I didn't miss the clips, but I totally missed the drums.

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None of it is a totally rational decision, of course. But I don't expect people in drama to behave more rationally that people in the real world do. A show All About Vulcans wouldn't be very entertaining.

I'm no Vulcan, but I'm an uninformed civilian hussy in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, and I'm shooting holes in these plans like a SWAT leader. I expect better planning from people who do this for a living.

Not a foolproof plan -- there is no such thing -- but some semblance of a complete plan. One that has an exit strategy, e.g. One that at least acknowledges that assassination is a tricky business. If the Commander is really sending Kara to her death, which is what seems to be the most likely outcome right now, then where's the acknowledgement of that? If the Commander doesn't know that he's sending her to her death, then he's too dumb to be in command. If the Commander has a plan for Kara not being executed instantly upon completing her mission, then what is it, and how does it cope with his suggestion that she commit murder in front of a whole bunch of violent, armed, possibly-hostile witnesses?

Who's the available psychologist? Baltar, right?

I have found that psychologists -- and other people with distance and insight -- are almost always missing in action-oriented fiction. If those people were present (I mean, competent ones), then the story would be a lot less melodramatically reckless.

Even if it didn't irritate my sense of contextual realism, it would irritate my sense of story. Only authorially-anointed Heroes get away with long series of stupid mistakes, and that only because The Script Said So.

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But the characters on Galactica have been acting like idiots since the get-go. I think this meets their standards for a thought-out plan.

Not that that hasn't irritated me

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If the Commander is really sending Kara to her death, which is what seems to be the most likely outcome right now, then where's the acknowledgement of that?

Er. "You'll take Lee with you. He'll watch your back. There'll be the normal chaos and emotional high after the attack. That'll keep their guard down." I'm sure the dialogue, the framing, the editing, Starbuck's reaction, and Adama's tone all could have been even more ominous. Somehow. And then I'd think that the writers believed the audience was feeble-minded.

I'm shooting holes in these plans like a SWAT leader.

By pointing out that it's risky? I just watched it again, and didn't get the impression that they expected it to be a cakewalk.

Adama hasn't been aboard the Pegasus. Starbuck has, and will be again. Given her history, I don't think it's unreasonable to think she's aware that there's some risk associated with the mission, and that Adama expects her to evaluate the situation and try to complete her mission in a way that allows her to survive it.

The last line of the episode is Adama giving Starbuck the order to kill Cain. They could have cut other things out so that the whole last act could be Starbuck & Adama discussing contingency plans, I guess. In real life, sure, I would expect more discussion. On a TV show, I will assume that discussion continues off-screen, because it's not gonna be that enlivening, and because I know what I need to know to get the story. The plan for attacking the Cylons takes a couple of minutes to go over, because the fine details (which civilian ships are used as bait, who pilots them, where do the passengers go it the meantime, etc.) aren't worth wasting screen time on.

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Mikey skipped and skimmed -- because I commented on the confusingness of the new Who nomenclature, like, one post down.

Jeez, miss one post out of 6,000+...

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Thoughts on Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars.

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I suspect Starbuck is your go-to-girl when you need to staff a sure-death-for-anyone-else mission. Also, Adama knows she's a big girl who can figure things out for herself (she's taught pilots, led missions, conducted important interrogations, and that's just during the series so far) so figuring out the exit strategy could be safely left up to her.

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By pointing out that it's risky? I just watched it again, and didn't get the impression that they expected it to be a cakewalk.

I can think of a lot of ways to engineer someone's death that are safer (to the assassin) than walking up to the victim in public and shooting her in the head. Like, bombs or poison or a tragic fork-wielding accident at a private dinner. (Which would be so cool!!)

As you say, it's a dramatic line on which to end an episode. But it's a drama I don't respect, if it's a line not supported by the show's own established infrastructure of logic.

And that goes double when both short-term and long-term planning seem to be absent.

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As with so much on Galactica, they simply don't have time to set up a decent strategy. You can't really poison somebody unless you're intimate with them or you're willing to kill a lot of other people. Bombs on a spaceship? REALLY not a good idea. That leaves person-to-person assassination, and a shot to the head is the most likely to succeed.

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You're not interested in a fork-wielding accident??

Bombs were a part of the plot of the introductory miniseries, IIRC. Of course, because they were wielded by the bad guys, they failed in their objective.

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