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Jane Espenson's obsession with food hits the Fleet front and center, contaminating all their business and leading to a plagueâ¦of starvation! Sharon finds a planet with lots of healthy, disgusting black algae on it, but it's on the other side of a massive star cluster. Trekking through the cluster will expose the civilian ships to radiation meltdown, and flying around it will lead to delay-induced cannibalism. The plan is this: shift all but skeleton crews from the Fleet ships to Galactica; shielded Raptors will lead them across in five trips; everybody meets up on the other side. The big jump on each trip is the one into the middle of the cluster, where they keep the starlight and radiation, and where they'll have to find their ships blind. Not to mention the intense cancery radiation that means they have to do all these things lightning fast. Meanwhile, Kat is actually a drug-running lowlife name of Sasha, who stole Louanne Katraine's name during the holocaust on Old Caprica and has been increasing her Viper power and becoming more awesome and less obnoxious all this time. Hotdog loses a ship on the first trip, Kat loses hers on the fourth. Kara goes on her own mission straight up Kat's nose about the "Sasha" thing, leading civilian ships of guilt and Adama Daddy anxiety behind her in a pretty chain. After that, Kat's in no mood to fuck up, so on the fifth and last trip, she goes ahead and gives herself cancer to make sure everybody lives. Back home, Gaius figures out about Three's recreational suicide game, gets Delphic all over a Hybrid's ass, then asks Three to keep killing herself over and over to fulfill his jerkwad dream of being one of the Final Five Models, thereby removing his guilt not only for engineering the decimation of humanity but also for being a criminally bad basestar houseguest. The idea is so fucking irritating he's probably right. Oh, and also there's another roadstop toward Earth, with the usual embarrassing name of Mervin's Meretricious Mallet of Apollo's Artemis's Harlequin Masquerade of Captain EO's Arrow or whatever. Anyway, it ends on a bummer note when Kat makes it right with Kara, then gets a MAJOR handjob from the Admiral in the form of him telling her he thinks of her as a daughter. Which is either a lie or something he tells, like, everybody. Everybody and everything: His nachos. Left shoe. A mandolin. His son Lee. But it's a really sweet scene, I mean, I cried so I'm not trying to be a dick, but come on. Not your moment, Bill. Let her have her cancer in peace. And how about nobody mentions Hera, eh? Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Kat gives us the previouslies. I like that. I like Kat. This episode is funny, because I always thought "Scar" was at least half Kat's episode, that whole "jouncing the limb" factor that makes you feel like a loser even as you're winning, and then this episode is clearly a Kat episode, while doing some pretty awesome stuff with Starbuck when you're not looking. The other cool thing about this one is that I assumed, because it was written by Jane Espenson, two wrong things: one, that it would be funny -- it really is not -- and two, that it would be wondrous in its words. Which it is. But so much of the story is told through the visual on this show, especially this season, and I should not have made those assumptions, as it turns out, because this is a story of powerful images with strong supporting dialogue. I saw a transcript before I ever saw the episode, which led me to another assumption: that I wouldn't cry my ass off. No more assumptions.
Before New Caprica, before Pegasus, before I even started recapping, Kat was a crackhead. She had a lot to prove. She flew missions like whoa and grew from nugget to a great tall oak that went NOW NOW NOW and sometimes she got tired, and so she took stims. She jounced Starbuck's limb until it almost snapped off, and called her on her shit, and they loved each other, but in a Tigh kind of way. It's good to have people pushing you. Other stuff: Bill invited Saul back into the CIC but that didn't mean he was going to stop loving Helo; Gaius discovered the secret Final Five Cylon models we don't talk about plus the glossolalic power of the Hybrid; and Three went nuts all up in your face.
Now: Sharon's flying a Raptor through the middle of a star cluster, surrounded by fire, and she is not doing well.
Adama and Cottle are conferencing with Roslin on the wireless, telling her there's no food left. There was good food and contaminated food, and the good food got mingled with the contaminated food, so now there's no food. Sharon's out Raptoring for algae to process into delicious meaty protein, is why all the fire and stars and stuff. Hopefully she is not a sleeper agent, because when you're down on resources what you don't want is Brokeback Boomer sabotaging your hungry ass. Cottle tells Laura the Fleet can survive about a week if Sharon comes back empty-handed. Helo gets choked up and tells them she was due back three hours ago. "The, um... The radiation levels are high, but she's strong and -- she's, um -- she'll be here any moment." First of all, what's hotter than Helo in full dress? Helo crying in full dress. Second of all, there's a very awesome parallel between Laura freaking out on Colonial One, and Helo freaking out on Galactica, about not at all the same thing, but also kind of the same thing. I like to think that Laura has the grace to be worried about Sharon, to love her like Bill does, but... she's great in a lot of ways. Great great lady. But I don't know if she's feeling the Sharon love. Still, a moment of silence.
Sharon flies, sick and coughing. Her radiation badge is going black. That's bad.
