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Galactica's scout ships, featuring Apollo and Sharon (Athena), find five ailing Cylons aboard the drifting basestar, and bring them back. Cottle identifies the virus, a lymphatic encephalitis that comes from rats originally, and confirms that humans -- and Sharon herself, thanks to Hera -- are immune. Cottle designs a vaccine that will save the Cylon, but not permanently: they'll need frequent injections. A Simon model tells them about how Gaius is working with the Cylons now, and how the Snow Crash portion of the virus would spread through resurrection ships. Apollo puts it together and realizes that by murdering their prisoners near a resurrection ship without warning, they can commit genocide and take out the Cylons for good! Roslin, of course, thinks this is the best new version of airlocking she's ever heard of, but Adama is ambivalent. Helo wigs on everybody, fighting Roslin and making some pretty iffy logical leaps in the process, but continuing to be the only sane, much less good, person aboard. Eventually -- and against even Sharon's wishes -- he takes matters into his own hands, killing the prisoners himself before they reach the infection window. Roslin gets that airlockin' look in her eye, but Adama calls her off, agreeing more vociferously with Helo now that the point is moot.
Lest you forget the Cylons are every bit as creepy as the humans, though, Caprica and Three spend the entire episode torturing Gaius for info about the beacon and the virus.
Lest you forget Gaius Baltar is the creepiest motherfracker ever written, though, he spends the entire episode getting off in a sex-type way with Chip Six in the middle of -- and spurred on by -- the torture itself. And then I think he fools Three into thinking he, or she, or both of them, are God. It's a whole God-sex-torture-threesome-projection-crazy thing, as we've come to expect from the basestar storyline. Which is either awesome or horrible, depending where you stand, but I say: "Bring on the God and sex and torture! Bring on the threesomes, with robots both incarnate and imaginary! This is the best season ever!" Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously, Gaius led the Cylons toward the Lion Nebula while Gaeta was taking the humans there. What the humans didn't know was that there was a virus on a beacon there which is deadly to Cylons. Gaius did know this, but left out the part about the beacon. His ex-girlfriend Caprica totally knew that he was lying about the beacon, but didn't say anything. The Cylons bounced, leaving the Galactica to discover the tainted basestar without warning -- including the advance scout Raptor piloted by Sharon.
Now: Apollo's riding shotgun in Athena's Raptor, calling in Plan A as they approach the sick baseship. He's gone hard again. Sharon's still mind-blown even though she's returned to Galactica and picked him up in the meantime. I think Major Apollo's the Marine LT on this op; maybe the same way Dualla was his XO on Pegasus. Sharon is having trouble dealing with the site: basestar conky, the Raiders outside her drifting. It's pretty eerie, but when the Raptor starts edging between them to land, it gets a lot creepier. Adama helos to the Raptor that they're clear for entry, and they descend. Helo's quite nervous on his own terms as well, of course. Inside, it is clear the thing is dead. "Galactica, Apollo. No sign of life. Ship appears to be abandoned and powering down." They work their way to the command center, where there are dead models everywhere. Racetrack and Apollo OMG, and Gunny Mathias (Hi!) notes mordantly that "their fracking resurrection ship is gonna overheat." Heh. Apollo calls in the dead -- thirty or forty in his line of sight, but not ours of course -- and Mathias sets up the perimeter. "Sharon," Apollo calls, but she's just staring around at all the bodies. "Athena! See what you can pick up with the computers." She puts her hands in the data port gel we've seen before; the screens all around command begins to flicker. "If I get a connection, put the SSR leads in the water over there. Reduce the error correction level for higher throughput." Racetrack marvels at the USB stuff Sharon can do, but more importantly wonders if it's a good idea. The screens go crazy; something comes up in Sharon. We don't know what it is -- she gasps -- and Hotdog asks if she's okay. Hotdog, who got hot; Hotdog, who named her. "Uh, yeah... the datapoints are almost completely corroded. I don't know if I'm gonna get much out of here, but let's try." I'm not convinced that's why she's wigging, but I'll let the suspicion slide for right now.
Apollo spots a moving Six (But not the dark-haired sort; I'm like so fascinated by that copy because I have a total fanboy crush on Six and I looooooove Cylons and that's how simple the world is -- and thank God because, coincidentally, that's precisely the amount of complexity I can deal with!) and screams just like Lee Adama. "Frack me! This one's alive! We've got a live one over there!" Mathias orders cover for him as Apollo wigs out that some of them are alive. He radios to Galactica, counting the living: five models. Helo asks if they're taking fire, and Apollo admits that they're in sorry shape. "Don't take chances. They make any threatening moves... " Apollo nearly grins: "Oh, you can trust me on that one." It's funny, but there's something underneath this, having to do with showing Helo's a really good guy, worried about the away team... stuff we already knew, basically, but it has its weight in the script this week.
The sick Cylons begin to pray. It starts with Leoben, of course: "Heavenly Father..." and then Six, of course, joins in. Mathias asks if they should kill them, and Apollo advises to hold fire for the moment. "Heavenly Father...grant us the strength...the wisdom..." Apollo's eyes practically cross. "What are they doing?" Sharon stares at them, stricken. She knows this one by heart. "... And above all...a measure of acceptance." As Sharon bends down to cradle a sister Eight in her lap, Apollo wigs. "Hey, Athena, what are you doing? Athena! Athena!" She's gone, holding them in her arms. "The strength...the wisdom..." Sitting in a circle of bodies, Sharon stares, shaking. The Eight below her looks up and focuses. "Traitor: Save yourself." She asks from what, and a Six joins in: "Get away from us. A beacon. We brought it aboard. Carried disease. We're infected." Sharon's jaw drops; her hands clench on her sister's shoulders. Mathias and Apollo begin the evac with a quickness. "Galactica, Apollo. We have a situation down here. The Cylons have been infected with a disease. We have all been exposed." Sharon stares down at her hands. Apollo: "We've all been exposed."
