By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 1
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The season begins seconds after the finale, fifty-five weeks ago: Apollo has just discovered Starbuck back from the dead and flying around, the Final Four are back at work, Baltar is being shuffled off to some kind of sanctuary, and there's a huge fight about to start with four big Cylon basestars. Here's what's up with everybody:
Lee is totally confused by Kara's reappearance, but super excited, of course. He has left the military permanently, and will now be joining the government in some capacity, hopefully involving an actual storyline for once.
Chief gives Anders a quick pep talk, and the newest nugget pulls it together and heads into combat. He sends some kind of glowy signal to a Cylon Raider scan of his shiny red eyeball, and the whole Cylon attack, four basestars and all, vanish. While it would be funny if he was secretly yelling at them with some kind of scary Wizard of Oz Final Five voice, it seems clear the Raider figured him as a Fiver, and the Cylon as a group realized that shooting at him, and the Fivers in the Fleet, would be about as tacky as throwing beer in St. Francis's weave.
Tigh is showing a...bit of strain under the pressure of Cylonicity, opening up the teaser by shooting Bill Adama in the head. Literally shooting his ass in the eye. Although whether it's suppressed Cylon programming or just a waking nightmare, we're unsure. I think it's the latter, because you know his number one fear nothing to do with hypocrisy, or the futility of killing his wife, but that something will happen to Bill. Which is sweet, but it's honestly the scariest moment, watching him plug the Admiral like that.
For Kara, the time between the Maelstrom and now was just six hours, subjectively. She is high on life and carrying loads of "vacation pictures" of Earth, and it takes her a while to figure out that everybody's acting so weird because she was dead for a couple of months. Given that generally she gets the slow clap for spelling her name right, her confusion is somewhat justified. Tigh, Tory and Chief are all total paranoid dicks and make sure they have as many fingers pointing at her as possible, but Sam and Lee are on her side. Of course. Somewhere Dualla's gotta be like, "Tell me when that bitch starts raping puppies, so we can throw her a party."
Madame President is not having any of Kara's mess, and throws her in the brig before visiting Caprica Six and learning that the Five are in the Fleet. It's really cool, because Laura just teases Caprica with the old "don't think of an elephant" trick until her robot eyes cross with the logic loop of not thinking about not thinking about not thinking about the Final Five. Caprica is awesome at a lot of shit, but nobody's immune to the BSD.
Around the same time, the Four agree that if they start acting toaster-like in any way, the others will gang up on them and shoot 'em dead. Grim. Meantime, all they do is get drunk and feel weird about themselves. Just like Kara and Tigh used to, before they died/turned into evil killer robots.
The Batshit Ladies of Baltar shove him in a tiny secret room on Galactica, where he gets laid a whole lot, prays for the son of his cult leader lady Jeanne, and feels yucky about having such a crappy cult. He eventually offers God his life in return for the kid's when he's attacked by Connor from the Circle, who kept tossing people out airlocks in the name of vigilante justice. He is saved by the completely crazy Paulla [sic] Schaffer, a cultist with a certain very amazing gleam in her eye and a taste for blood, and crazy. (I am in total love with her.) Also, his big Marxist agitprop philosophy includes that the Gods plural don't exist, and now he and his followers are all about monotheism. This is, of course, like a total birthday present for Chip Six, who looks more like a scary angel shark than ever.
Kara tries to get everybody headed toward Earth (and the Apocalypse!), but because of her being dead, possibly a Cylon, and generally hard to get along with, nobody's really listening. Even the Admiral admits that it's a hard sell to question Roslin's authority on the Earth issue after so many seasons of assuming her junkie ass knew what she was talking about. Which is like, so ironic, because fully half of every season is Adama committing the entire Fleet's resources to whatever bug is up Kara's ass at the time, but until now it's always dovetailed nicely with Roslin's separate ass-bugs. Adama, however, does not understand irony.
Every time they jump away from the Nebula in the direction indicated by the Pythian Scrolls, Kara's connection to their destination gets weaker and weaker. It also makes her want to barf, apparently. So, having had enough of her new magic powers getting ignored by everybody, Kara beats the shit out of several Marines, tells Sam that if he were a Cylon she'd murder him, and ends the episode with a gun pointed at Laura's beautiful head. Which to me proves that it's Kara, being that it's the most insane option. How great would it be if that were the solution? "I had my doubts, but only Kara Thrace could come up with a plan that idiotic. Welcome home." Want more? The full recap starts right below!
WHAT THE OLD MAN SAID TO KENDRA
He said to Kendra, "Soon there will be Four, glorious in awakening, struggling with the knowledge of their true selves, the pain of that revelation bringing true clarity." And he was right, there were Four. And they were glorious. And now they're struggling, pulling themselves together with their hands and shuffling back to the hangar, to the bridge.
He said, "And amidst confusion, he will find her." And he was right. He wasn't even looking for her, just trying to be good, but there she was: glorious. She came howling back from the place Three found, the place nobody ever came back from before, bringing the end of the story and the end of the war, and the end of everything. And he was the boy who was good.
He told her: "Enemies brought together by the apostle, enemies now joined as one. The way forward, once impenetrable, yet inevitable." And he was right. What began as a duet, a Sonata for Scientists, between a girl named Sarah and a boy named Gaius on a doomed world called Caprica, became a quadrille, and now they're dancing so fast you can't even tell who knows they're dancing and who's just trying to keep up: Laura, Caprica, Athena. Boomer. And Hera, always Hera.
The old man said to Kendra: "And the Fifth, though still in the shadow, yet clawing for the light, hungry for redemption, that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering." And he's right. But tell me who that doesn't describe, in the Fleet or out of it.
He said, "I can see them all, the Seven -- now Six -- self-described machines, who believe themselves without sin. But in time, it is sin that will consume them. They will know enmity, bitterness, the wrenching, the agony of the one splintering into many." He is right, and that's the Apocalypse for them too. It would be good to remember that, I think.
And the old man said to Kendra: "And then they will join, in the Promised Land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning."
THE SUBJECTIVITY OF HUMOR IN A GENOCIDE SITUATION
But first, there are two Vipers in space, set against the Nebula, flying in tandem. And Lee's sad face stares across at her, in the silence of space, and when he speaks it's disbelief. "I saw your ship blow up." She rolls her eyes. "'Fraid not." She repeats herself: "I've been to Earth."
"...Big blue oceans, fluffy white clouds... You're gonna love it. I promise," she says, on the wireless in CIC. Adama is offended by the universe, pulling this trick again. She's never spent this long in the underworld before, and it's never seemed this false before. Just as they reached the Nebula, just as the electrics went down, after four Basestars showed up, full of Raiders and malice, Kara Thrace. The thing you want most, at the least believable time possible. It's either a very mean joke or a very twisted one. The Admiral screams for ID on the ship, for a line to his son, to anything. And just behind him, Helo recognizes her voice, just as Gaeta confirms her ship's signatures.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
"...Big blue oceans, fluffy white clouds... You're gonna love it. I promise," she says, on the wireless in CIC. Adama is offended by the universe, pulling this trick again. She's never spent this long in the underworld before, and it's never seemed this false before. Just as they reached the Nebula, just as the electrics went down, after four Basestars showed up, full of Raiders and malice, Kara Thrace. The thing you want most, at the least believable time possible. It's either a very mean joke or a very twisted one. The Admiral screams for ID on the ship, for a line to his son, to anything. And just behind him, Helo recognizes her voice, just as Gaeta confirms her ship's signatures.
