4.3 The Ties That Bind

Easily the best episode of this Season so far, focusing in the main on Callie but not in a way that suggested her tragic end was inevitable, or predictable. At the start of the episode she was an exhausted and fraught wreck due to her husband’s pre-occupation with being a Cylon. Given the promises he made last season about how things were going to change in their relationship it was a natural unravelling for Callie since such changes had never occurred.

On some form of drug concoction she accused Tyrol of having an affair with Tori, which in turn meant a public show that the three Final Cylons needed to address, and so they conducted their meeting to discuss the matter. What they didn’t know was that Callie was watching and listening, and the news that her husband was a skin-job wasn’t something she took well.

The final, shocking scene in the airlock was excellently executed (if you’ll pardon the pun). Callie took her child to the airlock and set it to go, apparently ready to blast herself and her abominable half-Cylon child out into space. And then Tori turned up. What wasn’t so surprising was that Tori managed to talk Callie out of it. What was more surprising was the moment Tori had Nicky in her hands, when she belted Callie away with super strength, knocking her flat. By the time Callie came around Tori was in the airlock control room, ready to flick the switch. . .

So that was the end of Callie, blasted out into cold space. Given that Adama was consoling Tyrol at the end of the episode suggests the view must be that Callie killed herself (her attack on Tyrol, and the Doc’s opinion on her condition would corroborate that story). The reveal about Tori is the startling aspect to this. She had said she was enjoying the new lease of life, the change, which explains why she acted so impulsively as a Cylon.

The likes of Tigh, Tyrol and Anders almost certainly have this same potential. Quite how able they will be to keep their Cylon side suppressed remains to be seen; as does how their Cylon side may display itself should it come to the fore. It can only be a matter of time.

There wasn’t much progression with Starbuck, Anders and Gaeta and the rest on the ship searching for Earth (that’ll be a plot point focused on in later episodes, no doubt). But now Apollo is wrangling in politics, with Zarek baiting him to antagonise Laura, the issue about the secrecy of that mission, and the secrecy by which Laura and Adama conduct their decisions is being questioned.

Frankly, at this stage in the show, it’s an issue that doesn’t feel particularly relevant. But maybe it will prove to be so, somehow. So I watch and engage in it, generally wishing the action was elsewhere. Because elsewhere there was Cylon action going on!

I had been premature in my previous assumption from the last episode that the likes of Cavell and the other Cylon moulds had been destroyed. Caprica’s actions had been more of a warning shot – but it was one that backfired. Cavell apparently acceded to Six’s request to reinstate Deanna (how I cannot WAIT to hear what she has to say, if I ever will!) only to turn against her and attack her ship.

With the Resurrection Ship not nearby it seemed that Caprica Six and company, if they were blown apart, would be properly dead. Yet since we never witnessed the absolute destruction I can only hopefully presume total annihilation has not yet occurred. Either Six and co will get out to wage war another day, or she may download after all. Whatever happens, this is a rift between the Cylons that does not appear to be salvageable. It’s a fascinating crossroads they’ve managed to forge here, and quite where the Centurions will fall into this is an extra element of spice thrown into the mix.

4.2 Six Of One

Season 4, for me, is struggling to get going. Probably this is because the end of Season 3 left such an explosive and dramatic pile of plot threads and gasping revelations to be picked up the pace couldn’t be maintained. So it seems to me that this episode was designed explicitly to slow things right down so a new momentum could be gathered.

For example, on Galactica there was little in the way of progression from what we had already come to learn about from the previous episode. Apollo was still leaving his position as CAG, and this episode gave him an emotional send off from all the crew (who seem somewhat quick to forget his swift courtroom defence of Gaius, along with his father!). And then there was Starbuck who failed to convince Laura she was wrong, but slowly managed to win Adama round into giving her a shot.

So the episode ended with Starbuck, Helo, and potentially a small crew being given licence to take a ship and go searching for Earth. This is almost surely going to turn into a massive decision, and a crucial element in the future of the show. I’ll be watching that plot thread with great interest.

Gaius, meanwhile, was being slowly seduced by Tori on orders of Tigh and the other Final Four Cylons to try and ascertain if he was the last Cylon. Tori seemed to become convinced that she had found her man, but I am still not convinced. There was the startling moment for Gaius, however, when his own doppelganger mental apparition turned up to talk to him!

