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"For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars -- pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time." That's pretty much what it's like. On the one hand you're looking at the last episode of the series, before the finale, so it's mostly ligature and following up on the chess moves of the last two weeks. On the other hand it's by personal fave Michael Taylor, with Olmos directing, which means even if it were a frenzy it would be beautiful. But it is, of course, meditative and lyrical: Watching the story weave Saul's forgotten F5 history, no-longer-neurotypical Sam, Bill's innate atheism and inability to let go of his ship, Kara's life and death, Boomer's thousand regrets and Laura's concept of "home" into a fairly well-formed equation is a trip indeed.
So Kara wanders around peeing in front of people and offering Sam some Kevorkian therapy before a well-timed piece of Baltar Bullshit and a sweet little speech from Lee help her pull it together and stop making her existential issues everybody's problem. Gaius blows her spot about being a zombie, on the way to his usual religious crap, but nobody even really cares. Meanwhile, the 268s have plugged Sam into a Hybrid tub in the hopes of rebooting him, but instead he Hybrid-connects himself to the Cylon goo and is now pretty much Battlegod Godlactica. The Colonel reacts to this with some gritty annoyance.
The Opera House dreams are back, and of course Athena's completely undone anyway. (To review: prostituted, raped, imprisoned for years, forced near-abortion, kid died, whoops kid kidnapped, shot in gut by husband, kid kidnapped, nearly raped, kid kidnapped, husband raped, kid kidnapped.) Since there's nothing left to throw at Athena, the heartbreak is coming from Helo this week: trust me when I say you do not ever want to watch Karl Agathon beg for anything, especially a suicide mission to find his lost daughter. It's overwhelmingly sad.
Boomer spends the flight back to the necropolitan freak show that is the Colony trying not to throttle Hera. At some point, bored out of her mind, she decides to project that gross house on Picon... Only to find Hera in there with her. Away from the drudgery of kidnapping, those two crazy kids find out they have more in common than they thought, and when she finally hands the child over to Cavil for vivisection, they are both bummed.
And overlaid across all of this is the story of sixty-something repair crew -- half Cylon, half human -- who die after another huge hull-breach. (Thanks, Boomer!) After a self-sacrificing Six gives Dealino some perspective and a dying Eight nudges Saul toward accepting his forgotten past, we're treated to a truly beautiful funeral in which the Final Five and Rebel Cylons, the Gaius people, and the Admiral and his crew each say their goodbyes to the fallen deckhands. That shit alone is worth the price of admission.
So: Bill literally says that destiny and the God(s) can go frak themselves, Caprica makes Gaius cry and feel crummy, Lee makes Kara cry and feel great, Sam is magic now, Saul feels responsible for the 268s, Boomer might actually get it together, the Fightin' Agathons are completely fucked right now, and Laura's not got a lot of time left. What she does have, though, is a joint of that righteous New Caprica kind bud, so she totally smokes Bill out in sickbay preparatory to rambling about her cabin for awhile.
Moving forward: the rapidly failing Laura talks to Bill about abandoning the frakked-up mess that is Galactica in favor of using the Rebel Basestar as a military HQ. At the new Quorum, Franks (the pretty lady from Gaius's trial and Tigh's wife IRL) leads the charge to take Galactica apart for her pieces -- pretty much reversing Cain's first mistake, which is nice. So Bill cries and drinks and froths all on the mouth -- there's even a scene with crazy and white paint, though you'll be happy to know that at no point in this episode do Bill Adama and Leoben fuck -- but of course, eventually he gives in. Tigh balks, but Bill just hands him yet more crunk and promises to send the old girl off in style.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Hera is playing in Galactica's CIC, sitting on that table where they move the ships around, surrounded with dirt and debris. Hera is running through the Opera House; Hera is surrounded by sparks. Hera is playing in Galactica's CIC, driving Galactica into a Basestar like a fist from heaven. Hera isn't really any of these places. Hera's crying on a Raptor, speeding away from her family once again, into the arms of another one entirely. Hera is surrounded by sparks.
A knuckledragger Six stomps past the sparks and up to Dealino, the man who let Hera go because all Eights look the same. He's been complaining; she says the repairs aren't going so well because of Galactica's inferior alloys. An Eight watches as Dealino complains about the lack of the goo's efficacy; it's biological, it doesn't smell good. It smells like the inside of a latrine. Dealino also smells like a latrine, Six says, and before they can fight the Eight ushers her away. Eights don't like fighting. Sixes don't like bullshit, which means they're willing to fight to keep the machine working. "Lady, you work on your side," says Dealino, "And I'll work on mine!" The Eight pulls her away, still screaming at him to stop bitching; the Eight looks like any other Eight to him. The Six looks like any other Six to him. He stays on his side, they stay on theirs: that's what home means to him, using the enemy to keep his ship alive. He slams his helmet down and gets back to work.
Sam blinks, and the lights respond; they flash in Bill's quarters. Ellen's still persisting in thinking of Cavil as John, worried that the whole Boomer plan was to get Hera back to the Colony. She blames herself. Kara worries that she'll be dissected; Ellen explains that the Colony is, for all intents and purposes, "home." It's where the Final Five took the Centurions when they got to the Twelve Colonies, to teach them resurrection in the Armistice. Tory stares: Home. Lee gets in Saul's face, pissy as ever, carrying his father's stress, caught between it and the new Quorum of ships. "So you would have the Galactica jump into a Cylon's hornets' nest, risk everything, for one solitary, single child. Is that what you're telling me, Colonel?" He speaks for the Fleet. This is what a President does. His anger is a proxy for theirs, in these little meetings; it's like a plaintiff's lawyer weeping for the jury. A real and unreal thing.