But Roslin, recovering from her momentary headache, is sure that it's a Cylon trick; more sure than Adama. Remember what happened last time her death got close? Forced abortions, airlockings galore. She doesn't have the wiggle room that Bill has, to wait and wonder and see if it's Kara after all. She knows the Fleet doesn't have that time either. And the thing that has always made her scarier than Bill is that she is able to turn off that thing, and make the call. Not a Razor, she's not like that. Just...the Olympic Carrier is always with us. And Laura keeps their names written on a piece of paper, and carries it close to her heart, and that's how she makes the pieces fit.
Felix Gaeta -- and don't think I've forgiven you yet, missy -- notes the more than two hundred Raiders that are suddenly inbound, and Adama gives his CAG Helo the order to take them out. Helo sets up the Raiders as a back defense, and Vipers jump for battle. The ones out on CAP, and Lee's old Viper, and now Kara's shiny new one, head in.
"Don't lose me this time, Apollo," she laughs. It's a joke to her. To her, it's a joke. She doesn't know yet.
"Splash one!" Starbuck gets blood on her Viper, and laughs aloud, back in the fight. She doesn't remember a time she wasn't in love with flight, and with fighting; she doesn't remember the storm.
"Take that, you frakkin' toasters!" she screams, while they listen on the bridge. Laura repeats for the third or fourth time that it's a Cylon trick, and Saul stares at his friend Bill, who stares at nothing, and listens to the voice of his dead daughter. Her joyful warrior's laugh.
The battle continues, and the Vipers manage to stop the main Raider thrust from the Basestars, but the reserve get through, and head for the civilian Fleet. The Admiral calls for full commitment, now that his people are in direct danger, but Saul can't hear him. He's a million miles away. "Saul. Saul! What the hell is wrong with you?"
| Season 4 | Episode 1
"Nothing, Bill," says Tigh. "Never felt better in my life." And he raises his gun, aims, and shoots. One shot through the Admiral's right eye, so they match. And Bill goes down, as Laura stares. It's everybody's nightmare coming true. It's a nightmare that's already come true once, coming back around again, in slow-motion, with sitars playing. Saul stares at the space his best friend was standing in, and then his mouth opens wide, and he begins to scream.
THE MEN WE WANT TO BE
"Colonel Tigh! I gave you a frakkin' order. Everybody that's ever held a stick, I want them up there now. Get 'em out! Put 'em up there!" Saul snaps to, grabs the phone, speaks into it: "Attention, this is the XO." His biggest fear, his first thought, the things on his mind: Bill, something happens to Bill.
Because he is an embarrassment, and a drunk, and a lonely old coot. And he's been a cancer, and he's been a murderer, and an insurgent. He's been put to bed like a baby, and felt weird about it in the morning, on more occasions than you could comfortably count. And every time, Bill says, "You're my friend." Like that's enough, but for forty years he's nearly been able to believe it. A stupider man could let it rest altogether, and not have to drink sometimes, when the snake in the mirror gets too strong, when her faded smell comes back, and a smarter man would see through that excuse. The Gideon will always be with us, but the Admiral forgives him, and that's how he puts the pieces together.
Except, what happens when he kills him? When the thing in Saul decides it's time for Bill to die, where will he go then?
Chief -- it's Chief Tyrol I am proudest of -- hustling around the hangar, shouting at his crew, getting pilots in their Vipers and Raptors, shouting, "Where the frak are these nuggets?" and "Momma's not gonna save you today!" and "You wanna fly or not?" Don't get me wrong, I fully expect him to go craziest out of the Four, just completely ass-monkey, before it's said and done. He's the only one with anything to lose, and this show is nothing if not brutal to the people we love most. But right now, he's doing a good job keeping it together.
Seelix hustles Anders onto the hangar deck, and Sam pulls Tyrol aside, worried he's going to turn his coat on the battlefield. "What the frak is wrong with you? Shut the frak up. It's like the Colonel said, okay? Just think of that. 'Be the man you want to be, 'til the day you die." Which Sam appreciates, as rhetoric and as good advice for all of us, but notes that it's sort of hard to apply, given that he doesn't even know what he is, right now. Chief stares him in the eyes and nearly shakes him with pent-up Chief thinky-face nerves. "You're Samuel T. Anders. That's all you gotta remember, Samuel T. Anders. Now get the frak in your ship." Athena arrives just as Chief is delivering this bizarrely barebones pep talk, and asks who else Sam would be.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
(Because there's an issue with this Weddle/Thompson script, and it's nothing I haven't bitched about before, but if you're used to looking for subtlety from this show, you might get really confused this week. The actors are doing their usual nuanced jobs, adding texture to the scenes, but the lines on paper? They're exactly what they seem to be. Don't worry over it. If somebody says, "If she didn't notice anything, maybe the other Cylons won't either" -- like Sam's about to in a second -- then all you need take away from this line is that Athena didn't notice that Sam was a Final Fiver, so hopefully the other Cylons won't either. And further, you can bet that he's about to run into another Cylon, and they either will or will not notice that Sam is a Final Fiver. And that's literally all there is to it. And every scene, basically, is like this. So keep your eyes open, because any scene that is less than completely literal, that's where the season is.)
"Who else would he be?" asks Athena, coming in on the tailbone of an even more bizarre pep talk than she knows, in battlegear and ready to rock. "Hey, rook. Stay cool out there, all right? You'll lock in and do what you've been trained to do." Sam opines that a comparison could possibly be made to "suiting up for a championship game," and Athena agrees. Realizing that this entire conversation, and her presence in this scene, are pointless, she bounces with a curt "Good hunting." Sam notes that since Athena, a Cylon, didn't notice that Sam and Galen are Cylons, possibly the other Cylons won't either. Chief ushers him to his Viper and tells him not to ask them Cylons if they know he's a Cylon, or converse with them at all, because he should be busy shooting them, and killing them, not figuring out what they share. This is the man Chief chooses to be.
THE SCAPEGOAT IS LED FORTH INTO AN ISOLATED REGION
That strange young red-haired woman drives Gaius forward, under his red raiment, toward a secret room, an "unused compartment" still aboard Galactica. Her son's name is Derrick, and Gaius prayed for him, back during the trial, and every day she sat, like Mary and Martha, like the tricoteuses, and waited for his deliverance. Her name is Jeanne: like La Pucelle d'Orléans; like the Beloved Disciple, the Messiah's favorite. More mother than lover, more martyr than leader. She does these things for the glory of Gaius Baltar, because she needs something to believe in. She used to be a journalist, until Derrick got sick, and she got lost. But now she's found, and she brings the Fleet a greater news yet.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
Galactica's missile bays are firing at the Basestars, and a thousand Raiders and Vipers engage against the bright lights of the Nebula; a Raider takes out an entire ship with one crash. The Pyxis, led by Captain Tarney, six hundred souls aboard. Laura writes down this name, Pyxis; and keeps it close to her heart. Laura measures loss in the numbers of the dead, still. Maybe of the whole Fleet, she's the only one with a heart big enough to hold those cold equations: to count by those vast numbers. Her whiteboard was only ever negative space around the measurement of loss, and she's six hundred souls closer to wanting these monsters destroyed. "How did they find us?" Bill wonders too.
Tigh and Tory stare at each other, across the bridge. They don't know enough, about who or what they are, to measure their sins. They could be calling right now, across the void of space, set against the Nebula. They could be asking for extraction, resurrection, destruction.
The Cylon prepare to launch returning missile fire: forty, no, fifty missiles, plus inbound, targeted half on the Galactica and half on the Fleet, and those become priority.
"We can handle the hits," the Admiral grits. "They can't."
And Galactica and her Vipers and her Raptors begin to draw their fire, again.