Now what the hell was all that about? The Six in his head has now been traded for himself!? Does this mean Caprica Six may start seeing visions of her own self? This does, potentially, create the idea that the manifestations Gaius, and later Six, have been plagued with since the beginning are an entity entirely distinct and separate somehow. Quite HOW I don’t know.

In a welcome break we also got treated to some Cylon action, with them deciding what to do about the Raiders thinking for themselves and withdrawing their attacks by their own command. Cavell, and two other models of Cylon, decided to have the Raiders lobotomised so they could no longer function by themselves. Caprica Six and others decided that was not acceptable, and so took matters into their own hands.

The ‘release’ of the Centurions to have free will may have opened the door to the potential extinction of all the Cylon moulds. If all of this has happened and will happen again, what perhaps needs to happen is that the Centurions destroy their Cylon masters (as they once turned on their human masters) to become the dominant race of the Cylon species. Maybe for a while the humans and the Cylons will live in harmony, and then there’s a war, and an armistice. . . And maybe the whole thing starts all over again. That’s my hunch guess at how the show could play out (as I believe this is the last series and so my mind cannot help but start concerning itself with potential conclusions).

It’s a heck of a guess, but I am sure that Centurion free will has to have a major say in the shape of the future for the Cylons. Now that at least three of the moulds have been destroyed (I assume all of the Cavells and the Black Guy and the PR Guy were destroyed otherwise killing that one group would serve no purpose, since they can be downloaded easily enough) perhaps Six and the Boomer and Leoben moulds will start making key decisions that will govern the fate of the Cylons and the human race and their combined destinies.

Well, you’d hope so!

4.1 He That Believeth In Me

Season 4 kicked off right in the thick of where it left off, with a walloping great space battle that clearly had a large chunk of change thrown at it. The opening title messages confirmed that Tigh, Tyrol, Anders and Tori were all Cylons – though the identity of the fifth Cylon was kept a secret, naturally!

Tigh delivered the first gasping shock, with the brief moment where he appeared to have shot Adama straight in the head. Whoa! But, ah, it was just a brief flight of fantasy, or perhaps a pre-programmed urge that he repressed enough to prevent from happening (precisely the way that Boomer didn’t). Meanwhile, Anders climbed into a cockpit and, with a Centurion recognising one of his own kind, apparently prompted the withdrawal of the Cylons completely.

It was never really explained why the Cylons chose that particular moment to stage an assault that appeared to have the single intent of destroying the entire fleet. Surely they could have done this at any time, given they appear to be consistently able to track the fleet wherever they go. How do they do that? Why have they waited?

The return of Starbuck, and the plight of Gaius amongst the cult that had taken in him, were fundamentally where the title of the episode was derived from. Gaius, under extreme circumstances, turned to faith and prayed to the one God to save the soul of the little boy. This wasn’t the first time he had apparently prayed, though the important distinction here was that he wasn’t praying for himself this time. The show blurred the lines here with the apparently genuine miraculous recovery of the child, and Six’s smug satisfaction and confidence that it would happen purely through Gaius’ belief. It’s harder to reconcile BSG as promoting the possibility of a Godless universe when miracles like this happen, apparently as predicted by the likes of Six.

Is there really a one true God, and is Gaius really a divine being? Has that been the shape of his destiny all along? (Or is he, indeed, the Final Cylon?)

Which brings me to Starbuck, who I am becoming more convinced isn’t the Final Cylon purely on the basis that there’s so much suspicion and highlighting of the idea that she could be. Maybe it’s a double bluff, but I tend to think the spotlight is on her to keep our eye off the real surprise.

But that doesn’t explain what the hell did happen to Starbuck! She returned after some periods of blacking out, having apparently been to Earth and retaining a vague memory of seeing Saturn (though she didn’t know it was so). To her she had been gone a few hours, hence how mystified she was by the news she had been gone for two months. How very Flight Of The Navigator!

And not only that, she had returned in a version of her ship that was brand new, without a scratch on it. It does point to that idea of ‘rebirth’ for Starbuck, ship as well, but how that actually works in real terms is not easy to explain away. Nor is her new affinity with the correct journey to Earth and the concern she had that Adama, by Laura’s command, was leading them in the wrong direction.