Bill is getting angry too, as Ellen stands. "She's not just any child. With Caprica Six's miscarriage, Hera is our people's only hope of avoiding eventual extinction." Kara looks up at him, to explain about Slick's piano and her father, knowing that Cylon survival is not going to sway him. Ready to be a girl with a vector again: "She may be our only hope, too. I just..." She checks herself and stands with them. "We just experienced something remarkable." She explains how Hera wrote the notes to her father's song, and Saul tells him it's the same song he was hearing during the Trial, when he was going crazy, before the Nebula. Essentially "the same song that led us to Earth," Kara glosses: "Something is happening here, something that is greater than all of us, and that little girl is in the middle of it. She's the key, sir." Kara's been the key a dozen times; Kara's been in the hands of the Cylons' medical curiosity before too. "In other words, it's our destiny to go after her. Right?" Kara nods, waiting for him to give in like he always does.
"I've had it up to here with destiny, prophecy, with God or the Gods. Look where it's left us," he says, sounding sick. He lifts the glass to his mouth but doesn't drink, listing destiny's providence. "The ass-end of nowhere, nearly half of our people are gone, Earth a worthless cinder, and I can't even walk down the halls of my ship without wondering if I'm gonna catch a bullet for getting us into this mess." He laughs, but it's sad. Kara and Tory worry, for very different reasons. Saul points out that he wouldn't have bet on their survival in any form, four years ago. I agree: you can't really complain about the lack of a happy ending when nothing's actually ended yet.
Saul asks for a recon Raptor just to check it out, and Bill drinks. "The soldier in him has had enough," Romo said. The lights flicker, and she groans. She's dying. Pain is a signal from your body to your brain that something is terribly wrong. She's groaning with it. "Make it a Heavy Raider. I don't want Helo and Athena to find out about this." They're relieved; they are the destiny contingent. Home is out there somewhere.
Someone on the forums pointed out that, for a long time now, "home" for Athena and Helo has been each other. She forged a Colonial identity out of suspicion and hatred, and became a favorite pilot. He sacrificed himself on Caprica for Gaius Baltar, and never expected to make it back to Galactica. So if this whole episode is about accepting that even the idea of home -- or self, or love, or command -- can be taken away, it's going to hit hardest here. Boomer is a question; they thought Hera was the answer. And instead, Boomer took away something fundamental from them both, and Hera into the bargain. They've already lost her so many times, and held onto each other through so much. He begs her to look at him, just look at him, and she can't do it. She sees the lights flickering, as she woke up into a nightmare; she sees the man who let her daughter be stolen away again. She's killed, she's died, to keep Hera safe, and he just let her go. She pulls it together, as he holds her at arm's length, and he begs her to say it: "You hate me, don't you? Say it." She refuses; she won't. That's not true either. She begins, continues, to cry. He runs; she goes to the Opera House and watches the angels take her baby again.
Laura wakes from the dream, as the ship goes crazy; a wall splits open in the recesses, and a Six falls from a catwalk, down, then begins to slip toward the breach. Dealino holds on, but he's pulled too; the Six grabs him and pushes him up; sideways has become down. She shoves him up, but loses her own grip and slips past a marked line. She shouts at him to shut the door; in shock, he does. "Lock it!" she screams, with the wind whistling around her. "Lock it!" He does. She floats out into space. It's not really about the Cylon earning their personhood: they've already done that; it's not about your side and my side, holding each other at arm's length and trying to fix the problem between us, that fails; it's not about the biological inconsistencies that won't bind the goo to the hull, or spark a zygote; it's not about anything but this: For a moment she looked different from every other Six. Now she always will.
39,521 human survivors in the Fleet; that's 35 dead in this latest breach, and 26 Cylon. Dealino runs up, reporting to Bill that this latest thing, the Leobens say, is the "proverbial straw": 90% chance she won't last six more jumps. Saul jumps up his ass about the margin of error, and Bill lightly tells him to go get his injuries taken care of. Saul swears, telling Bill that Sonja Six asked him when Bill would be transferring his flag. "Transferring to her ... Baseship? That'll be the frakking day." Saul agrees; I'm sure he told her that in the politest way he could. I don't imagine talking to Sixes, especially platinum ones, is high on his list of enjoyables right now. High on mine, though, is of course Michael Taylor. I wish he would write a novel.
Saul goes off to yell at the repair crews, and Laura talks like the ghost of a former skeleton from her sickbay bed. "Must be tough saying goodbye to both of your women at once..." He goes back to her; she can only get out a sentence before the Opera House looms in her eyes: "You must feel like we're abandoning you." That's what the Opera House feels like: like a car pulling away from the curb. He promises her neither of his girls are dying: "They just need a little more care and attention." She smiles, and leaves again, calling out Hera's name. He kisses her hand, and watches her going.
Franks and Tarney were two of the five Captains on Gaius's Tribunal, so of course they're at this newfangled Quorum. We lost Tarney's ship the Pyxis in the Nebula fight, so he's here now captaining a new ship. I mean to say that Tarney more than likely voted to kill Gaius Baltar, and they both wanted to hear about Laura's drug use, and that he lost his ship -- his home, his command, his flag -- to the Cylons. There's usually a reason people do the things they do. Franks is the hardcore, pretty lady one, the one that's married to Tigh in real life. They're both grilling Lee about how Bill was totally just lying to Saul and Laura and himself, a second ago: in fact he is totally going to have to desert his ship. It's falling to pieces and there's no way to stop it.
