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So you know that music that Tigh and Anders and Tory have been hearing? Well, Chief's been hearing it too. Meanwhile, Laura's undergoing Space Chemo and still having the dreams about Hera...only this time Gaius is there, and Sharon and Six have been having them too. Gaeta flat-out perjures himself before the tribunal about being there when Gaius signed the death list and saying that he presented to resistance at all. Gaius's recollection says differently, what with the gun to his head and all. Lampkin decides to go for a mistrial, and to that end he calls Lee to testify to his father's pre-conceived biases against Baltar. What Lee ends up testifying to is a laundry list of every misdeed anyone in the main cast has committed and subsequently been let off the hook for, in a monologue that both argues that Baltar is not guilty under the law and also that there is, in fact, no law at all. It turns the tide, as you'd figure it would, and Gaius is acquitted. Of course, now he has to live among the Fleet, so that should be fun.
With the trial out of the way, Adama sets the Fleet to jump to the Ionian Nebula, and upon jumping, the entire Fleet loses power and everything goes to hell. Gaius gets spirited away under a cloak by the squirrelly reporter from last week and her associates. Six's dreams of the opera house intensify. The phantom music starts getting louder, and that music turns out to be "All Along The Watchtower" (stick with it). The music draws Anders, Tory, Chief, and Tigh (name one non-Roslin person who fought harder on New Caprica) to an empty room in the bowels of the ship, where they all WTF at each other for a while and realize that THEY'RE ALL CYLONS. So that's four. Tigh, for one, doesn't care what he is, he plans on resuming his post and defending the Fleet; Tory does the same, which makes their positions at the right hands of Adama and Roslin awfully tantalizing now. Finally, with power restored, Dradis picks up a massive Cylon fleet closing in. Lee, his flights of legal fancy having been satisfied, straps on a flight suit and takes his Viper out. After following a phantom Raider (sound familiar?), he find himself flying side-by-side with Starbuck. Our Starbuck. And she's been to Earth. And she knows the way. And she's going to take us there, all of us. In 2008. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously, The Thirteenth Colony of Hanselgretalon left a buttload of beacons, Temples, signposts, diseases and other crap scattered across the universe in order to point the Fleet and Cylon Hordes to Earth. The last one led, via a torturous logic path that only Gaeta and Chief could possibly understand, to the Ionian Nebula, which, as they neared it, began to fuck up everybody that is cool. Since nobody named Adama is being cool right now, they didn't notice, and Roslin was too busy -- getting more cancer, more drug visions, and the cold incompetent shoulder from Bill -- to notice, but Saul and Sam and Tory were losing their marbles all over the spaceship. And in space, you know, that means they roll around. Adama was like, "Still no sign of the Cylon," which of course summoned a huge Fleet of basestars to Racetrack's location, but she jumped away in time to freak out the Fleet, but then for some reason the Cylons weren't a problem again, for like five whole minutes. Also of note: I finally recognize her without prompting.
With everybody else going shit-crazy, Gaius started feeling like his territory was being impinged upon, so he went even crazier. That'll show 'em! It even spread to some other people, like a cute and very intense lady with a son and the belief that Gaius is magic and can heal people with a touch -- rather than his huge wobbly brain, which is how he normally heals people. Huge wobbly brain and bad priorities, I should say, which is why he and Chip Six didn't auto-ignore the crazy cult lady at first sight. Speaking of Gaius Baltar, he's on trial for something or other having to do with the Fleet continually getting whittled down and whittled down for occurrences tangential to his poor decision-making skills. Sentence first, verdict afterwards: that's the wonderland of Colonial Justice.
After bitching out hardcore in front of the entire Fleet, nobody was feeling Lee at all, particularly his dad and his wife, both of whom kind of let him go pretty hardcore. Lee responded, of course, by resigning from the military, from being an Adama, from being a pilot, and pretty much anything not having to do with being Romo Lampkin's creepy judicial prag. His dad told him he had no integrity, which was right by being wrong -- if all you are is integrity, then what you are is selfish -- and his wife told him that the entire system was bullshit anyway, because Alice doesn't live here anymore, which not even Laura's figured out yet. Lee finally got tired of punching his dad in the gut over and over, and went after mommy Roslin instead, because he is a little shit, because Kara's dead, because he has no idea who or what he actually is or wants to be. Just like the Cylons; just like everybody else. The road you take doesn't matter, if you don't know where you want to go: any road will take you there. He's still learning about words, so he doesn't understand that -- for the people at large, by asking the question and getting the answer -- he in effect just gave the President of Humanity (not to mention his father's one-day lover) cancer again. Which is to say, he just gave the Fleet cancer. With his words.
On Galactica, Adama's trying to shave. The lights keep going out -- this only ever happens around Bill, have you noticed? -- and he at one point slaps the bulkhead by the sink, cutely. He cuts himself and grumbles, "Ah! Frak me." You and I both know what that means: cue the phone from Colonial One, right? At least, that was the joke I was already mentally writing, before the phone rang. From Colonial One. He answers, and we cut to Laura, lolling about luxuriously in bed. "Yell at me." Um. "I don't want to get out of bed!" He tells her she's called the wrong number; he's been thinking about going back to bed himself. Finally, he's got his groove back. Even with the weird "yell at me"/Maggie's invisible Marine talk, it's still pretty hot. She asks if he's okay and he laughs about her caring about his welfare, what with her cancer; the implication is not that she should only be thinking about herself and her cancer. The implication, I mean to say, is that it's all Bill can think about. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just cut myself. How are you doing?" She sighs, says she doesn't want to face "them," or anybody; she just wants to sleep in bed all day. "I think I stopped the bleeding," Adama says. "If you still need to be yelled at, I think I can give you some volume." See? Hot. But weird.
She laughs and tells him to give it his best shot. He half-yells, half-rumbles a half-hearted "Get out of that bed!" God they're adorable. She giggles and tells him that was nowhere near his best shot; she should be able to feel the glare coming off her phone like a tanning bed. "Get your fat, lazy ass out of that rack, Roslin!" (WHOA! Bill, I'm doing my best here, come on. I'd like to get you laid sometime before like Kara comes back.) Instead of slapping him through the spacephone, she chuckles sexily and goes into the whole "Yes, sir. Okay, sir. Anything you say, sir." And you know, if this were any other lady, or any other man, playing this kind of game, I'd be shitting it right now -- but Laura's got all the cards here, and she knows it, and she always knows it, and by her breeding alone you know there's no grain of truth to any of it, so it goes all the way around from being creepy to being adorable. And the way she thanks him, oh, and the way he signs off: "Don't let 'em see you sweat, Laura." They have groundshaking chemistry when they're not even on the same set. You know that the two halves of that conversation could have been filmed months apart, and they'd still... I dunno. I'm a big fan of not letting them see you sweat, and of Laura in particular not giving anybody anything they don't deserve, and I'm a big fan of their friendship as separate from their stalled-out affair, and it's just such an awesome start to the episode. I don't know. You know? Plus the concept of getting yelled at by him, or even worse, yelling at her, yourself? These are people unlike us; they are brave, they play poker with Tarot cards.
