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Fake-out! The gunfire meant to execute the random innocents and insurgents was actually Chief's toaster-smashing backup; meanwhile, the Sharon/Anders meet-up involved some backup plans of her own. The survival of Cally, Roslin and Zarek, plus the whole HAVE HOPE thing we forgot to tell everybody last week, gives the denizens of New Caprica a bit of a future. For now. Gaius continues to bitch and moan and have weird marital moments with Chip Six, which are somewhat marred by the meaner Cylons' new theory where they blow everybody to kingdom come and let one god or the other sort 'em all out in a nuclear fashion, Tigh continues to rock the hell out and have weird marital moments with Ellen marred only by how everybody totally knows she sold out the entire Resistance; somehow she manages to live through at least this episode but things do not look awesome in her future. Speaking of soothsaying, Honey Bunny shows up as a chamalla-freak to make Laura look like a teetotaler, talking a big game about how both the Cylon God and the real Gods totally talk to her and tell her things. Things? Oh, like how Three's dreams about Hera are totally going to come true, and how she's going to love the Cybrid but also it will make her even more nuts than she's ever been before.
Speaking of nuts, though, Kara Thrace manages to take in every little detail about her horrible fake life except for how her child is whatever's worse than a Cylon, or else a totally awesome baby, and generally doesn't do anything we haven't seen her do this season, considering that amounts to losing it, losing it a bit more, and then seriously losing it. Lee and Bill say goodbye but they're totally going to see each other in a second; this doesn't change the fact that we finally get another trademark Adama Speech that makes you wanna do some unspecified but very inspired things of some sort that mean belief and the survival of mankind. Sharon -- loving Bill still -- goes undercover among the Cylons to get those gosh-darn launch keys, so the rescuees can do more than sit around staring at the eight-person Raptor she brought and then back at the scores of thousands of them and wonder if Cally was right after all. In prep for the Big Damn Rescue, Roslin goes into overload protecting Hera, which of course insured something HORRIBLE is going to happen with the baby, and you know it'll involve Three, Sharon, Roslin, Maya, and probably Boomer into the mix, and nobody will be happy. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Battlestar Galactica, Tigh could not figure out why they suddenly let him out of detention! But we knew it was because Cavil was screwing him and Ellen both. Doral, Three, and Roslin all agreed that Sharon's Cybrid baby Hera needed to be protected, but they all had different ideas about how this should happen. Roslin won, because she's Roslin, and they sent the baby off with pretty old Maya. The only people who knew about the switcheroo, as far as we knew, were Roslin, Tory, and Doc Cottle. Chief and Helo and Sharon didn't know, and Adama... face it, he probably knew. Anyway, there was a dead regular baby, and a secret Cybrid baby. And now there's Kacey, who was nearly both and is still mixed up and nobody knows for sure! Not even God(s), who have yet to weigh in on the Kacey issue one way or the other -- well, maybe they saved her last week -- yet simply cannot shut up about Hera. But then, that's been going on since the first season, hasn't it? Anyway, immediately to right now, Cally (and Zarek and Roslin) and Anders (and Sharon) were lined up and executed. Sort of.
ONE HOUR EARLIER THAN ALL THAT, though, Tigh is in his tent trying to replace his eye bandage. (Sigh. I thought we talked about that EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER THAN TODAY. And on top of everything else, Tahmoh Penniket hates me! So we got two in the loss column for the week, and it's... Tuesday.) Ellen helps Tigh sweetly with his bandage -- and yeah, there's no eyeball there, and it's weird -- and they are very tender and sweet with each other, as usual. Tigh laments his loss of depth perception and how he can't get it right in the mirror anymore. Two things I would think he would have noticed he's shitty at before now. At least now he's got the excuse of only one hard-boiled eyeball left. When I said I hated him, I didn't really mean he should lose an eye and his wife should raise her slut level to toasterfucker. (I'm not saying I wouldn't have. I'm just not creative enough to have come up with this, and also I love him now.) Ellen starts into her big apology-slash-admission of guilt regarding selling out the Sharon/Anders rendezvous (to be fracked up with gunfire IN ONE HOUR), but... Cally manages to fuck things up even from miles away and/or beyond the grave.