Home is decaying all around him, and Lee knows it. So they're going to move the whole dog and pony show, Mom and Dad, the Twins, the Quorum meetings, the Vipers and the Raptors and the knuckledraggers and everything that has kept humanity alive, onto a Cylon Baseship. Permanently. They accepted the fact that they'd have to combine their resources. They added Raiders and Sixes and Eights to the CAPs and planet searches. They gave guns to Gaius, even. They turned her bones alien, even, and it still didn't work. So now we blend the other way, they'll take all their human mess onto the Basestar instead, and make her their new temporary home. The CAPs will fly, and the planet searchers will go out six days at a time, looking for stray hope. Nothing really will change. The Thirteen Colonies will keep looking for home, but rather than being led by two limping Stars, they'll be led by one.
Tarney tries to keep his tone light as he complains that this would be putting power into the hands of "some people, and I use the term loosely" whom he still remembers mostly for doing their damndest to wipe out humanity. Sonja stands, and begins to speak, but when they don't quiet down she goes all kinds of Six on their asses, shouting for quiet. "Let me speak! As you all know, we agreed to accept Admiral Adama's military authority in return for a seat on this council. We intend to abide by that promise."
Xeno Fenner was last seen getting royally played by Laura during the whole Danny Noon debacle, and more than likely turning a blind eye to the anti-Cylon riots that started Gaeta's mutiny. He also knows what it's like to have your home taken away, more than once. He interrupts Sonja to take it the step further: "Speaking of promises, I have been complaining about air quality aboard Hitei Kan from day one. I am submitting my requisition now for Galactica's CO2 and particulate scrubbers." Lee is taken aback, but the rest of the captains are right on board with him. Tarney demands the FTL's, and as Lee's voice gets squeakier and angrier, Franks starts setting up a lottery.
It's Laird's revenge, and he's not even here to see it: look around you now and see your mandate, dying all around you. The military came to the Scylla and told us the Lie of War, put our families against the bulkheads, gunned us down and took everything, left us dead in the water, surrounded by enemies, so the war could go on. And now the war is over, and the military is fading, and all that's left are the people, the Fleet. And the first thing they want to do is strip you down for parts and take everything you've got, to stay alive. To keep moving forward: revenge on Cain, and Fisk, and Shaw. They're not here to see it either.
Lee screams over them, finally shutting them up, and explaining at the top of his girly little lungs that nobody's taking so much as a bolt from her bulkheads until the Admiral says it's okay. Maybe it would be better if they just did it and then Adama could cry, since that's what he's going to do anyway. Then, for no reason whatsoever, Tarney goes, "Really! What does Gaius Baltar say about that!" And even Lee is totally thrown, because do what? I guess it's a reference to the cult militia, like, "Gaius Baltar and the Batshit Ladies will gun you down mid-bolt removal," but the way he says it and the way Pissy Lee responds to it, is just plain weird. And speaking of weird:
"Angels. Angels, I hear you say? I don't believe that angels appear to you in some mystical, spectral form. Angels take the guise of those who are nearest and dearest to you, those who can understand your doubts and your trials, and steer you back on the road to salvation. I believe in these angels because I see them." In Joe's Bar, Kara Thrace begins to weep. She's not sure why. She is tired. Even the angels she didn't want, even the little demon on her shoulder that helped her paint the sky, that always understood her doubts and her trials, who always tried to steer her toward her destiny, even he has said there's no hope left: looked at her like a monster and ran.
"Wherever you are in the Fleet, this is Gaius Baltar wishing you a beautiful day." Gaius spots Caprica, on another mission to gather food or whatever she's always doing, and chases her up the stairs. He wants to show her what he's learned. How human he can be. "Uh, it's... Good to, um... Listen, I heard about your... loss, and I want to offer you my condolences, tell you how truly sorry I am." She thanks him; everybody's got to have their turn. He gestures limply at her ration: "I see you've got your... You know, if you need any more, we've got..." She assures him she's fine, and he offers her a place to stay, now that she and Saul have split. "I have no desire to join your harem," she says firmly. Been there, done that, thought God was involved, turns out no.
Gaius grabs her hand and begins to shake, pleading with her to believe him, to believe that he didn't mean it that way: to tell him back the story of his righteousness the way everybody else does. Terrified that she'll see through it, and prove that niggling little voice in the back of his head right. If she looks at him the way she used to, the way the rest do now, then he's new and different and changed, a holy man, worthy of respect. Redeemed. But if not, if the person who loved him the most in this world and whom he actually respected most, calls bullshit on that, then what is Gaius Baltar? "We are trying to make a difference within the Fleet!" It was Lida that reminded him, sent him home to his congregation. She believed in him, saw that his guilt and shame over leaving them behind was an injury, hurting him to the core, didn't she? She knew. When he looks into their eyes it's so perfectly clear: he would die for them. Gaius Baltar is more than anything capable of loving completely, as long as it's in front of his eyes.
Right now that's Caprica, and he shivers and quakes beneath her gaze, because if she signs on for this he won't ever have to question it again. "You haven't changed, Gaius," she says, still holding his hand. "Not really." The tears well up, but she knows now -- more than anybody, maybe -- that you can't just wish it away. You can't pretend that what they did, the two of them, doesn't matter. You can move on, take it into yourself, let it change you, let it settle, but you can't project it away. He hasn't changed. "I have." After Liam, she has. Home was her womb, and the bright future inside it that she always knew she was strong enough to bear. Home for Gaius is peace with his people, and God's love. All the things she wanted so long ago, before she changed. Gaius weeps, still caught in his own shit, wondering if she's right. Angel or demon, damned or redeemed, it doesn't matter; if it's true or not; if Caprica is too harsh or just harsh enough. The only thing that matters is that Gaius still has no idea.