The Chief lies in bed with Cally, humming the mysterious song. That's four. Man. I realllly wanted Cally to be one of the ones. I guess she still could be, but whatever. If it turns out Chief is a Cylon it will fucking kill her, and that'll be funny. I'll probably cry, I mean, you know me, but right now it's hilarious. However, if Chief is a Cylon, that means that Nicky is either A) Not his baby, or B) Chief loves Cally. Like in a "trumps Sam/Kara, trumps everybody but Helo/Sharon" kind of way. Which makes me distraught. Based on only this, my physical reaction to this concept that Nicky is a Cybrid, and what it entails, I would like to maintain the viewpoint that Chief is not a Cylon. No matter what happens in this episode. (How hilarious would it be if I was right and they're not Cylons? And I could be like, "Only my mindless, baseless hatred of Cally guided us through this dark time. That's amazing.")
Sam! And Tory! In their underwear! Après sex! Awesome, not least because they're technically the two hottest people left on the show, but also: of course. Of course this is happening. I wonder how much is the mysterious music and the weird networking it seems to be accomplishing with the Four, how much is the prenominate hotness quotient, and how much is the fact that they're the only two civilians (until recently, in Sam's case) apparently allowed free rein around the entire goddamn aircraft carrier, drunk or sober or going wildly crazy. Sam performs a favorite from the Sam/Kara playbook ("Please don't run off, we have to cuddle, I am perfect in my masculine neediness") and Tory sings her part well. For a sec, and then they commence taking off all the clothes they just put on, and getting hot and heavy some more. And then: the music. Tory's like, "Sweet Jesus with that music already," and Sam goes, "You hear the music too? That we already knew we both heard?" But then the pilots knock on the bunker door, and the oceans of skin get clothes put back on, and Tory sits very tiny on a bunk feeling slutty, and Seelix gives her the mean awful look that says, "And here I thought I was classy waiting two weeks before getting all up on his jock last week," and "I think I might airlock you," and, "Oh, am I going to write some riot grrl poetry about this shit right here."
Chief walks through the ship, listening to the music, placing his lovely face against the steel, like a child, eyes closed, innocent. Not even afraid, just listening as hard as he can, feeling something he can't describe. Something like water, and the sounds across the water, like jumping from the highest place in the hangar bay, like being a child again, carried by something larger than himself. Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but today: That thing he keeps looking for.
Lee and Lampkin agree that a mistrial's their best option -- the long and short of it is that every witness they destroy (Tigh, Laura) is another brick in the wall, because the Fleet hates Gaius Baltar. Of course, Gaius doesn't get it, and starts pissing his pants, so Lee goes a little... Lee, baby. Take a frakkin' nap. You are making it so very hard to love you, and that was never your job. That was hers. "You didn't hear what my father just called you," Lee says, losing the war by winning this momentary battle. Playing the Baltar game. "He called you a traitorous piece of garbage, a man who doesn't even deserve a trial." Lampkin's ears perk the fuck up; Baltar cries and whines some more. "Right, so now because we're winning we're losing, actually?" Gaius Baltar: Getting It Eventually, Since Time Began. "Perverse, isn't it? One of the reasons why I love what I do." So hot. Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. Lee reads from another one of his grandfather's books, and in so doing reveals what a legal dilettante he really is -- and that his grandfather was a crap writer: "Forcing a mistrial may seem of little benefit to either side, but in fact, it can be a boon to the defense. The prosecution's shown their hand; at retrial the defense has all the tactical advantages, and the statistical chances of an acquittal rise by 25%." Joseph Adama, Trial Tactics & Strategies, page 273. Lampkin calls Joseph a "smart man," and Baltar goes... in another direction entirely.
Actually, you know what, hold up. In the beginning was the Word: Logos. The word is the face that floats on the water, and it's God: codifying, creating laws and language and the systems that we live in. Institutions, republics, contracts, everything that falls under Saturn, Chronos, Lear, Daddies back through time immemorial. Words are the way we share and know the male face of God. (Counter to the Word is the Sound, or the Feeling: the Hybrid, the Goddess summoned at the crossroads, the Oracles with their ceremonial bowls -- water resists the hard, fixed forms of the Word -- and their utterances that don't make sense until later, or until an interpreter can turn it back into Logos. A Leoben, or a male priest of Apollo at Delphi. Logos tells immediate and concrete truths; the Oracle tells better truths yet.) Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves. But essentially that's the problem here: Bill Adama and his son Lee are both rebelling against the mortal avatars of the Logos, which is always going to be your Dad, because of how brains and people work. If Lee lived here and now, he'd have bad credit and shitty dealings with money, get into fights with the cops; if he were Kara it would be...well, see "Tigh, S." (One of Odin's names is All-Father; he gave up his eye for the language of water, and heard music nobody else could hear: women's magic.) As it is, Lee's just using the Logos against his father, the same way that by subverting the entire trial (and by misusing the masculine energy of war, throughout the series, even against Roslin; and by constantly readjusting his parental relationships with everybody, by the second, trying to be the best dad ever to an entire race) Bill himself is giving Joseph Adama the finger. Not to cram fifty years of psych and lit theory into one paragraph starting with the Bible, but I tend to think a lot of theory's the same game: getting back at Daddy by twisting what words are, what they can do. I'd like to see Lampkin's father one day.
Anyway. "Yeah, well," stammers Gaius, trying to get all Sixy in response, "I can see why you'd want a mistrial." Lee hops right in there. "Well, that'd be the quickest way, wouldn't it, for you to absolve all your responsibility. Wash your hands of the whole affair." He points to Lee, saying Lee can get back to his life or what's left of it, and to Romo: "You get back to... wherever you get back to..." Love that! "And I get back to a cell, and I have to go through this all over again. I can't physically take that." The prissy, essential Gaiusness of that last line, the delivery of it, were so gorgeous I rolled around on the floor laughing like an idiot. "There will be a verdict!" Gaius shouts. And on it, the Fleet's soul hangs.
