BSG - The Final Episodes

[Ireond]

Well, it looks as if the Earth Cylons probably followed the same religion as the other colonies. 

[Emperor]

So we met Starbucks dad?  Didn't seem like a skinjob and if he is, he would have ressurrected right?  I still think Starbuck is the corrupted Daniel.

[Emperor]

And I love this guys recaps...

 

Now this?  Is more like it.  Aaron Douglas,  Katee Sackhoff and Grace Park were all given chances to shine, and it goes without saying that they all were Great. Given the reveal at the end, some people might wonder if anybody might have said something to Kara at some point, but it’s not like she doesn’t have a history of acting out in public.

 

This was an episode that made me happy and sad at the same time.

 

Kara Thrace voices the previouslies, as she damn well deserves to:

•    The ship is falling apart, so they’ve enlisted Sixes and Eights to fix it up with Cylon Super Glue.

•    Ellen and Boomer escaped from Brother Cavil and (somehow) made their way to the Fleet, where Boomer was tossed in the Brig and Ellen caused buckets of trouble.

•    Back on Earth, which totally sucked,  Starbuck discovered her own corpse, and was none too happy.

 

We open with hands on a piano, playing a slow, stately tune as we montage back and forth between Starbuck giving the morning CAP briefing and Starbuck rehearsing giving the morning CAP briefing – in the shower, in her bunk, and at the bar. 

 

Here’s the deal: with Galactica essentially locked down for repairs, the Raptor pilots have been making six-day long runs looking for an inhabitable planet.  Solo runs, since the mutiny thinned out their ranks. And there are prizes!  First person to find a new home for Humanity and Cylonity wins … a tube of toothpaste?  WTF?  Perhaps Starbuck should increase the prize, because they’ve been doing this for weeks.  Everything is in stasis.

 

Except for Galactica.  Despite – or because of? –  the Cylon Super Glue, she just keeps getting worse.  Or so Galen Tyrol briefs Lee, Roslin , Adama and this week’s new Six, called Sonja.  In fact, Tyrol warns, throughout the episode we will experience intermittent power outages and random rattling of the ship.  So get ready!

 

When Tyrol is done, Lee turns to Sonja and congratulates her on being the rebel Cylon Basestar’s  representative to the brand-new Quorum, consisting of representatives from the ships, as opposed to the 12 Colonies.  So apparently, Lee’s plan for a more realistic government was fine with everybody.  Sonja thanks him, and says that the first order of business for the rebel Basestar is asking for the release of Sharon “Boomer” Valerii.

 

That gets Tyrol’s attention. So many many bad things on this series could be avoided if people like Galen Tyrol and Felix Gaeta were NOT in the room while the Adamas and Roslin discussed political business.  How about a simple “thanks, Chief, let us know when the Galactica is about to die from old age,” and dismissing him?

 

It also gets Adama’s attention.  He starts in with the “bitch shot me, twice,” but before he can work up a full head of steam, Sonja cuts him off.  She says that they don’t want Boomer to be free, oh no. Instead they want to try her for the crime of treason for siding with Cavil and starting the Cylon Civil War, resulting in thousands of Cylon deaths.  Well, Roslin thinks, why didn’t you say so? 

 

I could work up my own head of steam here by pointing out that a) what’s the point in having a voting system if the wrong vote could have you tried for treason?  and b) Caprica Six essentially caused the destruction of nearly all of humanity, and the humans are providing her with health care.  But I won’t, because I realize that this is the macguffin that is going to take us into the opening credits.

 

39,556 souls looking for a home.  Home. 

 

You know that weird non sequitur toothpaste prize we just saw Kara offer?  Apparently it’s going to be an item in the “Battlestar Prop” auction. What? The? Fuck?  All I can think is that Moore and Eick made a bet that they could somehow do an explicit product placement in a show set in outer space.  If so, they win.  We, however, lose. 

 

After the commercial, the Galactica is shaking, rattling and rolling all over. After a quick tour of various places in the ship shaking, we end up in Sickbay, where Sam is still in stasis.  He’s beeping regularly now, but he hasn’t actually, you know, woken up. Doc Cottle calls it the most bizarre readings he’s ever seen, and one of the random Eights wonders if Sam is just taking a long time to reboot.  Like the Fleet’s Foremost Authority on Brains installed the worst-ever bootleg copy of Windows Vista in him.  That idea is dismissed, and Cottle tells Kara that she’s on her own, and it’s to get on with her life. 

 

Which, for Kara Thrace, means going back to the bar.  And heckling the guy sitting at the piano trying to write a song.  The piano player never introduces himself to us, so I’m going to name him “Reginald Dwight.”  I know that the character’s name is “Slick,” but we all know that isn’t his real name, either, so I’m going to stick with “Reg,” because it amuses me.

 

Reg is all sensitive and artistic and shit, and Kara is all hard and cynical and stuff, and they hit it off immediately, but not in that way.  One of the good things about this episode is that Katee Sackhoff and Roark Critchlow (who plays Reg) are able to walk a fine line between obvious bonding and sexual attraction.  Which is good, considering all of the Oedipal shit that’s recently happened in this show.  In any event, Kara goads Reg into playing something beautiful instead of writing his song.  So he does.  And it is.

 

Haters of this plotline will get no sympathy from me whatsoever.  I grew up with a piano in the household, and a brother who played it beautifully, and one of the most enduring memories from my childhood is just sitting around and watching him play it.  Playing songs that he knew, or songs that he was learning, or songs that he was making up. 

 

Chief is hunched over a sander or welder or whatever and playing something noisy and sparky his own self and is having flashbacks to when he and Boomer were having their illicit relationship.  This was wayyyyyyy back in Season 1, and the reason it was an official secret was that she was his superior officer, and therefore it was against military regulations.  So innocent!  Oh, and Boomer also a Cylon sleeper agent.  Which turned out to be a huge problem when she started sabotaging the ship and eventually shot Adama. Luckily, she was subsequently killed by Cally in Season 2, and died in Chief’s arms.  So, as you can imagine, he still has some unresolved issues surrounding the whole thing.

 

Hey look!  It’s Hera!  Cutely drawing something.  And yet, still creepy.  Starbuck comes in, having been invited over by Helo.  The Helo / Starbuck friendship is one of the givens of this show.  They’ve both been loyal to each other throughout the series – he only turned on her during the Demetrius mutiny out of concern and immediately went back --  and so I’m going to make up this backstory for that friendship.  Karl Agathon and Kara Thrace became friends in Basic Training, then they became lovers. However, it turned out that they were terrible together as lovers, so they decided to remain friends, but with an extra special bond that they probably don’t even think about any more, much less discuss.  I didn’t say it was a good backstory.

 

In any event, when everybody thought that Kara was dead, they auctioned off her stuff as is customary, but Helo ended up buying most of it, and wanted to give it to her.  Ahhhhh. But the only thing that Kara wants from the box is a cassette of her dad’s music.  Dreilide Thrace – Live at the Helice Opera House.    Oh, that’s a good one! It used to be all over the wireless.  Not quite as classic as Foghat Live or Spiritualized Live at the Royal Albert Hall, but it still holds up. 

 

Oh, and Starbuck takes the pretty drawering of stars that Hera offers her.  Thanks Hera!  Now can you be a tad less creepy?  Maybe a good kidnapping might loosen you up!  Either that, or turn into Battlestar Galactica’s version of “The Ransom of Red Chief.” 

 

Chief Galen Tyrol is at the Brig.  He’s been in stasis for the past few weeks, marking the time by supervising the application of the Cylon Super Glue to the Galactica.  This entire time, he’s been resisting the temptation to make contact with Boomer.  It’s like he noticed that she’s joined Facebook, but doesn’t want to friend her too soon.  That said, the fact that she’s going to be tried and executed gives him an excuse!

 

They pick up the Brig phones, and at first, she’s confusing.  Apparently, the keeping of Humanity as pets on New Caprica was some kind of atonement for shooting Adama? And a way to forget and hate Chief?  Ooooohhhh kaaaay.  In any event, it didn’t work, because she still loves him.  And he still loves her.  So they touch through the mesh (which, if it’s a mesh, why do they need phones, exactly??), and WHOOOOSSSSSH!!! Chief is projected to a version of the life on Picon that they planned together. 

 

Except for the brief glimpse he got of life on Earth, back before it was nuked into suckitude, this is Chief’s first full immersion in how Cylons use projection to define their environments in their own minds.  He’s freaked out.  (I originally wrote “freaked up,” which I kinda like.)  He tells Boomer to stop with the projection already, and skedaddles.  You know, I know, and – especially – Boomer knows, that he’ll be back.

 

At the bar, Reg finishes playing something, and Kara claps.  “The critic returns,” he snides, but then instantly asks her what she thinks of his song now.  She likes it.