Saul wanders into sickbay for some reason, looking worried, and there's a short grump-off before Doc Cottle ushers him over to the bedside of an Eight, whose injuries from the explosion are eerily similar to the time Boomer tried to kill herself. He goes to her, confused, and she reaches out her hand. He takes it immediately, and she thanks him: "For the privilege of finally being able to meet my father before I die." His eyes well with tears, but he tries not to be moved. It would be a betrayal, somehow. Of Liam, or Bill, or Kara, or humanity. Letting go of Caprica means letting go of this tender peace, doesn't it? Letting go of Liam means letting go of fatherhood. Something in him will break if he lets this girl get to him, as she lays dying. "You shouldn't be thanking me. I spent most of my life trying to kill your kind." His nose twitches; she starts to lose it. "Too much confusion," she says, a private joke; he stares, as she finds her relief, still holding his hand.
Hera continues to demand her mommy, even as Boomer's being slowly driven insane by the Raptor sounds and the space sounds; she flicks switches, trying not to hear. There comes a point in every parent's day, usually around three o'clock. Not every day, and hopefully not often, but into every parent's day this moment comes eventually, and we don't like to talk about it, but the fact is that some days, you have to be really fucking slow with your movements and monitor your vocal tone carefully, or they are going to put you in jail for murdering everybody. And an even bigger secret is that kids -- even infants, even just a few days old -- know this, and love it. It is their Olympics.
But also, even leaving aside the whole stolen lives/substitution thing with Athena for a second: this is, genetically, her daughter. Half Eight genes, half Helo genes. And she has been pushed this far by Hera before, when she was newborn and they'd just stolen her off New Caprica: she nearly snapped her neck. Then Caprica snapped her neck, and it was a whole neck-snapping thing. She tried to be a mother to this kid once before, and it was an abomination; she brattily told Athena that her kid was alive and dying, just to hurt her. And when she woke up from that death, she was Cavil's. How awesome is that: Hera's crying drove her nuts, and so she became such a perfect machine that now, Hera's crying is driving her nuts the other way. The literal actual thing that made her suck is the literal actual thing that is going to make her awesome again. How about that? But first, more sucking:
So Boomer's at that place, that Olympics neck-snapping place, and decides that since her FTL is for shit and it's going to take at least a dozen more jumps to get to the Colony, she's going to stick Hera with another dose. She rips open the med kit, shouting at Hera, words she can't possibly understand. She flicks it, telling frightened Hera that they don't come in kiddy size, so it's going to be a long snooze. She yells at Hera to give up her arm, and then stops short of jerking it out of its socket and filling it full of adult narcotics, because duh. She sighs like "Fuck, obviously this isn't happening," and gets a headache. Hera watches her, worried. Last time Mommy made this face, she gunned down Natalie right in front of her. And Mommy's the one we like.
Saul runs from sickbay to his quarters and immediately starts looking all over for their booze, to deal with it. Ellen's up his ass about the Hera thing, and he's like, "But the recon mission!" She laughs at him, because that's not enough. "Our people's future is at stake and you got him to send out a recon mission." (See, if he had just offered toothpaste...) Saul mimics her always going on about our people, our people, and she's like, yes actually. He finds a bottle, but it's empty, so he smashes it against the wall and slides down onto the floor, apparently jealous that Bill's been using up all the hissyfit.
"You want to know who my people are, lady? The ones on this ship. The ones I fought with and bled with. The old man, this crew, they're my family. The only family I've known, and the only one I care to." This is such a funny, sad little Time-Traveler's Wife thing they're going through, isn't it? It's really elegant. He doesn't remember the 1001 responsibilities a dead man asked for, it's like Grimjack getting jailed for stuff he did in a past life. But even sadder is Ellen: remember her speech a while back to Laura and Bill about how if you think about how sad having 40,000 people left of the Twelve Colonies makes you, imagine if that number was five. But of those five, she's the only one alive, really. She's the only one that remembers. Everybody's trying to be nice about it, and ignore her when she goes nuts about it, but God. It's even sadder than when they bought D'Anna back and she had to be the only Three: Ellen is the only living person from the whole entire Earth. Imagine being surrounded by half-strangers, ghosts that are only sometimes the people you remember, of an entire world. I can't imagine how fucking frustrating that would be, to be alone in a family of amnesiacs and know they've shared so much without you.
"Oh, Saul," she grumbles, crouching down before him: "You're a pip. You really are. 'Old man'? Old compared to who?" She touches his face, begging him to remember how they were married two thousand years before he even met Bill; he tries to get her to understand how meaningless that actually is. "You're a Cylon, Saul," she says, and there's such hate in his eyes for a moment that it's almost shocking. "Whether you remember that life or not, at least you must understand what we were trying to do," she says with tears in her eyes: to end the cycle of war. "That was a bust," he grits out; he is sexy when he's mad, she's right about that after all. Ellen admits they failed, but points out that it's all about Hera now. "Without her, our children are going to die off one by one," she says; just like they're dying right now in Cottle's sickbay, just like Liam, with his eyes wide open. Saul flees into his pain: "I had a child. He died." Like Hera's gone and now he and Helo and Bill are a brotherhood of three; like the Cylon daughters are a metaphor, like their deaths don't matter. It isn't a metaphor; Ellen leans in: "You're wrong, Saul. You had millions." She hugs him, wraps herself around all the pain left in him, and he sighs in her arms, and says her name softly. But she's still crying, and she's still alone. Getting back to the Final Five was her Earth. Getting back to Saul was supposed to be home.
Boomer tries to get Hera to eat something awful from the long-term rations, but she won't. Too sad. Boomer starts talking to herself, out of boredom. This is what's on her mind: "Do you know what I do sometimes when I'm sad? I go to this special place. A house where I wanted to live. With a man that I loved." She projects herself into the house on Picon, and when she looks down, Hera's there too, reaching for her hand. She woke up screaming, remember, that night in sickbay, when all four of them were there together. Boomer's shocked, but Hera just holds up the algae crap, which is now a wondrous cupcake. Not for nothing do I keep bringing up the old faerie tales. Hera stares up at Boomer, who's intrigued but still trying to be a machine; in this house, she is different.
