BSG newbie recaps – The Mary Sue

I have never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. But I made a pledge to myself that this is the year I will. And so I, a BSG virgin, was thinking I’d watch show for the very first time and write about it here as I go along. Because I’ve been reliably informed that it will give me feels nigh impossible to contain. And I want to see what all the hoopla is about, darnit.

Here’s what I thought of the miniseries, beginning with a little disclosure in the form of Things I (Think I) Know About Battlestar Galactica:

Starbuck is awesome and genderswapped. Roslin is awesome and non-genderswapped.
Earth has been destroyed by the Cylons, which are robots that look like robots except when they look like humans. And what’s left of humanity lives on a spaceship. I think that’s right… maybe?
I will hate every single character at some point or another. (So says Susana.)
Something about John Hodgman?
TOASTERS. FRAKKING. SO SAY WE ALL. AIRLOCK.
Lee Adama has daddy issues and at some point wears a towel.
Baltar is my favorite character. (Everyone has favorite characters of shows they haven’t watched, right?)

If I were to assign Battlestar Galactica a spirit meme, it would be “that escalated quickly.” There was a war between the Cylons and the 12 colonies—no mention of Earth, so I’m zero for one on my assumptions so far—where the Cylons were able to take advantage of the Internet, basically, to mess humanity up. And the only ship that doesn’t have the Internet is the Galctica (how do they get their cat videos?), commanded by Commander “I’m too old for this s***” Adama. He’s really paranoid about the Cylons attacking again, enough so that he refuses to put advanced tech on the Galactica. Gee, I wonder if that’ll be relevant later on?

Also, the Galactica is being turned into a museum, because symbolism.

I have no feels so far about Adama the older, who’s basically just craggy and authoritative and… meh. He’s alright. Does no one besides Roslin get that he lied about there being an Earth for the survivors of the Cylon attack to go to? Guy has a good poker face, but it’s kind of freaking obvious that there isn’t actually a deus ex terra. Wishful thinking on the colonists’ part shouldn’t be able to keep them from realizing it for that long. He’d better have a backup plan for when they do.

Adama the younger gives me emotions, many of them centered around the fact that I want to slap him. (No one is happy that your brother died, Lee. Stop it with the blame game.) He’s a pretty interesting character so far, even if I’m a bit worried I’ll get sick of the “requisite Daddy issues” plotline if they continue to lean on it as hard as they do here.

Speaking of interesting characters: I think I have a favorite, and it’s not Resident Eventual Woobie Gaius Baltar. It’s Gerard Argent from Teen Wolf Colonel Tigh, who has one more eye than I expected. From the moment Adama went off course during his retirement speech and Tigh made this face, I knew I’d found my BSG spirit animal. I want that to be a recurring theme: Adama does something inspiring, and Tigh makes a face like he got a whiff or something foul. Dude’s a psychotic, curmudgeonly SOB with more issues than Batman. I love him.

As for least favorite: Billy and Dee ~~Williams~~. It’s not that I particularly dislike them. But their cuteness and uplifting ~we are the hope for humanity~ vibe kind of sticks out like a sore thumb. If this goes on, I might want them to be airlocked. (Though Adama’s “I want them to have children!” moment was pretty unintentionally funny. I think my face mirrored Tigh’s on that one.)

Lieutenant Gaeta’s adorable, as is his little mancrush on Baltar I swear, he stopped just short of asking for his autograph. I sure hope nothing happens to him. (Sorry I’ve jinxed you, Gaeta.)

Starbuck and Roslin are both awesome, so that’s one more I got right. I see in Roslin and Lee Adama a brOTP for the ages. I want them to gang up on Papa Adama from time to time just to make his life difficult. Hey, humanity’s trapped in space. Gotta make your fun where you can.

Baltar bugs me—if you’re going to be a jackass, at least be up front about it like Tigh is. He’s such a snivelling weenie. Jesus.

Boomer… Boomer’s a Cylon. Huh. Though, based on what Six said, she’s a Cylon sleeper agent who doesn’t know she’s a Cylon? I like where this is going. Speaking of Six, I love how she’s the only one who wears futuristic clothes. I don’t know why, I just do. “I’m a robot, dammit, and this is the future. I’m not dressing boring. Don’t leave your baby alone with me, I will break their neck. Clean my shoes, Baltar.”

Seriously, why did the mother turn her back on her baby in the middle of a crowd with a strange lady right beside the stroller? That was a bit ham-handed in terms of establishing how scaaaary Six is. I’m more intrigued by the idea of religious robots. And religious robots hunting what’s left of humanity across space and time? Sign me up.

Speaking of Boomer, I could swear I’ve seen pictures of that co-pilot of hers, the one who was stranded on Caprica, from later episodes. But how would he get back to the fleet? Do the Cylons kidnap him or something? I’m so confused.

Final thoughts: I really like it so far, particularly its less campy, bombastic take on the destruction of humanity. That said, there were moments where it got a little too self-importantly srs bsns for my tastes. I generally dislike it when shows take themselves too seriously, so that might be a problem. Then again, when they were making the miniseries there were no plans for a show yet (so Susana tells me, and I trust her on things BSG-related), so maybe the concentration of drama will be a bit less when they have more hours to work with?

But really, that’s a minor quibble. I can see why people love this show so far. (Though I’ve been informed by a BSG-fan friend of mine that most people don’t like Tigh?! Is that true? That can’t be true. He’s awesome; what happens to make people dislike him? No! Don’t tell me. I’ll get there.)

In an effort to avoid spoilers, comments on this post have been locked. However, Jill and Susana will be reading comments over at our Facebook page. So if there’s anything you’d like to say in response to this post, head on over this way.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

It’s been five days since the miniseries ended, and things aren’t looking too good for the last survivors of humanity.

Turns out humanity’s escape was short-lived, as the pilot episode has them needing to make a faster-than-light (FTL) jump every 33 minutes to avoid those frakking Cylons, who keep popping up like deadly, unwhackable whack-a-moles. The upshot is that our heroes have no idea how long the Cylons will be on their tail for and no ability to pull something fancy and lose them, since after five days everybody’s sleep-deprived and spaced out. (Spaced out… because they’re in space… Oh, shut it.)

Adama handles this admirably (He is an admiral, after all… OK, OK, I’ll stop). He’s a good military leader and spends the whole episode being authoritative, basically. I’m going to get really bored with that if it keeps on, but hey, we’re only on the pilot. Surely there’s some character development incoming, right?

Gaius, meanwhile, is completely freaked out for the entire episode, twitching and sweating and generally being off his rocker, which I want to say is only 10% sleep deprivation at most. The rest is just Gaius being Gaius. Oh, and the fact that he has a possibly-a-hallucination Cylon in his head. The timing of this crazy-making Cylon chase is rather convenient for him, as he can slip up and talk to Six out loud and people will just assume he’s a bit weird and doesn’t handle stress well, as opposed to what they would think, which is that he needs all sharp instruments kept away from him.

I wonder what’s going to happen when things settle down on the Galactica. He’s going to have to get a handle on internalizing his interactions with Six, otherwise everyone’s going to think he’s a complete loony. President Roslin already suspects. Woman’s got a good head on her shoulders.

Speaking of Six, in this episode she played what seemed to be quite the mind-game with Gaius. It started when Billy (a little bit less cutesy and therefore more tolerable in this episode) told President Roslin that a Dr. Amarak wanted to talk with her abut how the Cylons managed to overcome colonial defenses. This turns Gaius’ paranoia up to 11, as Amarak worked with him at the Ministry of Defense and suspected him of some shadiness. But Dr. Amarak, it turns out, was on a civilian vessel called the Olympic Carrier, which was left behind on the second FTP jump of the episode and was presumably destroyed by the Cylons. (Dee didn’t notice that it hadn’t checked in. I wasn’t her hugest fan in the miniseries, but damn, I felt for her here. She’s growing on me.)

Six proceeds to go all religious robot on Baltar, explaining that God must have been looking out for him. Baltar says it’s just a coincidence and that there isn’t any God, after which the Olympic Carrier—with Dr. Amarak on it—miraculously rejoins the fleet. Oops. You done pissed off God, Baltar.

Gaius snaps big-time, explaining in a panic that the Olympic Carrier or one of its passengers is probably being tracked by Cylons and should therefore be destroyed. For all that Gaius’ motives here are selfish—he wants to stop the meeting between Amarak and Roslin—he’s not wrong. There’s something shady going on here. The captain of the Olympic Carrier explains that the Cylons just let them go, which makes no sense. The ship ignores orders not to approach the fleet. And then there’s the fact that Lee, doing a flyby, sees nothing but empty windows: No humans.

Roslin has to decide whether the ship should be destroyed, and Gaius is sure that she’ll say no. Six explains that this is God’s punishment, that if he repents and accepts God Roslin will decide to fire on the ship and Dr. Amarak will be killed. He does repent, and everything goes the way Six said it would.

The dynamic between Six and Gaius was the most interesting part of this episode for me. I wonder if Six somehow engineered the whole thing—if not the Cylons chasing humanity down, which they might have done anyway, then at least the part with Amarak and the Olympic Carrier—to get Baltar to accept the Cylon God and, therefore, her power over him. Maybe the whole thing was a coincidence, like Baltar thought at first. Or maybe there actually is a Cylon God that’s really hands-on when it comes to humanity. But I don’t think so. I think Six is playing a more active role than she seems. I predict she’s semi-Stockholming Gaius something fierce.

Some other stuff went on in this episode, too: It’s looking like Helo, stranded on Caprica in the miniseries, was indeed kidnapped by Cylons, just like I speculated he might be. (Huzzah!) He was chased by Cylons, including Six, and then “rescued” by Cylon!Boomer, whom he thinks is the real deal. I can’t imagine they’d let him get back to the fleet, seeing as he’d ask Boomer why she was still on Caprica and there’d be some Marx brothers-level misunderstandings. But what could they want him for? We just don’t know. (Well, you do, if you’ve watched BSG already.)

Actual!Boomer (or, well, she’s still a Cylon, so ThinksShe’sHuman!Boomer) reacts rather well to the whole sleep deprivation situation. She’s tired, she explains to Starbuck and Lee, but it just doesn’t affect her all that much. Starbuck jokes that she must be a Cylon. Oh, dramatic irony.

And what’s my favorite curmudgeonly ol’ bastard up to? Tigh almost makes Dee cry, yelling at her for her role in the Olympic Carrier debacle. Everything he said to her is true—we’re all tired, but everyone still has to do their jobs—he was just being a jerk about it. As he explains later in the episode, if the crew doesn’t hate the XO it means they’re not doing their job. Tigh must be the best XO ever, then. He looks out for Captain Adama, letting him take a ten-minute break that was technically Tigh’s. I was feeling a bit warm and fuzzy toward him until the scene came where he said the whole kerkluffle with the Cylons left him feeling alive—that, not in so many words, he enjoyed it. Thank the Lords of Kobol. He wouldn’t be Tigh if he weren’t a bit psycho and completely unapologetic about it. “Warm and fuzzy” just doesn’t fit.

The episode ends with a tiny bit of good news—though over 1,300 people died, one was born, the first since the Cylon attack. I think I have a good enough handle on the show at this point not to expect the optimism to last.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

Because it’s really, really hard not to push “Next Episode,” after watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica, this week I watched the second, third, and fourth episodes of BSG‘s first season. And it still took some willpower to stop there. Have things gotten any less doom and gloom?

NOPE.

Episode 2: Water

I get the feeling that every episode’s going to give me feels about one particular character, and this time it’s Cylon sleeper agent Boomer’s turn. She wakes up covered in water with an explosive in her bag, and when she goes to return it she notices several other explosives are missing. Then, a few minutes later, the water tanks on the Galactica explode, shooting 60% of their water supply off into the sky, which is really awful, because some ships only have enough water to last them two days. We know Boomer did it, but we also know she doesn’t know she did it. Poor Cylon.

I feel bad for Sharon’s boyfriend, Chief Mechanic Tyrol, too (one miniseries and two episodes in, and I finally remember his name!), as he’s roped into the whole thing when Sharon goes to him after waking up. He’s convinced that someone must have framed her, though Sharon seems unsure that Tyrol believes her innocence. There’s a hearing where Tyrol, whose team examined the tanks after they blew, presents his findings on how it was sabotaged, and he’s so nervous and unsubtle about hiding something that I’m surprised Admiral Adama doesn’t think he blew the tanks himself. Something tells me Tyrol is too good a person to last long on this show. (Then again, though BSG is depressing, I don’t know if it’s one of those shows that kills off its characters willy-nilly. I guess I’ll see.)

Tyrol wasn’t the only one being hilariously awkward this episode: There’s also Baltar. Naturally Adama assumes a Cylon agent is responsible for blowing up the water tanks, so he asks his resident Cylon expert how that whole Cylon screening test thing is going. Baltar’s (paraphrased) response: “Uh… .buh… Cy—Cylon screening?! Er. That was two episodes agin, I thought you’d forgotten about that.” But Adama, like an elephant, does not forget, and furthermore he’s suspicious of Baltar. Maybe because Baltar’s acting really freaking suspicious. Find out if an acting coach survived the Cylon attack. You need help.

Adama assigns Gaeta to be Baltar’s assistant, which is a big problem what with Baltar never actually having invented the screening system Gaeta’s been tasked with helping him implement. Gaeta’s eventually going to pick up on that, no matter how blinded he is by his status as Baltar’s #1 Fanboy. Seriously, he follows him around like a puppy. At one point Baltar says he doesn’t have any money for a poker game, and in the background you see Gaeta go for his pocket to give him some money of his own. And then Baltar blows him off to play card and flirt with Starbuck. It’s Chin up, Gaeta. He’ll notice you eventually. And then probably kill you.

Sharon and her non-Helo pilot buddy (not enough episodes in for me to remember his name yet; he’s just the vampire from the American Being Human) are tasked with scanning one of the nearby planets for water, and in what’s an emotionally brutal scene to watch, Sharon’s scanner shows that there is water, but she says there isn’t. The Cylon part of her brain (well, I guess her whole brain is the Cylon part of her brain, but you get the idea) is trying to take over to doom the fleet to die of thirst, but she’s resisting. She knows something’s wrong with her, but she doesn’t know what it is. She orders another sweep and this time manages to get out that yes, there is water, the fleet is saved. Oh, and there’s an explosive on her ship, too. I guess the plan was that she’d blow up the ship if things went wrong (which they did), only she couldn’t make herself do it? Or something? Not quite sure what the plan was with that bomb, to be honest.

Other miscellaneous things from this episode:

Caprica Boomer and Helo pick up a military signal on Helo’s radio. They’re going to set off to find it, Helo having no idea that, if any of the military did manage to go underground, he’s leading the Cylons right to them.
Adama says finding a planet with water is like finding a needle in a haystack, to which Tigh responds that, no, it’s actually like finding a grain of sand on a beach. Tigh also grumpily asks someone if he’s ever witnessed a death-by-dehydration. Tigh. You’re not helping, dude.
Roslin asks Lee to be her personal military advisor. Wuh-oh. Drama incoming.

Episode 3: Bastille Day

Last episode belonged to Sharon, and this one belongs to Lee. Too bad for him, because it’s not really that good.

To get the water Sharon found to the Galactica they’ll need 1,000 men to work on the planet under very dangerous conditions. Wouldn’t you know it, there’s a prison ship in the fleet with 1,500 convicts who were headed for parole before Caprica went bye-bye, so they can’t be all bad. Roslin doesn’t like the idea of using the prisoners as slave labor, so Lee suggests volunteering to work would earn them “freedom points” (good God, that is so cheesy) toward their release. Admiral Adama doesn’t like the plan but eventually lets Lee—along with Billy, Dee, and maintenance staff member Cally—go to the ship to propose the system to the prisoners.

It doesn’t go well. One of the prisoners is Tom Zarek, a freedom fighter/terrorist who wants Roslin’s government overthrown to make way for free elections. He engineers a prison riot and takes the Battlestar folks captive. A rescue squad, led by Starbuck, sneaks onto the ship, and they’re going to kill Zarek until—surprise!—Lee saves his life. He really only wants to die in a blaze or glory, Lee explains, but he can prove that he really wants democracy by standing down and telling the prisoners to cooperate with the water mining project. Then, in seven months, when the term held by Roslin’s predecessor is up, they will hold free elections.

Naturally, Lee’s snap decision makes both Adama and Roslin a bit peeved, the former because he gave Starbuck direct orders to kill Zarek, and the latter because Lee’s gone and committed her to an election without so much as a by your leave.

There’s a bunch of talk about how Lee has to “pick a side”—is he serving Roslin or Adama? Is he on the side of the military or civilians? Even Zarek says something about “picking a side” at one point, which, considering he doesn’t know anything about the Adama-Lee-Roslin drama triangle, is laying it on a bit thick on the writers’ part. And then, after the prison ship debacle, each “side” is ticked off at him for not being on their side enough.

But he was working for both sides! Or, rather, there are no sides to work for. In insisting on elections and democracy, Lee was upholding the law and protecting citizens’ rights, which is, for lack of a better word, Roslin-y. But he also made a snap tactical decision—which turned out to be the right one!—on the ship with Zarek, which is Adama-y. This episode manufactured a lot of drama where much, much less should have existed.

While all the prison ship craziness is going on, Baltar fesses up to Adama that he doesn’t actually have a Cylon screening test, but he could make one, he just needs the plutonium from a nuclear bomb. That’s Six’s suggestion; Baltar does not, at this point, seem to have any idea how to make a screening test or any plans to figure it out. Baltar, Baltar, Baltar. You cannot keep this up. Someone’s going to realize, if not that you have a Cylon living in your head, at least that you can’t be trusted with basically anything.

Doesn’t Adama realize that Baltar was lying about the Cylon he said he ID’ed before, the person they marooned on the planet with the military stores? (He actually was a Cylon, but it’s not like Baltar knows that.) He clearly framed that guy. Adama’d better be asking himself why Baltar lied about that.

Other notable things:

Cally gets attacked—and will presumably be raped by—a prisoner, so she bites his damn ear off. Go, her.
For the second episode running Tigh’s first scene is him wandering around making grumbly noises and drinking. I think this will be a thing.
Tigh tells Boomer she has to break it off with Tyrol, considering she’s his superior officer and all. Later in the episode Starbuck tries to apologize to Tigh for mouthing off to him, saying she realizes she has flaws, too. Instead of accepting the apology gracefully, he responds that his flaws are personal, but hers are professional. You were working while drunk earlier this episode, Tigh. You have no room to talk. There has to come an episode when every single one of Tigh’s interactions with other people isn’t negative. I don’t know whether I’m looking forward to that episode or dreading it.

Episode 4: Act of Contrition:

… a.k.a. NOOOOO, LEE, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING, WHY WOULD YOU TELL ADAMA THAT, NOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Ahem. Excuse me.

This episode pained me to my very soul. Unlike Bastille Day, it was smaller-scale, with nothing nearly as big as a prison riot going on. It starts with something happy: One of the Viper pilots has his thousandth landing, which means everyone’s celebrating on the flight deck. And then a freak accident leads to thirteen Viper pilots killed and seven more injured. Holy emotional whiplash, Batman!

Only Battlestar Galactica takes a moment of genuine happiness and what could, in another show, be a slapstick-y accident and turn it into quite so much doom and gloom.

As a result of the accident there are very few Viper pilots left, so Adama asks Starbuck, who’s served as a flight instructor in the past, to train more. This is a major sore spot for her, as her fiancée (and Adama’s son) Zak died in part because she didn’t flunk him out of basic flight school even though he wasn’t a good enough pilot. Adama, not knowing this, assures her that if she gives all the newbie pilots (or “nuggets”) “the same attention you gave my son” everything will turn out fine. Ouch. This episode pulls no emotional punches.

Starbuck’s unable to refuse Adama’s request, but she only trains the pilots for one day before flunking all of them out, ostensibly because they suck (which they do, but who wouldn’t after only one day?) but really because she’s letting her emotional issues get in the way of her professionalism. Lee calls her on it, which he’s right to do, and when she doesn’t listen she goes up the chain of command to Adama.

And Lee is apparently, to borrow a phrase fron Merlin, a gigantic dollop-head, because some vague wording from Adama leaves him the impression that Starbuck’s already told him about her role in Zak’s death. So he mentions that Starbuck’s feeling some guilt, which confuses Adama, because what Starbuck have to feel guilty for? Uh-oh. Lee refuses to spill—he’s already done enough, really—so Adama asks Starbuck directly. She tells him the truth, and he’s… not pleased, to put it lightly.

Lee, you dumbo. I get that it was a mistake, but this is literally Starbuck’s deepest, darkest secret, one that she’s never told anyone but you, and you’re not going to bother to confirm that Adama already knows before trying to talk to him about it? You probably could have convinced Adama to change Starbuck’s mind without bringing Zak into it! I hope you feel appropriately guilty about this for a long while, Mister.

Starbuck, under orders from Adama, agrees to give the nuggets another shot. They’re all happy about it, so it makes complete sense that when she takes three of them out on a test run Cylon raiders show up, because I’m getting the feeling that happiness only exists on this show as a way to twist the knife when things go to hell later on. None of the nuggets die, surprisingly, though I was sure one of them, Hot Dog, was going to when he disobeyed Starbuck’s orders to return to the Galactica and instead tried to help her fight off the raiders. I like this Hot Dog fellow. I prefer characters who are unapologetically obnoxious, mean, manipulative, or whatever (hello, Tigh) to those who cover up their character flaws with a veneer of moral superiority (Lee). Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter character type—it can be very complex—but I prefer the former.

Hot Dog and the other nuggets survive, but for Starbuck it’s not looking so good: The episode ends with her plummeting to the planet below, the Galactica crew assuming she’s dead. A Cylon raider crashes to the planet with her, and I’m going to assume it’s not dead either. Just a hunch.

Miscellaneous bit and bobs:

Roslin went to a doctor—a doctor who smokes and chews Roslin out for skipping breast exams, so you know how very edgy and military he is—about her cancer. She wants to try something called Chamalla, which the Doctor’s not supportive of because it’s a New Age-y pseudo-treatment. An awful lot of time was spent on the Chamalla discussion for it being just an innocuous herb, though. I would not put it past this show to hinge a tragic death-and-destruction plotline on a life-saving drug.
Back on Caprica, Helo and Evil Cylon Boomer have tracked the military signal they were following back to an empty fallout shelter. These two only get a few minutes per episode, but they’re boring minutes. I hope Evil Cylon Boomer starts putting whatever devious plan she has into gear soon.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

How awful are things for the last surviving members of humanity this time?

You Can’t Go Home Again
If last week’s episode, Act of Contrition, could be subtitled “Starbuck gets emotional,” this one be subtitled “Starbuck gets badass.”

Well.

More badass.

The episode starts with her stranded on the planet where Kirk fought the Gorn a random moon, roused from unconsciousness by her parachute trying to drag her off a cliff. It almost manages, too, until she cuts it loose. Even such a tiny thing as waking up from a crash landing is life-or-death on this show. I’m surprised Starbuck lasts four seasons (if, indeed, she does).

Lieutenant Gaeta says that Starbuck has 46 hours of oxygen left before she dies, and Lee and Adama are determined to have Viper pilots out looking for her every second of that time, even though it damages the ships, uses up almost half the ship’s fuel reserves, and diverts resources that should be on hand to protect the fleet should the Cylons show up again. I can’t decide how much of their refusal to give up is guilt over what happened to her last episode and how much is just that she’s family, but honestly it doesn’t matter that much. It is an insanely risky thing to do for just one pilot, something that’s pointed out by Tigh, President Roslin, and Baltar.

I love how the show handles their dissent: They’re all saying the exact same thing, but Tigh comes off like a jerk, Roslin like a paragon of reason and wisdom, and Baltar like a cowardly fool. Roslin even gets really mean late in the episode, telling Adama and Lee that (paraphrasing here) they need to pull their heads out of their rears and get over what happened to Zak, and if they’ll risk so much because of a personal issue humanity doesn’t stand a chance, which, wow Laura. Way to not pull your punches.

She can get away with saying something like that and have Lee and Adama listen because she’s her: Noble, selfless, and possessing reason tempered by compassion. But if Tigh or Baltar said the exact same thing they’d get a double Adama death-glare, and not just because Roslin’s the President and they’re not. Roslin and Adama (who is convinced to call off the search) are both noble and prone to self-sacrifice, while Tigh and Baltar are self-serving, which is like the worst thing you can be in a post-apocalyptic future where everyone has to band together or die. Aside from the Cylons, Tigh and Baltar are shaping up to be the villains of the show, and I really hope they don’t get demonized. (And, likewise, that Roslin loses that “I’m so much more moral than you” sheen. It’s getting a little boring.)

Adama fails at rescuing Starbuck, but that doesn’t matter so much, ’cause Starbuck’s fully capable of rescuing her own darn self, thank you. She comes across the raider she shot down and cuts into its innards (ew), removing its brain (double ew) so she can crawl through its guts (ewewew), suck on its air tube to give herself some more time (ew^4), and figure out how to make it fly.

She eventually does get it airborne, because she’s Kara “Better Than You” Thrace (note the lack of sarcasm), but then of course the Galactica thinks she’s a Cylon. Anticipating that the pilot sent to destroy her (Lee, as it happens) might be a failwhale when it comes to proper “intercept protocol” and not realize she was a friendly, she’s painted “Starbuck” on the underside of the raider using some handy yellow paint she had about her person for some reason. Whatever. I can’t complain. Starbuck is amazing. Case closed.

The episode ends in a good place for the Galactica folks: Starbuck’s alive, she and Adama have a nice father/surrogate daughter moment in sickbay, and Chief Tyrol gets a raider to play with. Things haven’t been so great for Helo back on Caprica, though: After a night in the fallout shelter with Evil!Boomer, Cylons show up to ruin the nice romantic tension they have going. Helo hides from them, but they figure out the place isn’t empty when the toast he was making pops up at the worst possible moment.

Betrayed by the toaster, huh? I see what you did there, show.

Litmus

For the second time in five episodes, Chief Tyrol’s ~~penis~~ relationship with Boomer gets him into some major trouble. The pair have been ordered by Tigh (natch) to not see each other any more, but they ignore that, sneaking away to have a little alone time. As it happens that alone time coincides with a human-looking Cylon—Jill tells me that they later come to be referred to as skinjobs, so that’s what I’ll be calling them from now on—getting onto the Galactica and blowing himself up. (Right before the explosion Adama leaps at the bomber, despite the fact that his finger was on the trigger. The commander of the fleet only didn’t get blown to little bitty pieces because Tigh tackled him first. Dude. Adama. There’s a point where self-sacrifice becomes stupid.)

It can no longer remain a secret that Cylons can look like humans now, so Roslin lets the cat out of the bag, asking for the public’s help if they see any other replicas wandering around. Naturally the public’s pretty freaked out and wants answers as to how, if the higher-ups knew Cylons could look like humans, a Cylon was able to get aboard the Galactica. An independent tribunal is set up with the Master of Arms, Sergeant Hadrian, running the show. Since anyone at any level of leadership could be a conspirator she asks for complete autonomy in running the tribunals, with no military oversight. Sounds like the sort of thing a Cylon would say. She’s an agent. I’m calling it.

Four different people tell Hadrian four different things about where Tyrol was at the time of the bombing, so naturally he’s suspected of collaborating with the Cylons. (They don’t seem to think he could be one himself, which I don’t get.) Matters are made worse for him by the fact that a hatch leading to an arms locker—the one where the Cylon killed a guard and stole the bomb—was found to be open, even though his log said it was shut. Hadrian asks if Tyrol was meeting with a Cylon agent right before the bombing, which he was, just not in the way Hadrian thinks. Since the open hatch is the same one Boomer used to get to their sexytimes appointment, the implication is that she, influenced by the Cylon part of her brain, opened the hatch to let her skinjob buddy in.

One of Tyrol’s underlings, Socinus, takes the fall, saying that he left his post to get some grub and accidentally left he hatch open. Case closed, then! Except Hadrian’s power has gone a bit to her head: She summons Adama to the hearing and upbraids him for not telling the people about skinjobs, saying if security had known about it the bombing may have been prevented. Oh, and that he’s also responsible for the bombing because he knew about Boomer and Tyrol but didn’t make them stop. Adama’s response, justifiably, is “Woah, simmer down there.” The tribunal is turning into a witch hunt, and he won’t have that nonsense on his ship. He has no authority to shut it down, technically, but he manages it anyway through sheer gravitas.

Elsewhere on the Galactica, Six tells Gaius that the bomber was trying to blow up his Cylon detector research. The other Cylons don’t know she’s been hanging out in his head, she explains. I’m not sure whether I believe her. When Baltar says he might as well destroy the project and blame it on sabotage, Six goes a little nuts and proceeds to choke him. And then she quotes the Hulk with no apparent irony, uttering the words “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” in a serious scene with dramatic music swelling in the background. I can’t decide whether it’s supposed to be funny or not, but I’m leaning toward “no.”

Meanwhile, on Caprica, Helo’s looking for a Cylon-napped Boomer, who’s actually just hanging around on rooftops watching him with Six and a replica of the bomber. To carry out their plan, whatever it is, Caprica!Boomer has to get beaten up and then “rescued” by Helo. Six takes great pleasure in helping with the first part. I sense some animosity here. Is it because Boomer can be open about her human boyfriend (Helo) and Six can’t about hers (Gaius)? As Helo is rescuing Caprica!Boomer, back on the Galactica Tyrol is breaking up with SecretAgent!Boomer, because he’s feeling all angsty about Socinus getting in trouble because of him. Tyrol asks Boomer if she didn’t by any chance leave the hatch open. Oh, irony.

6 Degrees of Separation

And I thought the previous episode, with Six’s random Hulk reference, was weird. This episode puts that one to shame. Five words: “No more Mr. Nice Gaius.”

The basic plot of the episode is that Gaius still doesn’t take the Cylon god seriously, so Six decides to pay him back by waltzing one of her copies—named Shelly Godfrey, nice and subtle—onto the Galactica with evidence that he betrayed humanity by letting Cylons into the defense mainframe, which of course he actually did. Gaius claims that Shelly’s a Cylon agent who has it in for him (also true), but Adama and Roslin eventually come to believe that Gaius is guilty, so he’s locked up. He has a breakdown and prays to the Cylon god, saying if he’s saved he’ll devote the entire rest of his life to serving his cause. Shelly’s evidence is revealed as a fake, she disappears, and Gaius is released, more trusted by Roslin and Adama than ever.

Sounds fairly innocuous. Now for a list of all the completely frakking crazy things that characters said/did this episode:

The aforementioned instance of Gaius yelling “No more Mr. nice Gaius!”…
…which he says to Shelly in a bathroom, after he literally followed Gaeta in there to see how his investigation into Shelly’s evidence was going.
Seriously, Gaius follows Gaeta into the bathroom to interrogate him about his day. He opens the conversation—when Gaeta is in a bathroom stall!—with “So… how ya doing?” (Though I have to say I’m pleased BSG shows us a bathroom, because that doesn’t really happen in spaceship-set movies and TV all that often.)
After cornering him in the bathroom, Gaius asks Gaeta if they can take a few minutes alone together to examine Shelly’s evidence. No one else would need to know. That… kinda seemed like he was proposing something different, to be honest.
Six-as-Shelly tries to seduce Adama. He immediately gets suspicious of her; it’s good to know his BS detector is operational. But still, Six kissing Adama and asking if he ever just wanted to be held ranks up there in the list of things I didn’t think I’d see on this show.
Laura causes a fleet-wide panic when she collapses, and to get back on her feet the Doctor has to give her a shot. She holds out her arm and is told “It’s not that kind of shot.” Butt jokes. Butt jokes in Battlestar Galactica. What is going on here?!
At the end of the episode Gaius asks Six if Shelly ever actually existed, and it seems like it might be a relevant question. But then Six distracts him with nudity, and he makes this face while unzipping his pants. (Click the link. Trust me.)
There’s an overwrought romantic confession between Helo and Caprica!Boomer, and then they have sexytimes in the rain. Not weird on the scale of weird things in this episode, but not what I would have expected from BSG.

The whole episode was just really out of place, and I can’t decide whether I like that because it provided a change of pace, or if I hate it because it messes with the show’s rhythm. I’m leaning toward the latter. There were two endgames in this episode: One, make Gaius loyal to the Cylon god. Two, get Adama and Roslin to trust Gaius. But we had a “Gaius doubts God and Six brings him around via threats” plotline only a few episodes ago! Did we really another one? As for Gaius getting on Adama and Roslin’s good side, I’m not firmly convinced they really trust him all that much, and even if they do, something tells me he’ll lose that trust fairly quickly. He’s kind of shady like that. But I guess I’ll see later whether this 43 minutes of insanity had any wider purpose, or whether it was just the Battlestar Galactica equivalent of a monster-of-the-week episode.

I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

A new(old) Cylon! Tigh being drunk and grumpy! Lee getting his butt grabbed!

Flesh and Bone

This episode re-introduces us to Leoben Conoy (Callum Keith Rennie), the Cylon who was hanging out in the weapons depot in the miniseries and got killed by Commander Adama. Well, “killed.” Him being a Cylon and all he zaps into a new body, which in this episode is found hanging out in one of the fleet’s underground storage rooms.

Adama wants to kill Conoy outright, but Roslin demands an interrogation, because clearly Conoy’s been up to something, and they should probably try to find out what it is, doncha think? Between jumping on the Cylon suicide bomber in Litmus and not thinking to interrogate Conoy, Adama’s been a little stupid lately. In a noble way. But still.

Roslin gets her way (as she should), and Starbuck is sent to interrogate the skinjob after being warned by Adama to watch out for his lies and double-talk. I don’t remember how New Age-y Conoy was in the miniseries, but he’s seriously into that stuff now, telling Starbuck how existence is a stream and he sees where the stream is going and… stuff. Cylon God stuff. It would be corny, except Callum Keith Rennie a good actor and he’s playing such a creepy character that it gives me the chills instead.

More chilling for Starbuck, though, is that Conoy says he’s planted a nuclear bomb somewhere on the fleet. He won’t say where it is, though, so it’s up to her to torture the information out of him just in case A) he isn’t bluffing, and B) Adama and company don’t find the bomb in time. There’s some more mystical mumbo-jumbo from Conoy but Starbuck’s having none of it, telling him that he’s just a soulless machine, and if he turns on his pain sensors he’ll be admitting he’s “less” than human.

(I’m kind of confused as to why Cylons have pain sensors in the first place—what use is giving yourself the capacity for hunger and pain if you don’t need to, i.e. if you’re like Boomer, a secret agent who has to think they’re human? The Cylons’ tendency to religion-inspired masochism sort of reminds me of Adama’s tendency toward self-sacrifice, oddly enough. Moving on.)

Starbuck gets nothing out of torturing Conoy save a headache and a big, heaping spoonful of self-doubt, courtesy of a little psychoanalyzing he does about Starbuck’s mother. (How did he know about her mother? He knew who she was as soon as he saw her, too. What’s going on here?!) But Starbuck’s able to psychologically torment Conoy a bit as well, saying he doesn’t want to be killed because he fears he won’t transfer over to a new body, which would mean he doesn’t have a soul and is just a machine.

But it’s Conoy who has the trump card: Kobol is real, he says, and he’ll lead the humans to Earth. That’s when Roslin walks in, full of righteous redheaded fury, asking Starbuck if she’s really been torturing this Cylon for eight hours and has absolutely no information on the bomb to show for it. Taking things into her own hands, Roslin offers to make a deal with the Cylons: Our two races don’t have to fight, she says, so just tell me where the bomb is and you’ll live. Conoy then drops the bomb (AHAHAHAHA—I kill me sometimes) and says that there was no nuke to begin with. Roslin orders him to be airlocked, which Starbuck objects to because he cooperated with them. But, in true Roslinian fashion, the President cuts through the BS, asking why they’d keep a Cylon around, particularly one who likes to spread lies?

Before he dies (our first airlocking, yaaaaaay!), Conoy tells Roslin that Adama’s a Cylon. At first I didn’t think that Roslin believed he could be telling the truth, but apparently she does, because she spends the last few minutes of the episode gazing at Adama in a steely fashion. Meanwhile Starbuck is praying to the Lord of Kobol that Conoy’s soul, if it does exist, make it to his God. Why does everyone give so much credence to what this guy says? Adama’s a Cylon, you’ll find Kobol and Earth. Blah blah blah. It’s like he has Charles Xavier-esque superpowers or something. He does show up in two of Roslin’g dreams this episode, though. Something’s up with this dude. I don’t know what it is. But I think I like it.

And surely Adama’s not a Cylon, right? I am 85% certain that I would’ve heard about it at some point if that turns out to be the case.

Elsewhere in this episode Boomer’s feeling some major self-doubt as to whether she’s a real human, so she asks Baltar to test her. The test says that she’s a Cylon, but at Six’s instructions Baltar tells Boomer she’s 100% bona fide human. Is there ever going to come a time when Baltar doesn’t do exactly what Six tells him to? We have four seasons, it’s got to happen eventually.

Meanwhile, on Caprica, the knows-she’s-a-skinjob-Boomer runs away from the Cylons with Helo, because apparently she’s in love with him or something. Regardless, Six thinks that she’s become too human. I’m happy that this plotline is starting to move along, though I still have no frakking clue what the Cylons’ endgame was having Boomer roam around the countryside with Helo.

Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down

Aw yeah, a Tigh episode. In “Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down” our favorite Grumpy Cat Colonel is reunited with his presumed-dead wife, who may or may not be a Cylon but is definitely a fan of alcohol and bad touching Lee.

Roslin still suspects that Commander Adama might be a Cylon, so she keeps a close eye on him. That includes getting Billy to ask Dee—who actually has something to do this episode instead of standing around in the background and saying random lines, holy crap—if Adama’s been acting odd lately. Turns out he has: He’s been making unlogged calls and taking unannounced trips off the Galactica to who-knows-where.

It’s during one of those trips that a Cylon raider shows up. Vipers damage it, but then it hyperjumps away, presumably to tell the other Cylons where they are. Tigh has a tough call to make: Does he get the fleet to safety even though doing so could mean leaving Adama behind? He orders an emergency jump, but then the raider comes back… and jumps away again… and comes back… and jumps away again… Tigh tells Lee to run scans on the malfunctioning raider instead of destroying it, as gathering info might help them get the FTL drive on their captured raider working. Tigh didn’t make any wrong decisions in this scene, but I can’t help but feel he’s doing exactly what the Cylons want him to.

When Adama gets back to the ship it’s with Tigh’s wife Ellen, who passed out on some colony when the Cylons attacked and was carried aboard a ship by a random stranger. She only remembered who she was a few days ago. The whole thing’s rather suspicious, especially considering no one can find the good samaritan who supposedly saved her life, and Adama’s quite right to think that she could be a Cylon. He delivers a vial of her blood to Baltar for testing (so the Cylon test is done, then? No problems? That was quick.), which means Baltar has to stop testing Adama’s blood, which he was ordered to do ASAP by Roslin.

Gaius’ character is getting weird—he goes from super-intense scenes with Six about God and betrayal to weird comic relief scenes where (for example) Starbuck, who’s come to ask him to test her blood, sees him having sex with Six in his lab… except, since she can’t see Six, she thinks he’s whacking the mole in the middle of the day over vials of blood. That sounds creepier than it was in the show. Regardless. I like the juxtaposition of how others see Baltar—as a sexually depraved, possibly Tourettes-having mad scientist—with how he actually is, i.e. haunted by a Cylon. The two extremes of his character will just take some getting used to.

Back to Tigh, who’s happy to have his wife back even though every indication we’ve had so far is that he hates her. There was some drama between them before—apparently she cheated on him a lot, plus she brings out the worst in him, i.e. horrible drunken behavior—but that’s all in the past. The newly reunited couple dines with Lee, Adama, and Roslin, the three of whom are appalled by Ellen’s horrific table manners. She tries to play footsie with Lee, insults Roslin, and asks Adama about his dead son, whom she somehow didn’t know was dead despite the fact that it happened years ago and Adama’s her husband’s best friend. Roslin’s left believing that no one so ridiculous could ever be a Cylon. That’s just what they want you to think. Ahem.

After dinner Ellen and Tigh retire to their quarters, where Baltar shows up and participates in some outrageously brazen flirting. Baltar. Tigh is right there. Bad form, dude. Ellen responds to her husband’s anger by claiming Adama felt her up at dinner and visited her while she was on the other ship to watch her while she was sleeping.

The pair of them confront Adama, who’s in Baltar’s science lab with Lee, Roslin, and Baltar. There’s a Marx brothers-esque scene where they try to figure out whose blood Baltar should be testing to see if they’re a Cylon, at the conclusion of which Baltar reminds everyone to calm the frak down, because they are literally in a science lab full of volatile chemicals. The party’s broken up by an announcement that the raider from before—remember it?—has changed its flight pattern. Tigh makes a snap decision to deploy fighters and destroy the raider, which then sets course for the Galactica but is blown out of the sky before it can ram into the ship.

Then there’s a bit of a weird scene between Adama and Tigh. The former says he’s concerned for his XO/best friend because Ellen’s always brought out the worst in him, and it’s been nice to see him not drunk all the time for a change. But Adama also commended Tigh on his decision to scramble the fighters… which Tigh did while more than a little bit tipsy, which Adama had to have known, because he was three sheets to the wind at dinner not a few hours before. So… I care about you and I don’t want you to destroy your life with alcohol, but you do well on the job when you’re drunk?

The episode ends with Baltar revealing that Ellen is not, in fact, a Cylon. But, as he tells Six once everyone leaves, he’s rigged the test so that everyone passes it, so Ellen might not be human at all. He’s not telling.

This Cylon detector plotline really bugs me, by the way. No one seems to question that it works. I get that Baltar’s their resident science genius-Cylon expert and that they don’t really have another choice than to trust him, but the dude’s been given a task that’s hugely important to security with absolutely zero oversight. He already accused someone of being a Cylon using a test that he later admitted was completely fake! The lack of lasting skepticism everyone else has shown up to this point in all things Baltar-related is absolutely baffling.

I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

Only two more eps to go until the two-part season finale, and stuff’s starting to get (more) interesting.

The Hand of God
a.k.a. “You thought we liked religious metaphors before? Buckle up, buttercup.”

The latest crisis facing the survivors of humanity is that they’re down to five percent of their fuel reserves. Boomer and Crashdown (hah, I finally caught his name!) find some tylium ore, which is needed to make fuel, on a nearby asteroid, but the Cylons have already called dibs on it by setting up a refinery there. (So the fleet just happened to jump to a point past known space where the Cylons already happen to be? Can’t tell if Cylon God intervention or writing issue.)

Adama decides that, instead of jumping to another random location and looking for fuel there (they only have enough fuel for two more jumps, after all, and the Cylons have probably set up camp on other tylium-rich spots), they’re going to use what’s left of their fuel to take the Cylons’ base for themselves. Planning the attack is Starbuck, who’s not able to participate because her knee’s still screwed up, which she’s more than a little upset about. She takes it out on Lee, which causes his inferiority complex to flare up. Starbuck is well-known as the best pilot in the fleet, and Lee’s not one for daring, eye-catching moves like her, but completing this mission is his job, he says to her, not the product of some ego trip, so he’ll get it done.

I like the friendly, competitive dynamic between these two, but I have to wonder why Starbuck’s not called Lee out for telling Adama her deepest, darkest secret in episode four. He helped save her life the next episode, and she must know it was an honest mistake, so I’m not saying she should hate him or anything. But shouldn’t there be some tension there? Six episodes later and it seems like she’s completely forgotten about it.

Anywhoodle. Another critical figure in planning this attack is Baltar, who is asked to identify the place to shoot that will destroy the base while preserving the tylium. He has absolutely no idea, but instead of admitting it he just… guesses, spurred along by Six, who says God will help Gaius pick the right spot if he surrenders himself to God’s will. There was a rather nice bit in this scene where Baltar says the fate of the entire human race depends on his wild guess, and you can really see the pain he feels. He seems at times to genuinely want to help humanity; he just goes about it in some freaking awful ways. Part of that is that his priorities are whacked-out; he’s the Cylon expert, dammit, and losing face by admitting he doesn’t know something about Cylon refineries isn’t even an option to him. But the whole “evil Cylon whispering in his ear” thing isn’t helping, either. Why would Six be OK with humans attacking the base, anyway? I know she’s not supposed to be living in Baltar’s head, so she can’t exactly give her fellow Cylons a heads-up. But she’s helping him, even in a mystical mumbo-jumbo spiritual talk way, and I don’t understand why. A mystery for later eps, I suppose.

The night before the attack Lee and Adama have some father-son bonding time; Adama gives Lee a good luck heirloom and says that everyone else may think Starbuck would do better than him, but he doesn’t. I thought Lee’s insecurity issues would get old, but they haven’t. Yet.

The attack starts, and everything goes to hell pretty quickly. Starbuck’s plan to distract the Cylon raiders with decoy ships doesn’t work too well, and the Vipers, led by Lee, can’t get close enough to their target. Lee, in a move worthy of Starbuck, flies through a tunnel that (he hopes) will get him to where he needs to be. Luckily, it does. Even more luckily, the spot Baltar randomly selected happens to be the right one. The base goes boom. Tylium saved. Mission accomplished.

While all this has been going on Laura’s been having something of a personal crisis. During a press conference she hallucinates a dozen snakes, likely a result of the herbal cancer remedy she’s been taking. She tells this to the purple-wearing priest lady, who thinks Roslin’s trolling her, because surprise! There’s a sacred text called the Pythian Prophecy, written thousands of years ago, about a leader, shown a vision of twelve snakes, who leads exiled humans to a new land but doesn’t live to see that new land themselves because of a wasting disease. “All this has happened before,” says the priest lady, “All this will happen again.” (Hey, I know that bit! That’s one of our site categories!) Add up the snakes, the wasting disease, and the prophetic dreams Laura’s been having, and she’s the reincarnated savior of humanity. Or something.

Also on the God train this episode is Six (when is she not?), who in the aftermath of the successful attack on the Cylon base asks Baltar if he knows about the Pythian Prophecy. She explains how the prophecy applies to him (the twelve snakes are the Vipers used in the battle, something about a “confrontation at the home of the gods,” etc. etc.) and says he is an instrument of God. He agrees and stands in a very unsubtle pose.

Also in this episode: Back on Caprica Boomer and Helo are still being chased, and Boomer’s started getting sick. *twiddles thumbs* There’s only one episode left before the two-part season finale, and this episode ended on a rather triumphant note. I can only assume stuff’s going to start going down real soon, and I predict that some of that will be this Helo and Caprica!Boomer plotline actually starting to go somewhere.

Colonial Day

Who’s back this episode but our good friend Tom Zarek, the freedom fighter/terrorist who led a prison riot and tried to get Roslin ousted from the presidency back in Bastille Day. Representatives from all twelve colonies are heading to the luxury liner Cloud 9 for the Quorum of 12, where government… stuff… happens. Anyway. On the quorum is Baltar, who was elected as Caprica’s representative without him even knowing about it. I can think of one person who voted for him.

Zarek also gets himself elected as one of the representatives, and when the quorum starts he brings up the fact that Roslin really should have a vice president, so if something were to happen to her there would be some sort of succession in place. It makes sense, and Roslin probably should’ve thought of it before, what with her dying of cancer and all. But Zarek’s motives are far from altruistic: He’s been buttering up his fellow delegates over the past few weeks and easily finds himself within reach of the vice presidency.

The quorum coincides with Colonial Day, which means it’s been turned into a big to-do of politicians and their delegations schmoozing with each other. Starbuck and Lee, who are in charge of security, worry that Zarek plans on being elected vice president and then, taking advantage of how busy things are, assassinating Roslin. They’re not exactly dissuaded from that viewpoint when find a guy who’s snuck onto Cloud 9 with a gun. They interrogate him, but he remains mum on his (possible) connection to Zarek. When they show up to interrogate him again, he’s dead—murdered by Zarek, they assume, but there’s no way to prove it, and at the end of the episode Zarek tells them he wasn’t responsible.

Meanwhile, it’s looking like Zarek’s going to be elected vice president. Roslin’s chosen Gary Wallace, her number one political adviser (who’s apparently really important even though this is the first episode he’s been mentioned in?), to run against him. But Gary’s not much of a politician, while if there’s one thing Zarek’s good at it’s making impressive-sounding yet meaningless speeches about revolution and bringing about a new era. In an effort to shut Zarek down Roslin replaces Gary with Baltar, who proves himself during this episode to be quite the amazing public speaker. (I did not see that coming.)

Baltar wins, and now the guy who has a Cylon living in his brain is one step away from the presidency, oh joy. I see no way this will end badly, especially after Six tells him at the victory party that “we’re going to do great things together.” Also at that victory party: Roslin and Adama dancing, Starbuck wearing a dress, Gaeta dancing like a dork (it was only in the background of one of the shots, but I must have Gaeta-acting-like-a-dork radar), and Ellen doing some plotting relating to her husband Tigh’s future. Earlier in the episode she was firmly in camp Zarek, schmoozing with him and saying he’s the future and Roslin is the past. What are you up to, Ellen? Tigh doesn’t need more things to be grumpy about.

In the last episode before the two-part season finale the Helo/Caprica!Boomer plotline finally, finally starts getting interesting. Helo, who’s seen two different copies of Six in previous episodes, guesses that Cylons can look like humans now. Attaboy. Boomer suggests that if their biology is human they might be able to love like humans do, but Helo shuts that down real quick, saying they’re just machines. It’s great setup for what happens when the pair of him get to Delphi to steal a ship. Helo sees two more Six clones, which confirms his theory about skinjobs. Then he sees a Boomer clone, whom his Boomer (arrrrgh, too many Boomers) shoots to save his life. But there’s no redemption here: Helo’s already figured out that she’s a Cylon, so he takes the appropriate course of action and runs the heck away.

BWAHAHA. Stuff’s getting good.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

One season of Battlestar Galactica down, three (plus assorted web series/TV movies/Caprica) to go. Man, what a good season finale this was.

Kobol’s Last Gleaming: Part 1

Remember how a few episodes ago Leoben Conoy said humans would find Kobol and it would lead them to Earth? Well his creepy New Age talk had some truth to it. Boomer and Crashdown, out on a supply run, find a planet with oceans, continents, plant life, even the ruins of an ancient city. Turns out it might very well be Kobol, the planet where humanity was born before the exodus that sent most of them off to the 12 Colonies and the others to the mythical Earth.

Not everyone is convinced that the planet is Kobol—Adama, for one, remains craggily skeptical—but President Roslin’s well and truly sold. Not only does she believe it’s the planet, she buys into herself as the savior of humanity and also believes the myth that the Arrow of Apollo (a relic left back on Caprica) can open Kobol’s Tomb of Athena, which will show the humans the way to Earth. Part of Roslin’s newfound religious faith springs from her visions; when she looks at a picture of the ruins she hallucinates and sees the city as it appears in BSG‘s version of the Bible. Part of it, though, seems to be wishful thinking on her part—her cancer’s spread, giving her only six months to live, and she wants to save humanity before she dies.

Something about this whole Roslin-as-savior thing is off. All the evidence is presented too neatly, too conveniently. Plus Six thinks Gaius is the savior, and there are several things in the prophecy that are presented as meaning one thing but could mean another. (If “Arrow of Apollo” isn’t related to Lee somehow I’ll eat my hat.) Something tells me this whole “religious epiphany” thing is going to blow up in Roslin’s face eventually. We have three more seasons of pain, after all.

Roslin wants Starbuck to take the Cylon Raider she captured back to Caprica and pick up the Arrow of Apollo. That proves a pretty big problem, though. See, Adama might not buy into the religious significance of the newfound planet, but he still wants to check it out to see if it’s habitable. So he sends three away teams, one of which includes Crashdown, Baltar, Chief Tyrol, and Cally, to run tests. But when the ships jump into orbit they discover a ton of Cylons there. One ship is destroyed, one manages to jump back to Galactica, and the third—the one with the characters we know on it—crash lands on the planet. To rescue them the Cylon Basestar will have to be destroyed, and the plan to do that involves Starbuck flying the Raider onto the Basestar, dropping a nuke, and flying away. So Adama, understandably, refuses to let Roslin use the raider for a fool’s errand to Caprica, because he needs it to save his own people.

Starbuck’s not in a great place emotionally this episode. She starts it off saying Lee’s name during sex with Baltar, which makes things really awkward when Starbuck walks in on a drunk Baltar playing poker with Lee, Gaeta, Crashdown, and Dee later on. Baltar demands that Starbuck call him “Vice President” and asks if she wants to sit by Lee. In a later scene Lee criticizes her for sleeping with Baltar, not like it’s A) any of his business, or B) a bad thing for her to have casual sex.

Lee’s treatment of Starbuck in this scene is pretty awful, but it seems that he’s lashing out in part not because he thinks sleeping with people is bad but because he’s jealous. (Or maybe my shipper goggles are on too tight. Whatever. Still a jerkbag move, Lee.) I can’t decipher Baltar being a jerk to Starbuck, though; I didn’t think he even liked her that much. Then again, throughout this entire episode Baltar’s mental state can be described as “losing it.” He’d probably snap at poor Gaeta if he stepped on his shoe. Roslin tries to give him a crash course in government at the same time Six grills him about whether he loves Starbuck (uh… no?), and he flips out on both of them, saying that he’s no one’s plaything, that he’s been given too many responsibilities all at once, and that he needs a break. Later on Six convinces him to get put on one of the away teams sent to Kobol, since the Cylons have a surprise in store for the Galactica and he won’t want to be on board when it happens.

Another character on the verge of mental breakdown is Boomer, who’s been trying to work up the nerve to shoot herself in the head. She knows something is wrong with her, she explains to Baltar, and she wakes up every day wondering whether she’s going to hurt someone. Six tells Baltar Boomer knows she’ s a Cylon, but that her conscious mind won’t accept it. No matter; she’s a weak model, but she’ll complete her mission anyway. Baltar says some stuff about how she should follow her heart, since sometimes life throws unexpected stuff at you and you just have to embrace it. As he walks out the door, Boomer shoots herself.

Man, Baltar. You’re really bad at pep talks, are you? Though I guess you can’t blame him. It’s the “filled with angst by Cylons” leading the “filled with angst by Cylons.”

Boomer didn’t die, though—the bullet only went through her cheek, with the “official” explanation being that she forgot to check the chamber. Chief Tyrol visits her in the hospital and says he knows that isn’t true, but she rejects his offer of help. What could he do to help her, anyway?

Meanwhile, back on Caprica, Caprica!Boomer’s been shot as well, by Helo, who only caught her in the shoulder and couldn’t bring himself to finish the job. She tells him that she’s still the same person he knew, but he doesn’t believe her—he’s only keeping her alive so she can help him get off the planet, he says.

The episode ends with Starbuck, who’s had a chat with Roslin about maaaaybe disobeying orders and stealing the Raider to get the Arrow from Caprica. The pilot doesn’t want to do it, but that changes when Roslin explains that Adama was lying about knowing where Earth is. Using the Arrow to open the Tomb to get to Earth (anyone else reminded of Legends of the Hidden Temple? No? Just me) might sound crazy, and it might not work, but it’s humanity’s only shot. Before going on an autopilot test run Starbuck asks Adama to ballpark when the fleet might get to Earth. He waffles enough that Starbuck knows Roslin was telling the truth. Her decision made, Starbuck jumps the Raider to Caprica, abandoning the rest of the fleet.

And in Part Two…

The episode starts on Kobol, with the surviving members of the away team rushing to get out of the ship before it explodes. Baltar panics and only escapes death because Six appears and leads him out. Later, while the others argue about what to do—Crashdown is technically in charge but his ideas all suck, so Chief Tyrol takes control—Baltar, still shell-shocked, goes and has a nice lie-down in the grass.

Back on the Galactica Adama and Tigh are talking about the MIA Starbuck, whom Adama says only would have stolen the Raptor if “coerced.” Tigh’s response—that she’s uncoercable, “believe me, I’ve tried”—is pretty funny. Tigh. Dude. She hates you. And coercion requires subtlety, which your grumpy self (god, I love ya) does not have. But Adama knows who could coerce Starbuck: Roslin. He calls the President, who admits to everything, which in turn causes Adama to demand her resignation. He can’t just do that, right? Roslin doesn’t think so, anyway—sure, she says, you can remove me from office, but I’ll still be over here in the Colonial One president-ing unless you want to send some people over to arrest me. Come at me, bro. Fine, says Adama, I will. PBBBBHHHHTTTT.

So now Adama has two operations on his plate—Lee and Tigh, along with a crew, have been sent to board the Colonial One and arrest Roslin, and of course the Cylon Basestar still needs to be destroyed. For the latter mission Adama chooses Boomer, who’ll be doing the same thing Starbuck was going to—fly a ship right up to the Basestar loading dock, drop a nuke, fly away—only not in a Raptor, not a Raider. In theory the Cylons should think it’s being piloted by one of their agents (which it is, but, y’know, semantics), since Gaeta’s used some tech-fu and identified the device planted by the Cylons on the Galactica during the miniseries as some sort of transponder. If it’s put on the Raptor Boomer’s flying she should be able to sneak through.

Caprica!Boomer, meanwhile, has taken Helo not to a ship but to wait outside the museum where the Arrow of Apollo is kept, which would indicate that she knows Starbuck—or someone—is going to show up there. I mean, unless she’s taking him on an extremely fortuitously located afternoon date or something. Boomer tries to talk to Helo, saying she has genuine feelings for him even though she’s a Cylon. He shuts that right down… until Boomer says she’s pregnant. Insert Maury gif here.

Back on the Colonial One Roslin tells her political retinue—bodyguards, aides, etc.—that she’s the one Adama wants, so if they want to hide in the cargo they’re more than welcome. Billy steps forward and said “We stand with our president,” which is sweet but kind of presumptuous. Maybe the low-level aide who’s been on the job for a week and has young kids on another ship would rather hide, Billy, gawd. Lee, Tigh, and other military folk board the ship and get ready to shoot through Roslin’s wall o’ bodyguards, but at the last minute Lee backs out, putting a gun to Tigh’s head and saying that democracy shouldn’t be sacrificed because the President made a stupid decision. Right?! Adama can’t just up and decide to depose the president whenever a disagreement, even a major one, takes place. Lee wasn’t the only one who thought his pops was out of line—shots of the Galactica bridge while all this is taking place show Dee and Gaeta looking extremely uncomfortable about the whole thing. Roslin accepts being arrested, as does Lee, who after all just committed mutiny.

So that’s one of Adama’s crises resolved. What about Boomer and the Basestar (heeeey, band name)? There’s a slight hitch when the bomb release jams, so Boomer and the other Raptor pilot have to land on the ship and release the nuke manually. Surprisingly, it works. But while Boomer’s arming the bomb she’s approached by a whole bunch of copies of herself, who tell her they love her and they’ll see her again. That’s made all the more foreboding after Boomer flies away and the Basestar explodes, presumably destroying the creepy nude Boomers as well. Just how many copies are there?

Welp. Boomer definitely knows she’s a Cylon now. I wonder whether she’s going to rip Baltar a new one for lying about her Cylon tests results.

Back on Caprica Starbuck has successfully gotten to the museum and taken the Arrow, only to be confronted by Six, who proceeds to beat the crap out of her. Starbuck eventually wins but is wounded in the process. That’s when Helo and Caprica!Boomer show up; Starbuck immediately realizes the latter must be a Cylon, but Helo says not to shoot her because she’s pregnant. Not that I think Boomer’s lying, but damn, Helo, you went from thinking Cylons are manipulative creatures bent on the destruction of humanity to believing one when she says she’s carrying your child awful quickly.

Speaking of Boomer’s Cylon/human (Cyman?) fetus, Baltar’s come back form his mental walkabout on Kobol and heads with Six to the ruins on Kobol, where he sees the opera house therein as it once was (is this a religious hallucination like when Roslin saw the snakes, or a Six-induced hallucination like when she mentally zaps him back to his home on Caprica so they can have sex and talk about God?). Now is the time, she says, for you to know why you were chosen to serve God. Baltar’s mission is apparently to protect and guard a new generation of His children, the first of which will be along shortly. This is Boomer’s baby, presumably, because a glowing cradle shows up and Baltar looks awed by what he sees in it. Just as Roslin accepted her role as the savior of humanity, Baltar accepts his role as the savior of this new race.

But the episode’s not over yet! Back on the Galactica Adama congratulates Boomer on a job well done, saying he’s happy she carried out her mission despite any personal misgivings she might have had, all while Lee is standing right there. Adama, for Christ’s sake, drop it with the passive-aggression, it doesn’t suit you. Boomer apparently agrees, because she up and shoots him twice in the chest. OK, so that probably had more to do with her being a Cylon agent. Whatever.

Thus ends season one. There’s so much I’m hoping season two will shed some light on, mostly involving what the heck are the Cylons up to? Seriously, the text that appears before every episode says they have a plan, but I still have no clue what that is. There are tons of little things in this two-parter that they clearly engineered: The bomb release on Boomer’s ship jamming, so she’d have to land; Starbuck, Helo, and Caprica!Boomer meeting on the museum; Baltar finding himself on Kobol. Some of that was Six’s doing, but how much? How much is she working with the other Cylons, and how much is she doing things they don’t know about? Ditto Boomer: Is she aware of having shot Adama? Clearly her getting preggers is part of the Greater Cylon Plan (or maybe just Six’s plan?), but she doesn’t appear to have been on in it. But she has to have some communication with the other Cylons, or else how would she have known someone would be coming for the Arrow? What is Six being untruthful to Baltar about? It’s clearly something, or many somethings—she seems uncapable of not being cryptic and withholding. If Baltar’s the savior foretold in the Pythian Prophecy, what’s up with Roslin’s hallucinations making her think she is? Is is the Chamalla? Are the Cylons messing with that?

What’s going on?!

I’ll be taking a break from these BSG recaps next week, as I have family in town. So you can expect my first recap of season two on Wednesday, May 29th.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

I have to admit, I wasn’t 100% onboard with Battlestar Galactica during season one. Don’t get me wrong; I really liked it. But I kept hearing people say things like “OMG it’s addicting you won’t be able to stop it’ll take over your life!” And I didn’t really feel that part of it.

But sweet Jesus Baltar, I might now. Season two is going to kill me. I can tell.

Scattered

Season two starts right where season one left off, with Adama having been shot twice in the chest by Boomer. Everyone immediately realizes she’s a Cylon and she’s dragged off to the brig, which is pretty confusing for her because she doesn’t remember what she did. Also sent to the brig is Lee, who was going to end up there anyway because of his season one mutiny, but God, Tigh, don’t you think dragging him away from his dying father is a little extreme? Can you maybe hold off for an hour or so?

Oh, who’m I kidding? Tigh wants Lee to go to the brig, so he’s going to the brig, sentiment be damned. God, I love ‘im.

The entire command center is in a state of chaos. Racetrack mentions that Boomer took a quick walk on the Cylon Basestar when they were dropping off the bomb, so she easily could have told the Cylons where to find them. I didn’t think Boomer did tell the other-Boomers anything like that, but a Cylon Basestar show up anyway. Tigh makes the decision for the fleet to jump, even though doing so means A) abandoning the team stranded on Kobol for the time being and B) risking Adama’s life, since Doc Cottle’s not on the ship yet.

But when the Galactica jumps to the emergency rendezvous point the rest of the fleet isn’t there. Turns out that in the midst of all the craziness Gaeta forgot to send the updated coordinates to the rest of the fleet. Whoops. Ellen urges Tigh to rake Gaeta across the coals for what is, admittedly, a rather big screw-up. Tigh defends him, saying that he himself should’ve double-checked and shutting Ellen down when she starts to talk about how if Adama dies the ship is his. “This is Bill’s ship 5ever,” Tigh growls (paraphrasing here). Tigh uses Power of Friendship! It’s somewhat effective! Speaking of the Power of Friendship, during this whole episode Tigh has flashbacks to a time some decades when back Adama pulled some strings with his in-laws to get he and Tigh, both of whom had been kicked out of the fleet for some reason, reinstated. I’m sure there was some other stuff going on there, but I was too distracted by Tigh-with-hair and Adama’s rocking ’70s ‘stache to notice.

Gaeta, understandably, feels like crap, but he figures out a way to find the rest of the fleet: They can jump back to Kobol and use some scientific wizardry to calculate where the fleet is. If they link all the ships’ networks it’ll only take ten minutes, during which time the Vipers will have to hold the probably-still-there Basestar off. I love how Gaeta’s big plan is essentially “Internet!.” It speaks to me on a spiritual level. But remember, Cylons in the past have used the Internet to infect Colonial ships with viruses. To buy them a little more time Gaeta installs a series of firewalls.

Is Gaeta going to have more to do from now on? Because I kind of love him. Not as much as I love Tigh, but I’m getting there.

An imprisoned Lee and Roslin are freaking out, albeit in a stoic, dignified manner. Tigh puts Lee on parole, which means that he’ll do his job like he did before and spend any time he’s not on-duty back in the brig.

Meanwhile, Adama’s not doing so well. With Doc Cottle on one of the ships separated from the Galactica a random combat medic has to perform surgery to stop his internal bleeding despite having like zero training. (I like this medic.) She’s successful, as is Gaeta’s plan: It’s a close call, but the firewalls he set up hold in time for the Galactica to find the rest of the fleet.

Let’s pause and have a bit of a cheer for Gaeta. You go, Gaeta.

Things still suck, though, because BSG: During the battle the good guys got Trojan horse’d, with the Cylons ramming a ship filled with Centurions into the ship. OK, it’s not an exact Trojan horse metaphor, because one side wasn’t tricked into accepting it. But this show is filled with Greek mythology references, darnit. I can make one, too.

Things aren’t all sunshine and rainbows for the crew stranded on Kobol, either. They’ve decided to make for the treeline to avoid Cylons, but when they hear toasters nearby Crashdown makes them skedaddle rather quicker than they should’ve, resulting in the second medkit being left behind even though Chief Tyrol said “Hey, we should probably make sure we have everything before we leave.” Crashdown. Listen to the Chief. (I want that on a t-shirt.) Turns out the injured crewman, Socinus, really needs what’s in that medkit, so Crashdown sends a guy named Tarn *coughredshirtcough* to get the medkit even though everybody knows it being left wasn’t Tarn’s fault. Tyrol and Cally go with him, but on the way back it’s Tarn who gets killed.

Also in this episode:

Gaius being completely useless to the other Kobol survivors; he spends his
time having a religious experience, hallucinating baby cribs, and trying to get Six to tell him how the human-Cylon baby she showed him can be their baby when, y’know, she’s just inside his head. “Sex ed is useless to me here!”
Back on Caprica Starbuck tries to shoot Boomer, but Helo won’t let her because Boomer is pregnant and (so he says) different from the other Cylons. Starbuck’s response (paraphrasing): “God, men are so frakking stupid. She’s lying. Duh, you moron.” Attagirl. I don’t think Boomer is lying, because the show’s got an interesting thing going with the hybrid baby and I can’t imagine that’s a red herring, but I absolutely love how Starbuck calls people on their BS. Looks like she was right to suspect Boomer, too, as the Cylon steals Starbuck’s raider and flies away to who-knows-where.
Hicks from Alphas and Benny from Supernatural both play small roles in this episode, and Aidan from the US Being Human and Gerard Argent from Teen Wolf (“Mountain aaaash!“) are regulars. Please tell me Mark Sheppard shows up at some point. Please.

Valley of Darkness

The episode starts with a little bit of Billy and Dee awkwardness; apparently their parents Roslin and Adama fighting has put a strain on their not-quite-real-because-Billy-won’t-make-a-move relationship. Am I supposed to care about these two crazy kids working it out? ‘Cause I just don’t.

Then things take a turn for the scary; not only are there Centurions making their way around the ship, but the Cylon viruses that Gaeta so ably stopped with his firewalls last episode managed to get into some of the subsystems, resulting in communications being jammed and electricity being cut. Ooh, extra creepy.

What the Cylons are trying to do is fiddle with the decompression controls to suck everyone on the Galactica out into space; once that happens they can use the Galactica’s guns to shoot down every other ship in the fleet. The Centurions make easy work of anyone who tries to stop them until the only people standing between them and the destruction of humanity are Lee, a few of his pilots, and some random guy named Jammer.

Meanwhile Roslin, Billy, and a few guards are out of the brig and on their way to sickbay, because that’s the safest spot to be. On the way there they find Dee, who’s bleeding and in shock. Everyone—including Venner, Roslin’s guard!—is freaking out… everyone except Roslin, who keeps her cool and gets everyone back on track. For all that she’s not a soldier she sure has the whole survivalism thing on lockdown.

To get to sickbay they have to go past aft damage control… which is where the Cylons and Lee’s group is headed, too. Lee gets there first and prepares to hold down the fort against the Cylons with only six bullets and the fate of humanity on their shoulders. I was sure it was being set up that one of Lee’s people would accidentally fire on and kill one of Roslin’s people, probably Billy. The episode certainly seemed to be headed in that direction, with the emphasis paid in this scene to how nervous Jammer is at firing a gun. Turns out that doesn’t happen. Billy goofs up and fires when he shouldn’t, drawing the Cylon’s attention toward them, after which Lee and co. are able to take them down in the nick of time.

I love the bait and switch, personally; it added to the suspense of the episode, which was already the BSG version of a horror movie. Good for you, show. I’ll even forgive you for the cheesy Billy/Dee scene where they make up (and out) in sickbay, even though you can’t stop me from muttering “bor-ing” under my breath.

Meanwhile, down on Kobol, Cally and Chief Tyrol get the medkit back to the group, but it’s too late to save Socinus. Tyrol isn’t pleased that Redshirt Tarn died for nothing, to say the least. I wonder if he and Crashdown will fight.

Baltar’s still speeding along on the road to insanity; he has a dream that they’re rescued by Adama, who drowns Baltar’s baby. Upon waking Six tells him that humanity will always resort to their murderous instincts but that Adama will only be able to kill their baby if Baltar lets him. I’ve got to say, if that dream was planted by Six—and it had to have been, right?—that is some A+ psychological manipulation right there. Half of me wants to see Baltar at least try to break from her grip because their relationship’s gone a little static and could use some mixing up, but the other half of me just enjoys seeing the evil robot lady work.

Also in this episode:

The closing scene was an intense bit of acting between Lee and Tigh, wherein Lee says that neither of them were ever fit to wear the uniform and that Adama will decide what to do with both of them when he wakes up. Lee leaves, srs bsns music swells, and Tigh just can’t hold back one last crabby one-liner: “Thank the gods I didn’t have kids.” Never stop, Tigh. Never stop.
Back on Caprica Helo and Starbuck take a side-trip to Starbuck’s old apartment, where they chill for a while discussing character develop-y sorts of things before Starbuck finds the keys to her old truck and they go riding off into the sunset to find a Cylon ship to steal.

Fragged

This episode wasn’t quite so good as the previous two, I thought, but hey, they can’t all be that great. The major theme of this 43 minutes: S***. Goes. Down. Boy, does it ever.

First up: The Galactica. Roslin’s going through Chamalla withdrawl, resulting in her acting completely crazy: Not recognizing Ellen Tigh when she comes to visit, screaming in her sleep, mumbling about the Pythian Prophecy, etc. Billy tries to get more Chamalla from Doc Cottle, who’s on the ship to deal with a still-unconscious Adama, but he has to be sneaky about it because he can’t exactly let Tigh know that the President is both dying and insane. Tigh finds out anyway courtesy of Ellen, who tells him he should let the Quorum of 12—who’s been demanding to see their locked up Pres.—see exactly how incapable of leadership Roslin currently is. And he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for ~~you darned kids~~ Roslin’s guard Corporal Venner, who smuggles her some Chamalla. Tigh expected her to be a gibbering mess when the Quorum visits, but instead she gives a stirring speech denouncing Adama’s military coup and admitting that she’s the dying prophet who will lead the human race to salvation. Enjoy that egg on your face, Tigh.

Speaking of Tigh, he’s an absolute failboat this episode. He’s told Ellen before that he doesn’t want to be a Commander, and that’s a good thing because he’s as bad under high-pressure situations as Roslin is good. He’s drunk all the time, forgets about the people on Kobol, and, oh yeah, declares martial law. Tigh, Tigh, Tigh. Adama’s out of it for a few days and you (probably) start a civil war? I kind of feel bad for him, though. He’s not some evil power-hungry monster, for all Ellen wants him to rule the fleet with and iron fist. He’s just a mean, alcoholic screw-up.

Back on Kobol some Cylons are building a surface-to-air missile rig to shoot down anyone who might show up to rescue the stranded survey team. Crashdown, reeling from the deaths of Tarn and Socinus, decides to take advantage of the element of surprise to kill the Cylons and destroy the rig despite the fact that he’s the only one among them who’s been trained for any kind of assault mission. Chief calls him on that, but when Baltar starts in on Crashdown, calling his plan crazy and saying they’re all going to die, Chief defends his brother-in-arms, intimidating Baltar into sitting down and shutting up like he’s a disobedient puppy and Tyrol’s wielding the Rolled-Up Newspaper of Death.

When it’s time to attack the Cylons a screw-up on Baltar’s part (one that he doesn’t admit to, because he’s Baltar) means that one of two things are be true: Either there are more Cylons than they thought they were, which means the good guys are outnumbered and will probably all die, or the radar dish they need to take out is undefended, which means they don’t need to attack the Cylons at all and will probably all live. Crash, displaying a Tigh-like mixture of fear and bad judgment, orders them to attack, and when Cally refuses he threatens to shoot her. The poor guy’s panicking, and we never find out whether he actually would’ve shot Cally… because Baltar shoots him first. Six, who was giving him guff earlier for saying he wasn’t ready to be a father, congratulates him on being a man now. Later on she tells him that killing is his heritage as a human but don’t worry, she’ll be his conscience. That’s a lovely way of saying “You’ll kill a bunch of people and I’ll tell you who.” Oh, Six, you can be do delightfully evil sometimes.

Then the Cylons start shooting, so everyone runs to the radar dish which is—you guessed it—undefended. Baltar actually proves quite capable in the battle, and Tyrol manages to take out the radar dish. Right in the nick of time, too, as the rescue team, led by Lee, has just made it through the atmosphere. After the rest of the Cylons are taken care of Lee asks what happens to Crashdown, and instead of telling the truth (“I shot him in the back” might not go down so well) Baltar says he died heroically in battle.

Also in this episode:

There is just one thing I want to mention, and it is the following exchange:

Tigh: Why aren’t you in the brig?!
Billy: Um… because… no one put me in there?

