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Add one to the survivor count when a pilot from Adama's old command, the Battlestar Valkyrie, escapes from a Cylon basestar. It's POW Daniel "Bulldog" Novacek, played by Dixon from Alias, and he has many secrets. Years ago, the Valkyrie was sent on a black ops mission to the Armistice line, possibly provoking the original Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies. When Bulldog's Viper got too close, Bill shot him down and left him for dead in order to protect the Armistice. Good decisions with good consequences! Tigh gleefully sends Bulldog to tie up and beat Adama after letting him in on the whole shoot-and-run issue. It's only Starbuck and Tigh who look closely enough at the details of Bulldog's escape to figure out he was released on purpose to hurt Adama -- amounting to a motivation ironically identical to Tigh's. He makes up for it, though, by talking Bulldog down from several different flavors of ledge. In so doing, Tigh gets his swerve back, to the point that Bill calls him back into service as XO. Bill tries his best to feel bad about all this stuff -- shooting down a fellow officer while on a horrible creepy mission; possibly causing the genocide of the human race -- but between his son and Roslin both pointing out that he was following orders, and the medal Roslin pins to his chest, he decides on her orders to suck it up and keep going. Bill and Saul reconcile, and Saul begins to tell his best friend about how his wife Ellen died. Meanwhile on the basestar, yet more robot threesomes and weird religious epiphanies abound as Three goes even crazier than ever before and engages in several high-risk behaviors including sex with Baltar and Six and recreational suicide. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Bizarre graphic leading into the Previouslies, reading "In The Beginning..." Which translates roughly as "Hope you're not a nerd, because we're about to do stuff to continuity that not even the Japanese have invented. Check out these scenes from the mini-series on! Radical recontextualization to follow!" Not even Olmos's trustworthy voice-over is going to save you from brainfreeze and heartbreak if this is the kind of thing that freaks you out. Speaking personally, continuity means nothing to the particular story at hand, not to mention that half the time, as we've seen, I can't remember the difference between, like, Caprica and Kobol. So but here's the rundown: Adama said that sometimes history bites you in the ass and we thought he meant how his family invented Cylons, but maybe there was more to it after all, and while he was thinking about this, Six was kissing hell out of the Armistice functionary guy, and then the Armistice station got blown to hell after forty years, and that's how everything started. Due to the war and annihilation, Adama was totally not interested at all in probing why these things happened. ("Armed and trained Afghanis to do our evil bidding? Surely you jest!") Later on, he kind of made up for, like, every mistake ever when he beat up the entire planet of New Caprica while mustachioed, but he was too late to save his BFF Saul Tigh -- who, it turned out, had become full of bile and hatred and poison. And then Tigh totally threatened to commit suicide, but like people ever mean it when they say that, so Adama ran off and refused to stand up to Roslin's nuttiest plan to date.
There's breathing and a heartbeat, and a sound like water, and we're on a basestar. We're in a cage, though, rather than a house of whoredom and/or creepy sex torture -- and the cage itself is not the disco kind -- so it's not Gaius. There's a flash of Dixon in the cage; it's he who is breathing. And he's crazy, also.
Tory and Laura have decided to officially ignore the Colonial Gang exposé on their lesbian affair, because until Giorgio Armani can give an eyewitness account of your heterosexuality as "neverending," you might as well ignore the problem altogether. Okay, that's a lie, but their clothing is sexy/casual and weekend-functional, because they are doing spring cleaning on Colonial One, and they're being, like, adorable. They agree to put Gaius's self-portrait over the john, which is a lady thing to do because they won't ever have to look at it, but I'm wondering: are they going to put the whiteboard up again? Have you ever noticed how Roslin's such a packrat when it comes to the morbid and depressing? She's like Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice: dead people, dead ships, the whole Sorrow And The Pity diary, the horrible whiteboard....Oh, look: the dossier Billy made her for what she calls her "first day aboard Galactica," which...we're not even going into that one, and Laura and Tory open it up and start going through it. You know what I hate when it's cleaning time? ADD shit like that. "I'm just going to clean up this little pile here...oh, look! Six years of back when Sassy was good! And under that: Proust! Rad!" Tory, looking at a pretty fit picture of Adama on the CIC deck of the Battlestar Valkyrie, exposits that it was Adama's command before Galactica, and further that this year is the Admiral's forty-fifth in the Colonial Fleet, and finally that his commissioning anniversary is mere days from now. Roslin decides to throw a party for Adama and give him a medal, and she and Tory talk about how depressed everybody's been -- what with all this high-level black ops stuff that only like, ten people know about, while everybody else is just happy to be home, even in refugee camps -- so it'll be good to throw a party for Adama. Just like they do like every single week. One can only hope there will be an applause montage with adoring faces.
Later, on the Galactica CIC deck, Helo's wigging out and setting Condition One throughout the ship and he is not fucking kidding. Dualla tells Bill -- who I guess is late to the rodeo here -- that there are three Raiders nearby, CBDR -- Constant Bearing! Decreasing Range! Learning Is Fun! -- at bearing 145, carom 33. But, Helo explains, they're not in standard wedge formation, so it's so interesting. Starbuck and Kat are flying CAP -- wouldn't it be funny if the big lie was that Starbuck and Kat are always flying CAP, not because they're really unpleasant and/or scary people, but because they're the "best pilots in the Fleet"? -- and the most awesome part, Helo grins, is that it's two Raiders chasing a third. Which is so confusing, because they're not firing on any of the Vipers -- not to mention the Raider they're chasing, but we don't know that yet. Starbuck, as always with Raiders, wants to climb up their asses, and Kat is like, "But why are they..." and Starbuck's like, "Don't know, don't care, kill crazy." She tells Kat to wait to engage until they get closer, so it'll go faster, and they do, and then it does: the shortest space battle of all time. They take out the two chasing Raiders with like one spitball and a mean look, and then go to take out the last one, which is suddenly headed straight for Galactica.
