Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Stockdale Paradox
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 11 | Aired on 01.16.2009
Galen sees a Hiroshima shadow on a wall, ivy grown up around it. A man, two thousand years ago, stood in just this spot as the world turned white. He looks around himself, standing at the wall, and the ivy, and the shadow, and reaches out.
It was a Farmer's Market, rich with color, alive with smells and laughter, happy people sharing in a sunny day. He wore glasses, and a sports jacket, and thought about his afternoon. After the market, after picking up some fruit, he would head home and take off his shoes, read the paper. An avocado. The voices all around him were delighted, organic strawberries, fresh pineapple, ripe and sweet for the hungry and the leisurely; there are tiger lilies and bright red carnations. Set against the endless grey present, they are shocking. But it only lasted a moment, before the brightest light of all burned him where he stood, casting a shadow to last forever. A monument to one beautiful, bright day, before the world ended.
IV: Who Will Rise Again
"If my Viper's splattered all over this planet, then who flew it here? And what the hell did I fly back to Galactica?" More pieces. "Maybe it's better off not knowing," Leoben says, for the first time in his existence unsure, afraid of the unknown, feeling the cloud of unknowing bearing down, hounding him. He was like Laura, wasn't he? Animated by faith, lucky and satisfied watching the pieces of the future come together in perfect symmetry. Destroying what he loved, in order to bring about the destiny he knew was coming: just like Laura. All the coincidences and hopes and half-remembered truths coming true right before his eyes, how could he not believe? How could he not die for that, again and again, just waiting for the world to right itself? Look at what happens, when the guides lose their way. Look at him now.
"You're always telling me to face the truth, and not run from it. Why the sudden change of heart?" Leoben doesn't want to say it, hates the words as they come out: "I've got a feeling... You might not like what you find." Kara wonders who he's speaking to, really; he just stares at her.
Lee stands in the Galactica briefing room, lost and afraid, exhausted with responsibility and the unbelievable burden before him: to tell the Quorum, the twelve representatives of all humanity, that their dreams are dead below them. The last time he stood in this room, it was a carousel of memory: the fights, the laughter, the many hits he took to become a man. Now it is silent.
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