On the hangar deck, the radio is telling us about Tigh's freakout yesterday, which is in line with Lee's implication in the last scene that his conference with Bill and quittery took place in the last 24 hours. Racetrack's yelling at her nuggets about how they can't fly one of her Raptors until they know it all: "... Systems," she says. You can't operate a chopper, or the law, or your life, until you understand these things. The way they fit together. "Electronics, avionics..." Sam -- he's going for Raptors, I guess, and not Vipers. I like that, not only because of her but because of who he is: it makes sense -- hears the static and the sound. "...Navigation, engine controls, dradis configuration and calibration..." The senses, the way you find your way in the dark, the way you hear and see the voice of home: Sam notices Chief humming the song. "...Basic FTL functions, autopilot gearing and propulsion systems..." The way you move: Sam stares at Chief and begins to wander toward him, body trailing behind a feeling he can't name. "... The best way to learn that is on a Raptor. And that means getting your hands dirty." How dirty? She ushers them onboard, in her best Kat voice; Sam is drawn across the bay. Chief's still humming. In his throat and in his body.
There's a kindness, a friendliness in Chief's greeting to Sam, as he continues to hum, that would have warmed my heart once; now I just wonder if with other sight, you could see the sparks between them, the linkup, the connection. I would have loved for Chief to lean over and just give Sam a big old sniff or something, you know? Wildcats. "That song you're humming. What is that?" They talk about the song -- something you can't get out of your head, hearing it everywhere, the boom box at Joe's -- but it's not so much a conversation as two hands meeting each other. The same power playing both sides of the chessboard: take a drop of water, or mercury, and divide it. "Like it's something... " "From childhood," they finish together. Nobody notices how weird it all is, how many levels this game is being played on, except for Racetrack, who yells at him. He's reluctant, pulling away from the Chief -- and who wouldn't be -- but he moves on, grinning as she yells. These dancers and their song, and everybody around them just keeps walking, and wonders why they're not in step. It's just they don't see they're dancing, yet. Not from this angle. They just can't hear the song.
Sickbay, where Roslin's just finished her first round of "doloxan" treatment. You only have to see her face, the nausea and pain and grief, to know what we mean when we say that. "Ugh! Talk about the cure being worse than the disease," she says, trying to stay brave; he suggests bringing along a book or paperwork, time. "It'll help keep your mind off of it, and it'll also help keep your blood pressure down." Knowing Laura, the paperwork would probably be a list of the people whose deaths rest firmly on her shoulders, or people she's planning on airlocking, or a list of other possible ways she can offer to fuck Bill Adama that will sail over his crazy old head. None of which are particularly calming. He excuses himself gruffly -- "I do have some other patients" -- and leaves her to it. As soon as she's waved him off indulgently, she rolls over onto her side, hurting everywhere at once. "Oh, Gods..."
Back in the Opera House. Roslin and Sharon chase Hera through the halls again, and down to the Great Hall, where Caprica grabs her again -- and is joined by Gaius. They are lit up, beautiful, bathed in light. They enter the Great Hall together, closing the doors behind them. Laura wakes up screaming -- across sickbay, Sharon and Hera are screaming too. A scream like something being born. Cottle shouts, as Hera screams: "You're both freaking out at the same time?" Roslin makes her way across the clinic, dragging her drip stand along with her, locking eyes with Sharon: this isn't the first time. Sharon was part of her dream, of course. But then, Laura was part of Sharon's dream, too. "We need a moment. Take this off. Get this off me, please." Cottle wants desperately to understand; he's not alone. I think this -- whatever this is, this return to Kobol and the End of Line -- is the real mystery. I think the music, even Earth, are tangential, part of, working alongside. It's just too effed up and hearkens back to too many places and memories at once; it ties the human and Cylon together with blood, it involves everybody that ever crossed that line before now, including Gaius. Before the song.
Roslin enters Caprica's cell, Athena following behind, and tells the Marines to scoot. "We'll be fine. Shut the door." Roslin looks down at Caprica, so imposing even now, and apologizes to her for the shackles. Caprica's noncommittal but wants this woman's love: who wouldn't? (Besides I guess stupid old Bill, I mean.) "Were you with us a moment ago? In the lobby of the Opera House?" Caprica looks more unsettled than any Six has a right to be: it's fairly unbalancing merely to see. "I'll take that as a yes, by the look on your face." Sharon admits she and Hera were there too; Caprica protests that it shouldn't be possible. Cylon psychology is based on projection, not shared tripped-out freak-ins. Athena's like, "I'm a commissioned officer in the Colonial Fleet married to a nine-foot-tall slampiece from Caprica, large as life and twice as natural, with whom I have a preposterous child. Six impossible things before breakfast, lady." Roslin asks Caprica straight up if she was trying to get to Hera, and Caprica just shakes her head. God and children. "I just knew that I had to protect her with my life."
In Adama's office, Tigh's getting nutty all over the place about the music, how "they" put it in the ship, how he can hear it and nobody else. Bill's like, "Um, I'll look into it, kookoopants." Tigh tells him we've moved beyond the index card of someday on this one: "I am here telling you there is Cylon sabotage aboard our ship!" Bill asks Tigh to reconsider whether even the Cylons are fruity enough to "sabotage with music," and Tigh agrees that this would be a galactic amount of fruitiness. Bill promises again, and heads back to the trial; Tigh stands around his office hurling awkward, ridiculous anvils like cabers. "There must be some kind of way out of here..." he says.
You know what? Here's my hypothesis. Ron Moore's driving his car, or listening to his iPod, sometime around three years ago. No, he'd have to be not driving for this, because he's in a kind of drowsy state. And he's a hip guy, so he's got Dylan or Hendrix playing. I'm gonna say Hendrix. And he's thinking about how, hey look, after all that time on Star Trek and being the best writer on any of those staves, along with M. Taylor, and having worked his way right the fuck up the ladder, good old bad old Carnivale and the quiet times in between, he's created the best show ever seen. But what now? Can he let himself imagine two more seasons? Three more? What are the big turning points? And "All Along The Watchtower" starts playing, and somehow it falls into the fertile place his creative, dreamy mind is headed, and he can see it: the song, the intensity, the revelations, the stress of it all, putting everybody on the brink, turning everybody inside out, breaking more cameras, doing what he does best. Creating broken people and burning them pure again. It never comes out just as you picture it, but he already knows that, so he just gives in to this overwhelming, magic feeling that this is going to be the best thing ever. And you know what? That's what's on the tin. This isn't my favorite episode, because the dialogue in the Verheiden script is very WYSIWYG and tells you what's going on, there's no room for inference or play, just: tell me what is happening in the plot at this moment in time, and we'll move on. Let the crazy shit handle the rest, because it's going to end up awesome based on the five or six mind-blowing things that happen, and that's good enough.