A DOG OF FLANDERS
A Viper comes shooting out of the tube, always exciting, and it's Sam's, meaning Samuel T. Anders, born on Picon, attended Noyce Elementary, felt Dawn, saw nuclear sunset glow, loved and was loved... Seelix interrupts his concentration to remind him that he has his thumb on the transmit button, that his mantra is blocking the freq, and then the fight's on him, he takes up the quarrel, and elsewhere in the battle, missiles break through the defense shield Helo constructed, blowing like poppies of fire, and connect with that toroid ship you always notice, blowing out a segment, killing a few more people, and then Seelix is ordering her squad's formation like a quarterback, calling the Raiders one by one, setting her men on them like harriers, throwing Vipers at them like torches, and there's Sam in the middle of it, fucking up the lingo, kind of unbearably adorable as he fidgets and fumbles behind the trigger of a one-ton flying murder machine, and then he spots a Raider on Seelix, and as she climbs against the sky, like a silent lark, she sings out bravely for Sam to shoot, and somehow, for some reason, as he watches the Raider close in on her, and the world gets slower and slower, somehow for some reason he can't shoot it.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
Things get quiet and slow. The Raider turns, and looks at him. And Samuel T. Anders, he looks back at it. That great red eye, scanning back and forth like a storm, like a sentry, comes to a graceful halt, centered on its beastly forehead. It begins to pulse, hideously. Like it's sending, or receiving. Like it's asking a question it had nearly forgotten how to ask. And Samuel T. Anders, he looks at the thing, and he doesn't move. His iris flashes red, just for a moment. And the Raider turns immediately, tossing all those ones and zeroes in the Recycle Bin and flying away again. If they had tails, it would be tucked between its legs.
On CIC, the Admiral and the President wonder what changed, as the rest follow suit, and the battle ends before it's even begun. Before the numbers get above what's acceptable in a skirmish, before the numbers carved out on Laura Roslin's heart measure too much loss. Colonel Saul Tigh and Tory Foster wonder what changed. Helo brings the birds back home.
And out in the sky, Samuel T. Anders stares after his Raider, and watches the enemy, thousands of them, make their hasty retreat to the Basestars, which spin up and leave, like a massacre in reverse.
DEMAND ANYTHING
There are 39,698 souls in the Fleet, at this time, after the Pyxis scratched itself against the sky. And Gaius Baltar is going to save them all. From the emerging aristocracy to the unhappy underclass, from the misled polytheists to the mislead monotheists to the misled atheists, from the Marxists to the socialists to the capitalists to the black-market opportunists to the free-roaming profiteers and slavers, Gaius Baltar has a plan for our salvation.
"You'll be safe here, Gaius," Jeanne murmurs, and Paulla opens the door to them, looking like a total lunatic. Inside, there are lots of them: the faithful. I find them terribly sad, personally.
You had DEMAND LOVE, right, and that turned into a prison camp disaster. And DEMAND PEACE never got off the ground because those lunatics didn't understand how there's a time for that, but it hasn't yet come. But this is like...how do we measure loss? How broken are these people? Is this the jailhouse marriage of an ugly girl to a serial killer? Is this like returning to your abuser? Is it political? Is it religious? Is it even transformative?
Or (and this is the part that makes me sad, because I think it's true) have their souls just been used too rudely, too often, too brutally -- by Roslin, by Adama and Tigh, by the Cylon most of all -- to tell the difference anymore? Is this what Sesha Abinell would have become? So weak and afraid and hungry and disillusioned that the need for wholeness, for spiritual sustenance, could express itself in this malformed, uncooked, yeasty way? Or maybe this is just how all religions begin: in silence.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
Out in the hallway, there's another broken one: It's Connor from the Circle, Connor who we remember, whose son Kevin was seven once. He's lost Baltar's trail, but he's patient. This is his anything, too. Gaius is the endpoint for him, too: Religion looks different, to different people.
For example, now that Gaius is getting a good look around, he quickly picks up on how crappy his cult is. It's very IKEA. There are women of all ages, and some dudes. Lots of blankets and pillows everywhere, like any old harem you might find in an abandoned storage compartment: lots of incense and candles and soft flowy linen and linen blends.
Now, what my notes at this point say is, verbatim: "The song is crazy." Which, this episode is fun because there are so many new themes and twists cued up, so you get to enjoy the music the whole time, and definitely this one -- along with the Final Four theme, which is hilarious in that it's hard to make a sitar sit quietly in the background of anything, much like the Bagpipes of Filial Responsibility those Adamas are so fond of -- is crazy as hell, but let me tell you what the Old English lyrics translate to. I should warn you that probably this is going to blow your mind, so I'm going to ask in advance that you not join any cults once it does so:
We gather in shadow beneath your altar
Your image in blood and flame
By Your Command
Deliver us unto the One True God
Gaius Baltar
Our divine savior, now and for eternity
So Say We All
I mean, you know? That's impressively fucked up. I think the Lords of Kobol just revealed that I need to marry Bear McCreary as of ten minutes ago. Anyway, all the little Batshit Anythingers stand up and try to look nubile, but won't meet his eyes. Which is a funny journey for him to take: he started out as a celebrity with all the eyes on him, and then he was hidden away on New Caprica and started to look kind of diseased because he never went outside and just hated himself more and more and did a bunch of drugs and had unwise sex, and then after the Trial people pointedly wouldn't look at him, but now he's so...whatever is simultaneously the opposite of famous and notorious, accessible and frightening, consumable and poisonous. Taboo? Holy? Now he's so holy, to this self-selected group of sadsack weirdos that nobody will look at him again.
There's a shrine to Gaius Baltar, made with cardboard and Christmas lights, candles and pictures and little corn dollies, whatever's scraped together from what's come before, detritus and flotsam, a six-pointed star drawn in marker, random beads strewn and hanging. And Gaius, who is after all, a genius, nods and basks in the absolutely pure irony: "Right." So this is the situation I get to deal with now. These are the raw materials at my disposal. This is where Gaius Baltar ended up, the anything he demanded, for his guilt and his disappointment; the way his spiritual destiny was snatched away in the Rapture, only to express itself anew, in revolution and sedition, and prose. This is the man he chose to be.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
THE CALCULATION OF ACCEPTABLE RISK
The Admiral and the Colonel look down from the balcony in the hangar bay: Zeus and Ares, standing at the very Gates where Hephaestus threw himself to death, over and over again, every night, afraid of the end of everything. Grieving for the exodus of his humanity.
But that was when he didn't have any choices, just fears and suspicions. Now he's got choices, and he's got the man he's chosen to be, and that man is watching Kara Thrace climb down out of a Viper shinier and newer and in better shape than anything we, as viewers, have ever seen. She's talking a mile a minute, obviously, because she doesn't remember yet. Not the storm or what she did, but everything after that. When she brought them Earth: a gift, to replace everything the Cylons took from each of them. The morning star and a fair wind. A fresh start.
"Chief, I'm gonna need you to develop my gun camera footage ASAP. I've got a hell of a set of vacation pictures! I'll take my post-flight checklist, I want to sign out so I can get in the showers." But he doesn't have a post-flight checklist for her. Or he does, but it's only got one question on it, and it's not really a checklist kind of question, more like an essay, and it goes like so:
Q: WTF?
Kara chuckles a little bit, and asks what's up. We already know what's up, because we remember, so here's a list of people who are totally freaking out: Helo, Chief, Racetrack, and Athena. But not Lee Adama. Lee doesn't even look, just lowers his head like a ram, and crashes into her, and holds her so tight.
"Okay. Okay, me too. It's okay. It's okay."