 

The Non-Coma Four of the Final Five (and we still haven’t seen what happens when all Five are together and conscious in the same place) are meeting, and Tyrol is arguing for their interference in the upcoming Trial of Sharon Valerii.  Ellen says “No.”  The Prime Directive clearly states that they can’t interfere. Also, Saul Tigh observes that they’re all in hell.  Thanks, drunky!

 

Back at the Brig, Tyrol has more questions for Boomer about Cylon projection; and in full-on flirt mode, she says that the house was something they planned during their relationship, and if Tyrol would like to go there again, all he has to do is ask.  He asks, WHOOSH!, and while touring the life that he never had – really never ever could have had, under any circumstances whatsoever – he finds out that their un-life also included an artistic girl.  This makes Galen Tyrol very happy.

 

Throughout all of this, the power has been fluctuating on and off, and it reminds me of me and Rox’s old apartment in Oakland, where we couldn’t run the washing machine and the portable heater at the same time without blowing a circuit.

 

We’re at the bar. Reg has got his composing papers strewn out all over the place, and announces that he has now finished his first movement.  Apparently Kara Thrace is quite the muse.  So it’s on to the second movement of Reg’s Bowel Symphony #2.  But Reg has a bit of the old writer’s block, so he starts doodling around with what he calls his “touchstone.”  Kara recognizes the piece and calls him on it. Reg says that she obviously knows a lot about music, she confesses that not only was her father a musician, he even taught her songs. 

 

In fact, Kara says, while flashing back to her childhood: “There was this one song that he taught me, it made me feel happy and sad all at the same time.”  Instead of guessing which song, which is what I would have done (“Tears of a Clown?”  “One?” “There is A Light That Never Goes Out?”), Reg just says: “The best ones do.”

 

After the commercial break, Kara is obviously dreaming.  She’s standing on an empty hangar deck, and the only thing she can see is a girl with her back to us – obviously l’il Kara – playing a piano.  Playing something beautiful.  We learn something about Kara Thrace right here.  We learn that she obviously doesn’t know shit about horror movies, because everybody knows that a little blond straight-haired girl alone in a wide-open area is NEVER a good sign.  I even know this, and the last horror movie I saw was Jaws.

 

So, run away, Kara, run away!!  Naturally, she can’t hear me, so she approaches the little girl and touches her on the shoulder.  The girl whirls around, and is replaced by scary, burnt-out dead Starbuck in the helmet. WAKE UP! Which Kara does, sweating.

 

So clearly, she needs a drink to calm her nerves, so she’s back at the bar, talking to Reg and saying “What am I?  A ghost?  A demon?”  A complete unknown. But Reg doesn’t have the answers; tells her that maybe she should ask Bernie, he’s the wordsmith. Or maybe he gives here the typical musician’s answer:  “Just because you don’t know your direction doesn’t mean you don’t have one.”  No direction home.

 

You know who has a direction?  Boomer.  And her direction is straight towards a firing squad.  Laura Roslin is executing the first step of Boomer’s execution by signing the extradition papers.  Tyrol begs, pleads, and cajoles Roslin, even asking for a“personal favor.” Really, Chief?  This snaps President Laura Roslin into place:  “Personal feelings are what Sharon Valerii preys upon.  You need to clear your head.” 

 

But she’s wrong: Tyrol’s head hasn’t been so clear since Boomer died in his arms.  If the other Dylons (tm Jacob at Television Without Pity) won’t intervene and the Humans won’t prevent it, then it’s up to him, Galen Tyrol, to rescue his love.  This, by the way, is fully and utterly written all over his frakking face right there in Roslin’s office, and in “normal” times, Adama would have been watching Tyrol like a hawk from the moment he stormed out, but Adama is at about 10% right now.

 

Kinda like Galactica herself, what with all of the power outages and everything.  Luckily, Tyrol’s way is illuminated by the light bulb that has gone off over his head, and so he creates the largest power outage yet and uses it to whack a random worker Eight with a wrench; and replace Boomer in the Brig with that Eight while the monitoring cameras are out.  Boomer is free aboard Galactica for the first time since the first season.  That can’t be good.

 

Back at the bar, Kara finds out that Reg left his family – just like her daddy did – and is outraged.  How could Reg do this?  Her own dad never wrote, he never called; he was just gone, leaving her with her abusive mother.  But she showed him: she stopped playing the piano.

 

Well now.  Those of you who thought that the missing Cylon, Daniel, was possibly Baltar, please report to airlock #4.  Those of you who thought it was Kara’s father, please report to the bar – the drinks are on the house!

 

Reg want her to start playing it again.  Pick a song; any song, and start playing.  Kara tentatively plays a couple of notes, and starts crying. She can’t do it on her own.  Reg says, that’s OK, they’ll play together.

 

What’s the first thing that Boomer does when she’s free?  She goes to find Athena, who’s in the locker room.  And, the moment of disconnection when Athena realizes who just walked in is all Boomer needs to get the drop and totally kick Athena’s ass straight into a commercial.

 

After eating some delicious Kentucky Fried Chicken, Boomer is washing her hands – none of that finger-licking stuff for her.  Either that, or she’s washing Athena’s blood from her hands, when who should walk in but Helo.  You see, Athena was getting ready for one of those six-day planet searches, and Helo wants a little nooky before they go. 

 

Once Boomer realizes that she can totally play the evil twin card, she figures why not? Helo’s a hunk; might as well piss as many people off as is possible by doing him.

 

Naturally, there are people pissed off at the show for going so obvious with the whole “Evil Twin” scene.  Perhaps, but I think that it actually completes a weird circle:  back on Cylon-occupied Caprica, when Helo and Sharon first did it; he thought that he was banging Boomer, not Athena.  They were friends, and co-pilots, and he’d always been into her and jealous of Chief. 

 

At the Bar, Tigh, Ellen & Tory are confabbing.  Tigh is still trying to get over his post-mortem viewing of Liam:  “Little guy was looking right at me.”

 

Boomer likes it rough!  As she and Helo rip each others clothes off, we switch to groggy, Athena-cam.  She’s alive, but ass-kicked and gagged in a bathroom stall with kind of a crappy, fuzzy view of the proceedings.  Nevertheless, she’s able to figure out that her husband is banging her doppelganger, if for no other reason than Boomer’s moaning loud enough to wake the dead.

 

Speaking of the dead, Kara and Reg are now working out that song that her daddy taught her.  She’s playing some notes, he’s writing it down, and hey! wait a second!  What’s this? His musical notation matches the star drawing that Hera gave her!!

 

Speaking of Hera, a post-orgasmic Boomer-as-Athena is collecting her at this very moment from the Daycare, and giving her some druggy water.  Offscreen, Hera goes from being creepy to being sleepy.

 

At the Bar, Tigh, Ellen and Tory perk up like cats at the notes that Kara and Reg are playing.

 

Hangar Deck.  Chief is helping Boomer aboard. She’s dragging a Hera-sized trunk aboard, but that fact that Hera might be in the trunk doesn’t even cross his mind, so focused he is on letting Boomer escape.

 

At the Bar, the song that Hera wrote and Kara Thrace and Reg Dwight are playing swells into a full band arrangement of “All Along The Watchtower.”  Awesome!  At the end of the third season, when they first used it, I thought it was a weird, slightly cheap gimmick.  Now that we’re at the third or fourth time they’ve used it, it’s a motif!

Tigh, Ellen and Tory are fully freaking up at the music, and like Pepe LePew, start almost floating to the source of it.  As Kara and Reg finish, she flashes back to when she’d blow on her Daddy’s finger like a smoking pistol when they finished that song; and then he cups her neck in the same way her Daddy did.  In no way, shape or form is this sexual:  this is Daddy and Daughter at its absolute and utter purest, and the adult Kara Thrace looks at Reg with all of the worshipfulness that only a little girl can give her daddy.

 

Tigh grabs Kara at the shoulder, whirls her around and asks: “Where did you learn to play that song?!?”  But that’s not the important question.  This is the important question:  Where in the hell is Reg?!!!!?”  He’s gone.  All traces of him are gone. It’s exactly as if he wasn’t ever there; as if he was a chip in her head or an angel or something. 

 

I’m an idiot.  I wasn’t expecting this.  I knew that there was going to be some kind of reveal with Reg, duh, but not the full-blown “only Kara can see him” reveal.  I was too drawn in by the performances.

 

If Kara notices him missing, she doesn’t acknowledge it.  Instead, she haltingly answers Tigh’s question:  “I played it as a kid.  My father—“  She goes silent.  Tory picks up Hera’s drawering.  “Who did this?”  Kara doesn’t answer.  Because in a weird way, she doesn’t really know.  Perhaps the best thing would be to ask Hera where her ideas come from.

 

Except, of course, Hera is unconscious and being spirited off of the Galactica.  Well not so much spirited, because they’re taking their sweet time.  In the Raptor, Boomer asks Chief to come with. He can’t.  He won’t.  Fine, then she wants him to know that she meant everything she said, you know, in case, er, uh, anything happens.  And instead of noticing the huge red flag she just waved in front of him, Galen Tyrol WHOOSH! kisses Boomer one more time in the house in Picon.