In the pilots' bunks, everybody we know is piling their food stashes on the table. Kat calls down from a bunk that she doesn't have anything, and Starbuck gives her the stink-eye: "Um, to share," she corrects her, and Kat begs her to get off her back. Oh, in this episode all the pilots look like they've been to see that movie The Holiday: hollow eyes, nauseous green, a pronounced palsy. It's not so bad right now but it's going to get way worse once the radiation starts in on them. Starbuck yells that she saw a protein bar on Kat's cot, which Kat swears she gave to Cottle. "... Right. Right after I gave him head," says Starbuck. I swear that's what she says. (Team Espenson!) Kat gets bitchy about stop calling her a liar, and Apollo tells them both to shut up, and orders everybody to eat. They do, and it sounds like an orgy. I think Kat calls Hotdog "Baby," so I guess she noticed he got hot. Racetrack moans and gulps and eats, while Starbuck continues to stare at Kat with some radiation of her own.
Sharon's alarms are going off and her rad marker is getting blacker by the second. She looks terrified. Say what you will about my girl Sharon, but she doesn't fucking blink. It's gotta be pretty bad for this to even register. I know she'll be fine because she's still totally going all Admiral Cain on some bitches about her baby, but it still makes me very nervous.
Credits. 41,420 souls in the Fleet and holding steady for now. In the basestar bedroom of bad ideas, Three wakes up. She moves Gaius's hand off her ass and gets up, and we pan back to see Caprica asleep on his chest. So cozy! So sweet! So very much his wet dream. "Somewhere to be, D'Anna?" Still hate that name. But I love how even half-asleep, Gaius still doesn't want his bitches stepping. She tells him not to wake up Caprica, and says she'd love to hang around all day with the ménage, but there are things she's gotta do. Which, not for nothing, but really? Couldn't you do that while staying in bed? Is that not the point of Cylons? He's right to be suspicious.
Dreamlike piano tinklings and French camera stylings amble us to later, where he asks Caprica what she thinks Three is up to. (Caprica's like an angel when she sleeps. Or when she hangs out inside your head, causing you to masturbate in public and occasionally beat the crap out of yourself.) She's clearly and adorably sleepy, all, "You're not the only one asking that." Things were a lot easier when they were just robots. I love how they're not quite feeling "privacy" as a concept yet. He really did just drop ass-naked into the giantest sorority sleepover of all time. "She's been doing things," says Caprica, and Gaius gets all weird about it: "Doing things? What things?" Right answers, wrong questions. The Eden thing with Cylons has been growing for a good long while, but the snakiness of Gaius gets overt at this point. Like, if it weren't for him and Hera (WHO? WHAT?), Three would still be the most Cylonic of the Cylons, but he had to go fuck everything up just by existing, and now there's free will and personalities and all this other shit they're not ready for. (But then, fucking things up by existing is like his whole deal, every day, in every situation. That, and not even noticing he's doing it. Maybe he's not even the snake, maybe he's just the apple. I think Chip Six is the snake and she's playing both sides. We'll see.)
Sharon's back on deck, and when you look at her Raptor all you hear is the theme song from Sanford & Son. It is crunk. Also fubar: my girl Athena, who stumbles out into the deckhands' waiting arms for immediate shoving into a decon chamber and checking for radiation. Helo and the Adamas are watching, quite worried. She's pronounced "radiation negative," and immediately begins the debrief, because she is awesome. "There's a way through the star cluster. And I found the planet on the other side. I skimmed it and I took photos. There's huge swaths of algae, just like we thought." Helo's just staring at her rad badge. "It's black," he says, getting choked up all over again, and Lee is just a tad whatever about it: "She's a Cylon. She can handle a radiation dose that big." (I guess there are kinds of radiation, like how there's different kinds of Kryptonite, because more than once on this show there has been radiation that was totally and specifically bad for Cylons.) Helo's like, "Excuse me, Little Miss Cylon Physiology Expert," and over Sharon's protests, Bill agrees with him. I don't think Lee was being a dick about it like the other time, I think he was just worried Helo was going to freak out and endanger the Fleet. Bill's mouth is pointing out that "fine" for Sharon could still be deadly for regular humans, but his eyes are saying, "You need a hug and a nap, Surrogate Daughter #1423." She looks like hell, did I mention? But of course Apollo doesn't have time for your robot cancer: "So then how do we get tens of thousands of humans through there?"
War Room! Crazy table of excellent ship models and mission exposition! Too bad they didn't snag the Pegasus ready room and cool tech before her decommissioning ceremony; that stuff was awesome. Sharon shows them a treacherous path through the amazing star cluster, pointing out how it's a two-jump journey with a stopover in the middle of hell. "There's not a solution with a single jump?" asks Helo, but she says the cluster's too big, and they can't go around. (Kids ruin your brain, so of course at this point I started singing the Bear Hunt song: "Oh no! A star cluster! Can't go over it! Can't go under it!") Apollo notes the civvie ships aren't shielded enough to jump into the cluster, and out of his ass pulls the probability that 80% of the people onboard would die. Since it's Apollo, this statistic is now made of diamond. "Can we send Galactica for food?" asks Roslin, and Helo and Gaeta point out that this would mean zero defense for the Fleet while Galactica was jumping back and forth, because it would take dozens of trips to get it done. So if, as Gaeta says, they can't bring the food to the people... "What if we bring the people to the food? Put the people on Galactica," says Laura. "Send the civilian ships with skeleton crew, give them radiation meds." She's got some ideas about how people are cattle, doesn't she? Still, Apollo (still trying for his Junior Tigh badge in Nay-Sayery) says that the nav systems on the ships would go blind from the radiation. "They wouldn't be able to see squat on dradis. There wouldn't even be a way to calculate a jump out." And Sharon points out her first-person reporter take: "Once you jump in, the light is so blinding you begin to drift." And cough, and get horribly sick. "And before you can get your bearings," she slides a Raptor around the ice like it's drunk, "you're over there." Lee makes a little list: "No visual contact. Instruments blinded. Radiation." They'd get lost and burn up.