Except that in order to define for the viewer the feeling that Moore had, in my hypothetical iPod happening, a long time ago, you need a lot less logos and a lot more magic, because by simply laying out the five or six mind-blowing things on the table, and telling us first what you're going to tell us, then telling us, then telling us what you just told us, you get further and further away from the awesome of the idea in the first place. Now I for a fact know that this is a set of awesome things that Moore still feels strongly about to this day, and that he wants our minds truly blown by them and for us to be very impressed by these things, and I am in agreement with the awesomeness of these things. And I don't know if it was the spoiling, or the uninspiring dialogue, or if this is all my shit I'm putting on the episode, but I don't know if I feel quite as freaked as I am meant to feel. At the end of last season, your stomach dropped because you knew what would happen , and you were scared to see it. This season, I feel dropped into a hole that has no bottom, because I have no clue what happens . And that is awesome. We'll have plenty of time to look around and wonder what will happen . But I still wonder what this episode would have felt like with fewer edges, and more space between the notes.
And the whole quoting-the-song thing is a huge part of that, because we get it, we get it, we get it. It should be the least noticeable part of the entire script, the weave, but instead it sticks out like something large and looming, a bright red thread, in a way that takes you out of the entire setup. None of the actors know what to do with it, so they can't even really help weave it right, but this is a time where they shouldn't have to. It should work both as real live dialogue, and as the clues to the song, and in most scenes (although this one works as a disorienting non sequitur, the rest don't) it's not doing the double-duty it should. There is a lack of... shit, sorry. Enjambment, basically. It means what it is, and it does what it says, and that's the extent. And there are ways in which I kind of feel... cheated? That's not the right word. And I don't know if I have explained it sufficiently, because to say there's a lack of poetry is to go too far in the direction of criticism, and this isn't a criticism exactly, just an openness to the possibility that every story can be told in an infinite number of ways, that every split second on that screen is the result of somebody's choice, and imagining other iterations of those, like a Hybrid, is fruitless, and sometimes the worst idea you can have, because the only person you're hurting is yourself. So shut up, Jacob. Back to the trial.
"Do you recognize this document, Lieutenant?" Cassidy asks Gaeta. He does. It's the one he brandished in Gaius's face the day his heart broke: "A death list issued on New Caprica by the office of the President." Who signed it? Gaius. Was it a forgery? No. For sure? Yes, for sure. "Because I was there. I saw him sign it." Lie. Gaius starts to wig out. The smile on Felix's face would scare the entire Cylon Fleet: so disingenuous, so hateful, so broken, so vengeful. Of all the people in the Fleet, that document is Felix's problem: the second he saw it, he took their names onto his back, scratched in like scars. He was the one who put "democracy" back in place, he was the one who got the Presidency back for his hero, he was the one who watched it fall to shit almost instantly around him, for a year he watched this and could do nothing. For who knows how long, he sat under the Cylon thumb, and watched Caprica and Gaius together again, and tried to think of ways to help the Resistance, and then back onboard, he nearly let the Circle take him down: to buy back for the Fleet what his ideals took from them. There's a reason Tigh and Laura were questioned together: it's so Gaeta and Lee could take the stand together, in this episode. What Gaeta was, Lee is: a person whose ideals brought down the world. A person who hasn't learned to be good, but not too good. And what Gaeta is now, I don't want anybody to be. "I saw him sign it," Gaeta says, over Gaius's screams; Cassidy asks him to describe a scene he never saw. "The Cylons brought the document into the presidential office. They had already selected the names. One of them, I believe it was a Three..." Gaius is spitting now: The gall! The unmitigated and déclassé cheek! (I'm extrapolating from his spitting sounds. I'm like Leoben!) "...Gave the list to the President and said, "Here are the people that are going to be executed. Please sign this. He looked at the list. He saw all the names. And then he signed it." Did he protest? "I mean, did he argue? Did he offer any resistance whatsoever?"
Flashback to New Caprica, that day in Colonial One when they shot her through the head and promised to do the same to him. How angry Doral was: how afraid. Of God. Now look, see, how far we've come. See how far from stem to stern the angel has to reach. Ron T. writes, after explaining what an "unrep" is: "Usually an aircraft carrier has a 'breakaway song' that's played over the loudspeaker as both ships peel away from each other, practicing what would take place if a nasty bogey showed up. Or maybe a Raider." And Doral's still screaming, and Gaius is taking the only stand he's ever taken: and now, here, it's being taken away. Sybarites confuse the body with meaning, with the real; serial ladykillers confuse the act with the meaning, the speech with the sound, the messenger with the message; the nature of modern life is obsession: Gaeta breaks his heart again. I bust Felix's no doubt well-trimmed balls about the gay thing every week, but he doesn't have to be gay to be in love with Gaius Baltar. My love for Gaius Baltar is the least gay thing I've ever done. Felix doesn't have to be gay to get fucked by Gaius: we all were. But whether Felix is gay is not the question and it never was. The question is: does Gaius know the difference? Between Kara and Lee, between Laura and Bill, between Felix and Gina? His heart and his dick have always had some trouble communicating: why shouldn't this hurt just as bad? Felix loved Gaius Baltar as a hero, and Gaius Baltar loves most to be loved as a hero. And now Felix is taking away the one heroic moment the man ever gave us. This is how he's brought low, by love and respect removed: this is Caprica seeing Gaius walk out the door with Three. This is Sam tossing Kara's dogtags in her face. This is Lee and Bill Adama.
"Oh, Felix. Oh, Felix, what are you doing?" Gaius about bitchslaps Cassidy, retreating from her as she brandishes the order. That octagonal piece of his heart that everyone can look at. "Gaius, Gaius," Lampkin Seacrests, "We'll get him in the cross." Over shouts from the tribunal for Lampkin once again to get his crazy ass under control, Gaius screams hilariously: "Look, it's no secret! The whole Fleet knows this man tried to the stab me through the neck, and you missed! Butterfingers!" Man, I love my guy on the edge. Lampkin apologizes; Lee gives him a steely STFU. ...And then Lampkin releases Felix. No further questions. Gaius wigs out some more, and Franks finally gets to gaveling, and they dismiss the witness. "Listen, it's your word against his right now. If he's decided to perjure himself, there's nothing we can do to change that now. We're going to have to adjust our strategy."
