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What a silly, bloated, preachy, half-assed mess. It's embarrassing to see such great actors saddled with such unvoiceable, pointless activity, for so very, very long. After all the talk about holding something back and pacing yourself for the marathon, one would think the creators would follow their own advice, but then, this episode could have easily been written in 1992 when TV still had an excuse for sucking, so maybe they did.
Caprica Before the Fall: Tigh buys Adama a lap dance, screams "Woo!" sixteen times; Bill barfs on himself and decides to throw a shit fit and retire rather than take a desk job. Sean Ellison turns out to be a hot student of Laura's from when he was a child; she fucks him, smokes a cigarette, and joins Adar's campaign. After a long speech presaging Lee's undying love of democracy, Kara and Lee almost fuck in the same room as Zak but then don't. Caprica Before the Fall was fucking classy.
Galactica/The Colony: Everybody moves Sam's hospice-smelling tank into the CIC so that he can brainwave the Colony's Hybrids. Since they are female, they have orgasms and pass out. After about twenty minutes of "rounding the horn" -- which if you're not savvy means that Adama names each and every room in the ship and then a person in that room says Go! and it's riveting -- the Galactica t-bones the Colony. , imagine watching your little brother playing Doom on a PC for approximately sixteen hours. Boomer rescues Hera, and Athena shoots her a million times. Then Helo gets shot a bunch of times and disappears for about an hour and a half. While a bunch of CGI robots shoot at a bunch of other CGI robots, Hera runs off about eleven times for no reason.
The Opera House vision plays out, and Gaius (who joined after all) and Caprica scoop her ass up and take her... into Galactica's CIC. Which is the Opera House, which is cool: all Final Four standing around Sam's tank, glowing. Cavil pops up out of thin air and grabs Hera again, and Tigh promises him resurrection technology in return for Hera, but only after Gaius makes an embarrassing speech about how God doesn't pick sides because he's on everybody's side because we're all friendlies. Everybody immediately starts shooting at each other, only nobody actually dies. Except Cavil, who sticks a gun in his mouth hilariously and for no reason. Meanwhile, Chief chokes the shit out of Tory, because she's a whore and deserves it, but mostly because Ron Moore has discovered that the internet hates Tory and thought he'd give us a little present.
After the Colony is nuked and sent into the black hole with all the 145s aboard, Kara randomly plays "All Along The Watchtower" on the FTL boards, and the Galactica jumps to Earth. That is, our Earth, with North and South America, like we saw when she first came back from the dead because we went to bombed-out Thirteenth Colony Earth. That's a pretty good fakeout: "We're going to find Earth! Before schedule! And it sucks! But just kidding, because then we found Other Earth!" Then there is a lot of grass, some gazelles, and more grass.
Somehow the Fleet randomly shows up and then all the bridge officers lay down and talk racist imperialist shit about our ancestors, and then everybody decides to be freegans and live in dirt huts and make life suck for themselves even worse than on New Caprica, because cities are evil. Sam pilots the entire Fleet into the sun so that just in case anybody starts getting the idea that progress and intellectual development and the human urge to excellence lie anywhere other than somewhere on a scale between inconvenient and vile. There are sixty act breaks for no reason, and then back to more grass every time, so it ends up feeling like the end of that movie with the hobbits where they jump on the bed and then hug in the courtyard and then cry and then Viggo Mortensen and Liv Tyler making weird mouth noises and a necklace and Elijah Wood looking like he's going to throw up.
Then Kara goes, "This just got stupid," and vanishes into thin air because she's Jesus and her resurrection accomplished something or something. Lee stares around for a while and then decides to go climb a mountain. Laura finally dies after a hundred million minutes of staring at the grass and gazelles, and Bill decides to bury her and sit to the cairn and pretend it's a cabin and talk to himself. Once again, the only emotionally resonant part is Gaius and Caprica, who are back in love and ready to make a go of it as farmers. This is intense because of how Gaius has always defined himself as not-farmer, and so after all the letting go and handing the cult over to Paulla really only has one lie left. It's maybe the biggest emotional step he's taken this whole show, and it's amazing. The angels show up and explain that there wasn't really a point to all of their bullshit except to keep Hera safe long enough to get her to Earth, and then Other Earth. Meanwhile, Helo and Athena teach Hera to surf and grow beans, and the Chief heads off to invent Ireland.
150,000 years later, RDM's hanging out in Times Square, where they've just dug up the remains of Hera -- or "mitochondrial Eve" -- who apparently 1) died early but 2) not before fucking enough cro-mags to populate the entire Earth. A great idea in theory (we're all descended from the Shape of Things to Come) but I guess I don't know enough anthropology to understand how that's not fucked up. Then Chip Six and Chip Gaius are basically like, "God and the Devil are the same thing, which is pretty much everything, but don't call it God because that pisses God off; and I hope you Earthlings of 2009 don't fuck it up like every other time," but even though Six thinks we won't, there's still a montage of Asimo and that creepy Japanese girl robot and like Furby saying probably we will. Because in addition to cities, artificial intelligence is evil and we should all become freegans and it should be Woodstock all the time. Or whatever, the "message" as such is not really clear but I guess we should stop doing terrorism and war-type stuff because the cycle of violence is no bueno whether it's with robots or other people. This part also, though, was awesome, and it ends with the angels walking off through Times Square, and the real "Watchtower" playing because ooooo.
The Excellent: The Kara/Lee flashback continued to be tonally perfect, both subtle and fraught with meaning, and the story brought both characters to elegant and moving conclusions. Anything involving Caprica and Gaius (or their analogues) was superb in its writing and execution, and I find I'm still finding more and more reasons to love them after the fact -- which, if you think about it, might be the show's highest triumph. The depth and scope of Ellen Tigh's story offscreen, those two kids did right in front of us over the past six years, coming to a place of compassion and empathy no one could have predicted. And of course the Twins, the Drunks and the Roslin/Adama Administration are six more stories I'd be proud to tell, if my skills were equal to the task. Thank God the show was, and is.
The Good: Great actors can make anything work, so you're treated to the usual lapidary performances (between the hour-long onslaught of shit blowing up followed by the hour-long onslaught of weird Prime Directive patronizing weirdness in the veldts of Tanzania). The truth of the Opera House was beautiful in its way, and the mysteries of Kara and the angels were left appropriately mysterious. (Which is not to say vague, but just to say the whole point of stuff we don't have words for is that we don't have words for it: try to put words to it and you end up with Pah Wraiths, so that's at least one lesson learned.) Taken as a whole, despite the draggy finale's execution, the narrative journeys of Laura and Bill and Saul are benchmarks of characterization, and that's as present here as it's been every other week.
Also Good: Boomer's arc feels complete, in that she accepts both the up and down sides of free will, which are pretty much her whole deal, and dies willingly to exercise both at once. Tory never had an arc beyond being the whipping girl for the entire cast and writing staff, so her end was at least appropriate (although it would have been just as easy -- and thematically superior -- to shift her down to the sickbay with Laura working triage and have her die there, which is basically the same chance Felix got with Gaius). And Chief's arc ended with Hotdog's sperm just as much as Athena and Helo this season became automatons randomly shouting HERA every fifteen seconds on the dot, so their fizzled endings seem just as clean. I can almost see it as a shifting focus throughout the show: S1 was pretty much about Boomer, Athena and Helo proportionally, so they've had their parts of the story already. I can handle that, I guess.
Less Good: Laura's arc in the present day started with a bang -- a wholehearted paean to Cottle's gifts to her -- but quickly paled as she did nothing but stand around not being dead and looking more and more like it, so that by the time she finally bite it, it was well past meaningful and right into manipulative. Not really a new problem, considering how many Adama crying/drooling scenes were anchored throughout the season as placeholders for actual development.
Not Great: Most of the two-shot dialogues (Kara and Lee's especially) on Earth had a faceless, generic quality. Much bombastic disquisition on fate, responsibility, identity that would have fit just as easily into the mouths of Kira Nerys and Odo, or Chakotay and Janeway, or Hawkeye and Trapper John... And did. For a show that banks on transcending its genre, the dialogue in this episode sure did sound like the easy-reader pablum you can expect from any other show (or telefilm, for that matter) on the network, with corresponding awkwardness from even the canniest players. Again, not a new problem: the old-guard SF writers (RDM, Weddle & Thompson) on staff have always had these genre-bound tonal issues, and the majority of viewers enjoy it just fine.