The conclusion to the episode was a cliffhanger – ‘to be continued’ – with Starbuck entering Laura’s bedroom and holding her at gunpoint. I am sure Starbuck won’t shoot her, but quite how she’s going to convince Laura to trust her and follow her course is going to be interesting. (And the question of whether Laura should, given the prophecy mentioned in Razor is an intriguing quandary.)

Razor

I understand that this one-off, feature length special aired in between Season 3 and 4. I didn’t even know it existed until I took to browsing around certain websites looking to see if I could buy BSG on DVD cheap and noticed this curiosity amongst the regular seasons. I believed that it was purely going to be about Battlestar Pegasus – about Cain and her crew and the story of what had happened to them during and after the first Cylon attack. I got that story, and a little more besides. . .

The story of Pegasus was told in flashback alongside a story that slotted, chronologically, not too long after Apollo had been granted Commander status of the ship. He made the decision to make the tough, hardline Cain-enthusiast Kendra his X-O and it was through her eyes did we see the history play out.

In truth, I was a little disappointed by watching the story of Cain’s decisions and the plight of Pegasus before it encountered Galactica. We had already been given the ‘beats’ of the story by hearing about the X-O who got shot, and the shooting of civilians when ships were looted of their assets. What I wanted was to really get inside the mind of Cain and understand how it was she had made those decisions in good conscience. Really, I didn’t get much past the idea I had of her previously: that she was a bitch with a single intent and will to get it done no matter what.

The biggest surprise regarding her was that she was a lesbian, and one that was getting it on with the Cylon that would come to be known as Caprica Six. Six’s treatment once she was discovered as Cylon, and the torture and rape that was no doubt encouraged by Cain, were no doubt fuelled by her own hurt and self-loathing about how she had been taken in and perhaps fallen in love with Six. (It also makes the fact that Six would be the one to shoot Cain dead a more salient, poetic act.)

Otherwise the events we had heard about worked out pretty much how they had been said they did, which left little sense of surprise and no real understanding of the motivation. The closest to rationalisation was when Cain was of the belief that Pegasus and her crew were completely alone and the only thing they had left was vengeance and anger to deliver some payback. That was fair enough when they thought they were alone, but why the shut off and murder of civilians once they were discovered?

The title ‘Razor’ was the justification, with Cain’s viewpoint being that they had to become like a blade that cuts, coldly, to survive. I understood what was being said, I just couldn’t believe in it from Cain and see where her head state was at. That was a shame really, because the story of Pegasus was one I was willing to get along for the ride with. Perhaps it was the fact that the story was told in flashback, and so drained of dramatic impetus, that prevented me from fully engaging in it.

There were two other notable elements which, perhaps, justified this being a special episode that was aired between Season 3 and 4 (otherwise there was no real point in the story of Apollo’s command and the mission Starbuck and co made, and how Kendra eventually sacrificed herself as repentance for what she had done).

The first notable element was a young Adama’s story during the first Cylon war, how he had come across a Cylon base that was conducting experiments on humans. It was there he found the first prototype hybrids that were being created. Some of the detail on all of that was kind of lost on me, in truth, but I got the impression that the Hybrids were the Cylons first attempts at what would eventually become the likes of Six and Boomer and the other moulds. These hybrids, however, appeared to have some special sense of the patterns of the universe, and how things that had gone before would happen again. . .

Which brings me to the second notable element, and easily the most juicy in light of the end of Season 3and what Kendra heard about Starbuck. The hybrid delivered some form of prophecy warning of how Starbuck would bring about the end of humanity and that she must not be followed. Quite what the meaning was all about was, naturally, kept kind of oblique.

My own personal take on it, and the direction I think that Season 4 is going to take, is that Starbuck will indeed bring about the end of humanity. And I also think she will bring about the end of Cylons. And what will happen is that the perfection of a Cylon-Human hybrid will be complete, and that will be the new race. . .

On saying that, it sounds like kind of too much of a bleak ending for all the various people we have come to know over the course of the Seasons of BSG, so maybe that’s something of a longshot!

So, in short, not a bad feature length piece that served as a diversion and a mild curiosity – but there was never any danger of it generating the immediacy and excitement of Battlestar Galactica’s regular episodes when firing on all cylinders. The story of Pegasus was mildly interesting, but there’s a better story we want to see play out!