 

At the same time, Helo is giving a briefing which is interrupted by a bloody and bruised Athena.  They realize that Boomer must have taken Hera, and as Helo hugs her, she lets out a terrified, primal scream and continuing to wail, beats him ineffectually on the back.  Lord knows what he’s thinking.  If it’s Helo, probably not too much or too hard.

 

Boomer is waiting for clearance for takeoff.  Keep waiting, Boomer, because they’re on to you!  Naturally, she figures that out, and figures that her best chance is to take off no matter what.  She engages the engines.

 

In bed, Laura Roslin wakes up with a sudden jolt.  She knows.  She knows. 

 

Adama points out that he’s  going just shoot Boomer down, but Boomer says, not likely when I’ve got Hera.  Fine, says Adama, and instructs HAL – I mean, Hoshi – to close the pod bay doors.  Boomer spools her FTL.  If she jumps from inside of Galactica, that might just be it for all of them, because of the effect the spatial disruption caused by the jump will be just like a wafer-thin mint on her poor and tattered insides. 

Boomer makes it out of Galactica, but just barely, clipping a door on her way out, igniting her ship, and only feet away from crashing back into Galactica, she jumps.  Bye Boomer, don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out!  Oh, wait, it did.

 

But nobody is saying “bye” quite yet, because they’re too busy being shaken around like the USS Enterprise, And oh yeah, there’s a huge-ass hole in Galactica’s hull.

 

Roslin says “Hera,” and passes out cold, onto the rug.

 

On the hangar deck, in the midst of all of the chaos, Chief notices that Helo and Athena are giving some poor guy the what for.  He asks a random person what the yelling is all about, and that’s how he finds out just what kind of a dupe Boomer played him for.  Obviously, Chief needs to catch up on his noir films.

 

Back in the now-empty Daycare, Saul and Ellen are recapping it all for us, in case we haven’t put it all together: Cavil let Ellen escape so that Boomer could bring him Hera.  That she macked with Chief and frakked with Helo?  Bonus! 

 

Tigh is still confused:  “How can a 3-year-old girl spontaneously write down that song?”  But Ellen knows:  “She’s plugged into something that is manipulating all of us.” That would be, of course, not the One True God, but rather the writers of this episode. 

 

Ellen finishes with a hopeful “Maybe Anders can help.”  But not so far, as he is still Coma Boy, and not even Kara’s cassette of her dad’s music seems to be helping.  Maybe they should wheel him into the bar and have her play “All Along The Watchtower!”

 

And finally, poor Chief.  He’s figured out to access the house on Picon his very own self, and frantically looks everywhere for Boomer and their daughter, but the house is empty.  So he sinks to his knees in despair.

 

So let’s just quickly look at where we are:  Galactica is in tatters; Hera is (presumably) with Cavil;  Sam still in a coma; Life of Baltar has been training with their new guns; Tigh and Adama are despairing drunks; the rebel Cylons are worried more about revenge than finding a home; and Kara still doesn’t know who or what she is. 

 

Four more episodes left!!

 

http://www.screenjunkies.com/recap/bsg-recap-someone-watch-over-me

[Zashara]

That was an AWESOME recap!

[Emperor]

“And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering. I can see them all. The seven, now six, self-described machines who believe themselves without sin, but in time, it is sin that will consume them.

 

“They will know enmity, bitterness, the wrenching agony of the one splintering into the many, and then they will join the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.”

 

The Sacred Scrolls say that the Temple of Five (built by the 13th Cylon tribe more than 3,000 years ago) was dedicated to the five priests who worshiped "the one whose name cannot be spoken." For some reason the five priests bear the faces of the five Cylon resurrection scientists from “Earth” who were apparently born only 2,000 years ago?

 

And who is “the one whose name cannot be spoken”? The 2,000-year-old Cylons were polytheistic, like members of the other 12 colonies. (Apparently we’re to learn that it was a hot young computer genius named Zoe Greystone who turned the Cylons into monotheists back when Bill Adama was still a preteen.)

 

Why does Hera draw “All Along the Watchtower”? Why has Kara been painting The Eye of Jupiter since she was a lass? Why did Galactica happen upon the algae planet just as its sun was going supernova?

 

Who is the recalled seventh model, the artistic one named Daniel? Is he Kara Thrace’s daddy? Is he Kara Thrace’s former lover, Zak Adama? Could Bill Adama have somehow sired a Cylon?

 

Why does Roslin share Hera dreams with Boomer and Six?

 

Last week Baltar offered proof of Kara’s resurrection, which probably didn’t prove a huge surprise to anyone. (How strange that Baltar seemed to have only a passing familiarity with Starbuck after all this time!) We also saw Boomer return to the scary robot hive to hand Hera over to John Cavil, who was to introduce her to new “playmates.”

 

Does tonight’s hour focus on the retrieval of Helo and Athena’s little girl? SciFi says:

 

A call for volunteers is made for a final mission, as Galactica is stripped for parts.

 

 

“Galactica” mastermind Ron Moore co-wrote the two-hour series finale for “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” which starred Visor-Free LaForge and Greenskeeper Picard and received overwhelmingly favorable notices.

 

The finale script for “Battlestar Galactica” apparently put everyone in tears, including Ron Moore himself.

 

The first hour of the three-hour finale airs tonight; the final two hours air next week.

 

10 p.m. Friday. SciFi

[Emperor]

Last Week's Recap:

 

The producers of the original Battlestar Galactica had a plan.  In the late 1970s, it wasn’t uncommon for a male lead in a TV series to have a major pop career.  So when they found out early on that the Bee Gees – the biggest recording act in the known universe – were fans of their show, they reached out.  The plan was this:  the Bee Gees would write a thumping disco tune; Dirk Benedict would sing it; coke and hookers and cash to every AM station imaginable and voila! a world-wide smash that would guarantee a second season of Galactica.

 

That song was called “Islanded in a Stream of Stars.”  I’ll be giving you a taste of the words throughout this recap.  For example:

 

Islanded in a stream of stars

Death and betrayal is what we are

Trust and love have gone so far

Islanded in a stream of stars

 

The plan – as plans often do -- ran into a snag: Benedict refused to sing it.  Apparently, Barry, Robin and Maurice were doing the bad cocaine when they wrote the words, because the song was full of doubt and confusion and fear.  The Gibbs argued that noone paid attention to the words of disco songs – “Stayin’ Alive” was about a guy with no options in his life but dancing, for Christ’s sake! – and it was a guaranteed smash.

 

Benedict felt that singing the song might add an extra – almost womanly! -- dimension to the cigar-chewin,’ happy-go-lucky persona he had created for Starbuck.  So he put the kibosh on the entire project.  A few years later, the Gibbs changed the tune slightly, the words entirely, and the song found a new life as the Kenny Rogers-Dolly Parton smash hit “Islands in the Stream.”

 

According to Saul Tigh, here is what what’s happened previously on Battlestar Galactica:

•    Kara Thrace and her phantom daddy played Hera’s magical transcription of “All Along The Watchtower.”

•    After the bullet in his brain was removed, Samuel T. Anders became Coma Boy.

•    Laura Roslin is dying. As is the Battlestar Galactica. 

•    Boomer helps to facilitate thatdying by jumping very very close to the ship and tearing a gynormous hole in her hull.  While stealing the miracle child, Hera.

 

We open with a dreamy shot of Hera playing spaceships on that table that’s mostly used for airhockey, but occasionally used for mapping out battle strategies.  Hera is also running, running running through the Opera House.

 

On the Galactica, the repairs to the gynormous hull hole aren’t going so well, and a random Six and a knuckledragger start screaming at each other, but stop short of fisticuffs.  He’s lucky.  Oh, and Chief is nowhere to be found.  Apparently, he’s completely withdrawn after helping Boomer escape last episode. 

 

Everybody else, though, is well and truly accounted for.  In face, many of them are in Adama’s quarters, where Ellen & Kara are trying to convince the  Lee and Bill that they should go after Hera with everthing they got.  Ellen’s pretty sure that Hera is at the Cavil’s Holiday Camp, the Colony that was set up as the Cylon home.

 

Kara is now convinced that Hera is important, and explains how she and her phantom Daddy channeled Dylan, thanks to Hera.  “She’s the key, sir.”  Wait a second! I thought that Dawn was the key.  Is that why the final episode is called “Daybreak?”  Some kind of weird Buffy crossover?  Man, Joss Whedon would love that!! 

 

Adama, drink in hand, draws Kara into a trap by asking if it’s destiny.  When she confirms, instead of saying “Destiny, Destiny, no escaping that for me!”  He drunks about how much he hates destiny.  After all, look where it got them.

 

Luckily, Tigh convinces him to begrudgingly – Adama send a Cylon Heavy Raider out to look for Cavil’s Holiday Camp.  And please nobody mention this to Helo and Athena.  They’re not so happy with each other right now, since their relationship has been utterly blindsided by the evilest of Athena’s 4,655,896 twins.