Over the wireless, there's a Colonial pilot yelling, "Krypter krypter krypter! This is Bulldog. Get me the hell out of here. I'm wounded!" Starbuck and Kat decide to blow up the Raider anyway, and there's a lot of back and forth, and the message getting clearer, and Adama gets very quiet and very still, and duallas to the CAP to cut it out, and then helos for an escort for the Raider: "Prisoner drill. I want the alert guard in the hangar deck in five minutes." Helo and Gaeta OMG at each other for a long time, because normally this kind of shit only happens when Starbuck gets bored.
Down in the hangar deck, Chief is yelling lots and lots, and there's a very ominous shot of the Raider, chained, being pulled into the bay, Marines all around, the Raider's eye gone dark. Starbuck and Adama stare at it together, and suddenly, it starts, like, violently leaking all that gross biology they have in there, and then the hatch opens and Bulldog falls down onto the deck. And he is just disgusting, covered in that stuff. Adama, Starbuck, and some Marines approach guardedly, as Bulldog stands; he then salutes. Adama salutes back. If you know Adama at all, you already know that something is going really haywire in his brain and his feelings right now, but that's just because. The violins go crazy and Starbuck's eyes bug right out as recognizes the Admiral. "Is it really you, sir?" asks Bulldog, and Adama nearly smiles but not quite: "Yeah...it's me. Welcome home, Bulldog."
Credits: 41,421 survivors, which is one more than last week, which is Bulldog. So far Helo's turncoat bullshit respect for his humanity and soul -- and those of, um, everybody -- has had a deadly effect of negative one. ["I didn't edit that recap, but let me just say retroactively: shut up, Helo. Either you're in a war or you're not. God. You want to hug and kiss some poisonous Cylons, resign your commission and join the Colonial Peace Corps." -- Wing Chun] Flashback to Admiral Corman's office, back before the war. Corman's telling Adama that they'll never have "this opportunity" again. What opportunity? Hmm. "I'm assuming you appreciate the consequences if you're discovered," Adama is told. "And you understand, Commander, that this conversation did not happen." Such awesome things happen after that line. Always. It's in the WGAw rules. "This conversation did not happen" leads immediately to tax deferment, fro-yos, and free education for everybody. Adama says of course he knows about the conversation not happening, but requests his men for the mission, especially for something called the "Stealthship," which...I'm not sure. Either it's, like, a special Viper, or it's the name of a Viper. All through the episode, I thought it was called the Stealthstar, which would make it a bad-ass class all its own, and would make a certain amount of sense in context, but no dice. And also, there's only "one pilot" he trusts to fly it, and Corman says "Who?" but we both know. It's clearly Starbuck.
Just kidding! It's the proto-Starbuck, who is Bulldog. With whom we are, in the Galactica med lab, where Cottle is -- is he? -- yes, yes he is. He's checking Bulldog with Gaius's Cylon Detecting Apparatus. Which is awesome, because the only time it's malfunctioned is when Gaius lied about Boomer, and um, that robot chicken has flown the robot coop, so I'm glad they're using it. I would like to see that conversation over tea with Sharon: "Oh, that thing? Totally works. My bad. That was...a liiiitle bit before I shot you. Just a tad. Bet you wish it worked better, huh?" Oh, how they'd laugh then. "The conspiracy theorists are gonna be disappointed," Cottle grumps to Bulldog. Please. The conspiracy theorists don't care about Bulldog. They just want Lee and Kara back together. Cottle: "We've checked your DNA signature against your military records, and it's conclusive: you're not a Cylon." Bulldog's like, "I've been not being a Cylon for three years. In a tiny cage, doing pushups." Cottle crustily offers Bulldog a smoke, and Bulldog stares at him like he means crack, so Cottle shrugs and pops the cigarette into his mouth like delicious candy. I totally want a cigarette, so hang on. You can thank Doctor Cottle: It's so rare that people smoke on TV now that I've lost my defenses. Meanwhile, Adama's having a secret loooove conversation on the phone in the corner, which is totally all about Bulldog, who is totally sitting right there, which is totally rude. Roslin's like, "Bring his POW ass up here," and Adama is more than willing. "Whatever they did to him out there, they kept him fed and relatively healthy," says Cottle. Where's the crusty downer he always supplies? That was almost sunny! "...Physically, anyway." Right, there we go.
Up in Adama's office, Bulldog is eating noodles faster than Lee, even. Adama's like, "I appreciate the noodle love, and your POW status, but could you tell me what happened?" Bulldog becomes awesome, and ever so Original Girl Starbuck: "Well sir, it's like this. The enemy had me locked in a cell for three years. The accommodations were lousy, the service was slow, and after a while, I felt the institution no longer had anything to offer me. So I left." Seriously, that's all it took, I was like, "Bulldog is awesome! Please do not give him a fake daughter!" Adama then gives a sigh of profane relief: "Thought maybe the Cylons had beaten the bullshit attitude out of you." (Sometimes silent-bleeped, sometimes no. I say the more graphic depictions of sex and violence and words like "shit" we get on cable TV, the sooner we stop beating savage American drums around the taboo fetish God of Ignoring the Actual, and admit what we, as adults, already know to be true in reality. The kind of people who would phone their congressman at the word "shit" or having Gaeta mack on a dude don't deserve to watch this show anyway.) Bulldog laughs, and Adama cracks a smile, but then takes a stiff drink and asks again: "How'd you get out?" Bulldog starts shaking and quaking and sweating, saying that all the Cylons had a virus. Which, um, they didn't. And I like how right away that starts to fall apart. "I heard them say it was spreading, getting worse. But eventually I realize...I'm not catching it. I'm immune." So he was smart and patient and waited. But why isn't he helping the tortoise?
