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Two-parters are the new FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE JANUARY LAST WEEK. Not that I'm complaining, because this season freakin' rocks. After Starbuck risks her Viper acting like an ass, CAG Apollo grounds her. Meanwhile, Tigh has been both officially and unofficially replaced by Helo as XO and Adama's BFF. Kacey and her mom (whose name sounded like Julia Prynne, okay) come looking for Kacey's "friend" Kara, and get turned away just like Sam last week, and it is heartbreaking. On the other hand, Saul's crazy now involves hallucinations of Ellen.
Tigh and Starbuck spend the entire episode in the mess hall alienating everybody and trying to start that civil war between the New Capricans and the Fleet crew that I thought was going to boil so subtly for a while longer. Adama finally summons them to a hardcore glaring session in which he orders them to either shoot him in the head or stop fracking around. Even after being demoted from "daughter" to "cancer" (and that's not a metaphor, he literally says those words out loud) Kara seems redeemable, if by an infinitesimally small margin; Saul out-and-out tells Adama he plans on going as crazy as possible and that he'll disappear into the Fleet.
On the basestar, Baltar learns some things that are very interesting and wonderful about Cylons. They spend their existence in "projections," hallucinations of their own design. Unlike most Americans, though, their basestars have half-chrome "Hybrid" pilots that speak oracular gibberish. What else? Um, all Cylons are creepy naked swingers, but we knew that. Did not know that they've now decided to settleâ¦on Earth. (Or that Gaius might be a Cylon. Thought never once occurred.)
Baltar and Gaeta, working on the basestar and Galactica separately, come to the same conclusion about the location of Earth, and send scouting missions to check out a double nebula. The Cylon scout ship is infected with a virus that kills all Cylons -- Threes, Eights, Sixes, Centurions, Raiders and all -- so Baltar volunteers to investigate. He finds a beacon left behind as a trap by the 13th Tribe -- but doesn't tell anybody about this 2,000-year-old human trick. The scout group from Galactica fares better, except for how Lieutenant Sharon Agathon -- now callsign Athena -- is with them, and has no idea about the virus. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously: Sharon was called to service in the Colonial Fleet; Tigh spoke at length of his "purpose," to hold the line until Adama returned to New Caprica, and then killed Ellen; Adama saved everybody; Kacey's mommy took off with her; and the Cylons took off with Gaius, and were characteristically upfront about his conditional survival.
Gaius meets Chip Six on a beautiful beach; she's wearing a red bikini and there's a strange dreamy bright sun all over the place. Remember how weird it was when thePegasusshowed up? The music was all crazy and the camera acted like it was on drugs? That's Gaius's life, through this entire episode. It's really disorienting and dreamlike and creepy/amazing. Even the Six fugues have an extra weirdness and a sideways light, like at dusk. "Good to see you," says Gaius, and intimates that Chip Six is somehow connected to the Sixness: "I far prefer these picturesque settings for little our interludes, don't you? I thought you had abandoned me to your Cylon comrades." She grins archly and shifts on her chaise-lounge. "Would I do that?" (Heh: Ambiguous and terrifying? Me?) He's all, "You're nuts, remember?" He says she's always been more "unpredictable" than her flesh and blood counterparts, and I don't know if he means as an hallucination or as a lady or what, because of her response: "A man that loves women as much as you should have learned that a long time ago." He admits he's a slow learner, which in turn earns him a slow clap. "Then take this period as a time to learn all you can about the Cylons," she says in her "fucking pay attention" voice. "You'll need it in the days ahead." He asks if she's got something in particular on the horizon, and she shakes her head. "Cylon psychology is based on projection." Bwuh? "It's how they choose to see the world around them. The only difference is, you choose to see me." (I can't unpack this concept quite yet. I think I might be getting clinical psych bleedthrough where you assume people are talking about the thing you know, like how the psychiatrists and therapists always write us hate mail when we misuse the term "psychodrama," so I'm going to keep quiet. But I think I really like this, because it makes them weirder, and harder to understand, and more like Americans. Or maybe Six is just a Sagittarius, which would explain a hell of a lot. You know Gaius for sure is.) "What are you really?" he asks, and she turns away. "You're either connected to the woman I knew in Caprica, or you're just a damaged part of my subconscious struggling for self-expression. So which one is it?" Option C: "I'm an angel of God sent here to help you. Just as I always have been." Frankly, I'm about to take option C and say frack it, but you know. No polar bears just yet.
Gaius jerks awake in his basestar cell and stares around and has some screwed up psychic visions: rain inside, moisture on the pulsing walls. A woman with white skin, staring up into an indoor sun. Time shifts: "We're all part of one big ecosystem," says Three, and he stares -- wearing his scientist drag, suit and glasses -- that he can feel that. "Breathing." As the projection (maybe) shifts again to the real now, he hears her telling him to get used to it. "So, what'd he say?" asks Caprica, appearing in the real. "I haven't asked him yet," Three shrugs. About what? "Earth," Caprica says definitively. He boggles. "Earth," says Three in her frightening, friendly way. "It's the Thirteenth Colony?" He's still freaked. Caprica asks if he knows where it is, and he immediately shakes his head. "Not really, no." Three nods like she thought so, and calls it "unfortunate." "There was a hope -- my hope -- that if you knew the way to Earth, it would justify keeping you alive a little longer. Come on, Six." She just pulled like a hat trick of good cop/bad cop with nothing up her sleeves, so of course Gaius stoolies out immediately. "Wait. Wait, wait! Now when I say that I do not know exactly where Earth is, that is not to say that I do not know a very great deal about its probable location. Honestly, I spent hours, days, weeks, months and months on a map that Adama and Roslin found on Kobol. And I correlated that with astrometric observations. I doubt anyone here can make the same claim." Caprica just stares at him while he shits his britches, and then nods sharply. "We'll get back to you." But why do they care? "Because we're looking for it," Caprica says, like it's self-evident. "You are?" he says, but it's less like a question and more like trying not to boot. "Yes," says Three brightly. "We've decided that Earth's going to be our new home."