Chief comes running in, totally freaked out about how Cally's on the execution list. So totally freaked out is Chief that he... seems to have shaved and moisturized before running to her aid. (I'd do some grocery shopping, maybe get a manicure, just to make sure. Send some old friends a casual hello on Myspace; the kind they don't feel like they have to answer, so you come out on top. Plan Cally's funeral. Read some New Caprica Quarterly cartoons.) Tigh is like, "What now?" The "source," also known as "obviously Gaeta," left the list of execution detainees in the dead drop, and Cally's on it. Chief babbles at length, and Tigh ignores it all: "Cally's in the group heading for map coordinate x-ray seven." Babble babble. That's cool that he actually contracted her uselessness, like a virus, and can't think straight in even this minor crisis all of a sudden. (Remember when his last girlfriend spent weeks turning into an actual Cylon before his very eyes, and he got tortured to the point where he actually died for a second, and then his girlfriend shot herselfin her own face, and then shot the military leader of the free world in a variable location? And he didn't even break a sweat the entire time, until his now wife shot this girlfriend in the chest and she died in his arms with his name on her lips? But he was still total class about everything? Remember when Chief was, for want of a better word -- relatively, I mean, taking into account the suicidal stuff and the physical assault of at least two other members of the crew -- phlegmatic? Don't you like this retard much better?)
Tigh yells at Chief to chill and reminds him that in fact he can read a map, because they know the Cylon coordinate system, because it was in the list of freqs they used to talk to Racetrack. Chief babbles about this for a while, and Tigh tells him in very simple words to take some guys and go save Cally and stop yelling and stomping around. "Pull it together. You won't do her any good if you get caught too. Besides, the last thing your son wants is me and Ellen for parents." WORD. I love Tigh so much this season. They watch him stomp off into the distance and Ellen embraces Tigh, scared and thinking about how if that's how people are behaving these days, Anders is going to have her balls. And she's right.
Credits. Then, in the Tyrol tent, Chief stomps around and yells some more and Moves His Own Cheese all over the place before finally talking himself through some things and finding the list without losing one iota of his obnoxious freakout energy. (He also, and this is key, has been using terms like "Godsdamned" and "Holy frack" all season: not things a true son of Geminon would ever say. How much did Cavil take from him really?) Then he stomps out into the street and tells Seelix (a tech last seen helping Chief build the Blackbird, now with much less hair and a very stompy person in her own right) to get some people together so they can go to x-ray seven, also known as Pergamus Flats. They do a quick round of the We Are Lunatics dance, then watch the trucks full of the damned rolling out of town. Too bad the people on the other trucks don't have Chief stomping around on their behalf, but lucky that Roslin and Zarek are in the same transport group as Cally, or else they, like those 150 other unlucky people, would end up like Vegas strippers in the cold desert night. The kind that saw stuff they shouldn't have.
Sharon gets out of her Raptor and the Marine with her uses the word "enfilade," as in, "We could catch enfilade fire from there, there, and along there." (In short, the word "enfilade" as used here means "shot in all of our faces"; that is, if they all walked in a line the enemy fire could shoot through all of them from the front or back, like a skewer, which is where the word comes from. It's nice for the toasters, or whoever is shooting at you that way, because the up/down angle determines that you can't shoot too long or too tight, because you're going to hit somebody no matter what, if your target is centered down the skewer. Use it in a sentence this week! Mine is going to be, "We have to go see The Covenant on a weekday, because I'm going to feel like a perv if we go in and get a bunch of teenagers coming at us in enfilade. Oh yeah? Vide please the great Mean Girls incident, April '04, and the Bring It On conflict of August 2000. I ain't going out like that again.") Sharon puts the Marines on the ridge and heads out to the rendezvous point, bringing us back to the PRESENT. ("Go Panthers!" "C-Bucks rule!")
At Pergamus Flats, PROBABLY ABOUT FIVE MINUTES AGO, Chief stares through the binoculars at the trucks approaching, and sends his men to the corresponding ridge. "This is it. Lock and load." Chief finally notices that they've got Laura Roslin and Tom Zarek with them, proving that he didn't even read the list beyond Cally's name. Which is kinda Duck of him, frankly, considering the emphasis put on the whole "Read the names! Look at the names!" issue last week with Gaeta and Gaius. Seelix hates to see focus pulled from precious Cally as much as we all do: "Is there any sign of Cally?" Sadly, there is not.
Sharon fills Anders in at the rendezvous: rescue plan's in place and ready to go, and she's down here to coordinate the mission and evac, as well as snag the launch keys to the ships on the ground. "When can we meet with Colonel Tigh?" Anders tells her they'll wait until nightfall and then go into the city.
