io9
For those of us who have gotten sick of scientist-cum-messiah Baltar's sermonizing, Friday's episode of Battlestar Galactica, "Faith," was a welcome relief. Instead of watching a sweaty dude in a shiny robe preach to a room full of Lilith Fair lady ninjas, we got to watch an asskicking Starbuck court danger and cylons. Plus there were views of the cylon Base Ships that we've never seen before — and that looked seriously awesome. For BSG fans who like the whole character development thing, there was plenty of that too. A lot of the humans (and cylons) are having to face their mortality for the first time. And it's not always pretty.
Face-slamming excitement initiates the episode: Starbuck has a slitty-eyed glaring contest with Helo as he leads a mutiny on the Demetrius and tries to throw her in the brig. She's totally pissed off and Athena grabs her in a headlock while Helo yells "stand down!" a lot. More stand-downs ensue as Starbuck's cylon honey Anders goes nuts, aiming his gun at random people and demanding that Starbuck be reinstated as captain. Helo is yelling at Gaeta to jump the ship to its rendezvous with the Galactica, and Anders is yelling at him to stop, and Starbuck is freaking out, and in the craziness Anders shoots Gaeta right in the leg.
At that moment, Starbuck seems to snap out of crazy art girl mode, quickly patching Gaeta's wound and telling Helo that he was right. The Demetrius shouldn't go chasing after Leoben's promised Base Ship and cylon allies. Instead, Starbuck should take a Raptor, pack it with Leoben's cylon ass, and check out the Base Ship story for herself. A lot of "no ways" and "stand downs" later, Starbuck has an away team: Athena to be cylon interpreter, Leoben, Anders because he's Starbuck's arm candy, and a hot throwaway cast member who you know is going to be dispensable as soon as she says Starbuck as been "kicking ass all along." The Demetrius is going to wait for them for 15 hours, while Gaeta's leg goes to shit, before jumping to the Galactica rendezvous.
Oh poor throwaway cast member with the cute haircut, we will sorely miss you because as soon as the Raptor lands on board the least-crippled Base Ship, you die. But before we get to the death orgy, though, let's assess the coolness factor of seeing the horrible remains of the cylon civil war. As soon as Starbuck and Co. jump to Leoben's coordinates and tune out Leoben's inane commentary ("Can you feel the excitement? God is making my cylon nutsacs tingle!"), they are in the middle of carnage.
This really is a great scene, as the Raptor moves slowly through the charred remains of the Base Ships, their broken limbs glowing red like ripped muscles or burst blood veins. We know the Raiders are organic, but this is the first time we've seen the biological side of Base Ships. Does that mean the Base Ships are potentially autonomous beings like the Raiders are? Turns out the whole battle scene is what Starbuck has been painting in her cabin all this time, and the giant flaming comet she drew was actually the Base Ship they're about to rendezvous with. Whoa, religious epiphany, destiny, all that crap. Much oohhing from Leoben. Luckily nobody sees a giant electric Buddha like in Matrix Revolutions.
When the Raptor lands in the Base Ship from Starbuck's paintings, we get more of the organic creepy-coolness: the ship bay closes up with a slimy thud, red sinews and muscles blocking vacuum rather than a metal bay door. And more yuck awaits. As the away team steps out of the Raptor, Athena is immediately met with a bunch of Sharons in matching baby-blue sweater sets (scary!) who all want her to help them rebel against the Sixes. They start pushing Athena to teach them free will because Six is making bad decisions and "she must be stopped." Weirdly, Athena rejects their requests, telling them they should pick a side and stay with it, not leave at the first sign of trouble. Huh? Didn't Athena herself chuck her cylon sisters when the going got rough and she got busy with Helo? Whatever. Now she's all about the "stick with your sisters" thing.
After a tense meeting with the Sixes and Leobens, where one Six says something pretty funny about how all the Leoben models are obsessed with Starbuck, the alliance is secured. The cylons will help the humans, and in return the humans will help the Base Ship get its FTL drives back in order. They'll all go to Earth together. But first, Starbuck needs to fulfill that destiny that Leoben keeps whining about by visiting the cylon Hybrid who controls the Base Ship. That's the crazy, babbling lady who lives in goo and basically is a kind of avatar of the Base Ship's consciousness — or maybe the pilot of the Base Ship, or its symbiote.