"Do you believe in miracles?" asks Tigh. Bill doesn't; he can't afford to. He used to, before she died -- not in a lot of miracles, and not necessarily in the Gods even, but the kind of miracles that always used to bring Kara skipping back, dancing them away from the abyss. Those Starbuck quick saves and heroic last second-shots. But the last time she died, it broke something in him. Such a little girl, to leave such a big hole: that's our Kara. He can't afford to believe in miracles anymore, even when they're staring him in the face, grinning with a smile like five stars and no pain at all.
In the Colonies they have a very old story, about a boy who played the harp and sang like an angel, and the woman he loved. When she died, the Gods wept for him, for he was beloved. And he went down into the underworld, and made deals to get her back again. And on the way home, on the path out of the underworld, his curiosity or his fear or his desire got the better of him, and he turned around to look, and you know what happened , and so does the Admiral. It seethes in him.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
Lee is good, he's a good boy. When Sam comes running up, just as excited and just as scared, and throws his arms around his wife, Lee steps to the side. Just far enough not to get caught in the crossfire. Sam and Kara, their love was always a little too rough for Lee, I think. Jock love.
Sam chuckles, and touches her face: "I told everyone that you were too frakkin' mean to kill." And she says it again: "Okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. I'm okay." She pulls back and takes him in, his Viper gear. "What the hell are you doing in a jock smock?" He's proud: one more thing they have in common. One more thing on a list that might be getting longer every second she stands here, proving she's not dead.
"I just finished Viper transition a week ago, and I started ACM..." She shakes her head, really confused now, but he can't talk, he just touches her some more. And up on the balcony, Zeus calls down to Artemis, his voice booming, neither angry nor afraid, neither welcoming nor warning, but full of love: "Starbuck!"
"I did it, Boss. I found Earth." She chuckles like a daughter, and behind her, Sam smiles hugely. She's home.
"Everybody move back," Adama orders, and the guns come forward, the Marines start barking orders, and everybody steps away from her. "I need you in sickbay. Cottle's gonna give you a complete physical examination." Which is a nice way of saying it, but not nice enough to keep from tripping Kara's bullshit detector. She holds up her hands, edging closer and closer to anger. Has nobody noticed that she went to Earth and is going to lead them there? Has nobody noticed her redemption? Has nobody noticed the light in her eyes, the peaceful calm, the rightness of her mission and her calling?
"Okay, what the hell's going on? I'm off the ship for a few hours and everybody's acting..." When Sam tries to explain it was two months, she spits that her ship's clock still registers six hours and change. Lee speaks softer now, searching for her eyes. Lee and Kara, their love was always just a little too gentle, I think, for Sam to really believe. Maybe for all of us. Certainly for them. "Then your clock's wrong, Kara. Sam's telling you the truth. We thought you were dead." His voice breaks, again, on the word. It seethes in him.
THE DARKER MOMENTS OF DR. GAIUS BALTAR
Mother Jeanne, more Martha than Mary, chides Gaius softly: "I just wanted you to know that we'll be back soon. Whatever you do, please don't go anywhere by yourself. It's not safe." Paulla, the crazy one with the knife, the wild Crone, nods toward Tracey, the youngest one, the hot one. The Maiden. Paulla and Jeanne are going back to Derrick.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
"Right... Oh, Derrick. That's your little boy, isn't it? The one in sickbay." Jeanne pushed his picture through the bars at Gaius, weeks ago, but she doesn't begrudge him the vagueness. "Yes, I -- I'm praying for his recovery," says Gaius. Like she asked him to, over and over, back when she had just begun making up this strange, this brave new religion. "Really?" she asks sweetly. "Oh, thank you." He assures her it's a pleasure. They all stand around awkwardly looking at each other: too much intimacy already, without the underpinning of experience.
"So ... What's the game plan, ladies?" Paulla nearly smirks at him. "Game plan?"
He nods at their sad little shrine, gestures at the walls. "Well, this place is brilliant. Really. You know, it's beautiful. Just...when am I getting out of here? When am I getting off the ship?" Anywhere but Galactica. Anywhere would be more anonymous, less guilty, less populated with the faces of his shame and his persecution. Anything.
Jeanne protests that security's too tight, which Gaius translates as a lie meant to entrap him forever. Paulla levels him with a look like a razor: "Gaius, none of the other ships will have you." The Maiden measures it out and the Mother knits it together, but it's the Crone that clips that bastard off. Watch.
"Uh, we'll be back?" says Jeanne sweetly, and they take off, and he's left alone with only Tracey for company. Well, and his thoughts. He always has those.
"Yesterday, you were facing execution," says Six. "Today you're free. Why the long face?" He immediately begins whining, as he always does when she comes to him, and which so rarely goes well. Whining, to angels, sounds like the tiniest, least sexy violin every built.
"Oh gee, I don't know. From President of the Colonies to...this, king of fools, probably best to be hated by everyone than loved by this lot, doomed to live out the rest of my life in this loony bin, I don't know. That might have something to do with my rather savage mood swings." He drops to his knees, wiped out. Gaius in a box. She kneels before him and chuckles. "Relax, Gaius. You think I've brought you this far just to let it end here?"
"I need some encouragement. A ray of hope about the future. An inkling..." She caresses his face. "You've got me. I'm here for you."
Tracey watches for awhile, and then notes that it's really kind of beautiful, this prayer.
Six's word, not mine, and played for laughs. But in his bad moments, in the darker moments of Dr. Gaius Baltar, she comes to him. And tells him that she loves him, even if nobody else in his world loves him, she does, and God does. She convinces him he's going to make it, she promises she'll be the ground beneath his feet, that she will bear him up and make him strong, that every sin that he confesses only increases God's love for him... Can we call the Six Fugues prayer? Is that weird? Because I can't really see a difference anymore.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
"Oh, yeah, yeah," he nods. He knows he's beautiful, and is prepared to be graceful no matter what his follower says . "Oh, thank you, yeah," like she's asking for his autograph. "Not some hollow ritual," she explains: that's the beauty of his prayer. The way it seemed like a duet between entities, a Sonata for Supplicants: "It's as if the Gods are right here beside you." With Six gone for a sec, chased into the shadows, he can really notice how hot Tracey is. And she's well hot. It's just that when she prays, to the Gods, she feels all...empty. Six watches, and the line of her suit, the cut of her hem and her unblinking gaze, all these tell you we're at one of those points, like when Three had him in the chair, that will decide everything. "Do you? That's a shame, isn't it?" All empty like that, well, what can we do about that? Gaius is very charming when he wants to be.
"Her Gods are false," Six spits, bathed in light. "Tell her." He does. "If you feel empty when you pray to Zeus or Poseidon or Aphrodite, it's because it is empty. It's a totally empty experience." She touches his face, unbuttons his shirt, and he starts stumbling over his boilerplate: "They're...they're not real. They've been promulgated by...a ruling elite...uh...to stop you from learning the truth." (Gods, how long has it been? Since the Basestar! That was so long ago! Before the Eye and the Rapture, even. Everything on the whole frakking show was different the last time Gaius Baltar got laid.) "And what truth is that?" asks Tracey: a very good question. And one which Gaius suddenly can't answer. He looks past her, at Six, and she thunders, exasperated: "There's only one God."
"In a nutshell," he continues, "That's the truth." She responds by popping her own shirt open. "We're alone here, aren't we? The others aren't coming back soon? And the door's locked?" She grins and nods. Demand anything. "All right, good." She takes his hands, and places them on her breasts. "Can you feel God's presence?" And you know, he says, he can. And so can Tracey. And those two lonely souls make love, in the presence of God, and on the wall there's a picture of Gaius Baltar, on a cardboard star, surrounded by candles and incense and cheap beads strewn and hung, and all around them there's just silence.
