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Adama and Tigh weren't blown up so much as knocked out by the bomb at the end of last week's frenetic episode, and are taken into custody. Meanwhile, the Raptor bearing Roslin and Baltar to the Baseship narrowly avoids being blown up as well. A peak experience with the Chief causes the newly sprung Mad Bomber What Bombs At Midnight to radically reconsider skinjobs, his own absurd racism, and whether or not murder/suicide is ever a good idea. He ends up joining Adama's posse, redeeming himself in the middle of a much bigger shitstorm and making his insides look a whole lot more like his outsides.
Not so fortunate are the entire Quorum, whom Zarek has executed the second they blink about his self-declared Presidency. Goodbye, Jacob Cantrell. We especially liked your hip new 'burns. When not gunning down entire governing bodies, Zarek amuses himself giving speeches to a quickly fading Felix and lying about everything, to everybody, all the time. Half the time he doesn't even know he's lying, but still manages to demoralize people at their most vulnerable: first telling Bill that Saul's dead just as Felix is throwing him a ridiculous mock trial-slash-existential ass-cover, then telling Laura Bill's dead and expecting her to roll over. Roll over she does not.
Also not rolling over: Admiral William Adama, who literally spends the entire episode telling every single person in the world to fuck off as loudly as one can through one's dentures. He is a Lean, Mean, Fuck You machine. It is amazing. Turns out his Bucket List has one item on it, and that item is: Everybody Goes To Hell. Bill's Care Bear Glare powers have never been so magically delicious. He tells Gaeta to cram eleven things up his ass, invites Zarek to blow him, calls his lawyer a pimp, tears holes in the hull using his glare... A couple of lieutenants actually cry, because he's that scary. Finally they have no choice but to tie him to a chair in front of a firing squad. Then he just starts spitting at people.
Chief spends the entire episode crawling through exceedingly tight ducts and getting into hilarious scrapes, then pulls out the actual guts of the Galactica FTL drive with his bare hands at the very last second, saving the day. Meanwhile, Lee and Kara spend the entire episode running around beating the shit out of everybody in incredibly awesome ways, and eventually free the Cylons and toasterfrakkers from the brig. While trying to find and help Bill retake his command, though, Sam Anders gets shot up real bad -- only to be rescued by Kara and the reluctant Romo Lampkin. The rest of the Cylon/human posse meet up with Adama and take back CIC in about one bloodless second.
Laura meets resistance in the form of Final Fiver Tory Foster, who is totally uninterested in hanging around the Fleet now that it's gone pear-shaped and can't save everybody from Cavil. Laura gives fifteen speeches about the awesomeness of Bill Adama before getting real and declaring war on the Fleet itself from the helm of a Cylon frakkin' Basestar. Needless to say, when Madame Airlock returns, it is both very awesome and very loud. (Also: Leoben finally got hot. Very distracting.) Laura's about to deliver the whoop-ass, too, when Felix suddenly realizes that he has been fortune's fool, pees himself, and gives up exactly one second before Adama's posse takes over the whole Fleet again.
Gaius swans about on the Baseship for awhile with new Farrah-haired Lida Six before realizing that A) even though his cult is totally lame, they're still his responsibility because they love him, and B) if that's true about the cult, it's one thousand times truer about Felix Gaeta. So he rushes back to the Galactica just in time to watch them clean up the mess, have one last truly heartbreaking date with Felix, and then witness his execution, Zarek alongside, by Adama's firing squad.
So, yeah. It's definitely the second half of the story, and moves just as quickly as "Oath," but between the lyrical language (in particular, Bill and Laura get multiple Tigh-quality soliloquies), laugh-out-loud moments, real nailbiters, and Felix's deftly sketched and moving final hours, I'm giving this one the edge. Which is surprising, given the narratively perfunctory/obligatory nature of this mutiny, and its speedy resolution. But then, frak knows what's going to happen . Here's to seven more hours of this quality shit right here... Starting week with the return of one Ellen Motherfrakkin' Tigh.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!This is a good one, worth looking at. And not just because it's like a weird sci-fi retelling of Howards End, with the poor and the rich and the intellectual bourgeoisie robots in a three-way war, but most especially since it's the last chapter in an act, and that's always fun and a little queasy, watching all the pieces get moved around. This show, and Season Four particularly, have always been pretty amazing that way, not that we could ever see the patterns at the time: How the Demetrius took us all the way through Act I, and Laura jumped at the end of that: twenty-one hours, chopped into seven-episode chunks, laid end-to-end from here to Earth, starting with stories about faith and how far it takes you. Really, really simple when you come down to it. (What's funny is S3, where "Rapture" is the obvious midpoint, and "Hero" and "The Woman King" are the act breaks. Which Act wants them? Neither!)
This, Act II, is pretty beautiful in its simplicity: the simultaneous two-parter about what happened on Galactica and the Basestar, and then three stories about Frak Earth: the way the enemies came together to find their fondest hope, and had it taken away from them, and went catatonic. And then here, now, another two-parter on the other side of that, about the mutiny. Seven hours of story about the ending of this show, and the way it undoes itself: How we measure loss. Having the season chopped in half always throws it off, but you can reconstruct it. So most exciting, then, now that the Final Cylon has been revealed and Earth can frak itself, is what we know about those last ever seven hours, Act III: three of them are the finale, and then there's the midpoint of the act, and then there's the three that start week.
I mean, God. Kara's entire giant mess, the Opera House, the Deal With Hera, Caprica actually doing something for once, my Boomer finally coming back to life, Laura turning into whatever she's going to turn into, the immaculately white Einsteinian self-sacrificing whorl of timespace that I hope starts the cycle again, Galactica tearing apart, Ellen Tigh with all the facts and voting YES. Maybe Act III is just entirely those Jacob-type things, maybe we'll have an episode that's just the Hybrid talking for 44 minutes like that one episode of Mad About You, and a really depressing finale (on my birthday, mind) and they'll find me just having sublimed right out of my brain, drooling on the hardwood, after seven ninety-page recaps in a row. But besides that shit, the best-for-last shit I personally love most, is this: if Earth was the Little Bad, what's the Big Bad going to be? I say Time. I don't think we ever have enough time. I do know, now that Gaeta has boned a dude and Caprica's knocked up with Saul's baby, my own personal prophecies have all come true, which puts me way ahead of Pythia, and since it's all filmed at this point I figured I'd shoot the moon. We'll see.
Wrapping up the cliffhanger: Narcho gives chase to the President's Raptor, while the Marines retrieve the unconscious Admiral and Colonel. Two Marines each are required to get them up and moving again. Tigh pulls it together enough to sass former LSO Aaron Kelly, whose part in this is pretty interesting. I never really noticed him, before he tried to kill Romo, but I guess that's sort of the point:
As the Landing Signal Officer, he was responsible for flight operations, launching and landing: like the opposite of Anastasia Dualla, or the third thing between her and Felix, being the home she called them back to. During the First Exodus, Kelly organized damage control in the bombed-out port flight pod while the Colonel was still trying to focus his eyes; soon enough, Tigh countermanded him and vented the whole thing. Kelly helped catch Aaron Doral, and when the Old Man was shot, Kelly became second-in-command. He took up Adama's cry against networking, and fought Felix on it even when they'd lost the whole Fleet.