Credits; episode by Michael "Six Degrees Of Separation" Angeli. 41,420 survivors in the Fleet. In Galactica CIC, Cottle's telling the officers to quarantine the away team, and sterilize everything they touch, including the Raptors. Gaeta runs away, grateful for work I imagine, and Cottle tells Dualla there won't be any info on the length of the quarantine until he does their bloodwork. "You said they picked up this disease from a beacon?" Adama notes that this is coming from the Cylons, and Cottle tells him it's "always good to have the source of the pathogen," asking if they can bring that beacon aboard. Adama balks, protesting that they need to limit exposure, so Cottle asks for the sickies instead: the disease will be more advanced in their systems, and helpful in illustrating symptoms and life expectancy of the victims. Medicine is a cruel mistress. Adama asks how many prisoners he wants. "How many you got?"
As Athena's Raptor heads back to Galactica, the sick basestar explodes behind them, freaking Apollo out even more. Gaeta confirms from CIC that the ship exploded, and asks if they're okay -- apart from possibly contracting a deadly virus so bad ass that it even kills robots. "Must have self-destructed. You guys are lucky you got out when you did!" Apollo rogers the sentiment, and then stares at Sharon, who's acting totally weird. In addition to the other thing, her reaction at the data port -- which might just be me being weird -- I'm now thinking that the last thing she did was tell the ship to kill itself. Which is intriguing, and merciful, but also wipes out any other survivors, the bodies of the fallen, and the beacon itself. Which should make diagnosis more difficult at the least.
In Baltar's cell on the basestar, he is again: naked. The first movement, apparently, of Beethoven's 14th Sonata (the "Moonlight" one, Adagio Sostenuto) begins to play. We're dreamlike and slippery, again, moving from his waking to his standing to a conversation he's suddenly having, with Caprica and Three: "How long have you planned to betray us, Gaius?" He laughs; they look at him in sadness. Three really was pulling for him all that time, wasn't she? Last week I was struck by the similarities between Three and Adama; the way her face went when she had to abandon the sick basestar, the way he's had to do so many times before. She's making that face now. And Caprica, well, her heart is breaking: "You're only making this harder on yourself," she says. Like a pissed-off bossman. Like a schoolteacher. Baltar starts dancing his usual, listing all his wonderful accomplishments: Hera, the map to Earth... Three cuts in: "We know about the beacon, Gaius." Caprica's voice is shaky: "You knew it was out there. You knew it contained a deadly virus." He protests -- so weird to see him pull this shit and have it actually be true. But the really scary thing about Gaius Baltar is that as far as he's concerned, it always is. Caprica asks him, interrupting, if the virus came from Galactica; Three takes it to the level: "Have you been in contact with them since you've been onboard? Or did you plan this before the evacuation of New Caprica?" Apparently even the Cylons know how bad they are at making Plans and sticking to them, to assume that the Fleet has anything like this amount of follow-through. Gaius makes puppy-dog eyes of sincerity and sexiness and speaks in an even, low tone. "This is a most profound misunderstanding. Uh, I had nothing to do with the virus or the beacon. Yes. Yes, I did discover it on the baseship. And I should have told you about it sooner, and I didn't. Um, because I thought, you know, you'd try and link me, you know, to the virus." Caprica and Three whisper secrets, fading back and forth to his ever-so-earnest face, suspicious and sad and getting angry. "Which is, hello, you know, what's going on right now. I was wrong, and it was a mistake, and I fully admit my responsibility. It will never happen again. And I hope you'll accept my most, uh, yeah, my most humble apology. On a brighter note, I have a working theory as to where this beacon may -- " And behind him, the Centurions arrive, steel feet on the floor, more and more of them assembled. "I'm sorry, Gaius," says Caprica, unable to look at him. "Things would have been so much simpler had you only told the truth," says Three, and explains he's going to get tortured now. If ever there were a time for a Chip Six fugue...
There we go. Gaius lies on Six's chaise lounge on the beach, wearing a white suit just like Three's. There is a very interesting thing about Chip Six which is confirmed in this episode: she's never told a single lie. Watch. "Relax," she says softly. "Have a drink." He whimpers, gasping, at the pain he's going through now that he's being tortured in reality. "It's all in your head, Gaius. Pain, pleasure...They're just neural impulses sent to the brain. You decide how to interpret them. They can be pleasant. Or unpleasant." Chip Six has about three different tasks to accomplish in this episode, and she does them all brilliantly. She's back to being my hero. In both the projection and the interrogation, Gaius screams. Three's got him hooked up to a pain device like in Dune, with a volume wheel like in The Princess Bride. And she's turning it up. Caprica looks like she's going to puke. "I want it to stop, Gaius," says Three. And she does. She's got a fucked up sense of priority, but when I said Cylons are never cruel -- and wasn't that a long, wrong time ago? -- it was somebody like her that I was thinking of. Nobody's ever been so sure they're right. Except everybody else on this show... except Gaius, actually. "I don't want you to feel this pain. And neither does Caprica, do you?" She's crying, stepping back not of her own volition. "No," she chokes out, and from the edge of something big, tears in his eyes, exhausted, he looks up at her: "I love you." It's interesting. On the relationship level, you have somebody who broke up with somebody in a literally explosive way, and lived with a vision of them in his head for years, and he dated girls that looked like her, just like a Hitchcock movie, and when they got back together, they kept trying. I don't think he loves Caprica anymore; they're both completely different people now. I think he'd be better off if he figured that out, because he's really not bringing his A game here.