3.20 Crossroads - Part 2

If it wasn’t for the last ten minutes, this would have been the most disappointing of Season finales. Thankfully, it had the last ten minutes. I think they’ve always known about the last ten minutes quite a few episodes ago, which kind of explains why the show feels like it’s been cooling its heels waiting around to smack the viewers around the face with it.

But I’ll get to that. First, the preceding 30 minutes of the show. . .

Yeah, yeah, it was all about Gaius and his trial. The thing is, the longer it went on the more certain I was that he was never going to be found guilty. The evidence supporting it all was just too weak, and then Apollo was cajoled into taking the stand against his father and speaking on Gaius’ behalf. It was a good speech, actually, addressing some of the issues of hypocrisy and warped justice that have peppered the show since the start. Battlestar Galactica has enjoyed those moments of moral dubiousness, and it was only right that they came back here to be picked apart and held up to the light.

So Gaius was free and, not soon after, apparently spirited away to his “new life” amongst some kind of cult people that considered him a form of God. The threads of that, no doubt, will be picked up in the next Season and potentially serve as a kind of bridge between human and Cylon.

As for the Cylons we know, not much happened with them. There was that bizarre shared dream between Laura, Athena and Caprica – but though the phenomena was presented it was never explored or explained. It was indicative of this finale as a whole: present a whole lot of crazy, inexplicable stuff and then leave it hanging in the balance.

Which brings me to that final ten minutes. Right around the time Caprica had her vision in the opera house of being with Gaius and the child and seeing the Final Five staring down at them, it occurred to me to count how many people were hearing the music on Galactica. There were four, I quickly realised, just before THAT scene.

It turns out the four of them – Tigh, Tyrol, Anders and Tori – were channelling a sitar version of All Along The Watchtower (I’ll come to that). Apparently it was intended to be that way, a trigger that would cause them to gather and awaken themselves to the truth: they were Cylons!

It was quite a moment. Coupled with the constant music, the Cylon attack and the power running out, it was pretty intense. I had previously earmarked Tigh as a potential Cylon after Deanna made her apology upon seeing the Final Five (I am guessing it was him she apologised too!), but I didn’t fully believe it, and I really didn’t figure the likes of Anders or Tyrol to be one (Tori, when she started behaving weirdly, I figured her as a potential, also).

Again, quite what it all means for the four of them and what they are supposed to do next hangs completely (and tantalisingly) in the balance. Tigh wants to go back to being the man he knows of himself, but I am fairly sure that all of them are going to be irresistibly drawn to their true selves and their true purpose. Earth, no doubt, figures heavily in this.

What I suppose is unique to this four is that they have been allowed to grow up, be born, in fact, as humans. Tigh, after all, has grown up with Adama. I was of the understanding that the Cylon ‘moulds’ don’t change and so could never have been children. But these other five are perhaps more ethereal, and exist in a spiritual sense at a fundamental level and only exist in humans. (Perhaps that’s the key to the Cylon’s eventual goal – to marry a Cylon spiritual form housed in the body of man. It’s the best explanation I’ve got up to now.)

And so we had the final reveal (as Apollo decided to ditch the lawyer life and get back in the Viper) of Starbuck piloting her ship. She looked the same. The ship looked the same. Except she was happy, and calming, and claimed she had been to Earth and everything was going to be all right.

And that’s all the explanation we got. The quickest conclusion to reach is that Starbuck must be the fifth and final Cylon, who realised the truth about herself upon death and has since seen ‘the light’ and knows how to lead the humans and the Cylon in that unification goal I spoke of earlier. That’s the quick and obvious – which makes me certain it’s not right.

The final shot was, as was almost expected at that moment, of Earth itself. Given that the song All Along The Watchtower existed, I have to figure that it must be a future Earth. That is if it is our Earth, and this set of us that existed in the 20th/21st century are a part of the BSG universe, I think we’re long gone now – but that song, in a sitar version – remains!

Ultimately then that last ten minutes were cracking stuff. I do feel like it also ran an extreme risk of being rather silly. I can imagine many people watching and throwing their hands up in the air, figuring that the show had finally just gone too daft all at once. The reveal of the four Cylons and a freshly-alive Starbuck and then the reveal of Earth coupled with familiar music was a mass crash of incongruous, surprising revelation not to be easily swallowed in one gulp.