 

Speaking of twins, Roslin and Caprica Six are dreaming in twain again.  It’s the old Hera at the Opera House dream, where Hera is running running running through the Opera House straight into the arms of America.  I mean into the arms of Caprica Six and Baltar.  Unless, of course, it’s not Caprica Six, but Head Six.  Maybe that’s why it’s such a disturbing dream for Caprica Six: she knows that it’s not her Hera’s running to, but a different Six.

 

Too many Sixes?  Don’t worry, we’re about to lose one. Another crack appears in the hull of the Galactica, with bodies flying out into space.  That doesn’t seem good.  In all of the camera-spinning craziness,  the Six who was fighting with the knuckledragger sacrifices herself to close a hatch door and save him.  She gets sucked right out into the dark, cold vacuum and right into the opening credits.

 

Islanded in a stream of stars

How we die is who we are

Forever seeing deep, wide and far

Islanded in a stream of stars

 

39,521 survivors searching for a home.  Home.

 

Yup, as Cottle confirms right after the commercial break, we’ve lost 35 more humans.  And 26 cylons, to boot.  The knuckledragger says that, despite all of the Cylon Super Glue, Galactica has got 5 more jumps, period.  Maybe.  She’s dying. 

 

Remember that time when they had to jump every 33 minutes or get blowed up by the cylons?  Better hope that never happens again. 

 

Here’s a fun fact:  Sonja, the Six who represents the rebel Baseship in the Ship’s Captains Quorum, wants the Baseship to take Galactica’s place as the Fleet’s bodyguard.  Adama doesn’t like that.

 

Here’s another fun fact:  Roslin dying, and so is Galactica, and Adama is desperately fighting destiny by pretending that neither one is actually happening.  When Roslin points that out again, Adama doesn’t even address it. See?

 

The Fleet Captains are more than willing to address both of those facts.  Lee Adama is currently ruing the day he ever had this idea, because the Fleet Captains meeting makes the old Council of Twelve seem like the Algonquin Round Table.  (BTW, has the statute of limitations run out on that reference?  I can only actually name two people at the Algonquin Round Table: Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley.  And I only love one: Robert Benchley, who was one of funniest write—oh, wait, right, Battlestar Galactica.)

 

After all, it’s not like these people grew up memorizing Robert’s Rules of Order.  Unless, it was Robert Benchley’s rules of order!  In fact, they probably became captains of spaceships because they didn’t like being around and agreeing with other people.  So they’re all yelling and screaming and fussing and fighting and Lee Adama is keeping order by the ancient rite of yelling louder than everybody else.  He does, however, stop short of whistling at them.

 

The point of yell—er, discussion: Sonja’s plan to make the Basestar the Fleet’s bodyguard.  None of them like it.  Because, you know, cylons murdering humanity.  That old thing.  Sonja points out that Adama will be in charge, because that was the deal they made.  So, on a dime, the Ships Captains immediately start squabbling over scavenging from Galactica. 

 

That’s a bit much for Lee Adama.  He screams that nobody is taking anything from William Adama’s ship until William Adama says “come on board, boys, it’s ransacking time!”  And in the most awkward attempted transition in the history of this show, one of the captains says, “what does Baltar say about that?”

 

Lee and I both say at the same time: “Baltar?”  What does he have to do with any of it?

 

Baltar agrees with Lee and I, because he’s on the wireless, not talking about the Galactica, but talking about angels.  Uh-oh.  Normally, I have no truck with this kind of crap. You know, “it was an angel who rescued me from that car crash.”  Really, how about the angel stopping the car crash in the first place?!?  However, it soon becomes quite clear that Baltar is referring to Head Six as his angel, and since we’ve seen her since the mini-series, fine, I’ll give him this.

 

Also, he’s not just babbling about angels, he’s essentially confessing that he’s been seeing Head Six since the mini-series.  Then he abruptly disconnects from the wireless, because he sees Caprica Six – who does a lot of aimless wandering through the ship – and offers his condolences for her recent sudden lack of fetus, and lack of a place to stay, to boot.  Nearly weeping, he offers up his place, but Caprica Six has never been about sharing Baltar, and just tells him to piss off.  She claims that she’s changed, but he really hasn’t.

 

In Sickbay, a dying Eight freaks Tigh the fuck up by thanking him for the privilege of meeting and working with him.  After he points out that he’s spent most of his life trying to kill her kind, she speaks for all us by saying “Too much confusion,” and dying.

 

Islanded in a stream of stars

Confusion’s course is just the par

My soul is always yours to mar

Islanded in a stream of stars

 

“I want my mommy. I want my mommy.”  Nothing like a good kidnapping to turn a creepy kid into a weepy kid.  Hera is now just a scared, sad, little girl, having woken up on a spaceship with a woman who looks exactly like her mommy, but is instead the evilest of mommy’s 4,655,896 twins.  Who knows how much Hera has previously been told about any of this?  I’m guessing not much.  Which doesn’t mean that she doesn’t know all of it on some level, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.  But, right now, only one thing matters to Hera:  “I want my mommmmmy!” 

 

Boomer does what every babysitter has done since the beginning of time when faced with a kid who won’t shut up: she threatens to put the make the kid unconscious by brandishing a huge-ass needle of sleepy juice.

 

Man, I can’t tell you how many times that happened to me when I was growing up.

 

However, not even Boomer can go through with it:  Hera looks so lost and sad and lonely that Boomer’s heart grows three sizes – which, since she is a machine, might not even be a metaphor!  Instead of knocking Hera out, Boomer just sadly looks at her.  At this moment, I think that Boomer becomes the wild card that she was pretending to be when she let Ellen escape.

 

Speaking of love, Ellen and Saul are arguing.  She wants more effort in the Hera search-a-thon.  Saul wants more effort in the booze search-a-thon, having just thrown an empty bottle of hooch against the wall of their room.  Ellen, exasperated, asks Saul if he realizes how important Hera is to his people?  That’s just the problem, Ellen:  Saul Tigh doesn’t think of cylons as “his people,” he thinks – even now – of humans as his people. 

 

The fact that he and Ellen were married 2000 years ago means nothing to him, because he can’t remember it.  What he can remember, though, is Bill Adama rescuing him time and time again from his own damn sorry self.  It frustrates him so much to be torn between who he is and what he knows.

 

Ellen, who has amazingly dialed it down from yelling to loving exasperation – man, do I know that look -- wants him to understand more about who he is; someone who was part of a small group who took a chance to end the endless cycle of violence between man and machine. 

 

Which failed, yeah, but maybe Hera – the human-cylon child -- is the Second Chance.

 

Saul:  “I had a child.  He died.”

Ellen: “You’re wrong.  You had millions.”

 

Two of those millions, the Wild Card and the Second Chance, are in a raptor jumping jumping jumping towards Cavil’s Holiday Camp.  They’re bonding over the ancient rite of trying to get a sad, scared child to eat something.  Boomer tells Hera about her happy place, the house on Picon that she and Chief planned out. 

 

Whooosh!  Boomer goes there.  And suddenly, Whoosh! Hera is there, as well.  And it’s neither quiet, creepy Hera, nor sad, weepy Hera.  She’s happy, she’s pretty and she’s eating.

 

Baltar is shaving in the unisex bathroom.  Kara is pissing (I hope) in the same one; where the stall door isn’t even working.  Kara uses the opportunity to ask him about the angels he was babbling about.  Does he really see them?  He responds:  “with alarming regularity.”  Kara says that regularity is good when “you’re full of crap.”  BTW, what’s up with all of the poopy jokes aimed at Baltar?  A couple of weeks ago, when Baltar was requesting the guns, Adama said that he had to go to the head to take care of a project he’d been working on.

 

In any event, Baltar is all whatever, freakshow, and non-sequiturs: “By the way, who are you again?”  “I’m a dead chick,” she responds. Sigh.  I know why they did this, but man, that right there is some awkward dialog.  In any event, she gives him her story – pulling the dog tags from her own dead body, and challenges him to do some tests with the dog tags, help her figure out who or what she is.  “Only thing I know for sure,” she finishes, “I’m not an angel.”  OK, Gregg Allman.

 

Also, true, as we’ll see in about two minutes.  So, they’ve wheeled Sam out of Sickbay and put him into a room on Galactica inside a makeshift hybrid tank. Looking like an angel, Kara enters Sam's Hybrid Haven. An expository Eight tells her that they hooked him up to the main power grid hoping that might do the trick.  Nope.  His battery is still dead. 

 

Kara cannot bear to see him this way, and after hustling the Expository Eight out of the room, she gets sadder and sadder as she starts talking about how she once threatened to put a bullet in his brain if she ever found out he was a Cylon and how now she just doesn’t care what he is, human or cylon, it just doesn’t matter anymore because in the end, he’s just Sam, her Sam, which is how she’s always going to remember him.  Then, she pulls out a gun and – BLAM!! -- puts a bullet in his brain.

 

Jumpstart!

