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After months, our return to the Fleet proves to be both a blessing and a curse, as the hiatus has managed to turn the Pegasus story into a three-parter: while all the cliffhangers from last half-season are resolved within minutes, we end on another crazy set altogether. Apollo and Starbuck manage to resolve the Pegasus/Galactica standoff through either blind fuck-uppery or really intensely good teamwork, as both sides mistake the suddenly-appearing Blackbird for a Cylon Raider and call a truce under the old "enemy of my enemy" clause. Even Cain falls slightly in love with Starbuck due to her super-awesomeness, promoting her to Captain and making her the new Pegasus CAG, which is a neat switch against Cain's taking Apollo off active duty. Starbuck's recon pictures show that the HMS Ernestine is exactly what we thought -- a way-station for Cylon souls before download, and PegaSix Gina of all people provides corroboration -- for the horrible reason that her time on Pegasus has caused her to wish for permanent death. Tigh is pretty awesome throughout, and also gets the Pegasus XO Fisk to explain that Cain left almost her entire own civilian Fleet either dead or Cylon bait. Baltar gives up his awesome imaginary condo now that he's begun a non-sexual relationship with Gina, who came aboard Pegasus as a refugee, planning to sabotage the ship and get killed, downloading into a new body. President Roslin gets both Cain and Adama under her temporary control using only her grace, logic, and terrifying will, and gets a temporary amnesty for Helo and Chief until the Cylons are dealt with. Adama apologizes to Boomer, making me love him, and then cries about Roslin's cancer, making me love him more -- also Roslin, who flirts a bit before advising him, shockingly, to murder Cain. A plan is created to destroy the Cylon Resurrection Ship, thinking that this might cause the Cylons to abandon their pursuit of both Battlestars. The episode ends on a fantastic back-and-forth: Cain advises her ambivalent XO Fisk to "terminate" Adama and the rest of the Galactica CIC once the HMS Ernestine is gone, as Adama is meanwhile advising his ambivalent surrogate daughter (and Cain's current CAG) to shoot Cain in the fracking head. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Back when we last spoke, remember, the situation was briefly this: Helo and Chief were en route back to Pegasus for execution, after having killed Thorne while rescuing Boomer from him. Already on Pegasus was Baltar, attempting to rehabilitate the horribly abused Gina version of Cylon Number Six. Starbuck was off doing recon on the mysterious and eponymous Cylon vessel, Apollo was trapped in a Raptor with the very pissy Pegasus CAG, Stinger, and Cain and Adama had just released their Vipers in an open battle for the future of the fleet and Adama's various crew members. Cain thought Adama was dangerously incompetent, Adama thought Cain was dangerously insane, and they both thought they knew best. Meanwhile, a Cylon battle fleet -- including two gigantic Basestars -- was massing for an attack.
Now: the Vipers from both Battlestars are forming up -- the Pegasus ones are spoiling for a fight and buzzing the Galactica formation. Crackhead Kat, who seems to be our field contact on this battle, has an itchy trigger finger, not to mention being totally unnerved by the Top Gunnery of the Pegasus guys. Seriously, the only thing more nervous-making than open fire is this swarming, creepy, scary shit. Tigh, of course, would like to see Kat and the Vipers turned loose on the Pegasus squads, and would also like to attack the Pegasus directly. I will say right now that Tigh is right about more things in this episode than I would have believed possible, but I'm not sure this is one of them. At least not right away like this. Starbuck is coming in close on the Resurrection Ship, as we'll learn the Cylons call the HMS Ernestine, in the Blackbird Laura, where nobody can see her. She eventually pilots the Blackbird directly through the frackking center of the vessel, because she is a bad-ass, clicking pictures all the time, and then jumps away without any Raiders even noticing. The Vipers are still swarming, and Kat is still freaking out. She is duallaed that she will not fire first, and she gnashes her pearly whites, and dumb old Hotdog says he's got one in his sights, but he can't do anything. Nobody can do anything. It's crazy.
A Petty Officer on Pegasus tells the even bitchier CAG Stinger to "relieve Captain Adama of duty and aid an attack mission on Galactica." Apollo finds this hilarious and ridiculous, and opens the hitch on his gun for Stinger to grab it. He pissily requests permission to hang out in the back of Stinger's Raptor -- what else is he going to do? -- and once back there, a few feet away from Stinger himself, types a message incredibly loudly to Starbuck. Clickity-click-click-tick. Outside, Kat and a Pegasus pilot they call Nacho, apparently, are playing chicken. This, of course, causes Kat to scream and yell like the Incredible Hulk. They are wasting gas.
Starbuck and the Blackbird finally jump back to the Battlestars, and she's freaked out to see the two sets of Vipers dancing around each other. She receives Apollo's message, still off-dradis due to the Blackbird's carbon composite shell, and reads it. Her lips move, by the way, so that's strike one for the old Caprica ISD. She then types back very slowly, saying the words out loud: "Star. Buck. Here. What. The. Hell. Is. Go. Ing. On?" Strike two.