Which brings it home, because: if you like robots and shit blowing up, if you like watching people shoot at other people and occasionally grunt or toss off a wisecrack, if you like manipulative callbacks and clichés just for the fact that they're referencing something that's relevant to your past experiences, you probably loved the majority. If you like a little bit of fantasy in the mix, the very-very-ending might not have pissed you off too much. I don't know, because I don't know you and I'm not recapping your experience of the episode: I only know mine. But even if all these things are true, I can't see many people being all that patient with the six hours of unending prairie footage, the trite wishy-washy moralizing, or the haphazard tying up of loose threads in configurations invented on the spot and stuck together with chewing gum and ammunition. Still, shit blowing up and wisecracking gunplay makes more money than anything else, which tells me they're onto something.
However, if you thought the answers to series-long questions would be given their due, rather than snapped together like Lego around somewhat unnecessary character-building flashbacks -- and if you, like me, don't really care for robots, shooting, or TV science fiction -- there wasn't a lot here for you. I'm not going to say it was "bad," because what does that even mean, but I will say that I personally enjoyed it slightly less than "Crossroads," which I enjoyed slightly more than the episode where Lee dates a hooker, but slightly less than a root canal.
I've never understood "they're making it up as they go along" complaint about shows, because that's how stories work: you build a story a word at a time, you're always making it up as you go along. But there's a way to do this with reverence toward what's gone before, creating a greater whole out of the sum of all your parts, and there's a way to do it after a long night of coffee: assembling the pieces you've got on the table in front of you in a way that you think might fly, just to get it off your desk. Letting the plot "figure itself out" has lent itself to great intuitive leaps -- and the finest television show I've ever personally seen -- but it's also led to these last two season finales. So if this poor showing is the end of the marathon, I'm grateful they paced themselves as well as they did, for as long as they were able. I don't think we'll see a story this wonderful again in our lifetimes, and we are privileged to have taken part. And that's really what matters.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!ELLEN TIGH
In Islam, it's called riya: the showy performance of our own salvation. Lee looked Gaius in the eye and told him to commit it, gave him a logic loop, a puzzle to tease out: prove yourself by doing something selfless, and in so doing make it selfish. And the crew stepped across the red line, and looked across it at each other. And Gaius stood in the middle, shaking. Unable to commit that mortal sin. And the port looked to starboard, and starboard looked to port. And having chosen their sides, could no longer reach across. You can see them all at once, across the line.
It's a strip club: boys and girls, dancing for boys and girls. In the middle of these illusions of intimacy, they've come to talk. Caprica City by night is a rainbow of neon, coded decadent, music pumping. (The song the strippers dance to is called "When Will The Work Be Done?" it's by Brendan McCreary, Bear's brother that sang "Watchtower" the first time, and it's about fleeing Caprica for Earth, the Exodus, the Fleet. Pretend you didn't notice; it wouldn't be the first time this man's voice sang impossible things.) Caprica by night has churches but the windows are all dark. Saul Tigh haggles with a stripper, who reminds him Caprica is not Picon. They settle on forty cubits, for a lapdance for Bill, who is considering retirement. She begins to settle herself on Bill and he laughs, and he tells her to keep Saul's money and walk away. She does.
Saul and Bill discuss the life Bill could have, if he takes this job: "One hour of your time, and then you have a whole new life! A life without midnight watches, or drills, or Fleet politics, or inspections, or any of that crap!" He was cute once, when he drank. Bill sips, and Saul yowls suddenly, yipping at him: "Life! You could be here every night!" It's one of the good times. Saul is happy, and young; Ellen drapes herself across his shoulders. "He won't be here every night," she laughs. The sad old stick in the mud, who can look around this neon heaven and see only what it is ugly in it: "Can hardly get him here once." Skin on skin, the sweetish smell of ambrosia. Nasty laughter. Ellen Tigh was born for this city, by night: She was made to love it. Made.
But him, too: the way she feels about him, nobody could explain. Past-life love. Forever love, that burns too hot. She's loved him for two thousand years, and forty years, and only a handful. And if Bill retires, she knows, Saul will follow suit. "To retirement," Bill says after a silence, and she cheers him on. All three of them down a shot, and Saul Tigh crows.
Let the Fleet fly into the sun, they can settle. She'll have him all to herself; she won't have to share him with the Fleet, or Bill. Or death, past the red line. She won't have to cheat just to make the pieces fit.
KARA THRACE
He's coming to the end of a long one, you can tell. His voice and her eyes, tired. Easy to talk to, so friendly. Not like Zak said at all: not stolid or hard or soft or controlling. Just so excited. It's sweet, really. Something dark, under that brightness, something hurt, but that calls to her too. He believes in things. Listen:
"...If you don't participate in the political conversation, then you are giving up your voice! You're giving up your right to have a say in the way that our society is run!" He shakes his head at her laughter, and she shakes right back at him. It's like seeing a unicorn, this guy. "You have really bought into all that crap, haven't you?" Little Miss Regs & Rules. "I do. Proudly! And so do you, by the way," he tells her. She pulls back, just a little. He doesn't know why. How the cockpit felt just right, that first time; about the bugs the Sergeant Major faced on Medra, how they disturbed her dreams. It all looks bright to him.
"Yeah," Lee says, in love with the idea. If he says it enough times, it will be true. If he believes hard enough in the world he wants to build, then it will come true. "Because that's what the uniform stands for. It's what we train to defend..." She slaps the table, laughing, but he swears it's true. "No, that's sad. That's sad. It's cute, but it's sad." Zak enters laughing, bearing more wine like a dare. "Let me guess, he's going on about voting and its importance to a democratic way of life again?" Lee smiles: at least he's been listening all this time.
Kara marvels at Zak; such an idealistic dreamer for a brother? Lee snorts "Dreamer..." but he fidgets underneath it. "It's sad," she laughs at him again, anxious to press on the bruise. Zak takes it a step further. "Truth is, he's not. Beneath that romantic exterior lies the heart of a true cynic." Below the bright rhetoric lies a man with scars across every knuckle, who needs something to believe in. Who knows enough to know that the world is bleak, and must set his sights past that into daybreak. He's his father's son. Say it enough times and it will be true: wanting to believe the best in people, wanting to believe in pure forms -- logic, law, democracy, rules and regulations -- is the sanest defense against a world that keeps breaking apart.
Kara's excited, by the chinks in the armor, and settles in for explanations. "Yeah, it's one of the many, many, many reasons that him and Dad aren't on speaking terms anymore," Zak says, as Lee's face falls. Kara was never so young -- and she is young here, unspeakably, wonderfully young in voice and action -- that she didn't see a door and want to walk through. "Oh, come on. Family angst syndrome, I love it! Come on, boys, let's open up some old wounds!" Over and over again, until we get it right.
Lee's not interested, of course. Zak offers a take: "Dad believes in the system. Believes in the uniform. Believes in something greater than himself." Lee goes hard, and soft. "Correction. Dad believes in himself: his uniform, his system, his way of life." Getting angrier; drawing a line between his optimism and his father's selfish honor: "And if you're not with him in that tiny little bubble, then you might as well not exist."
"If you hate him so much, why'd you follow in his footsteps?" Why not ask why Bill hates lawyers so much? This is the story of parents and their children, speaking across unimaginable gaps; repudiating viciously, running headlong into their arms. Zak's the younger brother; he's not intimate with fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the way Lee is. It was Lee that Joseph called, across the room; it was Lee who stood between Joseph and William, that painful ricochet, and it will be Lee who stands between Commander and President, until they learn to love each other. Kara understands, though. She knows what it is, to bear that responsibility, and smiles more tentatively. "Touché," she says, and waits for him reply.
Lee is quiet. When he speaks it's with Joseph's voice. The hardness under the optimism, fingers tented, looking across the table at a defendant, double-dog-daring you to see him changing shape. "Service gave me four years of college," says the idealist dreamer. "I gave the service four years in return. Simple as that." Zak nods, point scored. "A cynic. Right through to that big, empty space that used to hold his heart."
It's the truth. It is a lie. Kara sees them both at once, and a world opens up. A bird flutters against glass, against the sun. "Honey? I think I'm starting to like your brother." Lee fidgets, grown young in a moment. She can feel the currents in the room, like a fresh wind: soft electric light, faces revolving, a dreamer going jaded, a cynic burning with hope. Kara is an orphan who left her mother far behind, she flew so fast. She is an only child.
Until tonight, she was an only child.
LAURA ROSLIN
Three months ago she stepped into the fountain; baptized she was born again. Years from now Ellen will dip her fingers in pure water, and draw them across her daughters' brows. She was born again, and retreated into her own mind, her own life. And her friend Marcie reached across that grief, and that salt, and drew her back across, demanding that she give the cold bright world another chance. Gave her a choice: service, or love. Adar's campaign, or a date with Sean Ellison. To give more, or to take. Take up the reins of governance, a mother in a cabinet, or become a woman again, after so long taking care of Father and the girls. Her loneliness outweighed her powerlessness, and so she asked how old he was, and his name was familiar.
