The Destiny receives two visitors via the Communication Stones: A lady senator (Senatrix?) and Harry from 3rd Rock from the Sun. In the worst tradition of Star Trek, the Senatrix is one of those pain-in-the-ass Ambassador/commodore types who show up to question Kirk’s command, make an ass of themselves, endanger the ship, and so on. Harry (From 3rd Rock) is the new head of Stargate Research, and an old rival of Rush’s.

The deathwatch begins, each ping of the heart monitor bringing us closer to the last moments of this series. It returns to be burned off with an utter lack of fanfare, Syfy (“The Science Fiction Channel That Doesn’t Really Like Science Fiction”) has given it no promotion. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Scorpius mentioning it yesterday, I wouldn’t have known it was coming up at all. Thanks, Scorpy!

With this episode, Galactica suddenly figures out what it is, and what it wants to be. Up to this point, the show has been scrambling to make deadlines, and just throwing crap on the air without much thought. Suddenly they start planning ahead, settling in for a long haul, which never materialized. Suddenly they’re taking major chances, stepping away from things that have been over done, and exploring the unique potential of the series in ways that even the RDM Galactica series never did.

I don’t think there’s any lingering doubt in anyones’ mind that this show is toast. Last week’s episode hit an all-time ratings low of 718,000 viewers. That means effectively the studio paid $4.17 for every viewer. That’s actually pretty sad, because this week, after a miserable three-week crapfest, the show suddenly found its footing again, and was pretty darn good.

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