Gaeta picks up the Blackbird, finally -- I guess sending the message put her back on dradis? -- and identifies her as a Raider due to her sudden appearance and lack of confirmation codes and whatever.
Over in Pegasus CIC, Fisk and Cain are freaking out about the Raider too. Makes sense -- you never see just one Raider. Well, if you do, it's Starbuck every time, but they have no way of knowing that. They're new. Cain recalls her Vipers due to the seeming impending Cylon attack. My question is this: what the hell was Apollo doing? Did he know that this would happen? Did he just want Starbuck to come in and save him? Did their messages in fact extend further than we saw, and he told her to come in dark and then suddenly scare everyone? What was his plan? Was there one? Does Starbuck at all know what's going on? Or is this just another example of one or both of them doing something impetuous and somehow saving everyone's bacon at the same time?
The Vipers get ready to blow Starbuck out of the sky -- Kat in particular is of course overjoyed -- and Starbuck is somewhat worried. "Starbuck to all Vipers: do not fire. Repeat, do not fire! I am a friendly, okay? We're all friendlies. So, let's just be friendly." In the Raptor, Stinger yells at Apollo, because he's realized that they've taken out the Blackbird against his express orders, and Apollo just prisses at him: "You got me, I'm just a passenger back here." He's loving it, it's great. Kat radios to the Galactica CIC that it's the Blackbird, and Tigh (of course) protests: "What the hell [drink!] is the Blackbird doing out there?" Gaeta mentions that Starbuck took the Blackbird out a couple hours ago, "running flight tests for Admiral Cain." I love Gaeta for many reasons, but chief among them is the fact that he actually seems to believe this. Adama doesn't, and Tigh -- this is sweet -- he goes argh and then says, "Another one of her crazy-ass stunts...Thank the Gods!" Adama's like, "Word. Get me the Pegasus." Adama points out to Cain that even though there is no actual Raider attack happening, they do have the option of standing down. She's about to tell him to get fracked, and then Fisk alerts her to some pictures they're receiving -- it's Starbuck's shots from the recon mission. And now again, I have to wonder exactly what this is: is Starbuck sending them to Cain because she's their new boss? Because it's a show of good faith? To further the plot? Is she in fact sending it to both ships? We don't get enough cockpit time with Kara to know any of it for sure, but any conjecture will work. The point is, I feel about Human v. Cylons the way Kara treats Galactica v. Pegasus, which is: get to the point already and stop acting like war as a concept hasn't changed. You're not emperors of the olden days fighting over principalities -- you're all we've got. The Cylons are fighting a twenty-first-century war: become the enemy. Interbreed. Take down the walls between us and them. Synthesize and unite, all monotheistic-stylee. The humans are outpaced and outclassed, because they think it's all about annihilation, even as they're being herded. Maybe it was once, but it's not anymore -- the Farm and all of Six's creepy shit prove that, at least. (I'd make a really bad soldier, clearly.)
Cain thinks the shots are from Stinger's recon mission, but Fisk informs her that the mission was aborted due to her and Adama going simultaneously nuts. Cain then freaks out and falls in love with Starbuck a little bit: "Thrace. She took off and did the whole recon mission alone. My Gods. Look at these shots, Jack: she put her nose right up their backsides and they never even knew it." Hello to the imagery, but I have to say that for me, Cain is humanized by a lot of what goes on here. After watching this episode, I went back and watched "Pegasus" again, and just for kicks pretended I was on her side, and -- there's never a point where I can disagree with her. Methods yes, priorities yes, overall she's totally unhinged, but in any given scene, her logic is soundproof and airtight. It's interesting. I talked a good game about how we should respect that she's been Kurtzed out to here by the Armageddon, because that's what I do, but I really feel it after this episode. This episode retroactively brings out a lot of the nuances in the performance in the last episode, too. She's...not sympathetic, but understandable. Imminently so. She's like a person demanding absolute etiquette at a tea party, even though the tea party is happening in the middle of an earthquake. Like -- imagine Martha Stewart, in a volcano, doing krav maga. Plus military training, which means like control freak squared. I'll try not to get carried away with the sympathy, because she did just get my two favorite characters raped, but it's there, and it's not subtle. Cain agrees to a joint recall and "stand down to condition two," and requests that Adama report to her directly. While this is within her rights both as his CO and as a crazy person who thinks she's doing the right thing, she has to admit that his problem with this is a compelling one. She floats the idea of meeting on Colonial One, aide-less, in fifteen. They both stand down. She whispers to the recon photos lovingly, like the creepy old bat she is.