I want that to be a thing: Tigh giving anyone who annoys him the stinkeye and asking why the hell they aren’t in jail yet. GRARRRRGH.

I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

Can season two of Battlestar Galactica live up to its awesome first three episodes? Does Gaeta get more screentime? Can Tigh do anything that will make me hate him? The answers to these questions and more in this week’s Battlestar Galactica Newbie Recap.

Resistance

Chief Tyrol had a break last episode, what with being rescued from the surface of Kobol and all. But once he gets back to the Galactica things quickly go sour. Turns out while he was away his ex-girlfriend shot Admiral Adama and was revealed to be a Cylon. Awkwaaaard. He’s interrogated by Tigh, who accuses him of being a Cylon himself before locking him up with Boomer. He’s not too pleased about it. Threatens to kill her, in fact. Golly, I’m not sure whether these two lovebirds will be able to work it out!

Another person upset by the situation is Cally. She firmly believes in Tyrol’s innocence, so much so that she blackmails Baltar—who lied about shooting Crashdown, remember—into helping him. Baltar tries to get permission to use his Cylon detector on Tyrol, but he’s summarily dismissed by Tigh, who has turned into the personification of everyone’s mean, drunk uncle. Imagine a bald, alcoholic Grumpy Cat, and that’s him. Baltar even tries to play the “But I’m the Vice President!” card, only to be told “Martial law, remember? And anyway, your Cylon test gave Boomer a clean slate. It doesn’t work. Get out of my face.” Six, sensing an opportunity for psychological manipulation (I swear there’s an alarm that goes off in her head whenever someone’s mean to Batlar) swoops in and says it’s time to do something about him begin constantly disrespected.

Tigh, meanwhile, is finding that maintaining martial law is more difficult than declaring it. In addition to there being protests and civil disobedience on the other ships, the people in charge of refining Tylium ore say they won’t do so until a representative government comes back, plus several ships are refusing to refuel the Galactica. Ellen, who must share Six’s “manipulate my significant other” alarm, passive-aggressively accuses Tigh of being soft on the dissenters. In response, he gets on the horn to Gaeta and tells him to send a message that anyone who refuses to send fuel will face “stern measures.”

The threats don’t work, and in fact the disobedience gets worse, with ships refusing to send any supplies to the Galactica at all. Tigh orders that boarding parties be sent to the ships responsible to take supplies by force. But said boarding parties are led in many cases by pilots and bridge control officers who have no experience dealing with crowd control. On one of the ships a riot break out, and the whole thing culminates in unarmed civilians being shot and killed.

Man, Tigh can just not get his stuff together, can he? That said, though he’s done some awful things in this episode and the last, I don’t hate him. He’s mean, drunk, and closed-minded, but he’s in an awful situation. I wouldn’t like to hang out with the guy, but he’s one great character.

Plus a later scene with him and Ellen arguing turns into a makeout session, during which his response to his wife saying “I love you so much!” is “Shut up, Ellen.”

Tigh is the best character. Everyone else go home.

While Tigh crashes and burns, Roslin becomes determined to escape from the Galactica, rally her supporters, and head to Kobol so she can meet Starbuck, open the Tomb of Athena, and head to Earth. Since Tigh’s not exactly the most popular guy in the fleet nowadays she has plenty of co-conspirators, among them Dee, Doc Cottle, and Lee, the last of whom plans to leave his post and his still-unconscious father to go with her.

The plan is almost ruined several times, first when Gaeta notices Dee’s been making off-log calls, which is against the rules, and second when Lee and Roslin are caught by a random soldier on the way to their escape ship. Roslin convinces the soldier to let them go, because the only one who can say no to Roslin is Adama, and he’s in a coma. At the last minute Billy tells Roslin he’s not going with them because he doesn’t want to take part in a civil war. Did… did Billy just do something interesting?

Tigh is understandably pissed when he finds that Roslin and Lee have escaped. He threatens to shoot them down but Lee calls his bluff, and in the end he’s unable to kill his best friend’s only living son. You go, Tigh. This scene also reinforced my love for Gaeta, who gets asked if he noticed any off-log calls and says no, electing not to make Dee’s involvement in the plot known.

Roslin and Lee fly to the luxury liner Cloud 9, where they meet Zarek, the only person with shady enough connections to hide the two fugitives.

Shortly after this happens Adama wakes up and asks Tigh what the hell’s going on with his ship. Tigh confesses to royally frakking things up, but Adama doesn’t grill him on what he did or offer any sort of judgment. Instead, he just says that people who’ve never had the responsibility that Tigh’s now had a taste of don’t know the sort of pressure he was under, and that whatever happened they’ll pick up the pieces together.

Adama doesn’t hate him, and I can’t either. Tigh 4 lyfe.

While all this is going on Baltar’s managed to get permission to run his Cylon test on Tyrol. He goes a bit beyond that, though, injecting Tyrol with something that’ll kill him in seconds if he’s not given the antidote. I’ll save his life, Baltar explains to Boomer, if you tell me how many Cylons there are left in the fleet. She might not think she knows, but the information should be there on a subconscious level, and if she loves Tyrol she’ll spill. Panicking, she says there are eight. (Should I assume she’s correct about that? I’ve no problem with it, I’d just like to know if the show and I are on the same page.)

Baltar injects Tyrol with the antidote and later clears his name, which Tyrol thanks him for. So I guess he doesn’t remember Baltar poisoning him. Good job covering your steps, Baltar, you weaselly old so-and-so.

Back on Caprica Starbuck and Helo run into some members of the human resistance, led by Anders, a hot-headed, snarky guy who seems pretty much like a male Starbuck. Our heroes are led to the base of said resistance, which is composed of 53 people who happened to be out of major cities when the attack happened. They run raids on Cylon bases despite the fact that none of them have any combat experience. Anders was the head of the Caprica Buccaneers, a pyramid team. From what I can tell pyramid is a cross between soccer and Quidditch. He and Starbuck play a game, and there’s sexual tension and longing glances, etc. etc.. I don’t ship it, at least not now. They’re too much alike.

As one character is introduced, another one leaves: The episode ends with Boomer, marching to a cell where she’ll become a Cylon guinea pig, getting shot and killed by Cally. She dies in Tigh’s arms, and her last words are “I love you, Chief.” But whatever. There are spares.

Also in this episode:
Six angrily informs Baltar that the nickname “toaster” is racist. I don’t know why that’s as funny as it is.

The Farm

After taking a back seat last episode Starbuck is in the forefront again, getting shot, killing a Cylon, and escaping from Caprica. The episode starts with her and Helo at the resistance base camp, where she advises Anders to hole up in the mountains until she’s able to get back to the fleet and have a rescue team sent back for them. To get her back to the fleet in the first place the resistance plans a raid on a nearby Tylium station, but they’re attacked by Cylons on the way there, and Starbuck gets shot.

She wakes up in a hospital being cared for by a kind-yet-creepy (kreepy? That can be a thing, right?) doctor named Simon. He tells her Anders brought her in and then died from wounds received in the battle while she was recovering from surgery. I call BS on this hospital—the resistance as we’ve seen it so far only has 53 people in a falling-down school, and you expect me to believe there’s a full-fledged aid hospital that the Cylons haven’t found yet? One where the doctors wear pristine lab coats? Starbuck is suspicious too, asking if he’s a Cylon, to which he responds “No. But isn’t that what a Cylon would say?” Tricksy Hobbit.

In later scenes she continues to grill him, asking how many other patients there are, why she doesn’t hear any of them, and why she hasn’t seen any other doctors or nurses. He has an answer for every question: There are several hundred other patients; she doesn’t hear them because most of them are dying of radiation sickness, which is a pretty quiet way to go; and she’s quarantined to limit the spread of infection, so her contact with others has to be limited. All of that sounds like it could be legit. It’s when Simon starts talking about babies that things get (more) weird.

He notes that her X-ray revealed cysts in one of her ovaries, which is particularly bad because of how important it is to the resistance that women be able to have kids. There aren’t a lot of women left who are physically able to reproduce, he explains, and your value as someone who can pop out mini-Starbucks is higher than your value as a soldier. When Starbuck responds that she’d rather not have babies, kthx, he responds that that makes perfect sense, as people with her history often don’t want to have kids. Her “history” in this case is that she was abused as a child, which he inferred when he saw from her X-rays that her fingers had been broken when she was a child. This psychological torture is awful… Cylon-y.

Starbuck’s suspicions are aroused further when she wakes up one day and sees a new scar, which Simon says is a result of dealing with some internal bleeding. No big deal, he explains. We’re almost done with you. Now, I haven’t been a patient in a hospital since I was like three, but I’m pretty darn sure if a doctor’s going to cut into you they’ll tell you first. Especially since Starbuck, when she’s not on the pain meds they keep feeding her through the IV, is pretty with it, mentally speaking. They better not have implanted a kid in her.

Starbuck, well and truly ready to get the heck out of dodge, tricks Simon into thinking she’s been dosed with pain meds when she hasn’t. She takes a walk around the hospital corridors where she sees Simon talking with Six, telling her that they’re almost ready to remove Starbuck’s ovaries, after which she’ll be sent away for some mysterious purpose. Holy shiiiiii—.

Technically Starbuck could just try and escape right then, sneaking through the corridors and hoping she won’t be noticed, but this is Starbuck and that’s not nearly badass enough. The next time Simon comes to wake her up she stabs him in the neck with a shard of mirror, killing him (sort of—there are many copies and all that) and making a run for it. She finds herself in a room full of human women hooked up to machines, being used as incubators for Cylon-human babies. One of them is Sue-Shaun, who was part of the resistance. She begs Starbuck to kill all of them by cutting the power, which she does. On her way out of the hospital she hits Six with a fire extinguisher and is almost stopped by yet another Simon, who just in the nick of time gets shot by…

…the Resistance, including a not-dead Anders, which has been looking for her since she went missing. They got some help from Boomer, who pops up back up and says she only stole Starbuck’s raider so she could track them. But why did she need to track them? Couldn’t she have just gone with them? What was she doing during her little break? Is this even the same Boomer? Woah there, Rebecca, conspiracy theories are in overdrive.

There’s a firefight, and the resistance is victorious after Boomer arrives in a new sort of Cylon ship and shoots the centurions. Starbuck tells the resistance what she saw, and Boomer confirms it: The Cylons are obsessed with “procreation,” that being one of God’s commandments, and to that end they’ve taken hundreds or even thousands of human women and put them on “farms” like the one Starbuck was in, trying to impregnate them with hybrid children. She explains that the Cylons have so far been unsuccessful in using science to create their new race, which led them to hypothesize that they might be missing an ingredient: Love. That’s why they set Helo and Boomer up to fall for one another.

Seriously? The super-intelligent, scientifically advanced robots think the secret ingredient to conceiving what’s technically a genetically impossible baby is love? I understand that the Cylons are all super-religious and into God’s love. They aren’t exactly the “Beep boop what is emotion? My servers cannot process” type. But still. Love? Not sure if red herring or just stupid.

Starbuck, having seen the horrors of the farms firsthand, wants to stay behind and liberate them, but she’s convinced by Anders to complete her mission by taking the Arrow of Apollo back to the fleet. The resistance will deal with the farms, he says, but you have to promise to come back and get us. She promises, and she, Helo, and Boomer fly off to rejoin the fleet at Kobol.

Of course, she doesn’t know that the fleet is no longer at Kobol. While all the kidnapping-experimenting-awful baby weirdness has been happening on Caprica there’s another sort of trouble on the Galactica, where a newly awake Adama has to deal with finding the fugitives Roslin and Lee. The two of them are still holed up on Cloud 9 with Zarek and Elosha, where they’re trying to figure out a way to get more people to their side. Zarek comes up with the idea of Lee publicly denouncing his father, which he finds himself unable to do. I think Adama Family Feels are sneaking up on me. Instead Roslin decides to play the religion card, recording a message that says she’s a prophet and that ships that want to find Earth should jump with her back to Kobol when she gives the signal.

Adama doesn’t believe in all that religious stuff, and furthermore he can’t comprehend that anyone else would, either. He thinks going to Kobol is a suicide run, and that if any ships want to be so stupid as to join Roslin then that’s fine by him. It turns out almost a third of the fleet is that stupid: Tigh only thought two or three ships would jump at Roslin’s signal, but it’s actually 24 of them.

Whoops.

Also in this episode:

Adama has a chat with Chief Tyrol and asks him if he really loved Boomer. He says he thought he did, to which Adama responds: Then you did. Love is thoughts. Boomer was more than a machine to all of us. Later he goes to visit Boomer’s body in the brig and seems to be genuinely sad—though also angry, of course—about her betrayal. Lee, Starbuck, Boomer: All his little duckies have abandoned him. I love how the gruff, serious military commander has a less hardline, most sympathetic view of the Cylons than most of the other major players, particularly Roslin. He almost kinda-sorta seems to see them as people, not that it matters, because they’re the enemy and he’ll deal with them as such anyway.
Instead of getting locked up for life for killing Boomer, Cally gets 30 days in the brig for discharging a weapon without permission. Roslin would’ve given her a medal.

I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

Is the fleet ever, ever, ever getting back together?

Home: Part I

Looks like Adama’s craggy cool has been broken by the defection of his son to the Laura Roslin side of the Force. Though the loss of approximately a third of the fleet on what he considers a fool’s errand to find Earth isn’t helping either.

With Lee gone Adama and Tigh have to find a suitable replacement CAG, which kind of sucks because there aren’t really any great candidates. Lacking someone with qualifications like “military experience” and “proven leadership skills,” Adama instead decides to settle on Lieutenant George Birch, who’s basically a stand-in son: Honest, loyal, and willing to follow orders. Oh, Adama. A psychologist would have a field day with you.

Tigh doesn’t agree with Adama choosing the green-behind-the-ears Birch as CAG, but he supports Adama’s decision anyway, because that’s what an XO does. Turns out Tigh was right on this one: Birch’s screw-up while leading a flight exercise almost gets a pilot killed, and he can’t coordinate a simple refueling mission without messing it up royally. The poor guy was thrust into a position he just wasn’t ready for.

As it happens, that’s a position Adama finds himself in as well. He holds a press conference and proceeds to failboat mightily, refusing to answer the reporters’ questions and responding to a rumor that he doesn’t know the way to Earth by threatening to lock up anyone who reports it. Yeah, that’ll go over well. At least he has a newfound respect for Roslin’s ability to deal with the press now. Respect the Roslin.

Later on, after delivering a monologue about betrayal and rage while building a miniature ship (he’s turned into a high school goth. Minus the ship thing) he gets a dressing down from, of all people, Dee, who pretty much tells him he needs to get his head out of his ass. You asked me to spend time with you because you didn’t think I’d tell you things you don’t want to hear, but I will, she explains. You let us down by splitting the fleet apart when you promised we’d all get to Earth together.

Her Moment of Awesome has an effect: At the end of the episode Adama announces that their family’s been split apart for too long, so he’s putting the fleet back together. Even Tigh looks less murderous than usual at the news.

So what’s Roslin been up this whole time? Her third of the fleet is hanging out above Kobol, where they’re waiting for Starbuck to show up with the Arrow of Apollo. Zarek suggests they find a way to arm the ships in case the Galactica decides to attack, to which Lee responds with a bomb of his own: A truth bomb (I amuse myself way too much sometimes). If Adama wants them dead, they’ll die. Roslin backs him up, pointing out that Adama let their mini-fleet go to Kobol in the first place. They’re here to go to the surface of Kobol and find the way to Earth, nothing else, and anyone who isn’t OK with that can GTFO back to the Galactica.

In a case of truly excellent timing Starbuck shows up soon after, though in that weird Cylon ship from the last episode, so she almost gets shot down. Upon seeing her Lee gives her a big ol’ smackeroo, which they both try to play off like it wasn’t totally frakking weird. Oh, these two. I ship it. The mood takes a turn for the dark when Boomer waltzes off the ship and Lee immediately attacks her, because of the whole “She’s a Cylon and another her shot my father” thing. Reasonable. Helo and Starbuck both try to get Apollo not to shoot her, explaining that she saved their lives, and Roslin appears to be on their side… until she gives the order that Boomer be airlocked, a fate from which the Cylon is saved only because she knows where the path to the Tomb of Athena is.

Roslin still doesn’t trust Boomer, so she threatens to airlock Helo if she doesn’t deliver on her promise to get them to the tomb. Not that Roslin would actually kill Helo (at least I think she wouldn’t), but if Boomer thinks that helping Roslin is the only way to save the man she loves then Roslin will darn well take advantage of that. You go, Roslin, turning the tables of psychological manipulation around on the Cylons. (Roslin’s not a Cylon… right?)

Meanwhile Zarek and his best bud Meier (ohai Dexters’s dad!) have giant hate-ons for pretty much everyone: Boomer (whom they think can’t be trusted, which is fair), Lee (whom they see as a useless little boy), and Roslin (whom they think is off her rocker in regards to the prophecy). They probably hate puppies, too. All they care about is themselves, and to that end they plan to “accidentally” kill Lee while on the surface of Kobol—after all, the scripture says someone will die there anyway—so Roslin will have no one else but Zarek to command her fleet.

Roslin may have resigned herself to working with Boomer, but Lee hasn’t: He threatens to shoot her again and has to be talked down by Starbuck. In a later scene they have another confrontation that kicks off when Lee steals Starbuck’s pyramid ball (which is actually Anders’ pyramid ball) and tries to use it as leverage to get her to talk about her ~feeeeelings~. Lee’s a good friend, so he knows something happend to her on Caprica and tries to get her to open up about it, though his method has more than a little eau de jerk about it. Emotional openness isn’t exactly Starbuck’s forte, though, so she clams up. Lee accidentally lets the L-word slip, too, albeit in a platonic context. Sure, Lee. Suuuuuure.

The crew (that’s Roslin, Starbuck, Boomer, Lee, Helo, Elosha the priest lady, Zarek, Meier, and a few ~~redshirts~~ guards) lands on Kobol and is set on the path to the tomb by Boomer. The prophecy about someone dying on Kobol comes true fairly quickly, but it’s not Lee. Instead it’s the priest lady Elosha, who steps on a Ye Holy Land Mine. The explosion catches the attention (and gunfire) of some Cylon centurions, who are only defeated when Boomer steals a grenade launcher and blows them up before giving the grenade launcher back like a good Cylon/Cylon who’s trying to get in good with the humans.

Also in this episode:

Elosha says that the scriptures mention a “lower demon” who will help the humans return to Earth. She and Roslin believe this to be Boomer. But the way Six interprets the prophecy has the endgame not as humans returning to Earth but as Cylon-human hybrids rising to power. Who’s the helpful “lower demon” in this interpretation? Is it still Boomer? If so, does that mean she’s still working with the Cylons? Or was the “help” just her getting pregnant? Could the “lower demon” be a different copy of Boomer? Is this copy of Boomer the copy we think it is? Am I reading way too much into a throwaway line?

Home: Part II

As Roslin and her Prophecy Pals are trekking through Kobol to find the Tomb of Athena, Adama’s aboard the Galactica doing his research on all matters religious. He figures if that he can figure out where the Tomb is he’ll be able to intercept Roslin on the way there. He notes that she might have seen the path to Kobol in a vision, which causes Tigh and Gaeta to have a mini gigglefit. But he’s serious, Adama explains. She has seen things, and whether they’re legitimate visions or just hallucinations, she believes they’re true.

That interaction is a microcosm of the show right there. You might think they’re going in a fun direction and making a joke. But no. And then a frakking exposition scene gets even darker: Adama says he and Roslin are coming back from the surface of Kobol together, dead or alive. Oh, Battlestar Galactica.

Going with Adama are Chief Tyrol, Racetrack, and Billy, the last of whom gets all sad about how he thinks Roslin won’t want to see him because he’s just an assistant and he chose not to escape from the Galactica with her. “Buck up, li’l Billy,” says Adama, “Roslin told me she thinks you’ll be president one day!” “Golly gee, she did?,” responds Billy. OK, no, he didn’t say that, but he is an adorable man-sized moppet. There’s no denying it.

Down on Kobol Boomer and Helo are being all lovey-dovey, or as lovey-double as a BSG romance can get, which is not very. (That’s a good thing. I hate sap.) Boomer reminisces about her old life (well, her copy’s old life. But she remembers it, so it’s kind of hers too. Whatever.) and talks about her baby, whom she says will be a girl. Lee’s majorly weirded out by Helo’s affection for Boomer, but Starbuck defends him. Later on Starbuck tells Roslin about the resistance movement on Caprica; Roslin, who’s not doing well health-wise, says they’ll discuss rescuing them after their mission to the Tomb is complete.

Meanwhile, Zarek and Meier have decided that, instead of killing Lee themselves, they’ll get Boomer to do it. Meier tells the Cylon that Lee will kill her as soon as she leads them to the Tomb, and no one will step in to save her and her unborn Cybaby, because when Cally shot the other Boomer she got off with just 30 days in the brig. Hmm. Trying to manipulate a super-smart robot, Meier? A super-smart robot who belongs to a species that specializes in psychological manipulation? That’ll go well.

That’s when Adama shows up. He and Lee hug—oh, my heart needed that—and Roslin and Billy get their happy reunion, as do Adama and Starbuck. Then things get intense when Boomer shows up and Chief Tyrol, understandably freaked out, pulls a gun on her.

Helo/Boomer/Chief Tyrol could be the most messed up love triangle ever.

Adama measures Boomer up for a moment before tackling her to the ground and telling her he wants her to die. He proceeds to choke her and only stops when he gets something like heartburn. OK, no, not heartburn, but Boomer did something to get him to back off. Then she says to him: “And you ask why?” Wait, what?! The moment she’s referring to took place back in The Farm, when Adama asked “Why?” to other!Boomer’s cold, dead corpse. So how could this Boomer have known about that? She says she doesn’t even remember shooting Adama, so how would she remember something that happened to another her when that other her was dead? What’s going on?!

Later Roslin and Adama make up, with Adama telling Roslin he forgives her for what she did and Roslin responding “Thanks, but I didn’t ask you to.” Has anybody made a Laura Roslin sunglasses “deal with it” gif? Because I really want one, but I can’t Google BSG-related gifs lest I be spoiled. #RecapperProblems

Boomer and Helo are having a srs bsns conversation, the Cylon telling her human boyfriend that the other her was killed. It’s made even more tense when Chief Tyrol walks in. Boomer says she’s never technically met him, but she remembers him. They hug. Again: Weirdest. Love triangle. Ever. Later, once Tyrol leaves, Boomer says something cryptic to Helo about how the humans don’t trust her and if they want to have any future together she’ll have to take matters into their own hands.

What “taking matters into her own hands” involves is seeming to go along with Zarek and Meier’s plan, which is now only Meier’s plan (Zarek realized the stupidity inherent in trying to kill Adama’s son with Adama right there), only to turn on him at the last minute. What’d I say about manipulating Cylons, Meier? Boomer pulls a gun on Adama and Meier pulls one on Lee, but Boomer shoots Meier instead. She then tells Adama that she makes her own choices before letting him go.

So her plan to get the humans to trust her is showing them that she could kill them at any time, even when she’s being constantly watched, she just chooses not to? How the hell is that supposed to be reassuring?!

Roslin, Adama, Lee, and Starbuck go into the tomb, which is filled with decrepit statues matching up to many of our own constellations. They insert the Arrow of Apollo into a statue of Sagittaron (Sagittarius, to us)-the-archer that’s conspicuously missing an arrow of its own. Suddenly they find themselves on what seems to be a completely different planet, surrounded by the same statues that were in the tomb. On each of those statues are jewels, and those jewels match up with constellations in the night sky above. It may look like another planet, but they’re actually standing on a map: The planet you’re standing on where you can see all those constellations is Earth. Lee even recognizes a particular nebula, so while they don’t know how far away Earth is, at least they have a direction.

I got chills.

Adams gives a big speech once they’re back on the Galactica about how they should remain undivided, and then he leads the assembled watchers in a big round of applause for Roslin.

Something tells me getting to Earth won’t be easy. Just a hunch.

Also in this episode:

Boomer, mid-theology (mythology?) lesson, gets all ominous about Athena, implying that the Lords of Kobol aren’t who (or what) the humans think they are. Evil Greek gods? I’m down.
The B plot in this episode is that back on the Galactica Baltar’s been talking smack about how the baby he and Six are supposed to have isn’t actually real. Six retaliates by telling him that she’s not in fact a Cylon, but merely a hallucination generated by his own mind. He hasn’t been chosen by God or anything. He’s just crazy. Enough with the bait-and-switch, show. I thought for a second there was some truth in what she was saying, and that I wasn’t just sitting through yet another case of Six-messes-with-Baltar-to-make-sure-he’s-on-her-side. But no. A brain scan proves that he’s fine. (For Baltar levels of “fine,” that is. Would “Help, I’m hallucinating a Cylon” even show up on a brain scan?) Six snaps back into no-I’m-really-a-Cylon mode, and at the end of the episode the two of them overhear Helo and Boomer talking about their unborn baby. Turns out Boomer’s kid is the one Six was talking about. Six says she’s an angel of God sent to guide and protect Baltar on his quest to bring about the end of the human race. Finally. Their plotline is starting to go somewhere.

I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

My notes for this week’s recap begins with “footage of massacre on Gideon—news report by is that Lucy Lawless?!”

Final Cut

The fact that Tigh inadvertently caused a riot that ended with several civilians being killed hasn’t been mentioned all that much over the past few episodes, but there’s one person who definitely hasn’t let it go: New character D’Anna Biers (Lucy Lawless!!!), a reporter of questionable journalistic integrity who’s putting together a news segment on it to get people all fired up about the fact that no one’s gotten punished yet.

Her efforts bring her to the attention of Roslin and Adama, who instead of shutting down her operation give her unlimited access to the Galactica and her crew so she can make a balanced documentary that puts a face on the men and women of the military. It’s not technically unlimited, though, since Adama lets her know she’ll be booted if she captures any footage that could be a threat to the fleet’s security. Good thing there aren’t any huge military secrets—like, say, a captured Cylon—on board, huh?

This episode is shot using a mixture of normal techniques and first-person camerawork, like you’re actually seeing the footage D’Anna and her trusty cameraman are shooting as they’re shooting it. Some characters take to being filmed better than others. Adama and Lee, for example, have a twin “I have to do this, but I don’t have to like it” vibe going on. With Adama that manifests as world-weariness whenever he’s on-screen, whereas Lee takes out his frustration by snapping at one of his pilots for mooning the camera. Fair.

For others, being interviewed helps bring their angst to the forefront. Dee talks about how she fought with her father over enlisting and never made up with him before he died in the attacks. Kelso, one of the pilots involved in the Gideon massacre, is clearly upset with Tigh over sending them to the ship in the first place. Even Gaeta, a.k.a Mr. Professional, expresses regret at never having had a life outside the service.

The worst interview of the bunch belongs to Tigh, who while all this documentary business is going on has been getting death threats. The first instance occurs when someone paints “From the darkness you must fall” on his mirror, the same way someone painted “Cylon” on Boomer’s mirror last season. (Wait, did we ever find out who did that? Was it Boomer and I just forgot?) The second time comes after Adama tells Tigh to attend a conference on Cloud 9. Ostensibly the point of his being there is to hold his head high and show his critics he ain’t give a damn about them, but Adama also wants him to get some mandatory (and alcohol-free, yeah right) R&R.

Tigh doesn’t want to go, and it turns out he doesn’t have to, because someone sabotages his ship. (At this point I’m thinking he might have done it himself to avoid having to hob-nob with a bunch of strangers, but I’m just projecting what I’d want to do in his place.) At the urging of Ellen, who thinks Adama’s trying to throw him under the bus (of course), Tigh agrees to an interview with D’Anna, who puts a drink in his hand and makes damn sure he’s holding it during the interview. Nice. It doesn’t take him long to realize he’s been set up for a PR disaster, and as he readies himself to storm out of the room in an epically grumpy fashion D’Anna blocks his path. He pushes her (not cool, dude, even if you were being baited. I love you, but not cool), and she gets it allllll on camera.

D’Anna shows footage of Tigh’s epic blow-up to Adama, who apologizes for his XO and says Tigh hasn’t been brought up on any charges because Adama refuses to sacrifice people in the court of public opinion. They’re at war, he explains, and they all have to live with what happened. Adama, that’s… not really how the justice system works, y’know?

It turns out the person who has it in for Tigh is Kelso-the-pilot, who’s suffering from some major PTSD as a result of his involvement in the Gideon massacre. He attacks Tigh in his quarters, but when Tigh tells him what happened was his own fault, so go ahead and shoot him already (only a partial bluff, I’m convinced), Kelso’s unable to make himself pull the trigger. D’Anna’s managed to figure out that Kelso was the one trying to kill Tigh and rushes in with some guards, but they weren’t even necessary, because Tigh is occasionally not a failboat and has managed to take Kelso’s gun.

When the intrepid reporter goes to interview a sick pilot she gets some even juicier footage of Boomer, who’s in sickbay due to a bout of presumably pregnancy-related bleeding. Heeyyyyy, thinks D’Anna. I know her, she’s a Cylon! When Adama demands that she give him the tape she fakes him out and gives him the wrong one. Now she has a choice to make: Will she let the public know that Adama’s harboring a Cylon if doing so means possibly tearing the whole fleet apart? She’s helped in her decision when two Cylon raiders pop in for a quick visit. Adama and company handle it perfectly, which seemingly convinces D’Anna that everything with them is wonderful and peachy keen, and that even if they mess up sometimes they’re only human and do what they do is for The Greater Good, so everyone should be nice to them, kthx. Her documentary reflects that, and we get several shots of people watching, smiles on their faces, as they realize that someone has finally, finally recognized their sacrifice.

Except no, it turns out that Lucy Lawless is a motherfrakking Cylon. The final scene is of her, Six, Boomer, and the Cylon PR dude watching the documentary on Caprica, talking about how great it is to know that Galactica!Boomer and her child are still alive. Oh, and the raiders from before? They were only there to get the footage back to D’Anna’s Cylon BFFs.

Holy craaaaaaap. D’Anna was kind of shady this episode, but I genuinely did not see it coming that she was a Cylon. I know, I know, sweet summer child. This episode was amazing.

Also in this episode:

This episode featured the Lee-wearing-a-towel scene I’ve heard so much about. Unless there’s more than one? I wouldn’t object to that. *whistles innocently*
Gaeta’s interview sequence saw our favorite buttoned-up bridge officer being all flirty and charismatic with his mussed-up hair and uniform. Oh, plus he shows off his tiger tattoo (?!), and he’s smoking a cigarette. It’s like he’s trying to be a ’50s greaser for the camera, and it’s adorable. Oh, Gaeta, you doofus. I love you.
Lee makes a joke about how Starbuck couldn’t have been the one to threaten Tigh because there’s no way she knows poetry. Starbuck fires back with a frakking poetry recitation. She’s like an ogre. Or an onion. She has layers.
Comic relief this episode comes courtesy of Baltar, who’s all put out that D’Anna doesn’t want to interview him even though I’m the Vice President, Six, why doesn’t she want to talk to meeeeee?! When he finally weasels his way into an interview and psychs himself up to deliver a dramatic monologue about how great a leader he is, he’s interrupted by the arrival of the Cylon raiders. He tries to convince D’Anna not to go film the crisis because it’s probably just a drill, but she’s not having any of it. Oh, Baltar. Your moment in the limelight will have to wait.

Flight of the Phoenix

Gaeta’s link-our-networks-to-boost-our-computer-power trick, though necessary when the Galactica was separated from the rest of the fleet, just keeps coming back to bite the good guys in the ass. In Valley of Darkness a virus managed to slip into the Galactica’s electricity and communications subsystems, and this time a virus has infiltrated… well, pretty much everything. In the weeks since sneaking in through the temporary network it’s begun slowly taking over all the systems and is rapidly reaching the point where it’ll gain complete control over the Galactica and be able to broadcast a signal to a veritable army of waiting Cylon raiders, leading them to a ship that will by that point be entirely unable to defend, or even control, itself.

The name for this virus: Cylon logic bomb.

I think I have a new favorite fictional weapon.

But before we get to that, there’s some drama to catch up on. Helo’s been getting a less than warm welcome from his comrades, who are a little weirded out by the whole being-in-love-with-a-Cylon thing. They’ve been side-eyeing Chief Tyrol for the same reason. The two have a nice bonding session over their mutual—wait, no, never mind. Tyrol, clearly messed up in the head about a copy of his ex-girlfriend, who happens to be possibly-evil, coming back in to his life pregnant with another man’s child, says he’s glad he wasn’t the one who got “suckered into” impregnating Boomer with her “freak kid.” After releasing some tension with a good ol’ fashioned brawl Tyrol apologizes, saying he knows his Sharon is dead.

To get over his angst Tyrol starts on a new hobby: Building a brand new fighter in a cave with a box of scraps. Pretty much everyone besides Starbuck, Adama, and Roslin thinks it’s impossible, but by the end of the episode everyone comes around and helps him get the new ship working. Even Tigh procures spare engines for Tyrol after finding him brewing alcohol to trade for parts. Of course, Drunk Grumpy Cat presents his offer as a way to help another ship get rid of its trash, not as a way to do something nice. And he grabs a mason jar full of booze on his way out. Even if getting alcohol isn’t his primary goal, if Tigh’s earned some he’s going to take it, darnit.

But back to the virus. Adama first gets alerted to its presence after Dee’s headset gets blasted with a super-loud dose of static, making her space out temporarily and then, later in the episode, get all handsy and flirty with Lee. Cylons, what are you up to? Tigh orders Gaeta to go through every line of code until he figures out what’s wrong, a project that will take days. Gaeta cracks and yells at Tigh, which Adama says is symptomatic of how the whole fleet’s starting to feel “the reality of their situation.” I’d hazard a guess that Gaeta’s feeling guilty about inadvertently letting the Cylon virus infect the Galactica in the first place. It’s not your fault, Gaeta. There’s nothing you could have done.

Boy needs a therapist.

Also, I’m pretty sure everyone wants to yell at Tigh all the time.

Next up to feel the wrath of the Cylon logic bomb are Starbuck, Lee, and Hot Dog, who find themselves locked in the shooting range while all the oxygen slowly gets sucked out. Never has a scene of characters being giggly—oxygen deprivation’ll do that to you—been so suspenseful. Lee and Starbuck, seconds before passing out, manage to shoot out the glass in the door and save all their lives. You’re welcome, Hot Dog.

Conveniently for what’s left of humanity there just so happens to be a Cylon onboard who says she knows how to defeat the logic bomb. The question is whether they should trust her. Adama consults Roslin, who earlier in the episode was told by Doc Cottle that she has, at most, a month to live. She tells Adama his judgment’s been clouded by his history with Boomer but, since humans created Cylons, they should be able to find some common ground.

As it turns out, they do have common ground: None of them want to die. Adama enlists Boomer to help with a plan that Gaeta cooked up that involves performing a hard reset on the Galactica and restoring it from backups, basically treating it like a giant iPhone with people living on it. It’s the only way to delete the logic bomb for good, but it’ll leave the ship defenseless should the Cylons show up during the reset. That’s where Boomer comes in.

As it happens the raiders do show up, though they opt against attacking, instead hanging around until the logic bomb takes full effect. Boomer freaks everyone out by stabbing herself in the hand and sticking a cable into her arm (Baltar and Tigh‘s expressions when she does this are gold), using the window of time when Gaeta’s resetting the Galactica’s systems to send a virus to the raiders. They get knocked offline, leaving them easy pickings for the Viper pilots, who get to experience something close to Cylon Death Christmas.

With that crisis out of the way Starbuck tests Tyrol’s now-completed ship, which thanks to a suggestion by Helo is actually a stealth wessel. (Sorry, vessel. Chekov isn’t in this particular sci-fi show.) The episode ends with a christening ceremony for the ship, with Roslin calling it a physical reminder that no matter how bad things get humanity will always make it through. When Tyrol announces the ship’s name—Laura—Roslin gets choked up a little. I have to admit, so did I.

Just a little.

Pegasus

What starts as a panic over an unknown ship showing up ends in an awkward, awkward family reunion as it’s revealed the ship in question isn’t of Cylon origin but rather the Pegasus, a Battlestar that was assumed destroyed but has instead been performing hit-and-run attacks on Cylon mining operations ever since the destruction of the 12 colonies. It’s commanded by one Admiral Cain, who I’m going to go ahead and say is a bad guy, or at least not a good guy, because I’m pretty sure playing nefarious people is her actress’ thing.

The discovery of a new ship makes everyone happy at first, but things quickly get tense, largely because Admiral Cain is technically Adama’s boss and as such is in command of the fleet. She doesn’t much like the way he’s been running things, either. In fact, no one from the Galactica really gets along with their Pegasus counterparts. The only exception is Tigh, who plows through conversational awkwardness with the Pegasus’ XO with the help of alcohol.

Cain and Roslin are instantly suspicious of each other, and it turns out Roslin is justified: Cain’s XO tells Tigh that Cain shot her old XO in the head for refusing an order. He laughs it off as a joke, but Tigh’s too grumpy and suspicious to fall for that, thank you very much. A sense of humor? Bah! Also Cain seems not to care very much about the civilian part of the fleet, as she’s not returning Roslin’s calls. You can tell Adama doesn’t like the situation either, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He follows orders, simple as that.