"You must be Sean," she says, more beautiful than she has been in months. He's guiltlessly charming and without guile. An invitation to the world. "Uh, yeah, I must be," he says, and she laughs. "I hope so." She takes the flowers, and offers him a glass of wine. He asks if she's comfortable, awkward, and she says it's not that, filling his glass: she just feels she knows him. She hands him the glass and he watches her face, wondering when she'll figure it out. The shoe drops and she puts down her glass. "Wait a minute."
She looks at him, accusing and charming: "You were one of my students." He is adorable in assent; he admits he knew, but didn't want to tell Marcie that he knew who Laura was. She's impressed, eating it up: "And you knew I was old enough to be your..." Sean completes the equation elegantly. "-- Teacher? Yeah." He focuses on her face, insistent and older in a moment: "But I graduated. Some time ago." She thinks a bit, and looks at him with a little smile as he offers to leave.
"Did I say you should go? I didn't say you should go." He grins sweetly, and she finishes pouring her wine. "The night's young... Apparently so are you, let's see what happens." They toast, and she laughs at herself, beautiful. Joyful. Saying his name, hearing it fall into place. What she's getting into; what the world demands. He smiles back, relieved. He smells of musk, and bergamot, he has dimples.
Years from now, they'll crowd in. Like students, each of them unique, each of them needing something from her. To teach is to govern. To govern is to teach. It's a line of salt she'll have to cross, eventually; hearing God under the Hybrid's song. For now it's an aberration. A double-dog-dare, to say goodbye to her old life and hello to the new. To throw open those windows again. Students become teachers, teachers students. Sean Ellison is an apocalypse waiting to happen, if she'll let him. The night is young. So is she.
WILLIAM ADAMA
Alone again; she's danced herself to the bar again. Bill dares Saul to say he'd do the same, in Bill's position. Take a desk job, leave the stars behind. Become civilian. Saul's eyes travel the landscapes of flesh, a smile on his face saying this is still light conversation. They both know it's not. "I want to hear it come out of your mouth," Bill demands. "Say it!" Tell me you could let all that go, and settle in your house with Ellen, and leave it all behind. How can you ask me to, when you wouldn't do the same? Saul is blinded, attention caught, staring up at the stripper. A tiny grin plays along his mouth as he ignores the question, and Bill laughs at him. They both know it; they are soldiers. Bravado born of Caprica City by night, saying they can walk up to the line at the end of the world and step over it. Two more shots, and Saul crows again.
Zak is thoroughly finished. Kara and Lee carry him to the couch. His heart is big; he's the baby of the family. They carry him on their shoulders like the dead. "I love you guys!" he says, as Zaks always do. This has happened before and it'll happen again. "Because you guys are my family." He takes a header into the couch, speaking muffled as they try to arrange him: "I love you, brother." Lee calls him "big boy," adorably; they're drunk too. Kara falls on the couch trying to lift his legs, and is pinned. Lee sets her free.
"Never could hold his liquor," Lee says, thinking of Mother. Wondering if Kara's seen this before, or he needs to apologize. He doesn't know her yet. The things that aren't important, he doesn't know them. "Unlike his brother!" she laughs, and he nods. He's still standing, after all. So is she.
Months, years from now, Gianne will come to him, bearing his child, wearing his ring, and he will push her away, and he will run. Like a bird, battering itself against the glass, twisting in fear of something he can't name. He won't see her, or speak to her, ever again. The world will end first. This is the story of parents and their children, speaking across unimaginable gaps: pushing with one hand and pulling with the other. "Hey, I'm still standing," Lee says, and Kara grabs his shoulders, grinning in his face. "Which means...? It's time for shots!" She beeps his nose, the old girlfriend-stealer, and fetches shot glasses.
Bill's vomiting, sitting in the gutter, wearing a civilian suit. It's all over him; he leans back against the cold, hard world as though it cradles him. He wipes a hand across his face and looks up, from the gutter to the stars. His vision clears and he can see them, in the black of Caprica by night: home. Whatever drives a man to them, it calls to him now. They are so lovely he laughs at them. And they laugh back.
THE GULL
The ships are leaving, the tapestries are rolled up in boxes. The harem is cold and hard, transformed from a temple to just another storage compartment. Their symbol, the Gull, still hangs above the door: Grace, Unity, Life, Love. (Seem silly? It's just a bumper sticker, something you can stick to your car's backside. ICHTHYS, the Jesus Fish: Greek for "Jesus Christ, God's Son and Savior." Said Athena, on Kobol: "We know your scriptures better than you do.") Gaius sits in the echoes and the emptiness; it was covered in rugs, once, that muffled the cold hard sounds. Tinfoil stars for a tin-crowned king. Now, it's just the world he's choosing over his own soul. It is empty.
"There's no need to torture yourself," the Angel tells him, dressed in red. "Just trust in God's plan for you." She thinks, arm across his shoulder, as he shakes with indecision. "You're following it right now," she says, playing with his hair. "Taking charge of mankind's remnants, and guiding them to their end." Paulla appears before he can find out what, urging him to join them. He asks for just a moment, waving his hand in the empty space as though he's alone: one more minute in the temple. His eyelids flutter, terrified, and she looks at him: just enough love to lend him bravery. Imagine those eyes.
Cottle gives Ishay just enough drugs for two more rounds of Laura's injections; enough to keep her upright for two more days. Laura nods. Two days. "That should be enough," she says. Just to hear the words aloud. "You're using up the last little bit of life you got," he gruffs, as though that wasn't always true. "You realize that, don't you?" She's tired of the conversation; she knows. He says goodbye, and makes ready to leave for the departing Raptors. He's too valuable for this mission. She stops him, to thank him, and he blows it off: "Just doing my job," he says, uncomfortable. It's no good, she's already crying, trying to break through the act for just one moment. Not a hysterical patient to her doctor, not a dependent, not vulnerable or weak or naïve: Thanking him, beyond and through and above their work together. For playing XO as she steered this ship around the last bend.
"No," she cries, begging him to admit he understands her. "You've done much more than that. You've taken a patient who should've died years ago, and you've given her a chance. Despite cancer, and the Cylons, and her own obstinate nature. And you've... You've given me the little time I have left? And for that, you..." She shivers. "You have my heartfelt gratitude. And my thanks." Her tears roll down as he searches for the words, and she suddenly smiles, strong. "No no, don't. Don't. Don't spoil your image. Just light a cigarette, and go, and grumble." Ishay laughs, lovingly. Cottle takes her hand and kisses it, and does just that. So that she won't see what happens .
When he's gone Laura admits she can barely see straight, and Ishay nods. "You're so pumped full of drugs you could float off this bed." She smiles; they are soldiers together, in the trenches of the body. There are no shocks and no modesties. No ceremonies are necessary. They are soldiers together. "Okay. Two days?" Ishay nods, and Laura slides off the bed, ready to work. "All right. Two days."
Athena watches from the door, posture doubtful, as Helo briefs the Raptor squad. "Plan's just starting to take shape, but one thing's clear: Raptors get the toughest job, as usual. This will require some special piloting skills, and I mean special. Threading a needle while you're on a rollercoaster special. While it seems a little redundant at this point, the word's come down that it's a volunteer assignment so..." All hands up, immediately; the creaking of flight suits under his beautiful pride. "That's my Raptor wranglers, always looking for new and interesting ways to get killed." He looks to Athena; she smiles at him for the first time since that day.
Lee's wild hair and unshaven face, wearing his uniform, briefing the Marines. He hasn't slept; he looks marvelous. "I'm not gonna lie to you, boys, we are thin on intel on this one. But the Cylons believe that the most logical place for Cavil to have taken the girl is deep into the interior of the Colony..."
Bill stands on the bridge, addressing scant officers. "We'll be in too close for nukes. Same thing goes for missiles." It'll be like "two old ships on the line, slugging it out at point-blank range," he says. They share a breath at that, the romance of sailors. "I want the gun captains to do their job and start firing immediately, and to continue to fire until they run out of ammo, then I want them to start throwing rocks." He flashes them all a brilliant, loving smile. Proud, and happy, and joyful. Moving forward.
Kara's in Sam's chamber, as Galen explains how Sam will help interrupt the Colony's defenses, which will be just as automatic. "If we can plug him into Galactica's dradis, FTL, and C-3 systems," Ellen explains, "His mind should then be able to directly communicate with the Colony's Hybrids once we jump in." His mind will control their commands, and slow down their responses. But there's a catch: they need hardwire connections to those systems, which means taking him -- tank and all -- into the CIC. She stares at him. It's so naked, in such a naked place.
