BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Season 4 Episode 1
“He That Believeth in Me”
Written by David Weddle & Bradley Thompson
Directed by Michael Rymer
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

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

It’s been just over a year since that shocking use of “All Along The Watchtower” and the shattering reveal that the Chief, Tigh, Sam, and (to a far lesser degree of “shattering”; “vaguely surprising”?) Tory, were four of the Final Five.
Oh, and Starbuck’s return from the (apparent) dead and her claim that she’d just found Earth…
After that year-long wait, we’re rewarded with the Season 4 opener, which is basically broken down into three main subplots: how the four newly revealed Cylons are reacting to their epiphany; the repercussions of Starbuck’s return; and Baltar’s finding himself at the centre of some loony cult.
It’s that last one that I’m still kind of iffy about, but let’s cover the first two first.

The Secret Cylons.
That scene where the four are assembled and make an unspoken pact that should any of them sense any of the others (or themselves) about to turn bad, that the solution would be the gun was both very potent—reinforcing Tigh’s climactic Season 3 pronouncement that he is the man he has always believed himself to be and not some damn toaster—and vaguely amusing (in a very nice way, mind you), as they didn’t seem to be anything so much as a Cylon support group, Toasters Anonymous, if you will.
There were some powerful scenes in this subplot: Tigh’s vision/delusion/anxiety of shooting Adama while “Watchtower” played maddeningly in the background; Sam’s reluctance to get into his Viper and the Chief’s impromptu pep talk for him.
And then there were all the little looks, the tiny asides, and of course that Raider scanning Sam, and subsequently bugging out, taking the entire Cylon fleet with it…
(Did it just scan Sam, or could it have downloaded some secret message or code through Sam’s retina, right into his toaster brain? Or am I falling for the same paranoia that may—or may not—be plaguing our Secret Cylons?)
I love this subplot!

Starbuck’s Resurrection.
The polarization caused by Kara’s return is amazing. Most, of course, think it’s all some sort of dirty toaster trick.
Kara’s back after two months (she believes it’s only been about 6 hours) with some muddled story about finding Earth (she can’t remember how she got to Earth, nor how she got back to the fleet, but she does have some pretty pictures to corroborate her story), in a ship that looks impossibly pristine, as if it just rolled off the assembly line, with a totally blank nav comp (so we conveniently can’t determine where the ship has just been).
This subplot is particularly potent when we witness the different reactions the characters have towards Kara’s return: father and son Adamas want to believe it really is Kara (and Lee is more inclined to accept this), President Roslin thinks it’s all a Cylon deception and insists on keeping Kara under watchful guard, while continuing to follow the course apparently dictated by the Eye of Jupiter.
The thing is though, they seem to be jumping farther away from Earth, and Kara warns that if they keep on getting farther from Earth, that she’ll never be able to “feel” her way back to it.
Which all leads to the episode’s truly evil cliffhanger, as Kara determines she needs to talk to the President, so she overpowers her guards and cold cocks Sam, makes her way to Adama’s quarters (where the President is staying while she’s getting her cancer treatments), and points a gun at the groggy (and we can assume, weak and medicated) Roslin…
We also get some great moments in this subplot, with Kara putting forward the theory that she’s some sort of Starbuck clone created by the Cylons (they did steal her eggs, right?), and Sam trying to convince her that, Hey, if you were, I’d still love you, and Kara going, Well, you’re better than me, ‘cause you know, if I ever found out you were a Cylon, I’d shoot you in the head.
There’s also a great Adama family moment as Bill offers Lee’s wings back, but Lee says he thinks he can do some more good in the government as opposed to the cockpit. I just so wanted Adama to say he was proud of his son right at that moment (yes, despite all my trash talk about Apollo last season, I’m a proven sucker for good father and son moments), whatever he chose to do, but of course, ol’ StoneFace doesn’t give any indication of that at all…
Oh, and Roslin visits Caprica Six, wanting to know if she thinks Kara is one of the Final Five; Caprica Six tells her, The Five are near. I can sense them.
Ohhh, yeah!
(I do have one gripe though about this subplot: if we’re really in serious doubt about Starbuck and we don’t want to endanger the fleet without any substantive proof that the Earth she’s ready to lead us to isn’t some sort of Cylon trap, then why don’t we just let her go off alone on her merry way, then get in touch with us once she’s found Earth again? Once that happens, when she’s actually on a very real world that could or could not be Earth, then we can decide whether we risk the “it could be a trap” scenario.)