There is one order, though, that he has a hard time following: That Lee and Starbuck be reassigned to the Pegasus. Adama objects, saying his team works well together, and oh by the way, didn’t you say you’d let me run my own ship? Cain’s response is that Lee and Starbuck are both disobedient and that it’s a bad idea to have your son as your CAG anyway, which is… actually kind of reasonable? Very reasonable, in fact. She comes off as harsh in this scene, but she’s technically correct. And so what if she makes the occasionally crabby Adama look like someone’s cuddly grandpa? She’s in the military, darnit!

Adama eventually cooperates and orders that Lee and Starbuck do so as well. The two of them will be on the Pegasus side of things when it comes time for a joint attack against the mysterious Cylon ship that Cain says has been following the Galactica ever since it left Caprica. The first step is performing recon on the ship, but Starbuck says the Pegasus CAG’s (whom I shall refer to in later recaps as Bizarro World Lee) plan is frakking stupid and gets herself booted from the mission because of it. Lee gets a little insubordination in too, slipping Starbuck a surveillance package so she can “borrow” the Galactica’s stealth ship and do the recon mission her own darn self, because Starbuck gets stuff done.

While all this is going on Baltar’s also had a crisis to manage. The Pegasus has a Cylon prisoner of its own, and since Baltar’s the resident expert he’s asked to examine her. Turns out she’s another Six. Oh, and she’s been raped and tortured to the point of catatonia. Gaius and Six (that’s the Six who lives in Gaius’ head… oh hell, this is going to get so frakking complicated) are understandably horrified, and Gaius promises to help her.

(I really wish Baltar had a friend he could talk to about the crazy stuff that goes on in his life. Not because it’d be true to his character or make any sort of sense story-wise, but it would be hilarious. “Hey, G-dawg, all this stuff with Cain is crazy, right? How ya coping?” “Oh, well, I’ve been more concerned with trying to rehabilitate my bodiless, questionably evil girlfriend’s traumatized clone. But yeah, I suppose Adama’s authority being questioned is difficult for him.”

You know Gaeta would volunteer.)

Baltar convinces Cain to let him have complete control of the prisoner so he can treat her however he sees fit, which basically means “not violently.” And he gets Cain’s approval without Six around to tell him what to say, as she’s skedaddled by this point. Oh, our baby’s growing up! Surprisingly, Baltar tells Prisoner!Six about his relationship with the other Six, how she changed his life and he loves her, though he says “I’ve never stopped thinking about her” instead of the sliiiiiightly more accurate (but less romantic!) “She’s living in my frakking head.”

Things are looking up for Prisoner!Six, but for Boomer? Not so much. Tyrol and Helo find out from some bragging douchebag Pegasus crew members (I tried to come up with a politer word, but I think “douchebag” fits rather well) what happened to Prisoner!Six. The two of them book it to Boomer’s cell, where they arrive just in time to stop Thorne, Pegasus’ resident Cylon interrogator, from raping her. That’s great. But they accidentally kill Thorne in the process. That’s not so great.

Helo and Tyrol are arrested and shipped off to the Pegasus, where despite Adama’s best efforts to get them returned to his authority they’re tried, convicted of treason and murder, and sentenced to execution within a few hours. Adama, understandably ticked, decides to hell with the chain of command, he’s going to get his men off the Pegasus. Cain doesn’t take too kindly to that, and the episode ends with Vipers and Raptors from both ships facing off against each other, ready to start a war.

Also in this episode:

Laird, the Pegasus deck chief who replaces Tyrol on the Galactica, used to be a civilian but was co-opted into service somehow. It’s presented like it’ll be significant later on, so in the recap it goes.

I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

In which Lee’s really starting to bug me, Starbuck saves humanity without even breaking a sweat, and something happens that’s cuter than Billy.

Resurrection Ship, Part I

This episode starts exactly where last week’s left off, with Vipers from the Galactica preparing to invade the Pegasus to rescue Helo and Tyrol. Admiral Cain launches Vipers of her own, and it looks they might start shooting it out until an unidentified ship shows up. Presuming it to be a Cylon, Vipers from both ships band together to turn against it.

Except it’s not a Cylon at all. It’s Starbuck, on her way back to the Galactica from performing her recon mission, during which she got tons of great pics of the mysterious Cylon ship. Realizing who she is, the other pilots stand down and, tension broken, head back to their respective Battlestars.

Did Starbuck just accidentally prevent a war? Damn, girl.

Afterwards Adama and Cain meet on the Colonial One to (hopefully) work out their differences. Their couples counseling discussion is mediated by Roslin, who tells them their only options are compromise or all-out war. By this point Cain has seen Starbuck’s recon photos, one of which shows that the mystery ship is home to lots of Six bodies. In the interest of killing more Cylons Cain says she’ll hold off on executing Helo and Tyrol until after the Cylon fleet has been destroyed.

Back on the Pegasus Admiral Cain summons Starbuck and, far from punishing her for disobeying orders, promotes her to CAG. She needs someone who’s gutsy, she explains, and the current CAG obviously can’t be trusted because he let Starbuck and Lee pull one over on him. So she demotes one dude for failing to stop insubordination, revokes Lee’s flight status for participating in it… and then promotes Starbuck for doing it in the first place. She doesn’t even give a hoot what anyone thinks, does she? I kind of love her.

So does Starbuck, particularly after Cain says the fleet’s ultimate goal should be, not to find Earth, but to return to the 12 colonies and kick the Cylons out. In turn, Cain is impressed by Starbuck insisting that Lee be reinstated to flight status. Caaaaaan you feel the mutual respect toniiiiiight?

Meanwhile, back on the Colonial One, Roslin’s trying to convince Adama that clearly the only thing he can do in this situation is kill Admiral Cain. Wait, what? Laura! Her reasoning is that it’s only a matter of time before Cain attacks him and then moves on to do who-knows-what to the civilian fleet, so he has to strike first. Adama’s not exactly receptive to the suggestion and stalks out, but not before Roslin tells him that he knows she’s right and just doesn’t want to admit it. Unspoken is the fact that Roslin won’t be around for much longer and doesn’t want to die fearing that the fleet won’t be far behind her.

Adama heads to the Galactica’s sick bay to visit Boomer and personally apologize for her almost being raped on his ship. He then orders she be taken back to her cell. He’s treating her more and more like a human on a personal level while still seeing her as a enemy from a military perspective. Don’t get me wrong, he has no reason not to do both those things. But I foresee his weird attitude coming to a boiling point sometime soon.

Meanwhile, aboard the Pegasus Helo and Tyrol get a visit from Lee, who tells them their execution has been delayed. Later in the episode Tyrol tells Helo that once they get out (so optimistic!) he’s going to “let go” of his residual feelings for Boomer. Helo admits that his feelings for Boomer sometimes make him think he’s losing his mind, but he can’t walk away, because it’s twu wuv.

But what of Battlestar Galactica‘s even more dysfunctional human/Cylon relationship? Baltar’s physically on the Pegasus with prisoner!Six, but mentally he’s chilling in his Caprica dreamspace with his Six, who’s lounging on the bed whilst he gets his brood on near the window. He seems a bit down in the dumps, which he explains as being because he’s “just lost interest” in Caprica and doesn’t really miss it anymore. Right now I really wish I had comments enabled so you guys could reassure me that I’m not the only one whose brain went straight to erectile dysfunction. Six tells him a story about the thing she misses most, which is sports. She used attend pyramid games to feel the energy of the crowd wash over her, and she always bought him a ticket because she wanted to feel like he was there, too.

He mentally zaps back to the cell when Cain pays a social call to tell him to have prisoner!Six look at the surveillance pictures of the mystery ship. Oh, and she also kicks prisoner!Six around a little bit. That might be what prompts Six to snap and try to choke the life out of Baltar once Cain leaves. She lets go, leaving both of them majorly freaked out, and begs him to kill her. Six—or at least a version of her—is crying. I’m not used to this.

Later she tells him that that mystery ship is called the Resurrection and that it holds the Cylons’ spare bodies. The Cylons we’ve met so far are too far away from their homeworld to skip to new bodies once they “die” without the Resurrection ship being there to serve as a sort of base. Essentially, once that ship is destroyed any Cylons the good guys manage to kill will be permanently dead. Cain and Starbuck are thrilled by the news that such an important ship is within their grasp, as is prisoner!Six, who really does want to die for good.

Back on the Galactica Adama and Tigh make a chilling discovery: Cain used to have a civilian fleet, but she stripped the ships to get spare parts for the Pegasus. The civilians were left stranded out in the blackness of space, unable to escape or fight back should the Cylons eventually find them. Cain did take a few “valuable” individuals for her own military use—one of those is Laird, Tyrol’s used-to-be-a-civilian deck chief replacement from last episode—but refused to take their families, too. In fact, she had the families of those who refused to go killed.

That’s enough to convince Adama that Roslin was right about killing Cain, so he hatches a plan: After the joint attack by the Pegasus and the Galactica on the Cylon fleet Starbuck will visit Cain on the bridge, wait for Adama to call her and say the code word, and shoot Cain in the head.

Unbeknownst to Adama, but knownst to us, Cain is ordering her XO—whom it’s about time I started calling by his name, which is Jack—to do pretty much the exact same thing to Adama. The only change is that Jack will have a group of marines as backup, whereas Starbuck will only have Lee.

Oh, shenanigans.

Resurrection Ship, Part II

This episode starts with Lee floating in a body of water, but surprise! He’s actually drifting in space, sans ship, about to die. From there we flash back to 48 hours earlier for the rest of the episode. I guess the battle against the Resurrection ship didn’t go so well for him, hmm?

Back before Lee was Major Tom-ing it up (OK, Major Tom was in a ship, but let me have my David Bowie reference, darnit), he was chatting with Starbuck about how she’s been asked to assassinate Admiral Cain. Starbuck is determined to carry out her mission and Lee assures her he’ll be her backup, but neither of them much like what’s been asked of them.

Starbuck gets some moral support from one hell of a weird place: Admiral Cain. She imparts to Starbuck a General Life Lesson that sometimes you have to do terrible things in service of a greater goal, and when the time comes you can’t let your conscience get in the way. Something about Starbuck gives her faith that she’s not the sort to flinch at an unsavory task, says Cain, but all the same she makes Starbuck promise that she won’t hesitate when the time comes.

Did… did Cain just accidentally convince Starbuck to shoot her?

Lee, meanwhile, has gone to see his father. Not to question his decision to have Cain assassinated or anything; he just wants to hear the order from Adama’s own lips. No judgement here, no sirree. Oh, Lee. Your sense of moral superiority is showing. Adama’s response is “You can suck it up and put on your big boy pants or I’ll find someone else to do it. Anyway, your beloved President’s the one who said Cain had to die. *z snap*” Lee, appropriately schooled, retreats to, presumably, angst in private.

After his chat with Lee Adama sits down with Boomer to ask her why the Cylons hate humans so much. Her response is that they don’t hate humanity necessarily… they just think it’s so flawed that it doesn’t deserve to exist. It’s an idea she got from Adama’s off-the-cuff speech during the miniseries, actually. Man, this episode is full of people’s words being used against them, huh?

Personal drama out of the way, it’s time for the big battle against the Cylon fleet to start. Surprisingly, things go pretty much perfectly: Lee, in the Blackbird, blows the Resurrection ship’s FTL drive, leaving it a sitting duck for the Vipers to take out while the Battlestars engage with the larger Cylon ships. The only thing that really goes wrong is the aforementioned Lee-being-ejected-into-space thing. Oh, and he’s hazy from lack of oxygen, so he can’t respond when Dee tries to get ahold of him. Just after passing out he’s rescued by a Raptor, which has time to get him now that the battle’s over…

… which also means that the assassinations can begin.

But first let’s find out what Baltar, Six, and prisoner!Six have been up to. Before the battle Six tells Baltar there’s no way God will forgive the destruction of the Resurrection ship, but when Baltar asks prisoner!Six she says God forgives everything. So now Baltar has two Sixes manipulating him at once, assuming prisoner!Six is manipulating him, which she very well might be. Because: Six.

From discussion of eternal damnation we turn to storytime, with Baltar telling prisoner!Six the same anecdote Six told him last episode, about Caprica and sports and scalping tickets. The upshot appears to be that Baltar has chosen prisoner!Six over Six. Dealt a (metaphorical) mortal blow by symbolism, Six disappears, possibly (likely?) for good.

Gotta say, the importance of the sports story left me a little bit bzuh?, but whatever, it’s poetic. Plus it means that since there’s only one Six now I can do away with the whole awkward prisoner!Six naming thing. Yaaay!

Later on, when a guard comes to escort Baltar out of Six’s cell, Six jumps the dude, snaps his neck, and takes his gun. She tells Baltar to kill her, but he refuses, saying that more than death she needs justice. He tells her that she knows a place where she can stay and be safe, but instead of responding she runs off.

How’s Cain doing, by the way? Still alive?

Yes, as it turns out. In the aftermath of the battle Starbuck and Jack are awaiting orders to kill their respective targets, but both Adama and Cain call it off at the last minute. Adama’s reason hearkens back to his discussion with Boomer: It’s not enough to survive, humans have to also be worthy of surviving. Cain doesn’t tell Jack what her reason is for not having him shoot Adama, but presumably it’s something similar. That’s nice. Cain might’ve been irascible and morally grey, particularly regarding her treatment of prisoner!Six, but when it comes down to it she puts ego aside and acts for the good of humanity. As a character, if not necessarily as a person, I like her.

So of course Six breaks into her room and kills her two scenes later. Oh, come on!

Starbuck gives a short speech at Cain’s funeral, wherein she sticks it to Adama by saying that Cain always did what needed to be done to ensure the survival of humanity, and that the fleet was safer with her than it is without. I smell brewing tension.

The episode ends with Adama and a near-death Roslin chatting aboard the Colonial One. Roslin gives Adama a pin to celebrate his promotion to Admiral, which he technically is now that he commands more than one ship. Oh, and a somewhat weepy-eyed Adama kisses Roslin before Billy helps the ailing President back to her quarters.

So Billy was just… in the background of that whole scene? I’m having fun imagining him trying to focus on paperwork while his OTP is becoming canon just a few feet away from him. “Awwww,” I imagine him thinking, trying to hide his adorable be-dimpled smile behind a requisitions form, “those two are cuter than I am.”

Also in this episode:

Tyrol and Helo, still locked up aboard the Pegasus, get tied up and beaten by two of the guys who were making jokes about Cylon rape a few episodes back. They’re rescued by Jack, who gives their attackers a thorough dressing down for assaulting superior officers. Later the two are freed, after which they visit Boomer on the Galactica. Tyrol makes good on his promise to get over his quasi-ex-Cylon-girlfriend by leaving her and Helo to their heartwarming reunion. I knew this was the wrong show to expect a wacky love triangle subplot from. Darnit.
When Jack and the marines from the Pegasus board the Galactica pre-battle, Tigh tells Jack to make sure the marines know their areas of responsibility in case they’re boarded by Cylons, as the last thing they want to happen is colonials shooting at one another. Oh, Tigh. The only jokes you make are unintentional.
After being rescued from certain death Lee tells Starbuck he’s sorry he couldn’t be on the Pegasus to back her up. Dude, your ship got shot, leaving you free-floating in space and slowly suffocating. I’m pretty sure she understands why you couldn’t make it. It’s not like you said you were running late because your dog ate your homework. He then says he didn’t want to make it back alive, which Dee overhears.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

Epiphanies was all right, but man… Black Market. I’m so glad Starbuck wasn’t in that episode. I wouldn’t want her to be sullied by it.

Epiphanies

The time has come for Laura Roslin: My favorite fictional President (sorry, Morgan Freeman) is rushed to sickbay, her cancer diagnosis finally having caught up with her. Doc Cottle explains that he can make her comfortable, but she’s going to die, and soon.

Her body’s on the Galactica, but her mind’s on Caprica, flashing back to a time before the Cylon attack when she was still the Secretary of Education. The teacher’s union was on strike, and while Roslin wanted to negotiate with their representative, President Adar—whom it is revealed Roslin was in a secret romance with, not that I’m sure why that’s relevant—was firmly against it. Roslin, doing her own thing, pulled some negotiation-fu and got the teachers to come back, but instead of thanking her Adar asked her to resign, which Roslin was obviously against. They never got to duke it out, though, as it’s revealed that all this took place on the day before the Cylon attack.

This bit was frankly a bit boring to me; more of interest is how, in Roslin’s flashback, she remembers seeing Baltar canoodling with Six. It’s unknown by the end of the episode how much Roslin’s put together. But, as my grandfather used to say, “the cheese is getting binding.”

Roslin still has some moments of consciousness left, though, and some of them are spent talking with Doc Cottle, Adama, and Baltar about Boomer’s unborn baby. The doctor’s found some genetic abnormality in the fetus, and while he doesn’t know exactly what’s up with it his concern is enough to convince Roslin the pregnancy has to be terminated. Baltar tries to convince anyone who will listen that doing so will screw with his experiments, that Roslin’s judgement has been compromised, that Boomer has too much tactical value to piss her off in this way… basically he’s saying anything he can so that his secret half-Cylon surrogate love child with Six won’t be aborted. No one listens to him, though, because when does anyone ever?

Speaking of Six: She’s still around. No, not prisoner!Six. The Six in his head, whom I thought went way last episode, but no, that would be far too simple. She just took a siesta for a few weeks, but now she’s back to tell Baltar to somehow use the nuclear warhead Adama gave him for his scientific research to save their/Boomer’s child’s life.

Also more than a little displeased about the decision to terminate Boomer’s pregnancy: Helo and Boomer. For all that Boomer’s helped humanity they’re still afraid of her. When Boomer gets the news she completely loses it, bashing her head against the glass wall of her cell and saying that she’ll give them something to be afraid of if they take her baby.

I miss this Boomer. Not crazy banging-her-head-against-things Boomer, but ambiguous-loyalties Boomer. I want her to get loose somehow and start wreaking glorious havoc.

While all this baby drama has been going on Adama has been dealing with his own crisis. It’s discovered that an underground group of Cylon sympathizers has been sabotaging the Vipers, replacing real ammo rounds with empty ones, causing the guns to blow up. Their ultimate goal is to surrender to—or, as they would say, “make peace with”—the Cylons, whom they see as impossible to defeat. The unofficial leader of the peace movement is one Royan Jahee, who draws Adama’s craggy faced-ire when Lee and Starbuck discover a plan to blow up a tylium refinery. Lee takes a team to find and disarm the explosive, but it goes off before they can land on the ship, taking out the refinery and almost killing them in the process.

Adama throttles Royan, who at this point has already been arrested, and demands that he make the attacks stop. I only mention this because of Tigh’s face while Adama’s choking a peacenik. He looks like Christmas has come early.

Tigh would hate the pro-surrdender movement even more if he knew who another one of its leaders is: Prisoner!Six, newly escaped from the Pegasus. Netflix’s captions told me she’s called Gina, and Susana confirmed that that’s what her name was back on the Pegasus, so no more “prisoner!Six” for me, hallelujah.

A Cylon is working on the inside to try and get humanity to surrender to the Cylons. Oh, the irony. Hey, speaking of Sixes, I wonder what happened to that reporter version of Six from season one. I kind of disregarded everything from that episode because the line “No more Mr. Nice Gaius” kind of harshed on its credibility, but… she could still be around somewhere. Taking a break from Cylonitude, maybe. Learning to play bridge.

Gina invites Baltar for a visit on Cloud 9; after seeing her he proceeds to get all touch-y and grope-y, despite the fact that she’s a sexual assault victim and that, oh yeah, she tells him to back off. He eventually does, but only because she pushes him. Baltar, if you were here (and a real person) I would slap you on the back of your head. Gina then proceeds to try and convince Baltar to use his Presidential authority—which he should have soon, barring some miracle that saves Roslin’s life—to turn the fleet against Adama so the Cylons can swoop in and save their little family. He refuses, saying he won’t be responsible for the destruction of humanity. Good on you, Baltar! I wonder how many episodes that attitude will last.

While on Cloud 9 Baltar has one of those epiphanies from the episode’s title, this one about Boomer’s baby. He does some bloodwork and explains his conclusions to Adama: The fetus’ blood has no antigens, and as such it’s a magical cure for cancer.

Baltar’s news came just in the nick of time, as Boomer’s pregnancy was just about to be terminated. Instead they take a blood sample from the fetus and inject it into Roslin, who seizes a bit and flatlines before coming back to life cancer-free. Boomer’s baby is also saved, as Adama and Roslin agree that more study of it is needed.

Back in the game, Roslin visits Jahee and gets a personal assurance out of him that the attacks will stop. And she didn’t even choke him! Tigh wouldn’t approve.

Proud papa Baltar (seriously, he’s smoking a cigar) gets a visit from Head Six, who gives him flak for saving the President’s life. She can’t ruin his mood, though. He’s adorably happy with himself right up to the point when he opens a letter Roslin wrote him back when she was still dying. In it she says that he’s smart, but selfish and lacking in compassion. Only if he dedicates himself to providing justice for the people can he become a great leader.

Baltar makes the switch to bitter in two seconds flat, ranting about how no matter what he does Roslin will never trust him. But… she could? At least as far as Baltar knows. We know that Roslin suspects him of being involved with a Cylon, but he doesn’t. Everything she said in the letter was true! And anyway, she shouldn’t trust him, because he actually is a traitor. Baltar, you drama queen. You’d get your second slap to the back of the head for this.

The episode ends with Jahee, released from the brig, delivering a special present from Baltar to Gina. Oh good, it’s the nuclear warhead. And him giving it to her is supposed to be “proof of his sincerity.” I see no way this could possibly end well. Baltar, you said you didn’t want to be the cause for humanity’s destruction a few scenes ago.

Also in this episode:

Black Market

Prior to watching Black Market I was informed by two separate people that it’s “that episode” of BSG that everyone hates.

Gotta say, it didn’t disappoint in how much it disappointed. What the hell was this?! I almost want to leave a series of judgmental gifs as my recap and leave it at that.

But no. I’m going to embrace my inner masochist and recap this clusterfrak.

The basic idea is that a black market has reared its ugly head in the fleet. Roslin wants to institute trade regulations to stop it, but lots of other people—including Baltar and Jack Fisk—are of the opinion that that’s just not practical. Of course, that might be because both of them benefit from the black market: Fisk is a major player, and he’s been buttering up Baltar with fancy cigars. Fisk gets in too deep, though, and he’s killed on the order of the head honcho, a guy named Phelan.

No problems so far. One of the good things about Battlestar Galactica is its realism, and I like that it addresses a non-Cylon problem faced by the fleet. After all, when you have 50,000ish people floating through space for an indeterminate amount of time, illegal enterprise is going to pop up. And I also like how the episode raises the question of whether it’s OK for Roslin and the military to allow something like the black market to exist if doing so means they’ll know the major players and be able to monitor it, the only other alternative being acting against it and forcing it further underground. It’s an interesting moral quandary.

So where did Black Market go wrong?

Lee Adama.

If I were Jamie Bamber I’d be so pissed at this episode. More pissed than I am anyway, I mean.

After Fisk is killed Lee is tasked with figuring out who did it. Things are complicated by Lee’s secret escort girlfriend Shevon—wait, Lee has a secret escort girlfriend?—and Shevon’s sick daughter Paya. Throughout the episode Lee keeps flashing back to another woman, an ex-girlfriend of his on Caprica. This nameless blond lady wanted to have a kid with him, but he said no (Lee Adama daddy issues on line two), and they didn’t make up before Caprica went kaboom.

So we have two women here—one, Unnamed Flashback Lady, is the great lost love of Lee’s life—whom we are supposed to believe are incredibly important to Lee and integral to the understanding of his character despite the fact that neither of them have ever appeared or even been mentioned on the show? I’m torn between wanting to know what was up with Random Blonde Lady and wanting to completely disregard every single bit of Lee Adama-related character development that happened this episode.

Lee pokes around in Fisk’s office and finds his secret stash of black market items. In a case of spectacular bad timing, Baltar, who doesn’t know that Fisk has died, shows up to have a chat with his black market buddy. Lee, recognizing that the cigars in Fisk’s office are Baltar’s favored brand, immediately begins questioning the Vice President.

Lee. Dude. If Baltar were involved in Fisk’s murder, would he have waltzed up to the crime scene and casually asked the guards to let him in? He’s squirrelly and weird, but he’s not stupid. Stop posturing.

In the larger scheme of things the point of that particular Lee/Baltar interaction was to prove that no one trusts Baltar. That’s reiterated in a later scene when Roslin offers to let Baltar retire. Predictably, he turns the offer down, saying as he stalks out of Roslin’s office that he never wanted to be the Vice President before, but now that she’s trying to get him out there’s nothing he wants more. Baltar, you immature goober.

Lee’s investigation is progressing merrily; a bracelet he found in Fisk’s stash leads him back to Tigh, who traded it in exchange for fresh fruit and real alcohol. Sure, he was technically involved in the black market, Tigh explains, but it’s nothing everyone doesn’t do, Lee included. That doesn’t make it right, Lee responds. It just means a whole lot of people are wrong.

Lee, how can Tigh even hear you from all the way up on your high horse?

Lover boy gets a call from Shevon, who’s been beaten up by some black market thugs. Lee says he’ll take Shauna and Paya back to the Galactica to keep them safe, but before he can make good on his promise Fisk’s killer shows up and beats him half to death. Phelan, Mr. Black Market, then threatens to kill Shevon and Paya if Lee doesn’t let go of the investigation. When Lee wakes up from a bout of garrote wire-inducted unconsciousness he sees that Fisk’s killer has himself been executed, giving Lee extra incentive to call it a day.

Unfortunately Shevon and Paya have been kidnapped and taken to a ship called the Prometheus. Lee is told about the ship by Zarek, who pays Lee a visit because… because he wants to get blackmail on him? But he already knew about Lee and Shevon. To explain that he’s not involved in the black market… even though Lee never mentioned him as a suspect? Why is Zarek in this episode?

Ah. To fulfill the role fo Mr. Exposition. Got it.

When Lee visits the Prometheus he finds that it’s a literal black market. Seriously, it’s like an old-timey bazaar, but everything being sold there is illegal. BSG, I don’t think that’s how the black market actually works…

Lee’s escorted by a Generic Mafia Thug to Phelan, who tells him Shevon was working for him all along; she betrayed Lee because she needed medicine for her kid, who’s now about to be sold to some random pedophile. Still, Phelan defends the black market, saying it provides people with a necessary way to obtain things when legal means run dry. “It’s hard to find the moral high ground,” Phelan says, “when we’re all in the mud.”

Oh, don’t worry, Lee will figure out a way.

Lee offers Phelan a deal: Lee, Shevon, and Paya’s safety, plus an agreement to shut the black market down, in exchange for the Galactica not blowing the Prometheus and everyone in it out of the sky. Phelan refuses, so Lee gets his hands on a gun and points it at Phelan bald noggin. Phelan says Lee won’t shoot because he’s “not like me” (ugh, be more cliché, please), but Lee shoots him anyway, because he crossed a line with the kid stuff, darnit!

There’s an emotional confrontation between Lee and Shevon, where Ms. Plot Device Shevon tearfully explains that Lee wants her to be his Flashback Woman, but she can’t be, because she’s just not her! This is so soap opera, I just can’t.

Lee tells Adama and Roslin that Fisk’s murder has been resolved and that he’s given the black market permission to exist under the condition that the military will be keeping a very close eye on it. Roslin doesn’t like it, but once Adama backs him up there’s not much she can do. Still… shouldn’t the decision on whether to allow a massive criminal enterprise that effects the military and civilian parts of the fleet be made by more than one person? Maybe the Quorum—you know, the representative government—should be consulted? So it’s not just Lee “Arbiter of Morality” Adama getting an impression and then acting on it on behalf of the rest of humanity?

I am so done with this episode.

Thankfully, the episode itself is almost done, too. Lee and Adama have a father-son chat, with Adama saying Lee’s been distant ever since he went free floating through space (which is a bit o’ character development that’s a little weird and random and cheesy, but whatever) and that he should’ve told him—his dad—about his escort girlfriend.

Um.

No.

Also in this episode:

There was a scene with Lee and Dee where the latter asked if their relationship was “going anywhere,” even though Dee’s dating Billy and there’s been no indication that Lee/Dee sexual tension was even a thing. Granted, a few episodes back there was this awkward moment when they almost kissed, but I just assumed it was some freaky side effect of Dee’s brain being blasted by Cylon static because what the frak where is this Lee/Dee stuff coming from it is so frakking stupid make it go awaaaaaay.
I would just like to note my regret at the passing of Fisk, who was shaping up to be a cool character. Hell, at least Admiral Cain died in a good episode. To be killed off in an episode this bad is a whole new level of ignominy.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

After a week off for personal reasons, Battlestar Galactica Newbie Recaps are back. I’m so glad to be past Black Market now, you guys. I did not need two weeks with that being the last episode I saw.

Scar

The central conflict in this episode belongs to Starbuck and Kat, who have been bumping horns of late. We’ve not really seen much of Kat before; if memory serves the most screentime she’s gotten so far was in the HOMG Lucy Lawless episode, when it came out she was addicted to stims. I can only assume her stepping to the forefront, even temporarily, means she’s going to die soon. That’s what happens with this show. It gets me attached to minor characters, then kills them.

But back to the plot.

Since the destruction of the Resurrection ship the Cylons have stopped mounting large-scale attacks. The reasoning behind that is that the Raiders reincarnate just like the skinjobs do, and now that the Resurrection ship is gone they can’t afford the casualties incurred when they send a frak-ton of Raiders out against the fleet. Their new tactic is to send smaller batches to pick off Viper pilots one at a time.

The scariest Raider—the Cylons’ Red Baron, if you will—is Scar, a particularly nasty mofo who likes to hide behind asteroids, pop out to kill one Viper while it’s separated from its wingman, and fly away before anyone has time to return fire. It’s a nasty, effective tactic, one that leaves Our Heroes little time to… be prepared. *crickets*

The episode starts with Starbuck and Kat running patrol above a Colonial mining ship that’s just hit paydirt and therefore really needs to be defended against Cylon attack until they’ve mined all the ore they need to make more Vipers. Starbuck tells Kat to be careful, since they’re patrolling in the same location where two pilots died.

From there we flash back to 94 hours earlier, when Starbuck, Kat, and their fellow pilots were boxing up the belongings of a dead comrade. Kat looks at a picture of his dead girlfriend and tries to recall her name, but she can’t. Starbuck brushes Kat off, saying it doesn’t matter what her name was, which Kat disagrees with. Their snit-fit is interrupted by the arrival of two newbie pilots, who are told about Scar. The nuggets doubt that one Raider could be better or worse than all the others—they’re all machines, aren’t they?—but the old-timers quickly disabuse them of that notion. The official nugget hazing has begun.

Flash back to Starbuck and Kat’s patrol: Kat sees something hiding behind an asteroid; thinking it’s Scar, she takes off after it. In the next flashback we get a better look at the two pilots’ rivalry. While hanging out and drinking with the rest of the squad Starbuck and Kat both claim they’ll be the one to kill Scar. Kat even bets $200 on it, though Starbuck says there’s no way she’ll be able to win. Not that Starbuck’s at her best, either; Kat calls her out on her alcoholism, to which Starbuck responds with a barb about Kat’s little stim problem. As far as we know Kat’s stopped taking stims, but in this episode it becomes clear that alcohol is definitely a problem for Starbuck. Lee tries to get her to stop pounding ‘em back, but she refuses, which leads to her taking a tumble and remembering Anders—remember him?—through a haze of drunkenness.

From there we’re back to Starbuck and Kat, whom it turns out isn’t chasing Scar, because the real Scar pops up from behind a different asteroid and comes after the Vipers from behind. Starbuck realizes what’s up and avoids Scar’s surprise attack, but just barely.

Speaking of Scar, the next scene is of Starbuck attempting to instill her fellow pilots with a little knowledge on how not to be killed by the guy. All the debris around the mining ship screws with the Vipers’ radar, meaning that the only way to see Scar coming is to use your—

“—eyes,” interjects Kat, like she’s Hermione Granger’s mean, angry cousin. At this point she’s intentionally antagonizing Starbuck, and it continues when Starbuck mistakenly says they’re going out in teams of four, when the briefing says it’s teams of two. To be fair to Kat, Starbuck is far from blameless. Her drinking habits have clearly started interfering with her work. That said, Kat’s still taking things too far.

From there we cut to Starbuck (politely) drilling Boomer for info on Scar. We find out that Scar may have been reborn a dozen times before, and also that he has a particular hate-on for Starbuck. This was never explicitly stated, but is Scar the Raider Starbuck gutted and learned to ride in season one, just in a new body? Shots of it were included in the “previously” recap, plus it would explain why Scar has it in for Starbuck in particular.

Back to the fight with Scar. Kat realizes it’s her, not Starbuck, who’s fighting him, and she tries to get to Starbuck but is unable to find her. The ‘buck isn’t particularly helpful on that count, though, ignoring Kat’s request to say where she is in favor of single-mindedly pursuing the enemy.

Pre-battle, Helo is spotting Starbuck as she angrily lifts weights. Helo defends Kat, saying she’s just a hot-headed kid, much the same as Starbuck was before she met Anders. Starbuck obviously still thinks about him all the time, but she says she doesn’t, because he has to be dead so what’s the point?

Starbuck’s later confronted by a newbie pilot, BB, who’s scared witless about the possibility of facing the Dread Cylon. She less-than-reassuringly tells him that if Scar attacks him all he can really do is fight back. If he runs, he dies. Kat intercepts BB, telling him his wingman knows what he’s doing, so just listen to him and he’ll be fine. That leads to another conflict between Starbuck and Kat, who tells Starbuck off for rattling off a textbook quote on tactics.

It turns out BB should’ve listened to Kat: When he’s out on patrol he sees Scar, and everyone tells him to retreat because he doesn’t have enough fuel for a firefight. It’s the one situation where it’s the right move to get the hell out of dodge, but he doesn’t. He’s shot down before reinforcements can get to him.

Starbuck’s affected by the death and her part in it, though she pretends not to be: Drinking with Lee, she claims she doesn’t even remember pilots’ names after they’ve died. President Roslin promises a bright and shiny future for the human race, she explains, but it’s one that they won’t get a chance to see before they die, so they should really “get what [they] can” right now. Lee agrees, to which Starbuck replies: “So why don’t we?” Lee still doesn’t get that she’s talking about sex, the adorable moppet. Until she kisses him.

Let’s all have a round of applause for Starbuck’s modified “last night on Earth” move. Well done, Ms. Thrace.

Not that the sex goes well: Starbuck keeps flashing back to Anders, and Lee tries to get her to slow down, which causes her to nope right out of there. He asks “What about us?” but gets told that there is no “us.” She’s hung up on Anders and wanted a quick lay; there are no deeper feelings than her wanting to sleep with him. Lee fires back, saying Starbuck’s great with the dead guys but not so good when it comes to dealing with living ones. Starbuck slaps him and storms out.

One: Starbuck and Lee. I ship it.

Two: This ship is going to cause me immeasurable pain, isn’t it? Dammit!

Back to the battle, where Starbuck’s engaged in a game of chicken with Scar. Kat yells at her to pull up, since there’s no way Scar will, being a machine and all. What she’s doing is tantamount to suicide.

There’s one final flashback to the previous morning. While holding a briefing Starbuck gets informed that one of her pilots, Jo-Jo, died 20 minutes earlier while on patrol. Starbuck was supposed to be Jo-Jo’s wingman but replaced herself on the schedule due to being hung over, a fact that Kat calls her on (of course). Starbuck asks the other pilots to leave and the two of them have a verbal confrontation, with Kat accusing Starbuck of being a drunk has-been who sends other pilots off to get killed, and Starbuck firing back with her own character assessment: Kat’s on her ass so much to cover up how scared she is, both of Scar and of being forgotten. That causes Kat to lose it, and she strikes her superior officer right before Lee walks in to see what’s up.

Starbuck doesn’t rat Kat out, but Lee knows something happened, and he orders the two of them to fly a patrol together. Now we’ve circled around back to the present (finally).

Starbuck, still on a collision course with Scar, closes her eyes and gets ready to die. She keeps thinking of how she told Anders she’d come back for him, though, and at the last minute she pulls away from a fiery death and corrals Scar within Kat’s sights so she can kill him herself.

Which Kat does, meaning she’s won the bet and humiliated Starbuck at the same time. Kat knows the kill was a team effort, so I was kind of worried that, during the celebration scene that follows, she would refuse to accept the special super-duper mug the best flier gets on the grounds that Starbuck deserves to keep it. Starbuck should get some, if not most, of the credit for Scar’s death, it’s true, but Kat stepping up and mending their rift and becoming Starbuck’s BFF would be so cheesy you could dunk whole loaves of sourdough in it. (Fondue references FTW!)

Instead Starbuck has to endure the mortification of filling Kat’s cup. Tigh’s face when she has to do that is the best thing since the last time Tigh made a hilarious face at someone else’s discomfort. (Two episodes ago, if you’re keeping track.) But Starbuck gets back at her, stealing her thunder by tearfully dedicating the celebration to their fallen pilots, whom she proceeds to list, because she actually does remember their names.

It’s not like that, of course. The act was entirely sincere on Starbuck’s part and wasn’t designed to make her look like the bigger person after all the passive-aggressive shenanigans Kat’s been pulling. Still, I like to imagine Starbuck going back to her bunk internally crowing because who’s the one everyone likes now, huh?