Over on Colonial One, Roslin is blowing my mind. She's taking back all the respect Cain refused her last episode, with fucking interest, standing behind her presidential desk and addressing the slouching Cain and Adama like she's about to assign them as lab partners for the rest of term. The thing about Cain is that she's thinky, and so is Roslin. I think a lot of some people's inability to communicate with each other comes down to this: thinkers and feelers. People who say "yes/no" and people who say "good/bad." And if you ask a thinker how they feel, it'll take twenty minutes because they have to bring it up like bronchitis, and if you ask a feeler what they think, it'll take just as long because that's like doing calculus in your head. A thinker could blow up a civilian transport to save the Fleet, even with little children aboard, and if you asked whether that was "good" or "bad," they'd look at you like a Cylon. An intuitive type like Adama can tell people exactly what they want to hear, for a separate example, and work it out that way. And Cain and Roslin have something in common, and Roslin knows it, so she lays it on the line, and in such a way Cain can't argue: "Let's start this by admitting an ugly truth. What happened out there today was the result of failure in leadership of everyone in this room. We are the leaders of this fleet. As such, we need to set an example. We cannot continue to let the conflicts between --" All true. But Cain gives it right back: "Oh, let's just cut through the hand-holding, shall we? Two of his men murdered one of my officers while protecting a Cylon. They're guilty, they admitted it. And under regulations, I have complete authority to try, convict, and sentence them. And you and I both know that the penalty for that crime is death." Also? All true. Especially because she hasn't lived through the last twenty episodes with the Chief and Helo, Cain doesn't know that you always want to hug Chief, she doesn't know the amount of honor and respect Helo deserves, or why we love them both. Apparently the only thing she's managed to pick up from her DVD set of the first two seasons is the so-rarely-telegraphed fact that Starbuck rules. All Cain knows is that the boys are deviant toasterfuckers who will murder for the object of their affection, and have done so. And that's why this episode is good, not because of the ways in which she's nuts, but because of the ways in which she's not.
Roslin -- amid a good many well-chosen pauses -- asks whether the "spirit of the law" might not require "something...more than summary executions." Not if the letter of the law is the only thing keeping you alive the last six months, dude. Which is basically what Cain wants to know: how the frack did the Fleet manage to survive this long with Laura and Bill debating "the finer points of Colonial law" at every turn? But she goes a little wrong here: "Guess what? We're at war! And we don't have the luxury of academic debate over these issues." She's right that they're all quite busy, but I stand by Roslin's original call on this one. I got your "first principles" right here: The war is over. We lost. But again, the "war" concept is all that has kept Cain alive -- "And we'll keep fighting!" -- so it makes sense that she's not trying to hear that. This all hearkens back to the very first Roslin/Adama thing, and will continue to do so all episode: stay and fight? Or run and build? The concept of the show, in other words: which is smarter and/or more honorable? Roslin obliges by cutting through the crap: "You have Pegasus, he has Galactica. Two heavily armed, very powerful warships. Now, I am sure that Pegasus would prevail in any fight..." Adama, still quite slouchy, begs to differ, and Roslin gives him an adorable shushing near-chuckle before continuing, "But certainly, there'd be heavy damage, and you'd take significant casualties. So you can go out there and fight it out with Galactica, or you can compromise. And those are the only two options on the table, period." She's right, and Cain knows it. She pretty much -- with a parting shot again at Roslin's and Adama's unlikely survival to this point -- gives in now, because of the logic (and Mary McDonnell's searing willpower, which is like a whole other deal on its own terms, that will stick you to your chair at seven Gs, cheeks flapping, until she's done). Of course, Cain frames it in her usual narcissism: she'll give in, but only because she wants to defeat this Cylon fleet, and the Galactica is necessary to do so. She agrees to suspend the executions until then. Adama demands that Chief and Helo be extradited back to Galactica, and Cain informs him of his luck at not having been arrested and court-martialed his own damn self. Which, again, is technically correct, and just as much within her rights as holding the boys on Pegasus is. Roslin informs them -- wonderfully and powerfully -- that they will return to the Colonial One after the mission to resolve the issue, and dismisses Cain.