Credits; episode by the glamorous and not un-Threelike Anne Cofell Saunders, whom you might remember for Sesha Abinell, and for co-writing a couple of the other best-ever episodes; probably though you know her name for writing/inflicting the Hugo-nominated and aforementioned episode they call "Pegasus," aka "The one where shit got real for real." 41,422 souls in the Fleet. Near a moon we find two squads of Vipers, Laser Tag dogfighting (awesome), as Adama watches from CIC. Apollo -- back to CAG -- is leading Red team with Starbuck under him; Kat's on Blue team. "Red team, Apollo. As soon as we clear the moon, we're gonna be on their dradis, so keep your eyes up. They're gonna hit us with everything they got. Stay in formation, Starbuck. Nacho, you're my wingman." Kat alerts Blue team, calling Red team "lazy fracks," and it's worth noting that not only is Hotdog on Blue team, but has become crazy hot. Starbuck sights him and hits him immediately, and it's nice to see her in the cockpit again; Apollo goes after Kat and misses her entirely. Kat taunts him, but as long as she doesn't do that awful NOW NOW NOW Dawn Summers bullshit we'll be okay. She's cool now. Starbuck heads after Kat without Apollo's clearance and he tells her to stay in formation, sending Nacho. She disregards, grandstanding, and ends up ramming Kat.
On deck, Chief's finally acting normal, horrified by Starbuck's blown compressor and even more horrified when Cally confirms that she was so bingo there aren't even fumes in her fuel tank. He wonders how on earth she managed to land, and she retreats even further back into the Starbuck persona that caused her to fuck up in the first place: "Pointed it toward the deck and stopped when I got here." Which would be bad ass, if it weren't at least as fake and hollow as the Starbuck personality always was. Hotdog complains/is amazed with Kat about what a dick Starbuck's being, and Apollo comes running up with the entire TOE sticking out of his ass sideways. "If you want to die, I will open up an airlock, but you are not taking one of my Vipers with you." First of all: ouch. Second of all, ouch, because I hate to see Starbuck acting the fool, but even more than that, I hate to see her acting the way people always said she did, because now they're right, because there's nothing behind it: "The bird's on the deck. I'm on the deck. I don't know what you're bitching about." (Again: would be bad ass, if she hadn't lost her Consequence Pass back on New Caprica, but now she's just being disgusting.) I don't give a frack what you do, Starbuck, you're done flying," Apollo spits, and takes off. Everybody stares. It is ugly. It is an ugly scene!
Metalepsis! Trrrrrrrrransitive property! Tigh's quarters, where he's drinking wildly and imagining strange noises. Voices, meaning Ellen's voice, meaning he's in huge trouble right about now. "I can't believe you did that to me," she murmurs, and he starts. "Don't look at me like that!" she shouts, and he goes looking all over his room for her. His tiny room. He heads out into the corridor calling her name, and the thing about that is that there are like hundreds of people in the corridor, and he's busily going nuts in front of them, screaming for his dead wife. Whom he killed. He spots a blonde in the distance and runs after her, pushing people aside in his hurry; Ellen's voice becomes another woman's voice. "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times," she complains. ("I told you and I told you," he said to her once.) Saul grabs the woman and spins her around, breathless: "Ellen, I'm right here." It's not Ellen, it's just another refugee. Another person who left something back there. "What is this? Let go of me," she says, shaken by his weirdness, and he stares as she takes the child she was yelling at and runs away down the hall, into the river of people, leaving him alone, screaming at a ghost, in the middle of the world. He stares down, at nothing. What happened to Gina when she had no purpose left?
Starbuck heads for her bunk in the Pilots' barracks and is attacked by a small adorable blonde missile shouting her name. "Kara, Kara!" She stares down at Kacey as the girl's mother approaches. "Captain Thrace? I'm sorry, don't you remember me? I'm Julia [Prynne? That would be funny. Sounds more like Brenham, though.] I'm Kacey's mom." Starbuck remembers. Kacey demands a hug from Starbuck, who looks like she's about to pass out, as Julia explains that they've been living in "Camp Oilslick," the refugee camp on the hangar deck. "Kacey's been asking to see you for days. I sent messages. I thought you know, maybe you'd come for a visit... " Starbuck keeps her voice level, for Kacey's sake, but she doesn't drop Julia's eyes. "You seem like a really nice person, so I'm gonna be honest with you. The last thing I need is a two-year-old friend. And Kacey sure as hell does not need me in her life, so do us both a favor and do not bring her around here again, okay?" She picks the girl up, her one-time daughter, one-time savior, and puts her tenderly but firmly in Julia's arms. "Go to your mom, Kase." Julia stares for a second, taken aback and hurt, and her mouth forms a thin line. "Sure. Sorry, don't let us keep you up." She hurries out of the barracks, comforting Kacey -- who, as usual, is taking some shit in stride -- and murmuring to herself: "Sorry, honey, we gotta go." Awkward. Starbuck throws herself onto her bunk and stares, up, at nothing.
In the training room, Lee checks his weight on the scales, and as they balance, we pull out and see that Lee has become possibly even more buff than before. Maybe Roslin gave him some kind of stem cell-derived weight loss drugs or something. Helo stands with him, doing his usual wonderful Helo magic spells: "That's it. See? See, I told you you could do it. You did great!" Lee shakes his head, grinning: "Remind me never to let that happen again." Helo smirks -- "You got it, Slim" -- but he's serious. "Ever."