Gaius shaves in the head, praying nobody punctures or stabs or slices his neck this time. The image originally was to have Six shaving him, but given the scene as a whole that's not going to work. So instead she perches. Also perching: Kara, on a toilet, with the stall door open, watching him shave. Apparently dying makes you tacky. No, actually, I take that back: it's the most Starbuck thing she's done in months. She grins at him in the mirror and very pointedly pisses. Gaius is, of course, appalled, and tries to ignore her. She asks if he even believes the "bilge" he was spewing on the radio before, about the angels: tellingly, she phrases it "The angels that bring out our better nature, blah, blah, blah."
Because as much as this episode is about the concept of home -- Laura's off-tone speech rapidly making subtext into text as clumsily as possible -- it's also about finishing the equation Sartre and Milton started: not "hell is other people," not "myself am hell," but something much better. Home is other people. Home is letting go of the place you only thought you were standing; the place you thought was home. And it takes the heaven of everybody else to get you there. (The shepherd Bodhisattva vows not to enter paradise until everybody else does first; the trick is that you then obviously have to go about making sure that happens. I submit to you that's precisely what we're doing and we don't even know it -- this is also my explanation for Gaius Baltar's amazing ability to duck enlightenment, if not redemption -- but imagine a whole world like that. It would be like Canada, but with God. How awesome.)
Lee leads Kara, Kara leads Sam. He thinks he's talking about Six, but it's Caprica that leads Gaius. And then Gaius leads Kara, too. Laura leads Bill, Bill leads Saul. Hera is Boomer's angel. Daughter Eight is Saul's, and Ellen too, toward something we can't yet see. All of them looking -- and helping each other to look -- for strength, and for wisdom, and that measure of acceptance that moves you into the thing, the shape, the home. Pilgrims of mortality, they'll say at the funeral, and voyagers traversing the stars, in search of grace, unity, life, love: No man is islanded.
So of course Kara -- fresh from playing piano with her father, another one -- can't help but poke at the bruise. She knows it's right, somehow, but there's static from her own experiences. If there are angels, there are demons; if there are angels, she might be one. The answer is staring her in the face, but her own pain obscures it; we have a history of getting these messages confused. So she baits him, and he admits it's the truest sermon yet: he sees them, he admits to Six's lavish delight, "with alarming regularity." Kara makes a joke about him being full of shit, and gets up off the toilet. He retreats to the old Cuttle's Breath superiority as she's leaving -- "You are entitled to your opinion, obviously" -- but as she's leaving, there's something in her manner that draws him back. "Who are you, by the way, again?"
Kara washes her hands, unsurprised. Unrecognizable to herself. She doesn't even know he loved Caprica for two years without knowing her name; he doesn't remember she called him "Lee" when they were frakking. "Me? I'm a dead chick, that's who." He blows her off, but she gets serious. Desperate to speak, to tell someone real, and who's the only person more self-absorbed than she is, gazing at himself in the mirror? A plan begins to hazily unveil itself, and her voice turns deadly serious. "No, I mean it. I'm dead, as in six feet under dead. Dead, as in crash-landed, burned to a crisp dead." He washes his face, intrigued, and she produces the old dogtags. "Here. I took these off my body. What was left of it, anyway. On Earth... You used to be a scientist, run some tests. Pull out the old Cylon detector, do whatever you need to do." He responds, not to her beauty but to her need; he takes them easily. "The only thing I know for sure: I'm not an angel."
She's lit like one, in the corridor outside Sam's new home. The Marine lets her in, and she's a demon, lit with red Cylon code, like fire licking at her skin. The truth is a door that can't be shut, for Kara Thrace: now that she's said it out loud, everything is clicking into place. It's comforting to know how often that's true, for everybody, but especially it's always been true for her. She barks at the Eight tending to him, who tells her they've connected him to the stream that feeds the ocean, as discussed last week. "So in other words, you tried to jumpstart him like a car." She's mad intense right now, there's something hiding underneath the anger, like a defendant's lawyer shouting at the jury. "Let me guess, it didn't work so well for you. Take a break." The Eight balks, and Kara pretty much ejects her from the room with only eyeball lasers. I'd get the hell out too. Kara puts her jacket down, looking everywhere but him. And they have a little talk.
"It's funny, you know? I, um... I remember when I told you that if I found out you were a Cylon, I would put a bullet in your head. Some frakker beats me to it, and all I can think about is how I can get you back. Human, Cylon... Doesn't seem to matter. I just wanted you back. Because you're just Sam." She begins to cry, with the enormity of this and its simplicity, and what's about to happen: "You are my Sam."
And he is gone. A vegetable, hooked up first to man's machines and now the Cylon. A mockery. Nothing so vital as a pyramid jock or so passionate as her husband: just a thing, metal tied to metal. She closes her eyes, barely breathing; hating herself, being strong. Looking for that measure of acceptance that will give her just enough room to do this thing. To give him the tribute he would ask for, if he could. He is her Sam, and that's how she'll remember him. She pulls the gun and aims.
Eyes flash open, and all over the ship the lights go crazy; he grabs her wrist terribly hard, like the Centurions firing when they tried to unplug the Rebel Hybrid; he begins to sing the songs of God. "The neuroanatomy of fear and faith share common afferent pathways flip a coin increased vascular pressure marks the threat response free will scuttles in the swamp of fear do not fear the word you are the harbinger of death Kara Thrace you will lead them all to their end end of line. New command resume function resume function resume function..."