And that strategy? Move for mistrial. Gaius screams a bunch more, both exciting and new, and one of the judges says in some kind of accent, "Oh, behave, Dr. Baltar!" The mistrial, of course, comes on the grounds of "somebody" and their total lack of objectivity. Bill's like, "That's a serious thing to say, and about whom?" Um, dude. You. Obviously. And to prove it? "...The unusual step of calling Mr. Lee Adama to the stand." Lee's of course like "The fuck?" and promises not to testify against his dad; Lampkin's like, "Either way, get that ass up there." Cassidy excepts and excepts, and Lampkin assures the tribunal that he can think of seven precedents right this second, for counsel testifying at trial. Franks gives it to him. Lampkin asks if it's been four days since the meeting Lee talked about earlier; asks if the Admiral expressed an opinion about whether Gaius deserved a trial. Lee stresses out and won't talk. "All I'm looking for is the truth here, Mr. Adama. Let's have it. I'm waiting. Answer the question. You swore an oath as an officer of the court. If you don't answer the question, you halt the entire system of justice..." That word again. Lee screams. "-- What frakking system?!" The judges try to chill him out, but this is it. The Maelstrom. He either becomes a man in the five seconds, or he's dead meat. His wings are clipped permanently. "All right, all right. I'll try something else. Do you believe that the defendant deserves a fair trial?" Yes. "Aside from the fact that everyone deserves a fair trial, I also happen to believe that he is not guilty of the charges and should be acquitted." Cassidy freaks, and the judges are swayed -- after all, defense can do this in closing statements -- but Adama sure as fuck wants to hear it; another judge agrees. So why acquit?
"Come on," Lee chuckles. What Bamber accomplishes here, with this ribeye of a mouthful, is nothing less than amazing. It's a lot of words and not the kind of words that naturally come from our boy, but they're good at telling you what's been going on the whole time. As in, the whole series. I'll let him talk. "Did the defendant make mistakes? Sure, he did. Serious mistakes. But did he actually commit any crimes? Did he commit treason? No. I mean, it was an impossible situation. When the Cylons arrived, what could he possibly do? What could anyone have done? I mean, ask yourself, what would you have done? What would you have done? If he had refused to surrender, the Cylons would've probably nuked the planet right then and there. So did he appear to cooperate with the Cylons? Sure. So did hundreds of others. What's the difference between him and them? The president issued a blanket pardon. They were all forgiven. No questions asked.
"Colonel Tigh? Colonel Tigh used suicide bombers, killed dozens of people. Forgiven. Lieutenant Agathon and Chief Tyrol? They murdered an officer on the Pegasus. Forgiven. The Admiral...The Admiral instituted a military coup d'etat against the President. Forgiven. And me? Well, where do I begin? I shot down a civilian passenger ship. The Olympic Carrier. Over a thousand people on board. Forgiven. I raised my weapon to a superior officer, committed an act of mutiny. Forgiven. And then on the very day when Baltar surrendered to those Cylons, I, as Commander of Pegasus, jumped away. I left everybody on that planet alone, undefended, for months! I even tried to persuade the Admiral never to return. To abandon you all there for good. If I'd had my way, nobody would've made it off that planet. I'm the coward. I'm the traitor. I'm forgiven."
"I'd say we're very forgiving of mistakes. We make our own laws now, our own justice. And we've been pretty creative at finding ways to let people off the hook for everything from theft to murder. And we've had to be. Because...because we're not a civilization anymore. We are a gang. And we're on the run. And we have to fight to survive. We have to break rules. We have to bend laws. We have to improvise. But not this time, no. Not this time. Not for Gaius Baltar. No, you...you have to die. You have to die, because...well, because we don't like you very much. Because you're arrogant. Because you're weak. Because you're a coward. And we the mob, we want to throw you out the airlock because you didn't stand up to the Cylons and get yourself killed in the process. That's justice now. You should've been killed back on New Caprica. But since you had the temerity to live, we're gonna execute you now. That's justice!"
Two things. Thing One is that the director should be put up against the bulkhead and smacked for the shot that follows, which is the entire gallery shaking their heads and going, "No! No!" like the rhetoric has convinced them all that they're entirely different people than they were a second ago, and they're horrified by the implication. Which, I'm very wary of reaction shots to speechifying, because they're productional masturbation of the most mirror-gazing sort. God, how many times on The West Wing did some character deliver some admittedly ass-kicking piece of rhetoric penned by Sorkin, only to have Schlamme point the camera at some wise character going, "Man, that was some good writing." I hate that so, so much. I want to be the one shaking my head, going, "NO!" I don't need to see a bunch of punter day-playing Vancouverians shaking their heads like I'm too stupid to see which way the wind is blowing. Embarrassing, grotesque, stupid shot. Also, it's like a quarter of a second long, and Crazy Gaius Cult Lady is front and center, so it's not totally wasted nor is it that unbearable, but Jesus God. Thing Two is: So awesome!
"This case...this case is built on emotion. On anger, bitterness, vengeance. But most of all, it is built on shame. It's about the shame of what we did to ourselves back on that planet. And it's about the guilt of those of us who ran away. Who ran away." And that's Bill, and that's the whole beginning arc: we were so busy wondering if the man at the top could forgive himself, we forgot about Lee, leaving Kara to Hell and worse. Those were his people too. His people. "And we are trying to dump all that guilt and all that shame onto one man. And then flush him out the airlock and hope that that just gets rid of it all. So that we can live with ourselves. But that won't work. That won't work. That's not justice." It goes out of him. Captain Apollo rises from the ground and begins to weep. "Not to me. Not to me." And Lampkin grinning Cheshire, knowing the weak places: "No further questions."
Cassidy tells the judges once again that this is bullshit, and they agree, but we already won and everybody knows it. Even Cassidy's like, "Thank you for registering my existence." Franks offers her the chance to cross, and Cassidy almost laughs angrily. "I have no question for defense counsel." Word. This trial! And then...Lampkin rests. Franks calls an adjournment, Lampkin mutters that this is a glorious moment indeed for jurisprudence. Roslin congratulates Cassidy on a job well done, while both of them look like they took bites out of the same lemon.