The episode ends with Starbuck explaining to Helo that, while she could’ve taken out Scar, she probably would’ve died in the process. A few months ago that wouldn’t have mattered, but not now. “You’ve got something to live for,” Helo tells her, “not just die for.” The dude in love with a Cylon is spouting hackneyed romantic clichés. Oh-kaaaay. Helo, I just don’t know what to do with you. Starbuck’s reason to live is Anders, and while I’m firmly on the Starbuck/Lee pain train, I’m glad that the whole “Heeeeyyyy, there’s still a human resistance back on Caprica, maybe we should go… get them or something?” plotline looks like it’ll be coming back soon.

Something else that makes me happy: Starbuck and Helo’s friendship. BrOTP 4 lyfe.

Sacrifice

Two good episodes in a row! I can feel the specter of Black Market starting to fade into the background.

This episode introduces us to a new character, Sesha Abinell, whose husband was killed when a Cylon attacked one of the fleet’s freighters. Ever since then she’s been on the vengeance train to Kill-the-Cylonsville, collecting information about their tactics as well as evidence that Adama is harboring a Cylon—that would be Boomer—aboard the Galactica.

Adama’s none too pleased that word about Boomer’s gotten out, but Roslin’s hardly surprised: Adama’s been having regular meetings with her and allowing her to interact with his crew. Of course someone’s eventually going to spill to an outsider. Billy, in a rare moment of assertiveness, tells Adama he should just ‘fess up already. Roslin suggests that they should “make a case” for staying on the ship, but to Billy it’s even more simple: Explain to the people that she’s a military asset, that she doesn’t pose a threat, and that she’s the only source of intelligence they have on the Cylons, and everyone will just… come around. Oh, Billy. That’s season one of Game of Thrones Sansa-level naïve.

Billy’s adorability climbs even higher when he asks Dee to marry him, slipping his old debate ring her on finger (awwww), before she says that she can’t marry him. Record scratch. Sad awwww.

From there we head to Cloud 9, where Dee is on an honest-to-God date with Lee Adama. She says she doesn’t know what to make of her and Billy, but she knows she can’t marry him. She doesn’t know what to make of her and Lee, either.

Ugh. Lee/Dee. I don’t understand it, and I don’t like it. Make it stop.

Lee and Dee aren’t the only major players in the Cloud 9 lounge. Sesha is there as well with several shady-looking dudes she keeps eyedarting at. Ellen’s there boozing it up. Then Billy shows up too. He approaches Dee to say hello just as Lee comes back with their drinks. Awkwaaaaard.

Billy quickly cottons on to the fact that the woman he just proposed to is on a date with a colleague of his; Lee apologizes and nopes right out of there to sit next to Ellen. Billy handles the situation pretty admirably, actually; he doesn’t lose his cool, doesn’t accuse Dee of being a vile temptress or anything. He just very despondently tells her that, whatever was developing between her and Lee, she should’ve been honest with him about it. Dee apologizes and tries to explain, but Billy, having said his piece, walks away.

Lee at this point has noticed Sesha acting suspicious, and also that she’s packing heat. He escorts Ellen to the bathroom for what she presumes is sexytimes, but alas, he’s just realized stuff’s about to go down. Poor Ellen: Her second Lee Adama butt grab will have to wait for another day. Sesha and her three colleagues close the blast doors and pull out their guns, taking everyone in the Cloud 9 lounge hostage.

While all this is going on Boomer is chatting with Adama. She asks him whether the fleet knows of her existence, a question he deflects by grilling her about places the Cylons might try and stage an ambush. She presses him, though, and he admits she’s no longer as Top Secret as she used to be. After Boomer’s taken away Tigh comes in and says that if people knew how Adama relies on a Cylon for intel they’d be scared out of their wits (which is fair). He’s not scared, says Tigh, but he doesn’t like the way Boomer’s gotten under his boss’ skin.

Meanwhile Lee and Ellen are still in the bathroom on Cloud 9. Lee has a plan to use the dry ice in Ellen’s drink to trick the oxygen sensors into thinking the carbon dioxide levels are being raised, thereby forcing the baddies to open the doors. Ellen ignores his request that she be quiet and calm, though (Ellen Tigh here, folks), leaving the bathroom and telling her captors that her husband’s the XO of the Galactica and they’ve done goofed.

Sesha calls Adama and issues her demands: He has two hours to deliver the Cylon agent to her before she starts killing hostages. After the call ends Gaeta (long time, baby, where’ve you been?) tells Adama and Tigh Sesha’s backstory and gives him a list of the people on Cloud 9: About half a marine squad, Lee *insert Adama’s “oh crap” face here*… and Starbuck, who’s getting a bit of R&R but isn’t in the lounge.

Well, that’s it then. Starbuck’s there. This situation’ll be taken care of in time for lunch.

Lee crawls through some ducts and gets his oxygen sensor plan rolling, but by this point the baddies have realized, heyyyy, wasn’t there another dude at the bar before? A nasty guy named Page goes to search the bathroom but Lee gets the jump on him, getting his gun and taking him hostage.

Things go downhill from there. Lee, his gun on Page, confronts Sesha and says he just wants to talk. But Sesha sees Lee and Dee exchanging relationshippy eye contract and comes to the conclusion that she’s his girlfriend. If he doesn’t put the gun down, Sesha explains, I’ll have one of my goons kill Dee. We’ll kill our hostage; I don’t think you’ll kill yours. Bluff called, Lee puts down his gun and gets elbowed in the stomach by Page for his trouble. Now Sesha, in addition to having a tactical advantage, has a great bargaining chip: Admiral Adama’s son.

It’s at this point that the oxygen alarm goes off. Sesha assumes it’s sabotage (which it is), someone trying to kill them by sucking their oxygen out (which it isn’t), and Lee assures her that they probably nicked a line while they were shooting. It should be an easy thing to fix. He just needs to call his dad to get the ball rolling.

By this point Adama’s already contacted Starbuck, who has three marines as backup and two strike teams arriving in about ten minutes to help her rescue the hostages. Sesha calls Adama (with Starbuck listening in) and explains that she’s willing to die for her cause, but she doesn’t think he’s willing to let his son suffer that same fate. Ellen yells in the background to give up Boomer, but Adama says he won’t sacrifice a military asset for the sake of Sesha’s revenge. It’s not revenge, Sesha counters: The military has been infiltrated by a Cylon agent. Boomer’s playing them, and she has to be killed for the sake of the entire fleet. She tells Adama that one person can come in, fix the air system, and leave. Any funny business and she starts shooting hostages.

Adama says he’ll get the air system repaired and, after the call is ended, makes sure Tigh knows that they can’t give up Boomer. Tigh agrees that negotiating with terrorists isn’t an option but expresses concern that Adama still sees Boomer as the human he used to think she was, instead of the machine she is and always has been.

Back on Cloud 9 Starbuck figures out right away that Lee fiddled with the oxygen sensors to give a rescue team an opportunity to get in (I ship it) and decides that she’ll be the “repairman” to go in and case the joint. It’s not the most well-thought-out plan, as Starbuck is fairly recognizable, but they’re running out of time.

It turns out that maybe she should’ve planned it a little better. When she enters the lounge the baddies fail to find any weapons on her or in her toolbox, but when they see Ellen look at Starbuck with recognition in her eyes they start to think something’s up and order another search. Starbuck, realizing the jig is up, pulls a pair of guns from a secret compartment in her toolbox and starts shooting. Her marine backup comes in, and in the hail of gunfire Lee accidentally gets shot. In the chest. By Starbuck.

Starbuck and one marine manage to kill one of the captors and escape with their lives, but the hostage situation is still in full swing, and Lee’s dying besides. Dee rushes to his side and begs Billy to bring her towels to staunch the bleeding. One of the criminals—a guy named Vinson—tells him not to move, but he fires right back that if the Admiral’s son dies you’re all screwed, so how about you let me get those effing towels, huh?

Billy, you’re amazing. It doesn’t even matter that this dude kindasorta stole your kindasorta girlfriend. You will risk your live to try and save his, because you’re a freaking champ like that. Billy comforts Dee as she cries over Lee’s body, telling her that everything’s going to be OK.

It’s at this point that I realized Billy, whom I previously thought was sweet and loveable but kind of boring and maybe a little annoying sometimes, was going to die. Just when I really started to like him. This show can go screw itself.

Starbuck calls Adama and tells him that her cover was blown and she had to open fire. Oh, and that Lee was hit by friendly fire, probably by her, and that he may very well be dead already. He orders her to stand down and await further instructions.

So it’s time for Papa Adama to step up. He visits Boomer in her cell, asking her point blank whether she’s playing with him. Pretty sure she wouldn’t tell you if she were, dude. Her response is that she’s saved the fleet so many times but Adama just can’t believe that she’s not working against them. Something about Boomer’s indignation at Adama not trusting her rubs me the wrong way. Of course he’s suspicious. Cylons are tricksy creatures well known for psychological manipulation and being able to play the long con when the endgame is the destruction of humanity. Her difficulty accepting why she’s not being accepted into the fold could be sincere, but… I don’t know. I don’t think it is.

Adama asks her whether she’d tell him if he asked who the other Cylon agents in the fleet are. (Adama, why have you not asked that yet?) She says she wouldn’t. “That I believe,” says Adama gruffly.

Back in the CIC Roslin tells Tigh and Adama about a manifesto Sesha sent to the press before taking control of the lounge. In it she expounds conspiracy theories about Cylons, and while some of them may be far-fetched (though as far as we know all of them are true), people are starting to pay attention to them. They have to end this now. Adama says the only option they have left is to give Sesha what she wants, which Roslin won’t accept. She’s emotionally invested, too—Billy is the closest thing she has to family—but they cannot negotiate with terrorists. Tigh brings up the elephant in the room, asking what if Sharon is playing them? But it’s not about Sharon, Roslin responds. It’s about how we conduct ourselves, how we deal with threats.

At this point Sesha calls to give Adama a heads-up on his son’s health: Alive, but dying. Up until this point she didn’t know how far she’d go, how many people she’d kill, but now she knows the number is two. She puts her gun on Ellen, whose life is saved by Adama making a split-second decision to agree to her demands. But there’ll be one change: They’ll deliver Boomer, but she’ll be dead. You’ve convinced me that we’re being manipulated, he says, so I have to kill Boomer so it won’t go on any longer. Sesha agrees to the exchange: The body for the hostages.

Over on Cloud 9 the Marines roll a corpse on a stretcher toward the lounge. But the corpse is suspiciously non-pregnant, meaning either Adama had Doc Cottle scoop the Cylon-human fetus out of Boomer’s body before killing her (which seems a bit much for him)… or the corpse he’s giving her is the other Boomer that Cally killed. Adama, you sly dog, you.

Back in the lounge Billy is eyeing one of the guard’s guns. Dee tells him not to try and do something heroic, that he’s not trained as a soldier and he has nothing to prove by playing the hero. Listen to Dee, Billy. Listen to Dee.

The body’s wheeled in, and Sesha peels the sheet down and recognizes her Cylon nemesis. She shoots the body twice and says her mission is finally over… but Vinson realizes that something’s up, namely that the corpse is looking rather decomposed for something that should’ve been alive 15 minutes ago. Sesha gives the order to kill Dee in retaliation, but Billy—here it comes—attacks one of the captors and gets his gun, which in turn gets him shot by Vinson. So Billy’s dead, but it stalled Vinson shooting Dee long enough for the BSG equivalent of a SWAT team to come in and shoot the remaining baddies.

Back in the Galactica morgue Adama is engaged in contemplative silence over Boomer while Roslin grieves over Billy. Your gambit wasn’t worth it, she tells Adama before fixing Billy’s hair all maternal-like and tearfully saying “He was so young.” Damn you, Battlestar Galactica. Damn you.

Meanwhile Dee visits Lee in the hospital. He’s weak, but he’ll survive. Dee tells him they’ll talk when he feels better and that he has to really stay this time (instead of following up a near-death experience by getting buddy-buddy with an escort? Agh, I said I would try to wipe my brain of Black Market). Starbuck hears the whole thing, then walks away just before Dee tells Lee she’ll be there when he wakes up.

I just. Ugh. He’s not into you, Dee. Can the Lee/Dee storyline be ditched, please?

The final shot is of Boomer, in her cell, staring up at the ceiling cryptically. (Yes, she stared cryptically. I don’t know how, but she did.) Is Boomer betraying them? I’m going to guess yes, but not in a straightforward “I’m reporting back to my Cylon overlords, MWAHAHA” way. After all, we already know Cylon leadership is split, because head!Six’s presence in Baltar’s brain is a secret even from the other Cylons, right?

Aw hell, I don’t know. The only thing I feel I can accurately predict with this show is that it will cause me pain.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

The Captain’s Hand was good, not great. Downloaded left me a gibbbering mess on the floor.

The Captain’s Hand

Battlestar Galactica has an abortion episode?! Well… all right, then.

But before we get to BSG going all political (more explicitly so than usual, I mean), there’s been a bit of trouble on the Pegasus. Namely, two Raptor crews—so four pilots—disappear in the middle of a training exercise. The person in charge of their training is Starbuck, who was lent to the Pegasus and has proceeded to royally piss off its captain, the engineering-grunt-turned-head-honcho Commander Garner. (Ohai, Kevin’s dad from Home Alone).

The friction between Starbuck and Garner has prompted Admiral Adama to temporarily assign Lee—who’s been newly promoted to Major after last episode’s hostage situation—to the Pegasus to keep a watch on his hot-headed BFF.

Lee tells all this to Dee as they engage in a little partially-nude post-coital plot exposition-y snuggling. I never really found Dee compelling as a character, but show, please don’t tell me you’re going to reduce her to being the girlfriend character. She’s better than that. You’re better than that.

When Lee comes aboard the Pegasus Starbuck is waiting for him, though she claims she just happened to be in the neighborhood, pssht, I didn’t want to see you, are you crazy? She’s emotionally messed up over shooting Lee during the hostage crisis, though as “emotionally messed up” is kind of her default state the fact that she’s engaging in some self-hatred isn’t exactly surprising.

They get to the bridge, where Garner tells Lee about the missing pilots and lambasts Starbuck for not having known about them before. It seems that Garner has a point: Starbuck’s training the pilots, and she’s the one who sent them out on that exercise, so she should be aware of how the exercise went.

But the next scene shows us that it’s not so cut-and-dried. Starbuck confronts the other pilots about how they didn’t give her a heads-up, and it comes out that Garner’s told everyone not to discuss flight details with anyone outside the Pegasus crew… so, Starbuck. Garner was on Starbuck’s back for not knowing something he specifically told everyone not to tell her. Jerk. A “paranoid and incompetent” one, to quote Starbuck.

From there we’re back to Lee and Garner, the latter of whom has a great monologue that I’ll refer to as the Song of the Bitter Engineer. Starbuck might be a great pilot, but no one ever cut the engineering grunts—or “snipes”—any slack for doing their jobs well. Snipes do what they’re supposed to, and they do it smoothly, precisely, and without drama. Some people *coughStarbuckcough* could stand to learn some more from them.

Later Lee walks into a flight meeting on Pegasus, where Starbuck and the other pilots, instead of trying to find the missing Raptor crews, are having a grand old time talking about how frakking awful Garner is. Lee yells at them to pipe the frak down, already—they have four missing pilots out there somewhere with only 36 hours of oxygen left, so maybe instead of whining about the boss they should, I don’t know, try and find them?!

He has a point. I don’t really like Starbuck in this episode—she’s definitely a “refuses to play by the rules” type, but it seems out of character to me that she’d just not give a flying frak about four pilots who are about to die.

Starbuck does put her thinking cap on, though, and through examining one of the ships’ last transmissions comes up with a theory: They received a fake distress call that lured them into a Cylon trap. Lee tells Garner Starbuck might know what happened to the pilots, but the conversation devolves into a bout of hair-pulling that ends with Starbuck being threatened with a court martial and confined to her quarters.

Garner, Garner, Garner. For someone so anti-drama, did you just turn what should’ve been a tactical meeting into a snit-fit and then send a pilot to her room? He’s so unprepared to be the Captain it’s not even funny. Though that is the point of his character.

The next scene is of Lee and Starbuck in the locker room, so I guess Starbuck ignored that “confined to your quarters” thing. Attagirl. Lee accuses Starbuck of being an unnecessarily confrontational frak-up. Starbuck accuses Lee of brown-nosing. Lee even throws the fact that Starbuck shot him back in her face, which you can tell Starbuck was just waiting for him to do.

Oh, Starbuck. I want to wrap you in a blanket and give you cigars and booze.

Side note: It’s really crappy of Lee to use the shooting thing against Starbuck. I can understand that Kara “Self-Hatred” Thrace would blame herself for it, but Lee, you’re supposed to be the level-headed one here. It was an accident. It happens. Don’t be a passive-aggressive tool about it. To his credit, you can tell Lee immediately regrets what he said. Still, if he keeps responding to Starbuck’s goading (and if Starbuck keeps goading him in the first place), there’s no way my ship’s going to sail. At least not a healthy version of it

In a scene near the end of the episode the two of them finally make up. Lee says he’s been mad at Starbuck for bucking authority and getting away with is, which is what she always does, so he’s not sure why it ticks him off so much now. Starbuck forgives him, and they hug. Awwww.

A Raptor out on patrol near where the other two disappeared hear what appears to be a distress signal from one of the missing ships. But it’s not time for celebration yet: Lee tells Garner that it might be a genuine distress signal, but it might also be a Cylon trap. Garner, recognizing that it’s Starbuck theory, proceeds to soundly ignore it, even though Lee says she might be right. He gets Papa Adama on the phone, who proceeds to tell Garner that yeeeeah, this probably is a trap, so maybe just send a rescue team instead of a Battlestar that we really can’t afford to lose, k? Oh, and that’s an order, by the way.

An order that Garner quickly disobeys. He orders the ship to jump straight to the source of the distress call. Lee tries to arrest Garner, which causes Garner to try and arrest him, and in the meantime there’s this poor guard in between them whose life is flashing before his eyes. He decides to obey Garner and take Lee to the brig, but there’s not even enough time to frogmarch him out of the room before the missing pilots are found. Sorry, did I say the pilots? I meant the pilots’ corpses. Three Cylon base stars show up and quickly take out the Pegasus’ FTL drive, cutting off their escape.

Ooooops.

Garner’s on the horn with engineering, which is being a total failboat at repairing the FTL drive. Seeing that he’s likely gotten the Pegasus destroyed and her entire crew killed, he takes it upon himself to go fix the darn thing himself, leaving Lee in command of the rest of the ship.

Let’s all take a moment to appreciate Lee’s “Oh holy s***” face.

He snaps out of the abject shock and panic pretty quickly, snapping off orders to try and even the odds by attacking the base stars. The Pegasus, with the help of the Viper pilots (including Starbuck), manages to take one down.

Meanwhile, engineering has found the source of the problem: A coolant leak only accessible by a hatch that, if opened, might suck all of engineering out into the blackness of space. Open it anyway, says Garner. We have no other choice. In a stroke of good luck the hatch hasn’t reinvented itself as an ersatz airlock, but the hall beyond is still rapidly losing oxygen. Garner goes in by himself and manages to fix the leak just before he runs out of air and dies. Poor guy. But he’s saved the Pegasus, which then gets the heck out of dodge.

The next scene is Lee and Adama back on the Galactica, reviewing all the crazy stuff that went down on the Pegasus. With Garner dead the ship needs a new Captain, and Adama gives the job to a surprised Lee. Garner was my choice before, he explained, so his failure is my failure, too. Now that you’re Captain, don’t let me fail again.

Jesus frakking Christ, even the happy bonding scenes between these two are tainted by inadequacy-related daddy issues!

Speaking of the Galactica, what’s been happening on her all this time? Oh, that’s right. Abortion controversy.

The flight deck crew is loading crates when they see something moving inside one of them. They call the marines in to help, but Tyrol decides to go inside and check it out personally, because…. no, I’ve not nothing. Tyrol, your species is being hunted down by murderous, super-smart robots. Do not check out the mysterious movement in the dark crate by yourself, oh my freaking God. You wouldn’t last five minutes in a horror movie!

Luckily for Tyrol the stowaway isn’t a baddie but a pregnant girl named Rya, who’s come from one of the ships run by the super-religious colony of Gemenon so Doc Cottle can give her an abortion.

Meanwhile Roslin’s on Cloud 9 with Tory, the new Billy. The Presidential election’s coming up, and Roslin’s pretty convinced she’s going to win, because A) she has the support of the military and civilian fleets, plus the Gemenese religious leaders, and B) who’s going to run against her? Tom Zarek, the convicted terrorist? Please.

But Zarek has other plans. He meets with Baltar and tells him he could have won before Roslin embraced her inner prophet, but now he doesn’t stand a chance. (What’s up with that prophecy thing, by the way? I assume the fleet’s headed vaguely in the direction of Earth? And it was pretty clear in the prophecy that the true prophet dies of some wasting disease—but Roslin’s cancer was cured. So was she the prophet? Was the prophecy ever legit in the first place?)

His own candidacy might be doomed to failure, Zarek explains, but Baltar could beat her. He’s already the Vice President, which is a point in his favor, plus many people would rather vote for science than religion. (Dear Battlestar Galactica: Please do not go down the route of demonizing science for being soulless or whatever. Thank you. Sincerely, Rebecca.) Once Balatar gets elected Zarek just asks that he “remember his friends,” i.e. Zarek. Whoomp, there it is.

Back to the pregnant Rya Kirby, who’s the subject of a discussion between Adama and Doc Cottle. Her people won’t let her have an abortion, Cottle explains. In cases like these I get a name, the girl comes to me, I do my work, the girl leaves. Bada-bing. I don’t ask many questions.

But not asking questions isn’t Adama’s style. He tells Rya that her parents are worried about her, and Rya asks whether he knows what they’ll do to her if Adama sends her back. All the same, Adama counters, you’re a stowaway on a military vessel. You can’t stay.

Doc Cottle pipes up in the background, saying that’s she’s technically a victim of political prosecution and could always apply for asylum, y’know, if she wanted. Adama sends him a death look, but Doc Cottle doesn’t care, because he’s Doc Cottle, sonny Jim, so watch your tone. Rya thinks asylum sounds like a great idea… so now this whole thing has turned from a military issue to a political one.

Sarah, the Gemenese representative, visits Roslin and demands not only that Rya be returned to her parents but that abortion be outlawed… at least if Roslin wants Gemenon’s support in the upcoming election. No go, says Roslin. Abortion was legal before the Cylon attack, and it’s legal now. Shoo.

Now comes my least favorite part of the episode. Roslin tells Adama there’s no way she’s turning Rya in or banning abortion, to which Adama responds that, with the population so low, maybe she should ban abortion, just as a practical measure. Roslin’s horrified—she’s been fighting for women’s right to control their own bodies her whole career—but Adama throws Roslin’s words from the miniseries back in her face: If humanity’s going to survive after the Cylon attack, people had better start having babies.

Adama, I’d like to remind you of something you said in a previous episode, the one where you decided not to kill Cain, even though it’d be easy, because it would also be the wrong thing to do. Humanity can’t just survive. It also has to be worthy of surviving. I’m sure you remember it; it was a big emotional revelation on your part. Adama supporting an abortion ban seems so out of character to me, I can’t even.

Whacked out though the abortion ban is, Roslin considers it. She asks Baltar for demographic projections, and what follows is a hilarious exchange where Baltar’s all “Oh well I’m sort of busy, luckily I did these projections months ago and only had to add the Pegasus’ numbers, which took no time at all because I’m super-smart, and I totally didn’t mind doing it, even though I’m really busy, like I said. So you don’t have to read all these big, science-y words in my report, how ’bout I just tell you the basics?”

The funny thing is that I really didn’t paraphrase him all that much. Roslin looks like she wants to murder him.

Baltar tells Roslin that if things stay as they are now humanity will die out in 18 years. Liar, liar, pants on fire. It’s never explicitly stated that he made that up, but c’mon, he totally pulled that figure, if not the existence of the report itself, out of his ass. If he’s known for months that humanity’s going to die in under two decades, why didn’t he, I dunno, mention it to someone? (I really wanted Roslin to call him on that, but alas, she did not.) I wouldn’t put it past him to keep that information to himself, but actually doing the demographic report in the first place, without being asked? Pssht, please.

What does he even do all day? He and Six don’t seem to have any non-crisis-related conversation topics (“Hmm… how ’bout that Cylon god?”), and it’s not like he does any Vice Presidenting. Ditto actual research into the Cylons, at least that we know of of. My headcanon? He’s teaching himself the oboe.

Armed with likely fabricated statistics (Roslin, nooooo! Fact check! I get her primary goal has always been the survival of humanity, but the way she so easily abandons her convictions seems like really sloppy storytelling to me), Roslin holds a press conference wherein she announces abortion is now illegal. That’s not enough for the Gemenon representative, who demands that Rya be returned as well. No can do, says Roslin: She already got an abortion, which happened before I made them illegal, by the way, and we also granted her asylum. So. mSuck. It.

There’s a second press conference, but this one is more interesting: Baltar hijacks it to announce that disagrees with Roslin’s stance on abortion. With every limitation to our freedoms we become more and more like the Cylons, he explains, Six grinning evilly in the back of the room. Therefore he’s decided to run for President himself.

Cue Roslin murder face #2.

Someone tell me she hauls off and slaps him at some point. Please.

Downloaded

This episode. Oh my God. Oh my Cylon God. Oh my mother-frakking Cylon God.

This 43 minutes of pure cinematic brilliance starts off nine months before the present day, on Caprica during the Cylon attack. (It’s only been nine months? Damn.) We see the scene from the miniseries with Six telling Baltar about Cylon reincarnation and then shielding his body from a nuclear blast, saving him but killing (one of) her.

Nothing new yet. But then she wakes up in a new body, with a Lucy Lawless Cylon (fine, fine, I’ll call her Three), a Boomer Cylon, and another Six Cylon there with her, helping her through the initial panic and disorientation. OK, nothing weird about tha–

—is that Baltar?!

I’m not really here, and no one can see me but you, he says to Six. And I’d recommend you keep it that way. Oh, and you probably shouldn’t let them know how you feel about me.

Three asks whether Six cares whether Baltar’s dead, and she follows head!Baltar’s lead, saying it would be unfortunate if he died because he was so helpful. Three then gives Six a verbal pat on the back for disabling Caprica’s defenses so very, very well.

Wait, wait, wait, hold up. There’s a head!Baltar mentally shacking up with another version of Six on Caprica? And he manipulates her the same way head!Six manipulates the real Baltar? But throughout this episode head!Six and head!Baltar act more like each other—all sneaky with their cutting insults and their manipulation—than they do either of their corporeal counterparts. Is head!Six not actually Six, but some other random person/Cylon (??) who’s also head!Baltar? Or is she Six, but just another version? But then who’s head!Baltar? Will the real Baltar and the Six he knew—who’s on Caprica still being all in love with him, not the one in his head—ever meet?

What’s going on here?! I do not have enough shocked gifs for this!

Ahem. Back to the episode.

We flash to ten weeks later, right after Cally shot the version of Boomer that shot Adama. Boomer downloads into a new body, where she’s greeted by Three, Six, the PR Cylon guy (Doral! His name is Doral! I finally know his name!), and another version of herself. Thoroughly freaked out and without an imaginary friend to tell her what to say, she pulls a Darth Vaderian (except more dignified) “Noooooooo!”

Caprica. Present day. Six is chilling in a park while Centurions plant trees and make the place look all pretty again. Head!Baltar interrupts her peace by pointing out that they’re really building a memorial—you know, because billions of people died? Because of you? Remember that? The Six we know wouldn’t care about that, but this version clearly does.

Three pops in to check on Six, who says she’s still getting used to her new body. Three commiserates; it can be awkward at first, but downloading to a new body is also a great chance to leave all the emotional baggage from previous incarnations behind and start again, hint hint. Six should feel good, because she’s a war hero: The Cylons couldn’t have defeated the humans without her. Doral reiterates the point: When she did is inspiring. Six makes an uncomfortable face; she clearly doesn’t agree with him.

Back on the Galactica, still in the present day, Boomer’s about to pop out her little’un. But there’s a problem: Boomer has a detached placenta, so Doc Cottle has to perform a c-section now or both mother and child could die. The birth is successful, though the baby’s lungs aren’t working fully, so she needs to stay in sick bay under observation for a while. Oh, and the baby’s name is Hera. (Speculation tangent: In Greek mythology Hera was big on vengeance, though said vengeance was mostly enacted against people who didn’t actually deserve it, e.g. her cheating husband’s illegitimate kids. Could that be relevant to what happens with Hera later on? Or am I just getting too excited about Greek mythology?)

Speaking of Boomer: After further regaling Six with compliments about her newfound celebrity status, Three asks for her help. See, seducing and manipulating Baltar must’ve been disturbing at times, and there’s someone else who’s been through something disturbing and is having trouble integrating into her new body afterwards. That would be Boomer. Caprica Boomer, that is. (God, I hate this show sometimes.) She refuses to leave her human life behind, and unless Six convinces her to come into the Cylon fold she could be “boxed,” or all her memories put in cold storage.

A horrified Six (a Six caring about Boomer and actively trying to help her? This is new.) agrees to help. She goes to see Boomer, who’s still living in the apartment she inhabited when she thought she was human, surrounded by family pictures and mementos. Boomer doesn’t trust Six, saying she must be a good liar if she knew what she was and was able to live as a human for two years. Head!Baltar steps in, telling Six to “start with the elephants,” meaning a pair of elephant statues Boomer has on a table. Six asks about them, which leads to Boomer opening up a bit about her mother.

How did Baltar know to ask about the elephants?

Six proceeds down the path of religion—good to know at least there’s that similarity between Six and head!Six—telling Boomer that following God’s path is never easy. Head!Baltar immediately tells her not to go with religion on this one, and it turns out he was right (How?!), because it sets Boomer off. You think I care about your God, she asks? Six, flustered, tells Boomer that God loves her, but Boomer’s having none of it. The love I felt for my buds on the Galactica, and the love they felt for me, was real love. My feelings were real, even if I betrayed everyone.

She throws the picture against the wall, and Six, with some excellent timing, scratches her own face and makes it look like it’s glass from the picture frame that did it. Boomer rushes to get her a bandage, but head!Baltar instantly picks up on her manipulation and congratulates her for it. You’re good at “feigning emotional vulnerability” and all, but I’m better, so let me help.

From then on he guides Six in what to say. I’m like you, she tells Boomer. I had someone I loved here on Caprica, and I think he could’ve loved me too. The last part she and head!Baltar say in sync, which is really creepy, but I’m not even going to bother to try and figure out what it means. I officially give up.

From there we meet up with who else but Anders and two other members of the human resistance. We saw them earlier in the episode spying on Six and Three, and now we find out their plan: They’re going to blow up a cafe where skinjobs like to meet. Sure, it’s sort of pointless because they’ll just re-download into new bodies, but Anders tells his doubting comrade that Cylons remember everything up to the moment they die, so maybe if the resistance bequeathes enough of them with memories of being blown to bits they’ll eventually realize Caprica isn’t a safe place and just… go away.

Anders. That’s stupid. Granted, I don’t know what else the resistance could be doing, but… Maybe if we irritate them enough they’ll go away? C’mon.

Back in Boomer’s apartment Six tells Boomer about how she went back to Baltar’s apartment after the destruction of Caprica and took a few souvenirs. She kept them for a while but then burned them, because they were keeping her from embracing her new life. Nice story, Baltar says, too bad you’re lying through your teeth. Later on he cuts her down for being “more human than Cylon.” I like this new Baltar. As a character, that is. He’s intriguing. In real life I’d want to punch him.

Boomer asks who Six’s mystery paramour is and is shocked when the answer is Gaius Baltar. Does that mean he’s still working with the Cylons? This is the first time that Six has heard Baltar’s still alive, and the news throws her for a major loop.

Aboard the Galactica Roslin, Adama, Tigh, and Baltar are discussing what to do with Boomer’s baby if it survives. Baltar accuses Roslin of suggesting that it be killed, to which the President responds: “I don’t make suggestions, Mr. Baltar. If I want to toss a baby out of an airlock, I’d say so.”

Favorite Laura Roslin quote, right there. Can I get that on a t-shirt?

Tigh pipes up to make sure everyone remembers it’s a machine, not a baby, kthx. Pretty sure he wants to get “Cylon = machines” tattooed on his big bald head so people will stop forgetting it. Baltar responds that it’s half-machine, but also half-human, and they can’t ignore that second half. He has a point. If only he weren’t a giant traitorhead. Adama, ever-practical, warns that the Cylons went through a heck of a lot to make this baby, and if it’s good for them it’s probably bad for us. They absolutely cannot let the Cylons get their hands on it or even let Boomer raise it herself. Head!Six, creeping on the conversation, tells Baltar that they’ll just have to take the baby themselves.

Back on Caprica Six and Boomer are chatting about Three and her possible ulterior motives (with head!Baltar throwing self esteem-injuring zingers Six’s way the whole time). Like why would Three bring Boomer and Six together when she must’ve known Boomer would tell Six Baltar was alive? The (possibly accurate) the conclusion they come to is that Three knew Six had feelings for Baltar and she intentionally wants to trigger those feelings by having her meet with Boomer. She’s messing with Six’s head—but to what end?

Speak of the devil and (s)he shall appear: Three pops in to catch up, exuding Lucy Flawless wonderfulness behind her. Six tells her that Boomer agreed to move out of her apartment. She hasn’t actually asked about that yet, but Boomer, sensing that there’s a conspiracy she needs to get in on, agrees. The three of them head to Boomer’s apartment to help her box things up, and their route takes them right past the parking garage that’s about to be lit up by Anders’ bomb. Three’s insistence that they leave right then is suspicious, though more suspicious is the evil little smirk she throws when a Centurion shows up in the parking garage. It almost manages to stop the bomb, but Anders distracts it long enough for the big boom.

There’s drama of a less explode-y nature going on on the Galactica, where Roslin’s decided what to do with Boomer’s baby. She asks Cottle’s help finding a foster parent, and while he’s clearly not comfortable with what he’s being asked to do, he agrees.

Back on Caprica Six, Three, and Boomer have been spared a bloody death by being in a stairwell at the time of the explosion. Six has been injured, though, and Three clearly wants to kill her (“You sure you don’t want me to put you out of your misery? One blow to the head, it’d be quick. Huh? Huh? Come onnnn.”) Six declines her most generous offer.

In an amusing exchange, Boomer asks why the resistance would blow up the cafe when it has no military value. Three responds that humans don’t respect life the way Cylons do. Oh, irony. The trio finds the unconscious Anders, who’s been buried under the rubble. Three’s all ready and raring to kill him (“Let me kill something, pleeeease“), but Six objects, giving the reason that they really should take him in for interrogation.

Of course, since Six is there, head!Baltar is too. He asks why she cares whether Anders lives when she doesn’t have a conscience anyway, and when Three finds Starbuck’s dogtags around Anders’ neck he taunts her for not being able to feel love. “I did,” she says. “I do. I love you, Gaius.” His response is the less-than-romantic “Where’s the proof?”

These two are so messed up, I love it to death.

On the Galactica Boomer gets the news that Hera’s died from completely natural causes, thank you very much, which makes her just a tad bit upset. A little. She throttles Doc Cottle and screams at everyone in the room that they’re murderers before being dragged away by the guards.

Also royally pissed off is head!Six, who accuses a crying Baltar of letting their child be murdered. God’s will was that the child survive and lead a new generation of God’s children, she says, and you were supposed to protect her. Failing to do that is an unforgivable sin that God will rain vengeance down on humanity for.

Of course, Hera’s not really dead: Roslin gives the infant to a woman named Maya, who’s told she has to keep the adoption absolutely secret because the mother’s an officer on the Pegasus. Roslin. You’re foisting a human/Cylon baby on this person and you don’t even let her know about it?! Sigh. I understand the necessity, I really do. Telling anyone who doesn’t already know that there’s a human/Cylon baby would really screw with the whole “absolute secrecy” thing. Still. Poor woman.

Meanwhile, in the parking garage, Anders comes to. Three is all ready to blow his brains out, interrogation or no, but Six says not to. With tensions between Three, Six, and Boomer reaching a boiling point, head!Baltar gives Six the bit o’ information that’ll tip it over: The reason Three was frakking with Six’s head is that she wanted to box her as well as Boomer.

Boomer and Six confront Three: They’re two celebrities in a culture based on uniformity, which spells bad news if they happen to have a different perspective from the rest of their race, because people are more likely to listen to them. And they do have a different perspective, because they’ve experienced love. Murder and genocide are sins, says Six, and if the rest of the Cylons knew that they’d have to consider that the whole killing humanity thing might have been a bit… how do you say… wrong.

A crash sounds through the parking garage as the rescue team makes their way through the rubble. Anders dives for the gun he dropped, but Three gets her hands on it when Boomer tackles him. She holds the gun on Anders but doesn’t get a chance to fire… because Starbuck beans her in the head with a rock. Several times. With a good amount of force.

The two remaining Cylons let a confused Anders go, and with the gun, no less. He asks what kind of people they are, and Six says they don’t even know, man. After he leaves Six says they have at least 36 hours until Three gets downloaded into a new body and is able to spread the word of their treason. That should be plenty of time for them to start their new lives as Cylon revolutionary leaders, giving the rest of their people a new beginning, one without hate. Head!Baltar says he’s never loved anyone more than he loves Six right now.

