3.14 The Woman King

Odd title for an episode, I thought, and it turned out to be something of a play on words, featuring as it did a pivotal character, a woman, named King! This episode focused on Helo for once, which made a welcome and interesting change. As became clear towards the end, Helo’s function has been very much as a lone voice crying out in opposition to what is usually viewpoints that don’t agree.

Usually he’s a bit of a bleeding heart for Cylons, and even in this episode, when he is left defending the fate of the curious people of Sagittarion (who don’t believe in medicine or technology so much, so I guess they’re kind of Mormonic, or Luddite!?) when he believes they are being bumped off by the doctor.

As it turned out he was right, but he had to go through a lot of self-examination and cross-examination from the likes of Adama and Tigh, amongst others. In the end, Adama bestowed an apology and Helo saluted him so I guess that sort of puts them back where they started. The only thing we had gained was more of an insight into Helo’s character, which was worthwhile though probably not wholly consequential in the grand scheme of this Season.

What was pivotal, it would seem, is the brief scene with Laura and Zarek discussing whether to hold the trial of Gaius. Zarek was adamant, and apparently scared, that holding such a trial would open up a “hurricane” of trouble that even the provision of marshall law might not be able to contain.

I’m not quite sure where Zarek’s conviction comes from. I got the impression that, basically, since Gaius was so clearly guilty in the eyes of the people for their sufferings on New Caprica that the idea of even giving him a chance of being proven innocent would create anger and rioting. At least, if this trial goes ahead, it’s been granted an extra layer of interest!

Meanwhile Caprica Six was in her cell, being watched as she talked to herself and kissed the imaginary Gaius that had turned up for her. Again, I am forced to ask myself what the deal is with these two and each having an imaginary version of one another serving as their conscience of sorts. There’s hopefully some form of rationale behind this, but beyond mad thoughts about them both being Cylons that died and, on their way to being downloaded somehow got entangled en route, I can’t really fathom it out.

So that was that. A bit of a standalone, character study of an episode that Battlestar Galactica occasionally chucks out there – biding time until the next set of ‘to be continued’ episodes rear their heads! (They’re always the best ones!)

3.13 Taking A Break From All Your Worries

Bit of an odd episode this. I could kind of see what it was doing, exploring the character points that had been revealed over the previous episodes – the trouble was that by the end there had been very little in terms of progression. It was like an examination before the whole thing reverted back over to its previous state.

The main thrust of the plot concerned Gaius, now in captivity on Galactica. Tigh had the viewpoint that he should just be executed, whereas Laura and Adama were more inclined to try and get whatever information out of him they could. Gaius, himself, tried to commit suicide at the start of the episode and had a weird hallucination that he woke up in a download tank – but I was never fooled. I knew he wasn’t going to be revealed as a Cylon; I have become certain of that much now.

Probably I’ll turn out wrong later down the line!

But anyway, Gaius was eventually injected with some bizarre serum that Adama only saw fit to mention now, where the subject was placed in a situation of jeopardy and only his interrogators had the power to aid him. This was apparently going to make him speak the truth. (The end, intriguingly, hinted that there was a secret in him so deep even he wasn’t prepared to admit it. . .)

What he did admit was pretty much what we already knew concerning his part in the Cylon attack on Caprica and what he knew about the Cylon race in general. It was good in the sense that it allowed him to clarify for us exactly where his state of mind was at; but at the same time it didn’t really feel like I was learning anything new.

What was worse was the inertia of the episode since, by the end, Adama nor Laura were at all convinced by his story. The only forward movement was that they had decided to give him a trial (whatever that means) rather than outright kill him. It was not an ending to the episode that made me excited about the next episode, really. Hopefully I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

And the inertia of the episode carried through with Apollo and Starbuck. Both pretty much broke apart from Dualla and Anders respectively, and then met up. Starbuck hit Apollo with it: that he could leave Dualla and she would be there. But then he worried that he could not rely on her after the way she had treated him (understandable) and so ended up going back to Dualla and breaking down in front of her, begging she take him back.

Personally speaking, I’d rather be with Dualla than Starbuck any day!