Galactica quarantine, Hotdog's getting on Racetrack's nerves hella bad. "Feel anything yet?" Shut up. "You didn't touch any infected skinjobs!" Shut up. "Kiss my infected ass." Shut up. Cottle enters and gives her leave to kiss his ass as she sees fit, but informs them no asses are currently infected. "Got your bloodwork back; humans are immune to the virus. You're all healthy." Everybody hoots and hollers and Apollo gives everybody a quick round of applause for being human before ushering everybody out. And everybody goes, except for Sharon, whom Cottle tells to stay put. Out in the corridor, Racetrack walks by Helo, and she would say something I think, if he weren't looking over her head, at his wife. He grabs Cottle, wigging out. "No no no no no no," he says. "Please tell me she's okay." Cottle tells him Sharon's bloodwork isn't done yet, and Helo whines about how he's holding off because she's a Cylon so she goes last. And either Cottle's got a serious character arc coming up -- given the conversation with Three on New Caprica, that would make sense -- or Helo's being a big old baby. He's allowed. He shouts back through the cleanroom door to her, where her shoulders are very small and her back is very bent: "Sharon? You're gonna be okay. Promise." She nods, scared; reminded of what she is and is not. Helo yells at Cottle, to find him the second there's anything, and runs off. And inside the cleanroom, Athena cries, possibly sick, probably dying.
When's the last time we broke an act on Sharon? Interesting. Down in Galactica brig, Cottle picks a Doral for tests -- "He's the furthest gone" -- and takes him for testing. Proud Doral, shaking and pulling against his restraints even though he's the furthest gone. I guess Cottle was making more medical decisions, then: first the crew certified, then Athena, experimenting on the prisoner stock. I can see holding off on that shit.
On Colonial One, Cottle's expositing his findings to Roslin and Adama: He can't cure them, but he can keep them alive indefinitely: "I identified the virus. We know it as lymphocytic encephalitis. The disease is carried by rodents. Rats, mostly. But a couple of hundred years ago, humans developed an immunity. Now, I can create a simple vaccine that will dramatically reverse the effect of the virus on the Cylons, but, uh, they have an antibody in their blood which breaks down the RNA of the vaccine. So they will need regular, close-interval injections of the vaccine. Or they will die." Okay. Pause. The virus thing still makes no sense, but I'm sure that every word here is to shore it up anyway, answering questions before they're asked, and I don't really care about the nitpicks and whatever with this, because: They are robots. It is not up to me to figure out how the bodies and DNA of robots works. You tell me the story, you get to make up the rules, and I am not interested in halving my appreciation of your story by getting hung up on details you obviously think make sense. No blame on either side, just an appreciation for the fact that Cottle spit out all that 'babble in about five seconds, so let's get to the moral dilemma already and leave the fights to the gift horse people. Like Lee Adama: "Can I ask the ugly question here? Is there a reason to keep them alive?" Helo, jumping at this, stammers out quickly that they're good for interrogation: trading scary necessities against the finality of death. Adama agrees, trading a final ending for the ongoing conflict. Lee protests that they won't talk: trading his flab for war. Roslin agrees with his sentiment, but allows as how they might talk if they don't know it's a stop-gap measure: trading the possibility of collaboration in any form for the hardline measure. These are your characters for the episode, so pay attention, because everything that happens develops organically from this one scene. They all stay on these vectors throughout: it's the way they combine that makes it interesting.
"They prayed on the infected ship," Apollo says, fighting Roslin on the "stay alive by giving over intel" issue. "Karl's wife said it was something called the Prayer to the Cloud of Unknowing, whatever the hell that is." Two things here: number one, it's a reference to an old religious text, and you know how much I love those. It's about what you think it's about: the veil, or "cloud of unknowing," that exists between us and God's true will. (I'll spare you my thoughts on how that connects to the whole Cylon persona/vapor-condensation thing the Hybrid was talking about.) Its use here is pretty inspired, considering that Cylon existence, as could be inferred from a race of robots, is predicated on information: even their concept of reality is constellated in terms of moving information around, bringing last week's forest into this week's conversation and so forth. So to look beyond the veil, to see the place beyond resurrection, true death, and see only "unknowing," well, that defines God. You can look it up -- it's about as interesting as most old religious texts, which depends on you -- but here's the prayer that serves as prologue: "God, unto whom all hearts be open, and unto whom all will speaketh, and unto whom no privy thing is hid. [The very definition of Cylon existence, separately and together: there's no sense of privacy with the Cylon God because there's no such thing: the unique circumstances that brought about DEMAND LOVE were a mutation, that changed everything.] I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee, and worthily praise Thee. Amen." Asking for God to cleanse your very intent. That's huge, in the Cylon mindset. And the human one, sadly. (The second thing is: Sharon, Eight, Athena, Boomer -- she became "Karl's wife" the second she wasn't rhetorically helpful. Inside him and in the conversation, she can't be a part of this story Lee's telling.) "She said they only use it when they're facing an imminent death that is final, no possibility of downloading." Which, Roslin points out, has no bearing: "Doesn't mean that one of them won't jump at a second chance."
