Last week on Battlestar Galactica, Kara’s alliance with Leoben caused the crew of the Demetrius to stage a mutiny, leaving Helo in charge. Meanwhile, Baltar (James Callis) continued to spread the word of the One True God, and eventually earned Tyrol’s forgiveness after an impassioned speech about the difficulty of finding his destiny.
Many fans were upset that last week’s episode was filled with more talk than action. Those disgruntled nitpickers should be happier with tonight’s installment, which kicks off with one heck of a tense standoff.
The episode begins right where last week’s left off, with Helo (Tahmoh Penikett) taking control of the Demetrius. Kara says that she’ll make the jump herself, which forces Athena to put her in a headlock. With Kara now under arrest for acting completely crazy, Gaeta starts warming up the ship to jump back to the fleet. Sam shoots him in the leg to stop him, causing Gaeta to writhe in pain while Starbuck attends to him with a med kit.
Kara (Katee Sackhoff) admits that she never should have planned a jump for the Demetrius. Instead of taking the risk of transporting the entire crew to the Basestar, she’s going to take Sam, Leoben, and Athena there in a Raptor. Helo is reluctant to let Athena go, but Kara insists that she may need a Cylon translator on her journey. Athena is up for the mission, and Helo agrees to wait around for 15 hours for the team to return. After that, he’s jumping back to the fleet with or without the rest of the crew.
Tory helps a wig-free Roslin (Mary McDonnell) pack up some of her things, and Laura asks her to keep a keen eye on whatever comes across her desk in the next few days. Putting nutty Tory in charge of anything is a very bad idea, but unfortunately Roslin doesn’t know that.
The Raptor crew takes off from the Demetrius and starts their journey to the Basestar. Kara lets Leoben know that he’s dying first if it ends up being a trap. After the jump, the Raptor moves through a floating graveyard of dead Cylon vessels — victims of the civil war. Kara hears music playing in her head, which may or may not prove that she’s a Cylon. She then sees the comet that’s straight out of her painting, which proves that she’s on the right track.
After the ship is suddenly attacked, the crew ends up aboard the Basestar. Athena (Grace Park) runs into a group of number eights outside the ship. They respect her for teaching them that they don’t have to be slaves to their programming, and they’d like her to help stage a mutiny against the sixes. Athena isn’t particularly fond of her fellow models, so she basically tells them to frak off.
Leoben talks to Natalie (Tricia Helfer) and demands that Kara get to see the Hybrid. She’ll allow it, but only if they help to give the Basestar jump capability, which it lost during the last civil war attack. Fixing the jump drive will involve taking the Hybrid offline for a few moments, which is a dangerous procedure.
Another Number Six recognizes one of the red shirts from the Raptor. She was on New Caprica, and while she was there she took great pleasure in killing Six. The Cylon repays her by murdering her, which forces Sam to put a gun to her head. Kara talks him out of killing her, but with a sweet kiss and a nice goodbye, Natalie pulls the trigger for him. With no resurrection ship nearby, the six is just as dead as the red shirt.
There are a lot of medical problems to go around in this episode. Gaeta (Alessandro Juliani) is worried that Doc Cottle is going to have to amputate is leg, and he makes Helo promise that such a thing won’t happen. Meanwhile, Roslin meets a dying patient while undergoing treatment in sick bay. She bonds a bit with the woman, but things take a turn for the morbid when the patient tells Roslin that her illness will get much, much worse. However, she also says that she once had a near-death experience and saw her entire family waiting for her. She thinks that death is nothing to be afraid of.
It’s time for a chat with the Cylon Hybrid. Or, more accurately, it’s time for the Hybrid to ramble while Starbuck tries to pull some meaning out of her words. Just as number eight is about to take the Hybrid offline, the thing freaks out and starts screaming. A Centurion shoots the number eight, and once the blood pours into the Hybrid’s pool she starts making some sense. She tells Kara that the three will give her the five that come from the home of the thirteenth. She also passes on that message about Kara being the harbinger of the apocalypse, which we first heard in Razor.
As the number eight lies dying on the floor, she reaches out to Athena for comfort. Athena isn’t up for getting all warm and fuzzy, so Sam does the comforting instead. Natalie believes that she’s decoded the Hybrid’s message: D’Anna can recognize the final five Cylons, and those five can lead them to the home of the thirteenth tribe, which is Earth. I hope it’s finally time to unbox Lucy Lawless.
Fifteen hours have now passed, and that means that it’s time for Helo to jump back to the fleet. He warms up the FTL drive, but three seconds before the jump is to be executed the Cylon Basestar appears out of nowhere. They can all go home together, and now they know the next step to take on the way to Earth. Hopefully Gaeta’s rotting leg won’t have to be chopped off, or he might have even more trouble finding a nice guy to settle down with.
Roslin has a dream that’s exactly like the one her fellow cancer patient told her about. She’s on a boat and sees her dead family members waiting for her on the shore. This makes her wonder if all of Baltar’s talk about a higher power may have some merit. As the episode comes to a close, Roslin tells Adama (Edward James Olmos) about the dream and assures him that they’ll get to Earth.
– Don Williams, BuddyTV Staff Writer
(Image courtesy of the Sci Fi Channel)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
