I never quite understood why so many fans panned last season's "Battlestar Galactica" episode, "The Black Market." I actually really enjoyed it and found the story of essentially Apollo-turned-cop in the underworld of-the Colonial-fleet and-falling in love with a prostitute along the way and all the while dealing with unresolved issues to be a good piece of work and actually a refreshing change of pace.

If nothing else, we got to see a few new faces, like there actually are 40,000-plus other folks out there aside from the regulars we see week in, week out.

But after watching the recent episode, "Unfinished Business," now I have my own episode to gripe about.

Maybe "Unfinished Business" didn't let me down quite as bad as "Black Market" apparently seems to have for others, but I can't help but come away disappointed. Let me rephrase that. When I first sat down to watch, I felt prepared to be dissatisfied. Then things seemed to turn around and I really thought my first impressions would turn out to be wrong. In the end, no, I really was disappointed by this one.

I'll admit: I wasn't sure how effective a story could be built around Adama's boxing match. Yet, it had possibilities.

Once they started flashing back to pre-occupation New Caprica, I was hooked. That the producers, at the end of the second season, would fast-forward a year just like that with no further explanation required was wonder enough. That they would then rewind further still I thought took some serious creativity.

Make no mistake: It were those flashbacks that made this episode anything at all. The boxing match merely serves to frame those memories. The fight between Adama (Edward James Olmos) and Tyrol (Aaron Douglas), while I understand the producers' intent, seemed forced and only proved to be a distraction.

I was truly intrigued my the romantic overtones between Adama and Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell). Some tension, some chemistry, has been evident for some time between the two -- that the producers actively are pursuing it is fascinating. It will be interesting to see how far they take it. Yet, also, in the end, romance is also the main "Unfinished Business" goes flat.

Romance clearly has a place in science-fiction and on BSG in particular. But the series has a tendency to take it too far and sometimes looks more like a soap opera that ought to be called "As The Battlestar Turns" or something like that.

My biggest disappointment is that Apollo (Jamie Bamber) would not only cheat on his wife -- a quality I don't really think is in the character -- but also that he would do so with Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff).

Starbuck in many ways has really turned out to be an unlikable character. Where once she was troubled -- and troubled characters are the essence of good drama -- she is now just a basketcase who is losing sympathy fast.

And will there be a soul left in the fleet that will not someday find himself in her bed?

The Cylon Six (Tricia Helfer) had all the markings of being the series sexpot. Yet that distinction has to go Starbuck, as unlikely as that may be.

Clearly, Apollo and Starbuck have a history and a love/hate relationship, for that matter. But a romantic future? It may come to pass, but I just don't see it.

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I wanted to say thanks to the alert reader who pointed out that in my recent column on the CBS series "Jericho," I jumped the gun by two weeks in announcing its mid-season finale. I didn't get away with the error unscathed. The karma gods chose to somehow bollocks up my scheduled DVR recording of the real finale episode, so I missed it completely. I'll have to wait for reruns, just like folks did back in the day. Just to prove that all mistakes have their consequences ...

A former entertainment journalist, Scott Nance is a member of the USS Chesapeake, an independent science-fiction and Star Trek club in the Washington, DC, area. He is a columnist for Airlock Alpha, and can be reached at scottnance@airlockalpha.com.