In the Galactica interrogation room, there's Simon in chains. Simon is black, and he's chained up. I'm just saying. His speech is difficult, because he's dying. He halts and coughs and sniffs and chokes, but he keeps talking. "It infected everything. Baseship. Centurions. Raiders. Until we were finally abandoned by the other Cylon ships." Apollo asks why they wouldn't just put the sick basestar under quarantine and look for a cure, and Simon -- the one who voiced the consensus, remember, that there was no cure to be found in science; I thought at the time it was picoseconds of calculations being done by the Cylon as a whole, and he just voiced it -- breathes hard. "Fear of spreading the disease. They told us that there was a bioelectric feedback component to the pathogen. It corrupts how our brains manage our immune systems. If one of us dies and is resurrected, the disease will follow, infecting the resurrection ship and the Fleet." Wow, it was like Snow Crash; at least they brought it back to something like a biological basis. We've got diseases that fuck up brains and diseases that fuck up immunity; I'm sure we have at least one that does both. Maybe it's like Huntington's. Simon spills that they were sent to the Lion Nebula by Dr. Baltar, and everybody goes nuts. Helo in particular, but also -- aww -- Gaeta: "Baltar? Baltar's alive?" At least he didn't call him Gaius, dude. Simon nods, as well as you can when you're wearing a leash and collar. "Baltar is on our baseship. He's helping us find Earth." Adama figures it out, that he's doing the same thing Gaeta did on Galactica, using the nav charts and the map from Kobol. Simon coughs, laughs, chokes: "We want a new beginning. Much like you." Find the one tribe you didn't already fuck over, and give it the -- what, fifteenth? -- college try, eh? Cool. I like this. The idea of the universe turning into a giant sequel of Cannonball Run where they race the robots for Earth was not the most exciting possibility last week, but this has potential. Cottle takes Simon back to the infirmary for his "cure," and as he's leaving, Apollo starts to laugh. Not a jubilant or very excited laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. Adama asks what the hell is so funny, and the horrified and proud little Adama explains: "I think I just thought of a way to solve all of our problems. To get rid of the Cylon threat for once and for all. We can wipe 'em out. We can destroy the entire Cylon race."
"Wipe 'em out," yeah? So I'm glad we're looking at this from a bunch of different angles, with due deference to like the sanctity of life. And before you freakin' email me, I'll remind you of something Abraham Lincoln said, which Moore has said more than once is a guiding principle for the show: " With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." With malice toward none, and charity for all. The categorical imperative says it's fine to commit genocide as long as you'd be happy to be on the other side of the line. But we'll get to that particular bizarre viewpoint in a second. Right now it's Roslin's office on Colonial One, where Lee is explaining his sickening but clever plan. "We jump to an area we know the Cylons use as a supply line, NCD2539. We stay there, exposed; we look as if we're spoiling for a fight. They'll send their Fleet. And where there's a Fleet, there's a resurrection ship. And once the resurrection ship is within our reach, we execute our infected prisoners. We bug out, the executed prisoners download into the resurrection ship, and with them, the virus." Roslin confirms that the virus would download to the new bodies, and Adama is very still and quiet about this. "Rescuers become carriers of the plague. Cylons themselves don't believe that they'll develop a cure." Well, Cylons are downers, Bill. But I think I see the logical loophole here, too: one of the main differences between the humans and Cylons has always been "network" v. "non-network." Adama's decree is that no computers be networked, because of the way the Cylons can get in; the Cylons' greatest fear, on the other hand, is having anybody cut off from the network: I think the resurrection ships are all connected, so this would work. Or, you know, whatever: the Cylons are scared of it, and they would know.
Roslin breathes, taking it in, feelings its edges: "Oh, my Gods. This could be the end of the Cylons entirely." Forever, notes Apollo helpfully. Helo speaks the hell up. "Genocide? So that's what we're about now?" Genocide or xenocide, raman or varelse. (I'd say framling, but I'd guess you know that by now, and anyway: every war that ever happened in real life happened between humans, so it's not letting anybody off the hook. On the other hand, as a wise person on the forums noted, qua Hera, that the existence of mules still can't make a horse a donkey.) "They're not human. They were built, not born. No fathers, no mothers, no sons, no daughters... " Helo gets taller, a little. "I had a daughter. I held her in my arms." Apollo notes that she was half-human, not a thing, a dangerous thing, like the Cylons. "This is our one chance to be rid of them," says Apollo, which is true. Helo's response piques Roslin: "You can rationalize it any way you want. We do this, we wipe out their race, then we're no different than they are." Which is still not the point, to me or to Roslin: "Captain, I respectfully disagree. The Cylons struck first in this war and, not being content with the annihilation of billions of human beings, they pursued us relentlessly through the galaxies, determined to wipe us out." Which is possibly bullshit and definitely a biased account, but what Helo says is unmitigated bullshit: "They tried to live with us on New Caprica." She smiles at him, that one smile you are thinking of, the terrifying airlocky one: "... What did you say?" He stupidly repeats himself, and then Roslin gets so hardcore so fast I think we all might die.
"You weren't on New Caprica. To my recollection, you didn't set foot there. So, out of respect for the hundreds of men and women on your crew who suffered through that snake pit, I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that." She smiles and breathes and is terrifying and is right. "You would serve your Fleet well if you'd remember occasionally that the Cylons are a mortal threat to the survival of the human race." Still not the point. Helo bounces back after that unimaginable misstep: "I'm talking about right and wrong. I'm talking about losing a piece of our souls." Which somebody has said in like every episode, and remains true to this day. It's not that I love the Cylons so much, although I do, as that this main, central, crucial point keeps getting lost in the static: You have to deserve survival. You don't put guns in the Temple, you don't rape Boomer, you donât force Cavil to cut his wrists open on the ground for your own fucking enjoyment, and you don't strap a motherfucking bomb to your chest. And if you do these things, Adama was right all along: humanity doesn't deserve to survive.