I guess when this originally aired the fans of the show had a whole long wait between Season 3 and 4; time to absorb and analyse and get used to this explosion of new information. I don’t have that cushion. I’ve got the first half of Season 4 ready and waiting so I can get to see pretty soon how well all these balls that are hanging in the air get juggled around and managed to see if the show really has lost its marbles or if I’m in good hands for what, I believe, is the final Season.

3.19 Crossroads - Part 1

The trial of Baltar finally begins, and what would seem like a watertight prosecution against is turning out to be a flimsy story perpetrated by witnesses that are falling apart at the seams. “A storm is coming,” Helo gloomily stated as he heard they were just three jumps away from the nebula, and I’ve heard similar statements of doom before – and they always carry through to reveal something grim.

I’m expecting grim things.

For one thing we’ve got people seemingly cracking up out of nowhere. Tigh has started hearing music that he believes is coming from within the ship – but he’s not the only one who heard it as Anders apparently also did. And then there was Tori, the president's aide, who out of nowhere has started unravelling and shared that odd exchange with Anders.

I have absolutely no idea what she is all about, but it feels like something to be dreaded. Indeed, the whole business with Tigh and the weird music is an odd one. Is it a psychological metaphor, or is there some deeper significance to it? The closer to the nebulae they get, the more the music plays? Signs of civilisation? Was Tigh picking up music playing from Earth!?

And then there’s the president, whose cancer has come back and she has taken to the kamala again to ease her suffering (which explain the hallucinogenic dream that opened the episode featuring Laura and Athena pursuing Hera only to see Caprica scoop her up – I am sure that’s symbolic but I don’t quite know what of). What does it mean that the cancer came back? Another symptom of something going inherently wrong?

And then there’s Apollo, now turned fully against his father and against the military to pursue a life as a lawyer for Gaius. What the hell is that all about? If people weren’t behaving strangely and cracking up I would have found Adama’s dismissal of his son hard to believe – but at present it could simply be interpreted as another example of this angry malaise that appears to have descended on the people.

It was a good thing that all of this was happening amidst the trial, because the trial itself was rather dull, and continues to be rather dull. Try as they might it’s simply never going to be as exciting as they’d want it to be. The moment the raptor stayed behind and encountered a sudden appearance of Cylon base ships was far more exhilarating than any trial could be. Caprica Six said the base ships were tracking the fleet due to the tylium ship – and this has created a plan to use the tylium ship as a diversion. Perhaps it’s just the sense of unease getting to me, but that seems like a bad idea. What if the Cylons get to the fuel ship and destroy it? That leaves the fleet without fuel, stuck out there, and in a bad spot. . .

Potentially it could mean the Cylons get the jump on them on the journey to Earth and take the next step ahead of them. That’s if the Cylons don’t just blast the fleet to pieces. There’s a whole lot of things could go wrong, and this first-part episode did a good job in selling the potential that it very probably will. I’m expecting grim things indeed. . .

3.18 The Son Also Rises

The instant Laura announced that Gaius was going to be given a trial it had an air of importance about it. There was the sense that this trial was going to be made into a big deal. And ever since it was, I’ve been deeply not bothered about it. And here, on this episode that is the penultimate one before Season 3 goes into a two-part finish, I have seen nothing that convinces me this trial was a good idea.

This episode was all about Gaius being given a lawyer prepared to defend him. After one was assassinated, up stepped this odd, gravel-voice, shade-wearing, kleptomaniac Irishman and completely dragged the episode, and Battlestar Galactica, into one of the dullest places I’ve ever seen it.

An episode like this would be bad enough mid-season, but right towards the end as I am poised now it just seems like a dreadful mis-step. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is such a killer payoff going to result from this trial to make it worthwhile. . . But so far I am dubious. Aside from Starbuck’s end in the previous episode, the instalments lately have felt inert and lacking in purpose – as though the Season doesn’t know where to end and is so serving up episode after episode tackling different ideas just to fill in time before the finish.