But while Lee is pointing out these rough truths -- and how cool is it that, ever since around the time of the big genocide/xenocide debates, that's his role? It makes total sense with how the season started -- his dad is pushing the models around in a whole other way, without speaking. He gets tactical like Kara does: without telling anybody. And it's just as irritating, and just as awesome. Lee gets it immediately: "Pilot ship." They'll pair a Raptor with each civilian ship, using Laura's plan of having skeleton crews, and lead them through the jumps. "Raptor navigation systems are hardened against nuclear strikes," Lee tells us, so they can handle the radiation. See how easy that was? I'm still not entirely sure I understood all the niceties of the Resurrection Ship battle, and God knows I watched that exposition briefing like a million times, but this one's easy: shipherds, herding ships.
How many jumps? Apollo's briefing the pilots in their big briefing room. I love getting to see all these sets again! "Five round trips," he tells them, and they all mutter. "You heard. Five round trips. On our outbound jumps we'll each be responsible for relaying jump coordinates to our own specific civilian ship, nailing them to their jump points, and insuring they don't drift off." Racetrack asks if there's food on the Algae Planet, and Apollo says sort of. Because they'll have to process it first. Kat gets kind of upset at the idea that something called "the Algae Planet" doesn't have a Planet Hollywood or even a La Madeleine, for some reason, and Apollo is hilarious: "The truth is that nausea from the radiation exposure will take care of our appetites." Helo gets worried adjacent to this: "You'll all be issued with radiation badges that track our exposure. White like this, you're okay. As your exposure increases, it'll darken." If it approaches black, they'll get pulled off duty. "Keep checking your badges. It's every pilot's own responsibility to monitor their own badge."
Apollo calls Starbuck up, and she reminds them how it's going to be: "We're all flying solo on this mission. So that means there'll be nobody there to bitchslap you if you start to get tired or start seeing little toasters on your wing." This is how Starbuck always was; it's comforting. "We'll be issuing stims, so use 'em." Kat yells about the stims, but not because she's gone all crazy twelve-stepper: "Stims amp up your metabolism. We've got nothing to burn. You put stims in our systems, we're gonna be flying into the sides of the ships." One of the pilots asks if that's true, so I guess he doesn't know she's the expert. Actually, none of us yet knows just how expert she is. Starbuck gets in a cheap dig about how Kat used to loooove the stims, back when she was a crackhead, and if it was anybody else Kat would throw him the finger, but it's Starbuck, so she hangs her head. Apollo tells them to use their personal discretion on the stims, and tells them the civilians are coming onboard Galactica already. "Skids up in four hours."
Four hours is a long time. Out in Camp Oilslick, Dualla is being... incredibly awesome. The dialogue, but also the performance, which is hardcore and just this side of hysterical: "There is no food here. There are no rations anywhere on this ship. If someone told you there was food, they were lying. If you leave this area, force will be used." Somebody was joking that Olmos made the entire cast starve themselves throughout the entire shoot, which is a very funny joke, but Dualla's doing the whole "out of it but doing her duty" thing so well you'd think it was true. A man named Enzo, who looks like a less-grotesque Spike from Passions in that he's clearly a drug-running sleazeball, recognizes Kat and runs up to her, calling her "Sasha." She whips around on him with a fierceness: "My name isn't Sasha. My name's Captain Louanne Katraine. You understand me? Sasha, and you, were a lifetime ago." Enzo gets all Prince Hal with her about why doesn't she hang out with the lowlifes anymore now that she's an officer, and she tells him to step off. "Do they even know who you really are?" he calls after her. Intriguing. I always wondered why she didn't have a cool callsign; turns out that's all Kat is.
"Oh, fancy bumping into you here," says Gaius to Three in the corridor of the basestar. As you can imagine, it's not entirely believable, suave, or normal-sounding. How much of Gaius's life is just people refusing to point out that he's not fooling anybody? Dude, I just imagined somebody telling him that, somebody scary like Three or Laura Roslin, and his face would crumple in a very sad way. "Can you believe I'm lost again? I'll never find my way around this place. Where have you been?" Somebody said this week, and I think it's very awesomely true, that Three is the one Cylon you never forget is a Cylon. The way Lawless plays her is just terribly feline and remote and real and vulnerable, all at once. There are benefits to going the other ways with it -- you may have heard that I love the Eights and Sixes -- but she is just... Did you ever see that movie The Last Unicorn? "You must never run from anything immortal." We always say it about Ryan Seacrest, but it applies even better here.