But before the Hybrid tells us the future and reveals the plot arc of the rest of the season, Six kills the hot expendable crew member. Turns out hottie is a former member of the resistance on Caprica, and she killed that particular Six model in an incredibly horrible way in a septic tank. When the Six mentions her murder to expendable hottie, unfortunately hottie says something kind of insensitive, like "I'd do it again." So Six beats the shit out of her and kills her. Then Anders goes crazy and wants to kill the Six, and Starbuck is like "stand down!" and it looks like the alliance will be off until another Six comes in and talks to the murdering Six, telling her stuff like, "I thought we'd worked through this." Then she kisses the other Six and pulls the trigger on the gun Anders has aimed at her head. Whoa! So two things: One, holy crap. And two, apparently cylons can be extremely traumatized by being killed. Which makes sense.
The Starbuck-Hybrid meeting scene is nearly as cool as the tour of the cylon combat zone, and for some of the same reasons. Not only does the meeting advance the plot and give us more hints about the human-cylon alliance to come, but it also gives us a sharper understanding of how the cylon technology works. Starbuck is visiting the Hybrid because Leoben has told her it can reveal her true mission or path or whatever. But the complement of cylons are there because they have to take the Hybrid offline so the Raptor can reboot their FTL.
When everybody comes to the Hybrid's chamber, the Hybrid's babble makes more sense than last time we visited her: a lot of what she's saying are clearly commands to the ship, or maybe just logs of processes happening on the ship. She mentions the FTL failure several times, and then says repeatedly that "the children of the one reborn shall find their own country." I'm guessing Starbuck is the "one reborn." Then things get seriously awesome because they unplug the Hybrid and she totally freaks out, screaming in this eerie voice and seemingly inducing a Centurion to shoot one of the Sharons. (Remember, they're out of range of a Resurrection Ship, so death is for keeps.) As the Sharon dies, her blood staining the Hybrid's goo, Starbuck grabs the Hybrid and yells "What the frack?" or something like that.
And suddenly the Hybrid focuses totally on Starbuck, saying, "You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace." Then she goes kind of J.J. Abrams on our asses, and adds, "The missing three will give you the five who come from the home of thirteenth." Six and Starbuck quickly figure out that this means they need to reanimate D'Anna, the de-activated cylon model 3, who has seen the faces of the final 5 cylons, who apparently know about the "home of the thirteenth tribe," AKA Earth. So they zoom off to rendezvous with the Demetrius, and then head onward to resurrect D'Anna (damn I missed Xena, so thanks for that).
Meanwhile, as all this coolness has been going on, Roslin is confronting her mortality and starting to see why Baltar's message is so seductive. As she bonds with another cancer patient in the hospital who likes Baltar's message, she begins to realize that Baltar has captured a true desire in the fleet for answers to their spiritual agony in the wake of the cylon attacks. Roslin even has a vision of heaven as Baltar describes it: an otherworldly place full of her dead family, which she can reach on a ship that travels across the water.
Oh, and by the way, Roslin has one scene where she's handing off power to Foster while she undergoes her final treatments which is awesome for two reasons. First, Roslin doesn't have her wig on — she's totally bald. And she looks frakkin gorgeous. Brief moment of wow. And of course she's handing over all her power to Foster, which is a brief moment of the other kind of wow. Not so good.
By the end of the episode, Roslin is so taken with her dream of heaven and her reevaluation of Baltar that she visits Adama in his quarters and tells him she's starting to believe in what Adama calls "Baltar's horse manure." Adama is weirded out, but listens to Roslin then leans into kissing-range of her face and says that she's made him have faith in their trip to Earth. But they don't kiss. Damn.
Previews for next week look seriously exciting, though: Athena and Helo's hybrid baby Hera has started drawing scary kid drawings full of "66666" and pictures of blonde ladies. Has she become Damien? Or is she just yearning for Six the cylon? Tune in next week to find out!
Comments
I guess we got our wish of a more badass Starbuck back.
Also the baseship jumping back on top of the Demetrius was el neato.