Chief wigs out about Cally, and then wigs double hard when she starts running. If he knew she were twisting time, space, and gravity in order to completely revise the shot from not only last week but the previouslies from this episode, he'd probably wig out a bunch more. Seelix notes that the Centurions are lining up for the execution, and Chief figures out what it means and says to sight the bulletheads immediately. But of course, Cally and her bag of bullshit and myriad issues and pointlessness are running right at the rescue party -- enfilade, if you will -- so that they can't take out the guys currently lining up to execute the main characters of the show. The Platonic ideal of the situation we call "friendly fire." However, then something really cool happens, where Sharon and Chief -- miles apart and at two different operations, dealing with two different groups of Centurions, occasioned by two different hapless wives -- have basically the same thought. "Count to five, open fire," he says, and runs out toward his wife. Seelix tells one of the men to bring up the RPG. Man, I love the RPG. Launching grenades with a grenade launcher is like seeing a unicorn or kissing a baby, as far as things on TV that are awesome. Bring it on!
Anders starts to tell Sharon about the underground system of tunnels in New Caprica City that we've watched him start to tell her about like eight times, and which we'll see in this episode, but then Sharon hears the toasters and then the gunfire starts.
Seelix counts slowly by thousands, up to five, and Chief reaches Cally in the nick of time. More heartwarmingly, Roslin grabs Zarek and pulls him down the bluff with her. The bluff that apparently flips you backwards out of time and space so you're running upside down and in a whole other direction. But I don't know if it does that to them, because they spend the bit rolling around in the dirt while everything explodes. I would like it if they got together, I guess.
Anders is like, "Frack this, my finely honed guerilla instincts are telling me that people are shooting at us," but Sharon has the same thought that Chief had -- "trust me" -- and she waits for the Marines on the ridge... who take out the Cylons. Anders is like, "Thanks."
On Pergamus Flats, Chief comforts a wet and distraught Cally.
While Sharon's Marine chick is like, "They were waiting for us, LT. Right where we thought they would be ONE HOUR BEFORE THE CLIFFHANGER," an insurgent comes running up to Anders to tattle on Ellen about how she stole the map and gave it to Cavil: "Found it on a dead skinjob. It's your handwriting, isn't it?" Anders clenches his fist, and all his other parts too.
Roslin grins in the dirt: "You all right, Tom?" Zarek says, "Been a while since I had a woman throw me to the ground. Not quite as much fun as I remember." Tom stares into the distance and thinks longingly of Maier: "There was a man who could throw you to the ground and you'd damn well know you'd been thrown."
Seelix crouches over an injured Cavil, kicking a gun away from him: "Hurts, huh? Good. Then I hope it hurts a long, long time till you go to download city." She kicks the gun even further away so he can't kill himself and reload, and then stomps off looking for some more enemies to treat with zero honor and no respect, because that's just how the noncoms roll on this show now, apparently. Why do people so easily confuse war with cruelty? It's guns in the Temple again. You give up willingly what you thought you were fighting for.
Chief calls down to the Roslin/Zarek tangle, and oh, how sweetly is Roslin grateful to see him? "Good to see you too, ma'am," he says respectfully. Cally utters the same stupid kind of line she always says, humped up against him like a Leia to her triumphant Luke ("What happens now? Where do we go from here?" she actually says out loud) and he answers: "We're going home." But not like that! He calls down to Roslin and Zarek: "We're going home, Admiral Adama's on his way. We're getting off this rock. We're going back to Galactica." Everybody's like, "Finally! But also: four episodes in? After all the buildup?"
Three massages her neck, standing in New Caprica City. Lights and colors and sounds are strange. Cylons dream of electric neon. She sees some Colonial fetishes near a tent, ropes and sticks and big stones, and hears a baby crying. She sees herself carrying a child, and wakes up to it screaming, sweating in her bed on Colonial One. I knew she'd go crazy but I didn't think it would take five seconds.
Caprica Six and Baltar are in bed on Colonial One, and apparently there's been a failure to launch. Caprica starts into the whole "it doesn't matter" spiel, and then Gaius goes on quite the rant. "You can stop that right now, okay? My ego's not so fragile as all that. These things happen. Or they don't happen. So what should we talk about? Should we talk about your day? How was your day, darling? How was your day at the office? My office?" Never one -- in any of her forms, real or imaginary -- to put up with his bullshit, she starts getting dressed as he continues to bitch and whine and go nuts. "Any news? No? Well, let me tell you about my day, because it was a hoot. I had the most fascinating chat with one of the Dorals. He's got this theory about sanitation being the key to regaining human trust and confidence. Something about toilet paper. No, lack of toilet paper, that's it. If people could only wipe their bums properly, there'd be a measurable uptick in the polls." It's very sad and very hard. Callis is acting hell out of this season. Caprica sighs. "Four months of this, Gaius. Four months of watching you slip further and further down into this well of self-hatred and loathing. Do you know what I've given up for you? Do you?" Especially if you assume that, when he's not around, there's a slimier, sexier Chip Gaius pouring martinis and making her feel cruddy; but even so, she really has given up a lot. The whole DEMAND LOVE thing is not easy, and even the other Sixes treat her weird. Baltar's response is equally valid, though. "Do you know, what with the occupation and everything, I can't really say I've given it that much thought recently." Whatever, she shrugs, and heads for the door. He pours a drink and begs her to stay, and as he takes a long-ass pull off the whiskey, she climbs back into bed with him.