Adama pulls Hoshi aside in the corridor outside CIC, handing him Admiral's stars. A surprise Saul couldn't manage to hold onto, nudging and winking his way through the last day or so, no matter how important it is to Bill. "I need someone to lead this Fleet who I trust, who demands universal respect. So the Baseship and the Fleet are yours." Hoshi's from Pegasus; of them all now on CIC after the mutiny, he understands what Bill is saying, and promises not to let him down. They've arranged a rendezvous point, twelve hours from now; if Galactica's not there by then she won't be coming at all. The Admiral salutes Bill Adama, and holds it there, wishing Bill good hunting. He holds his gaze long enough, and nods, leaving. Bill lingers in the corridor, watching him go.
The CIC is now a haphazard, approximate thing; inelegant and rigged as quickly as possible. It is ugly. He shudders: the cables, the wiring. Cylon technology, wet and sinuous, luxuriously draped across his world. He stares up at the total mess that is Sam Anders, and the Sixes and Eights plugging him in; he moves one set of cables away from his station, and another. They wet his hands, and he shivers again, looking up into Saul's eyes, appalled and upset. Saul doesn't drop his gaze, but fixes it: "Still not too late to flush them all out the airlock," he grunts, and Bill's relieved. "Take too much time." Saul grumbles a giggle, and the two of them look up at Sam, giddy. Ellen and Eight slide him down, into the warm water, and the Six connects him to the ship; the flashing lights.
Romo and Jake near the Raptor in the hangar bay, Lee smiling tightly. Poetic justice or just what goes around comes around; either way you're looking at President Lampkin. That's hilarious; nobody finds it more so than Romo. He did the thing he asked Lee to do, and Lee's asking Gaius to do, which is the impossible thing of deserving power without wanting it. Ideals without ambition. Admiral Hoshi boards with him, shaking Lee's hand and calling him "sir" until he's reminded. He ducks his head sweetly, and salutes, and Lee calls out to everyone: this is the last Raptor leaving. "Anyone left behind, your ass belongs to us!"
Gaius appears, around a corner, and Lee sees him, afraid and sick, holding his last box of things from the cult, his last burden. Of that life. He hands it to Paulla in the President's Raptor, and explains he's not going. The girls beg, but he tries to explain: "I don't belong to you, Paulla. I never belonged to you. You appropriated me." (Wow. I'm just saying. And it makes me sadder than ever that we lost his speech a few weeks ago about how the whole point of this religion -- and the resurrection -- is that God doesn't demand or rely on human intermediaries, and never will. That God doesn't speak through people, but to them; that 1-800 numbers are numbers anybody can call? Hard won, soon forgotten. And even if he'd given it, or gives it in the director's cut, how long do you think Paulla and the other Apostles will let that slide? Before the newest updates and revelations, the indulgences, Masses held in Old Geminese? How long until they pull that gull from the sky, and chain it down again?) "I'm sorry. I'm sorry if I led you to believe... They're all yours, now, Paulla, enjoy them." And she will. "Pilot," he says, louder, free: "You have your passengers." He steps back as they grasp at him, and as the doors close he offers the possibility that he'll see them in the life.
The life starts now. Lee sees him and he ducks away, and Lee calls out after him. "Doctor?" He throws Gaius a gun, and nearly smiles. A Six leads an army of Centurions down the center of the empty bay, painted red stripes across their chests and backs, like sashes of war. Like garlands.
THE COLONY
Admiral Hoshi, Baseship Actual, makes it official: "The flag has been transferred to the Baseship, and our Vipers are ready to take over CAP duties for the Fleet." They say goodbye, and Bill and Saul go around the horn. FTL, Weapons, Engineering, Vipers. I think Hotdog is the CAG now, of the Viper wing. Lee leads the Marine team; Kara's with the Raptors, between Helo and Athena in the cockpit.
Laura stands in Sickbay, while Ishay gives her the cold equations of triage. "Separate out the wounded. Those we can save, and those we can't. Take this marker, put an X on the forehead of those who are too badly hurt. You'll know when you see them." They are soldiers together.
Gaius cringes against a crate in one of the defense positions, in case the Centurions get through again. Bravery's another one: a thing you can't have and know you have it. He's still young enough to think fear and bravery are opposites, instead of lovers, but he's learning. Caprica touches him softly, and he jumps three feet into the air; she apologizes, and he takes a moment to swallow his heart. She can't see him like this, he thinks, and turns it into something else. "What're you doing here?" She stares at him. This is about Hera. God, and children. "I don't think you should be here," he says, and she nearly rolls her eyes. If she weren't a Six, she probably would: "Probably been in more battles than you have," she says, crouching hardcore, loading and locking her gun as he stares. He remembers who she is, and nods cutely.
"Yeah," he says half to himself, crouching beside her in his funny helmet with his gun. "I suppose a more pertinent question is what am I doing here? What the hell was I thinking?" He's scared, terrified: his every instinct telling him to run. Gaius Baltar's sense of self-preservation is one of the forces of the world, strong and weak at once. It plucks at him like gravity and turns the air electric, and it's screaming in his skin and his blood to run, run, run. And yet he doesn't. She searches his face, smiling, trying to find what has changed. Where he has aged, and changed, and grown. It's there, and she is bashful; when he meets her eyes she looks away, around the bins and toward their preparations.
Saul ends the horn at the Sam station, up above the CIC deck: Ellen? She is go. They are go. Bill addresses the ship, alone. "This is the Admiral." Saul watches him. "Just so there'll be no misunderstandings later," he says, as Lee settles in with his Marines. "Galactica's seen a lot of history." Kara leans against the Raptor's screen, begging to go, and go, and go. "Gone through a lot of battles. This will be her last." Athena and Helo look at each other a moment: Hera's parents. And Caprica and Gaius sit, studiously not touching.
"She will not fail us if we do not fail her," Bill says, and Laura stands in sickbay, looking up, up, up. "If we succeed in our mission, Galactica will bring us home. If we don't..." Ellen and Tory stare down into the Hybrid's tank, at their quiet brother. "Doesn't matter anyway. Action stations." Saul starts the clock; he smiles warmly at Bill, but Bill is in the zone. Jump.
Into the tidal stresses and debris surrounding the Colony; the music is as wild as any other battle. When Galactica jumps in, their gun batteries go wild all over her, lighting her up, firing and firing, never letting up. She is scraped and bruised, coming apart. The CIC is wrecked, men and women falling over. Bill stands strong. She can't take much more, Saul cries out, as the barrage continues from all sides. It is terrible, and beautiful.
"It's time, Sam." Ellen plugs him in; eyes dart, and there's that sound again: like something spinning up, coming alive, putting itself back together. The Hybrids sing their constant song: God telling lullabies, singing stories only God is meant to hear. Sam sings along with them, and then he is there with them. Her blue and white goes red, and she stares up, at the laughing stars; he is with her. She sings to God and God sings back songs of war, but Sam's voice overpowers them all. (, the Galactica will ram itself into the Colony's soft places. I'm just saying.) The Hybrid was made to knit herself across the universe, touching everywhere at once; the Hybrid was made to hold the whole ship in her hand, touching all of them at once. The Hybrid has no interest in guns, but she never gets a vote. Aspiration, but no voice. I imagine you would call it relief, once Sam has calmed them again.
The guns stop; the Raiders prepare to launch. Saul sends the Vipers and Raptors out toward the Colony, and Bill runs Galactica into its side. Amid screams and groans, sparks and fires, Bill looks up at dradis: a mangled mess of red Raiders and green friendlies, and then just red-green static as they blend and jitter on the screen. Galactica groans, horribly, and the Raiders swarm.
Hotdog leads his wing into the breach as Lee's Marines find their way into the Colony, looking amazing and waving the Red Stripes ahead of the squad. Out in the black, Cartwheel dies; Athena and Helo make nervous conversation; Skulls arms their Raptor's nukes and begins to tell a funny story. Asteroid rock smashes through the screen, killing Racetrack and Skulls; their Raptor lists sickeningly. Athena's Raptor docks against the Colony's skin, and their strike team boards, stalking through the corridors taking down Centurions of many shapes, toward her daughter.
Simon's got fluids happening, into and out of Hera; he holds a scalpel poised above her head as Boomer shakes her head. "You're going to just keep doing the tests. Even with the Colony coming down around your ears?" He doesn't look up. "I think you overestimate their chances. They may have confused our Hybrids temporarily, but we have superior fire power and superior numbers, and... In the end it's all about mathematics..." She snaps his neck, frees Hera from her restraints, and picks the little girl up. She hangs limply in Boomer's arms.
Red Stripes fight the Colony Centurions in ways ranging from prosaic (gun hands!) to intriguing (punch to the robot face!) to altogether horrible and wonderful at once (forced to kneel and shot execution-style!). Lee's Marines inch closer, as the Raptor squad moves closer to the center of the Colony.