"All rise." Franks explains the other side of the "system" speech: "Like everything human, justice is imperfect. It's flawed. But it's those very imperfections that separates us from the machines. And maybe even makes us a species worth saving." I like this undertone, it started with Roslin's "preserving the culture at all costs" speech to Chief, back in his episode. The idea that you can't just start over fresh, but you can't stay the way you are: you're stuck. What do you do when you can't get out? Change into something else. "Gaius Baltar. After carefully weighing the evidence, this tribunal, in a vote of three to two...finds you not guilty." Everything goes to hell. Some scattered applause and boos before the riot begins. Roslin grabs Tory and bounces; not out of fear for her safety but because she's breathing fire. Gaius addresses the press, hilariously: "I always knew that I was going to be acquitted, but the fact that I have been found innocent shouldn't disguise in any way that this trial has been a total pantomime!" Things go to hell squared, in the confusion; people getting beat up by Marines, administration getting smacked around. Lee calls out to his father, to save Gaius Baltar.
"I knew right from the very start that if there was a way to demonstrate the sheer -- What's the word I'm looking for? Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the word I'm looking for -- hypocrisy of the prosecution's case, then really, the judges had no other option but to find me not guilty." Lampkin and Lee look upon him, grinning and sickened like twins. "Well, your boundless confidence provided us with great solace throughout the proceedings," says Lampkin archly. Gaius refuses to take the hint and thanks them from the bottom of their grossed-out hearts; Gaius takes it too far: "On a personal note, if I could've seen the Admiral squirm just a little bit more, it wouldn't have hurt." Lee gets right up in his personal business and tells him not to push it. Gaius shrinks and addresses Romo, asking for his personal counsel. "I've thought about maybe doing a book tour around the fleet. And there's the publishing rights. And there are issues about my security, where I'm gonna live, what I'm gonna do. Since we've forged this great relationship during the trial, I thought, you know, who better to think about..." Gaius spent months on the Basestar learning to project; still can't read a room for shit. Lampkin winks, almost, in his gleeful hate: "Actually, now that the Fleet's legal system is in place, my not-so-inconsiderable talents are required elsewhere. So I'm afraid...this is the end of our journey." He was never there for you: it was Lee he was after. Gaius finally realizes how totally fucked he is. "What...what about me? Wait a minute, wait, please. Think about this for a second." Don't think about Danny Noon; don't think about how you have to make up what you are when they take away what you were. How dirty your hands have to get. "Where am I gonna live? What am I gonna do? How am I going to survive?" Lampkin tells him he'll land on his feet: the thief talking down to the joker. It's done.
Waiting for Romo's shuttle, Lee asks him if he knew what would happen, on the stand. Of course he did. "I knew you were an honest man, Mr. Adama. Much unlike your grandfather." Kinda Babylon 5, kinda Deep Space Nine, that, but then Romo walks away, strong on his pins; Lee looks down at the useless, abandoned crutch. Dude is good.
Roslin looks like she's about to puke up actual chemo all over Bill: "Gaius Baltar is innocent. Just the sound of that makes my skin crawl." He tries to wiggle: "Not Guilty is not the same as Innocent." But it's not opposed, either: innocence is the opposite of experience. (Are you experienced?) The opposite of Not Guilty is Not Guilty: it's what they all are. It's what you are. It's what I am. Scapegoats most of all. "It must've been particularly difficult for you," she says, still resisting. Don't ask the question and you won't have to hear the answer: "What, you just...couldn't get the other two guys to budge?" He's quiet; she already knows. "...You voted for his acquittal, didn't you?" Bill's libido is like "FUCKING A, DUDE." Bill nods. "Hate to say it. Defense made their case. The prosecution didn't." She touches him but without touching. Gaius Baltar is a traitor. They both know that, regardless of the outcome of this trial. "No one's asking anyone to forget. Or to forgive. But we have to look to the future." To the system that can't be remade and can't stay in place; to the place Lee wove for them, from all the truth in the Fleet: Dee, and Lampkin, and Gaius, and Laura. Bill, and Tigh, and most of all Kara. Fixed isn't the same as unbroken. It's what we all are. Laura leaves, to feel sick and rageful, to heal, to knit herself back together, to do the numbers on a Laura/Lee ticket for the election. Should she live that long. In the space left by her exit, Adama orders Gaeta to jump to the Ionian Nebula.
In a Galactica corridor, there's a small man, long dark Jesus hair, beard, with a box of things, rushing to a place he doesn't know about, on a road he doesn't recognize. Pen, "papers." Dreams, words, wishes, plans. Plans for breaking and remaking a system in his own image. A system that didn't need breaking; just healing. He came back from the fairies with his hands empty: this is a life. Gaius in a box, with nowhere to stand. The people push by him: some of them, pilots and Marines, shove past, but he doesn't mind that so much. It's the ones that don't notice him at all: those are the ones that hurt.
Jump coordinates distributed, sir, and all Fleet ships showing green, for jump formation delta. They jump. All fleet ships reporting in, sir. Gaeta scans on dradis: "Let's see what's out there." What's in here: Laura Roslin, on CIC again, doubled over. Dying Leader? Or proximity to the Nebula? Or a song that only she can hear? The lights go out, everywhere at once: in CIC, and in Galactica, and across the Fleet. Everyone goes dark. The music comes, again, louder and louder: that old song they used to play. The Fleet drifts, in the dark: nowhere to stand.
In the hangar bay, they're doing what they do: Racetrack summons her nuggets, wondering if they make it out of this. Cally calls for light. In CIC Dualla and Gaeta check in, calling systems: the voice of home, its nerve center, working together. Pilots and ECOs and a million deckhands, mustering in the dark. Laura and Bill look at each other, the light soft as candles, and will each other stronger for this round. Gaius looks around, wondering if this is them, coming to get him again; coming to save him from anonymity and the knives in the dark. Back into the dreamtime: two female figures, shrouded in darkness, look at each other and then back at him, and advance. Is one of them Tory? He turns, in fear, and a woman appears to him, from nowhere: it's Intense Cult Lady, with a hand out to him. "Gaius, it's okay. Come with me." The two figures in the shadows are on with her; Mary, Mary, Martha; they drape him in a safety blanket, to hide his face, the effect is jarringly New Testament. He begs to know where he's being taken; she tells him the truth. Home. "To your new life. Here. Come on."
Caprica dreams, in her cell: she and Gaius stand at the parapet of the Final Five, Hera in his arms. They step toward the five flags, bright as stars, but they are empty. Above and behind, before frescoes of creation, stand the Final Five, looking down from the balcony.