Anyway, Dualla took Apollo back and Starbuck was back with Anders and the pair just shared some looks across the bar towards the end (the bar being where the episode got its title, from the Cheers theme song!). Again, back to square one with the sense that there was still plenty more of this love square to come.

So the episode ended in pretty much the same place where it had begun. That’s not really a great mark of anything, though I guess with this foreplay out of the way the season can march on and properly get into whatever it wants to sink its teeth into next.

3.12 Rapture

I suspect for fans of Battlestar Galactica that are as nuts about the show as I am about Lost, for example, then this episode is one that would have prompted discussion and debate in a frenzy. That debate would have been fuelled by Deanna’s experience in the temple, when she confronted the final five and learned their identities. I’ll come back to that scene.

In the meantime the cliffhangers from the previous episode were all resolved rather amicably and quickly! The Cylon ships headed to the planet all backed off, barring Deanna’s ship (a decision that had the startling prompt amongst the other Cylons that her dissension was not one they could tolerate any longer). Apollo instructed Dualla to go and get Starbuck, so he and Anders could get on with defending the temple for as long as they could.

Uneasy alliances all around then, but it made for a tense and enjoyable episode. Plenty of action and tension. Battlestar always handles this stuff well – in fact its battles and skirmishes and high-stakes situations are something of a trademark of the show for me. The only downside, for me, was the escape when the whole planet went supernova. Given there were people on the ground when it was all going off, and Tigh’s priceless remark about how it was going to be “photo finish” I was anticipating every bead of tension to be wrung out of the escape. Not so. It was all rather easy and over quickly. Probably as a result of time allowance on the episode in general rather than any artistic or dramatic decision.

Elsewhere Athena elected to have Helo kill her so she could download back on the Cylon base ship and get to her daughter again. The scenes with Athena and Cylon Boomer were bizarre; Cylon Boomer has become such a cold character! That seemed totally at odds with the character that existed on New Caprica. Still, it allowed Caprica Six justification to snap her neck, so no sooner had Athena arrived when she was back on Galactica, with her baby, and with Caprica Six in tow!

Add in Gaius managing to end up back on Galactica, also, and pretty much every major player is now back together in the same place for the first time since Season 2. The ramifications to all of that are mightily interesting. Galactica has a new signpost to follow with the supernova (in truth this seems like an event so preposterously unlikely I’ll need more justification for how that event just happened to occur at the moment in time) and plenty of interesting reactions from the people onboard to follow up on.

Meanwhile, back on the Cylon base star, Deanna’s model and the knowledge contained within has been maddeningly ‘boxed’ indefinitely, and so what, or more specifically who, she had learned about was left unknown to all but her. Which brings me to the beginning, and where the debate would have raged amongst the fanboys about who the final five could be.

There wasn’t much in the way of clues, save for the fact that Deanna seemed to only react to one of the figures she saw. When she saw this one figure she apologised for her ignorance. And, just before dying, she told Gaius he was right without defining what he was right about.

Gaius thought it might have been about whether he was a Cylon. The longer this idea has dangled the less I believe it. If he was, why would he have been the brilliant mind on Earth that needed to be infiltrated by Six to allow access to the defence systems? It just doesn’t seem right. (And yet there is that bizarre telepathy he shares with Six and the projection aspect to his flights of fantasy, so I’m not dismissing him out of hand!)

There was Starbuck’s revelation at the end, where she was shown the picture she had drawn all her life that resembled the 4,000 year old image found in the temple. On being shown this Starbuck recalled the prophetic words of the Leoben Cylon who told her she had a destiny to fulfil. This either marks her out as one of the final five, or maybe just a pivotal figure in the eventual destinies of the humans and the Cylons.

Does Deanna have reason to apologise to Starbuck as she did? That’s what I ask myself. I don’t recall them having all that much to do with each other. (Indeed, Gaius aside, Deanna hasn’t hurt very many non-Cylon people!) But then I’ve not seen everything she ever did whilst on New Caprica, for example, and maybe her apology was a more general one for whatever was perpetrated to the individual in question.

Point is, I don’t know. And I’ve rapidly watched the show from beginning to this point in isolation of any discussion, so it’s hard to retain all the facts and scenes and pointers that I could build towards any specific case. My out of the box suggestion? Colonel Tigh. Irony of ironies that the one-eyed hater of all things Cylon turns out to be one of the final five! But given that he had an eyeball gouged out, that seems to me to be something that Deanna would want to apologise for!