Laura sits in Sickbay as the lights flash, faster and faster, brighter. Galen shouts down into Sam's staring eyes: "Sam! Sam, listen to me, you're pushing too much energy through the ACS. You gotta back off, you're gonna blow the main bus. You hear me?" Nothing; he calls Sam's name again. "There are secrets within the eyes answers within riddles lay off the ACS? You betcha, Galen. Open your mind and hear what your heart wants to deny end of line." They breathe; Tory's got a stethoscope, and secrets in her eyes. A blast knocks them both down, again.
A Viper slams past a Raider, ripping off her wing. She screams; it spins out into the black, trailing blood.
SHARON VALERII
Never should have trusted her, Doral's saying. A Simon stands with them, looking down at his brother, lying dead on the floor. "Trust didn't enter into it," Cavil says, disgusted by the notion. "I simply miscalculated her need to engage in gestures of futility."
(Six is complex, strong and soft by turns, steadfast in her belief, piercing in her brilliance. Seven was an artist, so sensitive to the world, Ellen's favorite: took that Six intuition and brought it back out into the world as beauty. Maybe the reason Eight pisses everybody off all the time is because she's the most human of them all, and nobody can handle it. Maybe that's where Hera came from. A closed system lacks the ability to renew itself; an open system looks wishy-washy to everybody else. Gaius and Saul are the storied "most human" characters as far as the Fleet goes, but I'll tell you this: nobody can infuriate and draw tears from yours truly like an Eight can.)
Simon figures she'll find the Colonials in the Colony, and Cavil says it's time to march. Simon cautions him against too much force, risking her safety, and Cavil gets pissy. "Really? Ya think? Please continue stating the perfectly obvious, it fills me with confidence." They stalk down the hall, toward another nexus.
Caprica crouches by him, almost unaware of the words before she speaks them. "Proud of you." His eyes are fixed to heaven, in fear; it takes a second to register, and then he's just confused. "For doing this. For being here, when you could have just walked away. I don't think I ever said it before, but... I always wanted to be proud of you." She sits quietly, a moment. Me too.
"Guess I always felt that was the only thing missing," she says, with a sad smile. A door opens; a bird flutters up against the light. She's afraid, bashful; she wants to know if he's looking at her but lacks the courage to look. And when she does, he is. He kisses her, reaching across to touch her, and hold her tight. They are very small, against the crates; the world is silent.
"All the pieces are falling into place," says the angel. They stop kissing, drawing back reluctantly, and look up. "You will hold the future of Cylons and humans in your hands," says the Gaius. "I will?" they ask together, and double take on each other: "You see them?" (And the old man is saying, "In the midst of confusion, he finds her again: enemies brought together by impossible longing, joined as one." And Baltar's saying, "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.") There is a blast, and they are knocked to the floor once again.
Kara and Karl come around a junction in the Colony, blasting their way through Centurions; like a well-oiled machine he speaks their language: one tap on her shoulder and she drops to her knee automatically, without thought or question, for covering fire. It's a beautiful, smooth, tiny moment. There is silence.
Boomer comes around on them with Hera in her arms, and meets Athena's eyes. Hera's slowly waking. Athena's rage is nothing compared to Helo's, who rushes forward; Athena pulls him back. Boomer steps forward with the child in her arms, and tenderly hands her over to her mother. "Tell the old man... I owed him one," Boomer says quietly. Athena assures her it doesn't change what she did, and Boomer meets gaze her quietly, with complex dignity and greater strength. "No. We all make our choices." She nods, slowly, holding Athena's eyes. "Today I made a choice. I think it's my last one." Kara: "All right, this is really touching. Can we get the hell out of here?" She's still on her knees.
Boomer stands up tall. "You should know that your Raptor's been destroyed. You can't go back that way." Athena hand Hera to her husband, and sneers a little. "Yeah, well, that's not the plan." Kara suggests that they not tell Boomer the plan, and Athena realizes how alone Boomer is. She's the only girl in the world. Athena aims her gun, and Boomer nods again. Her back is straight, as Athena fires.
"Missed the trap seven times in two days. It's a new galactic record," Tigh giggles meanly, and looks at Adama. "Regs say that you've washed out, Rook." They're both drinking; they enjoy this the way Starbuck used to, letting Kat and the Nuggets twist. It is harsh and it is ugly, but it's fair. "Time to look for a new career," Tigh says, and takes another drink.
"What do you want me to do, sir? Do you want me to beg for my billet? Do you want me to crawl?" Adama snorts. "I want you to land your frakking bird without digging holes into my deck. How's that, huh? How about being a pilot?" She stares at the wall. "An officer, worthy of the uniform. Take your job seriously. Don't let your personal life get in the way." She almost looks at him, surprised he knows. He doesn't.
"I've read your jacket. Your whole story. I know that your family's gone, and I know that you have no home." Tears spring up in her eyes, for her family and life on Troy. They are a fiction.
"All you got is the service, and it's slowly slipping away." Tigh loves it. "All because you're all wrapped up in survivor's guilt. You're trying to find a way to wash yourself out." Oh, she's trying to fail, all right. And she's guilty, but not like he thinks. Months, years from now, in the moment of her greatest joy and triumph, she'll pull out a gun and put two in his chest while the bridge looks on.
"The doctor's in," Tigh says, pointing at him. "Check your neuroses at the door!" She doesn't crack, doesn't move. An officer worthy of the uniform. "Lot of people have died on this ship. There's a lot of ghosts running around here. You don't want to pull them into your cockpit with you. Because you won't come back alive, do you understand that?" She says she does, but he laughs patronizingly, and tells her one day she might. "As for now..." he is arch, with caring so far back in the eyes you can barely see it. "...Make the trap tomorrow, rook. Dismissed."
And just like that, he hauls her back from nothingness. She breathes, for the first time. "Thank you, sir. I owe you one." The old man laughs. Her and lots of others; he's given them all a million chances to hurt him, to break his heart and disappoint him. "But you know what? Very few people ever pay back. Especially the ones that owe you their lives." Tigh laughs, lovingly, but she swears she will. "One day, sir. When it really means something." The old man pretends to take her seriously, for a moment. "You do that."
Sharon nods, in the Commander's office, and smartly executes a heel-turn, and leaves. And down the corridor, crying tears of relief. It's the only family she has left; it's the only family she's ever had. The smell of Galactica, the curve of her gravity: past-life love. And a name, Boomer: screwing up her landings until the day she died here, on this ship, and joined those ghosts. She was born for this ship: she was made to love it. Made.
HERA AGATHON
The dying are screaming as they roll them in. Ishay shoves her way through, triaging and diagnosing and treating in a flurry of activity, calling out to the assistants. A man groans on a gurney, and Laura tries to comfort him. He is covered in blood. As she speaks to him, Ishay leans over and makes the X upon his forehead. "He's gone." Life in wartime; there's blood on Laura's face, and her hands. He's covered in it. She promises him he's going to be all right as they wheel him away to die.
Lee and Kara surprise each other around a junction; Lee asks what took so long and Kara says they stopped for coffee. Helo's carrying the child. Neither of them know of any other Raptor teams that made it here alive. They reverse course, heading back toward the Marine's transport.
Gun batteries fire; a Raider nips at Galactica and something major goes up in flame as Lee radios his father. "We've got the prize! Repeat, we have the prize!" Bill gives them five minutes; another blast shoves them around and a fire breaks out, up near Sam's tank. Bill moves the reserve forces into position at the airlock, to wait for their children. The Centurions make their way through the ship toward Caprica's location, with Gaius, hiding behind crates. Gaius fires at a fallen toaster again, and again, and again, gone panicked and manic, and Lee has to scream for a while around the corner before Caprica can get him calmed down. Gaius apologizes, but Lee tells him he did great. Lee's group settles in to defend the position, and Kara's group takes Hera back into the ship, with Caprica and Gaius in tow.
Laura sits in the sickbay, shooting up her injection, covered in blood. After a moment, with Hera onboard, the visions return. Hera, running through the Opera House. "What? Hera." She stands off, dropping her lab coat, barely able to walk, spaced out on drugs, and begins to walk toward the vision.
The squad comes around a corner, Helo holding both Hera and a gun now. The lights are flashing wildly. They pass an empty junction; a Doral comes around and fires into their group, dropping a Marine and hitting Helo. He falls to the deck as Kara takes the Doral out, and Athena falls on her knees beside him. It's bad, and bright, and red; he chokes the blood bubbles beneath her hand. Hera runs away, in the confusion, and Helo tells his wife to go after her. "No, you'll bleed out," she cries, twisted impossibly around; he pushes at her weakly, screaming, and she realizes it's what she would do, so she goes. And soon enough, she joins the vision.