It's a kindergarten motherfucking sense of entitled, playground morality that assumes just because A is an asshole, B is blameless. It's possible for B to grow the fuck up and act in accordance with a stable morality, instead of leveraging their evil based on some kind of flimsy "Mommy, he started it" excuse. At the end of the day, A is not your problem, because A is not your responsibility. Your behavior is your problem, and what you did to excuse it, because you are the person in charge of you. There are a lot of unanswerable questions here, but that is not one of them, and somebody should have told these motherfuckers when they were younger, because now they are grown up and I am ashamed for them. Your personhood doesn't go in the closet until things get easier -- that's like the one thing I disagreed with Tigh about, down on New Caprica -- it's there all the time. You can't write your bullshit self a hall pass to be "your worst" or commit atrocities right up until the very second that things get perfect and awesome, at which point like a wonderful jackpot prize you get to be who you are "at your best," and how one of these days, you'll get to be that you. As soon as nothing bad ever happens, nobody ever calls you an asshole, and everything is perfect and quiet and still. I'm not saying don't "wipe 'em out," I'm saying be really damn sure you know why you're doing it, because that's the only question that matters. Fucking... be better. It's the easiest thing of the world.
And the assembled leaders of humanity standing on Colonial One -- with the exception of Adama, who's never been so conspicuously silent and aware -- are not interested in hearing it. Which Helo realizes, and notes angrily: "So let's keep it on me. Yeah, I'm married to a Cylon. Who walked through hell for all of us ... how many times? And she's not half anything, okay. How do we know there aren't others like her? She made a choice. She's a person. They're a race of people. Wiping them out with a biological weapon is a crime against -- is a crime against humanity." And because not even Lee is this stupid, I'm going to give him a pass for the fact that both of them have worked themselves, at this point, into rhetorical culs-de-sac: "But they're not human, they're programmed." THEN WHOSE FUCKING HUMANITY IS IT A CRIME AGAINST? So not the point! This week -- the last two days -- have been really hard, thinking and talking about this stuff, watching people take sides, watching people so willing to exterminate the Other just in case. It's been frustrating. Because unstoppable robots on a killing spree is one thing, but that would be a stupid fucking show, and I wouldn't watch it, and I can't imagine why anybody would watch that show. If that were the show we were watching -- well, not "we," but you know what I mean -- then I'd say "Go for it! Kill 'em off! They're not people! This show is retarded!" Like: Charmed v. Buffy: One of them you are called upon to look at both sides, the other you don't have to. But they are people, and this show is not retarded, and there are questions without answers, but this is not one of them. And I wouldn't get so grossed out about all this if I didn't think Apollo -- who's tremendously well-written in this episode, he's like the new Sarah Porter -- represented a sizeable portion of actual, current American view. Which is terrifying, and ugly, and scares me to death. Still. Because this is a viewpoint that's already given up on its own soul's worth, protecting a box with nothing left inside. Making zombies to carry the very best guns.
Man, I can't believe I got through both paragraphs without once mentioning Cally. ... D'oh! Roslin nods to Helo and Apollo: "We will take your input under advisement. Thank you both." That's Roslin for "I have a special file for people that disagree with me today." Apollo leaves with unctuous thanks and Helo lingers; a sympathetic Adama dismisses him. Alone, Roslin and Adama have the following conversation with just their eyeballs:
Roslin: What day is it?
Adama: Marsday? I think?
Roslin: No, I mean the date.
Adama: How come?
Roslin: Because I was trying to remember...
Adama: Oh, right right. Am I the guardian and protector of human morality this week, or are you?
Roslin: Exactly. I really feel like airlocking some plague victims or stealing an election or something, maybe committing genocide, but I wanna be sure ...
Adama: I think it's me? But I'm feeling meek, so...
Roslin: Jesus, this system is fracked. Where the fuck is Tory? She has it on her Blackberry...
Adama: Well, hopefully this decision will be taken out of our hands again this week, so we stay likeable and nothing huge changes.
Roslin: I love it when that happens. Then I can make a speech and Jacob will cry!
Adama: So say we all.
Roslin: Word!
And then commercial. Coming back, Gaius is fading in and out of his naked torture and out and into his Six fugue on the beach, shaking silently as Three turns the pain higher, until he finally cries out. "I can help you," says Six. "I can guide you through the torment and beyond, but you'll have to do the work." Task One: Continue teaching Gaius how to project. I don't know why, but it's clear she needs him to learn this better with a quickness. Considering she's always played his intuition, it makes total sense no matter what she is. "I'll do anything," he gasps, and falls back into the basestar: "Anything!" Then tell us what we want to know, says Three, who's not doing half the job she thinks she is, as far as coming off as cold and clinical with this. "How was the virus invented?" Is there a cure? "Look at me," Six says, hauling him back to the beach. "Look at me. When you make love to me, Gaius, you don't always think about me. Your mind wanders. I know that. You think of equations, puzzles, your laundry." Projection, on the lowest level. On the basestar Gaius screams. "It's the nature of the mind to disconnect from the body," she says, climbing onto him. The waves and the birds and the bright sunlight. "Separate your mind from your body. Keep your mind in that room. Use your intellect against her. Reason. Logic. Analysis. Find the holes in her psyche." In the interrogation he begs, saying he can't, it hurts too much. "The pain's only in your body. So keep your body here with me. Don't worry. I'll take care of it." (Hoo hoo hoo!) This show is so fucking weird.