She breaks free of him, and shakes; he blinks and the world follows. Fear and faith follow the same pathways in the mind, the road called awe: something you can't see yet, vastly bigger than you but able to see you, like a mustard seed, like the sparrow. "Flip a coin": that's Sam, after Kara died. "Increased vascular pressure" is Kara now, terrified; "free will scuttles in the swamp of fear" because fear, unlike faith, keeps you from moving, it's paralysis. It takes away your options. The word is "harbinger," but the word is also "death": do not fear the word. Don't let the word take away your options before you know the whole story yet. Free will dies in the swamp of fear, and doesn't rise again. When the angel comes to rob you of your home, it's only because it was never yours: either sit there in the wreckage, like in Hera's dream, or take a look at the ground you're standing on, and the people you're standing with. When you're struck still, you lose what little power you have, but when you move? You see things in different ways. That's the only home -- the only view -- we get to keep. Listen:
"And so I walked, like the beat cop I used to be. When you walk, you see things in different ways. But when something's out of place, you notice. A cop's eyes always notice, and those eyes were one thing they couldn't take away from me..."
Bill notices her watching him, and stops reading. Observations lends existence. She's grinning, though, and tells him to turn to page 61. Giggling delightedly, she watches him find her surprise: the last of the New Caprica weed, saved for just such a time. "Cottle won't mind," she says, "It's medicinal." She pulls out a lighter as he closes the curtain, leading one to wonder if the huge-ass oxygen tank to her is planning on blowing up in a medicinal fashion, but then Cottle smokes constantly and hasn't blown himself up yet.
They remember that day as they light up: the sun, her dress, Gaius's groundbreaking speech. "Guess what I'm thinking about right now?" Laura asks, but you already know. Mountains. A stream running into a little lake. Water so clear it's like looking through glass. The cabin. A house on Picon, a cabin on New Caprica: what matters in these little mental houses we build isn't the landscape, or the wine glasses, it's who we take with us. Kara drew her house with Sam upon the sand, and invited Lee into it; Galen and Cally wept until their own house was allowed: New Caprica was a dress rehearsal for Earth and the hard days after. It's amazing how much Boomer still thinks about it.
"It's amazing how much I still think about it. You know, sometimes I wonder what 'home' is. Is it an actual place, or is it some kind of longing for something, some kind of connection... You know, I spent my whole life on Caprica. I was born in one house, and then I moved to another. And then... this. And then now. I don't think I've... ever felt truly at home, until these last few months here with you."
Laura smiles, connecting the dots, thinking to herself, watching him breathe in the smoke. "I know you love this ship. You probably love her more than you love me." She giggles, he looks down bashfully. "Bill, if you don't get us off this ship, you may lose both of us at the same time." He looks up and swallows, and breathes, but the rest is just poetry on top: "Why don't you give us a chance?" she asks, and tokes mischievously, and nudges him with that smile. Leading him on, leading him home.
Gaius, scraping and titrating and microscoping. Tigh stares down at Sam. "A closed system lacks the ability to renew itself knowledge alone is a poor primer..." The Six and Eight admit that surges have been Sam all along: he's hooked himself into her bones, spreading through the goo and into the hull circuitry. Every system but the computers, as usual. But Tigh quickly realizes that, given the FTL upgrades, he could jump them all at any time, just like the Rebel Hybrid. "End of line. Begin reintegration of command subroutines ... there's a hole in the bucket dear Liza dear Liza there's a hole in the bucket the long view returns patterns and repetitions all has happened before and will happen again..." The Eight finally unplugs him, after sufficient growling from Tigh.
Sonja and Ellen report the recon's findings to Bill: John Cavil moved the Colony about five months ago, just before the civil war. Bill asks if there's anything they can do, and Sonja darts a quick look at Ellen before they both must admit it's over. Bill excuses himself and takes off, immediately. Nobody's getting any toothpaste today.
Boomer begins to enjoy sharing the house with Hera, explaining projection to her. This almost-daughter from the wrong father. She bites her lip, but goes through with it: "Do you want to see a special room? A room where I thought my daughter would live?" She keeps trying to put it back together and it keeps falling apart. Hera's breathing hard again, but once they get to Dionne's wonderful room she's happy. Boomer's heart breaks as she watches Hera jumping on the bed, plowing down on the cupcake. Breaks and reknits itself again, as hearts do. It's not home, and it never was. But Hera's neither could-have-been nor never-was: she's the shape of things rapidly approaching.
Helo chases Bill down the hallway at exactly the wrong time; he's still trying to process Hera's death and Helo's bouncing around like a rubber ball. He tries to blow Helo off, afraid to hurt one more of his children today, by saying he's en route to the funeral. Helo's voice breaks in the first measure as he sings out his well-rehearsed request for a Raptor, so that he and Athena can go find Hera. They can go out, it's written on his face, and fly where they need to fly, and find their family, their home, again. Bill sadly admits they already sent it out, and it did nothing. Helo nods jerkily, sleepless and jittering, and asks again, just in case.
"She's gone. I've lost a son, and you've lost a daughter. But I can't condone a suicide mission. So let it go." Tears well up as he steps away; Helo sniffs and jumps into anger, grabbing him: "You want me to let it go? You're the one who can't let go. Painting over the holes in this bucket? This ship is dead! But my daughter might still be alive..." Billl never liked it when they called her the Bucket, dear Liza; he likes it even less now. "I understand your pain, Captain, but don't lecture me. You're here to take orders. Do you understand?" He's watched Laura do this a million times, play the bad guy and shut it down; he used to be a soldier and it came naturally. Now it just seems sad for everybody. Helo's grossed out by himself for about three seconds, back on military time, and apologizes... Then he's right back to begging. It's the worst thing I've ever seen. He pleads for the suicide mission, for any chance to do anything. Bill can't speak. Helo's never looked so young, that's the worst part: the Admiral squeezes his shoulder and walks away, and Helo deflates like a balloon, looking younger than he ever has.