When the Centurions boarded, it was Kelly -- with Felix and Saul -- who stopped them. During the year-plus of New Caprica, he played the Gaeta on Galactica, even though with Saul gone to the surface it was him, not Helo, who should have been XO. Afterward -- just like Felix, and Dualla before him -- he caught fire: tired of sending pilots to their deaths in a never-ending war, he declared himself broken beyond repair, and asked to be locked up so he could stop blowing up lawyers. This isn't just some beefy hottie we're dealing with: it's the guy in the vicinity of Lee and Tigh and Gaeta, chainwise. I had no idea what we'd lost the last time we saw him. Nor how sympathetic I'd be a year or two later.
So it's a bit more intense than we might think, when he says, "Admiral," and bleeding Bill won't even meet his eyes. Somewhere else Felix scratches at something that's not there anymore. The Raptor falls into Hotdog's range and Narcho orders him to take the target. Plodding, sweet Hotdog waits for Raptor ID, and Narcho screams at him to get it together, even as he's following. Laura hears their conversation and radios to Hotdog that she's on the Raptor. Gage jams it, in CIC, but it's too late. Hotdog knows about the mutiny, and knows who's on the ship. The Eight driving them shifts into a higher gear.
Narcho asks Hotdog WTF he's up to, and Hotdog dimly informs him that the President is totally on the Raptor; Felix picks up the phone to yell at Hotdog, but first Kelly arrives with the old men. First, Felix sends them both to the brig, to chill with their Cylon prisoners, but them realizes this game is going a certain way and he needs to get his satisfaction when he can: "Belay that. Put Tigh with the Cylons. Bring Adama up here now." Tummy hurting, Felix vireems to Hotdog's Viper, and tells him to follow the frakking order already. He never fires; The Eight gets all zoomy and flippy-ship just as Narcho's launching his missiles. They connect with one arm of the Basestar, and the Raptor lands. Felix hangs up. Let's see what Forster thinks:
Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the gray, sober against the fire.
1050: The Cylon nation jumps right up Laura's ass, Tory first. We haven't seen the Cylon in a good long while, either, so certain assumptions must be made. When Bill pulled himself together after Dee, he invited them along for the ride. That's all we know. And of course, it's not that simple: the 268 are a nation in more jeopardy than the Colonials, having lost two sisters and almost all their brothers, their newest goal for which they sacrificed everything, their safety and immortality and lineage, their national identity. I'm not pleading sympathy for the devil this time because honestly, humanity has pretty much demonstrated they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt, w/r/t how much compassion they can be trusted to display. (On the other hand, "national identity" is exactly the thing that the Colonials should lose, and what's killing them now.) At this point it's more like something humans shouldn't even be expected to understand, just like not letting your dog do your taxes. All that wasted, ugly effort, by people who could be so beautiful. Isn't that sad?
The fact remains that the Cylon can't trust the humans any further than the humans can trust them, and right now they're in the most vulnerable position imaginable: this alliance is about one thing and one thing only. Finding a place to rest and a chance to figure out how they can continue to live. They are brave, but not that brave, and there's no reason for them to be otherwise: if they're there solely for the protection offered by the Fleet -- having purchased that protection through the willing commission of genocide, on themselves -- why in hell would they stick around once the warranty's voided? If there's no Fleet, if it's turning on itself more hideously than it ever has before, killing itself out of aggregate social rage, in some kind of heavily armed hysterical tantrum, who cares what happens ? Humanity's not living up to its end of the deal, so what else is new.
And what's saddest about this whole movement of the story is how nobody has a plan. The Cylons couldn't find their own assholes with a flashlight and a map, and never could, and up until Earth even Bill and Laura pretty much wanted to leave humanity's children in a parking lot like a nation of homicidal Punky Brewsters. Trauma means depression, and depression could be pretty much defined as the inability to come up with a plan. Athena's arrow pointed nowhere, and everyone's drowning in the pain of that and refusing to come up with anything. Bill (and Laura, now, thank God) could think only as far as bringing the 268s on their leg, which they then decided to nap on instead of figuring out. That's maddening on several levels.
It's just like post-industrial England: what now? What ? Everything is broken. And the mutiny still doesn't have their And Then Whats in place either. They're just committing ontological war on fate, expressing rage without going anywhere. The smartest kind of warfare is the kind where you become the enemy, love the enemy until the crinkly edges of complexity are all that are left. Even as the Cylons were splitting like the atom bomb, clustering around the little pockets of Gaius's taint, Laura was hardening into something scarier than the Cylon ever were, and that is a good thing. One nation, under the stars: The only good thing to come out of the revolution this time is the disbanding of the Quorum, and they manage to fuck that one up impressively too.
So how do you take these three kinds of people, the emergent aristocracy and the terrified victims of the holocaust and the clueless robots still growing out of their training bras, and attempt to stay alive until Cavil comes to push them all into action? By finding a new idea, by constructing a new Lie if that's what it takes. So much of this episode is about naming: who's the Admiral, who's the Commander, who's the President, who and what will the Cylon choose to be. Only Bill (and Kara, though she comes at it from a freaky angle right now) understands that actions define us, and actions can happen. The future waits to be written, and the shock they're all in means waiting for something else to nudge you back into place so that you can act.
Adama's last act was to invite the 268s into a glorious future he hadn't written yet, and now he's been cockblocked from sketching out the rest of the story, from building the new Will to Meaning for everybody, to get everybody out alive like any good Adama tries to do. Can Adama be the Lie he used to be? Can he rally the tatters? If he dies, can Laura build a world around his memory? If he lives, can he talk the people into remembering there's a future? He spends this episode like the cat in the box, neither living nor dead, and we're right back at depression, the way you get out of it alive: can you commit yourself to that half-future long enough, on faith, to find your way out of the maze? Can you forget Christmas and Easter, the way Cally and Dee forgot to do, and have faith in the end of the story? Stop waiting and move forward into light.
Tory and Six are freaked because they're being attacked, and Laura tells them they're not: it's her they're firing at. Tory's hilarious: "What did you do?" Awesomely, though, this is like the one time when Laura did nothing at all. All she did was get dressed up and kiss him goodbye. The pilot Eight explains that the government has lost its shit, and Laura pfffts this notion, but Gaius's dead eyes tell another story. "Excuse me, how would you describe it, Madame President? Adama is a fugitive. Gaeta has an army, and Zarek has control of Colonial One... The last time we saw Adama, he was cornered in an air lock with Colonel Tigh." Nothing untrue, nothing the Cylon don't really need to know, but of course stated in a way calculated to get the most under her skin.
A Two worries that the mutineers are more powerful than she's letting on, and she brings up Hotdog. The Eight confirms that Hotdog was too nice/dumb to kill them, but that Narcho obviously didn't have the same qualms. Tory explains the obvious, that if the Fleet is useless and getting more and more dangerous, and her entire country is now one ship with missiles pointed at it, carrying the two largest Prophets/Presidents/Public Enemies in the history of any Exodus... Frak the Fleet. Tory -- who after all has more experience in public policy than any of the real Cylons, and the advantage of being a religious icon -- has assumed authority on the Basestar.