Roslin, Adama, and Gaeta meet in the Galactica war room. Gaeta tells them he's been putting together Gaius's work on the path of the Thirteenth Tribe's journey to Earth. He catches himself saying "President Baltar," but quickly and ham-fistedly corrects himself. Roslin's exposition infection kicks in, in a major way. "I'm curious, Mr. Gaeta. What is it that you trust about Dr. Baltar's research? How do you know it's not another one of his lies?" Gaeta calls their attention to Gaius's "extraordinary capacity for self-preservation" and assures them that he would have worked hard on getting to Earth if that was where he wanted to be. Baltar's self-obsession being as much of a given as gravity and photosynthesis, they are immediately convinced. Gaeta explains that Gaius was apparently correlating the Fleet's own "astrometric readings," the map of constellations from Kobol, and the Scrolls of Pythia. Adama is thrown by that last, but you know Roslin's down: "Pythia is supposed to have chronicled the original journey of the Thirteenth Tribe on its way to Earth." (Pause: She what? She was an Oracle. She didn't have to go with them or come back to Kobol in order to do a bunch of drugs and imagine their journey, and/or get received wisdom from the heavens. She could chronicle all kinds of shit just sitting on her oracular couch eating caramels.)
Gaeta quotes one passage in particular: "And the caravan of the heavens was watched over by a great lion with a mighty blinking eye... " and Adama finishes: "... red and blue." Gaeta's like, "Exactly!" But it's been a while since Adama had to pretend scripture was a valid way to live your life or lead the Fleet or lie about in order to impose a provisional sense of order in humanity: "Exactly what? You're looking for a lion's head?" Roslin grins sweetly at him across the table: "With a mighty blinking eye." Adama's like, "And it's... blinking." They blink at each other, and Roslin -- kind of sheepishly, considering her bizarre history with Pythia -- lowers her eyes: "Well, they're Scrolls. They speak in metaphors?" Gaeta's feeling them both. "Initially I thought the doctor might be off his meds as well, sir? But then I found this note here, where he had written blinking equals pulsar." He exposits for us idiots, using Roslin -- the former secretary of Education for twelve planets, mind you -- who doesn't know what a pulsar is: "They're the rotating cores of dead stars, they emit a blast of radio waves." So from a distance, they'd appear to blink. "Right," he nods. "The doctor found two in very close mutual orbit within this sector. Uh, the spectrographic readings that I found show one will appear to be red, and one will appear to be blue." Red team, blue team: dead stars, whittled to their core; giving off radiation in space, whirling and confused. "Now...these pulsars appear to be in this nebula. We have never had a direct look at this area. But it is possible, with a couple of eyeballs out there, they might look at the nebula and see... " Adama nods. "A giant lion's head." As though this is the first time they've gone haring off based on little-to-no sound evidence that Pythia wasn't just a sad old saint of the apocalypse on drugs, Roslin quirks her mouth and looks at Adama. "Well, it looks like this is the best thing we've got going." She smiles brightly and beautifully: "So unless you object, Admiral, I suggest we go lion hunting." Always a good idea.
In the basestar corridor, Caprica's assuring Gaius that the "navigational markers" he and Gaeta simultaneously have developed will be useful. "They sent a baseship out to investigate the pulsars, and look for this lion's head of yours." Baltar whines about how she has to be serious with him about how conflicted and ambiguous he is feeling about finding Earth. She laughs at him and notes how all this internal conflict developed right after he managed to once more escape death. She leads him through a room where one of the Eights is doing naked tai chi -- she ignores them utterly -- and reminds him that there's a lot of skepticism still about his motives. Gaius apologizes to Naked Boomer for interrupting her, and Caprica rolls her eyes: "Come on, Gaius." Out in the corridor again, Gaius is confused, thinking they're going in circles. "I'm sure it all looks the same to you, doesn't it? Be hard for any human to navigate around here. Especially without projecting." He says something about how -- not Chip Six but Caprica -- has mentioned "projection" before. "I'm not quite sure what you're talking about. It helps you to what, exactly?" She asks if he's ever daydreamed, and he does a perfect, gorgeous deadpan: "I do have an active imagination." (I'd slap him, just in case.) "Well, we don't have to imagine. We project. We choose to see our environment in any form we wish, whenever we wish. For instance, right now you see us as standing in a hallway, but I see it as a forest." Reality complies. "Filled with trees, birds, sunlight." Back in the corridor, Gaius smiles. "Like the walks that you and I used to take. On Caprica." As a Doral passes them, in both the forest and the hall, Caprica shakes her head, still smiling but not with her voice. "The aesthetic is what gives me pleasure. Not the specific memories. Instead of staring at blank walls, I choose to surround myself with a vision of God's creation."
Time, I guess, for a quick Chip Six fugue, since Caprica's being weird again and just tripped Gaius out a little bit, so it's back to the beach. "Right, now I think I understand projection, but it's a bit of a coincidence, isn't it? That I could see such a vivid reality that I've created, and the Cylon projection experience seems to be so similar?" Not really. You're nuts, you're a narcissist, and you want nothing better than to turn back time to when you hadn't destroyed the Twelve Colonies and were getting regular tail. "Is it a coincidence?" asks Six, and he stops there in the sand, with the sun so bright behind him that you can barely see his face. This episode is so beautiful. "Well, what are you saying? There's a connection? What, because of my experiences with you -- am I a Cylon?" Back in the corridor, Caprica whips around to look at him, totally grossed out. "What was that?" Don't you hate it when you hallucinate out loud about the lover whose death you directly caused? In a hallway? "Oh, nothing. Just talking out loud. Silly me." But I mean, give it a sec. It's funny, and he's a dickwad and all, but this is just... really sad, that he would even go there. It's one very messy and sad and intriguing thing to kiss Leoben after four months and mean it, but you don't automatically assume that you're him. You know?