Kara sits at Kacey's bedside, talking softly to her. Except it's not really to Kacey, and it's not really about Kacey, and it's not so much what she's thinking as what she would want her own mother to have said. At least once. "That doesn't look so bad. There's something that I wanted to say to you. I'm sorry that I left you alone. I didn't mean for you to get hurt. I was upset with myself. And not you, okay? Grown-ups do stupid things sometimes. We get caught up in our own little world, until it's almost too late." Leoben enters and Kacey smiles up at Kara. "You have no idea what I'm saying to you, do you?" Kacey nods adorably, looking up at her. "Okay. Time to take a nap." Kara stands, but Kacey grabs Kara's finger and pulls her back down beside her. Leoben watches, as Kara gives in. I have this awful intuition that Kara's storyline is going to end up being even more horrifying than Sharon's, in the end. This is already hard enough.
Three walks through New Caprica City, not insane to the naked eye. She sees the Oracle's tent from her dream, and walks right in. There's Amanda Plummer, always crazy, formerly Honey Bunny of course and currently known as Dodona Selloi "Don't be afraid," she says. "I know who you are. What you are. Poor thing. You must be terrified." Selloi pours some chamalla into her hand and licks it off. I do love the nutty religious angle, especially when the drugs get involved. People make frackin' awesome decisions when they're fucked up on chamalla. "Do you have any candy?" See? Nuts. Three's like, "Um, no?" Selloi smiles. "Chamalla's so bitter." Oh yeah, Roslin used to eat candy too. "Zeus sees all. Sees you, number Three. Sees your pain. Your destiny. All the Gods weep for you." Three comes further into the tent and utters eight words that spell controversy: "There is no Zeus. No other God but God." (That's one of the Three Pillars of Cylontology, I believe.) "Well," Selloi sniffs, "You don't believe that anymore. You don't know what you believe, and that is why you're here." Three is very still, and very quiet, with this woman. Like she's waiting for an explosion, or for the Oracle to start freaking out. It's very nice, and very perfect for the scene, and it's not a Three we've ever seen. She is completely rational with her. It's great. "It's not true. I don't even know why I'm here. This is the stupidest thing I ever did," she grins. "It is your dream that brings you to me." Three's grin thuds in the sand. "How do you know about that?" Selloi gestures to her, and Three kneels across from her, shaking her head. "I have a message for you from the one you worship. He speaks through me to you, just as He speaks in your dreams. The message is...the fruit born of two peoples [Three's smile fades entirely] is alive. A child named after the wife and sister of the all-knowing Zeus: Hera lives." Three shakes her head sadly, thinks the word "crazy," says, "That's not true. The child is dead." But the Oracle is insistent: "You will hold her in your arms [like Kara and Leoben], and you'll know for the first time what it is to feel true love [like Kara and Kacey]. But you'll lose everything you've done here." They stare at each other in a prophetic impasse. "Wish I had some chocolate caramels," Selloi mumbles. Three's like, "Trade you for some Pepto."
Helo and Dualla, Executive Officers of their respective Battlestars, supervise preparations for the rescue op and the Pegasus's resumed journey toward Earth. "Will you quit looking at me like that?" asks Helo. Like what? "You know like what. Like we're never gonna see each other again. We will. It's a good plan, D." She sighs, he's right. "Take care of the Admiral," she says. "Take care of his son," Helo says. (Or "our son," which makes no sense, or better not make any sense, so I don't know why he said that, so it was just a loop issue or something.) Two interesting things I learned this week: Racetrack and Helo, the actors I mean, decided based on a fanfic that Racetrack was secretly in love with Helo, and they've been playing it that way ever since. The other thing is that Chief liked the characters of Seelix and Tarn so much that he inserted their names into every take of the scene where we first saw them, and they turned real. Turned out not so well for Tarn, who died on Kobol, but better for Seelix. Until now, I guess.