 

Instantly, Sam’s “awake” and grabs her wrist – hard! – while spouting the normal hybrid gibberish.  Which isn’t gibberish, I know, but I also can’t be bothered to transcribe it or we’ll be here all day.  Except for the part where he turns, and looks right her and says: “You are the harbinger of doom, Kara Thrace, you lead them all to their end.”

 

At the same time, shit all over Galactica – which has been full of rattles and power arcs and general signs of falling apart – gets 10 times worse.  Spark! Rumble! Camera shake!

 

Adama is reading to Roslin.  Again. But she’d rather get stoned, and has some of that New Caprican Brown stashed in the book. It was the weed they smoked the first time they Did It.  It’s some powerful shit, mannnnnnnn, because she almost starts instantly talking about the concept of home, and how it took slowly dying on Adama’s ship for her to finally feel at home.  But, she says, it’s time to leave this home.  Adama just thinks that “home” is a funny word, if you if you repeat or stare at it long enough.  Hoooommmme.  Hommmmme.  Hooooommeeeeee.  Hooooooommme.

 

Oh, and Baltar is testing Kara’s dog tags.  After having sex with one of his groupies, now doubt.

 

We’re back in Sam’s Hybrid Haven, and the expository Eight is telling Tigh that Sam has somehow connected with the Cylon superglue, meaning that he’s frakking with the ship’s power.  Not the computers, because they’re still famously not networked.  But it’s entirely possible he could be connected to the FTL, and in his state, that might not be good.  Ya think?

 

The whole time, of course, Sam is waxing hybridisms like "All has happened before and all will happen again," and -- talking about the Galactica -- "There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza." So Tigh orders him unplugged, not remembering that Sam Anders Unplugged was a huge huge hit on Earth.  One of the songs:  “Islanded in a Stream of Stars.”

 

Islanded in a stream of stars

Never home is where we are

Start every day behind your bars

Islanded in a stream of stars.

 

Apparently, the recon mission to find Cavil’s Holiday Camp was a failure. He’s moved it to a different location.  Probably because tourism was wayyy down.

 

Boomer and Hera are talking about projection.  Hera’s bonding with Boomer, and vice-versa.  I’m guessing that this isn’t part of Cavil’s evil plan.  I wonder why he forgot how easy it was for Eights to fall in love. 

 

And out of love, because Helo needs to win Athena back by finding Hera.  On the way to the mass funeral for everyone who died in the hull breach, he accosts Adama and begs, pleads and nearly demands to go look for her.  No dice, son. Suck it up, is Adama’s response.

 

My advice to Helo: steal a ship.  That’s what everybody else does!

 

At the funeral on Galactica’s hanger deck, Ellen and Baltar and Adama and Caprica are all leading the mourning of the dead in their own ways, but it’s the aftermath of the funeral that matters.

 

Which is this: Baltar starts preaching about eternal life.  As everybody heads for the exits, he stops them with this: he’s got scientific proof.  Of life after death.  Somebody – not a cylon -- has died, but they’re alive right this very second.  It’s a riddle.  It’s also Kara Thrace.  He holds up the dog tags: “She took these from her own mortal remains!!”

 

Kara just walks up to him and slaps him.  Hard.  Adama breaks up the service by using the ancient rite of yelling louder than everybody else.

 

Wall of Rememberance.  Lee gives Kara essentially the same speech she gave the unconscious Sam:  I don’t care who you are, I love you no matter what.  She just smiles sadly, and puts her picture between the pictures of Kat and Dee.  She’s dead.  She’s alive.

 

Cavil’s Holiday Camp. Boomer and Hera have finally made it, and as Boomer hands Hera over to Cavil, neither one of them are happy.  Hera calls for Boomer, but Cavil just evils:  “You’ll have all sorts of new playmates pretty soon.”  Uh-oh.  Boomer cries: is there any doubt that she is now going to betray Cavil somehow?

 

One last bit of breakdown from Adama.  In his quarters, he tries to cover up the Cylon Super Glue with white paint, but it doesn’t work.  He gets more and more desperate and more and more sad and crazy and starts throwing the bucket of paint all over the walls in a Pollock-like frenzy, but when that doesn’t give him the effect he’s looking for, he falls down crying, with paint all over him.  Oh, those artist types, what with the drama and everything.

 

Back at Sam's Hybrid Haven, Kara thinks that Sam can help her.  With the meaning of “All Along The Watchtower.”  Good luck with that. Also her life.  Her universe.  her everything. So she plugs him back in, and is going to deconstruct the song for him.  I can’t believe that somebody hasn’t already made an endless loop of it and played it for him.  Must I think of everything?  Music!!  It’s always music!

 

Adama has called for Tigh.  He’s come to the acceptance phase about Galactica’s death.  Which calls for drinks!  He calmly tells Tigh that Galactica is going to be stripped.  “We’re abandoning ship, Tigh.” At first, Tigh refuses, but Bill plays the friend card, which Tigh can never refuse.  “This ship never let us down, so we’re going to send off her in style.”

 

So they sit on Adama’s couch, paint still on his pants, and they toast the Battlestar Galactica.  You should, too.

 

Islanded in a stream of stars

Everything ever has ended so far

All you can do is be who you are

Islanded in a stream of stars

[mcs0083]

Where r u getting these Empy?

[Emperor]

It is linked in last review before the one I just posted.  I love their write ups.

[mcs0083]

Oh

Thanks

Yeah I like them a lot to

[Emperor]

So how many of the characters die next week?  Are you alright with them ending the show like this (BSG going into some suicide mission)?  Are they going to find a home?

 

 

[mcs0083]

In the end I believe that death may be the only home left for those going on the mission, and I think they know that.

[Emperor]

It’s right there in the title:  “Part 1.”  Of course this was going to be all setup for next week’s final confrontation, so, knowing that was our expectation, Ron Moore went on a bit of different route.  Here’s the thing: it doesn’t necessarily take an apocalypse caused by Sexy Killer Robots to make life totally suck.  Life can do that all on its own, as we shall see.

 

Edward James Olmos gets to do the previouslies, which are:

    •    Starbuck found her own dead body on Earth, which sucks, and after making the mistake, or “mistake,” of confessing her deadness to Gaius Baltar, he outs her.

    •    Samuel T. Anders gets a bullet to the brain, and Starbuck, having been given the transcription to “All Along the Watchtow--  Is anybody paying attention?  Is there anybody who is watching this last batch of episodes who is a NEW viewer of Battlestar Galactica?  Because DO NOT start here. Start with the mini-series, for frak’s sake. Sheesh! 

 

Right.  Because they’ve been messing with the opening sequence all season, this time, the previousies go directly into the opening credits --

 

(39,516 survivors in search of a home.  Home.)

 

-- which skip the poundy-drum spoiler montage, and instead start with a God’s (or, Gods’) eye view of an entire galaxy.  Shots of water hitting water and a bird on a ledge are interspersed with a slow zoom into a beautiful blue planet.  Not Earth.  Caprica.

 

Caprica City 

Before the Fall

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, before the final battle that determines the fate of humanity and cylonity, it’s time for some origin stories.  A look back at the idyllic life our heroes lived on Caprica before being nuked by the Sexy Killer Robots from outer space.  Because those lives?  Not so idyllic. Either that, or "Before the Fall" means late Summer, when the temperatures have gone down but the days are still nice and long.

 

While it’s a bit jarring – with only a few exceptions, Battlestar Galactica has always relentlessly moved forward, meting out the pre-apocalypse flashbacks on a need-to-know basis, probably mindful of the fact that the consensus Worst. Episode.  Ever.  (the infamous “Black Market”)  revolved around a retconny Caprica-based flashback that they were trying to use for a thematic comparison to a present situation – opening this episode with 15 minutes of flashback works tremendously.

 

For one thing, we never get the feeling that we’re suddenly venturing into Lost territory: that the apocalypse was somehow a good thing for any of these people.  In fact, we also see that – cylons or no – none of these people’s lives were in a place where they were all that happy in the first place.  Would they have preferred these lives to the, you know, End of The World?  Duh.  But the doesn't make them happy. 

 

Hey look!  That’s Bill Adama!  And he’s wearing a suit!  He’s also not too happy, because he’s listing his credentials (“billions of cubits” this, “thousands of lives” that) to a doughy white guy in a suit, and the doughy white guy ignores Adama’s awesomeness and says “It’s one hour of your life.  Look sometimes, there are things you just gotta do.”  I’ve been using that same argument with Rox about spending all weekend writing these endless recaps, and she gives me the same skeptical look that Adama gives the doughy guy.

 

That’s all we see of Flashback Bill this week, and my guess is that “hour of your life,” isn’t a military obligation, but rather a civilian obligation – something to do with Zak, I’m guessing – because neither Flashback Bill nor the doughy guy were wearing uniforms.