Bulldog's doing pushups; Three clangs a prod against the bars. The camera moves mighty strangely, like a miscopied document. Three chuckles and needles Bulldog about why he's exercising all the time: "Are you trying to stave off getting old? Doesn't seem such a tragedy to me. Given the alternatives." She sniffs, and we see her, and she is WAY fracked-up and sick-looking, clanging the prod along the bars. Of Bulldog's cage. When in doubt, and you've got a cage or a shock collar to spare, why not shove a black guy or Korean chick inside? Makes the point, not that anybody's listening. "You know what I'm saying?" says Three. "Do I look that bad?" She really, really does. She's like if you gave Sarah Connor 1991 some like serious Hep C. She looks like that lady that lives in the mountains in Japan. Three: "You know what I think? I think you're afraid." No she didn't! Bulldog stands up quickly and punches her in the nose through the bar; she screams and falls down, dead, face all nasty and hematomeriffic. No he didn't!
"Let me try and understand exactly what happened to you. I'm just gonna go back a little, all right? About a year prior to the Cylon attack on the Colonies, you were on a mission with Admiral Adama. Is that correct?" Roslin watches Bulldog look at Adama, watches Adama nod at Bulldog, watches Bulldog look back at her. Watches clearance happen. "It was a black ops mission." She gives the beloved hmm and crosses her arms, nodding. "You remember the Tauron Colonists were such outlaws, always pushing their luck with the Admiralty every chance they got?" (Not for nothing, but we've only met one I can think of. And fuck yeah.) "The Taurons were drilling for tylium ore on a moon that was too close to the Cylon Armistice line. We knew that they had to get out of there, or risk provoking the Cylons." Roslin nods at Bulldog and Adama, but Tory's a gisty kinda gal: "I'm sorry, but how did this result in his ship being shot down?" Instead of yelling about context and the bardic tradition, Adama explains that Bulldog was the recon pilot: "He was there to gather evidence. Taurons must've seen us coming, because they ambushed him." Lie #1. No, #2. Roslin looks very fucking closely at him but doesn't say anything. You know she's thinking, "Oh, Bill. I'm the guardian of human morality this week?" And she is, and it's awesome as usual. "Lieutenant Novacek was shot down by the Taurons in cold blood," Adama lies. And by the way, Edward James Olmos is a fucking brilliant actor in this episode, which is relatively unmeaty. He's amazing. Every time the camera is on him, starting now, he makes me want to cry. He's just so...deeply embarrassed. Like, on a spiritual level. It's so sad. How can any of us survive, unless the man at the top finds a way to forgive himself? I understand why it's him -- why logically it has to be him -- but it makes me sad. I don't talk a whole lot about how much I love Bill Adama, and honestly, that is one of the good things about Bill Adama. Response to this episode has been mixed, but given where it falls in the season, I'm just grateful for this: it's another way for Adama to be forgiven. He's just given so much already. And all he has to do now is truth, and reconciliation. All he has to do is speak.
Flashback to the very sexy Valkyrie CIC, and its very sexy crew, as we hear a strangely familiar refrain: "Krypter krypter krypter, I've got damage to the port engine. Bird is down. Repeat: bird is down. Request rescue.Krypter krypter krypter! This is Bulldog...bird is down. Repeat: bird is down. Request rescue." Repetitive? There's a reason, but we're not there yet.
"So what did you do?" Laura asks Bill. But they're not alone: "I made a bad call. His ship was gone. No ejection on dradis. No distress call. He was dead. So I left." Tory wows: "But the Lieutenant did eject, obviously, and somehow survived in his ejection seat long enough for the Cylons to find him." She's mostly wowing and a little bit going "For REAL?" She is so good! She says more in one line than most of them are allowed to say in five, but they're all that good, and I'm not complaining, because these scripts are already short enough. Roslin gives some classic motherfucking Roslin: "Could you both give us a moment, please, thank you, Tory, and thank you very much, Lieutenant, I appreciate it." All one sentence like that, you know how she rolls. She is strange and unusual. Tory leads Bulldog out with the dubious delights of checking the Fleet registry for the paltry if extant survivors of his family line. He's like, "Awesome, did you know every single human died?" but something is better than nothing. Bulldog leaves with sweet Tory...
...and Roslin looks at Adama sweetly. He is sad beyond belief; he's the kind of self-hating sad that only Kara usually gets to be. "So are you gonna tell me what really happened?" asks Roslin. He looks down -- not because he doesn't respect her, but because he's afraid of losing her respect: "You're gonna have to trust me on this one, okay? It's my mess. I'll fix it." Bill stands, at attention; Roslin finally, unwillingly, leaves. Alone, Adama stares around. And then beats up a chair. You don't think to worry about him, you don't worry about the hits he takes, because he's strong: that's what he does. You don't think about what this takes out of him. I know it's just a one-off in the middle of a half-season of two-parters and To Be Continued, but this is real: you don't think about the hits he takes until they remind you, and then it hurts.