I'm impressed by the way Tory is used in this episode: not too mean, not irrational, but also not that interesting yet. Both she and Sam are chess pieces in this episode, in the best way. She's the President now, of the 268, and she learned at the knee of the best there ever was. Wisdom and pragmatism from Laura, passion and charisma from Gaius. She's slept beside two Presidents and two Prophets. For a year, all she had was Tory/Laura lockdown. It kept Hera alive, it kept humanity alive. She lost her identity in a nebula, and found it again on Earth; Laura reclaimed hers on this very Basestar, listening to Hybrid music, and lost it again on Earth. When Tory said she wasn't taking orders anymore, she wasn't being bratty: she was being honest. Tory's no more and no less culpable for her hardness than Laura is, and if you hate one you probably hate the other, but that doesn't change the fact that she's doing the right thing: The Laura thing:
I believe we shall come to care about people less and less... The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.
Six agrees with Tory, because of course Six is not interested in being vulnerable to anything, ever. Eight is unsure, because she loves humanity more than humanity does itself; because she hates conflict even more than humanity loves it; because to connect is all she ever wants: to love Sharon, to love Six, to love Boomer and Athena, to love humanity, to save Gaeta from his own hubristic naïveté, to DEMAND LOVE. And then there's Leoben, who only cares about two things, one of which turned to ashes in his hand, on that damned planet: the Final Four. What about them? "Tyrol, Anders, Tigh, they're still over there." Laura nods, taking the advantage, promises they'll never see their saints again if they jump. This gives them pause; she presses the bruise.
"If you stay put, you give Adama a chance to save them." Tory and the Six take a breath, worried by complexity and fuzzy logic; worried because they've always liked yes/no, firm answers, easy binaries, lists of responsibilities: Capricorn and Virgo worrying at the idea that Adama in the box both can and cannot save them all. "Put your ship in the middle of the Fleet. Use the Fleet for cover. Give Adama some time." Tory's hurting, wanting to believe but crushed under a list of terrors. That's the opposite direction of what they want: that's connection on a level that endangers her nation. Gaius gets a headache as Laura explains that Gaeta won't jeopardize the Fleet: "He doesn't have the guts." She puts on her scary teacher voice, the one Tory remembers and the one the 268s have only begun to fear, and snaps them all into line: "Now come on, do it!"
Felix welcomes Bill back to the CIC with a backhanded compliment about how he wouldn't have left on the Raptor. Bill assures him he loves Galactica too much to "let it be overrun by rats." Felix turns this around -- "I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place" -- by wishing Bill cared as much for the people aboard. Bill finally looks at him, addresses him: "You have no frakkin' idea..." Felix cuts him off, ordering him to prove it by calling Roslin and telling her to surrender. He refuses; Felix affects boredom and lost patience: "I'll ask you one more time, Admiral." Bill's head snaps up, the glare like razor wire: "Admiral. Admiral?" No. Not for a while, not really. Certainly not now. She's tainted by his touch, now. Falling apart. "You're the Admiral now. So you call up Roslin. Make her laugh." He takes off his Admiral's pips, her first gift to him, and tosses them on the table. His pride in the idea of her is breathtaking. He knows she has faith, even if they haven't found the Lie yet to fill it with. Felix prepares to attack the Basestar, but Gage notices it finally moving into the Fleet. The Thirteenth Tribe, coming home to the only nation that exists now. Felix quarantines her, and sends Kelly to fetch Zarek. "Now you're going to shoot me, Mr. Gaeta." It's not really a question.
39,603 souls in the Fleet, including a memorably shitty CGI guy walking the hangar as Colonial One docks. 1116 hours, and Zarek's flirting, telling Racetrack an off-color joke about priests fucking children, and she laughs appreciatively. When this is all over there will be a reckoning, she's thinking, and you want to be on the side of the winners, the ones left standing. The Twins watch them go by, hidden away on the deck, and retreat to the shadows. On the Basestar, Laura continues her lifelong estrangement from technology, yelling her name into a Raptor wireless that's clearly offline, begging to engage again now that they're safely in position. In the brig, Caprica tends to Saul and Hera looks down at her wounded father, scared and confused. Athena assures her; Sam muses on what Felix is going to do to them. "In your case?" Tigh grunts from the rack, "Cut off one of your frakkin' legs." The humor is sort of underappreciated. Everybody shivers.
Felix and Tom argue about the Quorum, whom Zarek has brought with him to the site of the mutiny. "If you're insisting on the trial," Tom wishes they could just execute Adama without all the pomp and circumstance, without this existential ass-cover of a trial (mirroring the Cylon request for Gaius's signature on the Roslin/Zarek death order), but he knows you have to play Felix a certain way. Felix needs everything a certain way, in the right context and sequence, in order to live through this: "We can't move on until people have answered for what they've done. Which begins with Adama. One world at a time, Tom." They pretend Felix is in charge here, but one of them doesn't know it's pretend.
1131 finds the Chief running gingerly through the halls of the ship; he scatters to a hiding place as they strong-arm Romo toward the mockery, and he asks if somebody will feed Jake. It's nice to be reminded of that, now, since Lee only gave him the revolutionary dog to humanize him, tie him to the world, give him someone else to care about; his decisions in this episode link back to that decision, in a way. I think without Jake he'd still be carrying around a cat in a box, and when it's time for his actions to dictate his character, I'd like to think that Lee's gift makes the difference. To connect the beautiful prose in Romo Lampkin with the dark passions alongside: "Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man."
By 1148 the trial's begun. Felix worries about the Admiralty insignia in his hands, and Zarek charges Bill with treason, desertion, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and gross dereliction of duty. The punishment? Death by firing squad. Picturesque, which must appeal to Tom. Romo wonders what he's doing here, since he's not a great shot, and Zarek explains this is a court-martial, and Bill explains that they're looking for a pimp. (Nothing Laura, and Tory, didn't do throughout their administration, mind.) "Commander Gaeta will represent the people..." Zarek says, and Bill grunts: "Commander Gaeta?" Romo asks why, and Felix has no better answer than "for justice." Romo suggests that, should he pass, he will be killed by their thugs, and they're like, "Whatever, just do it." Zarek admits that he's also the judge, and Romo laughs at them.
Felix explains that the ships' captains that would normally lead a tribunal, if this were real, if any of this were really happening, "Are too busy protecting their vessels from the Cylon Baseship Admiral Adama welcomed into their Fleet." Bill instructs him to shove it up his ass, and Felix gets steely. He begins to read the charges, and Bill talks hilariously over him, doing his best Pissy Gaius "Butterfingers!" Baltar.
Felix: You are charged with treason...
Bill: By who?
Felix: ...desertion, with giving comfort and aid to...
Bill: This is a joke.
Felix: And you will answer for these crimes...
Bill: Aid and comfort? Oh yeah. I did bathe and wash them. Made their meals. I love the enemy.
Only connect!
That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.