 

Hey look!  It’s Dr. Gaius Baltar and a smoking hot blonde chick who’s about a foot taller than he is! In the back of a stretch limo!  Oh, and Baltar?  Is a pompous ass.  Plus ca change.  She's rubbing the inside of his thigh and he's saying things like “You’re a hooker?  I just thought I was doing great with you!”  His escort, in who knows how many usages of that word, calls him “Doctor,” and he says “you can call me Gaius.”  And then proceeds to confess that he forgot her name.  Niiiiice.  Instead getting mad, or even answering, she jumps right on top of him.  Since we didn't catch her name, let’s just call her “Body Six.”

 

(Sticklers might say, why not call her “Caprica Six?”  Because, Sticklers, “Caprica Six” was the honorific given to her by the other Cylons after she died in the nuclear attack.  And also, what’s up with this whole name business anyway?  They had a relationship, so at some point he would know it.)

 

Over the years, do you think that James Callis would pump his fist in the air when he first read any script that involved his being molested by Tricia Helfer?

 

However, before we can see yet another Baltar-Six sex scene, his cell phone rings, and he becomes immediately – and truly – concerned with the news that he’s hearing.  That’s weird: Baltar concerned.  He tells the person on the other side of the phone that he’ll be right there.

 

Hey look!  It’s Laura Roslin!  And she and her sisters have just finished throwing a baby shower!  She seems happy, though that might just be the champagne. She probably shouldn’t get used to it.

 

Hey look!  It’s Kara Thrace! Cooking dinner!  And guess who’s coming to dinner?  Natty dreadlock?  Nope, it’s Lee Adama!  Come to visit his brother Zak, and meet his brother’s girlfriend, Kara.  And the attraction between Lee and Kara is an instant live-wire jolt.  Fans of continuity might like the fact that the Eye of Jupiter is already painted on Kara’s wall, and Zak is played by the same actor who played him briefly in the very first season.  Hope he wasn’t waiting by the phone.

 

Lee and Zak seem incredibly nervous around each other.  Maybe because Lee has stolen Zak’s girlfriends in the past?  Or maybe because Zak is the apple of their father’s eye?  Or maybe they really don’t like each other all that much.  Sometimes, you just don’t like members of your family.

 

Especially when those people remind you of whom you used to be.  For example, Flashback Gaius has a crazy, bitter, invalid father – Julius -- who torments nurse after nurse after nurse.  In fact, Julius just stabbed the latest one with a steak knife, so she’s out of there.  She’s a Vegan, so she’s got to go home and blog about the fact that her problem wasn’t so much with being stabbed, but rather being stabbed with a knife that had once touched meat. 

 

As Baltar starts berating his father, Body Six walks in.  That gets his dad’s attention.  Baltar tries to shoo her back to the limo:  “go on, be a good hooker, and stay in the limo like I told you.”  Dad starts leering at her, while simultaneously talking about how Baltar is ashamed of his humble roots and his old father.  Baltar cranks up the anger, ineffectually striking his dad, which only increases the taunting.  Body Six looks utterly freaked up at the whole situation, no doubt thinking: “we are going to nuke you crazy frakkers SO hard!”

 

Eventually, Baltar has his driver take Body Six home, and decides to stay at home with dear old dad.

 

As predicted, Flashback Roslin’s happiness comes to a quick end: the Caprican Police knock on her door and inform her that her father and sisters were killed by a drunk driver.  Roslin responds with what I think might be the only false note in this entire episode:  she walks to a public fountain, wades in, and lets the water from the fountain fall upon her while she strikes a Jesus Christ pose.

 

We see the same shot of water falling on water that we saw while zooming into Caprica, and transition to a very slowly dripping IV.  We’re back on Galactica, and the IV is slowly dripping into the dying Laura Roslin. And, as we pan up to her vitals monitor, it flatlines, and she dies.

 

No. Not really, but I really thought that they were going there for a second.

 

Speaking of dying, the gutting of the Galactica is going apace, overseen by Lee Adama with sadness and compassion.  The last thing to go:  the thingamajiggies that help propel the Vipers into space, because they are the “heart" of Galactica, the thingamajiggies that provide it's major function.  Also, it’s a plot point. 

 

After the commercial, we see Bill Adama in his quarters packing stuff in boxes, which are helpfully labeled.  I guess that they’re hiring movers?  So if you need to reach him, the Admiral’s quarters are going to be Deck 74 of the Cylon Baseship.  However, be advised that his phones and email are going to be down for at least a week, because Cylon IT is really really backed up because of  this last-second move.

 

Life of Baltar.  Paulla (whose last name, according to Battlestar Wiki, is hilariously “Schaffer”) is excited: apparently some kind of tipping point has been reached in the number of Baltar’s followers, and Paulla thinks that Gaius should ask for representation in the government for him and his followers.  Gaius consults with Head Six, and she agrees with everything that Paulla says.  In fact, says Head Six, scarily: “Humanity’s final chapter is about to be written.  And you – you – will be its author.”  Yeahhhh, OK, creepshow.

 

Back on pre-Fall Caprica, Body Six is equally scary. Flashback Baltar has brought home another conquest or hooker or groupie, only to find Body Six just sitting in his front room.  If she acted like this while she was still alive, no wonder he pretty much took it in stride when she started appearing to him after she died.  Baltar is just about to call the cops when she says that she found a nice place for his cranky old dad to live.

 

Not only that, she insinuates that she, er “encouraged” his father to go live at the nice place in that special Body Six way.  On the whole, Gaius thinks that it’s a fair trade, probably glad that his dad got some, and is obviously impressed at how she pulled the whole thing off.  Not so impressed, however, that he sends the other girl home or anything.  I mean, c’mon, there are limits.  Nevertheless, we have the first glimmer of the ruthless way that Body Six gained Baltar’s trust enough that he gave her the launch codes.

 

I read some speculation that the nice place was essentially Puppy Lake, but it doesn’t make sense: she’s trying to build a relationship with Baltar – gain his trust -- and while he despises his father, I doubt that Baltar wants him dead.  So that’s too much of a risk for Body Six to take. 

 

On Galactica, in Sam’s Hybrid Haven, Kara has figured out something very, very important: Music is Math.  Sam, currently unplugged, has no comment.

 

In CIC:  Tigh tells Hoshi that Adama plans to fly the very last Viper that leaves Galactica.

 

In the Brig:  Karl Agathon and Galen Tyrol are discussing their twin Sexy Killer Robot lovers.  Specifically, they’re talking about trust.  As in “Should you trust a Sexy Killer Robot?"  Tyrol is currently agin’ it.  Because he’s trusted one again and again, and is – in his own words – “a frakkin’ idiot” -- for doing so.  Helo is currently pro-trust.  Because he just betrayed the trust of his Sexy Killer Robot by banging Tyrol’s Sexy Killer Robot.  Who then stole Helo’s child and spirited her to Cavil’s Holiday Camp. 

 

Has anybody noticed that Cavil’s Holiday Camp looks like a Basestar mated with a giant Space Starfish?  Or is that just me?  In any event, Cavil is mean and evil and has no truck with anybody who isn’t also mean and evil.  So he makes fun of Hera’s continual drawerings of dots – despite the fact that those dismissed dot drawerings  are probably the Key to Life, The Universe and Everything he’s so desperately seeking.  In other words, music!  It’s always music.

 

Oh, also, he’s about ready to have Simon do some kind of invasive thing to her, involving a drill.  Because he’s, you know, evil.  And she’s the key, and her DNA is going to unlock their future.  Or so he thinks.  Boomer is going along with all of this, but you can almost see her wavering.  Cavil can’t, of course, because he trusts her.

 

In the hallways of Galactica, Hot Dog is carrying his child, Nicolas, in one arm and a folder of pictures in another.  As Adama walks by in the other direction, the pictures fall on the floor, and Adama notices that they are from the Memorial Wall.  They’re pictures of pilots who died on Galactica.  But there are still a few pictures of others on the wall. Pictures of people that nobody cares about anymore.

 

Including, Adama soon discovers, a picture of Athena and Hera.  After thinking about that picture for a few minutes, Adama is suddenly infused with a purpose – or at least a question – rips the photo down from the wall and strides out.

 

Hangar Deck.  More like Haranguer Deck, because now it’s Baltar bothering Lee, asking for the Life of Baltar to be represented in the Government.  Lee’s having none of it; and instead rounds on Baltar for outing Kara as dead and stuff.  Baltar parries by pointing out that with Lee, it’s always about Kara, and asks for five minutes of his time.  Lee assents.

 

Sam’s Hybrid Haven.  Adama and Kara are talking about Kara’s discovery about the connection between music and math, but her inability to do anything about it.  Play Sam the godsdammed song, Kara!  The actual song! Adama  asks Kara if what Baltar said is true.  Kara says, yes, she knows what it’s like to be dead:  “I found my body and I burned it on Earth.  I don’t know what I am.”

 

Adama asks her to plug Sam back in, and then says:  “I know what you are.  You’re my daughter.  Don’t forget it.”  And they plug Sam straight into a flashback.

