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"Space Mimic"
Battlestar Galactica #9 (Marvel)
Written by Bill Mantlo
Art by Sal Buscema and Klaus Janson
November 1979 |
The Galactica faces the threat of an alien metamorph.
Story Summary
After Sire Uri's alleged hijacking of the
missing fleet ships and attempted assassination of Commander
Adama, Uri and his men are placed under house arrest by Colonel
Tigh until the Council of Twelve can reconvene to make a
decision on their fates. Adama himself is now stuck inside the damaged memory
machine, possibly irrevocably.
Elsewhere in the fleet, Master-Tech Shadrack and his team
continue to convert all the ships in the fleet to light drive.
But one of his junior technicians is overcome by a silvery glow
floating through the void and the light takes on the form and
substance of the technician himself. The copy kills the
human original and shoves it off into space. The copy then
attacks Shadrack, but the Master-Tech seemingly kills it with a
swipe of his wrench.
But the body is not really dead and, in the Life Center, it
takes on the form of Dr. Spang and, shortly after, Boomer.
Muffit is able to track the alien being as non-human and Apollo,
Starbuck, and Athena corner it in Cassiopeia's form in the memory
machine room. Athena fires a shot at the creature, but the bolt
strikes the console controlling the lights in the room and the
creature then mimics Commander Adama through the machine's
circuitry and escapes.
As it flees down the
Galactica's corridors as Adama, the
creature meets crewmembers who radiate their love and
thankfulness for him. This brings out Adama's copied emotions in
the creature. When Apollo and Athena catch up with and confront
him, he is unable to strike at them and the creature ends its
own life instead.
Didja Notice?
On page 2, panel 3, it appears to be Boomer speaking to Apollo,
but Apollo refers to him as Colonel Tigh in the next panel.
As usual with depictions of metamorphs, this one is able to
mimic not only another creature, but also the clothing its
target is wearing.
Page 10 seems to indicate that the Galactica houses the
fleet's food stores in its commissary after grown in the agro
ship(s).
It seems odd that Apollo allows Boxey to attend the medical
examination of Whittaker's body in the Life Center on page 14.
Except, of course, that the plot required Muffit's presence to
sense that something was wrong about the body!
How is it that Sire Uri is free to wander the corridors and come
into the memory machine room on page 22 when Colonel Tigh stated
that he and his men would be placed under house arrest on page 3?
Uri must have found a loophole or falsified an alibi to get out
of it, because he is also seen wandering free later on in
"Scavenge World".
On page 23, Boomer doesn't seem to think it's odd that Commander
Adama was walking around and giving orders, even though he knows
Adama has been trapped in the memory machine.
Apparently the space mimic can clothe itself in anything
remembered by the being it is mimicking. On page 26, we see
that, having taken on Commander Adama's form, it is not wearing
the spacesuit-like outfit the real Adama is wearing in the
memory machine sphere, but a replica of the Commander's normal
uniform. In addition, he is wearing the pendant of the Lords of
Kobol Adama was wearing in
"A Death in the Family".
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