Sometime later, Starbuck stands at attention in Cain's office. Cain promotes her to Captain (yay!) and makes her the new Pegasus CAG. For one second, Starbuck and Lee are equals. The promotion is fine, but I have to say -- CAG? She's a great strategist, a great pilot, but -- CAG? Not that flight training is anything like actual command, but she does tend to end up killing some students from time to time. Or naming them things like "Hotdog." The difference between Apollo and Starbuck in this arena is that she's so about following her instincts (and getting constant positive reinforcement for it) that she can't see past her own self, while Lee takes a different but parallel route, following honor and justice and the Colonial way. Which amounts to the same thing, in terms of being self-directed and ego-based, and he's no better at following orders besides those of his inner tight-assed Virgo demons. But at least if Lee's your CAG, there's a handbook. With Kara, it's like you have to always do what she tells you, even if it changes from moment to moment, because she's always right but if your reflexes aren't good enough, you won't live to see that fact. Even Kara finds her promotion ridiculous, but Cain compares her to Stinger, the old CAG, who somehow managed to let Lee type a VERY LOUD message to Starbuck in the middle of a dogfight. Starbuck asks after Apollo, but Cain reassures her that he's just been busted out of flight status, since it wouldn't be fair to punish him and not Starbuck as well. ("More tea, Admiral?" "Why thank you. Is that your house sliding down the mountainside?" "Oh, yes. Do you like the curtains? They're new.") Starbuck requests Apollo on her team, and Cain gets right up in her grill, and the love is both strong and crazy in her: "Do you always get what you want?" "Most of the time....Sir," responds Starbuck. It's intense. Cain goes as soft as she can -- like, less diamond, more ceramic -- and lets Starbuck have Apollo. She then floats Starbuck's desire to return to Caprica and save the people from "Resistance" and "The Farm," which I assume actually means Anders, or the man they call "Starbuck As A Boy." Cain says that she wants to return to the Colonies, not only to save the irradiated survivors but also to "kick the Cylons the frack out of our homes." Cain asks "Captain" Thrace what she thinks, and Starbuck replies it's the best idea she's heard all day. "Sir." And again, we're back to not only the big split (should we stay or should we go), but also the Kara split, since she's one of the few crew who's figured out that Earth is a huge gigantic lie. Now, it's a lie that mentions her by name in various religious texts and whatever, but still. She's pragmatic at the same time she's religious, which is like the best of both worlds.
Back on Colonial One, Roslin and Adama are chilling out for a bit. Roslin turns to him like you might turn to someone and suggest margaritas, and says, apropos of who knows what, "I'm afraid this can only end one way. You've got to kill her." Even Adama, who was present for the beginning of this scene, wonders what the hell she's talking about. Roslin admits to an interest in the Cain method of "cutting through it." She explains that someone like Cain can't step down from a war (we know!) and that she's going to try again to take power from Adama: "I hate to lay this on you, Bill, but she's dangerous, and the only thing you can do is to hit her before she hits you." It's not quite matter-of-factly that she says this (I bet you can imagine right now the precise note of weariness she gives this speech), but Adama is still blamfrazzled, as I imagine most viewers were too. So sudden! He protests weakly, and she jumps: "...You are a Colonial officer who's taken an oath to protect this Fleet. What do you think she's going to do with the civilian Fleet once she's eliminated you? You know I'm right. You just don't want to face it." Adama almost smiles at this less kind, less gentle Laura: "So the whole world's going mad?"
You know the Hayes Code? Like in old movies whenever somebody ate fruit it meant they were having sex, or like, whenever they got a sleepy look it meant they were on heroin, or whatever? Like you see one chick in stockings, you assume she's actually naked, but if you see two and they're smoking cigarettes, you think "whorehouse." You know what I mean. The Big Sleep is one of my favorite movies and it makes almost NO sense if you don't have your decoder ring. Anyway, the last episode went to great lengths to show that Boomer was NOT actually raped, just nearly. And this wasn't a censorship issue, this was a directorial decision, and one that I applaud, because it would have lessened the impact of the episode if we'd seen something like that. You recoil. However, your brain might feel a little less twisted around in this scene if you pretend that what we saw happen is not precisely what really happened, structuralist primacy of the text aside. Doc Cottle's examining Boomer, and he's telling her that she's basically fine, with a hairline-cracked rib and no permanent damage from "the attack." And Boomer's response: "'The attack'? Is that what we're calling it now?" Adama mentions that the attackers weren't from the Galactica, and Boomer blows that right off, asking after Helo and Chief Tyrol. Adama assures her that he's going to save them, and she asks -- in full soldier mode -- how he can do that with Cain in command. He switches back to the attack, which is pretty heartbreaking in itself: they are on the same wavelength, which is that if the Pegasus could attack her under Adama's nose, how can he hope to save the boys? It's so, so deft to have them switching subjects and predicates in every line of dialogue while still talking about the same thing: now that the world's gone mad, how can Adama protect any of them? "What happened to you..." he says, and Cottle interrupts: "Was unforgivable." Which: like we needed more examples that Cottle is wonderful (or a total Cylon). Without missing a beat, Adama continues: "...happened aboard my ship. On my watch. And it's my responsibility. So I just want you to know that I personally apologize." Wow. That's a lot. This is a person who only calls Boomer "It," who keeps her in a box, on a leash, who jumped right the hell on her and strangled her the first chance he got, and continues to imagine doing so every time they are together: this is Adama apologizing for what happened on his watch. "See that she's okay, then back into her cell." This is a show that can (and will, and regularly) break your heart with a pronoun.
In the Pegasus brig, Helo and Tyrol are bored and scared and bonding. Apollo enters and there's an easy camaraderie among these three that we're only getting in inference, because the second Helo showed up everything went to hell. Or, I mean, more so. Apollo informs the boys that it's not a pardon keeping them alive, just a delay, and that "the firing squad's on hold" until the mystery mission is over. "The Old Man went to the mat for you guys on this one" -- not to mention the Old Lady -- "and then some. We were this close to a shooting war with the Pegasus." Helo and Tyrol are duly impressed, and Tyrol spells it out for him: "I thought the Cylons were the enemy." Yeah, says Apollo: "Now it's us." The three of them drink in the drama and the rampant idiocy of that for a while.
