|
When Adama gives the clearance to launch
nuclear missiles at the spot where his son, daughter-in-law,
surrogate daughter, her husband, and his chief engineer
are all currently standing and there's no tension,
something's gone a wee bit awry. But other than that,
pretty interesting episode.
ARG! That business about the "inexhaustible
food supply" (what the frak?!) and "the food
manufacturing system" and "this algae can
keep us alive indefinitely" are REALLY IMPORTANT!
That all should have been in the aired episode
last week. Those are big details! How does that
get relegated to the Previously Reel? It really ticks
me off when they edit so badly that critical story
elements have to be jammed in after the fact. C'mon,
you're telling me thirty seconds of pilots yelling
at orange radiation fog couldn't have been trimmed
to slip those lines in?
Anyway. We thought Tyrol was hearing
Cylon Raider engines over the hills -- certainly sounded
like it to me.
Is there an actual link between the twelve
Lords of Kobol/signs of the zodiac and the twelve Cylon
models, or is it just that the human society from which
the Cylons came operated with twelve as a sacred number
(like we tend to think of seven as being important
or "lucky") so that's what the Cylons picked?
I am officially disgusted with both Lee
and Kara. Lee is more of a disappointment, because
at least he's owning up to his feelings, his bad behavior,
and his guilt, and he's willing to get a divorce. But
Kara? "Marriage is a sacrament" but it's
perfectly okay to "bend the rules"? I want
to smack her. I can't even say I'm appalled, because
she's repeatedly shown her immaturity and hedonism,
and how she chases the moment, adrenaline, risk, the
thrill, with very little thought to the consequence.
I seriously doubt she's given much thought to the idea
of "the sacrament of marriage." It's probably
a concept she grasped vaguely as a child and hangs
onto now as a nebulous kind of "but it's always
been that way," without ever actually taking it
out and examining it in daylight as an adult. She certainly
has no moral compunction about violating it, or her "vow
in the sight of the gods," as Lee correctly points
out. (and then Anders wearily tells Lee "what,
you think you're the first?" ouch!...) They both
either need to get divorced or stay the hell away from
each other. And PLEASE, Ron, for the love of little
green apples, DON'T turn this arc into another endless
Soap Opera E-Plot. Please.
And while you're at it, try not to turn
all the nonbelievers devout, okay? Even in a pagan
society, there should be room for atheists.
You know, all the Sharons have pin-straight
hair, and Helo has fairly straight hair. Why is Hera's
hair full of adorable little curls?
Let's consider this "Temple of The
Five" thing for a moment. It's mentioned in the
Kobolian scriptures, and the physical structure dates
to about four thousand years prior. The assumption
here is that the 13th Tribe left Kobol, heading for
Earth, and left markers along the way. But unless they
already knew the way to Earth, they would have had
to get there, turned around, and come back to
Kobol and leave directions as they doubled back again,
because there's no point in leaving instructions for
someone to follow you if you don't know where you're
going! In any case. "The Five" is a concept
in the Kobolian mythology. The five what we don't know.
Five of the twelve lords? Five daughters or sisters
or sons of someone? (For example, the constellation
we know as "The
Pleiades" is also called "The Seven Sisters," representing
seven daughters of Atlas, the guy who holds up the
world, and a sea nymph. Amusingly, the word for "pleiades" in
Japanese is Subaru,
thus the logo. But I digress.) Now, the Cylons happen
to have this breakoff group of five models about whom
the other seven don't speak. Remember that so far as
we know, the humans invented the Cylons as mechanical
servants. Whichever individuals left, they created
twelve models -- not twelve sects, but "models," templates
-- which they used to make endless body copies. So
based on the seven we know, these five are also likely
clones. The seven we know took on human form (and stuck
an eighth face on the hybrid, but apparently that doesn't
count). The other five could obviously be anything.
But no matter what form they took, they started forty
or fifty years ago as human-built robots. Even if the
missing five took on aspects of the human deities to
become literal deii ex machinae, gods in the
machines, they are at best fifty years old. I'm just
pointing this out so we're not expecting the missing
five to be part of the human pantheon or something,
because the Kobolian mythology is four millennia old
and the Cylons are not.
Why do Threena, Brother Cy, and Boomer
want to negotiate with the Colonials? Brother Cy has
a pretty good point from the Cylons' tactical view.
What good does it do them not to wipe out Galactica?
If Baltar is to be believed, he talked really fast
to get Threena to agree, but why did she? (And Rebel
Six is pointedly not in this group. The Leoben in the
High Council comes and goes, but Rebel Six is pretty
consistent. Are Threena and Baltar shutting her out,
or was there some reason a Six shouldn't be on Galactica?)
And not for anything, but Threena was really showing
off her cleavage in that outfit. If that neckline had
plunged any lower we could have seen if Lucy Lawless
is an innie or an outie.
Boomer seems to have gotten over her
human life. Or was she only pissed because Tigh ordered
the Marines to guard her and wouldn't let her near
Adama? Or is she cranky and sleep-deprived over taking
care of some other Eight's kid? Interesting how she
and Athena each glared like the other was the traitor.