Baltar the Holy.
So he’s spirited off by some loony (and conveniently enough, predominantly female) cult, being kept in some unused compartment on Galactica, and though I think I can scent where this plot thread could eventually lead (Baltar the Martyr, anyone? Dude does need to redeem himself, after all), what troubles me in this episode is that initial moment of selflessness as he prays for God to take his life instead of the boy dying of viral encephalitis.
That instance of self-sacrifice honestly seemed to come out of the blue for me.
Of course, once that takes place, it seems pretty clear that the boy will recover, and, lo and behold, a miracle! Granted though that this opens the way for Baltar to begin to preach the Cylon’s brand of monotheism to this cult seemingly disenchanted with the Colonies’ gods, so I’m willing to cut this one some slack, to see how this works itself out.
There is also one particularly potent scene, as Baltar is given a much-needed shave in the head, where he and his cultist helper, Paulla (Lara Gilchrist, who voiced Sue Storm on the animated Fantastic Four!) are accosted by a man whose little boy died on New Caprica.
The bereaved father is about to slit Baltar’s throat while his friend is choking Paulla to death, when the woman breaks free and goes totally postal on the two attackers, clubbing both of them bloody with a pipe. Messy.
Like I said though, I need to see some more of where this is going for me to truly say whether I’m crazy about it or not.

At any rate, fantastic episode, and it’s just brilliant to see the show again.
It truly is one of the bigger crimes that BSG’s cast has not been recognized by the award-giving bodies. I mean, people. This is one of the best ensembles working on TV at the moment (and, ever, for that matter), in one of the best shows on TV at the moment (and, ever, for that matter).
And I know that isn’t hyperbole.

The fact that this is the final season has also made each and every remaining moment rarefied, so, as with Lost, I’ll be instituting this here as well…

COUNTDOWN: 19.

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

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Season 3 Episode 20 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Crossroads, Part 2”

“`There must be some way out of here,’ said the joker to the thief…”

Oh, man, what a way to end the season and leave us for at least nine months…
After an impassioned testimony by Lee (which almost got me convinced), Baltar gets a Not Guilty, and is spirited off by some mystery females. (Presumably, these are the people who think he’s some sort of divinity… Either that, or some people pissed off he didn’t get blasted out of an airlock and are about to go all Death and the Maiden on him.)

“`There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief…’”

Then, four of the Final Five are revealed, as is the sinister reason for that song Tigh and Sam and Tory were hearing last episode (which turns out to be Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”!).
Slyly, they saved the Chief for this episode.
Man, I’m really sad that the Chief is a skin job (making all of that anxiety he felt after the whole “Boomer is a toaster” thing horrifyingly justified). And, hey! That means his rugrat with Cally’s a hybrid. Well, at least Hera’s got someone to play with now. And if they get it on when they grow up…
I’m upset about the Chief. That doesn’t surprise me. What does, is my reaction to Tigh.
As I’ve said ‘round these parts before, I’ve never been a big Tigh fan, but what he said, to the other three, about wanting to be the man Saul Tigh is, and getting out there to do his job, that was moving, and as much as I think he can be a bull-headed pig sometimes (now, he’s a bull-headed toaster pig!), the level of respect I have for him has risen. Of course, ironically, now I have to keep a closer eye on him, now that his true nature has been uncovered.*
Maybe though, this is exactly what Tigh needs to pull himself together: the knowledge that he needs to deny his Cylon nature (just as Caprica Sharon/Athena has done). Here’s hoping.
Funny, for a character I never really took a shine to before (and who was behind the whole suicide bomber thing), Tigh made this stunning, gradual turn-around in my eyes, over the course of this season. Fantastic job, guys, making me give a frak about a character I once couldn’t have cared less about (and at some points, even hated).
And, before I leave the subject of Tigh, could he have been the Cylon D’Anna apologized to in “Rapture “? (They did, after all, torture and put out one of his eyes back on New Caprica…) Or was she apologizing to the still unknown Fifth Cylon?**