On deck, a thick line of salt is poured along the floor as Helo speaks. "All right, people, you know how this works: Pegasus crew on the port side of the line, Galactica on the right." They line up across from each other (defilade, safe, facing forward, hands open; from défiler, "to scroll"), and look across, or down at the floor, or up into space. Racetrack reads from the Sacred Scrolls: "Their enemies will divide them. Their Colonies broken in the fiery chasm of space. Their shining days renounced by a multitude of dark sacrifices. Yet still they will remain always together." The crews speak as one: "Always together." They very deliberately erase the line of salt (Tears? All-purpose holy element? The old religions do it both ways) with their feet, and then the two crews embrace each other, promising they'll see each other again, and that really they won't ever be apart. (Gotta go with tears. Damn, that's awesome.)
Adama and Apollo stand nearby as prep continues. Adama asks why he keeps looking at his watch -- "got dinner plans?" -- and Apollo laughs. "No, I was just thinking. Sharon's probably on the ground by now." (AN HOUR TO HALF AN HOUR AGO.) Adama gives him his brief (and has the same thought Sharon and Chief are having; he's always been in the middle of their relationship): "You'll find the rendezvous point there. Take the civilian fleet and wait for me for 18 hours. If I'm not back in 18 hours, then find Earth." They agree, and Adama's voice goes quieter: "I'll see you at the rendezvous point." Apollo nods. "18 hours. Try not to be late." Adama promises to be there, even though he's getting old and he's a little slow. Apollo wishes once more that he could talk him out of the plan, but Adama's firm: "You can't. You tried." The Adama Theme goes nuts, even more Titanic-sounding than usual, as Apollo starts to say something sentimental, and Adama holds up a hand: "Don't. Don't make me cry in my own hangar deck." Apollo holds his tears back, just barely, as they shake hands and embrace. It is very touching, but I don't know how to explain it except to say that Bamber has his good days and then he has his very good days, and this is one of the latter. And that Adama can make me cry with a twitch of his moustache anyway. "Okay," says Apollo jaggedly, and Adama looks him in the eye: "I'll see you there." Apollo asks his Admiral for permission to leave his ship; Adama grants the Pegasus's Commander permission to depart. Apollo alights on a Raptor's wing and calls for attention. They salute each other, and -- Lee Adama could never cut the goodbyes short -- once more says, "18 hours." And Bill Adama watches his son leave, taking the Lie of Earth with him, so that he can stay and right his wrongs.
Three sees Doc Cottle's mobile unit and stops to pet Jake. They have a crazy little conversation -- "You don't care who I am, do ya? All God's creatures in your eyes." -- and Doc Cottle wanders out to wonder why the leader of the fascist regime is talking theology with the dog. "Can't sleep?" Three claims bad dreams, and Cottle admits he didn't even know "you people" had dreams. That's my Cottle! She throws her shoulders back. "Oh, sure. Everybody dreams, Doc." She looks at his bloody smock and asks if it's human or Cylon blood. "Cylon. One of the Fives got pretty shot up today by the insurgents. But he's gonna make it." Three tilts her head. "You could've let him suffer," but that's not Cottle's steeze, of course. She smiles. "What about the baby? Sharon's baby Hera. When that child died on Galactica, why'd you cremate the body? It's the first Cylon-human hybrid, and you threw it in the incinerator?" Like she's skewering him. He shrugs and says a list of words that spell more controversy: "It wasn't my decision. That was the President's call. I was just following orders." Yikes! She drags her fingers through the blood, prodding him. "That's a very funny thing. 'Cause this stuff all looks the same." Crazy! She's crazy! Or maybe she's turning sane, I can't tell anymore. I sure like her, though. Cottle takes off and Three heads back home.
On Colonial One, Cavil's whining: "She said, 'I hope it hurts you for a long, long time before you go to download city.' Then they just left me there! They left me in the hot sun with a bullet in my guts!" Doral sideswipes Baltar with a "what a noble race you are" snit, and Boomer's just agog: "How long were you there before you died?" Hours. "Eventually, I managed to drag myself over to some spent shell casings. I used one of those to scratch open my carotid artery. Skin is a lot tougher than you think." Aieegh! I hate the dude, but that's hardcore. "Now that's...three for me. Three downloads. The first one, I just got a headache. But I could handle it. Now it's worse and worse. This time it was like a frackin' white-hot poker through my skull. Not worth it. None of this is worth it." That's interesting. Puts a new spin on, for example, Doral's own suicide-bombing tendencies TWO YEARS OR SO AGO GIVE OR TAKE SEASON 2.5. "He's right, you know," groans Gaius. "It's not worth it. Which is what I believe I've been telling you all along." Doral rolls his eyes and begs Caprica to please control him. "Why don't you just shoot me, if that'll remedy the situation?" They ignore him some more. Doral wants to crack down harder, but Caprica protests that their resources are stretched "to the max" already. When Six says "to the max" it sounds really professional, because she is so scary. Cavil's bored with the whole talk; Three is just upset because "consensus used to be so easy," and now they're all fighting and confused. "Now look what they've done to us!" Doral tells her not to worry about it. "Worst comes to worst, we can always nuke the city and be done with it." Baltar's eyes pop out and run around the room, singing in high-pitched voices.
