Five-Legged Iguana

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Season 4 Episode 2
“Six of One”
Written by Michael Angeli
Directed by Anthony Hemingway
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Twelve Cylon models
Seven are known
Four live in secret
One will be revealed

“They will not harm their own. End of line. Limiting diffusions to two dimensions increases the number of evolutionary jumps within the species. Rise and measure the Temple of the Five. Transformation is the goal. They will not harm their own.”
-- The Hybrid

Man, this was a difficult episode to sit through, and I imagine it’ll only get tougher as we get further into this final season.

A lot of this episode’s moving bits came from the “Apollo musters out” subplot, as he takes his leave of the cockpit and prepares to take that government position (Caprica’s representative on the Quorum of Twelve).
There’s a rowdy pilot’s party, with toasts aplenty, as well as a full parade dress event on the flight deck, where we have a great Moment between Lee and Dualla (“Looks like you get the house,” he says, as he prepares to leave Galactica).
I only wish he’d had a Moment with the President, and truly hope that ended up as a deleted scene which will find its way onto DVD…
There’s even Lee’s solitary Moment in the Briefing Room, where snatches and echoes of the past ring out.
Hey, sorry for all the Season 3 trash talk, dude. You’re a decent enough guy, when your head’s on straight…

Then there’s the Secret Cylon subplot, which sees Toasters Anonymous trying to divine who the Fifth is, and in attempting to get at that truth, they enlist Tory to seduce Baltar, who may know something, given his presence at the Temple on the Algae Planet, and his… errrr… dealings with D’Anna.
And though Tigh tells Tory, You don’t have to end up on your back, she does so anyway… while crying…
Sigh.
Ah, well. Baltar’s presence in this though makes this overlap with the Baltar the Holy subplot, which as I’ve said before, I’m still iffy about, so I’ll wait and see…
Oh, and apparently, Baltar now has a Head Baltar. Gods, the man is certifiable…

Starbuck’s Resurrection, meanwhile, also affords Katee Sackhoff some great scenes, one of which is her face-off with the President, and her subsequent arrest, where it was truly startling to see Kara in a way she’s never been before.
Good stuff.
Within this subplot, there’s also a fantastic scene between Adama and Roslin, as they come to loggerheads about Kara: Roslin is still convinced it’s some kind of trap; Adama is arguing for, What if she’s telling the truth?
Miracles and faith (and Adama’s atheism) come into the conversation, certain hard and harsh things are said (Adama certainly is a mean drunk), and the President’s hair starts falling out.
Graaaah!!! This episode slays me.
Of course, it takes them all of this episode before Adama comes to the conclusion I posited last time: he gives Starbuck a sewage treatment ship (the Demetrius) and she’s to go off with a crew and find Earth. (At this point, I’m not sure if Adama meant that Helo would accompany Kara, so I’ll just have to wait till next episode to see if Karl is along for the smelly ride.)

Meanwhile, over on the Cylon front, the Sixes, Eights, and Twos sense what the Raiders determined: that the Final Five are in the fleet.
The Ones will hear no such nonsense. As far as Cavil and the rest of the Ones are concerned, the Raiders aren’t fulfilling their programming, and need to be fixed. This proposed lobotomy of the Raiders becomes the bone of contention within the ranks of the Cylons.
With the Fours and Fives on the Ones’ side, the issue is deadlocked, until Boomer makes the unprecedented move of voting against all the other Eights and coming down on the “lobotomize the damn Raiders” side.
Backed into a corner and convinced the sentience of the Raiders, along with the Final Fives’ presence (and Boomer’s decision as well) means there’s some kind of massive change taking place, a Six called “Natalie” takes it upon herself to remove the inhibitor which suppresses higher functions in the Centurions.
And when the Centurions are told that the Raiders have been sentenced to lobotomies, they side with Natalie and voila, Cylon coup d’etat.

It’s here, in this subplot, where a lot of the heady stuff lies: even as Four of the Final Five are allowed their epiphanies and awakened to their true natures, the Cylon race is experiencing some kind of evolutionary surge.
Sentience—and the free will that comes along with it—becomes an issue which fractures the union of the race.
It’s interesting that the Cylons are still continually progressing to becoming, for lack of better terms, more human. And with all that Hybrid prattle about not harming their own, could this be where BSG is headed?
Some ultimate union of both species, a mutual recognition that they are all one and the same after all, equal, in the eyes of God/the gods?

COUNTDOWN: 18.

(Images courtesy of SCIFI Channel and twitchfilm.net.)