2.8 Final Cut

This episode turned it all around for me. Halfway through I thought I was watching a clear cut contender for worst episode of Battlestar Galactica ever. Xena the warrior princess had been let onboard the ship to do a warts an’ all documentary, and so followed this reporter going around sticking her camera in everyone’s face and managing to hit them at times they’d least like it.

I hated all that. I hated the clichéd reporter character being only for the story and looking to find blood. I hated the way Tigh was behaving, and there was that other sub-plot going on with him and his potential-assassin (the guy from Gideon who blamed Tigh for the deaths of innocents). Thankfully that plot got wrapped up this episode, although killing Tigh’s wife might have been a nice idea!

And then there was Gaius, and Six egging him on to get his face on the camera and position himself as leader, saying the reporter would be useful to them. That went nowhere and was boring anyway. So, yeah, all in all, the episode was not going well.

And then it managed to wrap itself up. There was a Cylon raider attack and we watched the action the way the reporters watched the action, hearing the voices of Starbuck and Apollo and watching the faces of the crew as they waited for the result. It’s normal for the action to cut to scenes of the dogfight, and not making that cut was interesting and unique.

Of course, the real talking points of the episode concerned the end. The first surprise end was in the hokey finished report; which (rightly) painted the Galactica crew as human heroes (all to the sound of the original BSG theme tune no less) and it made for a stupidly tongue-in-cheek happy ending. Little did I know this was all a diversion, and the real reveal was that the reporter was in fact a Cylon, there on a reconnaissance mission of sorts to reveal how the Galactica crew were holding up.

That she came back with a scoop that Cylon Boomer had survived, and was pregnant, was an extra little bonus for the little group of Cylons all sitting around watching the finished article in a cinema.

So yet another Cylon mould has been revealed, taking the total count up to six, to the best of my count. That the Boomer present in the cinema didn’t know that her counterpart was still alive is another aspect about these Cylons and their group awareness that confuses me. Cylon Boomer shares all the memories of the previous Boomer, and yet the Cinema Counterpart knew nothing of Cylon Boomer. Is there some sort of ‘download’ period, if they get close enough or to a certain Wi-Fi connection point? Can the ‘updated’ thoughts and memories of each mould then be shared? Is that how the toasters work!?