Romo asks for a private talk with Bill, since he's doing a really good job of ruining the whole fake tea party, and Felix begs them all with his eyes to pretend it's real. To get from where he is to where Zarek wants him to be, without any more blood on his hands. Without the leg itching more than it does. He begins to weep, but he does leave. Laura continues to fight the wireless, as the Six worries about the Vipers circling and Leoben watches her, putting together a plan. He takes broken things and puts them together in new configurations; he takes visions from the Hybrid and makes them real, conveys you from place to place. Six sees the swarming serpents as a dare, and not what they are, which is ants scattering, rubber bugs jumping; Tory calls a meeting. Chief crowbars a hull open, and crawls inside. He knows her, one machine to another; he has husbanded her through worse, and she will give him succor. He's the only one with the maps. By 1222, Tom Zarek's left the kangaroo court and joined the Quorum on Colonial One, where he gives them his last little speech. It's time to move on; it's time for democracy's final test. It's a sort of pass/fail, and it's not the words that matter but the music behind them: not what he's saying, but what it reveals by their response.
"The world's upside down. And someone has to turn it right side up again. Felix Gaeta said that to me. He believes he's that someone. I believe he's that someone. But he has very big shoes to fill..." Jacob Cantrell is unmoved and unamused; he has every reason to hate Tom Zarek and the devilments he causes; he's the swing vote, the key. Tom knows that too: whither goes Sagittaron, in this new upside down economy, so goes the Quorum, because they've all just joined Sagittaron in the place he's been all along: where nobody has anything to lose, because it's all been taken away. Zarek spent 25 years in jail for a reason, he thinks. "I brought you here because I wanted him to meet people who refuse to give up, people who have the courage to voice their dissent, but at the end of the day, still stand by your President." (Reminiscent more than anything of Laura's patronizing speech to Chief after the first time Hitei Kan wigged out: "Sure, your voice matters. Just keeeep talking. I looooove dissent.")
They talk, he hopes; Cantrell stands and asks him to leave. When? "Now. Mr. Vice President." The Quorum gives a chorus of Hear Hears and So Say We Alls. I wonder how much they even know, at this point. Last week he had them so cooped up they didn't even know he'd been busted out of the brig. But I'm happy for them, the way they finally blink at Zarek's presumptions; I'm proud that Cantrell, in Lee's absence, tries to carry on the science of governance even as the world goes mad. I don't think it's a bad thing exactly, how this goes down, because Zarek would have found a reason to kill them eventually, so this is more of a last hurrah. I can't think of a better farewell for old Cantrell, anyway, than getting shot in the head for calling bullshit on Tom Zarek. That makes me want to hug the world.
And I'm glad it's done, because this is not a workable system of democracy, because the Fleet is not a republic. One thing Dee and Tom were always right about is that this is not a system that needs to be fixed, because it no longer suits: it's a Senate without a House, pretending to equal representation of a demographic wasteland warped by death and prejudice. There are only 35 ships in the Fleet at this point, and less than 40,000 humans. That's a town hall meeting twice a month, not the fucking UN. I've always thought the twelve flags of the Colonies were one of the saddest things about the Fleet, because it says so much about how lonely the science of governance actually is.
Remember that until fifty years ago, when the Centurions revolted, there wasn't even a charter of alliance between the Colonies: just twelve worlds constantly at war, like feudal Europe. Within these people's lifetimes. I know it's unrealistic to expect them to get over the Cylon racism, but think about how nasty and ingrained inter-Colonial bias has been, and still must be. At least in Europe there are borders, places where peoples touch and blend and cross the salt. In the Colonial star system, you had to move through outer space to even meet somebody different. And when you left -- like Kendra, like Gaius -- you left forever. You became that somebody different.
Tom leaves, not happy with this outcome, and right up until the second that he orders them murdered, to the thug Marines outside, you hope that he won't. But you know that he will, because Roslin : Zarek :: Pythia : Marx (:: Kara : Earth :: Cain : Survival) and there are like a million different reasons to become a Razor, but only one way. He sends Kelly for Felix, to show him what he's done in his name, and out in that corridor, as Kelly's walking away, they both lose something. Kelly keeps walking, winded like a punch to the gut. But I'll say this for him: Zarek feels every bullet.
1245 and it's a dead body party: the ones that tried to fight, and the ones that tried to run, and the ones that were still sitting in their chairs when they drifted off. Felix throws a John Crichton fit about it ("All I did was rub this lamp! Why do you keep granting me wishes?") and Tom is like, "Dude. Are you stroking out right now? This a coup. Which you began. So that we could do something vague and angry. This is what happens." And I mean, I'll take his word for it. He's been through many a coup. He's broken a lot of eggs over the years, in pursuit of an authority that doesn't chafe him. He's the other side of Dualla, the brighter side of Sagittaron: the side that lives so firmly in the future that he won't stop fighting until he gets there. And if you look at it that way, he's sort of terribly beautiful.
What's the first article of faith? Say it with me. "This is not all that we are." It never can be: that's the Cloud of Unknowing glimpsed from the other side. I thought finding respect and love for Tom Zarek would be one of those nice guy things, but honestly, I can't find fault here. Because what he says -- that history is written by the victors -- is totally true. It's only mutiny and treason if the dominant paradigm remains upright when the smoke clears: if Romo lives and Gaius goes free, then Kelly loses it all and goes to the brig. Otherwise -- if, say, they give you a hug and a snack and a garbage scow for pointing a gun in the President's frakking face -- you're a hero. Nobody ever wanted to be a villain and nobody ever wanted to kill: they got there by cruel fate, and strong convictions. I have to respect that. If you step out far enough on that limb to be either -- to be judged by history as hero or traitor, monk or beast; to be sacrificed in the temple, or on the altar -- then you have something strong in you that moves you forward past your limits. I have never fallen in love with anything or anyone that didn't have that as a main ingredient. Ape in a tux or not, Tom Zarek feels every bullet, and keeps walking. Felix, too. And Tom seals it for them both: "Adama has to go. There's no turning back now," he says, needing Felix to get it. And he finally gets it. It itches him in a place he can't reach, but he gets it.
Chief climbs through tiny ducts, claustrophobic, every vein and capillary of her, he knows. This engine he built with his blood. Tory returns with her makeshift Cylon Quorum, apologizing: "We have a chance to survive," she says, stepping forward. Laura calls her out for being a Final Fiver: "I'm sorry, I would've thought ... you'd have a broader vision than that." Six steps forward , to do what she does best: snap its neck, kill it in its sleep, before it becomes a problem. She sees the weak places and aims right for them. "If he hasn't done it already, Gaeta will airlock Tigh, Tyrol, Anders. Then he'll start with the rest: Kara, Helo, Adama..." Just enough force in her voice that Laura blanches at this, and begs her to stop. He's her weakness now but the entire point of love is that this makes him her strength. The thing that makes you awesome, etc. Over Tory's decree that fates have been decided, Laura issues quite a speech.
"No. No one believed that we would survive the Cylon nuclear holocaust. Or the hell on New Caprica. Or the fifty thousand other crises we've lived through. But we did, we're here. We've made this veritable habit out of defying the odds. Particularly William Adama. And he is alive." Six is moved; Laura's voice breaks on it: "He is alive. And he will take command of this Fleet again. And when that day comes, he's going to know who stuck with him, and who ran. Now, who do you want to be? Who do you want to be?" What is your name?