Hera wanders through soundless war, past bodies and gunfire, climbing through the small places, past the sparks and gunfire, past Marines in position, past last defenses, as the lights flash. Laura heads past a Marine going the other way, barely standing. Cavil comes around with Centurions at his back, walking through gunfire, forcing the Marines to give up position after position, falling back before him. Laura's nearly stumbling; it's painful to walk. Suddenly, she spots Hera and they rush into each other's arms; she ducks behind another stack of crates with the girl and waits for Cavil's squad to pass. It's actually very suspenseful and scary, I'd forgotten. And when they're gone, she looks around, and Hera has disappeared once again.
Gaius and Caprica make their way through a hatch, and into one room, and then the . He checks his gun, and he's all out. Caprica's got two rounds. And in the corner of the room, coincidentally: Hera, holding her hands over her ears. Laura and Athena meet at a junction, terrified as it comes true around them, and keep running in their separate nightmares. Caprica kneels to Hera as the women run down their stairs, and see her bending down. They are both so much more broken than in the vision. Caprica and Gaius make their way through another hatch, just as Athena and Laura converge outside, only to find it locked. Athena shouts her name, again and again.
Gaius was so beautiful, bloody and filthy, on Kobol, the first time he saw the Opera House. He stared around, twirled on a heel. They walk through the hatch now and his jaw drops, as the wonderful "Passacaglia" starts. "I've been here before," he says, and Caprica nods, staring around at the beauty all around them. Gaius blinks in the sudden light: they're supposed to...? Caprica smiles. "Go into the Opera House." She hands him the child, in the vision, and they head down the aisle toward the stage; on Galactica, she's got the gun as he cradles the child in his arms. Their baby, born in the brig.
(Except, hold up. I can handle the fighting and whatever, because Lee's hair looks fantastic and Caprica with a gun pushes buttons I didn't know I had, but let's review. The visions that have been appearing regularly for over half the series, that have provided meaning and context for half the characters on the show, that have provided what little female-female bonding and connection the show affords us, the visions that got Natalie killed... Amount to what, exactly? A dress rehearsal of a déjà vu, in which two women walk down a hallway and a third woman picks up a child and walks, conservatively, six yards, with zero danger anywhere nearby. This is the prosaic destiny that enfolds Caprica, Athena, Laura and Hera? And Gaius? To go down a hallway. Chip's Challenge indeed, motherfucker. It takes five people, Cylon projection, two Angels, two to four Moms, and a hallucinogenic folk remedy to bring this miraculous vision to bear? That is some weak sauce. It's basic storytelling to fulfill something this large and trumped-up with something worthwhile. If that's the shit God really needs you to know, then God is pretty much retarded.
"I'm sending you a vision. Disobey it at your peril. One day years from now, you are going to go downstairs, open the mailbox, and take out an Entertainment Weekly. On the cover will be Paul Rudd. You will think, based on a caplet review, that you should probably just give in and watch one episode of The Closer, because you love Saving Grace so much, and Trust Me is growing on you. But by the time you get back upstairs to the TiVo, you will be thinking about lunch, and will die without ever seeing that show. However, a few weeks before that happens, you will look out your window and see a pretty blonde woman reaching into that mailbox, and you will go nuts and shoot her just for standing near your mailbox. This is the Shape of Mail To Come.")
THE OPERA HOUSE
Awesome, though: the truth of the Opera House is that it is Galactica. Specifically CIC, where Gaius and Caprica find themselves. There are bodies of the dead and dying everywhere, on every conceivable surface: bridge officers and Watchkeepers, Simons and Dorals. A Simon stands with blood shooting out of his jugular; Bill shoves him over with his foot, hilariously. There's a Doral on the floor, beautiful and tiny and dead. All the songs start playing at once. ("Music, did you say music?") Sam is sitting up now, and the Five look down at them, as bright as stars. Gaius and Caprica stare up at them, in terror and wonder: in awe. They step forward into their presence.
Caprica smiles as Bill calls out, "They've got the little girl!" Everybody stares at everybody else just long enough for another blast; Gaius puts Hera down for a second and Cavil pops up out of nowhere, taking down a Marine or two before holding his gun to her head. Bill and Caprica take aim. "This makes it a lot easier," Cavil snivels. "I just take the little girl, and I'm out of here." Bill and Caprica promise him that's not happening, and he's like, "Um, or it will, and I will get to watch you chase your tails across the universe for another four years." Saul calls down, agreeing with Bill and Caprica on how that's not what's going to happen. "This thing is the key to my people's survival, and I'm not leaving without it," he shots, and Gaius goes, "Hera's not a thing. She's a child. And she holds the key to humanity's survival as well." Which he knows how?
Gaius and Caprica look at the angels, across the bridge, and Gaius goes for it. "I see angels," he says, as they smile. Shit gets super stupid. "Angels, in this very room. Now I may be mad, but that doesn't mean that I'm not right. Because there's another force at work here. There always has been, it's undeniable. We've all experienced it. Everyone in this room has witnessed events that they can't fathom, let alone explain away by rational means. Puzzles, deciphered in prophecy. Dreams, given to a chosen few. Our loved ones dead, risen. Whether we want to call that 'God,' or 'Gods,' or some sublime inspiration, or a divine force that we can't know or understand, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, it's here. It exists. And our two destinies are entwined in its force." Another rock of the boat, as Galactica herself protests this in-your-face attempt to bludgeon any questions we might have.
(I'm sorry, but what? I'm the first one to posit -- roll around in, frankly -- the strong religious presence(s) on the show, but we're back to the lecturing, answering-questions-nobody-asked, unsubtle lack of poetry. There's nowhere to go with this speech, as a viewer, because it is what it says, no more, no less: telling, not showing. The "makes sense don't it" to end them all; even more tone-deaf and insecure than the "Watchtower" lyrics, or Galen's embarrassing "and we have been from the start" coda. Cutting up your steak for you and constricting the moment -- which should be soaring, bright and fearless and powerful, inspiring of wonder and awe and above all questions -- to a simple wordy explanation. What does this story mean, what's it about? Let me tell you. No, just shut up and let me tell you. It's lazy, and it's gross, and it's story fatigue, and it's a bummer.)
And it's an easy answer in the narrative too, as Cavil's character completely goes out the window and he suddenly forgets to watch his own ass, because of the healing and redemptive power of Gaius's words. "If that were true -- and that's a big if..." (Although apparently not big enough to matter, not when the plot train's coming through) "...How do I know this force has our best interests in mind?" Bill stares at him, no doubt as bored with this bullshit as I am. "How do you know that God is on your side, doctor?" Because it's about to get worse. So much worse. Gaius shakes his head, and the angels smile down on him, full of love, as Gaius Baltar explains to us basic shit about God. "I don't. God's not on any one side. God's a force of nature, beyond good and evil. Good and evil, we created those."
(Which, fine: valid, and a good way to look at things. Lose the "any one side" thing, which just comes off like lame Give Peace A Chance crap, and you're good. I think the whole thing's covered by "force of nature," but then I've completely lost track of who this little speech is directed towards, so who knows what the point is? At least in Babylon 5 they got God and the Devil in the room and told them both to fuck off. That's what Gaius is trying to do, but it just comes off like God's sort of pointless and aimlessly moving people around for no reason this whole time. Which, to be fair, is what's been going on.
I want to be very specific here about what works and what doesn't, because to just say I hated the episode is a drastic and frankly stupid conclusion to draw. I like the implication of a double-blind in which the Gods have a personal stake in your personal well-being, while also being infinitely infinite to the point where you're just part of one big dance, so stop trying to make God the mascot for your temporary, self-contained bullshit. That God's not projection, God is wild magic you can't possibly comprehend: God's the forest, you're just a tree, or the river that feeds the ocean that feeds the river, all that. Instead, you get this mangled "we are all special which is how we know that God exists, except God doesn't really care so we aren't special, except we are.")
"You want to break the cycle?" Gaius literally says, with Saul and Ellen staring down at them. "Break the cycle of birth, death, rebirth; destruction, escape, death? Well, that's in our hands, and our hands only. Requires a leap of faith. Requires that we live in hope, not fear." He actually says that, like the first college freshman to ever drop acid he says it.
"If I leave you this girl, that means the destruction of my people. How does our extinction fit into this picture that you want us to believe in?" Seeing Cavil's point, and how it is actually relevant in a way Gaius's awkward bullshit isn't, Saul blurts, "We'll give you resurrection!" Ellen and Caprica are appalled. "You give us Hera and we will give you resurrection. But the war ends here. You leave humanity in peace and give up the pursuit, now and for all time." And Cavil agrees, because for once that is exactly the point. Whatever happens now, the 145s can't reproduce, and frankly if pulling it out of Hera's brain is the only answer, they're screwed anyway. Let them retrograde, and the rest of us will actually progress.