“`No reason to get excited,’ the thief, he kindly spoke,
`There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.’”

Aaaaand… voila, Starbuck’s apparently back, claiming to know the way to San Jose (which is on Earth, right?).
Either that, or Lee, not having fully purged himself of his guilt on the witness stand, was so distraught he took some chamalla extract off-camera and was hallucinating like mad.
From CAG to junkie. Them’s the breaks.

“Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.”

Frak, this may not have the balls to the wall immediacy of Season 2’s cliffhanger, but this one left us with so much dizzying potential and a frakload of anticipation.
Ooohhh…

* Actually, there’s so much irony here, it’s not even funny.
It’s ironic, given the Chief’s dalliance with Boomer and the fact that his job demands a certain affinity with machines to begin with, and it’s ironic given Starbuck’s resistance to Leoben’s pervy and twisted idea of “Happy Families,” when all long, she’d fallen in love and married a toaster! (Not to mention campaigning really hard to get back to Caprica to save Sam’s toaster a$$.)
I so cannot wait for the other characters to discover who’s a naughty toaster…
(Of course, given that Starbuck got whisked off to see “… the space between life and death,” she may just have already seen who the Final Five Cylons are, and thus, already know that her dear hubby is a skin job. Good luck, Sammy boy…)

** And considering the auditory switch for the sleepers turns out to be “All Along the Watchtower,” maybe Bob Dylan’s the Fifth Cylon!!!

(Quotes in italics from Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.”)

Parting shot: For the lyrics to “All Along the Watchtower,” go to bobdylan.com. And for a great blow by blow account of how Bear McCreary approached the song, go to Bear’s Battlestar Galactica Blog.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Season 3 Episode 19 (WARNING:SPOILERS)
“Crossroads, Part 1”

As if to waste no time getting to Baltar’s trial, we get no opening credits sequence this time out (missed the Gayatri Mantra), and let me tell you, the trial gets ugly.
I’ve never been a part of the Col. Tigh fan club, but you’d have to be totally unfeeling not to think what went down between Tigh and Ellen back on New Caprica was frakking heartbreaking.
And all that stuff comes out.
On the witness stand.
I mean, to have to admit under oath that you killed your wife because you were the leader of the resistance and she was a collaborator. That’s bad enough. But to know (and further admit) that she did it because she truly loved you and was forced into doing it to keep you out of jail…
I may not really like Tigh, but that’s tough. (And that’s the understatement of the century.)
In a fleet of walking wounded, Tigh is hemorrhaging. He returned from New Caprica not so much a different person, but as a Tigh that was broken somehow (something that he shared with, ironically enough, Starbuck).
And now the poor guy’s deep in his cups and hearing a damned song! It’s a scary, unsettling sight, and seeing him with that mad, sick gleam in his remaining eye at episode’s end was truly disturbing.
And apparently, Sam’s hearing the same song too! And what is up with Tory?
Meanwhile, the Adamas continue to tear into each other like mad dogs, and Apollo has crossed the line from flawed hero to a$$hole.
To cross-examine the President the way he did, to see him hurt her the way he did, all in the name of his beloved system…
A$$hole.
It was one of those Pyrrhic victories to see his face when he gets shafted by hearing Roslin tell him exactly why she was taking the chamalla extract again. Take that, a$$hole!
And power to Dee! It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a real person there, and her packing it in had, again, Pyrrhus written all over it. She needed to do that, not just for herself, but to prove something to Lee too. Of course, something tells me that could very well have been the straw that breaks Lee the Idiot Camel’s back…
And crap. Let’s get back to Roslin.
Crap.
I love Mary McDonnell. She was one of the biggest draws for me to sit down and watch the BSG mini-series. There’s this sensitivity there that’s always a joy to watch onscreen (and she was marvelous in Donnie Darko). So I sat down to watch the mini-series largely because she was in the cast, and I haven’t looked back.
Understandably, when they saved her from the cancer, I was massively relieved. And now it’s…
Crap.
This sucks. (There better be some way to get around that whole prophecy thing about Roslin not living to see the Promised Land…)
And whilst we’re talking religion, Baltar is being treated by some as divinity. He has been looking very Jesus-y lately… Of course, this is also the sleazoid who not only slept with the enemy, but collaborated with them as well, right?
Oh, and have I mentioned? The Cylons have returned! Granted, the fleet is trying to shake the toasters off their tail, but Helo does the whole doomsayer thing and refers not-so-cryptically to “a storm coming.”
We can see where this is going, right?
Season end cliffhanger, people…