In the Galactica mess, it goes like this: Sharon and Helo are sitting with Racetrack, being completely civil. At another table, Hotdog and Starbuck are playing cards with Kat and being somewhat more rowdy. Sharon asks if Racetrack would honestly want to go back to being an ECO after having piloted a Raptor for at least the last -- what, year and a half? -- and notes that she's gotten good, but Racetrack notes that there are too many pilots for the Raptors they have now. "Anything to keep me flying, at this point. You want me, I'm yours, Boomer." Racetrack's always been classy, but if you take into account her crush on Helo, she's like the anti-Cally for that sentence alone. "Uh, no," Sharon stutters. "Boomer was... she was someone else." I like that not only for obvious reasons, but this is also Sharon's return to piloting, too, which is why this conversation is happening. She was commissioned, did the launch key op on New Caprica, and now she has her bird back too. (Not too bad, especially considering this Sharon has never flown a day in her life, in military terms.) Helo notes her face at this point and realizes it's time for another Helo spell. "Listen up! We need a new call sign for Lieutenant Agathon." The pilots all over the mess -- as Starbuck watches -- call out hilarious names for her. "Chrome Dome! Titania! Lightbulb! Wind-up Toy! Raptor Adapter! Microchip! Digital Dame! Mayflower! Carburetor! Tincan! Toaster Babe! Transistor! Robopilot!" There are like a hundred (none of them as cool as the ones I made up last season, such as Man And His Symbols or Whitechocolatespaceegg, but it's a fun nod to that old game. My favorites are "Titania" -- because of Gaius's term right now away with the fairies -- and "Transistor" for some reason. Also "Raptor Adapter," because that's continuity and humor all in one, and "Toaster Babe," because I want to hear them say that shit on comms.) and Hotdog speaks up: "How 'bout Athena?" (Can't call him "dumb old Hotdog" anymore. I don't know yet.) Helo picks his out of the crowd: "What was that?" Hotdog, not dumb at all, schools their asses. "You know, the Goddess of Wisdom and War. Usually accompanied by the Goddess of Victory." There's silence and a dawning smile on Sharon's beautiful face, and Helo's. One Pilot nearly whispers, "She likes it." Helo smiles back at her, and they kiss. "Athena it is." Which I always thought was Laura, but then, I'm positive Starbuck's going to be the one to rescue Hera, so hopefully I'll get my intuition score back up after last season at some point, and anyway, wasn't that sweet? Such a good day we're having!
... So then Tigh walks in. Racetrack loudly invites him to sit with them, which is both sweet and dumb of her considering that Helo has Single White Femaled about 2/3 of Tigh's shit at this point and is edging into more of his territory with every breath. He doesn't even look around, just heads for Starbuck and asks if she's got anything to drink. (Everything you wanted, in the worst possible way.) Kat hoots out a funny welcome and he sits, noting that they're not playing Triad, but the incredible foreshadowy "Dead Man's Chest." "Cutthroat game," he says to Starbuck. "Not usually your style." She leans back, Starbucking up to her eyeballs. "It is now. And I'm in it to win. You don't like it, find another game." He grabs a chair from Sharon and Helo's table -- still not looking at them -- and commences bitching. "Oh, there's some straight talk. Have you seen the lineup outside the head? Fifteen civilians standing in line picking their noses and waiting to take a shower." Starbuck -- an equal opportunity haterator if ever there were one -- immediately joins in on the civilian-bashing, grunting about how they "think they run the ship now." A pilot at their table that I don't recognize, but I'm sure you do, points out that it's better to have way too many civilians than be empty and sad and sparking like during the settlement: "The ship was like a tomb." Tigh tells him that if he wants to know what alone feels like -- and note please the continuing poetic powers of Saul Tigh, because he just said more with one word than the rest of them say on a good day -- they should spend a few weeks in a Cylon holding cell. Like his missing eye is the thing that's aching. Like there aren't fifteen ghosts and more weighing him down. Fifteen men on Saul Tigh's chest, pushing down with all their weight. Kat grins and speaks up. Which is interesting, because she spends more time deliberately throwing herself in front of the truck called "Kara Thrace" than anybody besides Lee Adama, and she always knows she's doing it, and she always knows it's going to fuck her up, but she keeps doing it, because she is awesome, and because she loves Starbuck, still, the way Saul loves Bill.
Kat tries to speak their language -- violent, ugly, angry -- and defuse them, herd everybody back over to the same side; drag her foot across the salt on the floor. (The unbroken line of a house divided: I was right. It's tears.) "Yeah, it was a bitch on both sides. And it wasn't exactly easy coming up with a plan to save your sorry butts." While a stupid child would be able to recognize that she's being deliberately crude/flippant about it in order to get everybody over the hump that Saul just tossed in their path, we're talking about Starbuck here. Stupid children could do almost anything better than her right now. She takes her at her word. "You guys had it rough, huh? Hot showers, three squares a day. Viper jocks didn't even take a shot till you jumped into orbit." Helo calls, across the salt: "Hey. We all made sacrifices." "Is that so?" asks Tigh, sticking his nasty old self right in the middle of this, crowbarring the problem as wide open as he can, focusing on Helo, who keeps taking everything away. (Remember that friend you had in grade school that moved away that summer? Remember what a dick he was that whole week? Remember how he was just saying goodbye? Listen.) "While you were pinning wings on your Cylon girlfriend, our people were strapping homemade bombs to their chests. Doing whatever they could to take the bastards out. So forgive me if I don't get all misty over your sacrifices."