Three walks through the Galactica corridor, wearing D'Anna drag. I have this weird issue with the name "D'Anna," because I think it's the name of somebody who's got a sister named Misty and a brother named Forest -- and people named D'Anna and people named Misty and people named Forest are categorically terrific and classy, so don't email me -- but it's completely regional and completely personal when I say I hate the name D'Anna. And one thing I despise about this very nice little episode is the fact that I kinda have to call her D'Anna from now on, because Bithya-Three still sounds like a speech impediment. I'm not going to worry about it this week. Three walks through the Galactica corridor, wearing D'Anna drag. Marines follow her down the hall, and meet her coming. She turns a corner; there they are. She backs up and sees another set. She backs up; a Marine pulls a gun. She runs to a hatch. It reads "END OF LINE"; and...if they box Three because Lucy Lawless has a high quote, I will go berserker crazed. I mean it. Marines come in from both sides, and Three gets scared; the Marines assemble around her. And here is what she -- standing before a hatch that reads "end of line," a phrase I was told meant nothing -- says: "Fire." And they do. They do. Three awakes from the dream, shaking and confused. But it's okay; she's in Gaius's cell. Naked. Sexy naked. In a large four-poster bed. With Gaius. Sexy Gaius. And also...a Six, who needs no "sexy" before her name. And the music goes like this: "Chip Six Crazy Music...Cisum Yzarc Xis Pihc...Chip Six Crazy Music...Cisum Crazy Xis Chip..." like a crab canon of sexy robot in a math I don't know yet. And there in the bed, naked as all get out, is a Six. Threesomes for real! With robots!
Three sits up, stares at nothing, goes a little bit crazy, and heads for the wall, where a robe is waiting to cover up her even-hotter-than-you-thought hot bod. So that's three possibilities, and let's consider them: is this Chip Six in bed with them? No, because Gaius is unconscious and they use that music all the frackin' time. Besides, Chip Six wants Gaius to break Three: any amount of Three-breaking he can do is already done, because his ass is out cold. And I'm sure it took hours and hours. Is this some random Six? I don't know what the point of that would be. Is this Caprica? Well, she's covered in red satin like Chip Six, in the form of Gaius's incredibly tacky pimp linens. But also: what does Gaius get out of it? He's not just a dirty bastard: he only has sex to prove a point. You have to have all kinds of stuff to be a player that he does not have: he's just a little kid. It has to be Caprica because it's just Caprica that he's focused on, and this is in some way a punishment. Whether or not it hurts her, which to a narcissist doesn't make sense anyway, because Gaius Baltar's psychology is based on projection.
Less sexy: Tigh's quarters, where he's bringing a lit cigarette into and out of his line of sight; his one good eye. In and out. In, and out. "I see it. I see it. I see it." What does he see? It or not it. He's in bed with ghosts, and one eye sees fine and the other doesn't. He doesn't wander out into the corridors with his boxers at his ankles, like last week, but it still makes me sad. All that time he was loving Bill, before and after Ellen died, he was working for the hope of Bill to come and save him again. It's something I've made fun of before and will again, but the facts are these: Saul knew Bill would save him; Saul killed Ellen because that would happen more likely than anything else. Nobody should have to make that choice. Because his worldview depended on those who were with Bill, and those who were not. He took that universe with him back up into the sky, and called it the Circle. He was right, when he killed Ellen, that the world would be like that: what he discounted was his influence on that universe, and the fact that he would make it that way because he couldn't find his own way out. It was true because he made it true once he was back in the Fleet so he was right all along, but that doesn't stop him being right all the same. He murdered her, and I agreed and agree with him for doing it, because he knew what the world up there would be like, someday -- and someday came, and he killed her. In fear of the world he created. This plays throughout: Tigh couldn't imagine a better world in the Fleet, back on Galactica, so he killed Ellen to save her from a fantasy. While doing everything he could to save the world for Adama. Tigh makes more sense than everything: he couldn't see a world beyond his fear, and rage, and courage. He is beautiful, for making the best choice he could in the world he saw, and the world he foresaw: he is beautiful because he saved Ellen from the Circle.
The other eye is not quite the pirate patch Strega wished for, but what it is is fucking horrible. And in walks Bill, without knocking, in uniform. Tigh's best friend, who told him otherwise, who is letting him in on the episode, who needs to be forgiven. Who needs the obvious forgiveness of his obvious forgiver: "Daniel Novacek just escaped from a POW cell on a Cylon baseship, stole a Raider, flew it here. I just finished debriefing him." All one word. Tigh doesn't look up: "Bulldog's alive?" Saul stands, because that's fucking awesome. "That tough son of a bitch, he actually made it, didn't he?" And Bill acquiesces, and he's very whatever, and finally Tigh gets it. And you know, I give him credit for being shitty about it; because we know what it was like on New Caprica, he gets the pass. But also this: Bulldog = the Fleet. Bulldog is New Caprica in human form, and by existing, he accuses. Tigh: "So...are you here to talk to your friend? Or to your XO?" Because the four months of occupation have so little to do with it, no matter what else. "Last time I checked, I was neither." Adama takes a drink and looks at Saul guiltily. "Ohhhhhh," says Tigh. The Starbuck before Starbuck; the Starbuck before that. The one you'd always save, except you couldn't save me. And you didn't save her. And you didn't save Bulldog, before her. "I get it. Oh, yeah. Oh, this is gonna be a little complicated for you, isn't it, Admiral? You gonna tell him what you did?" Adama protests that he just did what he had to do, and Tigh pushes him to just tell the truth, then, and Adama sidesteps in a way he doesn't normally do out loud: "It's not gonna make any difference. The past is the past." Which is something a teenager says, and Tigh calls him out for equivocating. Adama totally runs away from all this mess, and Tigh calls after him that Bulldog's going to find out sooner or later. Alone, Tigh goes back to the cigarette game. "I see it..."
