“The Lost Warrior” is episode six of season one of the classic series of Battlestar Galactica.
Apollo is under attack from Cylon Raiders and is calling for help. Starbuck and Boomer tell Commander Adama that Blue Squadron is ready. Adama tells them Apollo is leading the Cylons away, and they couldn’t reach him. The transmission is for Cylon ears. Once Apollo hear the Cylons call in with the wrong direction for Galactica, he shoots one of them down, then runs out of fuel. He heads to some planets as the Cylons lose him.
A young boy is grooming an animal as his mother watches at night when they hear the Viper coming in. The boy, Puppis, heads out to look and finds Apollo. His Uncle Bootes told him about ships that fly between the stars, but Puppis thought he was making it up. He’s never seen another ship, or heard of Cylons. Puppis’s mother, Vella, confronts Apollo with a gun, then checks him out with a torch. She tells him he’d better leave; he says he can’t. She wants the ship hidden.
Boxey arrives on the bridge of Galactica, because he’s waiting up for Apollo to return from patrol. Starbuck tells him the patrol is going on longer; Boxey can spend the night with Starbuck and Boomer in the BOQ.
Apollo is looking at the gun Vella had, which she replaces above the mantlepiece. It seems a man called Lacerta is taking tribute from them; his enforcer, Red-Eye, has a gun like Apollo’s. Vella hates guns and if it weren’t for lupus after the stock, she’d destroy them. Her husband was killed by a gun like Apollo’s. Apollo knows how she feels; in the previous episode, “Lost Planet of the Gods: Part 2”, his wife was killed the same way.
Puppis says someone is coming and Apollo takes cover. It’s Red-Eye. A Cylon Centurion. Red-Eye quizzes Vella and Puppis if they heard a sound. Bootes turns up and says it went in a different direction. When Red-Eye is gone, Bootes is introduced to Apollo. He knows Apollo is a Colonial warrior, a captain. Apollo asks how Bootes knows, given Puppis and Vella don’t. Apparently, Vella knows, just never told. Puppis’s father was a Colonial warrior.
Bootes takes Puppis away and Vella explains that her husband, Martin, crash-landed after a battle. He told her brother stuff the night before the wedding. Red-Eye’s Colonial pistol was Martin’s; when Lacerta appeared with Red-Eye, Martin went for him and failed. Vella doesn’t want Puppis to spend his life as a warrior.
Apollo is concerned that there are more Cylons around. However, Red-Eye is not acting in character; he’s obeying Lacerta and not trying to kill everyone. Which, given that the local weapons are incapable of causing him serious harm, he could easily do. Meanwhile, Starbuck doesn’t want Boxey to lose a second parent.