Given Baltar's general scumbagness, I
think his words to Roslin about "it's good to
see you, Laura" were an excess of his own sentiment
about returning to Galactica, which quickly
sours when she doesn't show him the respect he thinks
he deserves for saving her life "again," as
he insists. Meanwhile, it's all she can do not to rip
off his head and beat him to death with it.
"We come in peace," intones
Brother Cy. Legions of Trekkies sing in unison "Shoot
to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, we come in peace,
shoot to kill, Scotty, beam
me up!"
Do we know for a fact that the Eye of
Jupiter is a thing, and not, for example, Hera? Do
we know that it's a thing and not an event like the
supernova which Gaeta conveniently predicted? Which
is going to happen while Threena is down on the planet,
because she refuses to leave when both Cylons and the
Colonial team get out? (And which side is going to
snag Baltar?)
This scene has a few examples of narrative
shortcut. How does Brother Cy know that Roslin is to
be called "Madame President" again? Assumption,
given her presence, or was that included in the diplomatic
briefing somewhere? And Threena tells Adama "you
want to find Earth as much as we do," but she
shouldn't know the Colonials know that, and she shouldn't
tell them if they don't -- that's a big tactical reveal,
so far as she knows. Even if they're monitoring Colonial
newscasts, that particular tidbit wouldn't be public
knowledge. I realize that at some point you just have
to move the story forward with what the audience knows,
but occasionally we trip over things.
We still don't know why both parties
want Earth. I could see Adama protecting it just to
keep the Cylons from killing other humans, but he could
have easily have said "I have no problem blowing
it up because we don't need to go there -- we can go
anywhere we want." And the Cylons really have
no need for that particular planet. The dramatic push
feels a little arbitrary.
Kara doesn't get it -- she can't ignore
Anders for weeks, knock boots when she's bored, take
off again to frolic with Lee, and then expect that
she can make puppy eyes at Anders and control his temper
when he gets angry with Lee. She loses the right to
puppy eyes and pleading when she walks out on her husband.
He's clearly a dope for not divorcing her, serial adultery
and all, but that's on him.
Why does Lee have that bizarre lump on
his left jawline? He looks like he's storing nuts for
the winter or something.
Why did Cally mention missing her son? Foreshadowing:
a valid literary technique. (Moogie thinks he's
going to be ransomed somehow for Hera, but I'm not
sure how that would work.)
What truth is Threena chasing?
Is it just religious claptrap? Some vision she's seeing
between repeated downloads? What does it matter who
the Five are if she can't get to them while she's still
alive and in a body? (And remember, no matter what
the hybrid is babbling, oracles never speak plainly.
Every utterance has another interpretation. Besides,
there are at least two other Chosen Ones.)
She also heard the hybrid wrong. The hybrid says, "The
Five Lights of the Apocalypse rising, struggling towards
the light, sins revealed only to those who enter the
temple." She does not say "the Five
Lights will be revealed."
Baltar is really despicable here, but
as always he's most interested in himself. If Threena
can prove that he's one of the Five, that he's a Cylon,
he can stop feeling guilty about his past actions.
Never mind what Rebel Six has done for him; his own
skin (or in this case his conscience) is his greatest
priority. Even though Threena appeared to be in agreement
with Brother Cy back on Galactica a few hours
earlier that they could dump him back off with the
Colonials in exchange for the Eye of Jupiter, he goes
with her version of his "destiny" because
it suits him better to think about it.
Speaking of Rebel Six, though, she tells
Threena and Baltar that she loves both of them.
Wasn't the whole idea that Love was something the Cylons
were having trouble experiencing? That they had to
pursue it in humans to grasp it fully or to feel it
at all? She told Threena back on New Caprica "If
you'd ever been in love, you wouldn't have to ask" if
it was worth the risk. So Threena had clearly not experienced
Love at that point. But introduce a human to the triangle
and now she can? And now she can love another Cylon?
Or does the word mean something different when it's
applied to each species?
For a species which objects to individuality,
they have adopted quite a few human names for the individual
personalities in the models, haven't they? Caprica,
Sharon, D'Anna, Cavil?
Aha, so Adama didn't know about
Hera! I didn't think he could pull off that level of
deception given how close he and Athena got. From the
brief shot it doesn't look like Athena is blaming him,
but she's still pretty cranked, and I can't blame her.
The problem with the cliffhanger is that
it doesn't hang, so to speak. We know that Kara isn't
dead, despite her Raptor going down, and we know that
even if the missiles are launched, Lee is not going
to die either. Dee, Anders, Chief, Cally, all the redshirts
are potentially expendable -- leaving it wide open
for Anders to sacrifice himself to save Kara, freeing
her from the marriage and saddling her with more guilt
-- but there's not much to worry about over the break.
We're not even concerned about serious injury, to be
honest. But it's only a month or so between seasons,
so I guess they didn't have to go crazy doing something
to coax people back. |
