eventually Apollo is able
to talk Starbuck out of escaping in a viper and he returns to his cell,
but he is still guilty of assaulting two guards and escaping custody.
So the episode should have ended with Starbuck in here for a little while longer.
This
is not a terrible episode but as a mystery it’s not quite Agatha
Christie. It’s never explained how Karibdis was able to get Starbuck’s
laser pistol, then go and find Ortega, shoot him and then get the gun
back into Starbuck’s holster in the limited time allowed. This script
was rushed, apparently written in 36 hours, so that kind of explains the
looseness of the plot, but unfortunately when writing a mystery the
plot is kind of important.
No comments:
Post a Comment