“Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down” is episode nine of season one of the new Battlestar Galactica.
President Roslin is watching Commander Adama from the gallery in CIC. In the previous episode, “Flesh and Bone”, Leuben told her that Adama was a Cylon. Gaeta hands something to Adama and says the president is waiting. The commander heads to see her and tells her that they have the universe’s first Cylon detector. Gaius Baltar wants to start widespread testing, but can only do one person at a time and verification takes hours. The president asks who will go first. The commander says people in sensitive positions. Roslin agrees and suggests Adama. If he’s a Cylon, she’d like to know. Adama does end up going first.
Vipers buzz Galactica‘s observation deck. Inside, Dualla tells Billy it’s because they know she’s there; they’re showing off. Billy asks Dualla a number of questions about Adama’s behaviour. He’s been acting distracted and taking secret, unlogged calls in his quarters. Dualla asks Billy if he’s pumping her for information. Billy denies it, but he clearly is.
Later, Billy reports what Dualla said to the president. However, Billy thinks Adama’s behaviour is explainable. The president is concerned if they are not. Billy can’t believe they’re discussing the idea that Adama was replaced by a Cylon duplicate. The president hopes he’s right.
Gaius is asking Number Six if suicide is a sin. Yes; a mortal one. Gaius has 47,905 blood samples to test. Each test will take 11 hours. That will take 21,956 days. Over 60 years. Number Six suggests something and Starbuck ends up walking in on Gaius when he’s… getting intimate with his hallucination. Starbuck wanted to know about her blood test.
In CIC, a Cylon Raider is detected. Apollo and his wingman are after it when Tigh arrives in CIC, asking where the commander is. Dualla tells Tigh that Adama isn’t onboard; he left in a Raptor about an hour ago with no flight plan. The Cylon is damaged and jumps away. Tigh orders emergency jump procedures. Then another Raider is detected. Apollo says it’s the same one. The Raider jumps out, then back. It keeps trying and failing to jump away. Tigh believes this is a chance to get intel and wants a Raptor out there to suck in every bit of data. Then Dualla reports the commander’s Raptor is landing. There’s a woman onboard and, when Tigh arrives at the Raptor, Adama introduces him. To Tigh’s wife, Ellen.
President Roslin calls Gaius; she wants to know the results of Adama’s test when it’s done. Gaius says the commander cancelled his test and gave him another sample he said was priority. A woman. Ellen; no last name. Roslin wants the commander’s test resuming immediately.
Ellen tells Tigh she can’t remember the last few weeks. She was at an airport buying a ticket home when the Cylons attacked. Until a couple of days ago, she doesn’t remember much. She was knocked out when the Cylons attacked the airport and someone put her on the last flight out.
They’re getting a lot of data from the Cylon Raider and both Chief Tyrol and Starbuck are pleased about this; they’re finding out more about the Cylons’ FTL drive. Commander Adama isn’t totally pleased to have Ellen back in Tigh’s life; she’s always been a bad influence on him and is rather unreliable when it comes to relationships. People not trusting each other and keeping secrets from each other eventually gets farcical; it descends into a situation as close to comedy as the series gets. Gaius eventually has to warn everyone to behave. There’s a thermo-nuclear bomb near them, for frack’s sake.
On Caprica, Caprica Boomer and Helo are being chased by a lot of Centurions. Caprica Boomer says they’re after her; she heard something whilst she was a captive about a major base where they could grab a ship and get off the planet. Whilst the Cylons are likely after Caprica Boomer, it’s probably because she isn’t going along with the Cylon plan for Helo.