COTTLE'S VERDICT
Is that Kara is not a Cylon, which Lee totally didn't even believe, and Roslin still does believe. Bill can't explain, about the miracles and Orpheus and the hole in him from last time, so he just says sadly that they had to be sure. Roslin is still on her whole thing about how Kara is automatically a Cylon, which is pragmatic since they saw her explode and then reappear six months later. Which would be correct, +/- a standard deviation or six, but when her death comes knocking Laura Roslin starts rounding down.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
"How many times do you want to hear it? I followed a heavy Raider into the storm. Took some hits, passed out. When I came to, I was orbiting this planet. Its yellow moon and star matches the description in Pythia. I took these pictures in orbit. The star patterns match what we saw in the tomb of Athena." Back when I was the favored daughter, back when you took me to your diseased breast.
"How did you get here?" No good answers. "Well, that's just not good enough, Captain. Tell us everything you remember." The pride of her conviction, that she's being a hero. The strength. She's the one that makes the hard choices, that shepherds the Fleet to salvation. She's the Dying Leader. She didn't put up with Baltar's nonsense, and she didn't negotiate with terrorists, and she didn't allow labor strikes, and she didn't let Chief and Cally win against the emerging aristocracy. She didn't save Danny Noon.
"I remember taking the photos. Turning my ship in a reciprocal heading." Kara's voice gets tired. "And then I'm not sure. I must've blacked out again." She tries, so hard, seeking out Laura's eyes, and Bill's. "I remember a giant gas planet with rings. I remember a flashing triple star, and a comet. And then I was back with the Fleet." Tory stares, and Laura reiterates that this was a six-hour trip for Kara. "I do not understand the time discrepancy either, okay? All I know is I was there. I took the pictures. I didn't imagine it!" The angrier she gets, the more sure Laura becomes, and the sadder Bill gets.
Back in the hangar, Chief's looked at her bird. "There's not a ding or a scratch on it. It's the got same tail number as the one she flew out on..." But it's too new. It's evaded, erased, rewound all the anguish and pain of running, since the attacks. All its pain and rage and blood burnt off in the storm. "So it's not the same ship," says Laura, like it's the confirmation of a theory. Tory and Tigh stare as Chief agrees. That's three, and Sam can't be expected to go along with them either way, but this is a deal being made. The blank space of their futures, the possibility of their betrayal, is so easily whitewashed and overshadowed by the much bigger blank space of Kara's return. Look, here, at this girl. She dies and returns to life, like the Cylons. She's always had dark spaces, nasty little crannies, that nobody could fathom. She was always hard to get along with. Look how many times she's hurt your son.
"Admiral, it's just not the outside either. This is the data from the nav computer. There isn't any. It's blank. There's no record of where this ship has been." Which is enough for Laura, who orders Kara dropped in the brig immediately. Lee, of course, takes offense. "What? So some things don't add up, and we're back to thinking she's a Cylon? What about Cottle's test?"
| Season 4 | Episode 1
Colonel Saul Tigh, a Cylon, suggests that Cottle's test doesn't prove anything, and Tory Foster, with a glint of guilt in her lovely eyes, agrees: "Even if her DNA's the same, she could still be a Cylon." And in case you missed the memo, Laura reminds us that she could have even been one "from the beginning." Pressing their case, even though none of the humans here know that there's a case being made, that there's anything to press, Tigh reminds them that Baltar's Cylon detector was a crock. "It failed to ID Boomer," he says.
The irony of that, the way Gaius is such a multidimensional fuckup that he can reach back across time and slap Starbuck that way. The machine works, it's always worked. There is a miraculous machine that works, that answers prayers, divides the lambs form the goats, and nobody knows it. They'll stick it in a dusty old room, in a cell, their savior, and it'll cry out in the silence: You're doing this wrong, I can do this, I know the truth. You're going the wrong way.
"I know how you feel about her, Bill, but that is exactly what the Cylons could be counting on here." In the background, Lee is fairly close to vomiting from rage. "Then we're back where we're coming from," the Admiral exposits in reply: "There could be Cylons right here, and we wouldn't know it 'til they put a bullet in our heads." (Or our right eyeballs, for example!) The three of the Five are so shocked by this lack of script subtlety that they almost start crying. "Or lead us into an ambush," Laura says. "The Cylon Fleet had enough firepower to blow us out of the sky, but instead they ran and jumped. And there's Kara Thrace suddenly back from the dead, having found Earth." She's telling us what we already know, but connecting the dots in a scary, weird, paranoid way: "If Kara Thrace can lead us off our course..."
"-- Course?" interrupts Apollo, answering our audience questions before we can ask them. "What course? The Nebula was supposed to be another clue on the way to Earth, but ..." Ah, no. Laura's got that angle covered: "The Nebula is only a road sign along the way to Earth. And we need to continue to follow its path." And what if -- and even Lee has to know this is a longshot, even though it's also obviously true -- what if Kara is the very clue they were meant to find? Laura doesn't even bother with that, just points out that, if we're hypothesizing in a crazy fashion, "what if" this Kara thing is playing the Adamas? Just like she's always done? Without even trying?
| Season 4 | Episode 1
I AM A STRANGE LOOP, OR: BRINGING GÖDEL ESCHER BACK
Jeanne wakes Gaius up, screaming for help, and he finds himself naked, tangled in the sheets with Tracey as Jeanne hurries to them, dropping the boy in the center of their bed. It's Derrick, her son. Out of sickbay. "Where are my clothes?" Gaius whispers to Tracey, and though she tells him it's all okay, he tries in vain to cover his nakedness with a corner of the blanket. Derrick has viral encephalitis, which Gaius explains to Tracey means that the only dogs in this fight are Derrick's immune system, and prayer. Doctors can't do anything about viruses. Jeanne, fearing her son's death is nearing, has brought him to die in the arms of his loving, de facto, weeks-old family. Demand anything.
She takes Gaius's hand, and Tracey takes the other. And Gaius says, again and again, that he prayed for the boy. Begs her to understand, to believe that he did. "I know. I guess...I guess the One True God just doesn't want him to live, right?" Gaius stares and realizes that his rants and manipulations have finally gotten him in over his head. He realizes what this cult could be. And while he tries to swim, there's Paulla standing, watching over them all, like Six. But how much of this, Gaius, how much of this is theatre? How can you know for sure, if you're bluffing yourself as bad as everybody else?
In Tigh's quarters, the Four sit around, feeling bad and explaining the plot to us. No, they don't hear the song anymore, because it was a trigger or something. Yes, when the Raider scanned Sam, all the Cylons left the area. Perhaps it recognized him, but he's more worried about how come he didn't shoot it first, but Tigh thinks it was just a nugget mistake and not some Cylon issue in his brain, but Sam's not so sure, but Tigh feels he cannot be programmed to do bad things, but Chief brings up the somewhat visceral memory of how bad Boomer's programming betrayed her when she shot the old man, but Tigh explains to us the audience that the difference is that Boomer didn't know what she was, so it's fine. It's going to be okay.
How does he know this? How can he know, this thinking-about-thinking, whence this Cartesian bilocation that could tell him whether or not he's just a made-up thing, a puppet. How can you know if you know? How can he tell them it's going to be okay? He demonstrates by pulling a gun out of his locker, cocking it, and setting it on the table to the liquor. "Agreed?" They nod, one by one. The Chief is sad. Everybody's sad. This is sad.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
Laura starts her conversation with Caprica by stuttering: "I don't know why I'm here. Yes, I do." The ability of the human machine, the self-reflective nature of the beast that separates animal from mineral, human from silicon. "I'm here because of the things that we've shared and the things that we've seen." Specifically, Caprica nods in her shackles, the Kobol Opera house, of course. "You went inside, you saw more than I did." You and Gaius, standing with Hera, looking up at the balcony, at the Final Five standing before frescoes of creation. "I thought that maybe you could help me." How's that?