Potentially, as this episode hinted, Apollo is going to be the driver to some scheme at the heart of Lampkin’s plans. The letter he sent to Gaius at the end, linked into the episode title, suggests that managing to convert Apollo against his father’s will is going to prove incredibly useful and powerful. But to what end, I don’t know. Perhaps my dislike of it is because the episode was dominated by this Lampkin guy who I just out and out didn’t believe in at all. Carrying a cat he didn’t like (that served only one purpose: to help Tyrol spot a bomb) and talking of deep-love between Caprica Six and Gaius, he just struck me as someone that was supposed to be all-knowing and profound about the human condition, but to me he sounded like he was full of shit.

If he turns out to be something to do with Final Five I am going to be very disappointed.

So the only reason I am now looking forward to the last two remaining episodes of the season is really because they are the last two remaining episodes, and Season Finales are generally good on any show, and on Battlestar Galactica they have been particularly good. Can I hope for a curveball, dramatic tone shift like Season 2? Do I dare hope for that much?

3.17 Maelstrom

Well well well. An odd episode in the sense that it probably delivered the most shocking surprise Battlestar Galactica has ever produced, and yet the way it was all set-up meant the apparent demise of Starbuck had an inevitability about it that emptied the eventual ‘surprise’ of any shock value.

Although, for sure, despite Starbuck flying headlong into a cloud storm and exploding I think it’s certain she isn’t gone for good. Quite where she has gone to is another matter, of course. Like that Aurora figurine she came across, Starbuck has potentially been reborn into the next phase of her destiny. And though that’s all very well and good in a poetic, metaphorical sense it doesn’t answer very much in the way of hard and fast reality.

Metaphor played a heavy part here, though. From the ‘maelstrom’ image that Starbuck had been drawing, it was appearing in her dreams, in melted candles and in the storm cloud that eventually consumed her. It wasn’t difficult to surmise that the darkness at the centre of the storm could also be portrayed as the darkness at the centre of Starbuck herself; her destructive nature and guilt over her mother being a swarming blackness at the heart of her that had been pulling her inside out like a black hole.

She faced her inner demons, made her peace with her mother and flew into the eye of the storm. That all works well, metaphorically.

What’s not so clear is what the hell was going on! Leoben had been in her dreams, constantly, and appeared in her extended flight of fantasy as her ship plunged into the eye of the storm. Yet at the end Starbuck knew that he wasn’t even really Leoben, so who the hell was he? And was there ever really a Cylon raider anywhere? It seemed like there wasn’t until close to the end when Apollo apparently got a glimpse of the raider that Starbuck had been pursuing.

That’s deeply confusing.

I have to try and corroborate some level of Cylon involvement in all that transpired, but I get the feeling this part of Starbuck, and the Cylon's destiny, goes back further than either of them. There was mention of that space between life and death, which is crucially what Deanna was in pursuit of when looking for the ‘final five’. Again, I get the impression the ‘final five Cylons’ and the five members of the 13th tribe are perhaps one and the same, and are a link between man and Cylon.

And, naturally, this leads to the idea that Starbuck may be one of these five. That’s perhaps where she has gone. . . How all that works, how a member of the Cylon five could have been a little girl that grew into Starbuck and had no real understanding of herself, well, that’s deeply involved stuff that I can’t really fathom out. I just have to have faith with Battlestar Galactica that it knows what it is doing.

I think it must do. I can’t imagine ‘killing off’ a character like Starbuck was one that was done lightly and without careful consideration. And I liked the way this episode tied in her first encounter with Leoben, and the details of her flat from Season 2, and made it feel like this episode, this fate, had always been coming. I have a feeling that I probably won’t get much of an answer about all of this in the remainder of this season, but perhaps the season will end with some glimpse as to where Starbuck went to next. . . Exciting stuff.

Although if she turns up in the next episode having miraculously survived somehow then I want my frakking money back!

3.16 Dirty Hands

This episode was, I think, another standalone edition in many senses, concerning itself with the working class and the ruling class as it exists in the fleet, and the sense that this status quo looks never to be broken. It was certainly an interesting one, I thought, but then this subject of underclasses and ruling classes is one that I am fascinated by anyway.

Gaius, from his prison cell, had been busy writing a book – a subterfuge piece about how the likes of Adama and other Capricans were set to forever rule, even in this new fleet society, and the peoples from other colonies would be forever bound into the roles and functions they were doing. Or, as Tyrol put it, his son would only ever be able to be an engineer because that’s what Tyrol would teach him and there would be no chance of him becoming anything else.