"You seem distracted, Gaius," says Caprica. "You can rest easy, at least for now. The data on Earth's location, and your valiant rescue of the baby, has gone a long way toward impressing the others." There are shots of the seven models we know, dreamlike and shifting. "I used to think you and I would have a baby one day," Caprica smiles dreamily. (Somewhere, Chip Six is like, "I know, right?" but then quickly does some Crazy Baby Math.) He clears his head. "There are only 12 Cylon models. But in the entire occupation on New Caprica, I only saw seven. Now here again, the same seven. Who are the final five?" Her baby smile falls clattering to the floor. "I can't talk about that." Can't? Or wonât? "I can't. It's complicated, but we don't talk about them. Ever." He presses when he should not press. "But you'd know one of them, wouldn't you, if you saw them? One of the final five. If they were to walk past here right -- " And just then, Three comes running up. Interesting.
So okay. This isn't the whole thing yet, but here's what I've got: Life on the basestar is, for us, dreamy and unreal, because Cylon logic is not human logic. We're not in a human space, we're in the kind of world where consciousness is only differentiated twelve different ways, instead of one for every single entity. We're getting a slice of what Boomer and Sharon and Six have always known: The soft edges of reality in a group mind, the way memories can pass like a shroud across the world before you, facts rising to the surface when we need them, math and GPS caroms drifting like clouds before the moon, memories presenting as prophecy and vice versa. We're not in an alien space, but merely an undifferentiated one. Without ego or personal consciousness, there's no need for that "reducing valve" Huxley talked about -- it's all the same. It's not a question of denying reality, it's a question of not denying any particular part of reality in favor of what's at hand. Ontological, cosmological ADD. "Projection" isn't a diss on Cylon selfishness: it's the equivalent of changing your cell phone face, or the skin on your mp3 program. The math underneath stays the same, and is shared among us all. This is the state that Pythia speaks from, and Amanda Plummer and Leoben -- and Drusilla, and even Tara for a short painful while -- and anybody else who looked on the face of God and went mad: the roiling undeniable sea underneath everything that we spend our lives building walls and choices around so we don't lose it completely. Prophets rock at telling you things that don't make sense but are still true, but they can't balance their checkbooks for shit. No wonder the Cylons know Colonial scripture better than most of the crew of the Galactica: they live there all the time. But also, maybe it's even more fabulous than that: maybe she can see a forest because she's been in a forest before, and that's the forest she's currently, actually in, as she says. Maybe "projection" is a willed way of reducing experience into the best possible shape, and the underneath calculations stay the same. Maybe they weave reality out of all the sights and sounds and math they've ever seen or heard or done, all the time, the way we collage together an afternoon flipping back and forth between Tyra and Farscape reruns and TV recaps on the laptop. And if they can do it with linear memories, maybe they can do it with time itself. Maybe she can see a forest because she'll be in a forest someday. Which is cool as fuck, but also really kind of terrifying. (Though not as terrifying as the fact that, if I'm right, that makes Leoben the sanest one, if you think about it.) Anyway, that's my theory right now.
"Six, we have a problem," says Three. Ignoring Gaius as well as Three does, Doral steps up. "A baseship. The one we sent to investigate the pulsars in the Lion Nebula. We've lost contact." The trouble, Three explains, is that the missing baseship's status is a zero. "We received a garbled distress call, then silence," says Doral. Scary for our Fleet, unimaginable for the Cylon. They've even got special ships in order to make sure everybody stays connected up. "Not surprisingly, their Hybrid sent us a confusing set of data. Our Hybrid is analyzing it." Gaius asks about the Hybrids and Six tells him to shut it, and then they all go running through the basestar corridors. Or, as I choose to see it, The Giant Banana Republic Where Everything Is Free And There Are Espresso Machines On Every Corner, Each Operated By Its Own Hateful Jim In A Disheveled Tuxedo, And Marguerite Moreau Is Like, "Do You Like These Shoes?" And I'm Like "Totally," And Cupid Ran One Million Episodes, And Plus Tina Fey Is There Also.
Basestar war room, where there are a bunch of those wet data panels like in the detention center. The seven models place their hands on panels, reading the data. "Our Hybrid's deciphered part of the data set that we received from our scout ship," says Eight, and Doral shakes his head, terrified. "This can't happen to us. It's impossible." Simon is more firm: "It is not only possible, it may have been inevitable, once we took human form." Wow. "We're not human," Doral hisses. "We're not like them." Simon isn't so sure: "God has chosen this time, this place, to test us. Whether we fail or pass the test is up to us." Gaius asks for a WTF and Caprica fills in the blanks. "The missing baseship, it's been infected by some kind of disease." Eight chimes in: "It's killing them. All of them." Simon tells us that they can tell a Cylon carrying this disease into a resurrection ship might infect and kill all the Cylon. And if you think that sounds awesome, go back and watch "Pegasus" again. "All right," says Three, "We make sure that the resurrection ship is out of range, then we jump to their location. Send in a group of Centurions to make sure... " Nope. "The data set indicates that as soon as the Hybrid was infected, the Centurions started shutting down," Eight says. "We don't know how ours are gonna be affected." Three assumes the Raiders and baseships are also susceptible, and Simon nods. "Of course. We are all created from the same genetic pool." Meaning, Doral finishes up, no Cylon can board the ship without risking getting infected. I can't wait to get a better handle on the models and their differences and philosophies -- there are some really interesting dimensions being set up here, as fast as things are moving, and watching them build and accrete is hopefully going to be one of the awesome things this season.
