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!

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!