Up in the Baltar Dream House, Gaius is, I think, suffering from something you may have at some point been assured happens "all the time," and I will not disabuse you of this notion. I do have to say, though, that I love this storyline, and I hope Gina stays around hella long, because the idea of taking this incredibly powerful, scary, mind-controlling lady who's in charge of Baltar's thoughts and desires, and putting her duplicate down in his care, broken perhaps beyond repair, is the only thing that will save him in the long run. She's his Darla, and not to go off on a whole thing, but there's a deep truth to that: you can't really be a man with Mommy still in charge, and for Gaius to see and nurse Gina back to health, to see and smell her humanity, is pretty much the point of 80% of all fairy tales. Hans Christian Andersen and Walt Disney both would tell you that, if they weren't dead and frozen. Anyway, it's no wonder Baltar can't really get it up for Six right now. Talk about your cognitive dissonance. She's being nice about it, like we always have to be, and asks if he's okay. He explains that they're rebuilding the road outside that set and the crew can't use it anymore for filming. No, well, he says he's over missing Caprica, but the two dovetail nicely. It was just last episode that he was admitting to Gina he found it sometimes difficult to even imagine a world before the Big One, after all. Six starts talking about missing sports, down on Caprica: "I used to go the Pyramid court just before game time, scalp two tickets. If I timed it right, I'd just be sitting down at the horn. Sit back...let the energy of the crowd flow over me. Waves and waves of emotion, like an electric current." Word. Baltar, of course, asks why she got two tickets, and she explains that, while he's too much of an erudite whinebag to actually enjoy sports, she liked feeling that he was there with her. How many imaginary people, for example, are in the room with you when you watch Battlestar? Lots, I think. Me too.
Gaius wakes with a start, still in Gina's cell, and Cain is looming. "Can you get it to roll over? Beg?" She tosses him the recon photos, and then starts the creepy slow burn she's so good at: "You know this thing used to sit in our mess and eat our food? Listen to our stories. Didn't you? You just sat there, listening to us, pretending to be our friend." Cain starts kicking Gina really hard, and Gaius begs her to stop, saying that any physical contact will set his efforts back. Um, she knew that, dude. She just didn't care. Cain spits on Gina and leaves. I never really thought about this until now, but even the abuse makes another kind of sense, given that you not only have a physical example of the people that destroyed humanity, but also the out clause of her being a robot. It's way more complicated than this, of course, but I'd never imagined her as just a punching bag with like Osama's face glued on. Seems like just yesterday I was getting all incensed over the shooting gallery in the Galactica, with Boomer's pictures on the targets. Those targets don't have feelings or real thoughts either, right? How much is it really just a difference of degree? After a few seconds Gina jumps Gaius and chokes him for a while, and then jumps off, and they both scatter to opposite walls. Gina: "I want to die. Will you help me do that? Will you kill me, please?" Won't she just wake up in another...? That's not what she means.
Over in Chief's hangar, Laird's reporting to Adama that all the "birds" are in the air for "the attack thing." He stumbles over his "sir"s and "yes sir"s and Adama takes Cally aside, having realized that Laird is not military. In fact, the way Adama works, I'd be willing to bet he's got this whole "stripping the ships" thing about four-fifths down, and hasn't made the jump to that last fifth merely because it's just too awful. Cally mentions that he was on the Scylla, as a civilian aeronautical engineer, before he got "drafted" onto what's technically the Pegasus, although Laird's story demands we call it the Charybdis at least once before all is said and done. "Scuttlebutt is that the Pegasus used to have a civilian Fleet, but something happened to them." Which is actually WAY worse than what I thought, which was that the Pegasus was just running across civilian leftover ships and ripping them up as she flew. Which is bad enough. The idea that Roslin, and responsibility to the civilians she represents, made the difference for Galactica; that kind of drops off here. The fact that Cain had her own Fleet just like ours means this is even more strongly an issue of character rather than humanizing circumstance -- that Adama and Cain are very, very different, like in a full-on nature v. nurture way. Which is fine, it's just not how I saw this going. It's better. You know, this is the first time I've listened to the podcast before writing the recap, and I've gotta say it's exactly like I thought it would be: like if my own ChipSix had a goatee and a devilish grin, and I don't know which are my thoughts and which are things I've absorbed, and I won't be doing it again. I get confused enough just being me.