In a tent, Anders tells Sharon to leave her dog tags behind, because they mark her as an atypical Eight. "No. You have no idea how hard I worked for these." He shrugs. "So our best guess puts the launch keys somewhere in the detention center. Just keep to the main streets, everybody'll think you're just a regular skinjob and they'll avoid you. But there's a lot of people out there looking to gut an unwary Cylon going for a stroll, so don't let anybody get close enough to stick a knife in you." She puts on her shoes with a tiny OMG. "All right, thanks for the concern. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside." He asks, excellently, how she plans to find the launch keys, and she launches some exposition in return. "When I get inside and hook into the data stream, it'll feed me the location." He returns the favor by expositing that he's already got pilots standing by for when she gets them. Then some insurgents come in with Ellen, hands bound, screaming and asking for her husband. Anders looks at her like total trash and says to stick her down in the bunker until after the briefing. Without skipping a beat, Sharon and Anders are like, "Okay, so you got everything?" She heads for the door and asks for a favor: "Just keep an eye out for Starbuck. I don't know if she's alive or if she's dead. But it's been four months." She nods. "I'll do what I can."
Down in the tunnels, Laura is lecturing Anders about how he has to keep Isis/Hera hidden at all costs. He exposits that they're keeping her on the move, along with other high-value targets, and that she'll be in a given location for three days at most. (Which is 71 HOURS AND 59 MINUTES LONGER than it will take Xena to snatch that kid right out from under your nose, of course.) "Sam, I need you to really hear me on this. Really. There is no one -- no one -- of higher value than Maya and her child. We cannot let them fall into Cylon hands." He's like, Gotcha. "How far do you want me to go? I mean, if it looks like the Cylons are gonna capture them... " Also not acceptable. "Don't let it get to that point. That's all." Anders asks if she's going to spill on the secret of the child, and she gets mysterious: "She may very well be the shape of things to come. That's either a blessing or a curse." Roslin takes off, and a gigantic lightbulb goes off over Anders's head so bright that it gives away everybody's location and they all get murdered but the only thing anybody upstairs can say is, "But is Cally safe?"
Three sees a woman on the street carrying an infant and leading a toddler by the hand, and thinks really hard about babies and how to steal them. Doc Cottle is crusty, but not a good bluff.
Chief explains to Sharon's Marine (Gunnery Sergeant Mathias, apparently) how there are arms and munitions hidden in "key areas" throughout the city. (Like for example, wherever the most civilians would be endangered by it, turning you into a suicide bomber, or like, if you were religious, we would profane your faith. That kind of thing.) Gunny Mathias offers some mortars and RPGs -- even a few shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missiles -- from the Raptor, and Chief is like, Awesome. "When we give the signal, our people are gonna attack the airbase, the detention center, the power station, other critical facilities. The plan is to sow as much chaos and confusion as possible the moment Galactica and Pegasus arrive. That should help cover the evacuation." (You know who could accomplish that? Starbuck. With both hands tied behind her back and a gag in her mouth, she could fuck things up that bad. And then she'd be like, "What? What is it this time?" Or Gaius Baltar, except for how it's too bad he became a Christian and then went ahead and broke permanently. In his squirrelly heyday he could cause that much chaos and confusion while eating breakfast.) But Mathias is no slouch: "No Pegasus. Just Galactica."
Roslin whips around, worried about Lee: "Why? Why no Pegasus? What happened?" Mathias still has a sense of humor -- common among the cast members who haven't been in a concentration camp for four months -- and shakes her head: "Don't know, sir. Way beyond my pay grade." Mathias and Tory, who is probably not actually a Cylon like I thought, discuss the plans for evacuation. "We've designated and assigned 500 block captains to cover each sector of the city. Each block captain is responsible for rallying and guiding the people in his or her sector along their escape route to their designated ship." (Like the Fire Marshal in the dorms! Ours was named Steve, and we called him the Hey Guys Guy, because he always smiled at us and said, "Hey Guys," and that was all there was to Steve, but then he was unanimously elected Fire Marshal for our floor in the hopes that one day there would actually be a fire, and he would go from room to room knocking on the doors and saying, "Hey Guys, there's a fire," adding a bit of levity to what would no doubt be a stressful situation.) Zarek wonders if they've been able to rehearse any of this, and thinks longingly of Maier, who could do the most bitchin' Caiaphas you ever heard -- "This Adama must die" and all that -- and you know, I miss Maier too, Tom. He sure did wanna shoot him some Adamas.