1305, Chief comes crawling out into a munitions locker, on his back. The world's his Raptor now. He looks up into the barrel of Kelly's gun. "Hey, Aaron. Sprung you, did they?" Kelly almost smiles: "Long live the revolution." He orders Galen out of the duct, and Galen, breathing hard, wearing out, says to just shoot him. There is something just indescribably wonderful about Galen Tyrol. His humor is so dark, but so very uplifting too. He laughs at death and it's not even a metaphor. Kelly points out that he's a toaster and can't get tired, and Chief smiles. "That's right, I'm a machine. What does that make you, dumbass?" Kelly smiles, exhausted, and begins to laugh.
"This was a hell of a ship once," Kelly says proudly, looking around, happy to stall. Chief agrees; he should know. He's proud as well. Kelly uncocks his gun and congratulates Chief on Nicky's fully human pedigree. "Could have told you she was trouble," he digs, and Chief laughs delightedly; grateful for a conversation and not just this death. "Wouldn't have mattered," he admits, managing to say about six things at once. Kelly gets steely again and points his gun, and Galen shuts his eyes up tight, waiting for it. Kelly shivers, and begins to scream: "Go on, keep going. Go! Go on, skinjob, go." He does, scrambling back into the walls. Kelly, alone, begins to weep. It feels like dying; it feels like being born. He becomes something new. We just do it differently, on our side of the salt.
Romo offers Bill a pen, to sign a statement of his innocence, but Bill can't respect this bullshit enough even to do that. Romo, sincere suddenly, begs him to do it, for the Fleet if nothing else. Bill shakes his head, on fire with hope, and promises Romo the mutiny will fail. "I won't betray my beliefs with a testimony." Romo leans forward, promises Bill his people are mobilizing -- that he saw Chief, scurrying away, and many things besides: "Give them a chance to do something, stall or play dumb or..." The Marines step forward and Romo slides back, away, raising his voice again: "We've been ready to proceed for some time."
A mutineer stands at a urinal; his head bashes against the wall before him and he goes down. Undignified, but awesome. Kara takes his gun; she and Lee stride away. Such a short, fabulous scene. And on the Basestar, a Six named Lida watches Gaius, terrified, once more without any Colonial identity, without a name. When he left the cult behind it felt wonderfully free, but now he's just a boy on a shuttle to Caprica, leaving Aerilon behind again. Again, again, again. A boy without a home. A boy who got all the nubile adoration he wanted, until he choked on it, and realized respect means nothing if you don't respect in turn. They became people to him, which is a step in the right direction, but not enough for it to matter.
Lida asks him if he's injured, and he corrects her wording: "damaged." No longer a President or a Prophet, nobody listening to his voice. He has nothing to say. No longer a revolutionary, applying the hard sciences to soft flesh: saying this is how many pregnancies, this is how far from home; this is the emergent aristocracy, this is the crack in the social armor. The exquisite thing for the dog, with food balanced on its nose, is the moment right before he locks his teeth around it. She looks at him, innocent, with Farrah Fawcett hair and a soft gauzy glow to match; he is covered in bruises. They recognize each other: she's made love to him, and he to her, a million times. They've never met.
London was beginning to illuminate herself against the night. Electric lights sizzled and jagged in the main thoroughfares, gas lamps in the side-streets glimmered a canary gold or green...
London was not afraid. Her smoke mitigated the splendour, and the clouds ... were a delicately painted ceiling, which adorned while it did not distract. She has never known the clear-cut armies of the purer air.
1337, and coincidentally we're back with Kara and Lee, getting elite on some noobs. Lee tosses a grenade into the middle of them, and the guys drop. They shoot all the Marines in the squad before them -- Kara double-fisting, wrists crossed -- and she drops behind a crate, terrified of the explosion. Lee walks easily to the grenade, pin still in, and when she complains he points out it would have been funny if she'd pulled that trick.
Around a corner, into the brig. Everybody starts yelling at everybody else, and it's sort of confusing. Lee screams and screams at Tigh, asking for his father; disappointed that he's not there -- after all that -- and Sam worries about Helo. Athena gets everybody moving, and picks up Helo; Caprica grabs Hera of course; at a junction Kara and Sam stop to get more guns, and Sam is shot by advancing mutineers. He goes down, choking on blood, losing the thread quickly. Kara shouts at him, trying to keep him focused and stable; Tigh worries and sweetly yells at them not to jostle his neck. Lee cries out to Saul, by beloved name, like an uncle, to help save Sam, to figure it out. Kara tells them to go find Adama, and after much screeching on everybody's part, they move out. Sam thrashes in her arms.
1342, Felix calls them out. All the crimes. He was the Tactical Officer, but I've always liked his real title better: Senior Officer of the Watch. It carries such loneliness, just in the sound of it. War gives us such poetry, at such unexpected moments. It's why I love Saul Tigh now, and it's why I hated Felix Gaeta for so long: because he stopped watching at the moment he most needed to. He lied on the stand, which violates my values, which means holding a grudge. Which is dumb. That was a different guy entirely that did that, and he had reasons we -- and he -- never even knew, for doing that. I can't really agitate for compassion if I don't play along, it violates the text. So okay, Felix, let's hear it.
Felix: You deserted us on New Caprica. You let us twist in the wind.
Adama: I saved your frakking ass.
Felix: Why can't you just admit that you've been derelict in your duties as an officer? Not only do you give aid and comfort to the enemy, you were about to grant them access to the jump drive of every ship in this Fleet.
Adama: About to? I did it. I gave them access. And you know what? I didn't give them aid and comfort. They gave it to me.
At which point I sort of got carried away and thought they might kill him after all. I honestly felt like anybody in this episode could die at any time (which, awesome show great job) but that was such a beautiful line that I actually got preemptively scared. He's done: that's what he needed to figure out. The thing that nobody's prepared to say or think, because there's so much scar tissue, but there it is. Of course, he's only saying it to piss Felix off, to push the blister until it ruptures, but the fact is that Athena kept his heart alive, in the sky above New Caprica. Lee was gone, going crazy on another ship; his daughters were scattered to the winds; Chief and Cally and Laura were gone. All he had were Helo and Athena, and they gave him aid, and they gave him comfort. They gave him a way to cross that bridge, in their love for each other, and they pulled him across it with their love for him.
And when Laura was gone, abducted by the stars, the Cylon brought her back to him. Having ended the war forever, having turned the 145s into Onoda and Uwano: guardians of a hate that has no bearing on the future. Having solved his problem for him, because he believed, and trusted, and had faith. The thing that Gaius wants most, and Laura fought so hard to lose, and that hurts Felix so badly in a place he can't reach anymore: the passion and the prose of William Adama, the bridge between the monk and the beast, the poet and the warrior, is the thing he's got that made him uniquely suited to shepherd and steward and save humanity again, and again, across the universe. It's the thing he has that kept us all alive. Only connect.
And Zarek steals it, like a thief in the night. Like a lonely, jealous beggar. Kelly tells him Tigh and the Cylon prisoners have escaped, and Zarek hangs up the phone. "Um, Saul Tigh was killed trying to escape." Bill breaks. Bad. Felix is shocked. He stares at the Admiral, worried, and spares him a moment of sympathy despite himself: "I'm sorry." He comes back around, immediately, disconnecting. No networking, no connection. Not now.
