Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Dictates Of Conscience
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.05.2006
Dinner with Kara. A treat as always. Leoben smiles, that luminous creepy smile he has: "It's been a couple of ugly days. I know you don't care about that," I guess because she's caged off from the outside world and doesn't know anything, "but life means something to us." Or is he saying she's down with suicide bombing? She might be. "So I've decided to show you just how precious life can be. Even in the worst of times it can restore your faith." He stands and heads up the stairs, asking if she remembers the horrible rape farm on Caprica; she says she remembers mainly blowing the frack out of it. I love this girl. He says it wasn't a total loss: they salvaged a bunch of samples and things. The shoe finally drops: "Like your ovary." He opens a door upstairs, and Kara starts to wig. In a second, he reappears on the stairs, with a little blonde girl. She's already done the math, did it before he opened the door, but she asks anyway: "What's that?" He carries the girl down the steps in slo-mo. "Casey, this is Kara. Your mother." The little girl smiles shyly. "Hi." Starbuck goes even more crazy.
Dee storms into Lee's area and tells him about the Admiral's plan to "put some boots on the ground" and send a liaison officer to coordinate the rescue op. The problem? "Who he's sending." Dualla hands him the brief and Lee wigs, immediately heading to Galactica.
"You can't do this! She's a Cylon!" Bill is mild: "I trust her." Lee calls this a mistake, and Bill does the usual rhetorical Bill thing: "My mistake." Except this time it's not actually true: "You're gambling with the lives of everyone on this ship, and my ship... " Bill says in no uncertain terms that he's not interested in a lecture -- from Lee in particular, I think -- about the responsibilities of command. He dismisses Lee and leaves, but his son follows him into the Galactica corridor. "This is risking the lives of the human race, not just your command," he protests. Bill says he's saving the human race, and Lee protests that he's not seeing the real deal here: "The human race is the 2000 people in the Fleet, huddled in those civilian ships. They're the safe bet." He wants to safeguard them, just like last time, when the show started and they left survivors all over the place in their haste. Bill changes the subject to how Sharon's a great person for this op because the Centurions can't tell her apart from the other models. He laughs at the irony: the Cylons did this because they didn't want the machines to become self-aware and rebel against them. "Dad," he shouts, jumping in front of him. Bill nods and admits that he knows what Lee is saying, but there's a responsibility to the people they left behind. Lee quotes Roslin: "Our first responsibility is the survival of humanity. We can't lose sight of that. Over the last year we've lost sight of almost everything. We got soft," he says, throwing his father's words back at him. "But if we go back to New Caprica now, and we lose? It's over. Humanity just stops. Admiral's stars don't give you the right to make that gamble." This show is hard because whoever's talking, that's who I agree with. I haven't felt like that since I was seven years old. Bill nods. "You're right, son. Make plans to resume the search for earth with the Pegasus and the Civilian Fleet." So the Galactica will stay behind? "I know why we left those people behind, and I know that it was their choice in the first place to be down there, and I realize the survival of the human race outweighs anything else, but this time I can't live with it. Can't face it. Maybe I'm a coward but I'm going back." Lee promises his father he won't stand a chance; meaning, of course, that his bad-assery is going to blow everybody's mind. "I'm going back, son." They embrace; a shaft of light shines down on them. Thank goodness they're okay.