Caprica weeps, putting out the candles for a service for her sisters. Ellen speaks. "For those that we have lost in the past, and for those that we are burying today, we must remember: There is a higher purpose."
Over her, in the launch bay, Adama speaks. "They gave their lives to save this ship. Casualties, as much as any soldier fallen in battle."
Paulla puts a string of beads on an altar. Gaius speaks. "And so we mourn the passing of our friends..."
The services merge, and converge. Henry Beston spent a few years on Cape Cod, in a house not unlike Laura's cabin, and not unlike Galactica: he called it the Fo'castle, because the ten windows and its position on the beach made him feel like the captain of a ship. It was his home. Later, he called it the Outermost House. He wrote about it for a year or two, before returning to Quincy Mass in September 1927, and proposing marriage to another writer, Elizabeth Coatsworth. Talk about angels: she said she wouldn't marry him unless he turned his pages and pages of notes and essays into a manuscript, to mark the time of his life on the beach. "No book, no marriage." That is a person who understands writers. And wouldn't you know, by April he'd got it done, and The Outermost House was published in October. They honeymooned at the Fo'castle. He wrote this about it:
"For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars -- pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time."
Gaius speaks. "Because that is what we are, voyagers traversing the stars..."
Caprica and Ellen offer the Prayer to the Cloud of Unknowing. "Heavenly Father, grant us the strength, the wisdom, and above all a measure of acceptance, however small."
Adama speaks. "We must understand that what we sacrifice here today are women and men of extreme courage. So say we all."
And Gaius, praying for comfort: "In search of grace."
And Ellen, anointing her daughters one by one, in grief and in renewal: "Grace."
And Gaius. "Unity. Life. Love."
And Ellen. "Unity. Life. Love."
And Bill, with honor and with love. "So say we all."
And the Fleet: "So say we all!"
The cult comes into the military funeral and joins them quietly, as does Caprica. Adama calls the service, and they salute sharply, shutting the door on them. She carries a candle in vigil; Gaius holds the dogtags in a vigil of his own. Seeing her, he smiles vaguely to himself. He thinks it's as easy to impress Caprica as it is to impress Six.
"Listen to me. Death is not the end. And I'm not talking about Cylon resurrection, I'm talking about the gift of eternal life that is offered to each and every one of us. Yes, even the most flawed amongst us." Lee stares. "All we need is the courage to face death when it comes calling for us -- embrace it even..." Caprica stares at him; Kara makes the funniest, Chiefiest face she'd ever made, like, "Ohh, fuckin' Baltar."
"Only then will we truly have the ability to cross over... As one amongst us here has already crossed over! One amongst us here is living proof that there is life after death. The blood on these dogtags comes from necrotic flesh -- that means a dead body. The DNA analysis is a hundred percent proof positive match..." Ellen's eyes dart at her again and again while he's speaking, I don't know if it's just Vernon being bored in this take or there's a point, because she's very soft-focus in the background and it's not the kind of thing EJO would look out for, but then also Ellen knows Kara is magic, in some way that is not directly related to her entire bag of bullshit, so it's not that hard to figure out.
"...For one Captain Kara Thrace. I told you there were angels walking amongst you! When will you believe me? She took these from her own mortal remains that lie on Earth, even now, interred with her bones..." Adama's who has had it up to here with magic, has settled back into his old comfy atheism like a dog across his feet, tells him to STFU before he goes to the brig. But Gaius is on a fucking roll: he's a scientist, he used to be a scientist. He used to live for the beauty of new things.
"She's not a Cylon -- they've already been revealed to us! Ask her yourself! She will not deny it!" Kara strides up to him and slaps his face, but he's right. She's even a little grateful, but it's sad. This is exactly what she thought he might do, either solve the problem or -- if she has to stay in the cloud of unknowing -- blow her secret so wide open she wouldn't even have to apologize for it. That's such a Kara plan. She and Gaius have this in common: it doesn't exist until everybody believes it. She can't just be secretly dead, she's gotta be totally, amazingly, mind-blowingly dead, for the whole ship at once, so it can stop eating at her and start eating at everybody else. She's never comfortable with lies or half-truths, it's one of the things I love most about her. But let the whole world chew on this latest thing, and she has a chance to breathe. Lee continues to shoot bitchface everywhere like he's been doing the whole episode, because sometimes he's dreadfully uncool, and Bill is like, "I will beat every one of you personally to a pulp if you don't disperse! Gaius, quiet down over there! You, bring me a mop!"
Kara's beautiful face is wearing a look of calm it hasn't since she was in the Viper, right before it happened. She looks at the Wall and weeps, but not in anguish. Not everything is fire and explosions and cramps all the time: sometimes you just let it go, and it hurts in a new way, a quiet way. It doesn't always have to hurt for us to learn: New for her. Lee comes up behind, worried, but when she turns to face him, she's already smiling. Sometimes he's unbearably wonderful.
"Okay, listen to me. I don't care, all right? I don't... We've all been through some crazy, crazy stuff. I don't care what you think you saw. I watched your Viper explode. Don't care. I'm here, you're here. That is all that matters." He touches her face and she smiles, but can't speak yet. It's too big. It's the last piece. "Okay. See you, around..." She grins as he takes off, awkwardly, and he tosses a smile back over his shoulder: "...Kara Thrace!"
Because you're just Kara. You are my Kara.
Strength, and wisdom. And a measure of acceptance. She stands on the water's edge: in her hands she holds two jugs of water, pouring one back into the river, and one onto the ground. She brings water to the river, life to the shore. Kara Thrace laughs through her tears, and puts the photograph back where it belongs, between Kat and Dualla. All the darling daughters. And of all the things she ever thought or felt about that girl in the photo, once upon a time, what used to be the hardest is the easiest of all: just to love her.
