Both Adama and Roslin are "good," but they aren't always right, and "Battlestar Galactica" is exceptionally comfortable with allowing some of their decisions rest in the gray regions between the right and wrong. When Apollo was ordered to destroy a civilian ship that had probably been infiltrated by cylons, he was haunted by the possibility that he'd killed innocent human beings. He tried to talk to his father about it, but Adama told him to suck it up and stop dwelling on it: "A man takes responsibility for his actions, right or wrong." Roslin, detecting Apollo's distress, told him that, on the contrary, a good leader should remember and learn from his mistakes, even if he must show perfect confidence about his past decisions in public. She keeps the name of the destroyed ship written on a piece of paper in her pocket.

Apollo, the Prince Hal of "Battlestar Galactica," wavers between these two models of leadership, civilian and military, and in general he's veered toward Roslin. But late last season, after Roslin's credibility had been carefully built up, the president suddenly seemed to go off the rails. She's dying of breast cancer, taking a strange, hallucinogenic herbal remedy and now believes in an ancient prophecy supposedly foretelling that a leader like herself will guide the people to a fabled promised land: Earth. (Yes, these folks are meant to be our ancestors, not our descendants.) Roslin defied the skeptical Adama by sending Starbuck off on a risky prophecy-related mission. This precipitated a military coup.

Roslin's visions have been so prescient it's hard not to think there might be something to the prophecy after all, but Adama's rebellion is perfectly understandable, too. Faith in "Battlestar Galactica" is as fraught as it is in real life. The cylons are monotheists who talk about "God's love" and the salvation that awaits those who repent of their sins, even as they proceed to brutally exterminate those they consider to be "corrupt." The human beings are pagans who worship a pantheon of gods with the names of ancient Greek deities. The prophecy Roslin believes she's fulfilling, of a leader who takes her people to the promised land but doesn't make it there herself, echoes the Old Testament, while the prophecy's emphasis on an eternal cycle in which "all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again," has intimations of Eastern religions.

It's so easy for a series dabbling in such matters to go even further overboard than Roslin and get lost in the byways of metaphysics and mythology. It's also easy for a drama so interested in realpolitik dilemmas to degenerate into too much talk. "Battlestar Galactica" is exquisitely balanced. The woo-woo philosophizing is evened out by the gritty, workaday sets and the documentary feeling of the hand-held camera work. The palace intriguing gets a regular jolt, courtesy of action and suspense sequences that are believably immediate and intense.

The season 2 premiere has Adama in critical condition after an assassination attempt by sleeper agent (another interesting character, fatally conflicted in her loyalties). His second-in-command, Col. Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan), has to take over -- a scary prospect since Tigh, although not untalented as a tactician, tends to wobble in a pinch and furthermore has a drinking problem. While in charge of Galactica, Tigh attempts a risky maneuver Adama would never condone. Meanwhile the occasional flashback shows us why Tigh is so dependent on Adama and fears nothing more than having to go on without him. It's just another example of how "Battlestar Galactica" proves itself a little braver and more grown-up than the standard genre fare; in this case, the faithful sidekick could be more liability than asset.

There are deft citations of real-world events in the series: Roslin's swearing-in ceremony harks back to the presidential oath taken by LBJ after the Kennedy assassination; the unfathomable loss suffered by Galactica's crew is represented by a wall of loved-one photos reminiscent of the ones that sprang up after Sept. 11; the camaraderie of the pilots, who have made a ritual, before flying out, of pressing their palms to a photo of a soldier taken on one of their blasted home planets, recalls the solidarity of the firefighters of New York. None of this is belabored; all of it strikes home.

Season 2 should tell us more about what's left on the 12 colonies, explore the ever-widening rift between the military and civilian leaders in the fleet, and perhaps most intriguing, shed a little light on what, exactly, the cylons are up to. They have a plan, the shows opening credits keep telling us. Or, rather, their god has a plan, as Number 6, the seductive, praying-mantis of a cylon whose voice and image have been implanted in Dr. Baltar's brain keeps telling him. These androids are true believers possessed of superior technology, something you don't have to be a beleaguered Galactica passenger to fear. I'm guessing we'll discover the cylons and the human beings aren't as different as the colonists would like to believe, but only a summer of Friday night appointment viewing will tell.

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