Bill's like, "On the other hand, you're a snake, so how do we know?" Cavil squints at him and says, completely out of character except for the nastiness and irony he brings to it, "You don't. You have to make a leap of faith." Saul says it's Bill's call, but he'll back the play, and Bill's like, "You are killing my doodz." Cavil asks for the phone and I guess Sam links him right up, because suddenly he's telling the whole Colony force to stand down, and they do. The dogfight ends, and Hotdog reports it; Bill orders everybody in CIC to chill out, and Hera runs into Caprica's arms. "I'm as good as my word," Cavil says, and Bill stares him down.
TORY FOSTER
The Vipers return home; the Raiders go home too. Doral looks down at his dead brother, shoots a bitchy look at the Final Five, and then hovers near Cavil accusingly. Simon stands way close to Lee as he and Kara get the reports from the fighter wings: Four Vipers down, and seven Raptors. This is the least effective battle of all time. Nobody died in the melee except some extra Dorals and Simons, not a single one of our guys, and four Vipers? The Colony unleashed hell and they got four whole Vipers total? Maybe that's God too, since he's in charge of everything and nothing now. Athena holds her daughter tightly; Caprica strokes her arm and smiles with Laura, as if to say, "That was awesome how I walked down the hall, no? Glad everything turned out okay. And stupid."
Laura looks up, above the bridge at the Final Five. Bill explains, in case Laura is as dumb as apparently we are suddenly, that each of them has a piece of the puzzle, so they're going to put their hands in Sam's datafont and share the information, and then send it via Samphone to the Colony. "Now, for a moment, we're going to know everything there is to know about one another," Ellen explains, and Saul's sweetly and romantically excited by the idea. Tory, not so much. "There are certain things that..." Saul and Ellen break their stargazing canoodle long enough to look over at her and wonder what she's going on about this time. "That we've all done. Certain things that people would be shocked to learn about..." Her eyes dart to Galen, and he sort of eyeball-shrugs.
Kara agrees, down below, with Cavil: "Hey, I don't mean to rush you, but you are keeping two civilizations waiting!" Which is so first draft it's ridiculous, considering Kara just made that same joke ten minutes ago when they killed Boomer, but who has time to quibble the little things. "Let's... Let's just all agree that no matter what we learn about each other..." Galen breathes, because if anybody is going to reveal doing something super frakked up it's going to be Tory, because that's what she is in this story, another Dirty Girl, "...We're all Cylons, and [to Galen directly now] we're all capable of making mistakes." Saul's like, "Blah blee, I'm so sure you cheated on a civics test in the seventh grade." (Well, they're all Canadian so he's thinking "grade seven.") He summarily forgives her all her "dark secrets" and urges them to get on with it.
(Like! I like the way it takes all five of them, and all the changes they've gone through, and all the different cycles they're on, which lives they remember, which lives they've tossed out the window. One thing I'll say is that, individual opportunities for characterization aside, these five really do work well as a unit of personalities. What's that Vonnegut word? I believe in them as one of those, and I believe it here now. There's all kinds of Jungian stuff you'd hate me for going into as far as I want to, but it works, in the same way as that episode of Buffy where they did this exact same thing. Compare with the Fleet estates, from when the Four were revealed: Saul the officer, Sam/Ellen the civilian, Tory in the administration and Galen the crewman. Thanks to Boomer and Kara, Sam and Ellen have switched places, and he's the magical missing one. Flip it along an axis and you've got the four functions, Intuition Feeling Thinking Sensation, and their associated shadows, and Sam's in the middle transcending and connecting it to the capital-S Self, the higher purpose. Flip it again and you're looking at the classic Elements, or the Humors, or Hogwarts Houses, or members of the Fantastic Four, or the Golden Girls, or Carrie Bradshaw and her friends. There aren't really that many stories we tell each other. This is not all that we are: the Opera House is a map of every human soul, and every Cylon's too.)
One hand each in the font, and everything goes red, and the water flashes white (nigredo, albedo, rubedo, uniting to bring resurrection and new life from ruin). They breathe through it; Tory feels it most strongly, as usual, eyelids fluttering.
And down on the floor: Laura stares up, enchanted, and Lee can't even blink. Simon confirms it, as the memories strobe across them. Sam on the beach of bombed-out Earth, running guns on bombed-out Caprica, kissing Kara the day she left him there. Ellen on New Caprica, soft and smiling in the sun, and later, when she thought she was playing Cavil and nearly threw up when her soul screamed at her to stop. Saul with a gun to Boomer's head, staring out at the ocean on Earth, so full of feeling he can't contain it all. Tory goes deep, trying to stay conscious, and keep back the darker parts of herself. That's always been the problem.
Cally, screaming; taking Nicky away. Tory's eyelids flicker. She told Cally she didn't know what she was: only that she wasn't evil. Galen's hands twitch as he sees it, and heads for it, thinking, putting it together. Tory knelt at her side, in that launch tube that we heard was empty. Cally weeping, terrified. Tory took the child from her arms. He gets angrier, pushing at her like Sam at a Hybrid, trying to get inside. His eyes search through the memories, pushing further. Her eyes dart to him, terrified and ashamed. Wondering what he'll do. He shoves at her, hope soaring to slaughter, all his best against her hull, again and again, eyes getting wider. Cally cried, and Tory punched her; she skidded on her face and came to rest. Ellen's eyes go wild in shock; Saul stares at Tory. The things she's capable of. A moment of remorse as she turns the key, holding Nicky in her arms. Galen's face is worse than anything. She pushed the button; Cally's lovely face as the vacuum pulled her back, away, into the sky. He looks into her eyes. Tory is more frightened than ashamed.
Galen pulls his hand out of the water, breaking contact, and Sam sends up a hideous scream; the Hybrids everywhere shriek in kind, shaking in fear and pain. Ellen jerks, and Saul flinches, as Galen puts his hands around her throat, lunging forward. She screams, and pushes weakly at his chest; his hands are larger than her head. She holds onto his wrists as they scream, her mouth gone impossibly wide as the world falls down and Sam screams. Doral pulls a gun; Simon notes the download's interrupted. A firefight breaks out, the music goes insane, and the 145s open fire. Sam only stops screaming when she's dead, neck snapped.
Seeing her dead, Cavil realizes it's over. Resurrection itself is dead and gone. He has no chance at all but to live in a world they'll create around him, in the broken shards of the beauty he tried, and tried again, to create. Dog-faced boys, chasing him through yellow mists, and finally caught: he puts his gun in his mouth like Budd Dwyer and with a "Frak!" pulls the trigger. The Raiders swarm Galactica again, but up in the sky, another awful miracle: a stray rock hits the lucky Raptor, nudging it into position and knocking Racetrack's cold hand onto the button. Skulls' nukes fire, eight white serpents, into the Colony, shoving it toward the singularity, and ending another world.
KARA THRACE
She stands up, woozy and hurting, and Bill calls to her from the floor, where he's curled himself around Laura. "We've got to get out of here! Starbuck, jump the ship!" She runs to the board, holding on tight, and shouts that she doesn't have the coordinates. "Doesn't matter! Just jump us out of here now! Jump!"
Kara looks across CIC at the destruction all around. Slick says, "Just trust yourself." Hera holds up a galaxy in music. "There must be some kind of way out of here," Kara mumbles. The Maelstrom is a singularity that pulls her in, from both sides of time. The notes, on paper. "I thought that if I assign numbers to the notes..." She plays the song on the board's numeric keys. Kara burns her body on a pyre, far from prying eyes. "If that's me lying there, then what am I?" Only the song. She plays it now, strong and clear. "When I look at you now, I don't see Kara Thrace. I see an angel blazing with the light of God." Kara plays at her father's knee; Kara plays the piano in Joe's Bar. Kara does the math. "An Angel," Leoben says. She presses the final coordinates, and pushes the jump key into its lock, turning it. Jump.
From great noise, the groaning of a great lady dying, the sound of nuclear annihilation, off just one word, to gorgeous silence and the clinking of their shot glasses. Well done, all of this, well done. Lee smiles at her, across the table. It's an open plan; Zak is just a step down and a few across, sleeping deeply on the couch: "You're tempting fate," Lee says. She laughs, adorable and so young, leaning on the table. "If I have a fate, then it is set. And thinking about it isn't gonna make it happen any faster." She's heard it a million times, every day of her life. It keeps her moving, fast. "Okay, fair enough. But flying when you're thinking about dying and... It's a bad way of doing business. You're gonna get scared, and you're gonna start second-guessing yourself." Climb into the cockpit with ghosts and you don't come out.