"I've been talking with Simon about our move toward Earth," Three says evasively, and notes that there's still simmering debate. Lying and cruelty: two more things the Cylons never did until we got involved. Gaius asks if "the relevant Simon" can corroborate this story, and she turns back with a grin: "Beg pardon?" Gaius mentions the "things" she's been "doing," and her first question is -- not "who have you told," as you might think -- but "who would tell you" about her business. She quickly figures out it's Caprica, and thinks about how she hates when her bitches go stepping. "Did you know you have some dried goo in your hair? That can happen when you resurrect." Heh. He puts it together with lightning quickness and she pulls him off the central corridor and gives him the hard stare. "Do you have any idea of what you are accusing me of?" Yes. "Intentionally killing yourself over and over so you can download over and over." He asks if it isn't true that death's just a revolving door, because he's still not clear on how the whole "abomination against God" thing works. That's just, like, words to him. She gets tears in her eyes -- fear? Sadness about how she's going to have to kill his ass? No, it's shame -- before turning it into a terrifyingly sexy, kittenish grin.
Kat mirrors Three's shame, and her actions, pulling Enzo into a niche: "Come here!" Enzo gets horny so we know the deal, and tells her to "take it down a notch" even as she's demanding to know what he wants from her. "Relax. I'm not looking for a business partner," he says. He calls her "baby" and notes how if "they" find who she "really" is, they'll kick her out of the service. Or worse. "Now, do you think that I want that? I don't want that, 'cause that happens, who's gonna feed me?" He laughs and she just stares at him and wonders how he missed Dualla's yelping announcement. "... Oh, come on. You're getting three squares, you think I don't know that?" He doesn't. She swears there's nothing to give him and he pulls her in, applies himself directly to her forehead, intimate. "Sure you don't. Oh, we go back, baby. Since when is it a crime to take care of your own? Huh?" He breathes her in. "Remember, I know who you are. And I know how to make you happy... " He starts unzipping her uniform, taking off the Kat to expose the Sasha, and she pushes him away, leaving. Zipping Kat right back up.
Tigh stands outside the CIC door, nervous. A random nods in passing and calls him Colonel. Inside, Adama watches him through the door and grins tinily to himself. Tigh finally goes in; Gaeta watches impassively and Dualla openly stares. The applause starts, quiet as a whisper, and as the officers on deck applaud louder and louder, they welcome him back and call him "sir." "We're with you, sir!" Gaeta stares some more, and he's not clapping, and he's not cheering. Just looking. Finally Tigh gruffs out -- zipping up the Tigh, hiding the Saul -- "Enough! Don't you people have jobs to do?" There's our boy. Same as ever. Adama welcomes the Colonel back, and Tigh greets the Admiral. Bill hoshis to Apollo to begin the op and launch.
"Shepherds, find your sheep. Stay close, and never let them go. These crews are counting on us to guide them through." Starbuck checks in, Kat calls the Chiron, Hotdog's got the Adriatic in sight. "When you jump into the cluster, you will be disoriented. Take it one step at a time. Find your sheep, work the jump calculations, and get them out. Remember, we do not stay beyond our radiation dose limit." I like all this shipherd talk. That's straight-up Apollo for real, right there. ("Stay close and never let them go" is less "Apollo" talk and more "Lee.") Everybody jumps.
Out in the cluster, they are disoriented but they take it one step at a time. The first step is to freak the fuck out, following by steps two through six: screaming blindness and wigging, alternating four reps at a time. Kat finds her ship and sends the coordinates, and Apollo follows suit. Starbuck's having trouble, but she's got her sheep; Hotdog's flailing in the weeds, screaming. Apollo looks but can't find the Adriatic, and on Galactica Helo calls out, trying to calm him down: "Hotdog, just ease up on the control, man. Ease up on the stick. This is not a Viper." Ah, the velvet tones of Helo telling you you're okay. That's one of the five signs of a good episode. Hotdog just keeps screaming. Helo comforts him, reminds him to use visual -- the skin starts coming off Galactica, horribly -- and Adama calls the Squad directly. "Apollo, this is Galactica actual. You've reached your radiation dose limit. We've got to jump. Count us down!" Hotdog begs them to wait, begs Apollo and the Fleet to just wait one more second. And somewhere in the heat there's a ship called Adriatic, with a skeleton crew, making their way in the blindness and the light, desperately waiting to be saved, and they're holding the line against the fire and against starvation and against annihilation, and they are heroes. And Hotdog can't find them. "You will jump on my mark. Starbuck, jump on my mark with or without your ship." He begins the count, and Hotdog begs. "We can't leave without them!" And then they do, Hotdog screaming obscenities as they go.
"Jump complete," Gaeta says. "Dradis is back online. Ship reports moderate hull damage." It looked gross and ugly and biological, the way the skin stripped off. "Galactica, Apollo. First trip complete. Raptors, land your birds, debrief your pilots, and prepare to jump back for the second group of civilians." He's already getting sick. And on CIC deck, Gaeta says calmly and sadly, "We lost the Adriatic." Tigh's voice is hushed with horror. "It's only our first jump." And Bill nods. "Yes, it is."