Roslin sparkles at Zarek: "Indeed. We've had three full-dress rehearsals under the guise of fire and natural disaster drills." I love the "full dress" there, like they were wearing crazy beards and can-can dresses and whatever. Mathias notes how it's going to be totally different when "the balloon goes up" (no idea), what with all the explosions, shooting, chaos, panic and total death happening everywhere. Roslin's equanimity is still unmatched: "They'll do fine. These people know that at some point, they're gonna be responsible for saving themselves. All we need to do is be ready and hope for the best." Roslin's equanimity is matched only by her redundant thoroughness: "What about Maya and Isis?" she whispers to Anders. He very nearly points his thumb back over his shoulder at the last scene, where they discussed it not five minutes ago, but he drops the 'tude because she's a lady. "I'm on it. I've got my two best shooters here. They're gonna be their escorts and make sure they get back to the ship." Roslin's inability to get out of conversational culs-de-sac is matched only by that of her buddy Lee Adama: "Gentlemen, I can't tell you why, but it is imperative that this woman and her child get off this planet. I trust you because I trust him." Is she back on the chamalla? Does she know she just had the same exact conversation three times with the exact same people in less time than it takes to smoke a Virginia Slims Ultra-Light 100? If you should ever wish to do so?
Ellen runs up yelling, with her arms behind her back, so I guess that concludes the briefing. Anders levels a very serious voice at Tigh: "We need to talk." Tigh stares and wonders what the hell she's done now. Poor guy.
Sharon walks through the city, and as has happened every other time they've ever let the poor woman out of her cage in the last WHATEVER, people immediately appear out of nowhere and start throwing shit at her and calling her a toaster. Which sucks, and did you know I really like her? But also: Galactica's all but abandoned. It's been -- far as we know -- basically just her, and Helo, and Adama for the last year and a half or so. After all that was done to her -- Pegasus and the abortion betrayal and losing Hera -- she got a year and a half with the two men that love her most. Alone, to heal. And now she's back among people again, and they're reminding her as hard as they can what it was like. It's not rage, it's sadness and shame. Remember how you never had the Sharon program in you, and how you were created to love? Your entire purpose was just to love, and be loved in return? And how they got ahold of you, and twisted that all the way around? Remember why the cage was easier? At least then it was just your own hate, and not everybody else's.
Anders takes it slow: "She sold us out." Tigh -- good form, old boy -- narrowly avoids the "What the hell," bending it in the last second like this: "What... are you talking about?" Anders explains about how the Cylons knew exactly where the rendezvous was. Tigh protests that this doesn't mean anything in particular about Ellen, but Anders shows him the map: "Colonel! The map that I drew for you. I gave this to you in your tent. You were gonna burn it, but then your wife offered to do it for you. I got it off a dead skinjob at the ambush. Do the math!" Ellen tries to explain, but gets the Boomer treatment from the other insurgents, who are instructed by Tigh to shut up. "He said he'd kill you. One of the Brother Cavils. I did it for you. Saul, it was all for you, I had to. I didn't have any choice. Don't you see that?" Questions without answers: I already made fun of Chief for ignoring everybody in his stompy quest to see his wife, the mother of his child, home safely. So I can't turn around and fault Ellen for doing the same -- but I don't want to. It's like suicide bombs: Tigh is okay ordering them, I just hate whoever would go through with it. I don't fault Ellen or Chief for putting Tigh or Cally a centimeter above everybody else, because that's just how it works. But I wouldn't countenance Anders letting it go either. I'm just hoping she doesn't die, because I've always really liked her. I already have no idea how Tigh comes back from this, just with what's happened so far. I don't want to think about it right now. Things are, I think, often a lot easier, when you're Anders. Which is actually a lot of the attraction, I think.
Sharon enters the detention center, plucking like a banana peel from her hair and rotten vaudeville vegetables from her clothes. (And like how come they can do that? If it were a Doral or Three, wouldn't they just kind of toss their asses in jail and keep walking? It fits Sharon's storyline and all, and definitely leads into this scene, but it makes New Caprica City life just that much more confusing.) She does some USB stuff with the detention center system, and then goes into another room, where "Drawer 3-7-8" opens By Her Command. She checks out its contents, and then Nutty Three enters. (I want a better name for her, but I don't think Pharoah's Daughter technically has one. Midrash names her Bithia -- ×ִּתְ×Ö¸×, daughter of God -- but Bithia-Three totally sounds like a speech impediment no matter how perfectly it works out thematically. Think I'm going nuts again? Check the title of the episode.) She can tell it's Sharon simply by her guilty look, and her jaw drops. "Oh my God, it's you." Sharon immediately pulls a gun on her, and she just stares. "You're betraying your own people. For what?" Sharon claims she's a Colonial officer now, and Three wrinkles her nose. "You're not one of them." Okay then: "I gave them my word." Still no. "That's not what counts. It's who you give it to." Sharon soldiers up. "I'm gonna have to shoot you now."