Commercial, and then Tigh wakes up, a bandage over his eye, and walks slowly around his tiny room, pulling a dress of Ellen's down from the shelf and caressing it. He remembers kissing her, and remembers crying over her dead body. He's weeping when Bulldog comes to his door, and Bulldog won't go away, just knocks louder and louder. Tigh finally puts the dress up and answers the door. Tigh and Bulldog embrace, and immediately get to drinking. Remember when Tigh's alcoholism was, like, a bad thing? Like the thing: you old drunk. And now it's like you'd pour for him. That's so intense.
Meanwhile, Adama has sent for Lee, and is very tentative and weird when his son arrives. "Thank you for coming. Sit down. It's time for us to talk."
Bulldog asks what Tigh's whole pirate/hermit deal is all about, and Tigh will only say that he's "been a little under the weather." Bulldog introduces yet more continuity weirdness into the situation, asking how Adama wound up on "this old bucket," and "what happened to the Valkyrie," which doesn't jibe exactly with the sense I've previously gotten of Bill's relationship with the Galactica, which relationship would be shorter than three years by this reasoning. But maybe it's our fault for assuming in the first place, I guess. "Let's just say that last mission wasn't exactly a boon to the old man's career. Galactica was his graceful retirement." Why have this in there? I guess it establishes the timeline insofar as having Six already right up in Gaius's infrastructure by then, so there's no way Adama did what he thinks he did? But that makes this episode suckier, not less sucky. Bulldog asks why Tigh and Adama aren't talking: "What's wrong? He won't cover your ass day and night like he used to?" HA! Seriously, dude. "Oh, no, he still does his share of ass-covering. Problem is, it's his main function now. Of course," Tigh dangles, "considering how you wound up getting captured in the first place, I guess you found that out the hard way yourself, didn't you?" Saul Tigh: Also Not Helping The Tortoise. He then turns into Sabrina the Teenage Bitch. "OMG he didn't tell you? He didn't tell you. I can't believe he didn't tell you! I thought he was going to tell you! But he did not!" and finally Bulldog is like, "Fuckin' what, dude?" And Tigh's response? "OMG I'm so disappointed. That son of a bitch! Dang! Why didn't he tell you!? I can't believe he didn't tell you!"
Meanwhile, in Adama's office, there's a whole other vibe that is not irritating, as Adama explains the thing that he didn't tell Bulldog, doing so without fanfare: "I shot him down." Lee goes to that special Lee Adama place: "Well, if you shot him down, you had your reasons. You were following orders. Preventing something worse. Right?" Grrrross. Adama clarifies that he did it to avoid detection: "Protect the mission, so it wouldn't be discovered by the Cylons. It was a black ops mission whose sole purpose was to ascertain the likelihood of a Cylon strike." ["Duh? What I don't get is the notion that Bulldog wouldn't know he might end up getting shot down for that exact reason. Maybe I've just seen Fail Safe too many times." -- Wing Chun] Lee's jaw drops as the world reshapes itself around him: "You're saying that we knew they were out there? That they could launch an attack on the Colonies?" Well...nothing for sure: "There were theories in some circles that the reason that the Cylons had stayed dormant for so long was because they were building a war machine. Preparing a strike." Other circles, of course, assumed they were knitting cute hats and mittens. The received wisdom that the Armistice was completely silent for forty years is only partially true: "The Admiralty had grown restless with the Adar administration. They thought we were resting on our laurels, unprepared to protect against an attack." (Not to mention the Lockheed "We Never Forget Who We're Working For" Martin contracts.) "My mission was to escort a stealth recon ship just beyond the Armistice line, stick our nose over, gather evidence, see if there was any suspicious activities." So if they got caught, Lee figures out, the Cylons would see it as an act of war. Which, um, is exactly what it is.
So, in flashback, we see all this: Bulldog edges past the Armistice line, and although his ship is called a, or the, "Stealthstar," he registers on dradis. Which is stupid. Two clicks past the line: "Negative dradis contacts. There's nothing here, sir. Which is fine by me. Company wants to pay me for a joy ride, they came to the right driver. Helluva moon." Immediately, an "unknown vessel" jumps in on Bulldog, and we hear it again: "Krypter krypter krypter, I've got damage to the port engine. Bird is down. Repeat: bird is down. Request rescue. Krypter krypter krypter. This is Bulldog." The vessel jumps away again, and Bulldog is calling krypter, and then two more Raiders jump in. Adama is frozen, overwhelmed, scared, staring at his Captain's hands, not talking, not moving. Tigh whispers his usual: "Don't do this. Think about it, Bill. You don't want to do this..." but Adama is galvanized: "Do you want his ship discovered? Do you know where we are? Do you have any idea what this could mean?" ["I'm saying!" -- Wing Chun] Twenty seconds before the bogies hit. Adama finally pulls a phone to Weapons: "Launch ship-to-ship missile. Now." And they do. And maybe it hits -- I think it hits -- and Bulldog ejects.