Trip four of five, opening up in the horror of a star. "Carina, Kat! Report your location." There's no response. Apollo asks if she has her, and Kat screams negative: "Radiation's pissing on my nav!" After a few tense seconds she finds her, then loses her again. Everybody looks like hell. Everybody's cells are shutting down, the radiation having cooked their genes so good they give up the fight. This is not right, is what their cells are saying. I've fucked up. I'm cooked. And instead of going rogue, instead of becoming a tumor -- which is to say, instead of becoming a cancer -- they are giving up. They have the grace to say they're poisoned and won't be coming back. Skin going slack and sallow as their bodies choose death one cell at a time. What we needed and what got cut was a scene, well before this one, where we learned that Kat loved "Kat" so much, the freedom of flight, the power of being the best, of being strong, all the things we love about the pilots and all the things Kara loves about being a pilot, she loved these things so much she stayed in the sky. Loved not being Sasha, I mean to say: was in love with this new woman she got to be, this name she was earning. When all the other pilots were -- when Kara was -- detaching for life on New Caprica. Kat was a chance to be strong, and good. What we needed to know was that Kat was the Galactica CAG for a year and a half. We should know that, moving forward: Kat was Galactica CAG, up in the sky, while everybody was happy down below. And after that too, when things went bad and they had to run, she was the CAG: she planned useless CAP after useless CAP, waiting to go back and save them. With that on her shoulders: soldier's readiness, a whole gutted army, a skeleton crew, waiting. And now the Carina is lost, and Kat screams, and they jump. "I lost it. I lost it."
Kat comes out of decon looking fucking awful; Hotdog barfs and barfs for a long time. Kat stares into her ruined Raptor, where she just was -- I mean to say that Kat stares long and hard at the place where she just was, and how she failed it -- and then wanders blankly around, watching the crew pull pilots out. Her fellow pilots, Kat's. Watches them fall, near dead from hunger and exposure. Another pilot passes out right in the decon chamber, just falls slack. Helo throws his gloves to the floor and stomps around, grossed out and sick and scared. Kat just stares, and thinks about Sasha and the heroes of the Carina.
Later the pilots are piled on the hangar deck floor, bruised cheeks and glassy eyes. Burned out from the inside and all along their skins. "All right, we managed to get another eight ships through, but we still lost one. We gotta get better at tracking our sheep. Quicker reaction times out of the jumps. Racetrack, don't be calling out coordinates to the wrong ship." Racetrack apologizes: she got mixed up. (I didn't recognize the woman she was fighting last week: it was Seelix. Interesting, and not just because Seelix creeps me out: Racetrack's a pilot and Seelix is on deck, so it was personal, right? I like to imagine that Racetrack was fighting for Athena's honor somehow. I also like to imagine that she is a saint.) He begs them to keep checking their instruments, and rechecking their instruments. "The instruments are crap," coughs Kat angrily, and Apollo nods. "All right, that concludes outbound four. This is return four. One to go. All right, get some rest." They stand and stumble and drag themselves out; Starbuck helps another pilot to stand. I mean to say that Starbuck reaches out to a fellow pilot, dead on the ground, and pulls him to his feet again.
Tigh gives Adama the latest, in his quarters: "A hundred marines too weak to work, two hundred more ready to drop." Adama worries that it'll slow down the algae harvest and Tigh points out as well that "the last batch of passengers kicked up some trouble." He repeats his bitching moan from "Collaborators" about how they all think "there's a diner and a chef waiting to take their order," on the other side. Which is how the bullshit started last time, but even Bill's had it: "Ohh, when are they gonna learn they gotta process the thing first, for frack's sake?" Tigh takes their part: "Try telling that to a bunch of empty stomachs." He's learning. I love him. "I hear they're still eating paper," says Bill. "Is that true?" It's not: "Paper shortage," Saul deadpans, and then they both laugh. It goes from funny, to sweet, to awkward, to hysterical, to scary, to where all you can think about is the word "dentures." Bill says it's not a good sign, and Tigh agrees, and I don't know if they're talking about how they're clearly going nuts or what. Because that laughing was both.
Sparks and repairs on the hangar deck; Starbuck watches Kat yelling and pushing Enzo off the higher observation deck from Chief's nightmares, and gets suspicious. She recognizes Enzo somehow, I guess from when she was a gumshoe.
"So when you resurrect you see the faces of the Final Five Cylons? The ones that no one's seen." Three's exasperated by Gaius, to say the least. "Why do you want to know about them?" And get a load of this shit right here: "I could be a Cylon. I would stop being a traitor to one set of people, and be a hero to another. And have a place to belong." And that's why I can't fully hate Gaius Baltar, and why I can't stop hating him either: if this episode's about anything, it's that you are the only fucking one in charge of whether or not you're a hero. The mass hallucination that New Caprica was a good idea was really just his smoke-and-mirrors way of trying to get everybody else to tell him he was okay. Even the Presidency was emotionally equal to finally bedding Gina, which was in turn a fracked-up plan to find the most damaged girl in the universe and "save" her, and now you're going to add "Hero Of The Cylon" to that futile list? Like Cylon accolades mean anything. They can barely tie their shoes at this point. They have more authority figures and Gods and Heroes and bossy ninnies than Adama's got fake daughters. Just stop already. Your neuroses are starting to develop neuroses. You're like a fractal of fracked. "You would help me understand my destiny. Have you seen my face?" Because of course he can't just be any old Cylon, he's gotta be one of their angels, or saints, or demons or whatever it is.
