Episode Report Card Jacob: A+ | 6 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Six Of One...
By Jacob | Season 2 | Episode 18 | Aired on 2006.02.24
Roslin taps her fingers on the desk in Adama's quarters, rolling back and forth like a piano player. "If her baby does survive, the question is: what do we do with it?" Gaius, looking surprisingly nuts after all that hot smooth action, bugs out: "'Do'? What are you suggesting? That we throw it out of an airlock?" Roslin says, hilariously, darkly, all in on long sentence as she does, without even sparing a glance for his squirrelly ass: "I don't make suggestions, Mr. Baltar, if I want to toss a baby out an airlock, I'd say so." Gaius -- not tipping his hand at all, is he? -- bugs out some more: "Well, it's really gratifying to know that infanticide's not on the table." Tigh: "Do I have to point out" -- no, but you're going to, like always -- "that this is not a baby? It's a machine." Gaius snaps, "No, it's half machine, half human. I suggest we all keep that half in mind." Proud papa. Thought on this, while we watch Gaius ramp up and up toward the hysteria he calls home: if Chip Six is mostly him, then all this "our baby" crap is really just him, right? His gift to humanity, for what was lost? His redemption? His last hope, as the straddler? And not to stretch the metaphor to snapping, but remember what happened when Demeter (Gaia) lost her daughter? Who holds the keys to life as we know it, still? Demented and arbitrary: who's in charge here?
"Cylons went through a great deal of trouble to create this thing," gruffs Adama. "Should go without saying that if it's good for them, it's gonna be bad for us." Roslin completely agrees -- and it's worth noting that my "political time bomb/Bartlet's MS" wank was never on the table, per the podcast -- and "takes it as a given" that they can't let Sharon raise her either. "That would be disastrous," for some reason. Not even Mary McDonnell can sell that line, because it's so open-ended, but I think Roslin's ambiguous relationship with Hera, hating and depending on the child even as she's way crossing lines about human babies, might be key to the show for the foreseeable future. Close-up on Tigh as Adama considers yet more factors: "There's [sic] Cylons aboard this fleet. If they find out this thing's been born, they're gonna make a play for it." Gaius watches, and Six slides out from behind him, sudden and sinister. "You can see where this is headed, Gaius. We're going to have to take our child." This line of dialogue, much like a whole storyline where the Fleet reporter D'Anna Biers was going to try and kidnap the kid, is pretty much abandoned at this point. (Which I consider a favor less to the fans and more to me personally, because think about this recap: "Then Biers, but not the one from the other scene, tells Sharon, but not the one from the other scene and not the one that died and not the pregnant one and not the one that was at the rebirth ceremony but this other one ...")