After a long walk (or at least it felt long, given the situation), the Doctor finally arrived at the bridge. Being... the Doctor, he couldn't hide any enthusiasm.
"So this is what keeps this ship afloat!" he sounded too frivolous, "Is that..."
He pointed to a piece of machinery, clearly about to touch it, but the two soldiers stopped him.
"Who is this guy?" one of the people in the room asked.
Apollo shrugged in response: "I've been trying to find that out myself, Starbuck."
"Really?" the Doctor seemed surprised that time, "Then why didn't you ever ask? I'm the Doctor."
"Apollo." an older man, who looked like a priest, spoke, "Care to explain?"
"Happy to, father." Apollo replied to the older man.
"Father?" the Doctor then turned to the older man, "May I say you have a very vigilant son. You must be very proud."
That man from earlier, who Apollo referred to as Starbuck, stepped in between: "Show some fracking respect for the Commander!"
I'm not sure why, but hearing Starbuck say "fracking" made me realize that the Doctor kept beating around the bush there. So I decided to make a call. Apollo answered my phone, though reluctantly.
"What is that?" the Commander asked.
"A communication device." Apollo answered, before he picked up, "What?"
"Give me the Doctor." I told him.
Just as reluctantly as before, Apollo did as he was told and handed my phone to the Doctor: "It's for you."
"Why thank you." the Doctor said, as he took the phone, "Hello. How are you? Better than last time I saw you?"
"Doc." I started, "There was a reason you had to be at the bridge. So now that you are, will you please cut to the chase?"
"I'd love to, but these people aren't letting me look at their instruments." the Doctor replied.
"I noticed." I said.
"But looking at the machinery alone, I think I already know what the problem is." the Doctor added.
"Really?" I realized how fast that was, just as Starbuck took the phone out of the Doctor's hand.
"Who are you?" he demanded to know.
Assuming I had an answer at the ready, the Doctor gave one before I could: "We're just travelers."
"Travelers?" Apollo sounded particularly surprised.
"Yes." the Doctor said, "And my instruments indicated that your ship is jumping from one point in time into the next."
"What is he talking about?" Starbuck asked.
"I don't know, I don't even remember when he stopped making sense." Apollo answered.
"Wait." the Commander said, "Wait just a centon. Give him a chance to explain."
I was about to ask what a centon is, when I realized I was still on the phone.
"Thank you, Commander..." the Doctor indicated he didn't know the Commander's name.
"Adama." the Commander said.
"Er... Starbuck." I spoke in the phone.
Starbuck was surprised: "How do you know my name?"
"Eavesdropping, aren't you?!" the Doctor said, looking directly into the camera.
Doing this, it made the others look in the same direction, apparently not noticing a camera.
"Who are you talking to?" Apollo asked.
"Let's see if you can understand this, before I tell you that." the Doctor suggested.
"Anyway..." I spoke to Starbuck again, "... close this phone and give it back to the Doctor."
It took a while for Starbuck first to realize what I was talking about when I said "phone", another few seconds for him to figure out how to close it, before finally returning it to the Doctor.
"Thank you." the Doctor pocketed my phone, "Now, clearly your people have mastered traveling faster than light, I presume."
The others merely looked at each other, surprised he'd state something so obvious.
"As some of you may know, if you travel at the speed of light..." the Doctor explained, "... you might arrive at your destination before you even left, or even arrive long after you left. So clearly traveling at light speed is unreliable, so some people would use hyperspace to bypass that. But you people kept experimenting with light-speed travel, and even try to travel faster than that. Quite crudely, I would think."
"What is he saying?" Starbuck wondered.
"What he's saying..." the Doctor said, speaking of himself in third person, possibly because he didn't like it when Starbuck spoke as if he weren't there, "... is that the longer you travel with this crude technique, the more you'll be jumping through time."
"That can't be right." Apollo said, "We've been using this for years to travel from one planet to the other. We never traveled through time."
"Only because the distance between your planets are relatively short." the Doctor explained, "But if you're traveling longer distances..."
"So..." Starbuck sounded genuinely sad, "... so all this time we've been searching for..."
Starbuck couldn't finish his sentence, but Apollo knew what to say: "Don't worry, it's probably not even true."
"Isn't it?" the Doctor asked, "Where's your navigator computer?"
Adama, who looked concerned, turned around: "Athena?"
Behind him, a young woman got out of her seat, which was at a computer: "Yes, father?"
"Ah!" the Doctor seemed over-joyed, "Running the Galactica is a family business then, eh?"
"Would you let this... Doctor look at our navigation systems?" Adama asked her.
"Father, you can't be serious." Apollo protested.
"Our goal is to find Earth." Adama said, "If there's a problem, I'd want to know it."
Find Earth? Hearing him say that made me realize something else. These people look human, so I therefor assumed they were related to my planet. But are they? Even the Doctor kept talking about his people and my people, which implied that he's not as human as he looks. It made me wonder who these people are. I thought of calling the Doctor to ask, but then I saw he had gotten behind a computer, and started doing... whatever it was that he had to do.