Time for another beach fugue, where Chip Six speaks evenly and urgently and does not brook refusal: "Say you'll go aboard the infected baseship and investigate what happened. You sent them to that nebula. Remember?" He asks if she's mad -- Can you imagine if your imaginary girlfriend went crazy in your head? -- and she laughs. "You have to prove to them you can be counted on in an emergency," and worth keeping alive. He asks what about if he catches the disease, and she chuckles a bit more darkly. "What are the chances that a human could catch something that infects a Centurion or a Raider? That is, if you're human." And this part is very subtle, but very complicated, because he is a man of many wishes, and she's offering to grant them all: "And if you're really a Cylon -- one of the final five you haven't seen yet -- then wouldn't you rather just get it over with and die?" To live and prove his worth, on the one hand. On the other, to be the thing that Cylons fear -- a Final Fiver -- or to be the thing that humans fear -- a Cylon period -- or to be dead. Those are the options she's giving him. She kisses him and it is beautiful onscreen, and he jumps back to the basestar.
"I'll go!" he shouts abruptly. Three is confused. "Yes, I'll go." He counts it out: he's a trained scientist, he can go to the baseship without dying, and he can bring back the thing they are freaking out about: "Observations about the Cylons, their physical condition. Bring back information," he adds -- the thing they want most -- and adds some extra leverage: "About this disease, which now threatens all of you." Simon worries that they can't land anyway without infecting the Raiders, and Gaius points out that they've got to have stolen some kind of Colonial vessels. Eight nods. "We could program one of our Raptors to approach on autopilot." (Especially she could, you know?) Three nods, machine logic closes it out, faster than it took to discuss it out loud. Say what you will about the Cylons, but they don't fuck around when it's decision making time. (And when it turns out wrong, they just re-vector and move out again, which is somewhat less laudatory than the not-fucking-around part.) "Prepare to jump the ship. Make sure the resurrection ship knows to stay behind, out of range." Caprica looks at Gaius suspiciously: "A truly... selfless act." (I'd slap him, just in case.)
Hotdog refills Tigh's glass and toasts "knowing that somebody will always have your back." All the Pilots cheer, but that would have been too cheerful for Tigh even before he went nuts and lost all his stuff he ever had. "The sentiment's good, but in my book, trust is an overrated commodity." Starbuck nods and drinks deep to that one. Finally, Kat decides to take out the salt line with the bazooka of her huge mouth. "Frack you guys." Starbuck laughs innocently: "What is your problem, Katraine?" Specifically? "You, Captain. And all this 'Us Against Them' crap." Starbuck goes for another beer, laughing at her and Starbucking into the stratosphere. "Truth hurts, doesn't it." Kat's had enough. "You know what, Starbuck? Whatever happened to you down there, why don't you take it out on the Cylons? Because we busted our ass to get you off that rock." She's right, but so is Tigh: "Do you think that means anything? Every colonist that landed on New Caprica was loyal, to a point. It was amazing watching those people that you thought you knew go over to the Cylons." Which has zero to do with anything, but also: when I said last week this was going to be the huge problem, I didn't think I meant FIVE MINUTES FROM RIGHT WHEN I SAID IT. "At least in the end, we knew where we stood, huh?" asks Starbuck, kissing his ass, but look, kid: he works alone. "Is that so? Then how come you are off flight duty, and some Cylon lover is holding down my post? Don't kid yourselves, you're on your own in this life. Each and every one of us." Now more than ever. Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum. "Why don't you tell that to the pilots that died getting you off that rock?" Awkward squared.
Helo reports to Adama in his office about how Gaeta is briefing Sharon and Racetrack on the scouting mission to the nebula. "You mean Athena and Racetrack," says Adama lightly, and Helo swells up to nearly twice his height with love and pride. Since he was already nine feet tall, this causes him to bust through Adama's ceiling and into the floor above. "Word travels fast!" he says. He and Adama are pleased together, and after the moment's passed, Adama asks -- vis-Ã -vis the relative speed of word -- about the morale dip on the flight deck. Helo assures him the crew can handle it, but Adama has more words. "I'm also told that Colonel Tigh is spending a lot of time down in the Pilots' rec room." Helo gives it up: "Both him and Starbuck, sir. They've been holding court. Second-guessing the rescue, bad-mouthing the crew that stayed up with Galactica. Suddenly, if you weren't in the ground war, it's like you can't be trusted." And people, Adama surmises, are listening. "They're destroying morale and unit cohesion." Adama's huge lie for this week: "They both know better." Rather than reminded the clearly senile Admiral that we are talking about Kara Thrace and Saul Tigh, Helo covers for his dementia: "... I don't think they care, sir."
Gaius stares at the Hybrid, the pale wet woman from his dream. She sits in a resurrection pool wearing a black snood, like a hearth goddess. Her body fades into ship and connections where she floats; Giger tubes and Craig Morrison rubber. And -- off the Pythia tip -- she says the following. "Two protons expelled at each coupling site creates the mode of force the embryo becomes a fish that we don't enter until a plate we're here to experience evolve the little toe atrophy don't ask me how I'll be dead in a thousand light years thank you thank you Genesis turns to its source reduction occurs stepwise though the essence is all one end of line. After your system check diagnostic functions within parameters repeats the harlequin the agony exquisite the colors run the path of ashes fifty-two percent of heat exchanger cross-collateralized with hyperdimensional matrix upper senses repair ordered relay to zero, zero, zero, zero..." If you know me at all, you know I did time in Tori Amos purgatory, so allow me to translate: Two protons with equal and opposite spin, moved any distance apart, react instantaneously to changes made in or upon each other. They are connected in a way that moves underneath the world we know (project); they are indivisible but opposed. One makes a move -- sometimes predator, sometimes prey -- and the other can't help but follow along, making a corresponding change. The trick is to live within that system, on either side, and remember that the essence is all one: we're here to experience, evolve, the agony exquisite, because in the higher level functioning of the Hybrids -- if Cylons experience our regular time and space as a five-dimensional solid, the Hybrids are the step above that, which is why they sound crazy to us, because we're crushing their thoughts down into our smaller number of dimensions in order to process them -- there's no way to even recognize the division between the two protons. Cylons and humans all look the same to the Hybrid, the way that human conflict looks to the Cylon like one hand attacking the other. Chip Six and Chip Gaius, and now Athena and Gaius, are the dots in the yin-yang, the first physically observable steps toward reconciling this senseless division. Not that it will ever work, or we'd like it if it did: that's fusion, not synthesis. Goes splode.