In the hangar bay, they're doing what they do: Racetrack and Cally saving the world. Chief hears the music. "There must be some kind of way out of here," he murmurs, before the bugs stop jumping. The song is a riddle: it runs backwards. First the princes keep the view, listening to the wind and the wildcats, like songs across the water. Then the litany of questions, problems, whining: Adama and Roslin drinking wine, none of them along the line knowing what it's worth. And then the angels, knowing this is just a joke, they've been through it, that's not fate. That's just the way it happens. Begin at the beginning and go on 'til you come to the end; then stop. It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. Cally begs her people -- her people -- to be careful where they walk: "It's all live." Tigh, Sam, and Tory begin to sing; everybody dances toward the assigned place, at the assigned time. Away from their posts and into the unfolding.
"There comes a pause, for human strength will not endure to dance without cessation; and everyone must reach the point, at length, of absolute prostration." Lewis Carroll said that. He would have loved this show. Sam and Chief greet each other, in the equipment room. Linking up. Tory begs them to tell her it's not happening. The look on Chief's face, as he thinks of Boomer, in the water: "Huh. So that's it. After all this time. A switch goes off, just...like that." Nothing so terrible, nothing so horrible. It's not the smell coming from you, it's learning you've been singing all along. Boomer, singing to a Raider, a song from childhood. This is what it looks like unfolding: like everything already looked. Just rubber bugs jumping, all along.
Tigh appears at the door, hilariously: "Whoa. Oh, no way. I don't believe this. I'm not buying this. This is a... this is a trick. Come on, we're not... we're not... " Tory begins to hum the song. This part was kind of rough to watch without laughing, even though they're not bad at humming. Tigh tells them to stop it immediately. To deadbolt the doors. To lock themselves in with it and save the Fleet. He quickly disintegrates: "Forty years in the service. Forty years. Two wars. Combat. Locked in that dungeon on New Caprica. Ellen. My gods. What about Ellen?" Sam's feeling him, anviliciously as well: "No, no, no, no. Not after all this. Not after the Resistance. And the Occupation. And after watching my friends die one after another for frakking this?" Tory reaches out to him: the link. He shrugs back. "You stay the hell away from me. You all just stay the frak away from me." Chief's been ready for this moment since before New Caprica was named. Since the first time he shoved old Brokeback in the bug room and covered her tracks. He's ready. There is grace in this. "Sam...it's true. We're Cylons. And we have been from the start."
The power outage was Fleet-wide, Admiral. It was also simultaneously restored to all ships. And now there's dradis, Gaeta's telling us: "Massive Cylon Fleet on intercept course!" Power up and spool, emergency jump. Which will, of course, take twenty minutes, thanks to the powerdown. Right where they have to be. Condition one, throughout the ship. "This is not a drill. All Viper pilots report to Vipers immediately. Inbound Cylon fleet. I repeat, action stations, action stations. Set condition one throughout the ship. This is not a drill." It never is. This is a breakaway song, and nobody can even hear it.
"Gods," says Tory. "What are we gonna do?" The Four stare and stare; Tigh reaches higher. Saul Tigh begins to rise. When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. When you don't know where you stand, you have to find the ground for yourself. That's the one thing you always own, no matter what they take from you. The road he's on... Not to belabor, but... When Saul falls, it's on the road to Damascus. God appears to him and says, "I am Jesus, whom you persecute: arise, and go into the city." And Saul is blinded, like Odin, and he sees the unseen and learns to speak the language of angels. He becomes somebody new. (He dies and is reborn. We just do it differently, on our side of the salt.) And all the things he thought he knew, all the people he thought he could hate with impunity, all the scapegoats he could kill, all the monsters he fought for forty years were just him. Looking back at him through God's eyes, singing a song only he could hear. This was never Gaius's trial; of us all, he's the only one who was never on trial here. And Saul is forgiven. You have to laugh. There is infinite grace in this: "The ship is under attack. We do our jobs. Report to your stations!" When the smell, the song, the sound is coming from you, then the song is all that matters. The rest is up to you. This whole season has been just one question: when we preserve humanity, what are we preserving? When they take away everything that makes you, when your entire self is taken apart in the unfolding, when the angel shows you the door and begs you to walk through, you have only one choice. It shines bright as five stars, and burns twice as hot: "My name is Saul Tigh. I am an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be."
The song begins to play for us now, without static, without confusion, without anything but the message, burning five by five: it's a breakaway song, but only by the rules of logos, the laws of war. We know a better song; took twenty episodes, took fifty-three, took ten thousand years, and so much salt, to hear it clear enough. But we know a better song.
Cally, adorable: "Where the hell have you been?!" Chief shakes his head: "I'll tell you later." She is going to have a full-on fucking litter of cats at that point, isn't she? That's going to be hilarious, and really really sad, and Athena best watch her hot little ass, because Cally doesn't like anything in the middle of her "us." Cally needs to interrogate seriously her concept of "us," but I've only said that like a billion times already; her concept of "them" is a Maelstrom all its own. I don't envy her. Saul and Chief lock eyes. The link. There is nothing terrible in connection: Cylon or not, it's only relief. Learning to be human is learning to own the ground on which you walk, and learning to be Cylon is learning to believe in an "us" bigger than you can imagine. Bigger than the universe. Learning to be a deckhand is learning to get your hands dirty; being part of the "emerging aristocracy" is learning to get your hands dirty, too. The Olympic Carrier will always be with us; so will the Pegasus. The only thing worth anything, human or Cylon, is the link between the nation called you and the nation called me: it's the engine where God is made. It's the engine angels must machine.
So too these Four, these heroes, this very frakkin' sexy shape of things to come: Saul Tigh, Sam Anders, Tory Foster, Galen Tyrol. Galen means "physician." Athena, and Caprica, and Hera. Laura, perhaps. Kara, one assumes and hopes. Those that walk between worlds, seeing in bifocal, finally focused, hearing the music of God. The obsession of life is nature, how about that: discovering and describing. Trying to love everything around you. Maybe all these Helo and Adama Suits, the Kara Suit of Special Destiny, the Chief Suit of Labor Disputes, maybe they were all helpfully provided for us, after all. Maybe we were the ones trying them on, all along. Boomer and Athena, and Laura Roslin. Tory and Sam. Cally, and Cavil, and Three, Gaius and his angels: maybe we were being prepared, focused through so many lenses one by one, so that we could handle this. Human psychology is based on projection; we've been running from the attack for years, too. Waiting to rest.