(Image courtesy of spacecast.com.)

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Season 3 Episode 18 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“The Son Also Rises”

The loss of Starbuck colours the proceedings of this episode,* which establishes the lawyer for Baltar’s defense, the unfortunately named Romo Lampkin (Mark A. Sheppard, 24 Day 5), a man who was apparently taught by Joseph Adama; a man who is all too ready to lie, filch, and manipulate to suit his own ends.
Initially put off by his manner, it wasn’t until the hospital bed scene that I found the interesting character that was there. (And episode’s end confirmed that. This is a new, dangerous variable that needs to be watched, constantly.)
Starbuck’s loss understandably affects Sam (who has a great scene on a Viper), as well as the Adamas, the tension between father and son flaring anew. Conceivably, if circumstances were closer to normal for Apollo, he might have been more aware of the subtler deceptions and manipulations taking place, but he’s in mourning, so there you go.
The stage is thus set for Baltar’s trial, with the Old Man as part of the Tribunal, and Lee assisting in Baltar’s defense.
And still no sign of the Cylons. (Hint hint.)

* I’m honestly surprised at how shocked I was at the absence of Katee Sackhoff from the opening credits. Yes, I know she’s supposed to be dead, but as per my review of last week’s episode, I really do think it’s one of those cases of temporary death…

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Season 3 Episode 17 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Maelstrom”

So Starbuck has gone off to fulfill her destiny. Of course, I sincerely doubt her destiny was to get crumpled up like a cheap soda can by extreme pressure.
Like that apparently divine presence which appeared to Kara as the sick psycho puppy Leoben said, she’s about “… to discover what hovers in the space between life and death,” that place that D’Anna kept obsessing about, where she saw the faces of the Final Five.
I’ve got to believe that Starbuck will be back (but how they’re going to explain her survival of that horrific explosion… that’s gonna take some miraculous plotting), with, hopefully, more clues to finding Earth, or, dare I hope, the identities of the Final Five.
We also get to see inside Kara’s tumultuous relationship with her physically abusive mother (Dorothy Lyman), who was really only preparing her daughter for this singular moment in time. Of course, all that managed to produce was a very angry, self-destructive personality.
So the Galactica loses another of its own and Admiral Adama gets medieval on his model ship (one of those disturbing, startling displays of explosive emotion from Edward James Olmos, the kind where you just want to stay frozen, lest he see you and that anger gets directed at you).
And next week, it looks like Baltar’s finally getting his trial. Oh goody!
But we also haven’t really seen the Cylons since Athena escaped the baseship with Hera and Caprica Six in tow some five episodes back. Methinks a visit from the toasters and skin jobs is coming, as is the season finale, so…
Not too hard to do the math there…