"...But you did give aid and comfort to the enemy. Saul Tigh was a Cylon. And even when you discovered that he was, you let him remain the XO, didn't you?" Adama's aged ten years in a second; he has died a little bit. He stops playing altogether, without even enough energy to fuck with him. Felix's sorrow comes in fits and starts, and Zarek assumes control: "The prisoner is guilty as charged." Romo sniffs: "This isn't the trial, this is an asylum." And the inmates are, once again, running it. Zarek shoves him against the wall, shouting... And Laura breaks across the wireless again. Her voice runs through his veins.
"This is President Laura Roslin speaking from the Cylon Baseship. Felix Gaeta has seized Galactica by force. The Cylons were defending themselves. They will not harm you. I repeat, the Cylons will not harm you. Shut down your FTL drives..."
Zarek gets on the horn immediately, demanding that they jam the signal, telling Gage to get "that little frak" Hoshi back on CIC. Bill just stares, and stares, and looks up at Felix. On the Basestar, Leoben strokes his makeshift transmitter happily, proudly. Machines and machines. Laura smiles in wonder.
Kara, exhausted and bloody, finally leans back against the bulkhead near a junction, holding Sam in her arms. He's not even moving anymore. She hears someone coming, and stares into space, unmoving, like a rabbit. A guard, escorting Romo to his death, screams at her. She closes her eyes, heartbroken, and aims her gun one last time. When she fires, the clip is empty. Luckily, Klepto Romo has a pen he stole from the trial, and stabs the Marine all to hell before he can gun down Kara. He grabs his shades back immediately, and Kara -- I guess tired after all the badassery, in both this episode and her lifetime -- mews pathetically for his help. He says no, pointing out that the mutiny has gotten so out of control that some of them attempts on him and his "penpal" were from his own side, and heads away. She grunts to herself, heartbroken and losing strength with every breath, and at the last second Romo... Dramatically decides to help. Wow, I guess.
1435 and we're reporting ten ships that followed Roslin's orders to kill their FTL drives. (So again, one-third of the Fleet is still with her. All this has happened before...) Narcho starts to bitch about her, but Felix makes lemonade: "No, she did us a favor. Now we're clear who's with us and who's trouble. Gage, give the jump coordinates only to those ships that kept their FTLs online. Order them to jump immediately." Wow, dude. You really are just going to blind-jump into nowhere, aren't you?
"You six people who are left, that went along with our mutiny? You six people are awesome. Rapists, racists, murderers, insane bomber terrorists, good to see ya. Conner and Seelix? Good people, I'm proud to have you with me. Who needs Earth with a Douche Patrol like we got going here? Yeah! Now, I know many of you had loved ones on those ten ships, and all our food was there, but trust me: this part is going to be great. ...Hmm? What's that? Oh, no. No plan of any sort. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that: we have no frakking clue what we're supposed to do now. I was just really pissed off. See, my leg got shot in this other mutiny -- not a great, awesome one like this, but a tiny, bitchy one -- and then my BFF shot herself in the head, and Gaius stopped returning my calls, and I became a heroin addict, then my bisexual college robot fling from New Caprica turned out to be a serial killer, and it turned out I knew that? Sort of."
"Oh, and plus, remember Earth? Yeah, right? Awkward! Then I broke up with my boyfriend for no reason, and then -- worst of all -- no matter how many times I stomped my feet -- um, foot -- and whined, people kept acting like there was a possible future, or that being kind to other people was a good idea. Fuckers. So... Yeah, that's about it. Not really a plan, per se, but at least our jump drives are still shitty and one-third as powerful as they could be, and I think all seven of us can agree that that's a good thing. Could you pass me the nothing? I'm sort of hungry."
He asks Narcho, more quietly, to get Bill's execution happening; Narcho's sad, because Bill's compassion toward the Cylon -- both real and trumped-up -- puts him between a rock and a hard place, w/r/t to his racism. But hey, he goes through with it. Zarek walks up and he and Felix are all prickly with each other. Felix stomps off to have himself a good long cry in the Admiral's quarters before continuing this total debacle. At 1447, Kelly ducks away from the Marine contingent Narcho's leading to the airlock, wobbles a second, and then runs to the Hall of Remembrance. He brings a gun to his mouth, surrounded by all the pilots he sent into death, but immediately tosses it away and begins to cry. What do you do when you can't get out?
Chief crawls past a toilet, choking. Lee shakes Kelly in the Hall, shouting at him. You can hardly hear Kelly when he tells Lee they're about to shoot his father. He picks him up, this gigantic man, and shoves him against the bulkhead, screaming. Tigh pulls him off, and they head for the hangar deck. Kelly shivers, and follows, and that's three humans in the posse -- if you don't count Kara or Hera, and I wouldn't -- out of nine. And now that Kara and Sam are out of commission, that means that this posse, which is about to rescue the Fleet from its own complicated suicide, is more than half Cylons, counting the Chief. Aid and comfort indeed.
Bill stands in the launch tube in a white blindfold, white square on his chest; Felix orders the execution detail and they fire, but it's just a dream. Of Gaius', who suddenly gets afraid for Bill. He's in bed with Lida, of course, because the Cylons don't drink wine and this is the only thing that chills him out. He feels sick, but she calms him, her mouth on his neck and chest, and he relaxes back, into it. Then, of course -- and let's be grateful nobody got beat up or sexually humiliated this time -- he has a huge epiphany and she sits there like a limp leggy blonde sex doll, saying nothing of import. Thank God for Tricia Helfer, who can even turn this random excursion into something interesting. She whines that she wants to make him feel better, and he says the best way to do that is to cut off his legs, which earns him a great WTF look.
"I ran... again. I disappeared in the nick of time... Again." Lida smiles sweetly and assures him, with that smile the Sixes do when explaining human brain chemistry to humans, that fear makes people behave differently. "I didn't run out of fear. Not this time, anyway. I ran away from those people. God, those people. I've got a kind of following on Galactica, like a fan club? Publicly I humor them..." She smiles. "Privately, I scorned their provincial intellects. Their unfailing willingness to make me feel better." Her smile falls for a second, because he just called her a retard. That's literally what he did:
Lida: "I want to make you feel better."
Gaius: "Thanks. On another note, though, you know who fucking sucks? People who want to make me feel better. They are so stupid and soulless and beneath me. Know what I mean?"
Lida: "Thank God you're cute. You know I snap necks, right? Just like this. Don't even have to think about it. Just click, snap and you're done. So you wanna run that the motherfuck by me again?"
Gaius: "Sorry, what? I wasn't listening. I just realized my whole pathology is pathetically Peter Pan and I only want what I can't have, and then I don't want it anymore once I get it, so I'm constantly begging for attention and love from the people least likely to give it, like Laura Roslin and that. I'm just repeating the neurotic patterns of my unhappy childhood and constantly working toward getting the useless acceptance and approval of people I know for a fact are beneath me. See, like even now: the only friend I have in the universe is Galen Tyrol, and he thinks I'm just ridiculous, and I think he's real dumb, but we love each other. Silently, from across the room, without ever talking about it: that's what I'm subsisting on these days. That, and rusty trombones from batshit cult members. It's rough."