"I need to know about the other five. The types we've never seen. The ones that Baltar calls the Final Five." Specifically, Caprica nods in her shackles, whether Kara is an unknown model. Caprica puts both feet on the floor, feeling guilty and gross. "I've been programmed never to think about them." And Caprica's a Six, a Virgo: God has a plan, and if you're not supposed to think about them, don't. "Well, your programming isn't working, because you're thinking about them right now." But how can you know if you know? Caprica looks down: "I try not to." Ignoring her shame, and her confusion, and her guilt, and her terror -- her lover Three was boxed, all of them, for just this -- Laura presses again: "Trying not to is thinking about them. How do you rationalize that?" How can you know if you know?
Caprica's face is stricken as she stands, as she fractures: Blaspheme with this woman? Here, in the house of her enemy, to not only think about them, but to share that knowledge. To give up the location of her brothers and sisters, her sacred fellows, who lie in the space between life and death. Whose nature is so extraordinary, like God's, that you must think only of what they are not, and never of what they are. To think about something that's been shoving itself into her consciousness for days? She stands, and the Marines jump to it. Laura waves them off, awesomely: "Back off, don't leave, back off." Her hands and feet are bound, after busting Tigh's face last time. She's no more, and no less, harmless or deadly than Sixes have to be.
"The Five are close," Caprica whispers, and Laura leans in, shocked. "I can feel them."
Gaeta's giving Kara attitude, on CIC, as they work their way through star charts. One looks familiar, but as Gaeta pissily explains, it's protoplanetary, nothing livable. "No ringed gas giants like you claimed you saw." She tells him, Lieutenant, that it's a fact, not a claim, and he accepts that, sir, if she says so, and she does say so, mister Gaeta, and what's his problem, and he doesn't have a problem, sir, he's just following orders. Which, I don't even get his mess right now, but anyway, speaking of orders, Kara orders him to stop being a dick, basically, and start helping her find Earth so people will stop pointing guns at her, and he refuses to stop being a dick, and just when you're positive this scene is going nowhere, Helo arrives and tells Gaeta to take a hike.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
Tigh orders a jump down the line in the direction indicated by the Nebula, and Dee starts spinning the FTL, and Kara complains to Helo about how nobody believes her, and Helo tells her the best way to take care of that is to find the star system, and she whines about how it's a waste of time, but he doesn't understand she means that literally, that that's not how it's going to happen, so he explains how she shouldn't lose hope because this stuff sometimes takes months, and just when you're positive this scene is going nowhere, the Admiral arrives and tells Helo to take a hike.
"It doesn't work like that. It's a feeling. An intuition. I didn't use nav fixes to get there and back. When we were at that Nebula, it was so clear to me. But every jump we take farther away, the clarity fades. If we keep jumping like this, I won't be able to find our way back." Literally, that's what she says, and that's what happens. I think I would not be so offended by all of this if the words themselves weren't so darned unlikely. Nobody ever talked like this in the history of the universe. It's a brilliantly structured episode and it's really fun to watch, it's an A episode, but damn if there's not some unnecessary George Lucas stink around the edges.
"The President's adamant." (See? The resident president's adamant and assonant and carries a laminate. If you're having trouble writing convincing human dialogue, find some humans and ask them. This is why people hate fucking science fiction and can't explain why, this stuff right here, because it hits your ear wonky and makes no emotional sense and takes you out of the story. The point is to get us past the spaceships and alien robots, not to point them out all the time. You know?) "We're gonna continue on the course laid out by the Eye of Jupiter."
Dualla counts it down, and they jump. And Kara's head goes crazy, and she shakes. "We're going the wrong way. If we keep jumping like this, I'm gonna lose the feeling completely, never be able to take us back." The Admiral asks Kara if she's seriously suggesting that he approach the President of the Twelve Colonies and tell her to forget Pythia and the Eye, because Kara has a "feeling." Um, yes. That is what you are supposed to do, and it's obviously what you're going to end up doing, so...
Adama's horrified and sad and tired from all the stuff going on with her: "I can't. I just left your ship. There's not a scratch on it. It's brand new. How do you explain that, Kara?" With tears on her face, she offers no response, and he looks away. He can't even look. It seethes in him. "Look at me. Look at me!" He does, and she leans close, searching his beautiful face. "I swear to Gods, it's me. Kara." But the question he can't ask, because it's too close to turning around, on the path from the underworld, is how she can possibly know that. How can you know when you know?
| Season 4 | Episode 1
"I can do this. You once said you loved me like a daughter. If you still do, you've gotta trust me on this one."
He can't afford to. And that's why.
In the last months, how many times has Lee Adama watched his gun camera film, from the Maelstrom, would you say? It's not an idle question, nor is it a comforting one. He did so many strange and awful and wonderful things, between the sunset and the dawn. How many of those times was he hearing this, in the back of his head? "...They're waiting for me." No! No! "...They're waiting for me." No! No! "...They're waiting for me." No! No! Or was it only today that he could do it, go back to the scene of the crime, now that she's back (or gone forever), and something else is coming? He's only obsessive when he's drunk, so maybe this is the first time. I like to think so, but I don't really know. If she's still dead, this is the goodbye and the final sweep for clues. If she's back alive, this is a fact-finding mission, as much for her breaking heart as for his broken one.
Bill clears his throat, looks down at his son in the tactics theatre. "What should I believe? Should I believe my heart? Or my eyes?" (Come back here. Come back!) Lee makes it clear where he stands: by Kara's side. Even when the angle makes it seem otherwise. "I want to believe her," Bill admits. "But the President's right, it's exactly what the Cylons would be counting on."
And they keep saying it, and it keeps being heartbreaking. Because in what kind of a fracked-up universe does Occam's Razor work out that way? "It's what I want most, so it must be poisoned." How can that be the smartest call? "It's the only joy I can imagine, so it must be a trick or a trap." What have we done to these kids? When will it get better? How can you know when you know?
For the time being, then, they'll follow the President's lead. "She still staying in your quarters?" asks Lee, sighing heavily. She is, but only until she's found a place to rest and finish her latest course of treatment. Bill turns the lights on, but they don't look at each other right away. Too many corners and spikes on all of this. The Admiral thanks his son for suiting up during the fight. He's a good boy. Lee smiles, tired. "We needed everyone up there." They still do. Bill pulls Lee's wings out, and places them gently on the table between them, and Lee shakes his head. "I took those off for the wrong reasons..." To which Bill, of course, responds that he should just go ahead and put them back on, then.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
"Baltar's trial may have been the trigger, but, um...this is a feeling I've been having for a while. It's time for a change. I need to move on. I've had some feelers from the government. There's a...position...opening up. And I think I can make a valuable contribution there. Maybe even more than in the cockpit."
(And what's so great for him is how he -- the Commander's, the Admiral's son, the good boy from Caprica, the lawyer's grandfather, this guy with the last name Adama -- has the option of doing so. Oh, to be Caprican, the seat of politics, culture, art, science, learning. Architecture. I wonder how old you get on the Daru Mozu, how long it takes for your beautiful hands to callus over and curl up, and the tylium in your lungs makes you choke and cough all night. I wonder if Danny Noon is still alive, sometimes, or if he taught himself to draw again. I wonder how the tylium's still rolling.)
"Dad, what if Zak had come back to us in that Viper? If my brother had climbed out of that cockpit, would it matter if he were a Cylon? If he always had been? When all's said and done would that change how we really feel about him?"