"Hera lives," says Three. "Your daughter Hera is alive. Your new friends tell you that?" Sharon flips back into a momentary flashback of Hera's birth, and her death. "They faked her death, and they hid her from you." Sharon isn't buying: "You could say anything... " But Three interrupts, all on fire with prophecy: "Oh, I had dreams. I had strange dreams. I was having strange dreams that made me question my faith. Made me question God. And in the dreams, there was a human Oracle, so I went to see Dodona Selloi." Sharon steadfastedly ignores her. "I'm not going to kill you, but I'm going to wound you, so you can't warn the others." Very polite, and even more polite to tell her the plan upfront. "The Oracle said that the fruit borne of two peoples is still alive, that Hera lives, and I would hold her in my arms, and I will know true love." But this is the part that just kills: "Put down the gun, and when I find her you can hold her too." There's a second, a split-second, and then Sharon shoots her in the knees: "Adama wouldn't lie to me." Three goes down, and it's horrible, and as Sharon's leaving she screams after her: "You're wrong. You're wrong!" What can you do? She's right. Sucks.
Sharon hands over the launch keys to Chief and notes that given the data, the ships on the ground still have enough tylium to make at least one jump. "Congratulations, by the way. I heard it's a boy." Chief's like, "Oh, right." She asks the son's name, and he stutters: "Uh, Nicolas. After Cally's grandfather." Her voice goes small. "Hey, Chief? You remember when you helped Helo spread Hera's ashes?" He nods, sadly. "You actually saw the ashes?" He's confused: "Yeah. Of course. Why?" She looks at no place in particular, with a sliver in her heart. "Nothing. Just make sure Cally never lets her kid out of her sight." She wanders away, fighting back tears.
Helo enters Adama's office on Galactica and informs him that the Listening Raptor just jumped back to say that Sharon got the launch keys. He leaves with a smile and Adama very intensely punches the table joyfully. Here we go.
The phone rings in the Galactica rec room and Racetrack answers. "... Very well, sir." She hangs up and looks over at Kat, who is sitting very still at the table. The room is so empty now; remember how it used to always be full of people? "It's on," says Racetrack. And they get moving.
Adama stands in the Galactica CIC, speaking over the ship's PA. And this is what he says: "This is the Admiral. You've heard the news. You know the mission. You should also know there's only one way that this mission ends. And that's with the successful rescue of our people on New Caprica. Look around you. Take a good look at the men and women that stand to you. Remember their faces. For one day you will tell your children and your grandchildren that you served with such men and women as the universe has never seen. And together you accomplished a feat that will be told and retold down through the ages, and find immortality as only the Gods once knew. I'm proud to serve with you. Good hunting." He hangs up the phone; Helo sets condition one throughout the ship. "Standby for a combat jump."
TO BE CONTINUED ONE HOUR FROM YESTERDAY OR SOMETHING.
Here's the thing. In the historical plagues of Battlestar, so far we've had: an exploding bomb courtesy of Duck, a heavy-fire rendezvous courtesy of Ellen Tigh concomitant with a heavy-fire execution courtesy of Jammer, and now we're heading into battle. "To be continued" is kind of beside the point right now. It's a technical two-parter following a de facto two-parter, with the biggest cliffhanger taking place between the two pairs of episodes, so the momentum is good, but because of the Plagues, this means that episode has to end with a gun to somebody's head. I've seen the show, isn't that how it works? "I'm getting my men," followed by a gun to the head? The thing is, it should be easier than this to narrow down exactly who will have the gun to their head. Will it be Ellen Tigh? Who will be holding the gun? Will it be Gaius Baltar? Who, then, will be holding the gun? Or will it be any of the other thousands of men and women on the ground or in the sky or jumping away into space? And who's holding the gun then? I'm tired! Boom boom boom. See you week for what I'm guessing is going to be a very exciting episode of this show Battlestar Galactica, in which more people will get shot, degraded, and probably engaging in some awful, horrible, timely behavior. Somebody's uppance is coming, though. That much I know.