Adama relates this new, horrible Cain story to Tigh in a conversation we don't see, and Tigh heads straight to the Tool Room to get Pegasus XO Fisk drunk some more. I'll mention again that I love Tigh in this episode. I think mainly because he's used too often as a tool for the plot, like Donna Moss -- the character that says, "What does that mean?" so that Josh or Bartlet can tell her (us) what the thing means. In Tigh's case, that accounts for most of the "What the hell?" all the time. It's a credit to the actor that he delivers them all so differently and freshly that you might never notice, if it wasen't your job to write down what these people say. Which I realize -- and I do apologize -- is a lot like the time I pointed out to my dad that Whoopi Goldberg has no eyebrows, and twenty years later he's still calling to curse at me because it's like all you can think about when she's onscreen and it gets really distracting. (Also, Marcia Gay Harden's nostrils are really, really asymmetrical, as long as I'm on the subject.) So but Tigh's totally on point in this episode, and he's got Fisk good and drunk, and at this point, this is all it takes: "So. Laird's ship was the Scylla." And he's off! "Scylla was a civilian transport, and like many other ships we found a week after the attack, we ripped out all the important parts, FTL drives and weapons and personnel, left the rest to float aimlessly and starve or get carved up by Raider fire, and the people we wanted that refused to leave -- including Laird -- we threatened to shoot their families, their wives and husbands and kids, and out of fifteen of these, we ended up putting two families against the bulkhead and shooting them dead." Tigh is so freaked out that he gasps a fairly blasphemous, or at least somewhat inaccurate "Sweet mother of Artemis!" and some other versions of the big OMG, but I mean...I'm not going to say that's cool, but it's a die slow/die fast situation, so I don't know if the shot families actually got the shit end of that particular vile stick.
Apollo enters the Pegasus CAG office, praying that he doesn't come off smarmy or whiny. And he doesn't! "A CAG's work is never done," he smiles, and Starbuck...oh, Starbuck. I don't think she meets his eyes this entire scene. Well played, Sackhoff. Starbuck: "Hi? How ya...doing?" He does a fair job of sweet no-offense: "You mean apart from being, uh, demoted? Finding myself working for one of my pilots? Great! Never better." Without looking into his eyes, she'd never know he's trying to get her over it, but that's the entire problem with these two: when he's conciliatory, she's defensive, and when she's flirty-friendly, he's scared to death. Jumpy. Starbuck: "You...know I had nothing to do with that, right?" He's like, totally, duh, look at me please, but whatever: "Never thought you did. I just checked on Helo and Tyrol. They're hanging tight for now." Starbuck and Apollo simultaneously switch emotional corners: "Help me plan this op. I've been staring at this roster..." And his response: "You wanna just carry on? As if nothing's happened?" But they've also traded SOP corners, too: "Lee, she's in command. What do you want to do? There's nothing we can do." Like you can talk sense to Apollo when his sense of justice and protocol are offended. Or, for that matter, like you can talk sense to Starbuck when her feelings -- in this case, for the Caprica Resistance, of which Apollo knows little -- are on the line. I really do appreciate what Starbuck's going through here, because it's happening on multiple fronts. She's like one of those "shows high potential" kids that always fucks up until some smart teacher gives her the opportunity of responsibility. Her demeanor, behavior and even appearance are more tip-top than we've ever seen, and though she's clearly scared to death of the idea, she's willing to demonstrate that she's capable and up to the challenge, even as it's tearing her allegiance in two. And like she says: there's fully two Basestars, a bajillion Raiders, and a mysterious vessel on the line. Just play along.
Back in Gina's brig cell, Gaius has brought her some new clothes. He turns around to give her some privacy, but sneaks a peek at her horrible scars. Cut from this scene were shots of ChipSix forcing Gaius to turn around and face the extent of Gina's injuries. While on the one hand, it makes him turning around to look at Gina's nakedness a little less oogy, I think I agree with the choice based on the fact that (a) it makes it less oogy and thus less complex, vis à vis his whole fetishization of ChipSix, but mostly (b) it takes ChipSix even further out of the Gina picture, which is important for Gaius's arc. "Were you aware of your true nature as a Cylon when you boarded the ship? Or would you describe yourself as a sleeper agent?" She knew: she was a soldier on a mission, which she carried out: "I thought that when it was done I was going to die. That you would kill me." Again with the painful pronouns. "Then I -- then I would download into a new body. Be reborn. But you didn't kill me. The things you did to me..." Shades of Boomer's "And you ask why?" Gaius begs: "What they did to you was evil. But I'm not one of them. You have to believe me. Things are going to get better for you. From this moment on. I promise." But Gina doesn't want things to "get better." She wants to die. For real. She indicates the pictures of the HMS Ernestine. Briefly: given what we know about the Six model's hardwired religious response, and her obsession with "life" v. non-"life," how sick is it that she'd even contemplate real suicide? That she'd willingly step out of Leoben's "stream," and God's plan? That would be the ultimate failure, right? An abomination? Treachery? In some ways, I would say this is the worst part yet, but really it's just the step in putting all of this into perspective for us.