The episode ends with the two of them being rescued and a hopeful/ominous shot of Maya holding baby Hera.

So… head!Six has been manipulating Baltar to support the Cylons. Head!Baltar is manipulating Six against the Cylons and in support of humanity. But both head!Six and head!Baltar have the same MO: Knowing things they shouldn’t know; alternatively breaking their target’s psyche down with insults and building it up with protestations of love; spouting cryptic, impressive-sounding statements. It’s like they’re the same person, but working at cross-purposes… or are they?

And that wasn’t even the season two finale! Jesus Christ! I’ve been reliably informed that the actual finale, which is the next two episodes, will break my brain. Check back next Wednesday to see if I’m still coherent.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

It’s here. The long-awaited season two finale. To summarize my feels:

Part 1: General creeping horror.

Part 2: Wow, this is really serio—[last 20 minutes]—OH MY FRAKKING GOD!

But first: Keeping track of a bajillion different Sixes and Boomers is hard, guys. So I asked Susana to let me know how people who’ve actually, y’know, seen all of BSG refer to characters. To that end, from now on I’ll be referring to the Six in Baltar’s head as Head Six and the Six on Caprica as Caprica Six. As for the Boomers: The Boomer currently on Caprica who shot Adama I’ll be calling just plain Boomer, and the Boomer currently on the Galactica who had the baby I’ll call Athena. Don’t worry, I’ve been given no spoilers on why the heck I’m calling a Boomer Athena. Whatever happens, I assume it’ll shock me. And whenever the Lucy Lawless Cylon shows up again to lighten up my life, I’ll call her D’anna, not Three.

Lay Down Your Burdens: Part 1

Hey, what’s Chief Tyrol been up to lately? Surely with his involvement in Boom—Athena’s storyline having come to a close (for now…?) he’s been able to settle back into his nice, normal life.

No? The episode begins with him lying on the floor of the flight deck, shivering and pantsless?

Well OK then.

It only gets worse when Cally finds him, because he proceeds to wake up, go all crazyface, and beat her bloody. After he’s pummeled her into unconsciousness he comes to and looks completely horrified at what he’s done.

Battlestar Galactica sure knows how to intrigue its viewers from the get-go, doesn’t it? Also kicking off the episode: Roslin prepares for her first Presidential debate against Baltar. She’s nervous, but not as nervous as her opponent, who’s convinced that he’s going to get his ass handed to him. Head Six says not to worry, as God has chosen you to lead us, so God will take care of everything. What, like God wanted our baby to live? How’d that work out?

I really don’t want this episode to turn into another case of:

Baltar: Oh no! Something bad!
Head Six: Believe in the Cylon God!
Baltar: No! Science! Skepticism!
Bad Thing: *gets worse*
Baltar: *half-assed conversion*
Bad Thing: Later, homies!
Head Six: Told you!

Isn’t Head Six supposed to be really angry at Baltar, by the way? She practically choked him to death last episode and said he’d committed an unforgivable sin for not protecting their child. My first thought was that she’s planning something against him… but if she’s not really Six at all, just a means to someone else’s ends, maybe the “Aggggh, you couldn’t protect our baby, die!!!!” moment was just another bout of psychological manipulation.

Roslin makes her way to the debate, where Baltar’s already there awkwardly cooling his heels. Good going, Laura! Making your political inferior wait. Four for you. They share a nice, cordial, greeting—nahnnnn, the following exchange happens:

Roslin: I’m going to wipe the floor with you, Gaius.
Baltar: You must be losing your mind again!
Roslin: If that’s the best you can come up with you’re going to be in trouble. Good luck.

Roslin: 2
Baltar: 0

While Roslin and Baltar are politic-ing, Starbuck, now Galactica’s CAG, is briefing her pilots on a new mission: Going back to Caprica to rescue Anders’ human resistance. We’re finally getting back to that, eh? Cool. It’s an insanely dangerous mission, which means it’s volunteer-only and anyone who wants to bail should speak up. No one actually gets the chance, though, since Lee marches in to close the meeting with an Inspiring Speech about how they’ll all be a part of history by even attempting this rescue mission, and if they’re successful they’ll be building the future.

Realistically speaking, I know that if there’s some Viper pilot who’d rather stay at home than go on the suicide mission they did at some point have a chance to go up to Starbuck and sheepishly admit they’d really rather sit this one out, thanks. But I have fun imagining someone trudging through the Caprican forest muttering “I wasn’t even supposed to be here today!”

Also in this scene: Gaeta! He doesn’t get to do anything particularly exciting, just explain how the Cylons’ FTL drives are better than theirs but now that they have a Cylon helper they can make the Cylon FTL drives they’ve captured compatible with their computers blah blah blah science science science. I’ve just missed me some Gaeta.

This scene also marks the (re-)introduction of Athena to the rest of the pilots, who aren’t too happy with the whole “Surprise! We have a Cylon! And she’s going to be helping us with this super-dangerous mission during which a lot of you will probably die!” thing. Starbuck tells them to stow their crap: She’s here to help, and if you have a problem with that you can GTFO.

Athena’s scared and uncomfortable and soon after asks to go back to her cell. She’s followed there by Helo, who asks her how she’s doing. She doesn’t respond, but the answer is clearly “not well.” But it’s not just because her baby “died” last episode. A dark time is coming, she explains. She can feel it lurking on the horizon.

Back to Chief Tyrol, who’s asked for counseling with one Brother Cavil. He doesn’t believe in psychotherapy, he explains, and his dad was a priest, so he’d rather turn to religion than science to determine what’s up with him. Umm, Tyrol, not to belittle your faith or anything, but if you’ve beaten your friend to a pulp and you don’t know why you probably need some treatment that’s at least vaguely medical in nature.

Surprisingly, the priest is on my side on this one. Prayer is useless because the gods created humanity and then vamoosed; it’s up to us to find our own path. Tyrol won’t be able to do that until he realizes his own problem, which is, in a nutshell, that he’s screwed up in the heart and in the head.

Tyrol: ?????
Me: ?????

Weird though his priestly manner is, he makes some headway and gets Tyrol to open up about a nightmare he’s been having every day for a few weeks: He climbs up some stairs to a platform above the flight deck and jumps off, killing himself. He was having the nightmare when Cally woke him up, which to Cavil means “You have a secret desire to kill yourself, and she stopped you, which is why you reflexively beat her.”

“But I don’t have a secret desire to kill myself,” Tyrol counters. “Yes you do,” says Cavil, “only it’s not really secret, ~~you bonehead~~. It’s obvious why you want to kill yourself: You think you’re a Cylon.”

OK, what is up with this priest?! Tyrol buys into the whole Cylon anxiety thing after the priest brings it up, talking about Athena and and asking how the priest knows he’s human. His answer: I’m a Cylon, and I haven’t seen you at any of the meetings. Is the shady frakker using sarcasm to misdirect because he really is a Cylon? I’m going to say no, if only because that seems too obvious. But I absolutely think he has something to do with planting the idea that he may not be human in Tyrol’s brain. Maybe he was involved with planting Tyrol’s dream in the first place. You know who else plants ideas in people’s heads? Whoever’s behind Head Baltar and Head Six.

Then again, Admiral Cain also seemed evil at first, and she turned out all right. Maybe Cavil’s involved in a good capacity. Or maybe he’s just a *Tim Curry voice* red herring. */Tim Curry voice*

From there Cavil actually starts getting helpful, instructing Tyrol to go back to his daily life and rely on his friends’ love when he starts to doubt his humanity. That’s all well and good, but you should still see Doc Cottle, Tyrol. You don’t even have to bring up the Cylon suspicions. He can just give you a prescription for sleeping pills or something. Hell, get it on record that you tried to fix this for when something goes wrong later (which it will). Tyrol… Tyrol? Listen to me, Tyrol!

Ugh. There are times when I do not like him.

Starbuck and Lee have one last conversation before the former ships off to Caprica, during which they’re both uncomfortable that Starbuck’s going off to rescue her boy toy. (Hey, “boy toy” is the closest male equivalent I can think of to “lady love.” And I love the stereotype inversion that is Starbuck going to save Anders, by the way.) Lee takes the high road and says he hopes she finds him. My shi-hi-hiiippppppp. *sobs on her laptop keyboard*

The rescue team gets ready for their first jump, which involves Athena plugging the repurposed Cylon Raider part into her arm to make it compatible with the human ships. Starbuck, I know she’s a prisoner and is technically lucky just to be alive, but you need to give her a fruit basket after all this is said and done, k?

When they make the jump one Raptor, piloted by Racetrack, ends up at completely different coordinates than the rest. According to the rules all she and her three shipmates can do is slink back to the Galactica and stew in their shame. But wait! What’s that showing up on their radar? It’s a planet! One with a breathable atmosphere? Golly gee! They take their scans back to the Galactica, where it’s determined that the planet is habitable, if mostly barren, and is surrounded by a cloud of dradis interference that should make it nigh undetectable by the Cylons.

And a navigational glitch just happened to drop Racetrack here? Hmm, let me see:

This new planet is really good news for Baltar. See, Roslin did indeed take him to school during the first Presidential debate, and he’s trailing in the polls in a big way. The only real thing he has on her is that she sees herself as a prophet, but that’s not a big enough issue to build an entire campaign on. And anyway, attacking someone for their religion is kind of a douchey thing to do—so it’s fitting for Baltar but not likely to make anyone vote for him.

But then this new planet shows up. It’s awful and drab, so Baltar makes some snarky remark to Zarek, who’s his campaign manager, that he couldn’t imagine if they had to live on it. “Baltar, you’re a genuis,” Zarek says.

Baltar’s response: “And? *mental hair flip*”

The idea that Zarek comes up with—he thinks Baltar has come up with it, and Baltar doesn’t bother to correct him—is that they can make settling on this new planet their big campaign issue. Vote for us and you’ll have a permanent home, an end to the fear and stress of your everyday life. Vote for Roslin and you’ll have a long, hard slog to a possibly nonexistent Earth. Baltar thinks the idea of settling on the planet is dumb, but he’s willing to latch onto it to get what he wants.

Roslin also thinks it’s a stupid idea: The living conditions on the planet are so harsh that humanity would be lucky to survive for a few years, plus if humans managed to stumble upon it the Cylons, with their better tech, will probably be able to find it eventually. Also, not that she says this, but I think it bears repeating:

Still, the populace likes the idea of settlement, because it tells them what they want to hear—we can live a happy, normal life again, and without too much effort on our part—when all Roslin’s campaign does is hit home how truly awful their situation is.

By the time the next debate rolls around the tables have turned. Baltar’s on fire, tying the religion issue to the resettlement issue to make it look like Roslin’s a zealot who’s running humanity into the ground by doing what the scriptures tell her. BOOM! Roslin’s response is a floundering “But… the scriptures have relevance to real life…?” Get it together, woman! The panel moderator asks Baltar to address the accusation that he’s opportunistically seized onto the issue of the new planet to get votes, and I was all ready to cheer that finally, someone has managed to call this gigantic d-bag on his selfishness! until Baltar gives a non-answer (“Well I’ve always believed in the search for Earth, but the Cylons are still following us, so if we have a chance to escape from them I think we should—” SDFGHJKJHGFDFGUIUYT YOU ARE NOT ANSWERING THE QUESTION!) and the press eats it up with a spoon.

The debate ends with Baltar interrupting Roslin’s time to call her a fearmonger and spout some empty rhetoric about how people should stop running from their lives and start living them. Voters! You live in a l i t e r a l post-apocalypse situation. Fear is the correct response. Baltar knows that, too; he’s just playing the role of the lying, sugarcoating political particularly well.

I have never wanted to punch a character more.

Meanwhile the rest of the Raptors make their final jump to Caprica—except one of them accidentally jumps into the middle of a mountain. Ouch. The surviving members of the rescue team slog through the forest and happen across the human resistance. Their base camp was hit by Cylons that morning, so more than half of them are dead, but Anders isn’t one of the deceased, yay! He and Starbuck embrace, and she gives him some guff about ever doubting she’d come back for him.

Because it’s been a happy scene so far, Cylons show up. Well, technically, Cylon missles show up, blocking the path between the humans and the Raptors.

Gotta say, I’d been told the finale was “OMG HORRIBLE WILL BREAK YOUR BRAIN,” so I was kind of surprised that nothing really bad happened this episode? Aside from the attack in the last minute and Baltar setting Roslin up for a failed re-election, but that’s like a papercut on the BSG scale of awfulness.

And then I just got scared about what WTFery will go down in the next episode. Hold me, readers. I’m scared.

Also in this episode:
Before Starbuck jets off to Caprica she has a convo with Adama where she thanks him for letting her launch the mission. There’s a random shot of grumpy Tigh in the background that I thought at first might be significant—because he has nothing to do with the rescue mission, so why focus on him?—until I realized it was probably his general I Hate Starbuck expression. Anyway, because I’m in the business of loving Tigh, I just wanted to share his face with you. Someone needs to pair caps of His Grumpiness with nihilistic quotes à la Henri the Existentialist Cat.

Lay Down Your Burdens: Part 2

We start right where we left off: With the humans on Caprica being fired at by Centurions. Comms have been jammed, meaning they can’t call the Raptors to come get them and have no other choice but to retreat to a fallback position, effectively leaving themselves trapped. The Cylons ease off, too; Athena says they’re going to get a non-lethal gas to knock the humans out so they can either be interrogated or taken back to one of the baby farms. Starbuck is absolutely not going back to one of those, so she and Anders agree that they’ll shoot one another in the head before being taken. But until it comes to that they’ll do what they always do, says Starbuck, and “fight until we can’t fight any more.”

But they don’t need to, because 18 hours later the Centurions haven’t advanced. What’s more, a scouting team discovers that they’ve just… gone away. Completely.

Then we get the first “holy crap” moment of the episode: Brother Cavil walks up behind Starbuck, says the Centurions having left is a miracle, and invites the humans to pray. My thought process went something like this: “Why would they bring a priest who has presumably no military training on a rescue misOH MY GOD HE’S A CYLON.”

See, while all this is going on, Roslin’s been facing some of her own trouble back with the fleet. Baltar’s idea to colonize the junky little planet Racetrack found is really catching on with civilians, the result of which is that Roslin’s started losing in the polls. The only way she could win is with some super-secret backup plan. “Super-secret backup plan?,” asks not-Billy Tory, giving Roslin a significant look. “I could do that.” It’s at that point that Brother Cavil walks in to pray with Roslin… even though he’s leading a prayer circle on Caprica at the exact same time.

So my idea that “Brother Cavil can’t possibly be a Cylon because that’s way too obvious” was wrong. Oh well. Isn’t the first time.

We also catch up with Chief Tyrol and Cally, the latter of whom has been cleared for work after Tyrol (accidentally? unconsciously?) beat her. He says what he did was unforgivable and inexcusable, but she forgives him anyway, because she knows it wasn’t really him and, anyway, she cares about him. Do I… do I ship it? I might ship it.

Roslin tricks Baltar into attending a private meeting, where she says the issue of permanent settlement is bigger than this one election and should be “carefully studied” before any final decisions are made. So how ’bout we put out a joint statement saying we’ll postpone the issue until after the election, when whoever the President is then has the time to give it the attention it deserves?

She appeals to his patriotism, which it turns out was the wrong move, because he starts on about how he is patriotic, thankyouverymuch, and establishing a society on New Caprica, as he calls the planet, is the patriotic thing to do.

Not that there was ever much chance Baltar would OK the agreement. I mean, what’s his incentive? He’s winning. Roslin has one more card to play, though, and it’s a biggun: She knows he’s been working with the Cylons.

She doesn’t come out and say that, instead asking if he met with a blonde woman right before the attack. (Roslin remembered seeing him and Six while she was on her deathbed, if you’ll recall.) But she’s looking miiiiiighty pissed, like she’s about to go berserker and stab him through the throat with her shoe, and Baltar and Six both know the jig is up. Six urges him to get out, but he just has to get the last word in: It’s none of your beeswax who I hang out with, and I may have saved your life once before, but I won’t save your career.

Meanwhile Ellen and Tigh are chatting about New Caprica: Ellen wants to settle there with the rest of humanity, but Tigh refuses, not that he thinks there’ll even be a settlement, because there’s no way Baltar will win. At first I thought this was a little sweet—Awwww, Tigh’s come around to Team Roslin (hey, that’s sweet for Tigh)—but, as later events in this episode show, it was something a little more, ahem, practical than a mere statement of loyalty.

Then, surprise! Starbuck, her rescue team, Anders, and the human resistance are back on the Galactica with good news. Except this is Battlestar Galactica, so I’m sure it’s somehow bad news. Following a semi-awkward Anders-Adama meet and greet Starbuck tells Adama that the Cylons have left Caprica. Not just the Centurions keeping the rescue team pinned down. All of them. Caprica is still an uninhabitable nuclear wasteland, but at least it’s empty now.

The impact of that particular statement is somewhat lessened by Brother Cavil (I’ll call this one Brother Cavil #2) walking off the ship and immediately being tackled by Chief Tyrol, who recognizes that he’s a Cylon. Cavil admits his robotic origins and says he has a message; he’s taken to the brig, as is Athena for good measure, since Adama says she had to have known their resident priest was really an enemy agent.

Talking to Athena through her cell wall, Helo asks why she didn’t tell anyone about Cavil. Her response is that she just didn’t feel like it, or maybe she wanted him to blow up the ship. I might be reading too much into things here, but she never actually says she’d seen Cavil and knew there was a Cylon agent onboard. She’s just generally pissed at the world now as a result of having lost her baby. She doesn’t care about anything else: Not gaining Adama’s trust, not even Helo.

Starbuck and Anders are re-getting to know one another in the locker room, being all drunk and flirty. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: These two are way too similar to one another, and their parallel personality flaws are going to bounce off one another to create a feedback loop of drunkenness and bad decision-making. Lee comes in to awkwardly introduce himself, but he’s suffers from a major bout of third wheel syndrome, since Starbuck keeps ignoring him to drunkenly make out with her boyfriend. Starbuck asks Lee whether he’s ever going to get a girl, and I kept chanting to myself “Don’t mention the escort, don’t mention the escort, don’t mention the escort” until Starbuck asks about Dee, which, oh yeah, that relationship just slipped right through my brain. I won’t judge you for getting into the pants of some pretty young thing, says Starbuck, since I have one of my own, simultaneously rubbing her relationship with Anders in Lee’s face and belittling his relationship with Dee. Offended, Lee leaves, but Starbuck doesn’t even notice until after he’s gone.

Meanwhile, it’s time for Brother Cavil #2′s message. It’s preceded by Brother Cavil #1 being marched into the brig, all the while insisting “I’m not a Cylon! No, really, I’m not a Cylon!… Oh, hey bro. Yeah, I’m totally a Cylon.” What #2 has come to say is that the Cylons have realized the error of their genocidal ways and have decided to leave Caprica and not chase the human fleet anymore.

I smell a rat. Brother Cavil #2 says their new modus operandi is a result of some convincing by Caprica Six and Boomer, and while we know the two of them were going to try and convince their brethren to give humanity a break, that was like… three weeks ago. There’s no way they managed to mount a resistance and completely reform Cylon politics in such a short period of time. And when Roslin asks whether the Cylons are going back to their homeworld Brother Cavil #2 gets all cagey, saying they have “other plans.” And something about the Cylons’ stated explanation for their “mistaken” nuking of Caprica—they were trying to be more like humans when they should’ve accepted themselves as machines—doesn’t ring true to what we’ve seen of Cylons in the past.

Next scene: Election day is here! Ballots are being counted on the Galactica, with marines and civilians on hand to provide security and prevent tomfoolery. Or try to prevent tomfoolery. Since Roslin is on the verge of losing and all, not Billy Tory puts in a call to Tigh to enact their super-secret ballot-fixing plan.

So that’s why Tigh was so sure Baltar wasn’t going to win: He was in on the plan to help Roslin cheat. Well, that’ll do it.

Also involved is Dee, who I swear to God is involved in every single conspiracy on this ship. She helps sneak in enough fake ballots in favor of Roslin to give the Pres a very improbable victory at the last minute. Zarek is convinced that the election was fixed, but Baltar disagrees, saying that there’s no way Roslin would ever cheat. Oh, irony.

So Roslin’s won, but she’s not pleased: She puts on a happy face among her supporters, but you can tell the fact that she stole the election is weighing heavily on her. But it gets worse when Gaeta figures out the deception. Someone on the ship with the fake ballots called him earlier to tell him they accidentally misspelled Baltar’s name, but the fake ballots spell his name correctly, and Gaeta’s spent too long doodling “Gaius Baltar” in the margins of his diary to not spot the difference right away. Tigh is evasive and shifty when Gaeta tells him about it, which only serves to convince Gaeta that Tigh was involved. So Gaeta moves up the chain and tells Adama what he knows.

Adama confronts Roslin, who says she didn’t know exactly what Tory was planning but was aware that something illegal was going to happen. But I had to do it, Roslin tells him, because we both know Baltar’s presidency would be a disaster. Plus, he’s working with the Cylons, even if I can’t prove it. Be that as it may, Adama responds, if I let you go through with this we’re both criminals. The peoples’ choice should be respected, even if the people are being idiots. They might have to give up the election, but they won’t stop fighting.

Wow. So not only did Roslin decide to cheat, she also got caught? Granted, the official story is that there was an “error” with the ballot-counting, so Roslin’s not going to jail, even though Adama had to say some strong words to Baltar to get him to let the whole thing go. But still. This episode is intense.

And it only gets worse.

Before getting sworn in as President Baltar goes to the Cloud 9 to see Gina!Six, who says she won’t be joining him on New Caprica. He’s upset—this is their chance to be together!—but she stays firm. He gets ready to storm out, but she asks him to stay, then convinces him by removing her clothes. She’s offering him sex even though you can tell by her face that she’s clearly not ready after all the sexual abuse she suffered on the Pegasus. Baltar accepts, because he’s kind of a self-involved horndog jerk.

From there it’s to his inauguration, where he says his first priority is immediate resettlement on New Caprica, so screw you and your “careful study,” Roslin. The happy (for Baltar) moment is interrupted by a massive explosion: Gina!Six has taken the nuclear warhead Baltar gave her and used it to commit suicide, though since it’s a nuclear warhead it takes out Cloud 9 and damages several surrounding ships as well.

Baltar’s presidency literally begins with a Cylon bombing. How’s that for symbolism?

In the aftermath of the explosion Baltar is visited by Adama, who says he suspects the warhead was stolen from Baltar’s lab and cautions the new President that the bombing could be the first step in a coordinated Cylon attack. Baltar’s in way over his head. He quite pathetically offers Adama tea and biscuits, which almost makes me feel sorry for him… until he ignores Adama’s suggestion to delay the settling of New Caprica while they deal with “internal security.” It makes sense from Baltar’s perspective, I guess, since he knows who detonated the bomb and why (Or does he? Do I? Which way is up? Where am I? Who am I?). But him snapping at Adama and saying he doesn’t have to listen to him because he’s the President, darnit, moved him back onto my naughty list.

After Adama leaves Baltar breaks down, albeit in a stoic, British sort of way, and lays his head down on the table. After a quick transition we hear Gaeta trying to wake him up. Oh, it is the next morning? Did he sleep at his desk? But… why is Gaeta talking about union leaders? Why is Gaeta on wake-up-Baltar duty in the first place? Why is there a half-naked lady getting dressed at the back of the room?

“One Year Later” flashes across the screen.

Ohhhhhhh.

No, that’s too understated a way to express my reaction to the way Battlestar Galactica just did a year-long time jump with only about 20 minutes left in the episode. Here, have a gif.

Also, have a picture of Baltar’s office. I’d link to it like I normally do when Tigh makes a grumpy face (oh, I do love Tigh’s grumpy faces), but everyone’s going to look at the tacky, awful, wonderful self-portrait Baltar’s had done whether they want to or not:

You’re welcome.

Judging by his interaction with Gaeta in this scene Baltar’s clearly not been taking the Presidency too seriously. He doesn’t care about responding to the people’s complaints or dealing with their problems. Cylons haven’t attacked since he took over, so what’s everyone complaining about? Jeez, get off my back!

And approximately one year and ten months after their first meeting, you can hear Gaeta’s mancrush on Baltar wither and die.

(Speaking of Gaeta: At first I was all “Noooo, why would you become Baltar’s Billy? Even if most people don’t realize he’s working with the Cylons he’s pretty obviously an awful human being.” But… I don’t know. It’s obvious to us that Baltar’s an awful person, because we see how he reacts to a variety of situations in selfish, cowardly ways. But Gaeta, who wears rose-colored glasses when it comes to Baltar anyway, hasn’t been in the inner circle when most of those situations happened. He pops up every few episodes to get some piece of business done and then leaves again. Granted, it was still a bad call on Gaeta’s part, but… OK, darnit, I’m a Gaeta apologist. I’ll accept that.)

We then get our first look out the window at New Caprica: A crowded, desolate, impoverished new home for humanity. Pretty much everyone lives there now, leaving the Galactica and the Pegasus staffed by skeleton crews. The next scene shows Adama stalking the halls of the Galactica, which would be a boring establishing shot not worth mentioning, except look! The stache. Is. Back.

After I watched Scattered, with its flashback to Adama and his ’70s lip caterpillar, Susana promised me the facial hair would return, and lo, here ’tis. I may be emotionally traumatized from the time jump, but right now, life is good.

Of course, then life gets bad again, because there’s a TIGH FEELS scene. Adama orders his XO to move down to New Caprica, where Ellen already is. He doesn’t want to, saying it would feel like he’s abandoning his post and his only friend *sob*, but Adama insists. Tigh points out that Adama’s staying, to which StacheMan responds that someone has to “take care of the lighthouse.” “I’ll stay and take care of it with you!,” says Tigh.

Stop it. Tigh feels. No. I don’t want this. No.

Tigh reminds Adama that the Cylons could show up at any moment, but Adama says he doesn’t think they will (but Adama! Remember that the planet is a trap! It’s a trap!). After a hug and a laugh (a laugh. Tigh laughed), Tigh leaves to go be with Ellen.

Down on New Caprica we see Starbuck and Anders, now married, the former rocking a longer hairdo and the latter suffering from a nasty bout of pneumonia that he might eventually die from because there are no antibiotics left. Starbuck sees Ellen and Tigh walking in the market and follows them into a tent, where we see that Chief Tyrol’s reinvented himself as a union leader. Also, Cally is his wife now, or at least his babymama, because she’s standing next to him him all big as a house as he shouts about going on strike because Baltar is a giant failwhale.

Starbuck and Tigh greet each other, and they hug. They hug?! Did New Caprica make Tigh and Starbuck forget that they hate each other? This right here is the final straw: I do not like New Caprica, Sam I am.

Starbuck asks Tigh if he knows a way she can get some antibiotics for Anders, and it turns out he does: Lee, still the Pegasus Captain, has backup meds he holds for his pilots. Starbuck is convinced he won’t give her any and clearly doesn’t want to even call him and ask, though Tigh reassures her that whatever happened “was a long time ago. People change.”

OK, one? Tigh being reassuring. Tigh reassuring Starbuck. This is the bizarro world.

And two: What happened over the time jump with Lee and Starbuck?!

There’s a quick scene of Roslin, now a teacher again, being assisted by Maya, the woman who adopted Athena’s Cylon-human baby. The baby’s now called Isis, by the way, and boy is Roslin keeping a close eye on her.

Starbuck braces herself and calls Lee. He picks up, and we get our first look at him, all schlubby, in the fabled fatsuit. Hey, I’ve heard of “Fatsuit Lee!” Starbuck explains the situation, and there’s some definite antagonism between them. We never find out whether Lee was intending to help his former friend because Dee (who’s stayed on the Pegasus as well and can at least still button her coat properly, Lee) sees on the DRADIS that a Cylon fleet has just shown up.

Lee hangs up on Starbuck and calls his dad, whose first thought is to try and get people off the surface. But there’s no time, Lee explains: Each of their ships barely has enough people to complete normal operations, nevermind defending themselves during a rescue op. They can always come back, but unless they want the Galactica and the Pegasus to go kablooey they have to leave stat.

So they do. The entire fleet jumps away, leaving the humans on the surface of New Caprica and Tigh kicking himself for letting Adama convince him to leave. (You know it’s true.)

Baltar’s canoodling on the Colonial One, which has been moved to the surface of the planet, when Gaeta comes in to tell him the planet’s been invaded and the fleet’s jumped away. Head Six tells Baltar judgement day has come. Several skinjobs, including Caprica Six and Boomer (at least I assume it’s Boomer and not some other random Eight), come to see Baltar, who asks how they found New Caprica. Turns out it was the nuke Gina!Six set off; the Cylons detected its radiation signature completely by accident. So Adama was right, and they should have moved on after the blast. A crying Baltar shares a significant glance with Caprica Six and promptly surrenders.

Also on the planet is über-freaky Cylon Leoben Conoy (remember him? I’ve missed you, Leoben!), who’s looking for Starbuck.

The last shot is of Starbuck standing alongside Tyrol as the Centurions come marching in. “What do you want to do now, Captain?,” he asks. “Same thing we always do,” she responds. “Fight ‘em until we can’t.”

The best thing is that she could’ve said “Try to take over the world” and it would be technically accurate.

Questions posed by this frakked up (in a good way) season finale:

Wasn’t the planet a trap? It doesn’t seem like the Cylons would’ve known where it was if Gina!Six hadn’t detonated the nuke, but… there’s no way it’s not a trap anyway, right?

Did Gina!Six intend the nuclear blast to lead the Cylons to the fleet? Did Head Six sell Baltar out somehow? How are the Cylons we know working with the Cylon leadership? Who even is the Cylon leadership?

Where is Athena after the time jump happens? The last we see of her before that she’s been locked up in the brig and has admitted to holding things from Adama, if only tacitly.

What the frak happened between Starbuck and Lee?

And many, many more that I’d probably be able to think of if my brain weren’t buzzing.

Let me finish up my recaps of season two like I started them: Loving my favorite character.

In an effort to avoid spoilers, comments on this post have been locked. However, Jill and Susana will be reading comments over at our Facebook page. So if there’s anything you’d like to say in response to this post, head on over this way. Former Battlestar Galactica Newbie Recaps can be found here.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

So how’re things going for the characters of Battlestar Galactica after that “!!!!??!???!?!”-inducing season two finale? Let’s jump into the first two episodes of season three to find out.

But first, because I’m a completionist*, here’s a quick recap of The Resistance, the web series that ran between seasons two and three.

*Also because Tigh’s in it. I may have a problem.

The Resistance

Here we catch up with Chief Tyrol, Tigh, Cally, and a few tertiary characters whose faces I recognize but whose names I couldn’t have told you before they took center stage here. It’s the 67th day of Cylon occupation, and Tigh, Cally, Chief Tyrol, Jammer, and Jean are up to their necks in the resistance movement. They try to recruit Duck, a one-time Viper pilot, but he rejects their offer. He’s a family man now; he has a wife, Nora, and hopefully one day they’ll have a kid.

Not that that stops Chief and Cally, the latter of whom has popped out her baby since the season two finale. That’s going to be the most revolutionary kid ever.

The majority of the resistance’s weapons cache was seized by the Cylons, but Tigh still has a few guns left. He decides to hide them in the temple on the grounds that the Cylons have agreed to leave it alone since it’s a sacred place. Jammer objects, saying it’s sacrilege to hide weapons in a place of worship, but Tigh doesn’t care. Haters gonna hate. (You’d best click that link; I broke out my meager gif-making skills here, OK?)

Later on Nora and Cally go to the temple to pray and talk about their significant others’ respective religions. Turns out Chief’s had a “crisis of faith” since the priest who incepted him with the idea he might be a Cylon turned out to be a Cylon himself. Yep, that’ll do it. The temple comes under attack, and while Cally gets away, Nora doesn’t.

Is Duck going to have a dramatic conversion moment where he decides to pledge himself to the cause because his wife died? Because I get that on a character level, but from a storytelling perspective it’s awfully cliché.

At first it doesn’t look like Resistance will go that route: Duck asks Chief whether there were guns in the temple, and when he’s told there were he’s none too pleased. The next scene shows Jammer expressing a similar sense of displeasure toward the resistance. There were a bunch of people in the temple when it was attacked; ten died and twelve were wounded. Tigh’s response?

“I never dreamed we would get this lucky.”

I love him. In any insurrection-type storyline there’s always going to be a guy who’s all “To make an omelette you’ve gotta break some eggs, civilians are going to die in a war, and this drives our recruitment numbers up so put your big boy pants on and deal with it, sonny Jim, blah blah blah.” But Tigh’s so unapologetic about taking a stance that he knows makes pretty much everyone think he’s a soulless jerk. He gives no fraks.

When Jammer gets arrested by the Cylons Chief stands up for him to Tigh, saying he’s no traitor and he won’t tell the Cylons anything. Tigh’s not so sure, and as it happens he’s right. (I’m getting some déjà vu—remember that time Adama didn’t think the Cylons would come back, but Tigh disagreed? And then Tigh turned to be right? Good times, good times.)

Jammer gets interrog— interviewed by Doral, who starts the psychological manipulation early by offering him some juice and cutting off his cuffs. You’re not in trouble, he says. I just want to talk to you about the temple.

Doral admits that the Centurions who opened fire “overreacted” but says that what happened wasn’t entirely the Cylons’ fault, since it was the insurgents who put the weapons in the temple in the first place. They knew the Cylons would find them; they might even have tipped the Cylons off themselves, hoping that the resultant massacre would up their support. Humans and Cylons can work together peacefully, but that won’t happen if the resistance gets its way.

He brings up the New Caprica Police (NCP), which is comprised of humans working for the Cylons and is therefore particularly hated by the resistance. Jammer says he’s not going to be a collaborator, but Doral says he’s not asking him to: He just wants him to give the Cylons a heads-up if the resistance is planning anything that might lead to loss of human life. Jammer takes the computer chip that will allow him to get in contact with his new Cylon overlords and is set free.

Jammer. Doral is playing you. That is some Gaeta-level bad decision making right there.

Meanwhile Duck tells Chief Tyrol about his plan to infiltrate the New Caprica Police. It’s a dangerous job, but it might allow him to figure out who told the Cylons about the weapons cache in the temple. Chief and Tigh bandy about the idea of attacking a military target that just so happens to be across from a hospital. If the resistance fraks up with the explosives, patients might die, not that that melts the cockles of Tigh’s heart.

The webseries ends with Jammer deciding to be the Cylon’s mole in the resistance and Duck deciding to be the resistance’s mole inside the NCP. That’s some Departed-style stuff right there.

Also in this series:

Tigh in a beanie! Tigh in a beanie!
Cally said Chief Tyrol’s first name at some point. Galen? Something like that. I did a double-take. I’d come to think of his first name as Chief.

Occupation

As alluded to in Resistance, life’s gone to hell for Our Heroes since the Cylons invaded New Caprica. Tigh’s been captured and tortured by the Cylons, who plucked out one of his eyes. So now Tigh has the number of eyes I thought he’d have when I first started watching. Good to know. To get her husband released from prison Ellen has sex with Brother Cavil, who’s been overseeing Tigh’s interrogation.

Least favorite character, right there. Brother Cavil, may the Tighs airlock you personally.

While Tigh’s locked up Chief Tyrol and Anders are still spearheading the resistance, setting up bombs to explode them some Cylons. I can just imagine Anders’ frustration. “I just stopped doing resistance stuff, like, a year ago. Can’t a man play some pyramid without having to worry about running an insurrection?”

Meanwhile Starbuck’s been in a different sort of prison than Tigh, and while her jailer’s less overtly violent than Brother Cavil, he’s definitely creepier. That would be Leoben Conoy, who kidnapped Starbuck right after the Cylon attack and has been keeping her in a jail cell modeled after her old apartment on Caprica ever since. The first scene of the two of them has them sitting down for a nice, fancy dinner. Starbuck asks for a knife to cut her steak; instead, Leoben gets up and cuts it for her. Ohhhh, Leoben, you’d better watch yourself.

He sees the resistance’s explosion through the window, and when he returns to be all creepy at Starbuck (“You look so lovely tonight” *shudder*) she stabs him through the neck and several times in the torso with what appears to be a tuning fork. She then cleans her hand of his blood by wiping it on the carpet, grabs his knife to cut her own darn steak, and primly wipes her mouth before tucking in. Attagirl, Starbuck.

I don’t know what it says about me that this is probably my favorite scene of the entire show so far.

We get a little exposition courtesy of Laura Roslin, who’s been keeping a journal. The Cylons have been there for four months, and though there’s been no contact with the Galactica since it skedaddled, she refuses to believe Adama won’t come back for them. Until then the insurgency will keep attacking, which is critical for morale even though it seems useless at times. There needs to be a high-profile attack; no more bumping off a few Cylons at a time, only to have them regenerate.

In a later scene she also tells those who didn’t watch the webseries about the New Caprica Police, humans who’ve been doing the Cylon’s dirty work. Their names are kept a closely guarded secret, but by looking at surveillance photos the resistance has concluded that there are about 200 of them, 50 of whom they’ve managed to identify. Speaking of the resistance, it’s being aided by an anonymous mole within Baltar’s administration. Is it Gaeta? I bet it’s Gaeta.