In the present, Bulldog screams at Tigh, but Tigh's not having it, and lays down some more salty sea dog rhymes on him: "Oh, it's true, and you know it's true. You've known it every second of every day since it happened. And the sooner you admit it, the sooner you might get that haunted look out of your eyes." Bulldog lunges, off on Tigh's mission of whatever, but Tigh grabs him: "Listen to me. Sometimes surviving can be its own death sentence. I know that." And the other half, which is that when somebody breaks your heart, or sees you being vulnerable, sometimes you have to hurt them for not saving you. They have to be smaller. Tigh and Bulldog stand looking at each other until Bulldog finally takes off.
Lee: "So the attack on Novacek's ship -- the one that winged him and the two dradis contacts that were following him -- they weren't Taurons. Those were the Cylons." Adama says that he told himself for years that it wasn't true, but that he was lying for a good long time about it. And that fits perfectly with him: "I was just lying to myself, pretending that it couldn't be true. It is true." He pauses, almost in tears: "I started it. Initiated it." But because Lee's always been about the easy answers, never more so than after the occupation of New Caprica, he's not having it: "Wait a minute, started what? Started what?" The attacks on the Colonies: "By crossing the line, I showed them that we were the warmongers they figured us to be." Bill begins to cry: "And I left them but one choice: to attack us, before we attacked them." But because Lee's always been a little stupid, he can't handle the idea of shared blame or context or ethical gray areas, he just yells denials: "No. No. Because it wasn't just you. They put you there. They put you there, across the line. You had no choice. That was the Admiralty. That was the -- that was the military. You were one mission. You were one man. One man." Ugh. But Adama is immensely touching in response, quiet and still and very sad: "It only takes one." And Lee looks at his father, breaking, and watches him stand, and stares at nothing, and begins to weep. It's not just Saul who counts on him; not just Lee, either.
In the basestar command, Caprica approaches Three with an Eight nearby: "You all right?" Three says she is, but she's lying. "More nightmares?" asks Caprica. Three corrects her: "Dreams." But there's something different this time, somehow: "I think God's trying to tell me something." End of line. "It's about Gaius, isn't it?" These two ladies, these two women trying to figure out the heights and depths and complexities of love using Gaius Baltar as a model, stare over at Gaius, who stands with Doral and a Six near a water wall. He cleans up so damn nice. "No," says Three, almost surprised. "It's about something much bigger than that."
Before this, or after it, or concomitant with it -- I'm not a Cylon, I just crush a lot -- Three speaks to a hidden someone, and this is what she says: "After you execute this command, you'll delete the order from your logs, then overwrite the corresponding memory locations." Swing about on a Centurion, tucked into a corridor niche. And Three is terrified by what she's about to do. Eyes wide, unblinking, she speaks one last word: "Execute." And he does. He does. The Kobol music I love most in all the show starts up as Three is dying; Three stands in the same great hall where Gaius and Six first saw Hera. Behind her are six white flags, floor to ceiling; five beings stand before them, bathed in light. Three is on New Caprica; Three is in a Caprica parking garage; Three's body lies in blood from a moment ago; Three falls in love with Hera, down on New Caprica. Three looks around the great hall in wonder, and draws close to the five figures, who are too bright to see. With tears in her eyes, she reaches out to take one bright hand. End of line. She dies, and dies, and dies again to return.
Three awakes gasping in a resurrection chamber, attended by the usual -- Six, Five, Eight, and Three -- and the Eight is guiding her through it: "It's okay. It's okay. Relax, try to breathe through it...breathe." Covered in goo and fluids, looking like a Hybrid, Three looks up at the attending Three. The Three above is hard, and cold, and perfect. New Three: "Oh, there's something beautiful! Miraculous, between life and death." The Three above is disgusted and worried; everybody looks around at everybody else. Six and Doral, as usual, are worried. Three stares at something fading up above her, something she already wants to see again; stares up, stares up, stares up.
Starbuck is watching tape of the CAP battle, with the three strange Raiders. It only takes a little while for her to notice that they keep missing. As though it's intentional. The violins go crazy as Starbuck pauses: a missile going well too astray. "Frack," she says, and stands, and goes to the one person she can trust.
Bulldog, now questionable again, exercises in his cell on the basestar; in his quarters on Galactica. Finally he growls, with purpose, staring out at the camera. A cat's paw. You can count his masters as they multiply. Adama's phone rings, and Bulldog asks to speak to him: "I need to see you right now." He knows Danny knows, Bill knows that, but he also knows he's Bill, so death or high water you know what he's going to say: "I'll be right there."
Kara and Saul in the common room, laying out screen shots from the video: "The Cylons are saddled up on him. They've got a perfect, point-blank, no-deflection shot. They had him dead to rights." Tigh's confused, but sees her destination from here. Starbuck: "Novacek was hit and smoking, flying straight and level. Any nugget could make that kill. The Cylons could've wasted him any number of times, and they didn't. They didn't. They let him escape." Saul takes a big drink and notes that Cylons do nothing by accident. "Yeah, that's what I was thinking too," says Starbuck. "Did Novacek say how he was able to overcome the Cylons that were holding him prisoner? They were sick? Had a virus? I mean, how many viruses do the Cylons have, sir?" Maybe it was the virus from before -- and the fact that Tigh doesn't know the whole story shows how high-level the whole Helo/Roslin issue really was -- "the same virus those Cylons we found were suffering from." Or else, Kara says, they went with a story the Galactica would buy. She keeps talking as Adama comes near to Bulldog's quarters: "Novacek was held on a baseship for three years, escapes, and then conveniently finds our Fleet with no agenda and no reason to be here."