Gaius briefs Starbuck and Cain on Pegasus: "At the moment, we are too far away from the Cylon home for the normal downloading process to work, which is why they built this ship. It contains the entire apparatus necessary for Cylon resurrection." I think of it like the supply wagons in a war, or The Oregon Trail: they extend how far you can go, and if you lose them, you're just in the middle of nowhere, getting picked off by dysentery and locusts. "Now, this ship has been traveling with the Fleet trailing Galactica for the last several months." Cain and Starbuck exposit/realize that this means that destroying the Resurrection Ship means actual, real, no one-ups death. "Doctor," murmurs Cain, "I think you just identified the most important ship in the galaxy." Baltar looks somewhat less than overjoyed.
Over on Colonial One, Roslin's having a "bad day," cancer-wise. Adama is worried, and apologizes for it after she chastises him. Adama tells her about the Pegasus's civilian Fleet, and how she dropped them like candy wrappers after sucking them dry. "I wish I could say I was surprised, but it's who she is," smiles Laura grimly. "She's playing for keeps. You've got to do the same." Olmos, who's a good actor any day of the week, rips hell out of this scene. It's astounding. He looks at her wonderingly: "What's gotten into you? You've become so bloody-minded!" Laura points out that as long as Cain's around, Adama's own survival is at risk, and then coughs like crazy. Adama gets really antsy, giving her water and patting her shoulder like Koko and All-Ball: "What can I get you?" She grins, and becomes as sexy as a person in the last weeks of life can be, which it turns out is lots: "A new body. Perhaps one of those young Cylon models from the Resurrection Ship." Adama smiles sadly. "I can't see you as a blonde." Laura laughs a little bit, and wiggles. "You'd be surprised." Adama's into it, but, like, the tree doesn't fall far from the apple, and he gets up to leave. I would remind you, Commander, that your ex was about to get remarried when the attack happened: you're allowed. In fact, I require it. "We'll see you tomorrow?" He looks at her more lovingly than he's yet looked at anybody, including his son (but not including either of his two fake daughters who will be dating Lee or already, fakely, are). Laura lets him go, and when he's at the door, she calls to him. Adama turns, wiping away a tear at just such an angle that she won't see it. "She won't hesitate to kill you," says Laura, in her most resolute voice. "Don't let her." He looks at her for a second, then books it out of the room, because: without crying, or screaming, what do you say then?
Chief and Helo in their own Pegasus brig, still in their same positions. Tyrol is lying on a bunk saying that, once they get out of there, he's going to make some changes. Specifically, he's going to let the whole Boomer thing go. Really go, he says: "I can't do it anymore. I mean -- don't get me wrong, Lieutenant -- what we did, I would do again. In a heartbeat. But I've got to let it go." Helo gets it, and Tyrol is amazed that he can identify, but Helo's like, check it out: "I'm in love with a woman I know isn't a woman. I'm having a baby that's...what? Half-machine?" Given the time and circumstance to actually consider this from Helo's POV, Tyrol's characteristically empathetic: "You really do love her, don't you?" And Helo does, and he can't let go. But if Tyrol possibly can, Helo advises, he should. Hey, as long as he doesn't hook up with Cally or Dualla, I'm cool. Oh, or Ellen Tigh. That would be wicked creepy.
Eeeee! Still not over that last mental image. Apologies. We're in the Pegasus War Room, where Starbuck is explaining the op. Tigh is sliding around those models we've seen before on the 2-D map of space. There's even a cute little Ernestine model. The reason they're doing it on the game board (the models are fine for Galactica, but you'd think Pegasus would have one of those piezoelectric desk-toy deals like in the X-Men movies because they're better off in every way) is because it's too complicated to just explain...which is what I'm now supposed to do. I'll bottom-line it for you. The Fleet, including both Battlestars, is going to...sit around and wait, and pretend to be conducting mining operations. This is in line with the Cylon strategy, which has been to follow them from useful planet to useful planet. When the Cylons finally launch Raiders, everybody will jump, except for some fake-miner civilians. (Already this plan is fuckin' great.) It will look like they're having jump trouble, and are just moseying away at sub-light speed. This pursuit will get the Raiders away from the Basestars. At that point, Galactica and Pegasus will take on a Basestar each. Which is bad-ass.
Meanwhile, Apollo will jump in on the Blackbird, take out the Resurrection Ship's FTL, and jump away again (You can't just nuke it, because that would invalidate the Blackbird's stealthiness -- unsurprisingly, Tigh asks the question necessitating this info in response). The Battlestars will continue to take on the Cylon Basestars, and every single squad from both ships will go after the now free-floating Resurrection Ship. Basically: the civilians will lead some Raiders away from the Basestars, we'll attack those with both our ships, and send our Vipers and Raptors after the Resurrection Ship. Hopefully, the civilian ships hopping away without using FTL will not get barbecued while all of this wonderful warmongering is happening. Hopefully, Apollo will be cool enough not to jump into the battle once he's taken out the Resurrection Ship's jump engines -- maybe this, and not Kara's new CAG status, is why he's the one flying the Blackbird. Hopefully, Kat will not freak out and start shooting indiscriminately in a crack-fuelled rage. Hopefully, I will be able to understand at least 30% of what's going on during this battle. Well, two episodes ago, I couldn't even have written this paragraph. I love you guys.
