BOTH ALIKE IN DIGNITY

Twinset and Helo speak to a gathered party of Viper pilots, Sixes and Eights. It's a comforting image: Karl and Sharon. Two halves of an air wing, fitting together all wrong. The Colonials are wearing the uniform, like always. The sisters are wearing them too. They wear the uniform, like they're human, or at least something more: they are the first to say yes.

"Since Cylon pilots don't use call signs, we're gonna be painting unique identifiers on all their birds." Seelix is relieved, because they all look alike, because blah blah she's dead meat. Helo's tone is half-ameliorating, half-irritating, all paternalistic, like they're idiots. Which, to be fair, is how they're acting. "You address them, use that number, okay?" Hotdog and Pike whine, in the front row, about how they never should have gone on this mission in the first place. My question is: how many times does Kara Thrace have to ask you to do something impossibly dangerous and weird before you start thinking that before the mission is underway? They both should know better, frankly. (And not for nothing, but I mean who would know better about being drawn by a Heavy Raider you don't trust and can't control -- into a whirling Hub -- to erase the boundaries between life and death, and change the game for both sides of the conflict forever? Hmmmm? What if they all come back sane?)

Helo calls them to attention, and explains how these Heavy Raiders are special turkeys that don't think on their own, and are piloted by the lovely ladies standing to their right. "Oh, and are there tiny pilots inside of them?" I think that probably that is the funniest thing I've ever heard on this show. Good one, Seelix. A Six steps up, not getting the total humor there, and tries to explain one more time that she's a trained pilot, just like them. Hotdog's wingman, Redwing, fronts on her and says that he's killed twenty-odd of her, so how good can she be, and Helo finally interrupts his unblinking time-filling BS enough to get him to back up off her, and continues with the brief.