Three turns down the machine again. "You see, Gaius, this is what the absence of pain feels like," she says, playing a role. "It's easy to forget." He repeats that it's not his doing, that it was a coincidence, and Three gets mad: "There's no such thing as coincidence. God wills the universe according to His design." (Wills. God wills existence. Just like a Cylon.) Six begins to undress, still straddling Gaius, still the one that knows him best: "Now. Focus on her. As a Cylon, not a woman. Be a scientist. Examine her faith. What's your analysis, doctor?" And as she starts to move, he starts to speak. "I'm a scientist. And as a scientist, I believe that if God exists, our knowledge of him is imperfect. Why?" He's speaking up at Three now, through bleary eyes. "Because the stories and myths we have are the products of men, the passage of time. Religion in practice is based on a theory, impossible to prove. Yet you bestow it with absolutes, like there is no such thing as coincidence." Three answers, correctly, that this is definition of faith. "Absolute belief in God's will means there's a reason for everything. Everything! And yet you can't help ask[ing] yourself how God can allow death and destruction and then despise yourself for asking. But the truth is, if we knew God's will, we'd all be Gods, wouldn't we?" She darts her eyes at him. Interesting. She's always assumed a privileged relationship with God, invoking it without even thinking as she commits her crimes and administrations. "I can see it in your eyes, D'Anna. You're frustrated. You're conflicted. Let me help you. Let me help you change. Find a way to reconcile your faith with fact. Find a way towards a rational universe." Let me ruin your ideology and religion by accomplishing the impossible? No thank you. But she's a robot: it's the perfect, ultimate, most beautiful solution. And it would shut Cavil up, too.
"I don't know what your game is," Three says, "But it's not going to work. She shows him an electric prod. "You intentionally led one of our ships to that beacon, didn't you?" She shoves the prod into his ear, face on fire, he screams and heads back into the projection, where the torture table becomes a chair by the sea, becomes a bed where Six is making love to him. "Give your body to me. Only your mind is there. Feel me. Feel this, where she wants you to feel pain." (Creeepy. S&M gives me the creeeeeps. Michael Angeli co-wrote Chyna's autobiography, wrote the episode where Six/Shelly Godfrey beat the shit out of Gaius while pretending not to recognize him, wrote an upcoming episode entitled "The Woman King," and once offered a naked Demi Moore $500 bucks to kiss him, in the middle of an interview. You tell me. Details unavailable at presstime, but he might well be the guy who invented Wonder Woman.) "Look at me. Look at me, Gaius. Do you want me to believe you're worth saving? Do you? Do you? Say it." Things are heating up in a sex way, as Gaius fades back and forth between the two beds on which two women are having their way with him, and as usual, he's completely powerless and thus blameless: "I want you to believe in me. Don't stop! Don't stop! Please, please don't stop. You have to believe in me. You're all I have left." Gaius and Six fuck, moaning and gasping; Three is stricken by his words: "Believe in me; you're all I have left."
Task Two: Make Three fall in love with Gaius, without letting him know that's what you're doing. Use his uselessness to your unknown angelic purpose; bring Hera and Gaius to bear on this woman, to bring her low and show her the power and the danger of love. "Now, tell me you believe in me. Tell me you believe in my strength." (Creeeeepy.) "Oh God," she moans, "Say it!" And, coming and going, jumping between worlds, he screams it. "I believe in you! I believe in you!" Three stares down at him, confused and moved, too much input from a strange little man. "I love you," he tells Six. His invisible girlfriend, the woman inside him that he can love completely, the woman shepherding him on and on. "I love you with all my heart." Three begins to weep, touching his face. He wakes up to the torture table. "... I love you with all my heart." In the room and on the beach, having finished up for the night, little Gaius Baltar falls asleep. Six collapses on top of him, spent. In the room, Three touches his lips and begins to weep. Okay, to be fair, that's a lot creepier on the page than it was to watch -- it was pretty cool to watch, and very intriguing. I should say that. Back on the beach: Chip Six grins like a girl with a secret, feathers sticking out of her mouth. Task two complete, and nobody the wiser. I think she's an angel of God for real, you guys: what is she but another kind of Hybrid? She might just save us all.
Galactica, Agathon quarters. The quite healthy Sharon is awesome: "... Cottle said it had something to do with carrying a half-human child, how the fetal blood cells enter the maternal circulatory system, causing the mother to create antibodies ... whatever. I'm immune!" I love that moment. "There was some kind of technobabble, but whatever, it worked. I got shot in the cancer!" ("New & Improved Baby Hera: She Shoots You In The Cancer!) Although I will say that it's not unproblematic: Motherhood changes you, but I get a certain undefined queasy ache in the feminism whenever the baby gives you a soul, or makes you more human, or whatever. I don't know if I can parse it out exactly, but it's weird: Back when you just had a vagina and a uterus, you were still Other, but now that my dick's been in there, and my baby is in there, you're more... I don't know. Approachable. Like I said, not huge and probably just me, but it always squicks me out. I don't think a woman would write that storyline, is all I'm saying. Helo grabs her and they kiss passionately; Sharon -- sometimes she's a buzzkill -- brings up their dead baby. "She's gone forever, and she saved my life. Hera kept us together." They continue making out, and Helo says quietly, breathing hard: "Share this." She smiles, going for his trousers: "This. ... You mean us? Together? You mean us?" She smiles, like: Do humans call it that? "Hey, baby, wanna share this?" but she quickly falls back down to earth. "Them, them. I mean them." Halfway there, she asks, but she knows: "Who's them?"