So Adama looks pensive and/or freaked, probably because of the civilian bait factor, and Cain asks if there's a problem. "I need time to study the operational details," he says, giving Cain her best bad-ass opening of the episode: "Suit yourself. I've gone over the details and I'm satisfied." It's just so...shruggy! Sixteen flavors of "Whenever you can catch up, old guy." I kind of love it. Adama asks for a moment with her CAG, ops-wise, and it takes, I think, everyone in both that room and this one to remember he means Starbuck. She gives "Thrace" one hour with him. Adama dismisses the incredibly worried-looking Apollo with a "Stay focused, son," and I have watched this scene literally one thousand times, no more, no less, and it's still...he's very wiggly, is Apollo. And very upset-slash-nervous, and very much wants to stay in that room, but no matter whether he knows the plan or not, that's how he'd be acting, so it doesn't really matter. And we know from the minuscule preview of week's episode that he's not blindsided by the thing Adama's about to say, so it's kind of moot whether he -- at this point -- knows it. Given the role-reversal ickiness of Apollo's demotion/Kara's promotion, I'm most willing to hang it on that hook -- it was Cain that took his flight status and made Kara her CAG, and this dismissal by his own personal father kicks it up that notch, all, "Let the grownups talk, kid." I think that's how Bamber's playing it, and I like it the most, because seriously, how weird is this situation to think about, given the characters thus far? The barbaric berserker chick who takes off into the wild blue yonder every other episode is now in the Honors Society, while simultaneously Little Miss Rules & Regs himself is bumped down to Hotdog's level? Ouch.
Then this very awesome thing happens that should not be so awesome, but because of the way it's edited, is very awesome. I got an IM from a close friend the morning that he found this all very "tune in week" cheap, so let me tell you that originally, everything we already talked about was supposed to be HALF of this episode. That's right. This last scene was supposed to be the end of Act Two, and "Pegasus"/"Resurrection Ship" was meant to be a two-parter and not a three-parter. So while I think it works just as well as another cliffhanger, because it is awesome, I'm much more pleased by this result. We would've missed out on the Tyrol/Helo stuff, I'm sure, and some of the more introspective moments with Roslin and Adama, probably, and probably less of the Cain/Starbuck lovefest. So don't look too close at the gift horse, because as I'm writing it's only a couple days anyway until the resolution. Meaning, I'm unspoiled but 90% sure my girl Cain's going to bite the big tin can in the sky before the weekend. Which is tight.
But the problem remains, if this idea is somewhat cluttered on the page and only gorgeous in its execution, I've gotta work double for you now. The action is split between two areas: the War Room, where Adama and Starbuck are now alone, and Cain's office, where she's meeting with XO Fisk. Cain tells Fisk to hand-pick a detachment of Marines and take them to Galactica: "Completely reliable. Completely loyal. Razors."
Adama asks Starbuck, meanwhile, to take on a mission neither of them will like.
Cain tells Fisk that he'll be her "eyes and ears" on Galactica, and Adama will know Fisk is there as a mole but will accept that, so Fisk should stay with Adama throughout the battle.
After the battle, once CAG Starbuck has accounted for her pilots, Adama needs Starbuck to land on the Pegasus and report to Cain, with Apollo alongside, as her CIC.
Fisk will position his marines around Galactica in key positions, with a squad just outside Starbuck's CIC. Cain and Adama then begin to tell the same story: post-battle, victorious, both ships will be wild with joy and adrenaline, meaning they'll get sloppy. Each King will call to his or her Bishop and give an order ("Case Orange," in Cain's case; "Downfall" in Bill's, and yes, those are both references to actual historical things). At this point, Fisk will signal the Marines to "terminate Adama's command -- starting with Adama"...
...and Starbuck will pull out her weapon "and shoot Admiral Cain in the head."
Three and a half awesome things. #1: Kara is totally torn in about five different directions, receiving these orders from Adama. Like, so much so that my friend Lily started crying, and she's only seen the mini and "Pegasus." It's intense. Starbuck does not cold-bloodedly kill, and she is in the best career position of her life, and Cain gets her on, like, a spiritual level. #2: Adama looks like he might boot, because he hates this. #3: Adama and Cain both know, although we might not immediately think of it, that this is precisely how Adama got shot last time, down to the cheering in CIC. That's the really sick one. And the #0.5: Fisk is even more ambivalent about all this than our guys are, thanks to, of all people, Tigh, who's like this drunk angel on his shoulder, yammering constantly. Now, I have no doubt this is going to go poorly and not at all according to plan. And the only person who really deserves to kill Cain is, pretty much, Gina. Which would be both poetic and epic, not to mention ethically acceptable for every single person concerned, and is more likely to keep her alive, thus furthering the redemption or not of Gaius, which I suddenly need to happen. Meaning, of course, that I have a stake, and so do you, and planned or not, the hook's got us good. Boom boom boom.