 

Hey, it’s Sam Anders!  In a locker room hot tub!  It’s pre-Fall Caprica and, he’s being interviewed by a blonde TV reporter about his mad pyramid skillz.  At first he starts up with the usual jock non-answers, but then suddenly veers off into more abstract territory; talking about his sport as more than an art than anything, and how he’s always looking for a Spaulding Gray Perfect Moment.

 

Which, yeah, is something that every athlete craves and understands, but hardly ever discusses and almost never reaches:  that perfect moment where mind and body are acting in concert almost like you’re some perfect combination of man and machine, and you can do anything, like pilot a spaceship.

 

As he’s talking, we flashforward to Sam the Hybrid -- not quite yet the pilot of Galactica -- spouting poetry about perfection and Kara.  Which he does a lot, apparently.  Adama, who is really more into detective stories, just wants to ask him a question.  Or have Kara ask him a question, as the case may be.  We don’t actually see the question, but it’s apparently a combination of “should/can we go find Hera?”  I’m wondering if “duh” is in a Hybrid’s vocabulary.

 

Lee is giving Baltar that five minutes of alone time Baltar requested.  Baltar starts talking like one of his wireless services: the end of Galactica represents the end of the life they once had and the beginning of a new life, and he wants that new life to be good for everybody.  One of the keys to a good life for everybody:  Life of Baltar having representation in the government.  Of course,  Baltar isn’t doing this for himself, he’s doing it for the people.

 

Yeahhhh surrre.  Lee doesn’t trust him.  He assumes that Gaius Baltar always has a selfish angle in everything he does; challenges Baltar to give him one example of a time where Baltar did something unselfishly.  Baltar can’t, and in fact has enough self-knowledge to say “I wouldn’t trust me, either.”  Besides, he still has all of those guns.

 

Back on pre-Fall Caprica City, Flashback Lee is piss drunk. We don’t know exactly why.  Is it because he’s attracted to yet another one of his brother’s girlfriends?  Or is because after his brother died?  Or maybe it’s because of a fight with that mystery woman from “Black Market.” 

 

In any event, no matter the reason, Lee Adama is falling down, bottle smashing, pigeon-chasing drunk.  Good thing about that last one, because there is a pigeon in his apartment.  Which of course, represents — I dunno, a pigeon in his apartment.  Lee chases it around his apartment with a broom, smashing more shit up in the process.  He doesn’t seem so happy.

 

There’s been some speculation – fear, really – that drunk Flashback Lee is the responsible for the death of Flashback Laura’s family.  I don’t think so, for three reasons:

  1.    Like I said earlier, this isn’t Lost, which is all about connecting seemingly disparate characters prior to their mutual disaster.  And we aren’t told that the timelines of all of the flashbacks are even close.  BTW, I love Lost, especially now with all of the time-travel, but it's a completely different show.

  2.    The Caprica City Police said that the driver was in stable condition, which means that they – and, by extension, Flashback Laura – know who the driver is, and it would be retconny beyond belief to have it be Lee and never ever been mentioned previously.

  3.    Just because he was drunk in his flashback and her family was killed by a drunk driver  in her flashback doesn’t mean anything: people are always drunk on this show.

 

Haranguer Deck.  Wordlessly, Adama and Starbuck spread a huge roll of red tape right down the middle of it, and Adama asks for everybody’s attention.  He’s all: “Remember when Hera was kidnapped?  And I cried a lot instead of going after her?  I’ve decided that I was a fool to cry. ”

 

Then we cut to a montage of various cast members spreading the word that Adama wants to go on one more last crazy mission:

    •    Hot Dog telling the other other pilots.

    •    Dr Cottle finding out from one of his nurses.  In front of Laura Roslin, who flatlines and dies.  No, just kidding.

    •    Ellen discussing it with the ever-skeptical Tory, and declaring that the Five are going.  Just like that?

    •    Lee’s on the phone with someone or other expositioning like crazy: it’s going to be volunteers only, and even the mutineers are invited.  In Hell, Gaeta is all, man, I coulda fought some more cylons after all!

    •    In CIC, Tigh says that they’re going to put Galactica on auto-pilot (or whatever), because everybody is supposed to head down to the Haranguer Deck to declare their choice.  It would be hilarious if Cavil showed up to attack now!

    •    In their quarters, Helo and Athena argue.  While she’s still utterly despondent and thinks it’s too late, he’s hopeful for a rescue.  Because he’s Helo, and that’s what he does.

 

In Sickbay, Laura Roslin has a flashback. It’s been three months since the accident that claimed her sisters and father, and Flashback Laura is on the phone – with someone or other – who wants her to get back in the game.  The dating game.  Either that, or join the Adar campaign, which is just ramping up, I guess.  Those are her only choices?  How about going to see a nice game of Pyramid? 

 

Since Flashback Laura Roslin hates politics, she makes a deal to go on a blind date.  With Sean Allison?  WTF?  Should I know this name?  Too much confusion. Even Roslin is confused, causing her to flashforward to Sickbay, where she flatlines, and dies.  Just kidding, instead, we see her put on her battle wig.

 

Haranguer Deck.  Adama is standing on a ladder, flanked by Starbuck and Lee, and speechifies to a very full house.  Here’s the deal: he’s going after Hera; on a Raptor by himself if necessary, but he’d really rather take Galactica.  So whaddya say, kids?  It’s so crazy that it just might work.  Though in reality, it’s probably sure death.  So there’s that.

 

Then he points out the red tape line running right down the middle of deck, and as everybody parts to reveal the Red Line of Sure Death, Adama says that volunteers should go to the Starbuck side of the Line and everybody else should go to the Lee side.  Adama actually says “starboard” and “port,” but naturally, Starbuck represents the crazy, hopeless cause, and Lee represents the safer, more rational choice. 

 

(Beat . . .)

 

(Beat . . .)

 

(Beat . . .)

 

Adama, in his most hoarse and commanding:  “MAKE YOUR CHOICE!” 

 

Lee Adama steps across the Red Line of Sure Death.  At that moment, he becomes Apollo again.  And so much for representing the safe choice.

 

The Tighs step across.  As if there were any question.

 

Hot Dog steps across.  Cottle steps—not so fast, there, Doc.  Adama stops him and says: “We can’t afford to lose a doctor.  Go on back, Sherman, thank you.”  But the “thank you” is drowned out by everybody watching going: “Hey, Cottle’s first name is Sherman!!”

 

Caprica Six steps across the Red Line of Sure Death, all the while looking straight at Adama.

 

Tyrol grabs Tory and they step across. 

 

And now people are walking back and forth all up and down the Red Line of Sure Death, making their choice one way or another.

 

Some people, of course, didn’t have to move, because they just happened to be on the volunteer side when Adama gave his speech.  Helo and Athena, for example.  Other people didn’t have to move, because they just happened to be on the wussy side when Adama gave his speech.

 

Like Gaius Baltar.  You can see the struggle in his face, especially after Caprica walks across – can he do the right, unselfish thing just this once?  Or is he, you know, Gaius Baltar, and cannot change; as both Lee Adama and Caprica Six have pointed out in the past couple of weeks.  The answer? “B. Cannot Change.”

 

Now nearly everbody has made their choice, and that’s probably a good thing, because here comes Laura Roslin, hobbling through the crowd.  Adama spots her and glides over to escort her to the proper side of the RLoSD.  As she walks by Baltar, he can’t even look at her.

 

In the end, only about a quarter of people have volunteered, but they consist of nearly all of the characters we know by sight, except for Baltar and Cottle, but I can’t imagine they won’t play a part.  Especially since that you know and I know that to fulfill the vision of The Opera House, Gaius Baltar is going to have to have a last-second change of heart and go along on this mission.  Right?  Or is that prophecy as much bullshit as Pythia’s turned out to be?

 

A recon Raptor jumps near Cavil’s Holiday Camp, and the pilots – Racetrack and Skulls, both newly released from prison for participating in the mutiny – discover something very interesting about it: Cavil has parked it near a Black Hole.  “But that’s impossible!” says The Doctor.  Oh wait, wrong show. 

 

Is the Hole as black as Cavil’s heart?

 

We’re going to find out, because there is one safe jumping place near Cavil’s Holiday Camp – a little bit too near, and probably where Cavil is going to have all his guns pointed it.  Doesn’t matter: they’ve made their decision, and while they know that it’s going to be as dangerous as all hell, that’s where they’re going.  Now, they just need a plan.

 

“Let’s get to work,” says Adama.

 

To be continued.

 

One more week.  Two more hours.

 

 

[Sirayn]

So how many of the characters die next week?  Are you alright with them ending the show like this (BSG going into some suicide mission)?  Are they going to find a home?

 

My predictions ...

 

* The scene in the Opera House is finally played out. I assume the Opera House is a Cylon projection - we already know (see: Boomer) that Cylons can invite other people into their projections.

 

* The Galactica is destroyed and Roslin dies, obviously. For either to survive would be a copout at this point.