"They're gonna execute the infected prisoners. But not until we jump into a Cylon region with a resurrection ship present." Athena begins to cry, laying her head on his shoulder. "The infection's gonna spread everywhere." Quickly, a logistics question: because I'm going with the physical representation of the Cylon as a network hubbed by the resurrection ships v. the open scattered radio of the Colonial Fleet, does... that mean he's asking her to kill herself? I know he'd do it, and it would be easy for her to download and jump in a Raider and come home -- assuming Starbuck or Kat aren't on the CAP, she'd probably make it -- but: is he asking her to kill herself? Or are they going to like, I don't know, email her antigens to them? It's weird. (Also, they already have Hera, and the only people that don't know that are Helo and -- probably but not definitively, and not for long -- Sharon. Making this particular line of thought just bleak and depressing enough to actually be on the show.)
Meanwhile, Adama and Roslin drink tea in his office; her feet up beneath her, body language easy and comfortable. "There's a point I'd like to make," says Adama. "The law forbids me to use biological weapons without a direct presidential order." Which, Roslin points out, means he's passing the buck. And yeah, that's exactly what he's doing. Covering his existential ass while not endangering their relationship by actively calling her out on yet another horrible, soul-sucking decision. "On this one, yes. Helo's right on one thing: we start destroying entire races -- even mechanical races -- we're liable to tear off a piece of man's soul." I think that parenthetical is purely for her benefit; I wonder how he would put it if Sharon were here, rather than freaking out upstairs with her husband. "The Cylons are coming to Earth. If they find us, they are coming for us. Those are the stakes. They always have been, Bill." All true. The right answers. But they're the answers to the wrong question.
"We're talking about the genocide of your entire race," says Helo, and Sharon whimpers, trying to keep her back straight. "Yeah. You think I don't know that? I made a choice to wear a uniform. To be a person." He's only hearing about half of what she's saying, and blundering again: "You were a person before you put on that uniform. Okay? You were a person before I fell in love with you. You don't have to prove that." (White people, straight people, men, are that maybe ten minutes out of the day; the rest of us get to be what we are twenty-four fucking seven. I'm really not trying to be the whiny liberal this week, but you talk about what's handed to you.) "I have to prove it every day," she spits, angry. And calmer: "Let me tell you something, Helo. My people may die, my entire race may be wiped out. But this Cylon will keep her word, even if it means she's the last Cylon left in the universe." Categorical imperative satisfied, in the most warped possible way. I don't agree with Sharon, for once: you don't get to take the easy way out and define yourself this way. You'll always be both, one foot her and one there, and that's your strength and that's your glory, but it's also your sucky life. Grow up. Or maybe she's just as good at looking at her options as Helo is, and seeing the right way to be: with malice toward none, and charity for all. Won't kill or turn traitor to save their race, won't move to help the other side either. And that really is her sucky life, and I guess I forgive her.
"Can a human being do that?" she asks, but if I wrote this script, it would have been Adama's line, coming in off nothing in the transition back to his office. "... Can a human being do that? Posterity really doesn't look too kindly on genocide." (See? Double duty, referring to Sharon's speech but also bringing us back to his conversation with Roslin. The juxtaposition still works, though, because it's fresh enough that you can ask the question. And the answer is no, but not because humans suck, it's because it's a weird call to make, and would only make sense to a robot: Not A but B. She's no longer a Cylon exactly, but woe betide her for thinking it's that easy, for taking her Cylon logic and thinking they mean anything. Check out the other parallel here, also: we're jumping back and forth between Helo/Sharon and Adama/Roslin, and the conversations mesh well, but we're also looking at Helo/Sharon and Six/Gaius: "This is how you become the Other. This is the psychology, the projection, the way you stay alive on enemy lines." The comparison between Sharon and Gaius became important the second he ran to Three's basestar, but now it's essential.) "You're making an assumption that posterity will define this as genocide. If they do, at least there'll be someone alive to hate us for it. The Cylons are our mistake, we created them." She delivers all her lines in the softest, most regretful tone this week. Like Caprica and Three, crying at the cruelty they must do. "All right, Admiral Adama. As President, I have determined the Cylons be made extinct. The use of biological weapons is authorized." He sighs. "So say we all." And she laughs softly, just like Apollo in the brig: "... So say we all."
NCD2539. Raptors and a Viper squad jump in, weaving through space, waiting for the Cylons to come. Back in the hangar bay, Sharon and Racetrack suit up. Another decoy mission.
Helo climbs through Galactica's innards -- what did they call those tubes and halls on Star Trek? Didn't they have a name? It's like that. He comes to a lockbox on the wall, like a breaker box.
Athena's Raptor reaches NCD2539. CAP is away.
Helo unplugs something, a multicolored printer plug.
After a bunch of waiting around, the full Cylon party jumps in. Including a resurrection ship, luckily -- has that ever happened with an engagement like this before? "Time to execute our cylon prisoners. Call it in," he gaetas, and Apollo and Mathias head down. Apollo requests headshots, as a measure of charity. (You dangle a cure, they beg to die so they won't infect their people, and then you yank back the cure -- which you lied about to begin with -- and kill them in just the right place. You use the sick and dying as a new kind of bomb. The grossness, the sin of this, doesn't just lie in xenocide. It's a perversion from start to finish.)
NCD2539: A beautiful Raider battle takes place. Hotdog and Starbuck chatter back and forth.
On Galactica, Apollo and Mathias reach the end of the labyrinth down to the brig, and fight their way through the mysteriously engaged deadbolts, finally enter the room with the Cylon prisoners. And they're already dead. Apollo shouts, and pouts, and mourns his chance to do more damage to himself. I don't blame him for any of this: he's hard, and he's coming back from suicide and worse. I don't blame him, but just because A is wrong doesn't mean B's okay. Apollo gaetas to Adama about missing the window, as a second baseship jumps in on Starbuck's CAP squad. Adama calls all the birds back, and they begin to spin up their FTL. Ships are destroyed that we don't see; Pilots die but we don't see it. So it's like it didn't happen. This fake battle that never should have happened, this feint to carry out abomination, and people died, and we'll never see them. Did Halliburton pick up the Viper contract? The Vipers land violently on Galactica, throwing sparks and bouncing heavily, and Adama orders them to jump back to the Fleet with a tiny little glint of "Fuckin' told you so" in his very intense eyes.