Three pulls out a bunch of pictures -- if you recontextualize it in terms of an artificial intelligence's socialization, then ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny in exactly this way: this is just Lascoux wall-drawings, which lies somewhere on the evolutionary scale between binary circuits and bumfight videos -- and gets more flustered than we've ever seen her. She's clearly frustrated by her inability to create a proper representation the divine with simple pencil and paper: "I try to get it all down while it's still fresh in my mind, but...nothing much comes out. It's just rubbish. I don't remember... " Oh my God religion is so hard. Poor Three. And isn't Gaius fucking helpful: "Cylons, humans. We're all just trying to discover who we are. Aren't we?" Not all of us in quite the same ass-backwards fashion as you, Gaius. But yeah.
... Segue! Starbuck approaches Enzo in a Galactica corridor as he's chatting up some civilian girl. This is a great little scene that manages to get across about seven pages of script in two moves: "Hey, Enzo," Kara says, and "... Yeah," Enzo says. (And meanwhile there's a whole other story that their faces are saying, and that goes something like this. "Aw, man! I thought you were cool!" Yes, I'm still cool and a drunk and all that, but I need information. "... You saw me with Katraine." I am so grossed out by both of you right now that I could punch a hole through this bulkhead, now what's the story. "I'll tell you everything you want to know." Life just keeps getting more bullshitty. "Tell me about it." Which we can agree is a lot to say with just faces.)
Skip the actual thing entirely, since they just did it awesomely through facial mime, and cut to Kat fessing up all over Starbuck's shoes. "I took the name Louanne Katraine from a girl who died two days before the attack on Caprica. Got me through the background checks." Kara remembers that "times were rough," right around the time most of humanity was exploded, and tells her to keep talking. "I was a drug-runner. Enzo was my supplier. What do you want? We were truckers, okay? We just moved stuff." Which is bad, but not like Cylon bad, and Starbuck is a fuckup too. I can totally see her getting into drugs if she hadn't found piloting after her knee got fucked up. She knows it, and that's not the point: the point is stuff, namely: "People. You see, some think that that's the way that the Cylons infiltrated Caprica. They seeded themselves throughout the Outer Colonies, and then they used criminals to get them into the Capital. Anyone who's found guilty of helping the Cylons is considered a traitor." Kat protests that she didn't ever carry Cylons, and Starbuck asks how she could know -- since nobody knew they looked like us -- and Starbuck just keeps asking and asking and asking. And I didn't really get her point there for a second, because my finely tuned sense of ethics tells me that's not really a valid complaint anymore, but the problem is that she lied -- that she was a drug-runner named Sasha, not a nugget named Kat. She was off the grid and she lied her way in. That's the problem here. Starbuck's right in her face: "How do you know?" Kat asks, at the edge of sense, after all she's been through -- just today even -- if Starbuck's honestly calling her a traitor. She's screaming now, which Starbuck loves, because she gets to be cool and calm and in control. And that's when she's scariest.
"No. I don't think you're a traitor. You're a smart young woman, that's what the old man said." Kat swallows back tears, begging her silently not to bring him into this. "You're just not smart enough to accept who you are," Starbuck says, tasting every delicious syllable. Telling the truth, pretending it's only true for one of them. Kat whimpers, having to look it in the face like that. "You see, you lied your way into the company of good people." Kat begins to weep, begs her outright not to tell the Admiral. "Please don't, or I... " And Starbuck's on it: "Or what?" Or I'll die, is the answer to the question, or something near it. She was CAG for a year and a half. She kicked this whole thing loose already. "Starbuck, please just let me tell him myself. Please just let me. Can you do that?" There's a long pause, and Starbuck spits, disgusted: "Gods." She takes off out of there, leaving Kat alone and sobbing. And I mean to say: Starbuck reaches out to a fellow pilot, dead on the ground, and pulls him to his feet again. The only way she knows how, the only way Mom knew how; she's returning a favor. How the hell do you think she knew to push the Admiral button? That was her story too, until like five minutes ago. The reason these girls can't keep their hands off each other, the reason they can't stop helping and hurting and bitching out and getting all monstery with each other, is that they already know all this, and can't admit it.
Cialis commercial, and then back to the basestar. That's beautiful somehow. Three and Gaius stand in the Hybrid chamber, where she's saying funny stuff this week: "... One degree angle nominal seascape portrait of the womanchild cavern of the soul under pressure-heat ratio ides of evolutions have buried their fears... throughout history the nexus between man and machine has spun some of the most dramatic compelling and entertaining fiction." I want to write Hybrid all day long; I think it's my default setting. The difference between "Pythia" and "Bithia" is aspiration. Or is it voice? I always forget. /p/ is unvoiced, that's right: the Hybrid doesn't get a vote. (I'm not going near the obvious "bilabial plosive" joke.) The difference between the Hybrid and Three is aspiration. Or is it voice? "So this is where you got the idea to start intentionally downloading," says Gaius. Which I find fascinating, aspirationally speaking. "Gestalt therapy and escape clauses," offers the Hybrid, and I tend to agree. But the last thing the Cylons need right now is Gestalt: I'm thinking Reichian. Possibly Montessori. "Right, let's see what we can find out," he says, and fully reaches down into the water, like a total Ugly American, horrifying Three and causing me to scream like Martha Stewart getting peed on by Borat. That is so fucking crass. Three wigs, but I think she's just being superstitious; I don't know. You don't piss in the Grail and you don't go wiggling your hairy knuckles in the pure stuff of resurrection. Especially not in the presence of two women who continually/constantly bathe in it. Plus me. Gross me out.