Lida: "Hmm? Sorry, I was just thinking about babies and God and shit."
Gaius: "Yeah, well. Look, I want you to look me in the eye because I am being very noble. My eyes are telling you that I know you're deeply in love with me, despite having met me four uneventful minutes ago, but my mouth is saying I must leave, though it pains me deeply."
Lida: "You're really cute when you're self-obsessed and putting on airs."
Gaius: "Yeah, well. You're cute when you're naked. I both hate and love women more than anything in this world."
Lida: "That's what I was just thinking about humans. Crazy!"
Gaius: "I wish that I had been breastfed, or of a taller stature, because sometimes my issues are so transparent you have to look at them through a hole in a paper plate so you don't burn your eyeballs. Mostly I wish that Caprica Big Pharma had invented Adderall before the Cylon holocaust. I really think things would have gone very differently."
Lida: "What's this really about?"
Gaius: "Well, I just realized that the only person who ever loved me -- that also deserved any amount of my respect -- is in deep, deep trouble."
Lida: "This is that gay shit, right? Caprica Six told me about this. God."
Gaius: "It's not gay. He's gay, but we're not gay together."
Lida: "Gaius, I'm a robot and I know that's even gayer than actually being gay. And what's wrong with a little brojob now and then? Nobody has to know."
Gaius: "Okay, now I really do have to go. Will I see you again?"
Lida: "Probably not. I'm practically imaginary as it is."
Gaius: "Too bad. Your hair is adorable."
He closes eyes and opens them, playing at nobility: "I have to go back. I have to go back, they're my responsibility." She smiles: that part, she understands. And at 1502, his dream comes true. Narcho watches, heartbroken, as they tie Bill to the chair, and he strides back toward the squad, and Bill spits onto the floor. They settle in, and wait for the order. They'll wait a long, long time.
At 1524, Laura cuts across all freqs again, like the voice of God: "Galactica, this is President Laura Roslin. Release all those being held against their will, and return command of this Fleet to Admiral William Adama. Surrender! You have five minutes!"
On CIC, Zarek stares around, looking for Felix. Felix is stumbling around The Admiral's quarters, unbalanced, weeping and sick. He stares at the pips on the desk, knows he doesn't deserve them; he refuses to sit in the chair, no matter how tired he gets. He's not an Admiral, he's not even a Commander. He's the Watch. He is broken. He says goodbye. He holds the Admiral's phone to his head, like a gun. He never could have done this on the bridge. Not with everyone looking. "Lieutenant Allison. Carry out the execution."
Narcho confirms, and hangs up: Tigh's got a gun to his head, as Lee unties his father. The executioners are on their knees, hands on their heads. Tigh gestures Athena over to cover Noel Allison, and takes in the sight of Bill, free and alive again. "They told me you were dead," Bill says. "For a while I was, Bill."
That old one-eyed fucker has written some poetry in his day, but damn. I imagine the line written nervously; I imagine it, once on the page, shining and bright.
(Saul, in hell: "So take your piety and moralizing and high-minded principles, and stick 'em someplace safe, until you're back in your cushy chair on Colonial One again. I've got a war to fight "
Elosha, the Price, the Gods, in their heaven: "Just love someone."
All the aid and comfort that they give each other, and it comes down to this: Saul keeps his heart somewhere safe, the safest place he can think of; because he knows what makes Bill uniquely suited to shepherd, and steward, and save him, again and again. The reason he'll choose to be Saul Tigh for the rest of his life.)
Bill addresses the thugs, on their knees: "I want to take back my ship." Aid and comfort, now, to the enemy. If there aren't any good guys, then there aren't any bad guys either: what makes Bill special is his inability to recognize the face of his enemy in any face at all. It's how we're going to win. Narcho almost cries, trying to explain not only today but what happens : "Sorry, sir. I've always respected you. But I hate the Cylons. And I can't take orders from a leader who won't fight them." Tigh pulls a gun on him, of course, and Bill tells him to stand down. He's disappointed, as Narcho looks at the floor. Bill gets in his face, both of them exhausted and sad, and tells his posse to tie Noel up.
Felix removes his leg, weeping with pain, and hobbles back to the CIC. Chief crawls to where the lights flicker. On the bridge, Zarek gets on speaker. "This is Tom Zarek, President of the Twelve Colonies. It's over, Laura. Saul Tigh was killed attempting to escape." Tory's heart drops. "Bill Adama was tried, and found guilty of his crimes." Laura closes her eyes and collapses. "Firing squad executed him this morning." The Eight, then Gaius, lose it too. "It's done, Laura. You need to think about the people of this Fleet now, and surrender." That word. She rises. He shivers.
"No. Not now, not ever. Do you hear me? I will use every cannon, every bomb, every bullet, every weapon I have down to my own eyeteeth to end you." The Six on the bridge is moved by the war in her; by her absolute certainty. "I swear it! I am coming for all of you!"
1528. Felix points out that Zarek has just elected himself both Adama and Roslin, in one fell swoop. "And how would you have answered her? If you'd been here," Tom sniffs. The Baseship arms itself. Laura Roslin has just declared war on humanity, from the helm of a Cylon Basestar. Her own death, she's made a place for. But Bill Adama? Frak that. No way. She won't let his ship be overrun by rats. Felix gages the FTL to spinning, and a Marine forces one of the bridge officers to set her boards green, at gunpoint. "There's been enough killing. I'm leaving them behind. Unless you object?" Zarek doesn't answer Felix, just stares.
Chief runs down some stairs, and finally arrives at the jump drives. Tory and Felix have both offered to separate the Fleet further, now; without Dualla to call everyone home the Chief's going to have to do the bloody, dirty work of keeping things stable. Adama's posse is awesome, heading down the corridors toward CIC; more and more people join, from all sides, as Galen tries to get into the jump systems. Laura continues to broadcast her demands for surrender; Galen's denied access, and he goes after the beast itself, with his bloodied hands. The board is green, the count begins. The Posse comes closer and closer. Everyone on the Baseship -- plus Tom Zarek -- stares, and waits for Felix move. Chief finally pries the panel open, and pulls out an essential part of the engine. A small thing, but a large one. His hands are covered in blood as he roots in her.
"But there comes a time when you realize that the engine you've built with your blood and your sweat and your tears is being used for something so foul, so perverted that it makes you sick in your heart. And it's then that you must throw your body on the gears and on the levers and on the machine itself and make it stop. And you have to show the people who run it, the people who control it, that unless we're free, that machine will be prevented from working at all."
He was a revolutionary, too. FTL goes offline, and Zarek begins barking orders. For Felix, it's like a sign from the Gods. A last-minute reprieve from irreparable damage to the whole of humanity. Zarek screams, and screams -- "Gaeta, launch your birds. Gaeta, wake up. What the frak are you doing? Launch your birds! Gaeta, Gaeta! We have to defend, do you understand that? Do you understand? Gaeta, we need to defend!" Tim stops. Like Laura in the jump, like Gaius and Saul in the exquisite moment of their breakdowns. "One day soon, there's gonna be a reckoning." Hours ago, Bill said it. Days ago, he said it to Starbuck. It feels like years. The gun batteries fix on the Basestar, and still he doesn't move. Zarek screams. "Gaeta, what the frak is wrong with you? Wake up!" That's what he's doing.