Baltar hasn’t been doing much since the attack; his government now governs in name only. But the Cylons running the joint don’t exactly agree about how to do so. In a meeting with the other skinjobs Brother Cavil posits that they do anything and everything, up to and including publicly executing random citizens, to accomplish their mission of bringing the word of God to humanity. He even suggests killing Baltar, who’s sitting right there in the background listening to the whole conversation. Luckily for him, Caprica nixes that idea, because he’s her pet and all. Doran also objects on the more practical grounds that everyone hates Baltar and would probably applaud his death anyway. Baltar looks absolutely stricken when he hears that, like he’s been kept so insulated that he had no clue his own people hate him so much. I can feel my “Oh, poor baby” feelings coming back…

Boomer and Caprica take a more philosophical approach; they’re here to bring peace and harmony, not to kill more people. Um, if your goal is a peaceful relationship between Cylons and humans, why not just… let the humans go on their merry way to Earth? You know, like Brother Cavil said you would before you showed up at New Caprica to wreck stuff? It’s not like the humans are going to be predisposed to trust the Cylons after they nuked Caprica, and imprisoning all of them isn’t exactly a great start. I smell something fishy here.

After the rest of the Cylons leave D’anna asks whether Caprica’s love of Baltar is worth the risk they’re taking. “If you’d experienced love you wouldn’t have to ask,” she responds. Jeez, Caprica, there’s no need to be all frakking superior.

Meanwhile Chief Tyrol’s gotten confidential papers about the New Caprica Police’s graduation ceremony from his Super Secret Source, which he takes to Anders and Tigh. The latter’s just gotten out of prison, and he casually drops the info that his eyeball was ripped from its socket right in front of him, just so they know. They then share a drink, and while Anders and Tigh both grimace heartily, Tigh chugs the stuff down. One eye, same Tigh.

The resistance’s plan is to bomb the graduation ceremony and kill Baltar, who’s going to attend. It’ll be hard to avoid human casualties, but Tigh ain’t give a damn, because if they’ve chosen to work with the Cylons then they deserve death. Way harsh, Tai Tigh! The plan, laid out in a later scene, is to have Duck go all suicide bomber and blow the ceremony to bits, killing or at least seriously wounding all the human police officers just to get to Baltar.

Item two on the resistance’s agenda is making contact with the Galactica. Before the Cylon attack the plan was to leave a Raptor hanging out above the planet just in case something went down, but every transmission the rebels sends gets jammed. Anders doubts that a Raptor’s out there anyway. Adama never would have come to get me on Caprica if Starbuck hadn’t stayed on his ass about it, he says, so he’s probably going to leave us behind, too. That is not the right thing to say to Tigh, who immediately jumps to his BFF’s defense. He calms down a bit when he remembers, shoot, this dude’s wife has been missing for four months now.

Back in her fancy-dancy jail cell Starbuck is still subject to the unwanted advances of Leoben, who’s downloaded into a new body. He waltzes into the living room to say that God wants them to be together, and Starbuck seems receptive to it… though he’s just trying to get close enough to stab him. He sees through her ruse and reminds her that, though she’s killed him five times before (you go, Starbuck!), he can be patient. He’s seen the future, and she is going to tell him that she loves him.

I think he’s right. She is going to tell him that she loves him, as part of a ruse, right before she cuts his junk off with a shard of rusted metal and peaces out for good.

Up on the Galactica there’s been a bit of conflict between Adama and Lee. The former is pushing what pilots he has left to the breaking point, trying to get them ready for the eventual rescue mission. Lee is… not being so vigilant. He calls his dad out on how poorly the pilots are being treated, and Adama absolutely loses it, accusing his son of becoming weak both mentally and physically. Stop whining, he says, and get your “fat ass” (woah, dude!) out of my office.

Take it down a few notches, Admiral. Lee’s definitely let himself go (to put it lightly), but his assertion that they’re not getting anywhere with their current mode of behavior has some truth to it, even if he’s not exactly suggesting anything better. Helo, who appears to be Adama’s new Gaeta, agrees; he was more than willing to pull the pilots in from a failed exercise before Adama told them to stay out and try it again for the seventeenth time.

The only person Adama’s close to anymore is Athena, who, judging by the mini-office in her cell, has been receiving a lot of visits from the old man. She calls him on his BS, albeit politely. After I was locked up I was consumed with rage for weeks, she explains, and I only moved past it once I realized I was really mad at myself for my betrayal and for losing my baby. (But she didn’t lose her baby? She thinks her baby died of completely natural causes.) If you’re going to move forward and save humanity you have to accept the guilt you feel for leaving New Caprica in your rearview mirror, and you have to forgive yourself.

Meanwhile Lee’s getting a pep talk from Dee, except it’s less a pep talk and more her agreeing with Adama about how soft Lee’s gotten. You’re a soldier who needs a war, she says, only you don’t want to admit that because you think it means you’re like your father. But you’re more like him than you know; that’s one of the reasons I married you.

*record scratch*

They’re married?!

(Also: “One of the reasons I married you is how much like your dad you are.” Oh-kaaaaay. I get what she’s saying there, but… weirdly phrased, Dee. Weirdly phrased.)

Back on New Caprica the resistance’s anonymous source has gotten them some updated info on the Cylon’s jamming frequencies, which means they’re finally able to get through to the Raptor that is indeed still hanging out above New Caprica. Tigh told you so, Anders! The Raptor, piloted by Racetrack, is even able to send a message back, to the effect that they’ll be in contact every 12 hours to coordinate a rescue effort, and have hope, because we’re coming for you.

Hah. We’re only one episode into the season. Like this is going to end well.

The day of the attack on the graduation ceremony has arrived. Chief, who previously expressed discomfort with the whole suicide bomber idea, thinks the revelation that they’re getting rescued means they should call the plan off, but Tigh disagrees, saying the only way the rescue attempt will be successful is if the resistance causes a distraction. Gotta say, I agree with the Chief on this one. Tigh is way too caught up in killing Baltar. And we know his track record with making decisions while he’s under pressure and feeling blood-lusty isn’t exactly good. The Chief and Tigh come to an uneasy compromise: They’ll only cancel the attack if Baltar won’t be there.

Almost at that exact moment Baltar is canceling his appearance, citing security concerns. Wait. Does he know there might be an attempt on his life, or was he just flaking out and got really lucky with the timing? Gaeta—who it turns out is the resistance’s mole, I knew it—books it into the city to give the Chief his super secret signal that something’s changed. The only problem is that he moves the dog bowl they’re using to communicate, indicating that something has changed, right after the Chief shows up and sees it unchanged.

Also, Gaeta has really nice handwriting. OK, moving on.

With the resistance still thinking they’ll get the chance to kill Baltar, the attack moves ahead: Duck straps a bomb onto his chest and detonates right as he comes up in line to shake D’anna’s hand.

Precipice

It’s the immediate aftermath of the suicide bombing, and Laura Roslin’s been thrown in a jail cell. Baltar pays her a visit to explain the situation: All important people have been rounded up; she’s not been targeted specifically. Baltar can help her out, but only if she agrees to publicly condemn the suicide bombing. Roslin doesn’t even respond to his request, instead saying that the Cylons must be desperate to send him as their emissary. Baltar presses on and tries to get Roslin to look him in the eye and tell him she’s seriously OK with the turn the resistance has taken. She’s unable to do so, instead informing him that the NCP officers killed in the attack arrest, detain, and torture innocent people, the last of which Baltar didn’t seem to know about. Defeated, Baltar leaves, telling Roslin as he goes to follow her conscience the way he always has, and asking the guard to let her loose. Her parting shot to him is that she doesn’t doubt his actions have been in accordance with his conscience, because he clearly doesn’t even have one.

I don’t agree with her on that last point. Baltar may have been sent by the Cylons, but he seems genuine in his stance against suicide bombings and his shock that Roslin doesn’t object to them. And it’s not like he’s the only person who thinks the insurrection’s new tactic of choice is morally reprehensible: Chief Tyrol spoke out against it before. All through this episode we see Baltar’s conscience bubbling to the surface. He has multiple chances to step up and do the right thing, and while he doesn’t, you can at least tell that he wants to, which is more than could be said for him earlier in the show. I predict big changes for Gaius Baltar in the future.

Back in resistance HQ Anders and Tyrol are fiddling with their transmitter and talking current events, namely how the Cylons might shut down the market because it’s a security risk. Tigh pipes up from his perch in the corner to say they’ll just have to shift targets, which alarms Tyrol, who had no idea attacking the market was even on the table. It’s full of civilians, he argues. Which side are we on? Tigh then give such an epic, evil-sounding speech that I just have to repeat it in its entirety. Some BSG writer had fun with this:

“Which side are we on? We’re on the side of the demons, Chief. We’re evil men in the gardens of paradise sent by the forces of death to spread devastation and destruction wherever we go. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

It’s not exactly Gene Hackman’s inspiration halftime speech in Hoosiers, is it? More like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. Man, Tigh has lost it.

They’re able to send a message to the Galactica saying that they have 1,150 people armed and ready to fight. Back on the ship, where Adama and his crew are trying to put together a rescue mission, Helo notes that that number is way small considering how many enlisted officers should be on the planet. Dee hypothesizes that the resistance could be taking heavy losses, but no, it’s just that no one likes Tigh. I wouldn’t like Tigh either if he weren’t fictional.

The plan they hammer together is that the resistance will need to get the keys to the Colonial ships, but the Cylons hid them, so the Galactica will drop some weapons on New Caprica to help the rest of the humans out in their search. The only one who doesn’t contribute to the workshopping is Lee, who pipes up every time someone suggests something to shoot it down. Adama ignores his Negative Nancy self, like he should.

While all this is going on the Cylons have ramped up their efforts to shut down the resistance by ordering the NCP officers, one of whom is Tyrol’s pal Jammer, to round up and detain suspected insurgents. One of those detained is Cally, and boy does that make Tyrol ticked. In a later scene he talks to Gaeta, asking the Presidential assistant/spy whether there’s anything Gaeta can do to get her out. Gaeta’s response is non-committal, which sends Tyrol off on a tangent about how he doesn’t know how collaborators like Gaeta can live with themselves. He continues ranting to Jammer, saying a day will come when men like them will string men like Gaeta up.

The whole thing is very ironic; Tyrol thinks Jammer’s his friend when he’s really the “traitor” NCP officer who arrested his wife, and he’s all derisive about Gaeta because he doesn’t know Gaeta’s the resistance’s mole. Please don’t let this be foreshadowing of Gaeta doing something stupidly brave to prove himself and getting hurt in the process. Please.

Back in Starbuck’s prison cell Leoben has a surprise for my favorite pilot. Turns out back when Starbuck was in the breeding farm the Cylons removed her womb, so Leoben went ahead and fertilized it and raised the kid, which is just what you do when you’re a criminally insane creeper robot with a really unhealthy obsession with someone. Jesus frakking Christ, I cannot handle this show! Leoben brings down the child, an adorable blonde-headed toddler named Kacey, and tells Starbuck a few tidbits about the kid’s future (her path will be “difficult but rewarding,” and she’ll “see the face of God” in her lifetime; she must get that “spiritual clarity” from him, ewewewew) before leaving the two of them alone for some mother-daughter bonding time.

Starbuck’s not so much for the motherly feelings, though, so she escapes into the bathroom to have a quiet freak-out. When she gets back Kacey’s fallen on the stairs, unconscious with a pool of blood running out of her head. I’m sorry, I call BS. Leoben came back and pushed that kid over. In fact, I’m not sure he’s not lying about Kacey being Starbuck’s in the first place. Kacey could be a full-on Cylon skinjob for all we know.

Up on the Galactica Adama’s decided to send a liaison to New Caprica to help with the rescue mission, and Lee’s not too pleased with who he’s chosen: Athena. He goes to argue with his dad about it, but Adama tells him he trusts her. Lee counters that he’s risking literally all of humanity, and he doesn’t have the right to do that. It comes out that Lee doesn’t even want to try and rescue the people on New Caprica, since the 2,000 or so people still with the fleet are the “safe bet.” I see his point, but I can’t help but think this is “soft” Lee talking—last season he never would’ve abandoned 96% of the human race without even trying to save them first.

Lee, Starbuck’s going to kick your ass next the time she sees you.

Surprisingly, Adama agrees, at least with the part about how he shouldn’t risk the lives of the 2,000 people still with the fleet. He orders his son to take the Pegasus and the remaining civilian vessels and continue searching for Earth. Adama and the Galactica will continue on with what they both know is probably a suicide mission. They hug for what might be the last time.

Roslin and Tigh have a chat about suicide bombings. Roslin wants them to stop, and Tigh caustically asks whether she’s working for the Cylons now, which gets him slapped. That’s right, Tigh. Talk smack, get slapped. Tigh goes on to say that little things (like human lives) don’t matter anymore; his job is to stir the Cylons up and distract them, and bombings accomplish that, so he’s going to keep ordering them. Christ, he’s unhinged. I don’t think it’s all just “Tigh being Tigh,” though. The dude did get tortured.

Just as Roslin doesn’t like the suicide bombings, Caprica and Boomer don’t like the way their fellow Cylons are rounding people up. Boomer visits Cally in her cell, but not because she can get her out or anything. Instead she starts talking about how happy she is for Cally and Tyrol, which is completely useless and also somewhat insulting. Cally agrees; she yells at Boomer to get the frak out if she can’t help her get free.

Every Cylon except for Caprica and Boomer want to ramp up the punishments against humans. To that end they’ve written up an execution order for several hundred humans. They just need Baltar to sign it. Caprica immediately objects, questioning why they need to drag Baltar into their sin. We’re covering our bases, Brother Cavil explains, so if it turns out God doesn’t like murder Baltar will be the one to take the rap, at least spiritually speaking.

Baltar refuses–of course he won’t order the death of hundreds of his fellow humans—but Doral holds a gun to his head. Caprica stays in his corner, literally and metaphorically, telling her fellow Cylons they’re being crazy. So Doral takes the completely non-crazy action (note the sarcasm, please) of shooting her in the head. She’ll download into a new body, he explains to Baltar, but if we shoot you then you’re dead for good.

With everyone yelling at him to sign the order and a gun being held to his head, Baltar gets whisked away to his mental office by Head Six (she’s baaa-aaaaack!), who tells him he has no choice but to sign. Sometimes you have to do things you hate so you can live to fight another day, she argues. So he signs, a single perfect tear sliding down his cheek after he does so.

Gotta say, this show is doing a really good job of making me feel sympathetic to Baltar. He’s in a hell of his own making, but still, that hell is really, really extreme. I found myself comparing him to Jammer, who thought he was doing the right thing when he joined the NCP, before I remembered that before things got bad Baltar was a selfish little jerk who pretty much only ever acted to benefit himself.

On the Galactica Adama swears Athena in as an officer and then sends her on her way. Before she goes she asks how he knows he can trust her. He doesn’t, he responds. That’s what trust is.

Now to another major NOOOOOO!!! moment: Ellen Tigh is still sleeping with Brother Cavil, and because her face is bruised the way it was last episode I feel safe in assuming he’s still beating her up. It comes out that Cavil freed Tigh not because Ellen had sex with him, but because having Tigh still in the resistance benefits Cavil. With Tigh out Cavil can always threaten to lock him up again if Ellen doesn’t spy for him. He demands the time and place of one of the insurgent’s meetings; if he doesn’t that, Tigh loses more than an eye.

And wouldn’t you know it, Anders, Tigh, and Chief Tyrol are planning the most important meeting the resistance has held or probably ever will hold: The meeting with Athena. Right as Ellen walks in the trio decide on a place, and Ellen takes the map, pretending to burn it but instead pocketing it to deliver to the Cylons.

Gaeta’s found out about the death order Baltar signed, and he goes to yell at him about it, asking whether he even bothered to look at the names of the people he’s consigned to death. Of course he has, Baltar responds, defeated, but it’s not like there’s anything else he could do. Among the people set to die are some familiar faces: Roslin, Cally, and Tom Zarek, the last of whom has been locked up for the entire occupation because he disagreed with Baltar about surrendering to the Cylons. Gaeta watches the trucks filled with doomed men and women as they head to the execution site, desperate to do something to help but unsure of what that something could possibly be.

In a similar state of desperation of is Boomer, who fruitlessly tries to convince D’anna not to execute Cally, and Jammer, who’s going to have to pull the trigger on Cally and everyone else. The Cylons stop in the middle of nowhere to give the prisoners a five-minute rest break, which makes absolutely no sense to me—they’re about to die, why would they need to stretch their legs?—until the Cylon’s plan is revealed. Centurions show up on the hillside and start shooting at everyone, prisoners and NCP officers alike. The only one out of danger—relatively, at least—is Cally, because Jammer finally leveled up, cut her bonds, and told her to run.

Also facing heavy gunfire are Anders and Athena, who started their meeting only to have the party busted by Cylons. Ellen! *shakes fist at sky*

But the end of the episode had a slightly optimistic scene, too. Starbuck’s daughter isn’t dead, just wounded, and Starbuck and Leoben hold a silent vigil by her bedside. Starbuck prays to the gods not to punish Kacey for her mistake, and the gods seem to listen, because Kacey wakes up. Starbuck, relieved, reaches out to hold Leoben’s hand.

Why am I saying that’s optimistic? Not to be a cynical child-hater, but we’ve seen Kacey for all of five minutes, and I don’t really care if she lives or dies. And how is Starbuck warming up to Leoben’s advances by accepting comfort from him good?

It’s good because I firmly believe Starbuck’s playing that motherfrakker. She knows he’s trying to manipulate her, knows that he probably hurt Kacey, so she’s turned the tables on him without him even knowing. Cutting-off-your-junk time approacheth, Leoben Conoy. Be afraid.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

If you’ve been reading these recaps, you know I’m a Tigh fan. So yeah. I did not much like a certain thing that went down during these episodes. And I’m not talking about Adama shaving his ‘stache off. (That too.)

Exodus, Part 1

We start right where the last episode left off: Centurions show up ready to shoot the human prisoners, minus Cally, who’s been cut loose by Jammer and is running for the hills. I knew something wouldn’t go according to plan with the execution, since Roslin’s in the group of dead men walking and I know she doesn’t die, at least not yet. We skip back one hour to find out how the Cylons screwed this one up.

Tigh’s doing a bit of wound care on his eye socket, and Ellen, all appreciative and loving, comes in to help. “I want you to know that I would do anything for you,” she says. Poor lady. I may have screamed to the high heavens a bit when she betrayed in the insurgency last episode, but she was in a tight spot, and there wasn’t much else she could do.

Chief Tyrol comes in, panicking because he’s found out Cally’s on the list of people to be killed. Tigh immediately takes charge, snapping at Tyrol to stop freaking out, find out where the execution site is, and get a team of people down there before things get bloody. Tigh bounced back from having his eye plucked out, so Tyrol can darn well cope with having his wife abducted, the baby. Tigh’s pretty harsh in this scene, but it’s exactly what Tyrol needs: He consults materials provided by his secret source and sets off to the Pergamus Flats with Joan and a few other people to rescue Cally, Roslin, Zarek, and the rest.

Happily, they’re successful. There’s a bit of a snag when Cally’s escape route places her right between the Centurions and the insurgents, but Tyrol pulls a quasi-Romeo and Juliet love theme and tackles her to the ground, letting the good guys shoot some toasters without any human casualties.

Well, without many human casualties. The NPCs are getting shot along with the Centurions and the skinjobs, so Jammer ditches his mask and runs like hell. Brother Cavil isn’t so lucky: He gets shot in the gut, and instead of putting him out of his misery Joan leaves him to die there, in agony and baking in the hot sun. Karmic retribution for messing with the Tighs, you SOB.

Not that things are all sunshine and roses for them, Ellen in particular. Intercut with the scene of Tyrol’s daring rescue are shots of another group of Cylons crashing the meeting between Anders and Athena. Smart thinking by one of Athena’s marines saves the day, but a few redshirts unnamed soldiers die in the gunfight. One of the insurgents finds the map Ellen stole in one of the skinjob’s pockets, and Anders realizes right away she must have sold them out.

One of the reasons I really like this pair of episodes, despite the emotional trauma they caused me, is that D’anna gets a subplot. I already like her because she’s Lucy Lawless, but if her character actually does things and gives me even more reasons to like her, as she did in Downloaded, then that’s just gravy. Cylon: Warrior Princess is having a craaaazy dream in which she’s walking through a wasteland filled with dead bodies and sees a (live) infant among them. Later, while walking New Caprica, she recognizes a tent from her dream, and goes in to meet Dodona Selloi, a nutty oracle lady who’s hopped on Chamalla and says she sees the future, namely that Athena’s baby, Hera, is still alive and D’anna will hold her and know true love. D’anna puts up a good front of not believing her, but the single perfect tear gives her away.

Later on D’anna has a chat with Doc Cottle, whom she asks about Hera. Why would he cremate the body; if it’s the first Cylon-human hybrid, surely he wanted to examine it? He responds that it wasn’t his call—he was just doing what the President told him to. She knows. And he knows that she knows And she probably know that he knows that she… OK, stopping now.

Back on the Colonial One Baltar’s been suffering from a bout of erectile dysfunction. That’s how Battlestar Galactica starts this scene, I’m not even kidding. Four for you, James Callis, for going all Viagra commercial. That must’ve been fun. Because they can’t get down with the sexing, Baltar and Caprica turn to arguing. Or, rather, he goes off on a lunatic rant about of the Dorals’ plans to distribute more toilet paper to the humans while Caprica resolutely ignores him. Eventually she snaps at him for going down a spiral of “hatred and self-loathing.” Doesn’t she appreciate what she’s given up to be with him?

Jeez, Caprica, of course he hates himself. He literally surrendered his entire race to their enemy. Even if you assume he’s OK with the Cylon occupation, which he clearly isn’t, he’s going to have some issues. Baltar echoes my sentiments, snapping at Caprica that her problems are pretty low on his totem pole right now. She gets up to leave but comes back when he asks her to, albeit with a look of pure hatred in her eyes.

For all that Caprica’s so “human,” in this scene you can see that she clearly isn’t quite so in tune with messier human emotions/mental patterns as she might think she is. Furthermore, she’s starting to see past Baltar’s veneer of charisma and intelligence to the wimpy, selfish jerk lurking not so far underneath. Lest I seem too much like I’m bashing Baltar, it also seems that he’s tiring of being that wimpy, selfish jerk. Now the question just remains as to whether he’ll do anything about it.

Later Baltar gets it together enough to attend a meeting with Caprica and the rest of the Cylons. The Brother Cavil who was left to die earlier in the episode has managed to download into a new body, though he gripes about how doing so is getting more painful every time, humans are barbarians who don’t value life, blah de blah blah. They value life just fine, Brother Cavil. They just don’t see you as living. We have some serious communication issues here; maybe some couples counseling between the two races is in order?

Baltar pipes up and says that if everything’s so awful they should just leave. Gaius Baltar, you don’t even go here! Unsurprisingly, the Cylons reject his advice. Doral suggests they crack down harder, but resources are already stretched thin because of the insurgency. Fine, he concedes: If it comes down to it they can can just give the genocide thing another go and nuke the whole planet. I love how this season is giving us a look inside the minds of the Cylons.

Meanwhile the crew of the Galactica is saying goodbye to their Pegasus counterparts, with whom they’ll meet back up at a rendezvous point in 18 hours time… assuming everyone on the Galactica doesn’t die trying to save the rest of humanity, which is statistically a far likelier outcome. There’s an emotional farewell between Adama and Lee that would’ve been a lot more effective if Lee weren’t wearing that ridiculous fat suit. I’m sorry, but it was all sad with the bagpipe music and both of them almost crying… and then the camera pulls back on Lee saluting his father and I just lost it. Can we lose the suit soon, please? It’s really distracting.

Back on New Caprica Anders and Athena put the final touches on Athena’s plan to waltz into a highly secure Cylon bunker and take the launch keys to the civilian ships. Other insurgents come in with Ellen, who says she can explain and demands to see her husband. Later in the episode she gets that chance and tells him that she did what she did to prevent him from being killed by Brother Cavil. News of Ellen’s betrayal causes Tigh to go full-on Crazy Eye. Please don’t do anything stupid, Tigh. I beg of you.

There’s one final meeting of the insurgency left before things start to go down. The plan is as follows: When the time comes the insurgents will attack the air base, the detention center, the power station—as many places as they can to produce maximum chaos. While that’s going on, “block captains” will coordinate the citizen evacuation. Zarek asks if they’ve had any chance to practice that last part, and Roslin explains that they’ve already run two full dress rehearsals under the guise of fire and natural disaster drills. Never doubt Roslin’s ability to have her stuff together, Tom Zarek.

One of Athena’s marines points out that it’ll be different when the real evacuation comes around—there’ll be explosions, gunfire, chaos in the streets. Roslin responds that everything will be fine; people know that at a certain point they’ll have to step up and save themselves. Methinks I just spotted a theme for the whole show!

It’s incredibly important that Maya and Hera—or Isis… screw it, I’m calling her Hera—not fall into the hands of the Cylons, so Anders has assigned two of his best guards to personally escort them to one of the ships. I have to wonder what Maya’s thinking right now, living in an underground bunker with her kid until she can be smuggled to safety by armed guards.

Speaking of Hera: Athena’s managed to retrieve the launch codes, but she’s interrupted by D’anna, who tells her Adama and Roslin faked Hera’s death. The oracle told me I would hold her in my arms one day, she says, and if you stop helping the humans I’ll do a little baby timeshare with you. Athena refuses to believe that Adama would lie to her and shoots D’anna in the kneecaps. On the one hand, I’m really happy that the rescue effort is moving ahead. On the other… Athena, please follow up with Adama when you get back to the Galactica, k?

All the pieces are now on the board: The insurgents have the launch keys, Maya and Hera are safe, and the insurgency is ready to blow some buildings to kingdom come. The episode ends back on the Galactica with Adama giving an inspiring speech so good that even Tigh wouldn’t stinkface at it.

Probably.

Also in this episode:

Tigh made a joke. When Tyrol was freaking out about Cally Tigh told him he’d better pull it together, because the last thing their kid wants is Tigh and Ellen for parents. Oh, you!
Roslin and Zarek seem to be getting along now, and there was a bit of banter between the two that actually made me laugh. If I like Zarek now, does that mean he’s going to die? I don’t think so, because he’s not really important to the narrative… yet.
Starbuck apologizes to Kacey for leaving her alone and letting her get hurt. It’s an emotional bit of mother-daughter bonding, and Leoben’s watching the whole time. This little kid/cherubic angel is way too cute to be legit.

Exodus, Part 2

Before I start recapping this episode, I would just like to say!

“Ellen! Oh my God, Ellen! No! No! Nooooooooooo! All the crying gifs ! All of them !”

Ahem.

Now I’m ready.

(No I’m not. I will never be ready.)

The episode starts, not with Adama spearheading the rescue op, but with Lee and Dee in the Pegasus, where the former’s trying to come to terms with leaving his father to tackle his suicide mission alone. Lee says he thinks Adama might survive, but Dee calls him on his lie, saying “I saw the look on your face when you came back from the Galactica. Like you were never going to see him again.” Lee asks if he’s that easy to read, to which Dee replies: “Just to me.” The Pegasus has to soldier on and find Earth, she says, so there will be future generations of humans to remember Adama.

This scene is cheesy, and I don’t like it. Granted, I have a low cheese tolerance, at least when it comes to sappy, romantic cheese. (Cheddar, on the other hand…mmmmmm.) Pretty much all Dee’s done so far this season is give Lee pep talks. I mean, c’mon! She used to be involved in conspiracies! Back when she was with Billy she had things of her own to do, but now that she’s with Lee it’s all the loving wife routine. I’ve never been the hugest fan of her character, but she deserves better than this!

Also, Lee’s totally going to go back to save his dad’s bacon, isn’t he?

Luckily, we got the worst scene of the episode out of the way early. Next up we get a different sort of “worst”: A pair of scenes that, while amazing in terms of quality, manage to rip out my heart, squeeze it, and collect the dripping blood in a flask for Tigh to drink.

Anders explains to Tigh that Ellen’s betrayal could’ve toppled the insurgency and that Tigh “knows what has to be done.” If Tigh doesn’t want to be the one to do “it,” Anders will understand, but it’d be better for Ellen if it’s him. Hold up, show: You’re not going to kill Ellen, are you? Girl was backed into a corner!

Alas, the next scene shows Tigh doing exactly that. Ellen tearfully confesses to her husband that, not only did she have to give the Cylons the map, she also had to have sex with Brother Cavil so he’d set Tigh free. “I smiled and I faked it to save you,” she says. She didn’t want anyone to be killed, but she’d do it, all of it, again. He looks horrified. She looks absolutely broken. She says she needs a drink and takes the cup in Tigh’s hand; after drinking, she hugs him and says he was right, she never should’ve left the Galactica. And then she dies. Because the cup was poisoned. To give you the full impact of how this scene ruined me, here are the notes I took while watching it:

OMG OMG OMG NO DID HE POISON HER DID HE KILL ELLEN HE’S CRYING OVER HER ALL LIKE I LOVE YOU NO TIGH NO NO NO NONONO NONONONONONONNONONONONONO HE LAYS HER BODY DOWN OHNONONONOONONONONONONONONSHE’S DEAD HE’S CRYING NO NO NONO NO
CRYING OVER HER BODY HE’S LIKE SOBBING AND S*** NO NO NO NONONONONONONONNO

What pains me more: That Tigh’s going to have to live with the knowledge of the other horrible things Ellen was forced to do for him? That she was sweet to him right before she died? That he knew her so well that he didn’t even have to offer her the poison drink because he knew she’d take it? I cannot decide. This scene turned me into a big ball o’ pain.

Strictly speaking Ellen didn’t have to die: The insurgency could’ve waited until everyone got back to the Galactica and put her through the Colonial justice system there. And if they don’t make it back to the Galactica… well, she’d be dead anyway. On the other hand, putting her under armed guard when everything’s going down just isn’t feasible. Tigh didn’t have to kill her the same way Ellen didn’t have to give the map to the Cylons. Technically they both had other options, but they were in a really bad situation, during a really chaotic time, and they had to make really awful decisions.

Back on the Colonial One Baltar is reading the Cylons the riot act about how Roslin and Zarek have escaped, though the effect is somewhat lessened because he appears to be roaringly drunk. He tells the Cylons they should just throw in the towel and leave, but D’anna shoots that suggestion down right quick, saying if they did that future generations of humans would just hunt the Cylons down. “Blood for blood,” says Baltar. “It has to stop one day.”

Well whaddaya know, he just said something right!

Seconds later the insurgents begin their campaign explodeitude. Tory sends Maya and Hera off to the ship with their pair of sharpshooter guards, while Anders and some of his pals empty a weapons cache under the Pyramid goal and head to the detention center to bust people out. Meanwhile, above the planet, Raptors from the Galactica have launched drones that’ll make it appear to the Cylons as if two Battlestars are here to save the day, when in fact the Pegasus won’t be showing up and the Galactica is waiting in the wings for their cue.

Down on the ground the evacuation is in full swing. Zarek asks Roslin if she’s coming with him to the shipyard, but Roslin responds that nah, her ship is the Colonial One, thank you very much. You know, the ones with all the Cylons still on it. God, I love ‘er. Zarek hails down Jammer and puts him on “guard the President” duty.

At this point I really thought that Jammer’s conflict of him being a “traitor” NPC officer would come to a head in him being outed and then redeeming himself by dying to save Roslin. That doesn’t happen, and I couldn’t be gladder. This show keeps setting up situations where they could do the expected, they even make you think they are going to… and then they don’t. Because reality is much more complicated than clichés, even if said reality takes place in the whateverth century out in the blackness of space.

The Cylons are all freaking out, frantically making phone calls and trying to coordinate who-knows-what. D’anna soon realizes that the two approaching Battlestars are actually drones, but all the baddies are still on high alert. The only one who’s not actually doing anything is Baltar, who gets all maudlin about how everything he did was for nothing. He spends almost the entire episode with an expression on his face that’s pure, condensed “Oh, sh**.”

Tigh and Helo are trying to take over the shipyards, but they don’t do all that well until the Galactica shows up right above the surface and drops ‘em some Vipers. It’s a ballsy move, and one that leaves the Galactica badly damaged, but with the Vipers’ help the insurgents manage to clear a path to the ships they can use to get offworld.

The only Cylon we haven’t seen be part of all the planning sessions is Leoben. (Actually, if memory serves we’ve never seen him interact with the other Cylons. Do they find him as creepy as I do?) When the attack kicks off he starts to leave Starbuck behind in her jail cell, claiming it’s the safest place for her and Kacey to be while he goes and does… whatever he does when he’s not being a weirdo at Starbuck. She attacks him, but he gets the last punch in, leaving her unconscious on the floor.

And that’s how Anders finds her when he liberates the detention center. He picks her up and carries her out, and she wakes up shortly thereafter. There’s no time for a happy reunion, though, since Anders didn’t know about Kacey and, therefore, left her behind. Starbuck runs back into the fray to get her daughter (or notter, because I don’t think she’s really… ah, forget it ), but when she gets back to her cell Leoben’s there, too. He only agrees to let Starbuck take Kacey if she tells him she loves him, which she does, because… of course she does. C’mon, Leoben. Is this your plan? “I won’t let you have your daughter unless you tell me you love me?” Of course she’s going to lie and say she loves you! Geez! It’s no skin off her back! Leoben really is out of touch with reality, huh?

Starbuck even goes the extra mile and engages in a bit of makeout session, which gets her close enough knife him in his frakking gut.

Ahem. Called it.

Anders comes in and escorts Starbuck and Kacey out of there, not that she really needs him to, but he can provide moral support, I guess.

Things aren’t looking well for the Galactica. On top of the damage it took hurtling through New Caprica’s atmosphere like a rock, the Cylons have called in two more Basestars in addition to the pair they already had above the planet. Two of them Adama and company can hold off, but not four. The Galactica’s FTL drive quickly goes the way of the dodo, meaning they can’t even retreat. (Man, ships’ FTL drives are always getting temporarily destroyed in this show. You’d think they’d put ‘em somewhere not so shootable.)

Right when it looks like the Galactica’s going to be pummeled to space dust the Pegasus shows up to lend a hand, drawing the Basestars’ fire while the Galactica repairs its jump capability. The problem is that Lee’s left the Pegasus’ fighters behind to defend the civilian fleet, so they’re basically just out there getting shot at with minimal defenses. Adama, confident that Lee has an evacuation plan in place, jumps away from New Caprica, trailing ships full of human refugees behind him.

Adama’s intuition was right: Once everyone else is away Lee orders the crew of the Pegasus to evacuate into space lifeboats. He takes one last look at his ship, the one he earned and has to sacrifice for the good of humanity, before leaving as well. I love that Adama trusted that Lee would do the smart thing, even with all the flak he’s been giving his son the last few episodes. Hopefully Lee’s leaving behind some of his issues with the Pegasus. And the fat suit. One can only hope.

While all this is going on the Cylons have decided to evacuate, too, and they’re even going to let Baltar come with them. He lingers a bit, which proves to be an unfortunate move, because Gaeta has a gun and has decided he’s going to kill that frakking jerk. He explains that he believed in Baltar, in the dream of New Caprica, but Baltar only was only interested in procuring booze, drugs, and sex for himself. He hates Baltar and is disgusted with himself for having followed him for so long. (Can something good happen to Gaeta, please? Can someone at least hug him?)

Baltar agrees with him, but says that D’anna’s about to set off a nuke—which is true—and that the only way anyone will get off the planet is if he stops her. He walks right up to the gun and puts it at his chin, begging Gaeta to shoot him, which he doesn’t do. He’s giving Baltar one last chance to redeem himself, to do something good for humanity.

What does it say about me that I actually thought he might take it?

Granted, he does find D’anna, and she doesn’t set off the nuke. But not because he expended any effort or anything. Nope. On the way to stop her Caprica and Baltar find Hera, who’s been left on the planet after Maya and both their guards were killed. Head Six pops in to helpfully let Baltar know, by way, this is the Cybaby. D’anna walks out of the tent, where she’d been looking for the oracle, and sees Caprica and Baltar with the kid. She asks to hold her, and Baltar initially resists before handing Hera over. Now you don’t have to kill her, Caprica explains, because there’s no way she’s going to nuke the planet if doing so would kill Hera.

I just. Arrrrrgh! BALTAR! What the hell is wrong with you?! You were there in the room when Roslin said the last thing that can be allowed to happen is for the Cylons—whom you should have no allegiance to at this point, because they completely ruined your life—to get their hands on that baby. And then you let D’anna take the baby.

Though, thinking about it more, this is an echo of the Ellen-Tigh situation from before. At this point Baltar has to throw his lot in with the Cylons whether he wants to or not. He can’t exactly go back with the humans, so it’s not like he can give the baby back to Roslin. He could shoot Hera just to stop the Cylons from getting her, but… I can’t really expect him to do that. He actually has some morals, first off—you see that in the scene where he’s talking to Roslin about the suicide bombings. Second, he’s not going to shoot a baby, for Chrissakes, especially not one that he and Head Six at one point regarded as their own. And third, he’s a lazy dude who’s going to take the easy way out. He found himself in an awful situation, and there’s really no good option, but he has to do something.

I’m noticing this show does that a lot to its characters. I hate you, Battlestar Galactica. Why do you make me feel things?!

With the Colonial One once again vacant, Roslin and her team move in, and the former (and now current, if not in name) President retakes her position at the desk and says she’s ready to go.