Three begs him not to touch it -- egging him on, which she has to know on some level, the level that's already risked levels and levels of heresy to get to the truth -- but he does anyway. The Hybrid grabs his hand, suddenly sensate: "Intelligence. A mind that burns like a fire." And it's Gaius, so you know he's like, "Right here, that's me!" She tells him to "Find the hand that lies in the shadow of the light. In the eye of the husband of the eye of the cow." Which... there's got to be a better way to say that. It's the eye of Zeus, Hera's husband, cow-eyed Hera (because apparently they had Homeric epithets in the Colonies), but it's just so... The Thing of the Guy of the Place of the Way of the Deal. Of Latter-Day Cylons. It was "Zeus" right up until Friday, I'm given to assume, given that there are (smoothly done but noticeable) cuts to the backs of people's heads every time they say "Jupiter." It's the Eye of Jupiter that we're looking for, and that the episode is named after. Greasy-maned Gaius falls back and bored-faced Three's like, "It's crazy, right? Talks crazy?" But goo-fingered Gaius explains to silky-haired Three about the Hera stuff, and Three's like, "Could there be a connection between their Gods and ours?" (And this show kills you with the pronouns, because I think when she says "ours" she means hers and Gaius's. Which would be like the crappiest God ever.) Also: duh, Three. Pythian Oracles and Eleusinian Mysteries of death and resurrection and you're thinking maybe there's a connection?
"It's a location. A planet hidden in the shadow of light -- probably a cluster of stars -- that'll lead us to the eye of Jupiter. And to the hand hidden in the shadow of light. Probably some type of artifact." They fuss around about hands and five fingers and five faces and generally X-Files it right up, but basically: so everything's at stake now on the Algae Planet. The Eye of Jupiter to get one step closer to Earth, Gaius's stupid Cylon destiny, and Three's whole bag of bullshit, plus on the human side, you know, the algae that this whole episode is about. It's like somebody wants the Colony and Cylon to have to deal with each other. I'm sure that'll go fucking great.
In the officer's lounge on Galactica, a horrible thing is happening. Kat's staring in the mirror at herself, and slowly pulling out her hair. Like that dream with your teeth. Hair, and hair, great gouts of hair, coming out in her hands. Her cells revolting. She pulls out her rad badge and stares at it. It's black as night. And she hears a voice, and the voice is Starbuck's, and the voice is saying, "Accept who you are." And Kat grabs her rad badge, sucks it up, goes out and finds Enzo, and remembers Sasha. She says goodbye to that girl, in bed with Enzo, and then says goodbye to Enzo. She remembers who she is, and accepts it, and knows that she'll leave Sasha out between the stars. And she touches her Raptor, and she goes to Helo's locker and trades out rad badges with him, because he's the best and she knows it; she accepts it. The drums of war follow her into the flock, onto the hangar bay floor, among her fellow pilots, and up onto the wing, Helo's rad badge in her hand. Remember who you are; accept the grace in that: you're Kat. Not Sasha. It's always easier on this show to blame yourself. Nobody wants the embarrassment of absolution.
Outbound trip five, black-badged Kat loses the Faru Sadin, and curses herself again. In the CIC the damage reports are escalating across Galactica, and Tigh reports that the jump spot's gone unstable and they've gotta get out. Engineering reports a cascade of pressure failures. Bill hoshis to Apollo for a group jump, and Kat hisses at herself: "I'm not losing another one." And somewhere between the stars there's a ship called Faru Sadin. The shipherds jump, along with their flock. Outside the cluster, guilty-faced Starbuck and wincing-assed Apollo search frantically for visual on Kat and the Faru Sadin, and can't come up with her. In CIC, bunch-browed Gaeta watches the screens grimly; T'Pol-haired Hoshi reports that a Raptor and the Faru Sadin are missing. "It's Kat. She must've missed the order." Bill gets scared. In the cluster, Kat calls again and again for the Faru Sadin, looking down at her badge whenever she's brave enough. The whole CIC stares at the dradis. Kat flies around the cluster, blind, begging, starting to lose consciousness. Tigh begs her, quietly and under his breath, to come home.
Bill and Gaeta stare, worried. Kat's fading fast. It goes on a long, long time. It stretches out and seems longer than it is. I imagine Kara Thrace has a lot of things to think about during this time.
Kat and the Faru Sadin suddenly appear on dradis; Hoshi calls out for all of them. Kat radios into Galactica: "Mission accomplished." The Faru Sadin comes home. Kat comes home.
On the deck they crack Kat's Raptor, and she exits to thunderous applause. Adama and Tigh stand in the center, worried, while everybody else is grinning and cheering. She looks like last week's dinner. Her body turning in on itself, screaming something's wrong, but nobody can hear it over the applause. She holds her hands up, Evita-style, and the crowd goes wild. Portrait of the woman-child, cavern of the soul. Lee realizes something's wrong with her; what she burned off in the pressure-heat ratio of history and starlight. Lee sees her breaking right before she falls.