Adama arrives at Bulldog's door, hands open: "Hey, Dan." Bulldog bashes him in the face with a steel pipe, throws him across the room, straddles and hog-ties Adama with his belt: "It's funny how all the training comes back, huh?" He holds the pipe across Adama's throat, bringing him low. Making him small. "Why did you lie to me, Bill?" Adama nears passing out, and Bulldog relents for a moment: "All those years...you know what I kept telling myself? What stupid, fracked-up dream I held onto? I kept thinking, 'Just hang in there, Bulldog. Bill Adama's coming. He won't leave you to rot in here, not him. He won't leave a man behind. Just hold on.'" We build our worlds around things. Rules. Structures. Human psychology is based on projection. You think Bill will come get you, you think there's somebody with answers, you think there's fairness in the universe, and when that goes away and you don't have any easy answers, you feel small. Again with the pipe: "But you weren't coming. You didn't think I was alive. You weren't even hoping I was alive!" Bulldog is the colony of New Caprica, is Geminon and Sagittaron, Scorpion and Caprica, is the Olympic Carrier and Maya, rising to speak. He is Billy Keikeya.
Flashback to the dead Three on the floor, and Bulldog escaping his cage and heading out into the basestar: "And if I hadn't figured a way to escape, if I didn't make my move when I saw they left that door wide open for me, I'd be as good as dead right now!" Adama puts it together: "Is that what they did? Did they leave the door standing open?" Bulldog starts to scream: "That's not what I meant. I know the truth." But in the flashback, there's a Three, and she's not sick, and she is hidden, and she is healthy, and she is watching Bulldog leave with a huge fucking grin on her face. "I beat them. Do you understand? I beat them at their own game. I frackin' killed her, and I escaped. You trying to take that away from me?" Um, yes? This isn't the simple answer either? You come out of the cage and find you're in another cage, and escape that one, you're in another cage. This is the nature of synthesis, but why aren't you helping the tortoise?
Tigh appears just then, back online, cocking a gun and calling Danny's name. Bulldog attacks, and Saul Motherfucking Tigh takes him out faster than the human eye and it is very awesome: "Stay down!" Saul calls to Bill, who confirms that he's okay, and then Tigh gives a little speech: "You don't wanna believe it, do you? I know. The truth hurts, Bulldog, but it's better to know the truth than to live a lie. We're all soldiers, Danny. We're all expendable. And we did what we had to do to protect the mission. It's ugly, but there it is. The Cylons let you go. The question is why? Ask yourself that, Danny. Because up until a minute ago, you were doing exactly what they wanted you to do: come here and learn the truth and seek revenge. And that's exactly what you did. You almost gave them what they wanted." Hogan's my hero. Tigh drops the pipe and frees Adama's hands.
Saul puts a pistol in Bill's hand, which is central: something broken just got fixed; Tigh rejects Adama's guilt like Laura will in the end of the episode, in apology for what he's done since the beginning of this one. "Tell you a dirty little secret: the toughest part of getting played is losing your dignity. Feeling like you are not worth the oxygen you are sucking down. You get used to it. You start to believe it. You start to love it. It's like a bottle that never runs dry. You can keep reaching for it over and over and over again." Redemption comes through working a story out to its logical conclusion and then taking yourself out of it: taking the wish apart and seeing the ugly stuff inside. It's why myths have power. Looking at Bulldog, at his rage at Bill's offense of being human, looking at Bulldog coming out of one cage and into another one, gives Tigh just the space he needs to breathe, and think, and see the story for what it is. Bill asks him how you're supposed to put the bottle away; Bulldog looks up at him too. I love how everybody finally gets how awesome Saul got. "I don't know. One day you just decide to...get up and walk out of your room." (I want to draw a connection here -- I'm not sure if it's legit -- but it has to do with Gaius working out basestar life at a constant rate and that rate being matched by Tigh learning to live among humans again. I dunno, though. It just struck me this week, an accumulation of parallels specific to this week. We'll watch out for that.)
Roslin's going to bring this up in a sec, but as long as all the parts are here: two men, deserted by Bill, assuming that he was infallible, locked in cages. Okay, that's one thing. And they get up and walk out of those cages, into bigger cages. But we're also talking about guilt, and about shame. Taking personal responsibility for an engine of war, with all its million moving parts, is just another way of asking for the easy answer: of getting control. So really, you've got three men thinking Bill's in charge, only Bill's one of them, and none of us is going to survive unless the man at the top can forgive himself. Again. But you have to look closer and further away: there's another cage here. Count their masters as they multiply: Three sends Bulldog on a mission of vengeance, using his pain for her own purposes. Tigh contributes, adjusting Bulldog's vector to make it easier; aiming him at Bill. And when Danny calls for him, Bill comes running, supplying the target. All because the buck stops with Bill. But the war started when the Admiralty used Bill, and Bill used Bulldog, to start the war -- so the buck stops with the Admiralty, and blood leads to blood, but these are still the easy answers. It's another cage, which is what Roslin's about to explain; this episode reflects the season like a fractal, as they all have, which is why I love this season. It only takes one man because the personal is not political. That's self-obsessed Baby Boomer thinking. The political is made up of the personal, which is a very different proposition. E pluribus unum: there was never a movement or a war or a terror that didn't amount to a lot of people's personal shit accumulating in a particular direction, on a particular day. Without Cally endangered, without Leoben and Kacey, without Charlie's son Kevin, there's no Circle. But that's resisted, always, because we need easy answers and we need control. We need to point a finger and say, "Terrorists are so vaguely evil and crazy that they don't even register as human; they all look the same, their religion is complicated. My racism is patriotic, because I can't handle a complex, realistic, tainted image of my country, because the personal is political." The Other becomes the scapegoat, carries the monster, and that's how the Admiralty stays clean -- and that's how we stay clean, too. But you're still in a cage, and there's still an ugliness that pertains to using people that way, but human psychology is based on projection. New Caprica was settled and later occupied because Laura got suckered into a gay marriage debate, because thousands of people bought the image of Gaius Baltar, because they were tired and wanted a home, because Gaius took something broken and broke it further, because Bill let Fleet defense trickle through his hands day by day, because Caprica and Boomer were changed by love. All of these and a thousand more. And once there, Kevin was only seven when he was killed. While taking it all on, like Bill, is the more honorable option, it's still just another easy answer.