3.11 The Eye Of Jupiter

So I had been a little previous with the last episode and assumed that the mission to get algae had been done and dusted and now the fleet had got food for themselves. I was wrong. This episode started with the information that the harvest of the algae had been going on for two weeks and was in full flow. So whilst I didn’t understand how the ‘radioactive passage of light’ incident from the previous episode had been necessary nor traversed, I quickly got to grips with the current situation.

It was a situation that was going to get massively intense. And it started with Tyrol getting a hunch about something in the mountains so he went for a wander and inadvertently stumbled upon some massive temple – potentially the temple of the five from the 13th colony.

Right. OK. So here we bring in the Cylons, who also appeared four base ships strong at the planet on their own quest to find ‘the eye of Jupiter’ that apparently pointed the way to Earth and would be found in this temple. So all that business from the previous episode, again that I had mistaken and/or got confused by, with Baltar and Deanna going on about shadows in light had also brought them to this point.

I have to say they could have done a better job of making that a little clearer. I mean, maybe I was a bit sleepy when I watched the previous episode but I don’t think I totally missed the signpost on this thing.

So what’s the deal with the Cylons and the humans then? Because there are the Cylons going on about these five weird Cylon moulds that exist in the point between life and death. And now there’s this temple of ‘the five’. . . It seems to me that the history between the two races may have more common ancestry, or roots, than has been outlined so far. Or maybe it’s to do with the statement from the ancient book about how all of this has happened before and will happen again.

It’s intriguing stuff, but I am going down the line of thinking that there’s a serious link between humans and Cylons that is yet to be introduced. Perhaps they were once all like Hera, and then there was a split? Who knows?

In the meantime it was time for a whopper of a cliffhanger to end this episode on a ‘to be continued’ note. We had Baltar and Deanna journeying to the planet. Adama was priming nuclear weapons with a poker faced intent on whether he was going to use them or not. Starbuck had been shot down by Centurions already on the planet and set to wage war with the makeshift army of civilians down there. Apollo and Anders were facing off over whether to rescue Starbuck, with Anders held at gunpoint. And there was Tyrol, alone, trying to unlock the mystery of the temple. To cap it all, there’s only a bloody great supernova due to go off at any moment.

It’s a heck of set of plot strands all left in the balance! I can’t wait to see how they pick up the threads and move on from this!

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.

3.9 Unfinished Business

Like much of the boxing that took place in this episode, this one came with a sucker punch. The ‘unfinished business’ of the title referred to the various motivations and frustrations that had arisen on New Caprica before the Cylon occupation. Chief of these was the relationship between Starbuck and Apollo, but that’s one I will come to.

The reason for the free-for-all boxing match was, as Adama explained, a regular event as a means for the crew to release their pent up frustration and grievances that military protocol dictated that they keep bottled up. It also served as a pretty handy means by which character plots could be explored.

So as various fighters took to the ring we were treated to brief flashbacks to their time on New Caprica and the story explaining whatever grievances existed. Adama had issue with Tyrell for allowing him to take Callie to the planet and abandon Galactica to raise his kid. As he pretty much goaded Tyrell into beating him to a bloody pulp the message was an admittance that he had gotten soft, as had his crew, and they had let their guard down and been beaten as a consequence.

In real terms, this suggests a more harder, tougher Adama may come to the fore. One, perhaps, taking a cue from Admiral Kane. . .? Though hopefully not as extreme!

I also believe Adama allowed himself to be battered by Tyrell as a form of penance for his own guilt at allowing Tyrell to go, and urging to Tigh to depart as well – given the dire consequences that decision created.

However, this episode was really all about Starbuck and Apollo, and the extraordinary story of what had taken place between them. Drunk at a party on New Caprica, they had taken themselves away from their respective partners and had sex, and then both had declared that they loved one another. It would have been a climactic moment, except this was all revealed whilst the two of them were pummelling the living shit out of one another in the ring.

We witnessed them finally getting together at a point when it had all fallen apart. I rather liked that.