The Colony is sixty bad dreams at once, dreams about bugs and scorpions and Babylon 5, nightmares about the limits of CGI in 2009. Boomer lands the Raptor, finally, and brings Hera in through bright halls and dark corridors, code climbing up the walls. Her exhaustion is written in her back and on her face. Cavil's delighted to see her; she gives a fairly good impression of pride and triumph. John practically rubs his hands together with glee at how sad Ellen will be now, knowing she was the Trojan Horse for this.
I am just so grossed out by Cavil. There are so many lines crossed here, generationally: the way that humanity laughed off its accountability for its children, the way Cavil has worked those intergenerational lines from every angle, out of his own sickness. The stuff he wants from Boomer, that nobody should want. But I will tell you this: without Cavil, Boomer never would have gotten over Dionne, because she never would have spent those scores of jumps with Hera enough to come back to the world. She's not Boomer's daughter, but she is a daughter. Just like Boomer is. And there's something good in that. Boomer, watching Hera jumping on the bed, remembered false memories of her own never-was childhood, and that gave her something back.
I think we all repeat our worst mistakes less out of some weird Freudian masochism loop than the simple animal desire to get it right this time: again and again, until we get it right. The difference is a mile wide; it's the difference between kindness and self-hatred. Between "This has all happened before" and the shape of things to come. A closed system lacks the ability to renew itself; knowledge alone is a poor primer. It takes an angel to push you over the edge, sometimes.
Boomer balks when he takes Hera from her, but he tells her not to worry, and takes her around a frosted-glass wall. "There, there now. You'll have all sorts of new playmates pretty soon," he says, and Boomer weeps as Hera turns and puts her little hands against the glass, calling out again and again for her new friend.
Bill's got tears in his eyes as surveys the damage, heading back to his quarters for the first time since before the latest accident; he takes off his Admiral's insignia before he even gets inside, holding them in his hand. She groans around him, in dreadful pain. This isn't how he wants to remember her. The hatch isn't even locked, it swings easily open. In the bathroom, the panels have fallen off the walls. It's an unholy mess. He picks up the whitewash and tries to paint it, just like Boomer when her home was dying all around her; just like Kara, too. He splashes the walls with paint, great gouts of it, and collapses against the wall, caressing her, smearing his hands across the bulkhead and crying out, saying goodbye. It's a funeral. He blinks; she is his world.
Kara pulls up tankside, Hera's notes and her slick music in hand. The lights are up normal this time, but he's still gone. "I know you can hear me, Sam. Just like I know on some level you'll understand. Same as the old you. Just took me a while to accept it." (That is a characteristically Kara apology, isn't it? "Sorry I tried to shoot you in the head, but like, you were so freaking me out. Don't worry though, I've totally worked through it.") "Which brings us to the larger question: Why am I here? I think it has something to do with this music." You can feel Sackhoff struggling with the lines, as she always does when there's a false note like this Chester Copperpot cool-shit little-boy nonsense, but it's good that she's so good.
"There's a pattern there, a pattern that I can't see, but I think that you can." As much as I hate the sheet-music thing, I like this moment: if you're looking for patterns, that's both computation and intuition. We know she knows that, because we've seen her do it before, so we know if she wants help it's the right idea. And who better to ask than your robot husband, who is both a computer and connected now to God Himself? Patterns are all he's got now. Not to mention the lovely reversal of having Kara play Leoben to the newest (hybrid) Hybrid of all, assuming his role here as she's assumed so much of the work he used to do for her. "So we are going to sit in this room until we figure it out," she says sweetly. He doesn't move as she plugs him in and says, hands-on-hips pragmatically, "Talk to me, Sam." Everything spazzes out, and then he chills and starts to sing: "New command." She stares down at him, with almost a smile. He blinks and the world trembles, but he's Sam.
It's like Gaius said: the courage to face death, without fearing the word. Without letting it take away our will. Without trying to soften the blow, or shutting down at the moment of our greatest challenge, or running away from it: only then will we truly have the ability to cross over. Anybody can die the same death a million times, as long as they know they'll come back from it. My friend Rachel says, "The ones who come back are the ones who suffer." Change feels like dying because it is, right, but the opposite is true: if it doesn't feel like dying, it isn't change. We don't cross over, and we don't get bigger. We go back to the beginning, and this all happens again.
When Saul gets to Bill's rack, he's just washing paint off his crazy old face. Saul's pleased that Bill "sent those toaster work crews packing, for all the good they've done," but Bill explains that's just a little bit of it: he's halting all repairs. He pours them two drinks, because they'll need it, and sits, and tells Saul to get them stripping her down. "All the weapons and gear. Gonna start offloading the civilians by tomorrow. Full crews and ordinance transferred by the end of the week." Saul's like "what?" and his eyeball goes "the fuck?"
Don't fear the word: "We're abandoning ship, Tigh." Saul shivers, and starts begging him not to. "She's dying, and we both know it." Saul turns to bargaining: As the XO, he refuses to let this happen. Bill's eyes sparkle a little bit. "You've never let me down, Saul. I can't blame you for being what you are. Especially since it includes being the finest officer and friend I've ever had. This ship never let us down, so we're gonna send her off in style." He sips his drink peacefully and Saul rolls his eye, finally sitting heavily to him.
"So we're gonna do this, huh? She was a grand old lady." Bill nods. The grandest. "To Galactica. Best ship in the Fleet." Saul clinks his glass, and they toast her. But it's the music, again, that does it. Those darn bagpipes that get you every time: what used to be the song for Zak, and Bill and Lee, and reached out to hold Dualla and Kat, and Laura, it plays as they sit together, drinking in her honor. For everyone on that ship, as they say goodbye: I myself am home. Home is other people.