Well, it was a pretty satisfactory episode, the first in a long time.

I thought Six's address of the Quorum was probably the best. Her lingering on the subject of mortality being the key to development and growth harkened back to Lorien and Babylon 5. Specifically, Lorien's chat with Ivanova: "....that for there to be growth and change, life had to be short...." Without the knowledge that your time can end in a moment, there would be little desire to be act, to get things done. The Cylons have been a long time in learning that lesson; the long way is often the most painful.

Interesting taht the Cylons are using a hybrid. I thought Athena said that project was abandoned.

Where did the hybrid jump the ship to?

And finally, there's something that the Colonials appear to be overlooking: since fleeing the Colonies, the idea has always been that the Promised Land is Earth, but the Cylons have been there every step of the way. Now, suddenly, it's believed by everyone that one group of Cylons know where Earth is. But that implies that the Cylons (or, some of them) have already been there. But doesn't that little factoid completely undermine the entire journey, not to mention invalidate the destination?

I appreciated the fact that we saw two things occur that would never be done in another series: Gaeta's leg amputation, and the fact that Athena shot Natalie dead. It ended on the sort of cliff hanger that you could have used for a season finale.

>How did he know to hold the weapons?<
What's the very first thing we've seen every base star do as soon as they've made contact? They release swarms of raiders.

This one had them dead to rights. even if the ship fired it's nukes it could have taken out half the fleet, but with raiders, too, I think only galactica could have escaped. But no shots fired, and not a single raider on draedus by the time the colonials had scrambled, launched and arrived.