Kat lies in sickbay, Starbuck standing above. Looking tall as Helo. "They said you wanted to see me," she grits out. Hating the sight of this. Kat swallows painfully, and says she didn't want things to end between them the way they did. I think that Katee Sackhoff should have an Emmy on her shelf, I mean it. I know this is Kat's episode and Kat's scene, but my God Sackhoff can kill you with a look. She chokes out the following, proud and sick, sad and on fire. The kind of shame at somebody else's pain where you kind of hate them for showing you, and yourself for seeing it. The one thing she's always had is a body that works, and looks great. This is what weakness looks like. This is what she helped Kat accomplish. "Listen, um...everybody's...everybody is stuck with the things that they're not proud of. That, uh..." She breathes. "That thing about good people, I... um, I didn't mean that." Kat blinks at her: duh. "Yeah, I know." But it got the job done, didn't it? Burned off all the Sasha and left just Kat. Now there's just one girl in the room with an ugly history. "Here," she coughs, handing Kat a small bottle. "Take these. Sleeping pills." Kat looks up at her; if you know Kara, you know now isn't the time to look her in the eye. It nearly breaks her: "Enough," she says. "So, um, take 'em if you want." Kat thanks her. Once you've burned off that amount of bullshit you can look pain in the eye and make the choice. They tell each other their own stories, over and over, and this is how they tell their stories to themselves. That's why things are so intense with them. The last time that Kat, Kara, and death were in the same room, Kara pushed Kat out of the way and dove straight for death. And the only reason she didn't die was because she had Sam Anders. That's what we're dealing with here. Kara breaks into tears, finally, and runs straight from the room. As much for Kat as for herself: they've been all over this from every angle now, the pain of seeing your rival fall. Of being seen. Neither of them wants her there for that. Bill claps her on the shoulder on the way out: he knows. Kat was the CAG on Galactica for a year. He knows what it's like to love her.
"Admiral, I -- I know, I'm so sorry... " she says, apologizing for heroics. He shakes his head. "I'm not here to lecture. I'm letting you know about a promotion. I'm making you CAG again." We should have known this. She cries, almost laughing about it: "Sir, you know I'm not getting out of here, right?" He doesn't answer that question because that question is moot and not important; he answers the question behind the question. "You earned it. What you did was harder than facing a bullet. And you did it without putting one other soul in harm's way. Don't know if I could've done that." Okay, this is a sweet and touching scene and I do love this episode, but, Bill: BWAH! You couldn't go five fucking minutes! You've got a Faru Sadin all right, and you've put the whole Fleet in danger for her more times than I can count on my magical Cylon five-fingered hand. And you sent her over the brink just a few days ago, called her a cancer, burned out what didn't work. And that's the thing you can't admit here: given the same exact abuse, from the same place, for the same reasons, Kara lived and Kat is dying, and Saul's back on the CIC where he belongs. That is something inside, that response. You can't know in advance which way they'll jump, you just have to do it. And love, and hope.
"I wish there was something more that I could give you." Kat tries to smile. It's ugly, and sad. "No. It's good. I'd like to be CAG very much. Thank you." She sniffles, takes a beat, and realizes she's strong enough to be this real -- Kara gave her that. "Sir, there -- there's a thing. A reason why you might not want to do this. Kara knows what it is, but I wanted to tell you myself." As usual, he's five steps ahead. "I don't need to know anything other than what I already know. When you were CAG, you protected your people. Made them feel safe enough to be brave. What you were gonna say, does it change that?" No. Yes. Kind of. That was another girl, who died earlier today. You make me feel safe enough to be brave. She just looks up at him, mute. He pulls a chair to her side and sits down. Don't think about Billy Keikeya. "Are you...staying?" He smiles down at her. "I love this sickbay, in a way. Reminds me of where my son Zak was born. Caroline was so happy. She was convinced -- both times -- that she was having a girl. So it was a surprise at the end." (Sorta.) Kat asks -- hopefully, safe enough to be brave -- if he wanted a girl too. He realizes there's something more he can give her after all, and almost weeps. "... Yeah. Three's a good round number."
The Admiral doesn't talk, in the briefing room. Just pulls down Lee's name and switches it with Kat's, as CAG of the Galactica, placing Lee's quietly in her place as squad leader. The pilots nod, and weep, and say goodbye.
Before New Caprica, before Pegasus, the first thing the survivors did was take a wall in the corridor of Galactica and make it a little bit holier. They put up pictures of the lost and the dead and the broken, and laid flowers and candles and offerings on the floor, and made little shrines. And on that wall there's a picture of a girl named Kassie, which sounds a lot like Kat and a lot like Kara. She was just a girl. She wasn't a fancy pilot, and she wasn't a drug-runner or an expiated sinner. She wasn't a hero. Just a girl. And after she died, her lover -- a pilot -- got killed too. So then nobody remembered her, except for everybody that ever saw that picture. Everybody that ever walked that hall. And that's how we go on. Starbuck, dressed, healthy, pins Kat's picture just below Kassie's. And she looks, and she weeps, and she says goodbye. She touches it tenderly. Behind her, a respectful distance behind, Lee watches her remember.