3.10 The Passage

It had been discussed before, about how much food was available to the fleet and how it might run out. I guess the stay and quick escape from New Caprica meant that supplies for the fleet were in short supply, and so when this episode started everyone was suffering from extreme rationing.

The 'passage' of the title was a route through an extremely radioactive star cluster and extremely bright planet to collect some form of food - algae - to feed the fleet. By the sounds of it the food wasn’t going to be particularly tasty or exciting, but it would keep everyone alive. Perhaps that issue is yet to arise; with the fleet perhaps resenting the food they are given and becoming mutinous or something. Maybe.

But things have changed in Season 3. The survivors have known harsh life on New Caprica already, which has perhaps made them more hardy. Also, in the previous season, this may have been a more political issue with Laura having to negotiate some tricky decisions to get people onside. But the political wrangling was more of a Season 2 thing and that presence has been (happily) muted more this season.

The episode also focused more on one of the more peripheral characters: Kat. It was revealed she got her flying skills being a trafficker back in the day, and also an ex-junkie, who had faked her identity to get on Galactica. This certainly shed light on the character we had seen in previous episodes (particularly Scar) and yet despite her grubby past she finished the episode a heroine.

There was an interesting diversion going on with Deanna and Baltar, where he was asking her about her experiences between life and death. She discussed how she saw five shapes, potentially the five other Cylon moulds. That’s an intriguing development. How do they come to exist in the space between life and death? It’s certainly a strange one, and probably not one that’s going to be easily answered.

There was an unlikely set of deductions made when Baltar and Deanna listened to the Hybrid. Baltar let the Hybrid touch him and then she blathered out some apparent nonsense that suggested seeing shadows in the light or something. I guess she was talking about the light in that space between life and death, but for a while I did wonder if The Passage, with its blinding light, might have held some weird revelation from within.

For a moment I wondered if Kat herself wasn’t going to see something incredible when she stayed longer to find her ship. . . but no such revelation came. So probably I was just joining two separate ideas together that were merely being paralleled rather than linked. But there’s no doubt this sub-plot with Baltar and Deanna is the driving narrative going on from this episode, whilst back on Galactica it’s more about waiting for the next discovery or crisis to propel Season 3 onward.