That the morning after Starbuck disappeared and quickly got married to Anders explains why it was Apollo was so embittered towards her that time she requested drugs for Anders when he was extremely sick. As a consequence, in his own disgust, Apollo had jumped straight into the arms of Duala. Both of them, then, had hooked themselves up to someone else as a means of blocking the other off.

Refreshingly complicated stuff, I thought. But the real sucker punch came at the end of the episode. Exhausted, battered and spent, Starbuck and Apollo embraced one another and admitted that they missed one another. The demon between them had been exorcised. And with Anders and Duala both seeing what was going on, and no doubt realising what it signalled, the future between Apollo and Starbuck now is rather intriguing.

I don’t expect a happy romance to ensue, not with these two. But a will they/won’t they relationship hanging in the balance for a while has potential, I think!

So, good episode in all. It could have flopped over without delicate handling; but some nice editing (the shock reactions were displayed long before we understood their meaning) and just enough exposition without overkill meant the episode pulled the intent off with aplomb. Classy, actually, was the word that most sprang to mind immediately afterward. This was a classy episode.

3.8 Hero

A turn up out of the blue presented an episode here that left a lot to mull over. The appearance of Bulldog in a Cylon raider, pursued by other Cylon raiders, put the veritable cat amongst the pigeons for Adama.

The backstory for Bulldog was that he was part of Adama’s crew when he was the commander of the Valkryie. Adama had been sent out to the border line between human and Cylon to see if there was any Cylon activity. Bulldog went over enemy lines, was spotted, and so Adama had him shot down and then rushed away from there to avoid detection.

As far as Adama was concerned, hearing that Bulldog had apparently survived and then been captured by the Cylons indicated that he had been exposed, and therefore he had broke the truce between human and Cylon and therefore been a catalyst for the holocaust on the colonies.

Crikey. That’s a tough pill to swallow.

It turned out that Bulldog had not escaped after all, rather he had been set free precisely so he could get to Galactica, and Adama, and either kill him once he knew the truth or perhaps in the very least de-stabilise Adama’s command. (In the eyes of Apollo that plan probably worked a tad.)

Handily Tigh was there to break free of his stupor and come to Adama’s aid; swallowing down his bile and see his role as one of an expendable soldier in a grand war. For Tigh to come around it needed a short, sharp shock like this to make me believe his ‘road back’ could occur, so in this sense the episode won me over.

But what of the idea that Adama could have started the war? It doesn’t quite ring true. In the vast expanse of space how did the Cylons so quickly detect Bulldog? Suggests to me they either knew he was coming or they were hanging around the borderline already. And how long had Six’s scheming with Balthar been in place? Before the Bulldog capture? After? I tend to think it was before - but I could be flat wrong about that.

A funny question would be: Why did the Cylons choose to cast themselves in the mould of humans? Was it to serve the God they believe in, or to better infiltrate and attack the human race? Or both?

And what Laura said rings true. For one thing Adama was ordered there, so what else was he supposed to do? And for another thing he is totally unaware of what else his superiors were up to in relation to potentially provoking the Cylons. What’s interesting is that we have now been given the idea of provocation. Before this point it was basically the case that the Cylons showed up out of nowhere and nuked the human race for no reason.

Now we are presented with the idea that humanity might not be blameless at all. That, perhaps, it was us that cast the first stone?

And meantime Cylon Xena – who I suppose I should start calling Deanna since she appears to have become a serious featured character! – was having her own weird sub-plot thrown in. She ordered a centurion to kill her so she could re-experience this bizarre place between her death and reincarnation. (Apparently her three-way sessions with Balthar and Caprica Six have opened her mind!?) This looks to me like an intriguing introduction to a new level of awareness for the Cylons, perhaps one that’s linked with those other five Cylon moulds that they don’t like to talk of?

Slowly some layers about the Cylons are being peeled away, opening up some fascinating possibilities. Pretty much that’s what this episode was about in general, I think; I just don’t know if it’s planting seeds here that will really blossom throughout the season, or just sprinkling a little spice to prickle things up a little bit.

3.7 A Measure Of Salvation

So this second part to the previous episode followed on from where the other ended, with the discovery of the dead Cylon base ship in the nebula after it had picked up a beacon that had infected the ship and the raiders and the Cylons on it – where they had been left to die.