That's what he's done. "Weapons hold!" he shouts, alive again, staring into Tom's eyes. Zarek realizes it's over: another wall has fallen down. The fight is over. The revolution is dying. The story's ended. Adama and his posse enter CIC, and they take it easily. Felix doesn't fight; Tom makes that put-upon face he makes, but is calm; Gage shoves and pulls at his captors. "Connect me with the President," the Admiral orders someone, and she obliges as quickly as she can. "Madam President, this is the Admiral. Stand down." She stares, unable to swallow, to process, to believe. She knew he was alive. She knew he was dead. "I repeat, Galactica's secured." The Eight's hand flies to her mouth. "Stand down." Laura says his name, softly, like a prayer. Bill stares at Felix, in brutal disappointment; Felix begs for more. This was nothing. Bill nods at Kelly, and he marches Felix Gaeta away. 1532.
Galen stares up at the bulkhead, sickened, deep in the jump engine room: Time has clawed at her skin. She groans under the weight of it. Laura comes down a ladder, landing heavily; when she turns, he's there. She gasps and takes off her glasses, losing it, and he walks slowly toward her. She can finally weep. The longest day since the first day: She punches his shoulder for almost dying; she caresses his wonderful face, pats him on the shoulder hilariously. He takes her in his arms and walks her slowly away:
There is certainly no rest for us on the earth. But there is happiness, and as Margaret descended the mound on her lover's arm she felt that she was having her share.
Lieutenant Felix Gaeta spent the three years prior to the Cylon attack on Galactica, serving as Adama's Senior Officer of the Watch. He was studying genetics, planning a degree through the military extension program; Adama's heavy reliance on him didn't interrupt his plans. He was a wunderkind, and he knew it: networks, FTL calcs, computer systems. He was more than her nervous system. He fought Shelley Godfrey tooth and nail to protect Gaius Baltar, even when the fakest of fake evidence seemed to suggest a double-cross.
When he lost the Fleet after Bill was shot, he blamed himself. Not even Tigh blamed him; Tigh called him "son" until he rejected him. The viral logic bomb that got through his firewalls plagued him for weeks, but he met it every time. He helped Athena talk to the Galactica, jury-rigged wires in her palm, showing her kindness when nobody else would. He sold out the presidential conspiracy because he knew what was right, even though it earned humanity a year in the stocks and gallows. He was a double, triple, infinite agent between the shifting factions on New Caprica. He committed crimes he still can't fully comprehend; he whored himself out, like Ellen, to ease the pain of his people.
He fought Caprica for the right to kill Gaius, but granted him reprieve so that he could save the survivors from Three's nuke as they were leaving. Back aboard, he carried out the search for Earth from Gaius's notes and calculations; they repaid him with a bag over his head and near-murder. He never stopped hating Kara and Saul after that, even though their time on New Caprica was even worse than his. He tried to kill Gaius again, to hide his secrets, and eventually committed perjury to see him dead. On the Demetrius he followed Helo's momentary mutiny with one of his own, and lost a leg. He spent weeks in the infirmary, singing so beautifully; giving voice to something he had lost. Felix is Latin for a particularly innocent happiness: it connotes a luck in life, as in a felicitous coincidence. His parents named him for Joy. Now he's in his quarters, speaking to someone, smoking one last cigarette.
"Suppose a long time ago, it was... architecture. There was a year there where I scribbled floor plans on everything? Dining room table, patio tiles, rare books... Drove my parents crazy." Gaius asks how old he was. "I don't know, uh, eight, maybe? Nine?" Gaius is smoking, too; he can't take his eyes off the prisoner. "Tell you one thing, though, I had some pretty frakking amazing ideas. Restaurants shaped like food. Hmm? Top-heavy buildings... And stairways, every... Everything had to have a stairway..." Gaius smokes sadly, and puts out his cigarette. Felix pours him more ambrosia: "Spoils of war..." He smiles, happy in the final analysis, to be here, now. With Gaius. The only friend he has left. Gaius can barely drink. "When I was older, uh... Then it became medicine, and... Engineering, photography. I think I would've made a better architect than any of those, though. And then, I discovered science. And I ... Thought I was really, really good at it. Until I met you," he says graciously, obligingly, affectionately. Gaius tries to hold back tears.
Gaius leans forward, through the haze of smoke, and says his name, softly. Just once. "Don't," Felix nods. The intimacy is palpable. One more word and he'll break. "And please, no religion." Leaving aside the point that this moment here is all religion is really good for, what else can he give? He wants to do something we don't have a name for. It's something a Cylon could do, easy as thinking, but we do things differently on our side. How to connect, through all that history and salt and smoke, how to reach from one body to another and express that horrible, wonderful existence of someone else, that cuts through the loneliness that only humans know. This was Laura's lesson on the Hub; if Jake humanized Romo then this is all Laura's lesson for Gaius now. How to connect, how to just love somebody.
How to say that this man -- of all the men in the world the least likely to ever really understand another person's subjective personhood, whose mental health such as it is rests upon his narcissism, and keeps him sane -- has been invaded, and changed, through years of this intimacy. How to say this man, of all men, has been brought to turn an It into a Thou: to say without breaking, this man loves you. Knows you, dark and sharp, and shiny bright bits. Bears halls and corridors and doors inside, for you. Forever. How to say that, without touching, without even saying, when he won't let you. When he's fragile enough to shatter, how do you give him strength without taking strength away?
Gaius wasn't kidding last week, comparing Felix to Tory. One world at a time: You are my weakness, and you are my strength. We break each other. But as his face crumples, Felix brings him aid and comfort, because that's what Felix brings. Gaius's pain is more pressing and immediate than this curious emptiness, than this ache and itch and phantom pain: "I'm fine with how things have worked out. Really, Gaius. I am. I just ... hope. I hope that people realize, eventually... Who I am?" Gaius nods. Those are the words. Say the words. He begins to weep. Only connect:
"I know who you are, Felix. I know who you are."
In these English farms, if anywhere, one might see life steadily and see it whole, group in one vision its transitoriness and its eternal youth, connect -- connect without bitterness until all men are brothers.
Felix smiles at Gaius, in his quarters, grateful to be loved. Everything he wanted, now. Felix smiles at Gaius, tied to a chair in the hangar bay launch tube. Saul and Lee are watching, but it's Gaius standing witness. to him sits Tom Zarek, who grins at him: a regretful, apologetic twinkle in his eye. Felix has a choice, and takes the high road. He nods to Tom, his last act of kindness, and Tom is unimaginably grateful. At the end of line, with nothing to lose, you can be honest. You can be kind.
The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.
Adama orders the executioners to ready themselves, and Gaius watches as they raise their guns. He calls them to aim, and Lee watches as they do. They can see Felix, through the sights of their guns, as down a long tunnel, tiny. A little man, who raged against mountains. Whose beautiful, crystalline mind burnt faster than the world. His leg stops itching, stops aching: the thing that isn't there anymore stops aching. At the end of line you can be honest. Adama orders them to fire, and they do.
And Anastasia calls him home again.