Adama stands across from Roslin's desk, on Colonial One, and she looks at him owlishly, and he presents her with a document and stands at attention. After a few seconds flipping through it, she glares up, disgusted: "Your resignation. You have gotta be kidding me." He repeats himself: "We can't hide from the things we've done. I see no other way around this situation. Maybe it's time, Laura." She looks him directly in the eye: "Siddown, Bill." He does. You would too. She accuses him of being naïve: "Did it ever occur to you that the Admiralty may have set you up to provoke a war they wanted? It's naïve to think that horrible things that we can't understand have simple explanations. Because simple explanations make us feel like we have control when we don't. We know why the Cylons attacked us, and it wasn't any one thing. Oh my Gods. We did a thousand things, good and bad, every day for forty years, to pave the way for those attacks." Bill shakes his head, thinks of satisfying the Gods: "Something has to be done." Laura takes out an invitation to his anniversary commemoration: "You know what that is?" Adama takes it, reads it, drops it. "Medal of Distinction." Roslin hides her love, and her smile, behind anger at him and for him: "This was before I heard about this resignation of yours. So." She makes the hmm again: "I'd like to propose this. You seem hellbent on paying some kind of penance for whatever it is you think you've done. So instead of resigning, why don't you get up and walk out of here. meet me on the port hangar deck tomorrow evening for this ceremony, and let me pin a frackin' medal to your chest." Adama shakes his head: "I can't." And Roslin gets a bit more flinty: "It's not for you, it's for them. Stand up there, acknowledge your Fleet, and give them what they need: a hero. That'll be your penance. Even if it kills you."
On the Galactica hangar deck dais, Roslin stands with Bill, attended by Helo and the CIC crew. "On behalf of everyone in this room, it is my pleasure to present you, Admiral Adama, with the Medal of Distinction for your forty years of courageous service to the Colonial Fleet. Congratulations." Applause hits as Adama takes the podium, and we don't hear a word he says; the applause fades and we cut around the adoring Fleet: Apollo and Dualla, Starbuck. Athena. We've seen how well they deal with complexity -- what was Season 2.5 but a demonstration of the need for these idiots to have something easy to fight? Take away the resurrection ship and you're left with a bunch of jerks -- and for that reason alone, they need this: a hero. They need Bill Adama to ignore complexity and shared blame just a while longer, give them another easy answer for a little while, so they'll have time to heal. Before the thing hits.
Cottle and Adama say goodbye to Bulldog, who's going to another ship in the Fleet for recuperation time, but we'll see him again, I'm sure. Adama offers him a Fleet uniform, calls him "Lieutenant," but Bulldog's caught in the idea that he struck a commander and superior officer, and is willing to detach. "Take it. You're not gettin' off that easy." Adama knows, even if nobody else is hearing it. Sorry I hit you with a pipe and tied you up and lied; sorry about how I used you to jumpstart a war and then shot your plane down and left you for dead. So awkward, but all you have to do is speak. Bulldog takes the uniform. "Once a pilot, always a pilot, Bulldog." They salute each other -- nice bookend with his arrival -- and he boards the Raptor and takes off to heal, and to speak.
Adama's quarters, where Tigh and Adama are about to put Lee and Kara to shame in the extended adolescent apology department. Not that Lee and Kara are anywhere close to that right now, but they've played some doozies in their time. At least Tigh didn't shoot Adama. Tigh comes in, and he and Adama stare at each other for a bit. Tigh digs in the floor with the toe of his shoe, shoulders rounded, eyes grounded: "I heard you won a medal." Bill is gruffly ironic, trying to lighten a mood that won't lighten until something happens: "They give 'em out for anything these days. Good behavior, attendance, playing well with others..." He finally looks Tigh in the eye; Tigh does not know the meaning of any of these words. "I need you back in the CIC," says Adama. "It just ain't the same without you in there intimidating the inmates." Tigh jumps and shakes his head, nervous that this attempt at reconciliation looks weird: "No. No no no. That's not what I came here to talk to you about." Tigh and Adama stare at each other, trying to remember how they've done this before: the awkward mutual thing. Why is it so hard to remember when you're in the middle of it? "Okay. So why are you here?" Tigh literally shrugs, and his body folds out like an eight-year-old, into awkwardness and shy nervous anxiety: "I don't know. Nothing." Sorry I fired Bulldog at you; sorry I spread dissent through the ranks like a cancer; sorry I hate you for being fallible. "You wanna tell me what happened to Ellen?" asks Adama. Tigh sighs: "I could use a drink." Bill pours out two, and they sit down. They begin to speak.