I gotta say I disagree. I find the character motivations pretty crappy this season. Starbuck is all vision-crazy, then flips to being suddenly concerned, then suddenly crazy again?
And the rest of the crew decide "oh, it's okay to risk Gaeda's LEG because Starbuck wants to rub bumpies with the robots who exterminated humanity"?
And Athena, who has been opposed to Starbuck's crazy behavior sudden volunteers to go along? WTF?
Seems to contrived, but I guess that's just me.
I'm kind of shocked you didn't mention that whole scene with Anders about to put his hand in the Cylon command goop. most tense ten seconds of the episode for me. Wouldn't that have been awesome?
Didn't Baltar's-head-Six tell Baltar that Sharon's baby was really their baby? not sure how that works out, but i distinctly remember that being said in the first season.
Also: Bald wig was hot, but it freaked me out cuz her head looked too huge.
Couple of key problems with this episode: 1) When Anders hears them discuss that the final 5 must know the way to Earth, he makes a face like "No I don't!" So for that prophecy to come true all 5 must have to meet and make the red eyes at one another, or something. 2) Apparently they don't have bandages in space, because by the end of the episode Gata is covered in blood. So again they are making bad medical care a major plot point (just like when they ran out of antibiotics on new Caprica, so lame). 3) When they say "the base ship is ours" they neglect to mention that it is also "filled with a bunch of sixes that have lost it and don't really want an alliance". So we can look forward to the pointless scene next week where the sixes argue with the colonials, and then in the end agree that an alliance is in everybody's best interest.
The biggest problem with this episode was the Hallmark Hall of Fame feel that the Roslin scenes had to them. It was so over the top and weepy. Roslin is played by a great actress, but they are just giving her the lamest situations to work with. The scenes show yet again that the producers just do not get their demographic. They should figure out that people who like sci-fi are not that into chemotherapy. They're kind of orthogonal.
I'm struggling with depression right now, and BSG isn't helping things.
Also I think they had to rent a pneumatic cannon just so they could jump the shark with gusto.
I really liked this episode, and continue to enjoy where this season is headed, nice recap!
I would be remiss in my nerd duties if I failed to point out one flaw in the write-up:
"this is the first time we've seen the biological side of Base Ships."
Not true, in season one when Boomer boards the cylon base-ship orbiting Kobol to fix the nuke on her raptor, we can clearly see the deck of the ship is made of organic goo-stuff.
Very nice summary.
I think I remember seeing that expendable crewmember before, I realized right away that she might as well have been wearing a red shirt.
So, the Final Five are from Earth. Does that explain the Bob Dylan connection, or are we still stuck with that song being part of everything just b/c RDM likes it?
I'm kind of irked about the boat/river motif. I need to watch it again, but is that really what Baltar is preaching, b/c it seemed like the River Styx to me.
@itsburnsie: Well, yes, but we got that organic view THEN the crappy metal box with king-size bed with velvet sheets view, without much organic material except the "docks" since then. This episode showed basestar GUTS, not just an "organic" decor. And we got additional internal designs that better bridged the the organic and utilitarian looks.
@Seth L:
To be fair, BSG has never been what you would call a happy show.
@Ryan H: I think it's going to be awesome when Three wakes up in her tub of goo, sees Anders and says "Oh hai! Which way to Earth?"
@WagCurious: Couple of key problems with this episode: 1) When Anders hears them discuss that the final 5 must know the way to Earth, he makes a face like "No I don't!" So for that prophecy to come true all 5 must have to meet and make the red eyes at one another, or something.
Why is that a problem? I think it's actually a cool story complication. It makes sense that none of them individually know the way to Earth.
Roslin is played by a great actress, but they are just giving her the lamest situations to work with. The scenes show yet again that the producers just do not get their demographic. They should figure out that people who like sci-fi are not that into chemotherapy. They're kind of orthogonal.
Watching the effects of chemo was painful, but I do like that the writers are exploring the barriers between life and death. Roslin being ill from the beginning and therefore being close to what separates the living from the dead could be argued as the reason why chamalla has enabled her to have the visions she's had. It makes sense to me and I find it interesting that Roslin is dealing with the implications of the afterlife as she nears death.