Back on the Galactica it’s a good time for everyone, with two exceptions: Starbuck and Tigh. The former was happy until Kacey’s real mom shows up, all happy to see her (Kidnapped by Leoben! Surprise!) little girl. After that it’s all about emotional turmoil for the ‘buck.

And then there’s Tigh, whose limping, one-eyed, hobo-looking self is decidedly out of place among the celebrating masses. Adama congratulates his XO for bringing everyone home. Tigh says “not all of them,” and Adama instantly knows what he means. Even when Adama’s being hoisted on people’s shoulders and cheered for being humanity’s savior, he looks back to see Tigh walking around all sad and alone. The pain in my heart was alleviated by a quick shot of Gaeta, whom I feared might’ve been left behind on New Caprica. My second-favorite character is moving up on you, Tigh. Step it up a notch.

The scene ends with two hugely important details: Roslin finding out that Maya and Hera didn’t make it off New Caprica, and Adama shaving off his ‘stache. One of those is a bigger deal to me than the other. Hint: It’s the second one.

Here’s to you, ‘stache. Here’s to you:

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

So now that humanity’s escaped from New Caprica everything’s good for them now, right? No trouble? Two full episodes of people drinking fruity cocktails and playing Yahtzee?

Collaborators

Poor Jammer. We barely knew ye.

The episode starts with our favorite insurgent-turned-NCP officer (OK, our only insurgent-turned-NCP officer) being tried and executed for treason and crimes against humanity for his role in helping the Cylons on New Caprica. The ones doing the judging are a group of six calling themselves the Circle: Tigh, Anders, Tyrol, Jean, some random lady, and guy named Connor whose young son was killed during an NCP raid on a temple.

Jammer protests that he was trying to help people and explains to Tyrol that he cut Cally loose when she was about to be executed. Tyrol and Anders are clearly uncomfortable with the whole thing, and so am I—Jammer’s been bound, gagged, and dragged into an empty, ominous-looking airlock. It doesn’t exactly look like an official trial.

Later Tyrol goes and asks Cally, hey, by the way, did an NCP officer try to save your life down on New Caprica or anything? She confirms that someone did, but it’s too late for Jammer, who’s already been airlocked.

The next scene is Adama and Roslin forgiving Baltar for surrendering to the Cylons: There was nothing else he could’ve done, they say, and anyway, all that messiness with betraying humanity is behind them. I smell something fishy. Head Six shows up and berates Roslin and Adama for their leniency and tells Baltar not to make her angry… and it’s when Adama responds “You wouldn’t like her when she’s angry” that we realize this has to be a dream.

I don’t know what’s funnier: That even in Baltar’s dreams Head Six scolds him, or that Baltar’s unconscious comes up with Adama quoting The Incredible Hulk.

No, wait, it’s totally the Hulk one.

Roslin then kisses Baltar, which is a little weird, to put it mildly. The earlier part of the dream showed us Baltar’s subconscious need to be forgiven, but I think the Baltar/Roslin kiss was there just to freak me out. Baltar wakes up in a very sci-fi room aboard a Cylon Basestar, where he’s being kept prisoner.

From there we meet up with the real Roslin, who’s planning a game of Presidential Musical Chairs with Zarek. With Baltar gone he’s the President now, but only temporarily: He’ll nominate Roslin as his Vice President, and once that’s gone through he’ll step down. That’s Roslin’s cue to say ”Hey, you know who would make a great Vice President? Tom Zarek!” The two of them seem to be getting along pretty well at this point, though there is some residual tension from him being… y’know… a manipulative terrorist.

Then we get to my second favorite character, Felix “Let me ruffle your hair” Gaeta (sorry, Tigh). Back in civilian clothes after the whole “Being Gaius Baltar’s Chief of Staff” thing, he walks into the CIC to do Adama a solid by helping repair the communications system. Tigh goes off on the poor guy, accusing him of being a traitor and asking him, if he was so friendly with the Cylons, whether he knows where Tigh’s missing eye is. Dude, really? Harsh. Harsh and crazy.

Luckily for Gaeta, Adama agrees: He pulls Tigh aside and tells him he needs to pull himself together. Tigh says he is together, thank you very much, and other people may be willing to forget what happened down on New Caprica, but he isn’t.

I really feel for him this episode. Not to excuse the fact that he’s being a crazy jerk, flying off the handle at Gaeta and being perfectly OK with executing people. But he was tortured on New Caprica. His eye was plucked out. And he killed his wife for being forced to collaborate with the enemy; if they don’t punish people who collaborated of their own free will, that would mean, in his mind at least, that Ellen died for no reason. And it’s not like he wasn’t traipsing along the edge of the deep end even before that happened. He’s a wonderfully complex character.

Ignoring Adama’s demand that he rest, Tigh instead meets back up with the Circle to examine evidence of accused collaborators and, more likely than not, find them guilty and sentence them to death. Connor’s particularly into it, and Tigh yells at him that they’re reasonable people serving out justice, not hotheads set on vengeance, dangit. Just a suggestion, Tigh: If you want to impress upon people how balanced you are, slamming someone’s head against the table isn’t really the way to go.

The next person to be tried is Gaeta. Noooo. Anders defends him, saying that even if he worked for Baltar there’s no hard evidence that he did anything bad himself. Tigh takes the exact opposite viewpoint: Baltar didn’t actually run things, so Gaeta must’ve been the one ordering executions and all that. Excuse you, Tigh. Gaeta?! He was an idealist with a mancrush on Baltar, not a moustache-twirling evil villain sending people off to be tied to the train tracks. Tyrol counters that there’s no proof that Gaeta was running anything (yeah, ’cause it’s a stupid suggestion!), but then a list comes up indicating that Gaeta saw the death list Cally was on. He didn’t do anything about it (but he did! He gave it to the resistance!), therefore me must be guilty.

Anders is the smart one here, saying they don’t know when Gaeta saw that list or what he did or didn’t do afterwards. But then he turns not-so-smart, saying he’s done with the whole thing and peaceing out. Um, Anders. Maybe you should quit after you vote not guilty? They need six votes, and with Anders gone they only have five. For their new jury member you can be darn sure they’re going to find someone who’s predisposed to bringing the hammer down on supposed traitors.

That person, as it turns out, is Starbuck. Gaeta’s eating alone in the mess hall when she sits down at his table, except instead of being all comradely she rakes him across the coals for doing Baltar’s dirty work and never bothering to think about his former friends, i.e. her. Starbuck, nooooo. To be fair, she has no way of knowing Gaeta was passing information to the insurgents… until he straight up tells her about it. Starbuck doesn’t believe him, nor does Jean, who overhears the entire conversation and then (presumably) is the one to invite her to serve on the Circle.

Now that they’re back up to six members they can decide Gaeta’s fate. I wanted to absolutely scream during this scene, because neither Starbuck nor Jean tell the rest of the jury about Gaeta claiming to be a spy for the insurgency despite the fact that that’s kind of relevant information. Also Tyrol keeps repeating that they don’t know what Gaeta did when he saw the list. You could, I don’t know, ask him?! Everyone except Tyrol finds Gaeta guilty, and then Tyrol gets badgered into making the same call.

I want to punch so many people.

After the vote Anders comes to see Starbuck aside and calls her on sentencing people to death to make her feel better about what she went through. Their relationship’s gone downhill since New Caprica. An earlier scene saw Starbuck rejecting his physical advances, and now Starbuck says she can’t be with him anymore because she’s changed, and every time he looks at her she wants to tear his eyes out. She wants to hurt someone, and he needs to go before that someone becomes him.

Are they… are they actually addressing Starbuck’s PTSD from having been kidnapped and held prisoner for four months, during which time she was severely emotionally abused? You go, BSG! So many shows will put characters through the wringer for dramatic effect and then just forget that real people usually won’t have bounced back during the summer hiatus.

The Circle kidnaps Gaeta and informs him that he’s going to be killed, but oh-so-helpfully explains that he can always try and convince them of his innocence first. Gaeta refuses on the grounds that he already explained that he was a mole—he told Starbuck, after all, and here she is on the jury, so they must know—and he’s not going to beg for his life.

Screeeeeech.

At first I wanted to scream at Gaeta for not having told anyone before all this—his old friends and coworkers all hate him, and mentioning that he was risking his life for the insurgency every single day would go a long way toward not being a pariah. But then I realized he doesn’t want to be forgiven, because he still hates himself for having been taken in by Baltar. And as if that’s not enough, Gaeta thinks Tyrol, his friend, knows about him being the mole and still thinks he deserves to die.

Stop this show, I want to get off.

(Side note: I want all the Gaeta-centric fanfic, but I can’t go a’hunting for it without being spoiled. This is why I hate watching shows late.)

Gaeta’s about to die, and he even appears to have accepted his death (because he thinks he deserves it. I hate this show)… but it doesn’t happen, because Starbuck kicks him and starts screaming that “Ohhhh, you’re not going to lie about how helpful you were with your information and your stupid yellow dog bowl, huh?” Hearing that, Tyrol realizes that Gaeta was the source and cuts his bonds. Horrified at what they almost did, he tells the other jurors that Gaeta’s the only reason they knew about the death lists in the first place, and if it weren’t for him humanity never would have escaped New Caprica.

I have a theory, and it may very well hogwash, but here goes: Starbuck totally knew what she was doing when she was yelling about Gaeta claiming to be the mole. In her mind Gaeta was probably lying, but what if he wasn’t? Then his death would be on her shoulders, since she’s the one who didn’t pass the information on to the jury. Starbuck may be messed up, but she doesn’t want to be responsible for the death of an innocent friend. She couldn’t just come out and say “Holy crap, I forgot, Gaeta said he was an informant, maybe that’s relevant?,” because that would be admitting her mistake, and in Starbuck’s mind she’s the only one who’s allowed to hate herself. (And boy howdy, does she ever.) In a roundabout way, she intentionally saved Gaeta’s life.

There. Watch me get Jossed.

In an earlier scene we found out that Lee and Adama were aware, not of what the Circle’s been doing, but that people known to have survived the exodus from New Caprica have started disappearing. After Gaeta’s near-execution the rest of it comes to light. Adama, Lee, and Roslin are none too pleased with President Zarek, who gave the Circle the go-ahead and has been providing them with signed death warrants for whomever they deem guilty. Zarek explains that it’s all perfectly legal and that by facilitating the hush-hush executions of traitors (or “traitors”) now he’s making it so Roslin doesn’t have to deal with long, drawn-out trials during her Presidency. Sure, Zarek. You were doing this all to help Roslin. Sure. Roslin objects, arguing that everyone deserves a trial by representation and that, while said trials may very well turn into media circuses that consume her second term, they will also provide justice.

She later changes her mind, at least about going through with trials: In her post-inauguration press conference she announces a general pardon for every human in the fleet to help facilitate healing and reconciliation instead of vengeance. You go, Roslin.

If Baltar knew about that, I’m guessing he’d wish he were on the Galactica instead of hanging out with the Cylons. See, while the Circle has been trying collaborators, the Cylons have been deciding what to do with Baltar. D’anna helpfully lets him know that the vote on whether to allow him to stay is deadlocked—three models want him there, three don’t. The decision rests with the Sixes. Then, in a later scene, Caprica comes in and tells her one-time guyfriend that her feelings for him made her lose sight of who she really is: Not a human, but a Cylon. Baltar, trying once more to save his skin, objects. At the end of the episode a close-mouthed Caprica returns to his room with a nice white shirt, implying that the decision has been made.

But what’s the decision? When I saw that scene I assume Caprica had voted against him and he was going to die, but I’m pretty sure the Cylons never actually said the decision was whether to kill him or not, just whether to “let him stay.” I see no reason why they’d let him live, but I’m pretty sure the writers wouldn’t kill him at this point. And hey, maybe Caprica voted for him. Sure, she was all quiet and ominous in that last scene, but you never know.

Torn

Last episode’s first scene gave us an execution, and this one gives us some eye candy. Hey-o. A bikini-clad Head Six is lounging on the shores of Baltar’s subconscious (see, because she’s on a shore, but she’s also in Baltar’s head. I kill myself sometimes), where she tells him to take advantage of his time on the Basestar to find out as much about the Cylons as he can, specifically this little thing called projection. Baltar asks her what she is, and she—predictably—refuses to answer. The latter part of this scene has both of their faces artistically obscured by lensflare, which is wonderfully fitting: Her real identity is uncertain, and throughout this episode his will be, too. I can feel my inner cinematography nerd smiling.

After his mental siesta Baltar finds himself back in his room on the Basestar, where he’s paid a visit by D’anna and Caprica. They want to know if he can tell them how to get to Earth, and he says no. Ohhh, what a pity, they say, because we really wanted to have a reason to keep you alive for a little longer. Oh well!

Wait, says Baltar! I may not know exactly where Earth is, but I spent quite a while comparing the map Roslin and Adama found on Kobol to astrometric charts, so if anyone could find it, it’d be me. Please don’t kill me.

Baltar is so predictable. I have a headcanon that D’anna and Caprica sit around and gossip about things they’ve psychologically manipulated him into doing. “The other day I mentioned that Cylons take a critical eye toward poor diets and he totally gave me his slice of cake!” “That’s nothing. Yesterday I told him the Cylon god really likes Pig Latin, and he was eaking-spay it-yay for hours.”

Turns out the Cylons want to find Earth because they’re looking to settle there. Get your own planet, toasters! Geez.

Back on the Galactica the Vipers are engaged in a training exercise that Starbuck proceeds to mess up when she disobeys orders, bangs her Viper into Kat’s, and lets her ship run out of fuel. Back on the ship Lee berates her for her reckless move, saying it’s fine if she wants to die but he’ll be damned if she’s going to take a ship with her. When Starbuck is less than apologetic, Lee revokes her flight status.

Both Starbuck and Tigh are still majorly messed up by their experiences on New Caprica. While drinking in his room Tigh hears Ellen’s voice, and when he looks outside to investigate he sees someone he thinks is her but is actually just some other lady in a Pepto Bismol pink suit. Starbuck, meanwhile, gets a visit from Kacey and her mom Julia, who are living on a refugee camp on the Galactica. She wastes no time in telling them to buzz off, because she doesn’t want to be Kacey’s friend and it’d be bad for Kacey to be around her, too.

Their respective capital-i Issues established, the two of them both make their way to the pilots’ rec room, where they proceed to smack talk everyone who was fortunate enough not to have been on New Caprica. One of those people is Kat. She doesn’t let Starbuck get away with any of that bull, pointing out that coming up with a rescue plan wasn’t exactly easy and that pilots died pulling it off. Tigh and Starbuck are having none of it, though: If you weren’t on New Caprica, you can’t be trusted.

So the two of them are BFFs now. Is the apocalypse nigh?

Helo, in a meeting with Adama, lets the old man know that Tigh and Starbuck are second-guessing the rescue and ruining morale. Adama says both of them know better, and Helo responds that he doesn’t think they care. Determined to snap them out of it, Adama marches to the rec room and tells everyone else to GTFO. He asks Starbuck for her gun and suggests that one of them just go ahead and shoot him if they feel like it. (They don’t, of course. Head Six doesn’t have the monopoly on dramatics in this show.)

Adama gives each of them an ultimatum. To Starbuck: She can shape up and stop sowing discontent among the crew, or she can find another ship to live on. Tigh’s deal is slightly more lenient: He can go back to his quarters and not leave until he’s gotten himself together and is ready to be the man Adama’s known for 30 years.

Starbuck, after storming out, decides to accept Adama’s offer: She cuts her hair off, albeit with a giant knife, because Starbuck. Tigh’s not so receptive, saying the man Adama used to know doesn’t exist anymore. (♪Now I’m just some officer you used to know.♪)

I don’t know, Adama, I think maybe your ultimatum didn’t work because you literally sent Tigh to his room. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s not gonna work, though honestly I don’t know what would. While Starbuck puts on her big girl panties and goes to visit Kacey, Tigh stays in his room, drinks up a storm, and looks at an old picture of him and Ellen. He legitimately looks like he’s about to cry. There’s a lip tremble there. A lip. tremble.

It’s not been wall-to-wall Tigh ‘n’ Starbuck drama this episode. Gaeta’s been doing SCIENCE, you see. He’s been given the task of deciphering Baltar’s notes on the search for Earth and thinks he’s managed to find something of a landmark: A nebula shaped like a lion’s head that, because SCIENCE, looks like it has a blinking red and blue eye. Roslin expresses doubts that Baltar’s research is legit, but Gaeta points out that the one thing Baltar can always be trusted to do is look after himself. He wanted to find Earth so he could get there. With no other leads, Roslin and Adama decide to send a Raptor, piloted by Racetrack and Athena, to check out the nebula.

Back on the Basetar HQ Baltar has shared that same intel with the Cylons, who’ve sent a ship to investigate. Baltar and Caprica talk about his relative trustworthiness while striding around the halls of the ship, and Baltar remarks that it seems like they’re going around in circles. Of course it does, responds Caprica, since you, as a human, are incapable of projecting. Baltar’s ears perk up, and he asks her to elaborate.

Projection, she explains, means that the Cylons can see their surroundings however they want. For example, Baltar sees them walking through a ship, but she sees them walking through a forest. Back in his headspace Baltar remarks that it’s quite a coincidence that Cylon projection is so similar to the way he constructs his own vivid mental realities. “It is a coincidence?,” Head Six asks, ramping the manipulation up to eleven.

Inception: done. From then on Baltar thinks he might be a Cylon. He quizzes Caprica on how there are twelve skinjob models but he’s only ever seen seven of them: Who are the other five? Would she know one if she saw it? Caprica refuses to answer, saying that none of them ever talk about the final five.

Oh, Baltar, for goodness sake, you’re not a Cylon! For one thing, it’s never been made clear that it’s Baltar’s brainpower that’s creating mental dreamscapes. I just assumed it was Head Six. And Batttlestar Galactica is too good at storytelling to introduce that critical bit of information only when it becomes relevant to the plot. Plus there’s no damn way Head Six just ~happened~ to suggest Baltar look into projection right before Caprica just ~happened~ to mention it for the first time. Head Six made him think he might be a Cylon the same way Brother Cavil made Tyrol think he might be a Cylon. She’s playing to his vanity, too, the way he’s so sure of his own genius his first assumption upon finding out about projection would be that he managed to do it without even knowing it was a thing that could be done.

Congrats on your red herring, show.

Their little tête-à-tête about Cylonitude is interrupted by D’anna striding past and announcing there’s been a problem with the Basestar sent to investigate the lion’s head nebula. They make their way to the Cylon equivalent of a CIC, where all the assembled skinjobs figure out that their brethren have been infected by some mysterious disease. They can’t send Centurions to investigate, since those will probably be damaged, too, and they have to move the Resurrection ship away lest one of the dying Cylons downloads into a new body and infects their entire race.

Head Six urges Baltar to volunteer to check out the plague ship. He initially resists, but she points out that if he’s human he won’t catch the disease, and if he’s a Cylon… well, wouldn’t he rather die now? Baltar offers his services, surprising the other skinjobs, and after a short bit of convincing they agree to let him go.

When he gets to the Basestar he sees dozens of dead or dying Cylons, plus a weird mechanical device that’s clearly man-made. He’s halted in his examination by a brunette version of Six, the only conscious Cylon he sees. She tells him that the device was floating in the nebula when they got there and that it must’ve been left by the original members of the 13th Colony as a beacon or marker. Baltar reassures her that he’s here to help, but the disease appears to have gotten to her brain… though whether that’s in a crazy-making way or a psychic-making way is subject to interpretation. She starts ranting about how he left the marker, knowing that it would kill them, and that he intends to lure in all the other Baseships and wipe out the entire Cylon race. He fails to keep his cool, yelling at her to shut up—which I probably would do in his case, too, if the clone of a Cylon who has a history of knowing things she shouldn’t started yelling about how I was planning to betray everyone. I’d like to think I wouldn’t strangle Brunette Six to death, though, which is what Baltar does.

He heads back to the ship, where the Cylons are arguing about whether to try and save the infected Cylons or leave them to die. After a short but intense burst of bickering D’anna decides the risk of a fleet-wide infection is too great and orders the Basestar to jump. Baltar, under some suspicion because he was the one who suggested they go to the nebula in the first place, lies his butt off and says he didn’t notice anything weird on the ship.

Why did he do that? Telling them about the device would take at least some suspicion off him. If he had been working with the Galactica to plant a Cylon-specific biological weapon, he wouldn’t admit that that weapon was there. Having realized his life is in very real danger he’s started up again with his old Baltar-y tricks, withholding information so can hopefully save his bacon somewhere down the line. Except now he’s playing the game against Cylons, not other humans, and as such it’s much riskier. I like where this is going.

Of course, there’s a minor hiccup when Caprica looks at the photos Baltar took and sees the weird plague bomb, but hey, this wouldn’t be Battlestar Galactica if things were easy.

The episode ends with Athena and Racetrack getting to the nebula and seeing that it does indeed look like a lion’s head with a blinking eye. Their joy at making progress toward finding Earth is cut short when they see a ton of Cylon Raiders and Basestars milling around. Racetrack quite reasonably suggests that they get the frak out of there, but Athena appears to be frozen in place, able only to utter a cryptic message: “When God’s anger awakens, even the mighty shall fall.”

And with that…

TO BE CONTINUED.

Also In This Episode

Au revoit, fatsuit!Lee. There’s a quick scene of him post-workout asking Helo to remind him “to never let that happen again. Ever.” The sentiment is shared.
The pilot-formerly-known-as-Sharon (whom I’ve been calling Athena) officially starts being called Athena this episode. Whew. It’s just her callsign. Part of me was worried that she’d turn out to be the incarnation of a Greek god or something. (Oh, who’m I kidding, I’d have loved that.)
Via Baltar, we get introduced to a new type of character: The Hybrid, a form of questionably-sane Cylon that serves as a sort of living computer for the Basestars.

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I’m a sci-fi geek who has never seen Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I know, I know. 2013 is the year I change that, and I’m blogging as I go.

One great episode. One, eh… not so much.

A Measure of Salvation

We start this 44 minutes of sci-fi pain with a team of pilots, led by Lee, investigating the dead Basestar Racetrack and Athena found at the lion’s head nebula. After a bit of exploring they find a room of skinjobs, most of them dead but five of them only mostly dead. One of them, a Six, tells Athena that they were infected by that weird beacon. Understandably, the information that they’re on a plague ship sends the pilots into a panic. Unbeknownst to them, but knownst to us, all of them are immune… except for Athena.

Back on the Galactica it’s decided that all of the good guys will be put under quarantine while Doc Cottle runs some bloodwork. The dying Cylons will be brought aboard and kept in the brig so the good Doc can examine them as well. “When they die,” he says, “I’ll know how long our prisoners have to live.” Wow, no bones about it, huh Doc?

Speaking of bones, I want Doc Cottle and Bones from Star Trek to have a show where they go around curing diseases and being gruff at people. Please tell me someone’s at least drawn some crossover fanart of them.

It’s not that long before Doc Cottle figures out that humans are immune from whatever disease the Cylons are infected with, so everyone’s free to go. Everyone except Athena, that is. Not because she’s infected, but because the Doc hasn’t had time to test her yet. That causes Helo to go off on his first “Everyone’s prejudiced against my girlfriend!” rant of the episode. Calm it down, dude. You don’t want to take the Moral Superiority crown from Lee. He’s worked too hard for it.

(I would like to point out the dude in the background who got really enthusiastic upon being told of his clean bill of health. I think I have a favorite extra.)

Baltar, meanwhile, is in a tough spot: Caprica told D’anna that he lied about not having seen anything suspicious aboard the infected Baseship, so now the Cylons are convinced he’s guilty of working with the Galactica to infect them. Baltar tries to explain that he didn’t tell them because he thought if they knew about the beacon they’d accuse him of betrayal. He even goes so far as to rock some major puppy dog eyes. But it’s all to no avail: D’anna says they think he knows something about the virus, and they intend to find out what that is.

Cue the torture.

D’anna has Baltar strapped to a chair, his fingers attached to nodes that activate the pain centers in his brain. Caprica’s clearly very upset by the whole thing, and D’anna sends her a distinctly “judging you” sort of look. Head Six, still in Baltar’s beach headspace, is doing her best to guide Baltar through it, telling him that he can interpret neural impulses in a way that’s not painful. But that’s easier said that done, so to help him out she… has sex with him.

Wow. A torture scene that’s also a sex scene. Battlestar Galactica went there.

There’s context, of course. Head Six tells Baltar that it’s human nature to separate the mind from the body. So if he keeps his body, where the pain is, with her to get sexed up, he can send his mind back to the Basestar and come up with a way to psychologically manipulate D’anna. Baltar says he can’t, that the pain’s too much. During a break from the torture he tries to convince D’anna of his innocence by telling her that him finding the beacon was just a coincidence. But that’s not enough for her: She says everything happens according to God’s will and starts back in on the torture.

And now for some theology.

If God exists then our knowledge of him must be imperfect, because our stories are filtered through human experience, Baltar says to D’anna. You claim to have absolute faith in God, but you can’t help but ask yourself why he allows death and destruction to occur. I can see that you’re conflicted about your beliefs, so let me help you reconcile faith with fact.

That only makes D’anna angry, causing her to ramp up the torture, so Head Six tells Baltar, out of his mind because of torture and sex, some things to say to her: “Don’t stop! I want you to believe in me! You’re all I have left. I believe in you.”

At first D’anna is all “What in the hell?,” as a guy screaming “Don’t stop!” while you torture him will tend to do. But eventually she backs off and looks like something profound has just happened. Baltar tells Head Six—and, back on the Basestar, D’anna—that he loves her with all his heart. D’anna, seemingly smitten, caresses his mouth.

So. That was intense.

But not so intense that it kept me from thinking about the idea of Baltar spouting Intro to Atheism philosophy as pillow talk. Hey, it’s funny.

Back on the Galactica Doc Cottle has figured out both what the infection is—lymphocytic encephalitis, which humans developed an immunity to hundreds of years ago—and how to keep the Cylons from dying. It’s not a cure, though: They’ll have to receive regular injections of the vaccine or they’ll relapse. Roslin comes up with the ingenious idea of telling the Cylons they do have a cure and offering to trade it for information. Lee expresses doubts, noting that back on the ship “Karl’s wife” (not Athena) said the Cylons were saying this prayer that basically means they’ve accepted their death.

All the same, they decide to try it, and as it happens one of the Cylons is completely prepared to give up valuable information so that he can live. That would be Simon, the creepy Cylon “doctor” from The Farm. Brief meta break: Of the seven known Cylons, Simon is one of two non-white ones. It’s been over a season since The Farm, and in that time he hasn’t gotten to do anything. He’s been in a bunch of group scenes so far, but the extent of his involvement is that he occasionally gets a line. Even Doral gets to stomp around being grumpy at people! And now they need a Cylon to be tricked by humans into giving up valuable information, and welp, there’s Simon. Whaddaya know. Battlestar Galactica has problems after all.

With the humans dangling a (fake) cure in front of his face, Simon spills about the infected ship, the beacon, how they were abandoned for fear of spreading the infection to a Resurrection ship, and that Baltar’s been helping the Cylons look for Earth. Everyone is, understandably, a bit ticked that not only is Baltar alive, he’s helping their enemy reach the exact place they saw as a refuge. The stakes now exponentially higher, Roslin and Adama are open to a new plan Lee’s come up with: Park the Galactica in a shipping lane, lure a Cylon fleet to them, and execute the Cylon prisoners, (hopefully) infecting the fleet’s Resurrection ship and exterminating the entire Cylon race in one blow.

The only one who’s none too pleased with that plan is, you guessed it, Helo. He argues that it would still be genocide, even if the Cylons aren’t human. Exterminating an entire race would make us no better than them, and anyway, they did try to live peacefully with us on New Caprica. Up until that point Roslin respectfully disagrees with him, but bringing up New Caprica causes her to go off. You didn’t suffer on that planet, she says, so out respect for the people who did I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that you just said that. Burn, Helo! Still, he’s undeterred, arguing all Cylons—like, say, Athena—aren’t murderous, human-hating fiends. On the other side of the argument is Lee, who says Cylons not being human means it’s A-OK to kill them all. Roslin says she’ll consider both of their arguments, but it’s clear which way she’s leaning.

The next scene shows us that there’s an unlikely person disagreeing with Helo: Athena. It turns out she isn’t going to die, by the way. Something to do with how carrying a half-human child gave her the antibodies she needed to fight the disease. Anyway. She’s not pleased by what Roslin and Adama are planning to do by any means, but she argues that it’s more important, at least for her, to obey orders and continue to prove herself. If that means the rest of her species gets wiped out, so be it. Helo, as a human, has the luxury of disobeying his superiors without the risk of being labelled a Cylon agent. Athena doesn’t.

Roslin and Adama have decided to go through with the genocide plan. They head to the shipping lane, and a Cylon fleet shows up to meet them. Everything’s going according to plan… until Lee goes to execute the prisoners and sees that they’re already dead. It’s Helo’s doing: He reversed the air purification system so the Cylons would suffocate before they got in range of the Resurrection ship. The Galactica manages to jump away before there are any casualties, but they still missed their golden window of opportunity to take out the Cylons once and for all.

Helo goes to Athena and tells her that he did what he thought was right, and if he’s labelled as a traitor because of it, so be it. But it won’t come to that. Adama, who was never truly on board with the whole genocide thing, decides not to investigate the sabotage, even though he pretty much knows who did it.

The episode ends with Doc Cottle providing some relevant information about the infection. One, the beacon was probably accidentally contaminated—Baltar may very well be enduring torture because somebody sneezed on the beacon before launching it. I wouldn’t have thought a season ago I’d say this, but: Poor Baltar. Two, the virus is an exact match to one reported over 3,000 years ago, right around the time the 13th colony left Kobol. That means the beacon was probably left by the colonists, and therefore the Galactica is probably on the path to Earth.

The problem, says Roslin, is that the Cylons are, too.

Hero

Welp. Time for another monster of the week episode.

The “monster” this time around is Daniel “Bulldog” Novacek, a pilot who flew under Adama’s command back before the Cylons attacked Caprica. He was captured during a top-secret mission three years ago and has been imprisoned on a Cylon Basestar ever since.

But we find out about all that later. First off, the episode gives us Roslin and Tory talking about how it’s coming up on Adama’s 45th anniversary of being in the military, so they really should have a ceremony for him. Not only would it honor Adama, it would also give people something to feel good about.

Meanwhile Adama is dealing with three Raiders that have popped up near the Galactica. But there’s something unusual about them: One of them is being chased by the other two. The inhabitant of the pursued Raider is, of course, Bulldog. He sends a message requesting help to the Galactica, and Adama, much to the surprise of everyone else in the CIC, orders that the Raider be brought aboard. The pair of them have an emotional (well, emotional for Adama, which means he looks like he might crack a smile) reunion on the hangar deck.

After being checked over by Doc Cottle to determine he’s not a Cylon, Bulldog tells Adama how he managed to escape. A while ago all the Cylons started getting really sick, he says, and eventually a chance came for him to kill his guard—a death-warmed-over looking D’anna—and bolt. But that doesn’t explain how he got out of his cell, since he attacked her through the bars. Something doesn’t add up here.

Moving the exposition chronologically backwards a bit, Bulldog and Adama explain the super-secret mission they were on when Bulldog was captured to Roslin. The pair of them—Bulldog in a stealth ship, Adama on his old Battlestar, the Valkyrie, with Tigh and some other crewmembers—were monitoring a group of miners who were working too close to the human-Cylon armistice line. Bulldog got shot down, and Adama thought he was dead, so he left. But Bulldog managed to eject, and he floated in space until the Cylons found him and picked him up. Something about the story doesn’t add up for Roslin—the way Bulldog keeps shooting hesitant glances at Adama has something to do with it—so she asks Adama to tell her the whole story. He refuses. What happened is my mess, he says, and I’ll clean it up.

Things get even more intriguing when Adama goes to visit Tigh. He’s feeling particularly confrontational that day and pushes Adama to tell Bulldog about his part in his capture. Again, Adama refuses, saying what happened is in the past and won’t make any difference now.

But Bulldog finds out anyway. Tigh’s next visitor is Bulldog himself, who pulls a hilariously uncomfortable Tigh into a big ol’ hug. (Casual physical affection? What do?) The two of them have a bit of a chat about Tigh being a drunk hermit and how Adama ended up on the Galactica, and eventually the conversation works its way to how “Oh my Gods, Bulldog, did Adama not tell you how you getting captured is his fault?!”

At the same time, Adama is telling that same story to Lee, whom he invited into his office for a family chat. Turns out the mission wasn’t about whupping some rogue miners. Instead it was to monitor the Cylon side of the armistice line to see if the Cylons were preparing for an attack. When unidentified ships showed up Adama made the call to shoot Bulldog down himself, since if human ships were discovered in Cylon territory it would be all the justification they’d need to start a war. Or course, the unidentified ships were probably Cylons anyway, a fact that Adama’d been lying to himself about for years. So not only did he shoot Bulldog down, he unintentionally provoked the Cylon attack on Caprica.

Wow. That, in the words of the immortal Marty McFly, is heavy.

Also, Tigh, you jerk. Don’t even pretend you told Bulldog about what happened for his or Adama’s own sake. I saw that glee in your face when you were leading up to the great reveal. You’re milking this, you drunk bastard. God, I love ya.

While other characters have been embroiled in flashback drama, Starbuck’s been reviewing pictures of Bulldog’s pursuit by the Cylon Raiders. Turns out they had plenty of opportunities to shoot him, but they kept intentionally missing. At this point Starbuck and I are both convinced that Bulldog is a double agent, a brainwashed sleeper agent… something. Sure, he says he was able to escape because of the Cylons being sick, but maybe he was just using that as a cover story because he knew the good guys would buy it. Furthermore, how did he just happen to find the fleet? She shares the photos and her suspicions with Tigh.

Meanwhile Bulldog, intensely ticked because of what Tigh told him, asks Adama to come visit him. When he arrives Bulldog beans him on the head with a pipe, ties him up, and proceeds to choke him. Mid-rant about how Adama abandoned him, he mentions that the door to his cell was left open by the Cylons. That captures Adama’s attention, and he asks whether the Cylons let him out. We see what happened via flashback: They did let him escape, but he’s not a double agent. They just let him go so he’d seek revenge against Adama.

I’m sorry, but that’s stupid. You’re telling me the Cylons set Bulldog free assuming he’d A) find the Galactica and B) be brought aboard, later to be C) told by someone about Adama shooting him down, which would cause him to D) try and E) succeed at killing him? These are the Cylons, for chrissakes. They take years to formulate elaborate plots. I call bullpucky on their whole plan being “Well, I guess we’ll hold this guy for a few years, let him go, and see what happens.”

The plan doesn’t work; Tigh storms into Bulldog’s room and rescues Adama. Of freaking course it’s not going to work. How would it, when the Cylons have accidentally engineered it so it looks exactly like Bulldog’s a traitor, even though he isn’t? (And how did Bulldog find the Galactica, anyway?) Tigh has a great monologue where he talks about the nature of being a soldier, and how the toughest part of getting defeated like Bulldog—and Tigh—was is that it robs you of your dignity and makes you think you’re worthless. The self-hatred, he explains, is like a bottle that never runs dry. When Adama asks him how one puts that bottle away, Tigh responds that one day you just have to decide to walk out of your room.

Tigh’s pep talk (the world’s most bitter, depressed pep talk, but still) gets to Bulldog. He’s shown, minus his murderous rage against Adama, leaving the Galactica to try and recover on a different ship. Adama, meanwhile, goes to Roslin and tells her he’s the one responsible for the Cylon attack on Caprica. He tries to resign, but Roslin tells him to STFU, because did you ever think the admiralty might have set you up to start the war they wanted, you naïve baby? The Cylon attack is way too complicated an issue for one person to take responsibility for it, so shut up and let me hold this ceremony for you so the people can have a hero to look up to.

Sigh. I love her.

The episode ends post-ceremony, with Tigh—in his uniform again!—going to visit Adama. Adama asks his former XO to come back to the job and asks if he wants to tell him what happened with Ellen (all my creys!). Tigh doesn’t respond to either request, but he agree to having a drink together.

Awwww, the friendship is getting mended. I like that part of this episode, ditto the larger Tigh character development, but other than that… meh. Bulldog shows up and you think there’s some larger traitor plot going on… until there isn’t. And a Big Dark Secret from Adama’s past is revealed… but he’s gotten closure by the time the credits roll. Nothing that happened in this episode, aside from the Tigh stuff, looks like it’ll have any impact on the further development of the show. (I will gladly eat my words if Bulldog actually turns out to be a secret agent or if the I Killed Caprica, Waaaaahhh stuff shows up again.)

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a bad episode. It’s no Black Market. But the larger series arcs of Battlestar Galactica are so great that when a monster of the week ep comes along and halts the momentum it’s just jarring, even if there’s nothing wrong with the episode itself.

Granted, there is something that went down in this episode that has wider implications as far as D’anna is concerned. Back on the Basestar she has a nightmare where she’s walking around the Galactica and is killed by a group of marines. She thinks it’s the gods trying to tell her something, so she orders one of the Centurions to kill her. In the time between dying and re-downloading she sees some sort of beautiful, miraculous place. Upon coming to in her new body she tells another version of herself about it, with Caprica and Doral looking on like she’s gone nuts.

Oh, and when she wakes up from the dream it’s in a bed with Caprica and Baltar. So apparently that threesome is canonically happening. Good to know.

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