4.6 Faith

Now this is more like it. The Season has finally stepped things up a notch and allowed at least some of the more pedantry pieces to click into place. The episode spent most of its focus on Demetrius, and Starbuck, whilst also cutting to Laura spending time in a hospital with a dying woman named Emily – and both of these plot threads led to interesting places.

Laura, first, had the more digestible story. Through hearing Emily explain why it was she found the words of Gaius to hold meaning for her Laura was apparently coming round to believing in Gaius herself. Emily talked of a dream where she had crossed the river and saw her family waiting for her on the other side. Then, towards the end of the episode, Laura experienced the same dream, seeing Emily leave and cross the river whilst she saw her own mother.

It’s the classic life after death scenario, clichéd to the hilt, but here it was handled excellently. Laura moved from someone that had watched her mother die an ungracious death and believed that it held no more than blackness and emptiness to someone that had a new-found sense of hope that there was more to this world than she realised.

She explained as much to Adama at the end of the episode in a neat little coda where, perhaps with a new sense of clarity, she can make good on her pledge to be the one that leads the people to Earth and, in effect, becomes the prophecy of the dying woman. That along the way, as the Hybrid mentioned, she may eventually learn the secret of the opera house is something to look forward to. The opera house business was revealed right at the end of Season 1 and if that gets a decent pay off after all this time then it’s an impressive piece of foreshadowed storytelling.

The more dramatic, traditional story concerned Starbuck. At the hands of her mutinous crew the situation was eventually resolved with Anders stepping up (shooting Gaeta in the leg, something I doubt the increasingly bitter character is not going to take too well). And so Starbuck took a raptor with Athena, Anders, Leoben and a red shirt and Helo stayed behind and started the clock running. We had a good old fashioned race against time.

The raptor finding the broken fragments of the destroyed base star was a good plot turn. (Quite why the other Cylons didn’t annihilate it completely was somewhat fortunate!) There were Sixes and Boomers all over the place, some more willing to get along and join the humans for their own salvation than others.

The business with the Hybrid offered up the most interesting points. I’m sure the fanboys had a field day dissecting the potential meaning behind the hybrid’s cryptic words, but the gist of it seemed clear enough to me without having to pick it all apart. 4 of the final five would point the way to the Final Cylon, and this Final Cylon would go through a desperate time to find Earth where, apparently, everything had originated.

Starbuck was, once again, labelled as being one that would end the human race – but I still think this means only in the sense of a unification between Cylon and human rather than a straightforward massacre. That Starbuck’s function appears to be separate from the Final Cylon probably suggests she’s not it. Gaius seems a too obvious fit, and Laura’s role as “dying leader” surely counts her out. So all the main characters are covered except for the Adamas – unless the Final Cylon turns out to be someone more marginal. Right now, I don’t know if the likes of Anders and Tigh were ever ‘born’ in the natural sense and grew up. If they did, that paves the way for Apollo or Adama to be the Final Cylon. Otherwise, all bets are off. (I guess that would make Helo the only viable main character candidate!)

The idea that Deanna is going to be ‘unboxed’ is also a tantalising one. The moment she claps eyes on Anders (how I wished he had touched the Cylon control panel!!), or Tigh, or Tori, or Tyrol, is going to be a heck of a scene. And surely that moment cannot be too far away, with the Demetrius now linked back with the Cylon base ship and the whole bunch of them set to re-unite with Galactica. That’s a meeting I am looking forward to seeing!