Up until right at the end, I thought we were going to have another "No-Adama" episode, which would have made it automatically suck.
Good thing they put him in there, because it was a good episode otherwise.
I'm confused about the Hybrid. Hybrid of what? Was she a hybrid like Hera's a hybrid? If so, then Hera and Tyrol/Cally's baby are not that unique then.
Well, that was a vast improvement. What made this episode so much better was that of the two storylines, one advanced the plot while the other did some nice character development.
And I love how the mutiny was over within the first two minutes, thus rendering the previous episode completely pointless.
@WagCurious: I think that face was at the prospect of being identified.. (because I thought he made that face when they said "She can identify them")
A couple of points.
I have sort of been assuming that this isn't a Leoben, but rather THE Leoben, the one model who 'played house', it seems that all of the lines have started fracturing individuals... (the 8s have two)
I really liked this episode, and I think that Starbuck is back.. she had her momment of freaky laughing when she saw that baseship/comet... but I guess we people have been saying you were crazy for weeks it must be a nice payoff..
I didn't have a problem with any of the characters motivation (even Athena)..
I loved the revelation that Cylons can have trauma associated with the death-recycle process..
And I don't think that anonymous crew member really provoked crazy six, but rather crazy six when looking for it and got a little PTSD.
And No props for Mj. Kira? I liked her bit part...
Did anyone else think Helo was pretty quick to spool up the FTLs while Athena was still lost in space?
@mar3nez: I think it might be a hybrid of human and animal cylons...
Or something like that... (it is confusing the way they obsesses over two types of hybrids..
@InfiniTrent: Nahh, if he waited any longer the fleet would leave them.. and he had a duty to get the rest of the crew back..
Although, to continue my own thought there, maybe it's showing that Helo really is fitting into the command structure now and learning to make "Adama-type" command decisions for the greater good.
@DocGratis: I'm not saying he shouldn't have, but in the past, he's shown a pretty extreme willingness to break the rules for Sharon/Athena.
@extracrispy: "And I love how the mutiny was over within the first two minutes, thus rendering the previous episode completely pointless. "
Not to mention that nobody really did anything to Anders for capping Gaeta in the leg. Leftover New Caprica hate, maybe?
@DocGratis: I think one of the 6's made a comment about him playing 'house' with starbuck, so I would think that this is THE Leoben.
@InfiniTrent: Helo lead the mutiny against Starbuck to save the crew, if he would have stuck around it would have been the same if they had all just went along with Starbuck's plan in the first place.
I thought this was the best BSG in a long, long time - like since early Season 3. I totally lost it in Roslin's scenes, she made me cry like a baby. And the mercy killing of the Six was heartbreaking. Not to mention all the cool plot developments!
So much for the ship of light orbiting Jupiter that had been speculated upon.
Which is great, because the show has consistently defied the expectations of its audience.
Along a similar line is the new expectation that Starbuck is the one reborn. I'm sensing that's a bit too obvious and perhaps this is more of a tie in with the Caprica prequel.
Also, I have the feeling that Starbuck being a harbringer of death is not necessarily such a terrible thing. Had there not been talk of a resurrection hub that gets destroyed? Perhaps permanent death is the next step in Cylon development. The additional metaphysics of the show are equally intriguing and I hope they lead to a satisfying conclusion.
@mar3nez: I belive they call it a hybrid as in, it's half cylon, half ship as opposed to being a human/cylon hybrid.
@DocGratis:
Dude, major props for Maj. Kira. During her interactions with Roslin, I was like "She looks familiar..." and then it hit me during the boat scene "Holy shit, Major Kira!"
Completely, utterly bald, but with eyebrows left untouched?
(I thought chemotherapy would make hair of any type fall out!)
@mar3nez and DocGratis: The hybrids that command the basestars are the evolutionary link between pure machine cylons and organic cylons. I believe their origin was explained in Razor.
But they are totally different from the hybrid human/cylon children.
"And two, apparently cylons can be extremely traumatized by being killed."