Once Apollo and Athena and other members of Galactica were onboard the biggest concern, for me, was whether Cylon Athena was going to get infected, too. It was certainly her concern the moment they realised there was an infection at play and got off the ship into quarantine.

As it turned out they found out the disease was not communicable to humans, and not long afterwards Athena was given the all clear. I was glad they didn’t drag that issue out, really. Instead the focus, on Galactica, was whether they could use the dying Cylons they had captured to wipe out the Cylon race.

The plan, of Apollo’s, was to jump to where the Cylons would find them. Then, when the base ships arrived en masse, with a resurrection ship nearby, they would execute the prisoners who would then be downloaded to the ship and infect the whole lot of them. (Are we saying there is only one resurrection ship now? Because they destroyed one, once! Was that it? There’s just one left? I struggle with that, but maybe it’s the way of it. And how does a biological disease get downloaded, exactly? Hmm.)

Laura was all for it. Adama was willing to go along with it. There was only Helo that was prepared to perform the ‘measure of salvation’ to prevent the mass extermination. It was certainly a dilemma for the viewer. I could see both sides; of how the Cylons had managed to create a consciousness that understood life, and therefore had moved beyond the role of ‘toasters’. But then in the same breath I could concede the view that humans created the Cylons, a mistake they made that they alone could remove and correct.

Both compelling. Ultimately I think I came down on the point of view that extermination was an acceptable proposition – given the mass genocide the Cylons performed first of all and have been chasing ever since. However, Helo intervened and killed the prisoners before they were in range of the resurrection ship so the chance was taken away.

Now Galactica have the hope that they are on the right route to Earth, but with the bitter knowledge that the Cylons are also on the same path. . .

Meanwhile, Gaius was undergoing a bizarre torture experience at the hands of Cylon Xena, whilst in his head Cylon Six was having sex with him to take his mind off things. It was all rather odd. But the net result was that Gaius wonld up crying out that he loved Cylon Xena, which appeared to have a marked effect on her. Where that’s going I don’t know.

The only other point I should note was that Starbuck was in a Viper and part of the squad out defending Galactica. From this I guess the gloomy, anxt-ridden Starbuck from the previous episode has put her issues aside enough to be allowed to continue in her military role. That all seemed brushed over way too quickly for me – but maybe it’s something that will be picked up later on and explained further. Either that or it really is over and done with, and that just leaves Tigh as the rotten soul festering away.

3.6 Torn

As anticipated, the experiences Starbuck and Tigh had on New Caprica have had marked changes to their character. And in this episode they got together, sitting in the mess room, spouting negativity and bile to anyone who would listen. Ostensibly their point was that they had been through worse than other people, and so other people had no right being positive.

Self-pity turned outward, made destructive.

This idea, thematically, made Starbuck and Tigh contaminants on Galactica that were polluting morale. By the episode’s end Adama stepped up to try and nip it in the bud; telling them both to either sort themselves out or get off the ship. Starbuck, as a result, went to Casey and hugged her, suggesting that she has taken the route to swallowing her bitterness and trying to pull ahead.

Tigh, on the other hand, told Adama that his old self was gone and never coming back and he hit the bottle in a big way. His may be a character that is really going to hit bottom before ever getting a chance at returning to the fold – I just wonder if he will ever come back from the brink at all.

The view of a contaminant theme was continued with Gaius and the Cylons. He had plotted a course towards the next stage of the journey to Earth. The Cylons, unsurprisingly, have decided that they want to make that their next place to stop. (They have all the universe and decide Earth is the spot? Bastards!) However, a base ship was sent into the next marker and hit upon a problem: a Cylon-killing disease vessel, most probably left by the thirteenth colony en route to Earth.

Fundamentally a hurdle on the path to Earth; a barrier to prevent the Cylons from passing. Gaius went onboard the base ship and found this all out, and then chose to not mention it to the Cylons. But they saw it anyway!

There was a lot of interesting information about Cylons and Gaius, though, which was welcome. It was precisely the function I hoped Gaius would be used for during his time with the Cylons. Six spoke of ‘projection’, of how the Cylons alter their environment easily, to suit their own well-being. Like vivid daydreaming. Naturally, we have seen from the start that Gaius is also particularly adept at this skill, which inevitably made him raise the same question I was thinking:

Is Gaius a Cylon?