"Is it aware of us?" asks Gaius, and Caprica considers him. "Of course. She's aware of everything aboard." The Hybrid continues: "... End of line. New paragraph. Pancreatic fluid at one with the continuum of evolutional matrix we're here to experience evolve the little toe reduction occurs stepwise though the essence is all one full stop. New paragraph. System check... " Gaius asks if she has any idea what "it's" talking about. Like this show would exist if she did. If any of them could. "No. Most Cylons think the conscious mind of the Hybrid has simply gone mad, and the vocalizations we hear are meaningless." But not everybody, Gaius wonders. "Thank you Genesis turns ... " Caprica tells him that "the ones you know as Leoben" believe every word from her mouth "means something," that God literally speaks through her. I swear to you that I will not talk crazy again for the rest of the recap, but: word. "She sort of controls the baseship, does she?" asks Gaius, his mind blown. He's a scientist, he has nothing like the capacity for this. "Well, she is the baseship, in a very real sense." He stares down, weirded out and with maybe a little bit of undeserved pity. "Mind gone mad." The Hybrid continues to talk the whole time, by the way, but it's more of the same: the answer, if they could hear it, over and over forever. "She experiences life very differently than we do, Gaius. She swims in the heavens. Laughs at stars, breathes in cosmic dust. Maybe Leoben's right. Maybe she does see God... " Can you give me a better description than what you just said? Six gets that religious look she has, and they stare down. "...they cry for succor in the dark of the light." Caprica snaps out of it. "We're wasting time." And the Hybrid screams: "... Jump!" She shudders orgasmically, for reasons which should be obvious by now: if projection is weaving memory and thought and personality, jumping is weaving the stuff of the universe itself. With your mind and your body, on a level we can barely theorize about. If she didn't look so fucked up and scary, that would be the best job ever.
Gaius's borrowed Raptor heads for the infected basestar, enters its bay with some directional jets, and he steps out onto the deck. In a full spacesuit, of course. The white and red and black on our basestar is darkness, blueness, sickly green. On the floor, a Three gasps for air; there are sick bodies everywhere. An Eight vomits. Gaius calls it in on comms, stricken. He drops his flashlight, taking pictures of the fallen Cylons everywhere, and notes on the floor a strange device, the size of an oak barrel, made of flanged metal. "What the hell is that?" As he investigates it, a black-haired Six on the floor grabs his ankle. He rushes to her side with a first aid kit. "You're severely dehydrated. You must drink some water." She begs him to kill her, and he balks. "You don't understand, there is no resurrection ship nearby. You will not be downloaded into a new body. You will just be gone." She weeps, desperate, barely breathing. "I saw how they died. Please -- please, I can't bear that." Gaius begins to panic. Like to an impressive degree. He takes a blood sample and she screams; he promises to bring back a treatment. She coughs; he begs her to breathe. "Please. Please take some water." Six focuses on his face. "You're -- you're from Galactica." He declares seriously: "No. I'm from a baseship." He waves toward the metal object and asks what it is. "We found it floating at these coordinates. Must be some kind of beacon, or marker." He muses that it looks very old. "Must've been left by the Thirteenth Tribe," she exposits. "Infected, poisoned. Left by some humans like you, to destroy us." She is pathetic and sad and gross. "A human device filled with a pestilence. You sent us to this place." He shakes his head, protesting, but she keeps going. "You know we'd bring it aboard." He begs her to stop: "You don't know what you're saying. This is the disease speaking through you. Calm down. I am going to bring help... " She shouts that he knew it was there, that he, and the other baseships even, knew it was there. He begs her to be quiet, to calm down. "I would never do anything to hurt you." She continues to scream, accuses him of lying, of bringing the Cylons to their doom, that he's going to bring them all there to die, and he keeps screaming at her to stop. Begging her to keep quiet. "You're gonna infect all of us!" She screams, and he finally freaks out, crushing her throat with his boot. "Gaius," comms a Doral. "Do you hear us? Gaius, do you read? Is anyone alive? Speak to us. Do you read? What do you see? Are any of them alive?" Gaius reports back. "This is Gaius Baltar. I'm returning to the baseship." And what does he see? Staring at the beacon, already turning on another race as fast as he can, already looking for heroism again: "I see nothing. Nothing of consequence. There's nothing left to do here."
"Nobody likes it," sighs Three, "But we have to make a terrible choice. Do we attempt a rescue, and risk the lives of our Fleet -- even our species -- or do we leave them?" Simon shrugs. "The answer won't be found in science, because there's no cure in science." I... don't know what that means, but Eight's not having it. "Look at them, do we just leave them?" Leoben points out that this would be condemning them to death; Caprica is really upset. "Even the humans don't leave their own," she says. Leoben isn't on her side either: "They must be sacrificed for the greater good." Simon says there's a greater question, and Three agrees: "How did this happen?" Simon's answer: Gaius. "It's Baltar, of course," says Doral definitively. I love him out of nowhere this season just like Tigh and Gaius. This show is so weird. "It's his fault. He led us there deliberately. He's been working with Galactica the whole time... " Gaius whines and protests and the usual; Three draws the line of logic: "Baltar, we followed your coordinates and found a disease with no treatment or cure." Well, when you put it like that. "... They're doomed," moans Caprica. "Never to return." She's always had the strangest sense of pity. "Perhaps God would smile upon us for our mercy," says Doral, and Eight is disgusted: "Listen to you! You can barely even speak His name!" Three orders everybody to agree, and I think disagrees suddenly with abandoning "our brothers and sisters" (that sounds more like a Caprica line, though) and then they all descend into shouting and craziness. In its fashion just as terrifying as losing their link to the infected ship, I bet. Gaius continues to screech about his innocence, which does nothing productive but does add to the amazingly intense chaos going on right now. Three finally screams at them to stop -- just short of a Xena yip! -- and slams her hand into a data panel, shutting everybody up. "We have to leave them. We have to jump, and leave them to their fate. There is no other way."