This is an old plot point-- recall that back on New Caprica the Cavil's mentioned how much it hurts to die and be reborn. Of course, it hurts more when you have a *conscience*, thus the Sixes get a little more psychological wounding going on (as opposed to the truly amoral Cavils. . . )
My question is this - if the Demetrius can send a Raptor to meet with the Base Star, why can't they send another one to go meet up with Galactica and tell them not to leave?
>And she looks frakkin gorgeous.
Aside from the bald bit, how does that differ from Ms. Roslin's usual looks in any way at all?
@CargoCult: Not all chemotherapies cause total body hairloss... Some do just affect hairs on top of your head, but not body hairs, facial hairs or eyebrows.
It has to do partly with how fast they grow..
I liked how Starbuck started playing with her sidearm when Anders wouldn't stand down with his gun to the Six. That would definitely be the integration of the badass and crazy Starbucks, if she took a shot at him to save a cylon.
@GodofMonkeys: I agree. The characters are... out of character.
Man I loved this episode. A lot. It really feels like BSG is moving forwards towards something major right now.
I loved how Anders is so curious that he's taking stupid risks. That's exactly the sort of dumbass thing I would do, so I empathise.
The whole death trauma thing was pretty cool. I got the impression that it could suck a lot, given what that Cavil was saying on New Caprica. Also leads you to wondering about the Leoben who Starbuck has killed how many times now? That's gotta be some devotion, even if it is crazy devotion, to go through it over and over and over.
And this is just a small weird thing I adored, but in Roslin and Emily's scences on the ferry, I really liked that it was a contemporary ship, not some old-style thing.
@GodofMonkeys: I think it's reasonable that the rest of the crew will go along with someone's leg being risked, in exchange for their own safety, given how screwed they thought they were. There's no room to lead another mutiny now that your conditions have been met.
@Mister Adequate: Stupid lack of edit button. Anyway, just to clarify - yes, I know that BSG really IS moving towards something major right now, but they've actually got me highly excited about it and anticipating it a lot. Which was my meaning when I praised it.
did anyone else notice that right before 'sharon' died, anders leaned in as if he was about to touch her hand? and then it seemed that something happened between their nearly-touching hands...maybe a type of data transfer?
either way, let the unboxing of three begin. anders is going to start to really sweat...and i imagine things will get even more colorful when he fills tigh, tory, and tyrol in on the impending shenanigans!
@Mister Adequate: @GodofMonkeys:
I agree with Mr. Adequate, who is going to lead a mutiny. Plus the last one didn't go very well...
Helo was never questioned, and had a cool head (and by extension the support of the crew)..
@Moneepennee: I think they needed to make a series of jumps to get back to Galactica, and there was a small jump to the base star, which is how the damaged raider made it there.
Oh, and Starbuck didn't say "What the Frack", she said "I NEED YOU" to the pre-cog, which brought her out of her modem screech.
If you noticed the banter before they tried to unplug her, she talks about defenses, so I think she anticipated the "un-plugging", much like HAL did in 2001.
@DocGratis:
Thanks for the Major Kira ID! I knew she looked familiar... the chemo did a number on her, obviously not quite as hot as she was on DS9, when I had a major crush on her...
@El_Guapo: That's Colonel Kira to you, bub!
One thing that bugged me was the scene in the Basestar hanger deck when the sixes were advocating killing the humans and taking their FTL drive. Starbuck (or one of 'em) said the Cylons wouldn't understand their tech, and that it would take too long for them to interface with the Raptor's FTL drive BUT they had a shipful of Sharons on hand. Since the knowledge gets disseminated to the rest of the line when they're killed and reborn, any of those Sharons would have been able to do the work with ease. That bugged me.
And did anyone else notice Baltar quoting Shakespeare? "The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns"? Granted it wasn't in the original Klingon, but Shakespeare it was nevertheless.
@GodofMonkeys: It is not just you. The whole season has seemed contrived to me. Honestly, the only reason I am still watching is because I have invested a few years watching this show, and I might as well watch the remaining few episodes and see how it ends.
Anyone else find the similarities between Balatr's radio babble and the hybrid (cybrid?)'s ramblings rather curious?
Technical Note: Is Hulu chopping out content? I did not see the scene where the baseship door closes. I wonder what else I might have missed.
Of to work, where management fault 7 remains uncorrected.