"They'll be coming for me," Helo says. He turns his back, upset. "You or me," he laughs. Sharon stares at him. He is... a murderer. The only soul he leveraged was his own. There weren't options, with the prisoners, for max charity, but they could have been given the cure, could have been made Spikes of, enslaved to the vaccine, waiting for their catch. Unable to ever go home. And that's the best option for them, barring somehow using Sharon's antigens to save them for good, at which point they'd be POW's and could just wait and kill themselves later, assuming they didn't get raped to death by the humans. Who sometimes do that. These are questions without answers. (Maybe that's all Helo meant and I imagined the other, horrible thing; in which case I am a horrible person and I do apologize for thinking it.) "Seems like they're always coming for one of us..." he muses. Always for the best of reasons, though. I remember Pegasus. "I'm not a traitor. I love my people. I love this ship. Besides you, the first thing I wanna see on any morning are the lights in that CIC. I did what I thought was right. If it was a mistake, fine. I can live with that. It's you I can't live without." The measure of salvation, in this case, being that we're no longer on New Caprica, so they won't have to kill him for what he did like Tigh with Ellen, the day she said just that. Sharon holds him, tightly, and their bodies echo that last atrocity. "I'll always love you, Helo." Just like Saul.
Adama offers Roslin tea in his office; this time she's not having it. "The prisoners died of asphyxiation," he explains. He neglects to point out that this is the first time in the history of the Fleet that the asphyxiation was not happening to his son Lee. I wonder if it'll happen again, now that he's gained himself all that weight and suffocated himself again and now he's over it? "The air purification system was reversed, sucked the oxygen out. When this happens, the deadbolts are automatically activated on the door. Someone did this manually." Roslin snorts at the "someone." "Seems to me there's only one or two likely suspects. Who will head the investigation?" And I guess it was Adama's turn this week, for the big forgiveness: "No one. I'm closing the book on this." She rolls her eyes -- "How convenient" -- but she knew he'd say that before his ass walked in. And somewhere she's grateful for Helo's action. For the way all their vectors combined and came up with a small measure of grace after all.
The story wasn't going to end, obviously, with the extinction of the Cylon. And the story wasn't going to end with everybody coming to what I facetiously call "their senses" when what I mean is "the same conclusion I did." So it had to be messy. People had to act in accordance with their feelings, with their guts. Every viewpoint balanced against every other viewpoint, checks and balances, resolving down to a simple precept: With malice toward none, and charity for all. If only Three knew how close her secret Helo came to fucking it up this round: if Gaius hadn't followed Six's instructions to the letter, he'd probably be dead. There was no other way this could happen, but it doesn't mean I'm not grateful, and it doesn't mean I'm not grateful to have seen it happen. Battlestar Didactica is a true and good and funny joke, and God knows we've all thought it, but I think its timeliness -- especially this week -- is better expressed in Cylon terms, in Hybrid terms, than ours: This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. And the choices we make, every time -- not just when we're on top and not just when we're getting screwed -- are the choices we live with, after the threat has passed away again.
Adama hands Roslin Cottle's report on the virus: "He thinks that it was simply an accidental contamination of the beacon we abandoned on the sick baseship." (Which somehow mutated, or carried within it, the strange RNA markers that made it Snow Crash and made it unfixable.) "Somebody sneezed, maybe," says Roslin, and they both chuckle. "Yeah," he riffs, "An entire race almost wiped out because someone forgot to wipe their nose." Don't quit your day job for the Improv, baby doll. Laura laughs politely, both of them horrified, both of them whistling in the dark, and takes off her glasses. "According to Cottle, the virus was an exact match to one reported over 3,000 years ago -- right around the time that the Thirteenth Colony left Kobol." This is unnecessary, this is phlebotinum, feldercarb, fan service, hanging an unworking lantern on a confusing concept, except that it's not: "That beacon was a signpost to Earth," Roslin realizes. They smile and put their arms around the Lie of Earth, now becoming real. It's a load off your back to find out you're not actually dancing around as fast as you thought. It's a possibility of forgiving yourself for the things you've done and have yet to do: a sign pointing home.
"I think we're on the right trail, Laura," and this is the last interchange we'll get this week, so let's think about names for a second. What he's saying is, "Do you forgive me for letting Helo off the hook?" And the answer is: "Yes. We are on the right trail, Bill." Yes. The answer is yes; they fill in each other's blind spots. But on Colonial One there's an office, and in that office there's a desk, and in that desk there is a drawer, and inside you'll find a piece of paper and a looseleaf diary, and on that paper is written "Olympic Carrier," and in that diary are written the names of the dead. And that's a burden for a democratic leader, not for the leader of the military. That's Roslin's alone. We're on the right track, but she reminds him: "So are the Cylons." Eddie swallows and looks at her, and they sit in the middle of two places. And it's not what she means, and they don't know it yet, and I don't know if we'll ever see it come true, but everything that rises must converge: The Fleet's on the right track. And maybe, so are the Cylons, a long ways off. If you can't believe that, might as well throw it in right now, because Mutually Assured Destruction is not an option and it never was, it's a bet. And if the whole thing's a game, sometimes you gotta roll the hard Six.
Boom boom boom. week: Dixon from Alias with awesome hair -- no Marshall in tow, but I've got fingers crossed -- and a secret that I think might change everything for good.