The Hybrid screams in her chamber. "Mists of dreams drip along the nascent echo and love no more end of line." Those mists, the vapor of disparate memories and experiences, black-haired lives, won't ever coalesce back into their reborn rivers, now: Six, Three, Simon, Eight, Leoben, Doral, Cavil. All losing memories and shapes forever, shedding drops of memory and self, becoming less, to love no more. End of line.
"The Hybrid objects," says the suddenly merciful Doral, and Three smirks. "She doesn't get a vote. Jump the ship." The Hybrid's jumpgasm is... not as enjoyable, this time around. The price of being outside "control" is that you aren't ever in control; she's an angel, but an angel in an engine. Cylons are gross but they get the job done.
"This disease, it must've come from someplace," says Three to Gaius. "So what did you notice on the infected ship?" He repeats that he saw nothing. "I am just as baffled as you are." Three asks again -- "You noticed nothing suspicious on the infected ship?" -- as Caprica reviews Gaius's pictures from the mission. She sees the beacon, zooms in, and stares up at him. "Nothing whatsoever." She stares at him, her face taut and angry, but she's quiet.
Adama enters the Galactica mess, announced by a pilot, offered a drink by Tigh. "Give me the room," he glares, and everybody heads for the door with a quickness. Including Starbuck, who gets shoved back into her chair. "Stay in your seat." Tigh again offers him a drink, and he glares at both of them -- and neither, he won't be looking them in the eyes today -- and asks for Starbuck's gun. She's confused, but puts it on the table. He cocks it roughly and tosses it onto the table. "Hey, there's a live round in that!" yells Tigh. "Now. One of you, and I don't care who, pick that weapon up and shoot me." Starbuck protests and he gets even more intense. "I didn't say to talk, you've done enough of that already. I said to pick up that weapon, and shoot. What's the matter? No guts? You don't got a pair? You're both fracking cowards." Tigh tells him to watch his mouth -- dumb, Saul -- and Adama gets in his face. "Or what? You going to turn the rest of my pilots against each other? Poison the crew? You've already done that, Saul. Both of you." Starbuck tells him if he's looking for an apology he can go to hell, and Bill Adama shoves Kara Thrace to the floor. "You were like a daughter to me once. No more. You're malcontented, and a cancer. And I won't have you on my ship. So you have a choice. You figure out how to become a human being again, and an officer, or you can find another place to live. Off of this ship. You're dismissed." She kicks the chair, stands, and leaves angrily. Even though it's her mother's language, her mother's violence, it's still the language she speaks herself, and the one she knows the best. He's doing the best he can.
Adama turns to Tigh. "Are you gonna kick me out of my chair too?" He starts to speak the other language, the one they share: "Listen, I know you've been through a lot... " but Tigh interrupts, with a somewhat valid "Don't patronize me." He tells him to spit it out. "You're full of bile, hatred." And poetry! "And I know that it has something to do with Ellen. And I'm sorry for that. And if you need time, Saul, well, you take all the time you want. But I gotta run a ship. The last thing I need is a one-eyed drunk sitting down here sowing discontent and disobedience. So I'll tell you once again, Saul. You can pick up that weapon and kill me...or you can get your ass back into your quarters and not leave until you're ready to act like the man that I've known for the past thirty years." Tigh, nearly crying, picks up the gun. Holds it in his hands and feels the weight. He tips it up -- not aiming at Adama really -- and ejects the round onto the table with a loud crash. "That man doesn't exist anymore, Bill. And you won't be seeing me again." Drink and the devil had done for the rest: Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum.
In the Pilots' head, everyone showering and running around, Starbuck takes a knife from her boot and stares at herself in the mirror. The other Pilots are disturbed by this behavior. She sticks the knife in her teeth, gathers her hair, and begins sawing at it. In Tigh's quarters, he pours himself another drink. In Camp Oilslick, Starbuck is wearing full dress, her hair short. She searches the cots, that huge room, looking for somebody. Tigh wanders his quarters, that small room, looking for somebody. But she's gone.
Starbuck crouches at Julia's side, looking down at Kacey. She considers her friend for a moment, and then wordlessly hands her a doll. Tigh drinks, and looks at photographs, and weeps. Starbuck stares at Kacey, nearly crying, and Kacey throws herself into her arms. Kara begins to cry. And Saul weeps, broken, and gathers up the hard metal corners of a picture frame, pulling them to himself. Pulling memories to a dead man's chest.
Athena and Racetrack's Raptor jumps into the Lion's Head Nebula. Its eye is blinking. Racetrack is freaking. "Oh, my Gods, it's right there. The Lion's Head Nebula, and the blinking eye. Holy crap, it's the road to Earth!" She laughs hysterically, and then they both spot the sick basestar on the periphery. Sharon figures something out, and goes cold, and quiet. Racetrack panics about the basestar, and gets ready to jump back, but Sharon can't hear her: she just stares, and quotes prophecy (paraphrasing King David) to herself. "When God's anger awakens, even the mighty shall fall." That sounds fun. Damn Cylons have a bummer prophecy for every occasion. Racetrack curses, and they begin the jump away.
TO BE CONTINUED! BOOM BOOM BOOM!