Tyrol was very much the focus here, harkening back to his role of union leader on New Caprica. Visiting the tylium processing ship, and the harsh conditions there, he instigated a strike that lead to his imprisonment. Adama was particularly harsh in his treatment of Tyrol, I thought. He threatened to take his wife, Callie, and have her shot first if Tyrol did not relent.

I know Adama has turned over a new leaf for himself to be a meaner chief, but that just seemed a step too far. Mind, it wasn’t clear if he was bluffing or not – but it didn’t seem like he was! (Odd that a man like Gaius is being allowed to have a trial, yet someone like Callie could be stood against a wall and shot without hesitation! I don’t think I buy it.)

Gaius and his impending trial looks as though it’s going to be at least one of the features of the season finale. Again, there seems to be a lack of impetus for the season at the moment, with another episode rolling by with little indication of forward momentum. I wonder if Gaius will get his trial. I wonder if he will be executed. I wonder if, after he is executed, he will wake up in a Cylon downloading tank. . . Maybe that’s the season finale!

It would seem that Gaius certainly struck a chord with people in the fleet, though, as his book got circulated and read in secret. This perhaps leads towards Zarek’s words about Gaius having a trial opening the door to a riot; but again I struggle to believe that people would have real sympathy for the man that lead them to New Caprica and was in apparent collaboration with the Cylons during their occupation.

So it was a good episode for Tyrol, but in the sense of progression and credulity I thought it struggled along more than it had to. But the sub-plot story of Celix, being turned down for pilot training only to be then awarded the status at the episode’s end was a delightful payoff. Until I know where this season is going, though, it’s hard to know if this was an episode that was more filler than anything else.

3.15 A Day In The Life

It feels like this season is taking a little bit of an introspective turn for a while, which seems kind of odd in terms of pacing and impetus. There’s now about five episodes to go before the thing finishes so I would have thought that whatever plot angles the season has been arching towards would be in position by now. . . Maybe they are and I just can’t see the alignment, but it sure doesn’t feel like there’s much in the way of momentum towards anything at this point.

Still, with this show anything can turn up at any time and produce a rapid acceleration of plot and excitement so it’s no big worry.

This episode focused on two aspects; Adama the man and Tyrol and Callie. The Tyrol and Callie situation was, I guess, a kind of metaphorical event for Adama in some respects. There they were doing a routine repair on the hull when there was a slight breach and they were locked into a room rapidly venting air. What started as a mild inconvenience escalated into a crisis.

During this time, Tyrol and Callie got the chance to re-evaluate their relationship that had been strained with work and their baby. Tyrol, in particular, got to realise exactly what was truly important to him in respect to raising his family and progressing from his old life to the new one.

The sequence where Tyrol and Callie had the doors blasted open and were ejected out into space to be caught by Apollo, Starbuck and Athena in a Raptor was a totally “Holy shit!” moment. I loved it. Although I was reasonably sure the two would survive, there was always the off-chance that Callie, perhaps, might not have made it. But they both did. Both live on, to live and learn.

Metaphorically, for Adama, the idea of venting out old ideas and blasting them out to be reinvigorated by a new awareness was kind of what his daydreams regarding his ex-wife on the day of their anniversary was all about. Tellingly, at the end, it seemed he hadn’t moved on much and knew he would do the same thing again next year. Still, he had at least recognised the need to show Apollo that he respected and loved him as a son and not just a member of his military.

Interesting that Adama’s imaginary conversations with his wife echoed the way Gaius and Caprica Six have both conjured ‘imaginary people’ to interact with exclusively. I think enough was done to try and ensure that it was clearly a flight of fancy, a daydream for him, rather than any hint that he might be some kind of Cylon.

Indeed, is it right that the Cylons do not age? That is their mould does not change? So for the likes of Cylon Boomer she was implanted with false memories before she knew she was a Cylon to ensure she believed she really was human? Which, therefore, suggests that anyone who has grown up with anyone else – and seen them grow up – cannot be a Cylon.

We’ve seen photographic evidence of a young Adama, and he watched Apollo grow up. So we know those two are fine. How long have Apollo and Starbuck known each other? Or Adama and Starbuck? Or Adama and Tigh? How long were Tigh and Ellen together? I only wonder all of this when considering who may yet be awaiting the reveal of being a Cylon all along – I am sure at least one major cast member will be!