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Battlestar Galactica
"Take the Celestra"
TV episode
Story by David S. Arthur & David G. Phinney and Jim Carlson and
Terrence McDonnell
Teleplay by Jim Carlson and Terrence McDonnell
Directed by Daniel Haller |
Starbuck is reunited with an
old flame; trouble brews within the fleet.
Read the complete story summary at the Battlestar wiki site
Didja Know?
This is the first episode since "The Living Legend" Part 1
that has included the "There are those who believe..." preamble
during the opening theme. I guess this episode was just short in
running-length because with the following episode,
"The Hand of
God", the preamble is gone again!
Actress Ana Alicia, who portrays Aurora here, later goes on to
appear as Gloria Alonzo on the Galactica 1980 episode
"Space Croppers".
According to the
Battlestar wiki, the arm patch worn by the crewmembers of
the Celestra is actually the shoulder sleeve patch of
the United States Army's 78th Infantry Division.

Didja Notice?
At the ceremony honoring Commander Kronus, Commander Adama
mentions that Kronus was once the commander of the battlestar
Rycon and the Fourth Colonial Fleet. The Rycon
was lost in the Battle of Cosmora Archipelago, though Kronus
took out three basestars in the fight.
For his efficient command of the industry ship Celestra
in the fleet, Commander Kronus is awarded the Distinguished
Service Medallion and appointed Executive Commander of all three
industry ships: the parts ship, the textiles ship, and the
Celestra (the other two ships are left unnamed). Possibly the
parts ship is the Hephaestus, the foundry ship which manufactures
replacement Vipers, as mentioned in the novelizations of
"Lost Planet of the Gods"
and "The Gun on
Ice Planet Zero" and first named in
The Nightmare Machine.
Apollo later seems to refer to the
Celestra rebels as being from the "electronics ship".
When Aurora walks into the
Interfleet Navigational Operations room, notice that the duty officer
there has a hook-grip prosthetic in place of his right hand.
I have not been able to find any real information about the
actor,
Robert Murvin, who played the duty officer, but I suspect
he himself is actually missing his right hand since
IMDB also lists him as playing a character called Lefty in
the very non-politically correct comedy film Under the
Rainbow (1981). A character nicknamed Ironhand (real name
Stedonis), who may be the same duty officer seen here, appears
in the novel
Surrender the Galactica,
as
the captain of the
Broadside.

The computer keyboard used in the Interfleet Navigational
Operations room at 6:21 on the DVD looks just like one of our
own Earth keyboards, using the Latin alphabet in a QWERTY
layout.

During the party after the ceremony, it is revealed that Adama
was once the aide to Commander Kronus.
After intercepting Aurora at the party, Starbuck again uses the
phrase "for Sagan's sake", as he has in a couple other episodes.
He seems to be the only one who uses it. Was Sagan a Lord of Kobol
who has particular significance for Starbuck?
Cassiopeia tells Starbuck she's managed to get two tickets to
that night's Spheroid concert. Is Spheroid a musical band? A type
of music?
At 9:44 on the DVD, there
appears to be a modified Eastern
Alliance destroyer as part of
the fleet! The production had
limited funds to construct
spaceship models, so obviously
the destroyer model got modified
(notice the tailfin and
down swept wings) and reused as a
miscellaneous member of the
fleet. My No-Prize explanation
of its presence in continuity is
that one of the destroyers that
attacked the fleet in
"Lunar
Won" was damaged and
captured in the battle and then
repaired/refurbished to add to
the fleet, possibly as
additional defense since the
destroyers seem a bit small to
house civilian living quarters.
This would bring the fleet up to
215 ships, up from 214 in
"The Living Legend" Part 2. |
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Ship of the
fleet |
Eastern
Alliance Destroyer |
Although it appears the same externally, the shuttle that
ferries Commander Kronus seems to be modified from the
traditional shuttles on the interior. There is a partition in
the cabin that reduces the passenger area in back to make room
for a command cubicle for Kronus' use.

Notice that the corridors of the Celestra appear to be
the same sets as the Galactica corridors, repainted
tannish-yellow.
The Celestra rebels sabotage a turbodyne aboard the
ship, part of the sublight propulsion system.
As the rebels make their move at 19:35 on the DVD, two crewmen
aboard the Celestra seem to be closely examining a
packing crate for no apparent reason!
As Apollo and Starbuck land their Vipers in the Celestra landing
bay at 21:25 on the DVD, notice that the nose of Apollo's Viper
is missing part of the fuselage!

Do the letter/number combinations below, seen at 21:43 on the
DVD, represent "fire extinguisher" and "telephone"?

When they land on the Celestra, Apollo chastises
Starbuck for not looking his best for the meeting with Commander
Kronus; he needs to fasten up his jacket. But Apollo's jacket is
not fastened up either!
At 22:54 on the DVD, it can be seen that the futuristic packing
crates of electronics aboard the Celestra are just
corrugated cardboard boxes spray-painted gray with duct tape on
the top and bottom edges!

At 27:13 on the DVD, it can be seen that the joysticks of the
shuttle are the same as the ones seen in the Vipers. At 44:39,
we see that even the Celestra has the same joystick
design on a ridiculous stand-alone steering column on the
bridge.
The scene of the shuttle launching from the Celestra's
landing bay at 27:36 on the DVD is just a recycled shot of the
Galactica's bay!
I like the scenes at 33:26 and
40:48 on the DVD, where we see
that portions of the
Celestra are suffering from
rust. It adds realism to the
concept of a used and worn-out
fleet of ships. Since rust is a
result of oxidation on metal and
there is no oxygen in space, the
presence of rust is an
indication that the Celestra
spent some time grounded on a
planet's surface before becoming
part of the rag-tag fleet after
the holocaust. |
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Aboard the shuttle, as Apollo orders Starbuck to scan for the Celestra, the scan screen we see shows a ship diagram
that does not match either the Celestra or the shuttle!
So what is it?

At 37:04 on the DVD, it's appropriate that the shot of the
Celestra shows her landing bay without the usual lights
inside as the ship is running dark at Charka's order.
When Charka asks how long until the Celestra reaches
the fleet, Hermes responds, "Just over a centar, sir. But we'll
be in communications range in 81 centons." Since a centar is
approximately one hour, it would seem that there are less than
60 seconds in a centon if 81 centons is still less than an hour.
And besides that, this dialog exchange would seem to suggest the
Celestra does not have faster-than-light communications
capability. In fact, it's possible the Colonials in general do
not have faster-than-light communications; I can't think of any
times they have used it in the course of the series.
Despite the fact that the Celestra is running dark and
the passengers of the shuttle remark on the danger of guiding
the ship into a dark landing bay, there is some kind of residual
lighting still visible in the landing bay as Apollo brings the
shuttle in.
Near the end of the episode, Commander Kronus struggles to reach
the steering column of the Celestra to straighten the ship out.
1) What's the big deal? So the ship goes off course a bit until
the battle is over. Just set her back on course at that time! 2) Why is
Kronus struggling and why does he die? Did he get hit by
gunfire? It's never revealed.
At the end of the episode, Commander Kronus receives a burial in
space, similar to Serina's in
"The Memory Machine".
The ship Taurella falls behind the fleet and is lost
sometime in the first yahren of the exodus, as explained in
"The Death of Apollo"
Part 1. I have more-or-less arbitrarily decdided to place
the loss of this ship in between "Take the Celestra" and
"The Hand of God". Now 214
ships.