Battlestar Galactica (9): I Am Still Giddy.

So, please forgive me if I am kind of incoherent. And I need to hang on to this feeling since there will be no new episodes until early 2009.

But first, a Short Recap: D’Anna held Roslin and the human crew aboard the Baseship hostage in order to flush out the Final Five. While hostages, Baltar thanks Roslin for not killing him. When only Tory “joined her people” D’Anna started executing hostages, so Tigh told Adama the truth. Adama (understandably) lost it, and Lee took charge, putting Tigh in an airlock, forcing him to give up Anders and Tyrol, and telling D’Anna that he would execute them. Before being outed, Anders and Tyrol told Kara that the Viper she returned on was important and when she turned it on, she found a Colonial signal from Earth, so she ran to tell Lee and stopped him from throwing Tigh out the airlock. Lee offered D’Anna a truce, a chance to find Earth together, and full amnesty for the Tory, Tigh, Anders, and Tyrol. Adama, slightly recovered from his shock and reunited with Roslin (who praised Lee’s performance as president), decided that the whole fleet, including the rebel Cylons, would jump to the signal. There was much celebration when the fleet first saw Earth, but it was short lived. Landing on the surface, the remnants of humanity and the rebel Cylons found a barren and abandoned wasteland.

I will say it: Lee is a kick-ass president. And a really good human being. Finding out the rival for the love of his life just happens to be not so human, he didn’t use it as an opportunity to pursue a personal vendetta under the cover of authority. The look Anders gave him when he was first taken into the airlock absolutely confirmed that Anders was questioning if Lee would do just that.

Maybe not to the same extent as Adama’s, but Tigh’s confession broke my heart. Probably because it broke Adama’s. I cried when he cried, and thinking that he was so wounded as to allow his son to take care of him makes me want to cry again. Tigh made a great sacrifice by revealing his secret and he did so with as much dignity as possible. And really, that made it worse. He displayed the best part of him self by revealing the worst. Granted, I applauded for a second when Lee decked him. It was one hit as a (former) soldier betrayed by his (former) commanding officer, and also as a son avenging the betrayal and devastation of his father. It was both utterly personal, and representative of the entire Fleet, therefore singularly cathartic and necessary.

Without that hit, Lee probably wouldn’t have been able to offer the rebel Cylons the chance to forego the pattern of mutually assured destruction that has defined Human/Cylon relations thus far. Interestingly, early in the episode, on the Baseship, the rebel Cylons talk about how the Humans will never forgive the Cylons for the destruction of the Colonies (personally, don’t think that they should), and that remains true still. Baltar tries to encourage D’Anna not to execute the hostages because force did not work with the Humans in the past, but he doesn’t claim that a more peaceful future erases the past. Lee asks the rebel Cylons to join the Humans in making new choices, to disavow their fatalistic attitude (just because it happened before does not mean it has to happen again), but tellingly, he doesn’t reference the past, doesn’t say that all is forgiven. Moving on is not equivalent with forgiveness.

But, it all might be meaningless because the great promise of Earth has been totally destroyed. Or they just landed in Outer Bumble Fart and need to head towards the equator to find habitable land. Okay, that doesn’t seem likely. Earth looked to be uninhabited and uninhabitable, possibly the victim of global warming and international conflict, or ravaged by a geological anomaly. Or could it be that the other Cylons got there first?

As an aside, I would like to take a second to praise the artistic design of BSG. The final scene of the episode moved so fluidly, looked so unlike anything that has come before it, demarcating the ending of certain aspects of the show and the beginning of new ones that has nothing to do with the convenience of mid-season-finales. The fact that each place, and even each genus/species has its own particular color palate (Earth’s slate gray and bone tones told you it was empty before the sweeping final shot confirmed it) is one of the details of this show that makes it so whole and enjoyable.

My one gripe is the lack of Lee/Kara personal interaction. A conversation, a handhold, a hug, a kiss, anything! I mean, they found out her husband is a Cylon, so there really should have been some sort of Apollo/Starbuck business. I will just have to wait for the last ten episodes for this mistake to be rectified.

And for the last Cylon to be revealed.

The next couple of months is starting to look sort of like the Earth the Fleet found.

The TV Girl