But Dad, he's saying: what about the unthinkable? What if the unthinkable happened? What would you think about that? How can you know if you know? How can you ever be sure? Lee's not doing anything to his father that Laura didn't do to her prisoner first. He's just doing it better.
FAR TOO KEEN ON WHERE & HOW, BUT NOT SO HOT ON WHY
Gaius stares at Derrick, breathing rough, lying with his mother on the center pallet. He moves to the door, buttoning up his shirt -- is he leaving? Is he leaving the cult? -- before turning back, staring down at them. He crosses back to Derrick, and kneels by his side, and awkwardly, repetitively, touches the child's hair. He begins to pray. How much of this is theatre?
"Please, God. I'm only asking you this one last time. Don't let this child die." Tears well up, but don't drop quite yet. "Has he sinned against you?" He interrupts himself: stupid question. "-- He can't have sinned against you. He's not even had a life yet." Paulla and Tracey wake up together, nearby, and settle quietly down to listen, in the silence. "How can you take him and let me live? After all I've done. Really, if you want someone to suffer, take me. We both know I deserve it." His hand on Derrick's head is fervent, and forgetful. Jeanne's eyes, turned on her side away from Gaius and the child, fill with tears. "I have been selfish and weak. I have failed so many people. And I have killed."
| Season 4 | Episode 1
His tears begin to fall; his sobs become real. He has killed, he has been selfish and weak, and he has failed so many people. And the real tragedy of Gaius, the reason he deserves so desperately to be loved, is that he knows it. If he didn't, he wouldn't spend so much time looking for a way out. His head wouldn't be such a prison if he were just allowed to live there. For the same reason Bill loves Saul, and Lee loves Kara: forgiveness saves us both. A stupider man could forget it, and a smarter man could redeem himself, and know peace, but Gaius is neither, and both: his weakness is a world-changer.
"I'm not asking for your forgiveness. I'm just asking that you spare the life of this innocent child. Don't take him. Take me." Jeanne weeps, for her boys. For her world. "Take me, take me please." The cult lies in the dark as Gaius Baltar stands, and walks away, staring up at the ceiling of their secret little heaven. Their dirty little garden in the shadows. Demand anything, anything at all.
AND THERE APPEARED AN ANGEL
Paulla, with the knowing grin of a schizophrenic, leads Gaius down a corridor, explaining how moved the whole cult was by Gaius's prayers for the kid. Which means now he knows that he had an audience, and that the cult is even creepier than he thought, because they just laid there listening to him cry. Gaius is like, "And yet he is way sicker, so please don't bug me about it right now." She points out that God's answer to prayers is sometimes "no," and that Derrick's immortal soul, at least, is under His loving care. "Yes, I wish I shared your confidence on that one," says Gaius for some reason. "I really do." Paulla sternly reminds him that he has no choice but to "keep the faith": "We all look to you for guidance." Gaius tells her not to, and as they enter the restroom, he looks at her. "I mean, you're just... Well, you're very young..." She's hurt, but bounces back. (She reminds me so much of Sexy Sadie from the Manson Family, it's amazing. I even like the actor, although normally any comparison to Marguerite Moreau would bring out the jealous boyfriend in me.) When Gaius asks why she's dragged him off the head, she pulls out a razor and giggles, and shuts the hatch behind her.
Later, Paulla's shaving Gaius, still with that nutty look. (And can I just say how cruddy it is that Paulla's misspelled name just happens to be in a show recapped by the same person that recaps American Idol? It bites a tiny bit. Not huge in the scheme of things, especially this week, but still. Why Paulla? I think she looks like a "Ginger," possibly. Or, to go with the weird bisexual cult-member vibe, "Robia," late of Prince gal-pal flirt-pair Diamond and Pearl, and former Sunnydale computer teacher/technopagan. At least I know this won't ever happen with Gossip Girl ever, because their names are weirder than the names on this show any day. "This is my friend Bllair Walldorf. We're going to Berrgdorrf Ggoodmman.")
| Season 4 | Episode 1
As she finishes up, and Gaius thanks her, God shows up to collect his debt in the form of Charlie Connor, from the Circle. Religion looks different to different people. Connor greets him, not unkindly, and goes to the sink-trough to do unspecified stage business involving water and touching his face a whole lot without getting it wet. Gaius, of course, apologizes for not recognizing the guy, because this whole time he's been famous he hasn't really understood how or for why, because he'd prefer to be famous for being Dr. Gaius Baltar, Nobel winner, and there's a whole mess of static between that and what he's famous for now. Paulla tries, in vain, to get him out of there, but Gaius is locked in on Charlie.
"We met at the groundbreaking ceremony on New Caprica. Introduced you to my son Kevin. He told you he wanted to be President when he grew up. You told him that he could be if he stuck to his schoolwork." Gaius remembers him, a "little redheaded boy," about eight or nine. Charlie gruffly corrects him: "Seven." They're both right, in a way. But Kevin Connor will always be seven years old, another burned and dying child of Gaius Baltar, no matter what happens to little Derrick. Paulla pulls and pulls at Gaius, but it's too late. Charlie's buddy Shaunt enters and grabs her by the neck, choking her; Charlie holds a razor tenderly to Gaius's throat. Razors. This is the man Charlie Connor chooses to be.
And Gaius? Screaming, over and over, "Leave her alone!" Demanding that they set Paulla free, with Charlie shouting in his face, over and over, "Look at me!" But Gaius won't look at him, so Charlie decides he wants to hear Gaius scream instead. "I want to see if anyone comes to help you," he shouts, and then screams in Gaius's face, like a wounded beast. Like an animal. And the tiny part of this that was about Gaius goes away, because that's the sound of pain, not rage.
"Beg." He begins to scream. Gaius Baltar sat up there in Colonial One and didn't save them. Twenty-four hours a day, the only thing we know for sure is that he didn't save them. It's the one thing he did constantly for four months, and for a year before that. And then they took Charlie's son, little Kevin, the little red-haired Connor boy, before Charlie could even apologize for bringing him to New Caprica, or into this brutal world at all. All the king's horses rounded them up and shot them dead, and up in Colonial One was Gaius Baltar.
"Beg. I bet you begged the Cylons, why don't you beg for me? Come on, beg!" He headbutts the former President, and forces him to his knees: Gaius Baltar who came this close to paying for his crimes, only to have that justice snatched away at the last second by a tribunal that didn't understand about justice, which is to say that they didn't understand about Kevin Connor, who is seven years old. And now Gaius Baltar is on his knees with a razor to his throat, and he refuses to scream, and he refuses to beg. I mean to say that on his knees, with a razor to his throat, Gaius refuses to be the man that Charlie Connor has chosen for him to be. For a second you can see why she still loves him so much, after all this. How you could fall in love with Gaius Baltar.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
"Get up! Get on your knees! Get up!"
And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, saying, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done." And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
"You asked God to take your life instead of the boy's. Did you mean it?"
His voice sounds like it did when he was Kevin's age, back on Aerelon. Those consonants that scrape the back of the throat. "Yes. Do it. Take my life. Please." Six smiles down at him. He alternately screams, and begs: begs the angel, God, Charlie Connor, Kevin, anybody who will do him the favor of redemption, to make it stick. "Please. Please take my life." His for the little boy's. But which little boy are we talking about? There are at least three in this paragraph alone, after all. They all have different claims to his blood. Any case, something happens to Paulla; she takes out Shaunt like a wild thing, tears the handle off a janitor's bucket and beats him unconscious, then beats the everloving shit out of Charlie Connor, until Gaius stops her. Literally, grabs her arm and says "No." Watch that one: she stops, but she still looks wild.
