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When luring the Cylons away from the Galactica, Apollo (Richard Hatch)
crashes his Viper onto a planet - that resembles the Old West pretty much
to the t. There, he's taken in by a sympathetic widow, Vella (Katherine
Cannon), and her son Puppis (Johnny Timko), who are quick to accept him as
their husband/father surrogate. Apollo learns about "Red Eye"
(Rex Cutter), a creature terrorizing town, and figuring Red Eye must be a
Cylon he goes to town to learn that he's actually a crashed Cylon whose
programming has somehow been wiped and who now serves Lacerta (Claude Earl
Jones), the local white collar baddie, who collects crippling taxes from
all the locals because Red Eye is almost indestructible and has a laser
blaster. Now Apollo has a laser blaster as well that could destroy Red
Eye, however at first he plays it safe and even panders to Lacerta,
letting nobody know he even has a blaster. But ultimately, he challenges
Red Eye to a duel, which he wins fair and square, this way shaking up the
whole system of oppression in the area - not that we see any of that,
because after the duel, Vella tells Apollo that she might have just the
rocket fuel he needs to leave the planet from her deceased husband,
conveniently enough also a crashed figher pilot ... Now the pilot
and the first
double episode still managed to butter over pretty tired TV
standard writing with a very cool concept, something that doesn't come
into play in this episode anymore, as the overriding concept is pretty
much taking a backseat for a western plot, and a pretty tired one at that,
further weighed down by cardboard characters that are too easily divided
into good and evil. And unfortunately the story is abandoned with Apollo's
exit once it gets interesting (the aftermath of the duel), while it's
never really explained why Apollo hasn't used his blaster much sooner, as
the death of at least one important side character could have been
avoided. Of course, seeing it today there's a certain amount of nostalgia
that somewhat butters over all these shortcomings, but that doesn't make
this one good.
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