 

* I'm in two minds about Adama senior. I wonder if he'll try to go out with them, since they are the two loves of his (current) life, but one of the show's themes has been carrying on despite everything - the exodus from the Twelve Colonies, Lee as Pegasus commander being prepared to abandon everyone he loves on New Caprica to continue leading the fleet to Earth, etc. Although on second thoughts, most of these decisions were subverted and/or worked around.

 

* Gaius "weasel" Baltar does his one unselfish act, which I'm thinking is self-sacrifice, given all the Jesus imagery. He probably sacrifices himself to save Hera - I'm basing this on Head Six's comments about Baltar's role being to protect Hera. Bonus Jesus points if Baltar is resurrected by the Final Five's "organic memory transfer" technology, Cylon downloading.

 

* The "end of humanity" referred to (repeatedly) by Head Six to Baltar and all the hybrids to Starbuck is a symbolic end of humanity as a separate race. Humanity and Cylon form a joint civilisation, breaking the cycle of violence the Final Five were so worked up about. Hera, who's been spoken of so often as "the shape of things to come" and "the first of a new generation of God's children", is just the first of many little hybrid babies. I wonder if downloading becomes commonplace as well, or whether everyone chooses mortality as a reflection of the rebel Cylons' decision to be mortal like humans.

 

* Lee survives to be the President of the new Colonies, but Starbuck kicks the bucket.

 

* Head Six and Head Baltar are the actual angels of an actual God. There is really no other in-universe explanation for everything that's happened. Baltar pointing out the right place to bomb at random in The Hand of God? That's divine intervention right there.

 

I forget who suggested that the notes to All Along the Watchtower are numbers which form a star map leading the rag-tag fleet to a new inhabitable planet, the Earth of prophecy, but I like that idea.

[RobertAlexWillis]

So ... um ... apparently Jimi Hendrix is God, but he doesn't really like the name?

 

For a show that built itself on surprises, and sucked me in after "Earth" turned out to be a lifeless waste ... it seems it was entirely predictable in the end after all.  What a shame.  Feel free to lambaste me now, fans of all stripes.

 

Boyo says he told me so.

[Majsju]

So ... um ... apparently Jimi Hendrix is God, but he doesn't really like the name?

 

 

 

Rather Dylan than Hendrix, I would say. I can not really see God doing covers ;D

 

It will take some time for me to fully process this. For the most part, I liked the final, but there are a few things that bugs me. Maybe especially the opera house. What the frak? All that build-up, and then...

[Liathiana]

Here's a link to a news article with common questions and the answers from Ron Moore and other people.

 

Spoilers!

[RobertAlexWillis]

Rather Dylan than Hendrix, I would say. I can not really see God doing covers

 

Meh, I just wanted God with dreadlocks.  Besides, what was behind the show sounded a lot more like the cover, to me, and I think I saw video of Hendrix when they were playing it behind the "our real world here come the Cylons from Japan" montage.  Maybe I didn't ...

 

And yes, the whole Opera House bit was disappointing.  It almost seemed as if ... God's ability to manipulate events became ... clumsy and overt.  I don't know.  I just know I sat there at the end, sighed, and felt ... less than rewarded.  Maybe my expectations were unrealistic.

 

At least Cavill took the true nihilist's way out.

[Luckers]

How seriously dissapointing. I mean could they have ruined everything on a cheesier note? I think not. Silly me, silly me.

 

*vomits a little in his mouth*

 

Realistically, for a show that got its viewership for its harsh realism, the cutesy way out was insulting. It didn't really address any of the remaining issues--other than to pull the faith card--and lets be serious--Lee's big plan at the end was utterly unsustainable. Not only would no one agree--and comments about how surprising it was that people did agree does not address that--but they wouldn't have been able to do it full stop.

 

So, so dissapointing. I want to slap someone till the world feels good again.

[Werthead]

The perennial annoynace with BSG is that it often takes the logical storytelling course but does not actually give the logical reasons why it should be done. Even after the mutiny, which might not have happened if Adama had actually explained his reasoning a bit more clearly and if Roslin had recovered from her freak-out, they keep doing so.

 

So, Adama explains the decision to assault the Colony as, "We need to recover the child Hera." Right. And not because if you destroy the Colony and wipe out Cavil, his people will not be able to pursue humanity and the rebel Cylons across the Galaxy any more? And you should it do it now whilst you have an expendable battlestar which is going to fall apart by itself in a few weeks anyway? If they'd expanded on this, probably more of the whole crew would have agreed to go along to visit some payback on the Cylons, especially if they knew ahead of time they had their own Centurion assault force going along with them.

 

With them throwing away their technology, it is true that most of it won't be useful for much longer. As shown on New Caprica, they couldn't move much beyond a tent city. Without a basic infrastructure built up by civilisation over a long period of time, it's simply impossible to keep a high technology civilisation running for very long. The ships themselves could provide power for a while, or serve as a place to live (as Colonial One did on New Caprica), but the whole point is that people want to get out under the open skies and out of the tin boxes. Some people have said getting rid of their medicine is foolish, but their supplies are limited and they have no way of getting more (there's no evidence of a working pharmaceutical industry within the Fleet). By trying to build a city, by chaining themselves to their ships again they could have kept a modicum of civilisation going for a few years, but sooner or later the power would have run out, the old supplies would have run out and they'd be reduced to going native anyway.

 

Now if the show had actually said that, or shown perhaps the Colonials living off their ships for a while and the ships gradually getting stripped for parts and then vanishing, that could have worked. Instead they had Apollo present it as a very dubious ideological notion that the whole Fleet went along with for the sheer hell of it.

 

Having said that, I actually quite enjoyed the finale. My biggest annoyance wasn't the above, it was when the CGI team forgot that a Cylon Heavy Raider had totally trashed the museum in the starboard flight pod back in the opening episode of Season 2, and here they showed it completely intact.

[Luckers]

It doesn't quite work that way unfortunately. There is no way 38,000 people born to an advanced society could survive thrown into being a hunter gatherer society. Any way you cut it a lot of them were going to die over the next ten years. Especially without medical care.

 

 

[RobertAlexWillis]

Well, if Hera really was "mitochondrial Eve", then maybe they did fail, completely.  I mean, according to "science" none of their genes really made it to us. Perhaps they all died out and Hera was adopted by some clan who could actually teach her to survive.

 

Of course, that doesn't jibe with the rest of the "half-hints" given, (Galen going to the ancestral "Gaelic" location?  a hundred thousand years before there was anyone there?  that was a little sad), or the generally happy tone to the ending.  Although I would appreciate the irony of so many of them surviving to "dream Earth" and then failing to integrate or even survive because of their inability to really adapt to an absurd proposition.  Its almost as delicious as the irony of a dreadlocked ganja-smoking God who can only cover the most important piece of music in the universal consciousness.  Take that Maj/Dylan!    ;D

 

 

 

[Majsju]

Robert, you seem to believe Hendrix was Bob Marley ;)

[RobertAlexWillis]

Oh yeah?  Well ... crap.

 

Can I plead extreme disappointmentally induced confusion?  Probably not, huh ...

 

Anyway, I didn't like it!  I'm going to go read something to make myself feel smart again ...  :'(

[Cadsuane]

May I suggest an author you should try? His name is Goodkind... Terry Goodkind.  ;D

 

*runs*

[Luckers]

Haha, its funny because he's going to kill you.

 

Seriously though, there were so many things wrong with this episode.

 

The first is the premise of the attack--even if you buy into Werthead's logic of that only being the states reason it doesn't explain why so many humans would risk themselves. Yes, the Cylons would have reason, but Hera isn't significant to the humans. And the sad thing is that its just poor form--despite the whole God-Music thing (which was just plain ham-fisted) the rest of the fleet found 'earth'. So alright, why not have them find 'earth' first, and have the attack to be to stop some Cylon way of finding that. It wouldn't have even taken alot of thinking.

 

And then there is everyone just plain agreeing to having their technology destroyed--just because people want to get out under the open sky is no reason to revert sociologically. It goes against everything the show set up about these people, and their selfishness--its well established, and then they suddenly what? Get over it. Become hippies? And consider, there are very good reasons why society evolved. The whole 30 years life expectancy for one. A vast majority of the people to settle would have died in the decade following their landing, no matter how far they spread out. They did not have enough trained people able to gather food--without a solid agricultural effort supported by their machinary their society was gonna get thinned fast. And lets not mention the medicine. Laura Roslin was not the only sick person in the fleet.

 

And what of the threat of the Cylons? Yes they destroyed the Colony, but there are still hundreds of base ships out there--one would think New Caprica would have remained in the minds of the settlers. So what? They just casually send away their only protection. They've been on the brink of extinction for years and they just shrug and go 'but we're hippies now, its all cool'. Really?

 

And Cavill? Seriously, everything that man does is routed in self-interest... so then he just kills himself. Wow.

 

They broke the cardinal rule. They forced their characters into doing something for the story rather than letting their characters drive the story. It was a betrayal of everything they'd built up.