Episode Report Card Strega: A | 8 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT The Starcrossed
By Strega | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 2005.02.25
Adama opens one of those filing cabinets for corpses. Yeah, but you knew exactly what I meant, right? He pulls the sheet aside to reveal Leoben's body. The Leoben from the mini-series, that is. It's the Boomer problem all over again. Should I start numbering all the duplicates? But then I'll have to keep track, and plus, what do I do with the Sixes? Anyway, Adama looks at the body and then picks up a phone and calls Tigh. Tigh reports that, with two hours left, nobody's found the nuke. Adama stares at Leoben briefly, and then orders the fleet to spread out, so that if one of the ships goes boom, it won't take out its neighbors. Then Adama holds the phone receiver like he's thinking about clubbing Leoben's body with it for a while. He finally leans in and says, "No," to Leoben. I think Adama might need a nap. But you know what would be funny? If all this time, Adama's had a chatty little Leoben in his head.
The box. Leoben's on his knees, supported by two of the soldiers. Starbuck sits in a chair facing him as two more soldiers enter and set a tall bucket of water down in front of Leoben. Starbuck smirks, and says, "Do it." The soldiers dunk Leoben's head into the bucket and hold him down. He blows some bubbles and struggles a little. The soldiers seem ready to pull him up, but Starbuck has them wait a little longer. She finally lifts her hand upwards, and they haul Leoben out. Starbuck says that Leoben will drown in the bucket if he won't tell her where the nuke is. Leoben gasps, "I can't drown; I can't die." Starbuck reminds us that the Cylons transfer their consciousness to a new body when the current one dies. But she guesses that, if Leoben were sure about that, he wouldn't have talked at all. She flicks one finger down, and Leoben goes back into the bucket. When he's yanked out again, Leoben sputteringly insists that this isn't Starbuck's destiny. Starbuck grumps, "Don't interrupt me." She figures that the fleet is a long way from home, and that Leoben isn't sure that his consciousness will make it back: "What if, when you die here, you really die? It's your chance to find out if you're really God or just a bunch of circuits with a bad haircut." Leoben insists that he's not scared of dying, but he looks a little worried. Starbuck chuckles that, deep down, Leoben is thinking, "I don't have a soul; I have software. If I die, I'm gone."
Starbuck nods, and Leoben's dunked. When he's hauled out this time, the soldiers let him flop onto the floor, and he kind of reminds me of that fish at the end of the "Epic" video. Leoben gasps, "I have a soul. I see patterns." He says that Starbuck is damaged: "You were born to a woman who believes that suffering was good for the soul, so you suffered." Starbuck stares down as the Cylon tells her that "life is a testament to pain, injuries, accidents." He stares up at her from the floor and says that's what her mother taught her: "You wanna believe it because it means that you're bad luck. Like a cancer that needs to be removed. Because you hear her voice every day and you want her to be right." Starbuck listens intently, and then looks up at the soldiers and quietly says, "Start again." Leoben's hauled up and dunked, and this time we get a bucket-cam shot of his face underwater. He struggles and makes faces for a few seconds, and then stops moving and smiles into the camera. Okay, this time I'm cool with actors staring into the camera, because it's meant to be disconcerting. I think.