3.14 The Woman KingThis is a featured page

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BSG Episode 314: The Woman King Picture
Air Date: February 11, 2007

Written by: Michael Angeli
Directed by: Michael Rymer

Cast

Tricia Helfer (Number Six)
Mary McDonell (Laura Roslin)
Katee Sackhoff (Kara "Starbuck" Thrace)
James Callis (Gaius Baltar)
Grace Park (Sharon "Boomer" Valerii)
Edward James Olmos (William Adama)
Jamie Bamber (Lee "Apollo" Adama)

Plot Summary

Assigned to supervise a burgeoning civilian refugee camp housed on the Galactica's starboard hangar deck, Capt. Karl Agathon faces a restive population, including many Sagittarons. Considered insular and backward by their fellow Colonial citizens, the Sagittarons are used to discrimination — and to fighting back. Worse, the civilian doctor overseeing the refugees, Dr. Mike Roberts, diagnoses a number of the Sagittarons with Mellorak sickness . The disease is curable if it's treated within 48 hours. Untreated, it's fatal — and the Sagittarons don't believe in medical care.

To Agathon's frustration, the sickness spreads and refugees start dying, all because the Sagittarons refuse treatment. Then a distraught Sagittaron mother, Mrs. King, tells Agathon that her grown son died even after she allowed Dr. Roberts to treat him. Mrs. King believes that Roberts murdered her son.

As Agathon ponders the woman's claim, he grows increasingly sympathetic to the Sagittarons' plight — and thus increasingly alienated from his own comrades. Soon, another sick Sagittaron dies after being treated — against his will — by Roberts. A riot erupts in the hangar bay as angry, frightened refugees insist that Roberts is murdering them out of ethnic hatred.

After breaking up the fight, Agathon takes the Sagittarons' case directly to Colonel Tigh and Admiral Adama. He denounces Roberts as a disruptive man and, possibly, a killer. Adama rejects those allegations. Tigh, who came to trust Roberts in the resistance movement on New Caprica, then pursues Agathon into the corridor and accuses him of always taking the wrong side in any fight. Agathon, disgusted, strikes his superior officer.

Soon afterward, his daughter Hera falls ill, and Roberts cures her successfully. At this, even Agathon's wife Sharon suspects that her husband is overreacting to the Sagittarons' paranoia.

Agathon, however, can't put Mrs. King out of his mind. He secretly inspects Roberts's medical files and discovers evidence that, on New Caprica, the doctor discriminated against certain groups: higher percentages of Picons and Sagittarons died under his care than did Capricans. Doc Cottle catches Agathon with the files and dismisses his concerns, even after Agathon begs him to perform an autopsy to see how Mrs. King's son really died.

Stonewalled, Agathon returns to his quarters. In the middle of the night, however, Mrs. King awakens him. She has come to tell him that Lt. Dualla, herself a Sagittaron by birth, is sick — after being treated by Dr. Roberts. With his friend's life now on the line, Agathon must take drastic action to stop the doctor — even if it means the end of his own career.

Remarkable Scenes

- Roslin meeting with Vice President Tom Zarek.
- The mother of the boy who died confronting Helo.
- Athena meeting with Caprica Six.
- The return of the Baltar in Caprica Six' head.
- Roslin covertly monitoring Athena's conversation with Six and Six' conversation with the Baltar in her head.
- Adama: "Captain, I have the former president of the colonies sitting in a prison cell, a Cylon woman is in custody, and a population that would love nothing more than to tear both of them apart. My ship is over crowded and I have an epidemic on my hands."
- Tigh's confrontation with Helo about Dr. Robert.
- Cottle confronting Helo about Helo sneaking into his office.
- Helo rescuing Dee.
- Tigh and Cottle realizing Dr. Robert was killing Sagittarons.
- Dr. Robert: "Remember what you used to say, Saul? Aside from a Cylon is there anything that you hate more than a Sagittaron?" Tigh: "I'll tell ya what I hate, Mike. Being wrong."


Addtional Notes

-At Joe's Bar, Connor refers to Racetrack as "Marge." This is the first time in the series that anyone has used that nickname in reference to Racetrack. Her full name, Margaret Edmondson, was first revealed in the episode "Final Cut" from Season 2.
- The game that Racetrack, Chief Tyrol, Apollo and Dee are playing at Joe's Bar is called Pyramid X.
- Unlike the lymphocytic encephalitis disease that affected the Cylons in the episodes "Torn" and "A Measure of Salvation," the disease in this episode (Mellorak Sickness) does not appear to be a real disease. The medicine (Bittamusin) does not appear to be taken from real life either.

However, there is a real-life animal disease called African horse sickness. One of the noted researchers of the disease is a Dr. Philip S. Mellor of the Institute for Animal Health in the town of Woking, Surrey (United Kingdom). Woking was also the town where H.G. Wells wrote the famous novel The War of the Worlds.
- Tahmoh Penikett read the "Previously on Battlestar Galactica" line at the beginning of this episode







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