Wired, she's abuzz as they make their way back toward Cult HQ, pretty much covered in blood: Gaius's, a lot of it, but also Shaunt and Connor's. She really gave them the business. "You see? Gaius, I knew God wouldn't desert you. I mean, I felt his love course through me, giving me the strength to smite them!" Obviously still distracted, or he would right now be having his mind totally blown by how nuts she is, he's like, "Less smiting time." Murder charges, and all.
Jeanne welcomes them back, excited and then terrified by all the blood on Baltar; Paulla posts two cultists to watch the door while they care for him. As the doting begins, Gaius takes a sip of water and deadpans that he cut himself shaving. He looks like he drained a pig, they both do. It's kind of amazing. Jeanne's chirpy and nonchalant about it, all, "Okay, whatever! Come check out my kid!" Down on the bed in the middle of the floor, Derrick's sitting up, looking stronger, smiling up at him. "Derrick," Jeanne murmurs to Gaius, "Oh, yes. God answered your prayers. You have to see... Look! Look at him!" Gaius reaches out and touches the boy, much more softly and naturally than before, feeling for the fever, which has broken. Jeanne giggles, and says that magic word. "It's a miracle!"
| Season 4 | Episode 1
That's one. Two more and you'll be martyred. This isn't my first barbecue, I know how it works.
The cult sits in a room grown bright as five stars, in their secret little heaven. Their miraculous garden in the shadows, demanding magic now, murmuring of miracles. Paulla -- covered in blood -- looks on once again from the sidelines.
And there past her, in a corner flooded with God's light, the angel stares at this new tableau, her look untraceable. Light, and dominion, and joy, and passion, and love, in those eyes. And maybe something else, something hard and wild. Something with a claim now on them all, like a diaspora, like an exodus, in reverse. Like something joining with itself in the Promised Land, gathered on the wings of something yet to come.
HE WHO WALKS BY DAY, OR: JOCK LOVE
Kara stands in the Hall of Remembrance, staring at her picture, to Kat's as she requested, long ago. Looking at the girl who burned away, who left her past behind and flew shouting into the heart of a star. Sam approaches, yearning for her, but she doesn't look up.
"No one took it down. Not the old man, not Lee. Not even you, Sam." Leaving out how this scene is dumb, because she just got back like yesterday and Kara wouldn't be throwing a hissy about this if it weren't the most expedient way to get to the thing, Sam explains that she's being illogical and needs to cut everybody, including herself, some slack. Marines look on, now, everywhere she goes. "When I woke up orbiting Earth, I just figured it was some crazy dream, but..." He breath goes ragged as she tries, desperately, for the hundred or thousandth time, to reconstruct her life. Which is to say, to put herself back together, starting with her most recent past: how can you know when you know?
"I went in following a heavy Raider," she says, tired of saying it. "I mean, maybe the Cylons pulled me out of the soup, captured me, brainwashed me? On Caprica, in the experiment on me, I mean, did they take pieces of me? I mean, is it possible that they grew me, another me in a Petri dish, and they embedded me with the memories, or it with the memories, or..." And, having checked off all the most obvious theories, she sits heavily, voice breaking. The only thing she ever had was Kara Thrace. Even when they took away her wings, even when she started cracking up, she still had that. Not the girl she chose to be, but the sacred girl beneath every choice and mistake and wrong turn, all that stuff burned clear: that secret name, like a precious gem. And now that's gone. Burnt off in the soup, in time dilation or wormholes or vat-grown Kara Klones or all the stuff we can now be sure it is not because that's how this episode works, gone, in a secret disappearance we might never know the truth about. Samuel T. Anders and Tory Foster and Chief Galen Tyrol and Colonel Saul Tigh have one thing going for them: the men and women they've chosen to be. The only thing she's always had, until now.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
Sam kneels at her feet: "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, hey, no. Kara, no. Listen to me. If you were a Cylon, then you've been one from the beginning." (There was a memo, and everything.) She nearly spits, grossed out: "Like Boomer. Spend my entire life thinking I'm one thing..." Sam nods. "And then you wake up one day and discover you're another. Still doesn't change who you really are. Still doesn't change the fact that I love you no matter what." She smiles; her eyes dance. "You are a better person than I am, Sam, because if I found out that you were a Cylon, I would put a bullet between your eyes."
It's a joke to her. To her, it's a joke. She doesn't know yet.
Dualla, over the PA, announces another jump, and counts it down. Kara hisses, grabbing at her head, at the infinity inside it, and whimpers. "Damn it, they're still going in the wrong direction. Oh, one more jump and I'm gonna lose my way altogether..." She wobbles off in an unspecified direction, and he grabs her elbow, supporting her. "All right, we gotta find you a rack. Okay, take it easy." The Marines stare at them, guns shaking, at ease, as Kara whirls on Sam, eyes bright with crazy revelations.
"It's Roslin. The old man's not gonna listen to me as along as she's... I gotta get to her." The worst idea in the universe, well, Kara Thrace is going to go ahead and do that. Sam points out that it's a dumb idea to go lurching through the halls toward the President of the Colonies, what with being a suspected Cylon and confirmed high-ranking seed on Laura's Big Old Airlockin' List.
"Is that a fact?" It is, Sam says, almost sadly, like he knows she's about to bust into crazy ninja Cylon-powers hyperspeed and take out one Marine -- by the neck -- then drop the other one after Sam gets knocked to the ground disarming him. So now, in the time it might take you to blink, there are two KO'd Marines on the floor, a bunch of ordnance ready to be snagged, Sam on the floor looking at her like she's crazy. And where this is happening is in the middle of the holiest place in the Fleet, the place where memories are kept and honored, where love is laid to rest and where families weep and lovers remember and brothers and sisters mourn and wives and husbands and lovers grieve: right in the middle of that, a hall made into an altar for the tears of the orphans of twelve planets. In the Hall of Remembrance, where she wept for Kat, where Sam and Lee wept for her, where they laid to rest a girl named Kat, and Reilly's girlfriend, who had a name like Kassie, or Cally, or Kacey. Back from the dead, Kara Thrace stands in a temple and stares down at her husband.
| Season 4 | Episode 1
"No, no, wait! What the hell are you doing, Kara?" She shakes her head. "Where's the president, Sam?" He scoffs, begs her to stop, and she knocks him out with the gun. She moves so fast, now. Death is really good for your reflexes. Also your hair, I keep meaning to mention how cute her hair looks.
Kara stands in the Hall and stares down at Samuel T. Anders, feels shitty, looks at the other scattered bodies, and takes off running toward Adama's quarters, the obvious location of the President. Laura is alone on his bed, with her shoes off and a cold compress over her eyes. Maybe she's in the Opera House, maybe she's just trying not to vomit from the chemo. Maybe she's getting a little bit of real old-fashioned sleep. I wish that for her. Kara and her giant gun charge through the ship, and outside the connecting corridor she can see the Marine guarding the door. She pulls a gas bomb and takes him off, so when she enters it's backlit with foggy light.
Laura sits up when the Marine drops, blurry as the door opens, no glasses on, smiling fuzzily. Does she know who it is? Does she think it's Bill? Does she think it's Sharon, in a vision? Does she think it's Kara, and everything is going to be okay? I don't know, but when Kara cocks the gun at her, she doesn't move. Her eyes go sad, and her face goes hard, but she doesn't move. And they look at each other.
TO BE CONTINUED
With a gun between them, and headaches pulling them in opposite directions, and pulling the Adamas in turn all over the map, and generally, I'm sure, making life difficult for everybody. When I said I wanted Laura back with the twins, I guess I should have been more frakking specific. See you then. I missed you, you know. Boom boom boom.