Crucially this question was not answered. Right now, it’s the possibility that makes the most sense. He asked about the five other moulds of Cylon he has not yet seen, asking why it was only seven of the twelve appeared to be the ones making all the decisions. These were good questions, ones I had been wondering about as well. And though there was no answer, it was good that the question was posed and was obviously a part of the bigger picture yet to be revealed. As long as the show’s creators have the matter in hand then I am happy to wait.

I have to figure that the Hybrid isn’t one of the Cylon moulds. I don’t quite know what the hell she was, mind. Talk of her being the voice of God, whilst controlling the ship, existing on a plane of experience completely different to everyone else. . . Yeah, OK. They’ll either go somewhere with that, or they’ll drop it like a hot brick.

So the episode ended with newly-named Cylon Sharan, a.k.a. Athena, discovering the blinking lion in space, and seeing the dead base Cylon base ship next to it. Is such fleeting exposure enough to contaminate Cylon Athena? Does that little machine have to be onboard a ship to give Cylons the disease, or is just travelling through that region of space enough? Are there lots of those disease-spreading space mines scattered all over that area? I guess the second part will let me know, but this was a very intriguing episode. It felt like the show was making big strides to the ‘next level’ of revelation regarding Cylons, and the journey to Earth, both of which are, I think, the next natural progression for the show to take.

3.5 Collaborators

After the occupation, recriminations. The stark opening scene with the ‘prosecution’ of Jammer in the airlock was hardline stuff. Despite him being a baby-faced young man, who had aided Callie in her escape from the firing squad, the ‘circle’ of judges and jury still considered him guilty and culpable – and punishment meant death.

And so Jammer was blasted out of the airlock. And he wasn’t the first, as rumours of other people that had gone missing were filtering up the chain of command.

Tigh and Starbuck figured heavily here, with both of them exhibiting a new-found bitter side to their characters as a result of their respective experiences on New Caprica. Starbuck, it seems to me, is the one who is least likely to bounce back quickly. Her statement about wanting to just scratch out Anders’ eyes spoke volumes about her state of mind. I am not sure what it’s going to take to bring her back from the dark place she is currently in. Likelihood is she’ll get worse before, if ever, she gets better.

Tigh may have a better chance. He had a long pause after the near-killing of Gaeta. It was this scene that was crucial for me. I can honestly say that if Gaeta had been blasted out of the airlock it might just have been a blow too cruel for me to take too well. Thankfully Starbuck was there to drop the point that he had been the guy feeding the resistance movement information and without him there would never have been a rescue mission at all.

I felt pleased for Gaeta, getting nods of respect and the company of the always-likable Tyrell at the end as he ate a meal. They didn’t speak, but just seeing the two of them – one vindicated, one humbled – sitting together trying to reclaim a bond given what they had experienced encapsulated pretty much where many of the survivors of New Caprica are coming from.

This is a crew and people that have been much-changed and had the boundaries of their lives shifted. How else could it explain Skarek being permitted the role of vice-President? Suddenly he’s Mr. Nice Guy? Suddenly the anarchist is gone? Maybe for the moment, but I think there’s a viper in him still ready to strike given the right motivation and opportunity.

Gaius, meanwhile, is now in the custody of the Cylons. This is potentially an excellent avenue for the show to take, as we can see the Cylon’s point of view through his eyes. The trouble I have found so far is that the Cylons were at their best when their rationale and motivation was unknown; so far whenever reason is revealed for what they do it sometimes feels contradictory and flawed. The show kind of negotiates its way around this problem by showing the Cylons themselves as disagreeing amongst themselves, but there was a sense of unity and purpose about the Cylons when they were less understood that feels betrayed by every new revelation.

By the end of the episode a pardon had been issued so the matter of who is guilty following New Capica has been dispensed with. Another slate wiped clean, leaving the way clear for the series to start burrowing into whatever plot machinations and character complications are going to be explored and developed. The way the show is balanced now, darker and more mature, I have little doubt that there’s dark times and turmoil ahead.

Bring it on.