And these Four, these newborn people, that can dance in the link and still claim the ground below their feet; these Four that can lay down their burdens of fear, and hatred, and self-loathing, and pledge the work of their hands to their people. Their people. These Four take their stations, hold the line, and take back their names again. Bill greets Saul in CIC, and Saul promises he can count on his oldest, closest friend. Through all the bad nights, when he gets like that, they held on as tight as they could: Lee and Sam couldn't stop loving each other if they tried, from that angle. Tory takes Roslin's arm ,and the love in her eyes could stop you cold. "I'm here if you need me, Madam President." And across the deck, Tory and Tigh lock eyes. The link.
As long as things are fucking awesome rockout stupid great, they say, why not make Jacob cry? Lee grabs his flight suit and helmet from his locker, and runs to the deck. It's no use going back to yesterday: he was a different person then. Why am I only getting emotional about Lee Frakkin' Adama these days? If I knew him I'd slap him to hell and back. I think it's all the civics talk. What we do and what we don't do. How the only way you can be sure about the lines between yourself and everybody else is to draw the circle as wide as possible, and serve it all with the work of your hand. How goodness is the strength to do what's right, not what's allowed. The pursuit of excellence. He's like the only person on this show that wouldn't look at me like I was crazy talking like that. That's probably why I hate his ass. That's probably why I secretly love him best, too. Human psychology is based on projection. Captain Apollo is dead, shed like a Suit. On the other side of Bill, and Joseph, and Kara and Carolanne, on the other side of Roslin's carcass and all the apologies, all the love, burning like that door, there's Captain Apollo. He's not one of the Four, in this moment, and I don't think he's number five, but you tell me the difference. Then tell me how it matters. He's a good boy, we never forgot that. But there's no such thing as too good, just the wrong angles. He just needed to remember. Thank the Gods he did.
Three is the number of the Goddess, of change, of language that passes understand. Three women stand in a cell in which they've all spent time, for trusting God, in their time. Maybe this time Caprica's the prisoner, and Laura's the interrogator. The players change, the story stays the same: three women, a prison cell, a dream, and a child. Four is the number of God, of logos, of stability. It's the ground on which we stand, so that we may sing songs and spells and write our poems and have our dreams. Four people, representing the four classes of the Fleet: pilots, command, administration, knuckledraggers. All of them crossing lines, all of them changing too fast to see clearly. In every three there's a secret fourth, missing: the Devil, or woman, or whoever we hate most today. That's Gaius, in the Opera House, rushed away in a moment by his women: the agent of change, destroyer of two societies, two cultures. That's Gaius, tying the two groups together now: Hera's Crazy Math Father, the first person to hear this song, when the angel first came to him. It's beautiful, I think, the symmetry. And Gaius means "Earth."
Helo notices him, up in the sky. "Who's in Viper 3?" The song is gorgeous, exactly what I would want to hear if God and/or our erstwhile robot masters were to take over my hearing apparatus. It's weird in that it gives you flashbacks to the soft guitar sounds of Enterprise, a bit, but over the vrooming spaceship porn, it's all right. It's a cover -- I imagine Jimi or Dylan is way expensive -- but it's all mixed up with the muzak and the poundy drums and the sitar and it's just ... correct. Cheesily correct, but everything's happening so fast. "...'Plowmen dig my earth: none of them along the line know what any of it is worth...'" Apollo calls in a bogey: an invisible Heavy Raider, perhaps? An angel, a will o' the wisp? A white rabbit? Leading where? "...'No reason to get excited,' the thief, he kindly spoke..." They say the messiah comes when you least expect it, like a thief in the night. Lampkin's a thief, and Gaius is a total joker. But Gaius is a thief too. Apollo loses his bogey and stares all around. Not even Lee's dradis can identify him. Or her: Everybody watching says just one name, softly and under their breath, afraid to break the spell.
("..."But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate...") For a pilot there's always a bogey in the bug room. Sometimes they stop jumping. ("...So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late ...") And there it is. There she is, the bogey, the monster that's chased him across the stars, teasing, fading from view, taking him down into heavy atmosphere and up into the sun, naked on a virgin world, under the moon. She stands on the bank of the river, bringing life to the shore. Kara Thrace comes up alongside.
Ever tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like, after the candle is blown out? It's like this: just one star, burning, like a storm, from an angle you couldn't ever see before. Like her eyes, looking at you with more love. Fixed, but not unbroken. Her Viper's so clean, so fresh. Her grin is full of love and wisdom, just as in life. Never innocent, never guilty: The dawn, breaking. Again.
Every love story is, first and foremost, a mystery. That means riddles. So first the princes, the wind and the wildcat, like a sound across the water: as the song plays us out, before the credits shine with a gift from them to us, KATEE SACKHOFF as STARBUCK, so GET OFF OUR ASSES, we're treated to a vision of our own. Back, back away from the two Vipers, flying in tandem, as they always have, even when the angle showed they weren't. Up into the sky, out of the Nebula, away from the Fleet, back through four Basestars and a Battlestar, away from that old anvil war ("Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"), and back, and back, and then -- after just a moment to breathe, after so much beauty, after all we've been through -- straight forward, faster than Kara, watching galaxies and then solar systems and then planets and then her: most beautiful, the endpoint, the glory of Earth. And all along the watchtower, she's just the view we have to keep. Like Bill, and like Roslin, before him. The nature of obsession is life, untwisting: All those wrong turns, suddenly wrenching straight; all those mistakes not mistakes, but just the way things had to go.
But then! Then the conversation, the litany of questions, answered before he can start. He says her name. "Don't freak out," she laughs. "It really is me." He speaks softly, afraid to say the name, afraid to break the spell. "It's gonna be okay," she says, like the dawn waking you softly. "I've been to Earth. I know where it is. And I'm gonna take us there."
I believed. Admit that you did, too. I'll see you year, and I'll miss you 'til then. Thank you for everything. Boom boom boom and all that. But first, the angels, knowing this is just a joke, knowing they've been through it -- that they're going through it now. Knowing "fate" is just bad weak logos, unequal to the task, just a bad angle on the way it happens. On it happening, now. Knowing it's going to be okay, whatever else happens.
So lastly in the riddle, the first part. The best part: in the moment of the opening of the door, in the moment before he comes to life again, in the moment before he can finally breathe, in the moment before she leads him out of the storm, Kara Thrace comes up alongside Lee Adama in the sky, and smiles perfectly.
"Hi, Lee," she says, and dances us back from the abyss, again.