"I'm not scared," she says, shaking her head, trying to get it across. Of course she thinks about dying every time she gets in a cockpit. That doesn't make it scary, that makes it real. "Yeah, but it doesn't scare me. Like, that's what you don't get." Lee doesn't get it. He won't get it, until after she's dead and come back. "What, so it's um, Kara Thrace the fearless warrior? Right?" She laughs and drums the table. "No, I... know fear. And I get scared. Just... Just not of dying." Can't be Kara -- can't be Starbuck -- without that on your side. So what scares her? He leans forward, lips parted. He wants to know. She pours another shot, splashing his hand and grinning; she raises it, to that girl and in her honor: "Being forgotten." The awful daring of a moment's surrender, to be honest for just one moment, about what she depends on. All that notoriety and all those desperate grabs for attention: that was her fighting off true death, all along. We leave so much more than footprints behind us when we go. Jump.
Her back breaks; she's ripped apart. The flight pods jostle, pieces rip themselves away from her skin. Compound fractures of steel beams, thrusting through ceilings and walls. She groans.
Bill holds her, tightly, on the floor; Saul helps Ellen up. Kara's hand is still on the jump key as Galactica's systems come back online. Kara pulls herself to standing. Caprica, still supporting Athena after all this damage. Laura assures Bill she's fine, and he turns his attention to the other lady, asking Saul for a sitrep. Saul looks at Ellen before obeying Bill's order, for the first time in their lives. She nods, and tells him she's okay. Galen sits against a bulkhead, a murderer and the man who ended resurrection forever, after another man with his face spent years creating it. The higher power the Five were capable of evoking, connecting to, communing with: gone, forever. To thunderous applause.
"She's broke her back," Saul says. "She'll never jump again." He shakes his head, winking out a tear for her as she groans around them. "Wherever we are is where we're gonna stay," Bill says, and Laura looks up lovingly at her: "Where have you taken us, Kara?"
LEE ADAMA
Galactica slides across the atmosphere of the moon, Luna, green cheese and all; rising over her horizon is the Earth, our Earth, yours and mine: Africa in the middle, framed in blue. A Raptor is sent to the rendezvous, and twelve hours later the Fleet jumps in. A Raptor cascades along Galactica's flank, over her and down to the rolling fields of grass. It's lovely. It looks like Caprica, the day Helo gave up his life for Gaius Baltar's. Hoshi crouches toward a line of men, lying on their tummies below a low ridge, staring out through binoculars: Saul, Cottle, Bill, and Hoshi settles easily between him and Gaius. "Glad you could join us, Admiral," Bill says, and Hoshi hands him back his pips, uncomfortable with the Admiralty.
Gaius gestures toward a group of humanoids walking across the landscape. "Well, there you have it, Admiral. The most advanced civilization we could locate on this planet." He hands them over to Bill, continuing: "I can't see them talking to each other, so either they communicate a different way or they're preverbal. Judging by the look of their tools, which are rudimentary to say the least, I'd suggest that we've found an early, ritualistic, tribal society." Bill's eyes are shocking blue, on this new planet. "They bury their dead," continues Cottle. "I came across a grave a couple of klicks back and ran some tests. Their DNA is compatible with ours." Meaning we can breed with them, Gaius says, and Bill grumbles, "You got a one-track mind, Doc." Hoshi smiles, but Gaius gets pissy: "What? Listen, I'm talking about the survival of the human race, actually, not some get together with the natives..." Grass underneath you and the sun on your back. "You also have no sense of humor," Bill continues, and Saul giggles. Cottle loves it, of course, and Gaius feels like a spaz, apologizing. They talk about how unlikely it is that human beings would naturally evolve on a planet so far from the Colonies, and Gaius goes, "One might even say there was a divine hand at work," which, isn't that him? Hoshi looks at him and Bill says that it doesn't really matter. This is where they're staying, with their new families.
Unloading Raptors at a comms station, Lee standing with Hoshi and Romo. Romo wants to clear a large parcel of land, ridge to river, for cultivation. "We should be able to lay out the preliminary lines for a city within a day or two," Hoshi continues, and Lee looks around, suddenly struck by a stupid idea. "No. No city. Not this time." He stares into the middle distance as they wonder what he possibly could propose instead.
"We break the cycle," Lee says excitedly to his father, as they walk along a river. His arm is through his father's, he's happy as a clam. "We leave it all behind, and start over." Bill points out that they're talking about 38,000 people -- the entire human race -- with the clothes on their backs and some provisions, but Lee disagrees, smiling: "It's not the entire human race. There are people already here!" Whom we will outcompete and relegate to the species junk heap! It's great! Bill's like, "They don't even have language!" And in its viral language of clicks and pops language goes, I'm on it. Lee wants to give them language: "The best part of ourselves. Not the ships, the equipment, the technology, the weapons... If there's one thing that we should've learned, it's that... You know, our brains have always outraced our hearts. Our science charges ahead, our souls lag behind." He puts a hand on his father's shoulder, and asks his blessing to start anew.
Some time later, people have agreed to this for some stupid reason, and Bill's explaining how they're going to land civilians all over the globe, "to give them the best possibility of survival," and document all the locations for some reason. Romo nods in the direction of how stupid this is, and Bill tells him not to "underestimate the desire for a clean slate." Not good enough. Suddenly, Leoben is the spokesman for the 268s again, with his sexy goatee, and smiles that creepy fucking smile of his: "The Sixes, the Eights, and the Twos have decided to stay. See how we can contribute to the world before we pass into God's hands." Other dumb ideas: giving the Baseship to the Centurions so they can go "find their own destiny," because as Ellen feels it they've earned their freedom. Romo waves in the direction of how this means they will come back and kill us all, and Bill tells him that isn't going to happen, and they've earned it. Then the Fleet, the entire Fleet of ships, queues up in space so that Anders can pilot all of them into the sun.
SAMUEL T. ANDERS
Kara stands at his side, hand creeping toward the water, shaking a little, wondering what she is. His eyes close slowly in memory; he can feel her. He is all around her, and he can feel her everywhere. She is enveloped in him, in his arms, and can't even feel it. Her mouth crumbles with disappointment and she begins to cry. This is really it. She pulls at her dogtags, holding them in her hands like Caprica, and drops them into the water beside him, like a grave. Her other hand rests upon his shoulder, like a benediction. She stands at the river's edge, still: bringing life to the river and water to the shore. She leans in closely: it's still him, somehow. She kisses his lips, so softly; her tears run down his face. "I love you," she sobs, whispering. "Goodbye, Sam." Her tears are his; he's all around her. He sees all her angles at once. His eyes close again, slowly, in memory, and she steps back and away.
Sam weeps. "I'll see you on the other side," he says quietly, with a tiny smile.
Bill heads onto Galactica's hangar bay, far above the Earth, wearing his flightsuit. He closes the last airlock and spins up his Mark II; Husker flies again, and for the last time. Acceleration through the launch tube pushes him back, to Frank Porthos in an office as blue and bright as a Baseship bedroom. "Is your name William Adama?" Always. They adjust the cuff, the leads, the lie detector. "Are you an officer in the Colonial Fleet?" Always. It's only an hour of his time. "Are you a Cylon?" Bill jerks, and Frank apologizes: they're trying to work up a proper control question: "I need verifiable yeses and nos." Bill's never been good with those. "Have you ever stolen money from a cash drawer?" Bill's fists nearly clench, in his lap. He's getting bored. (They haven't even gotten to the tortoise yet!) "Have you ever stolen money..."
Bill stands, ripping off the leads. "No job is worth this, no matter how fat the paycheck is. I'd rather spend the rest of my career -- what's left of it -- on a broken down old ship than have someone sit here and question my word."
The Viper banks up and around Galactica, saying goodbye, and out past the Fleet. The Fleet kept him alive, kept his heart alive. He kept them alive in turn. Found a place to rest.
"Perfection," Sam said. "That's what it's about. It's those moments... Sam flashing all around in the waters. When you can feel the perfection of creation... The beauty of physics, you know? The wonder of mathematics. The elation of action and reaction. And that is the kind of perfection that I want to be connected to."
That's Galactica, gone red and white, as the Fleet sets out on its last, empty journey. Galactica herds them all into the sun, as day breaks.
GALEN TYROL
Ellen holds out her hand toward Galen, worried about him, at the top of a green ridge. He's sure. "Just tired of people. Human, Cylons, whatever." He's found an island off "one of the northern continents": cold, in the Highlands. No people to speak of. Ellen smiles and holds him close. Saul shakes his hand: "For what it's worth, if what happened to Cally had happened to Ellen, I'd have done the same frakking thing." (Except it did and you... Never mind. I'm tired. The sun is coming up.) Saul embraces him and he smiles sweetly, back over his shoulder, walking away. Saul wraps his arm around Ellen, holding her tightly.
SAUL TIGH
Ellen wraps herself around Saul, holding him tightly. Bill is gone, "taking a leak," and Ellen chuckles into Saul's lap: "Oh, nice." She orders drinks, and keep them coming. He smiles up at her. "Tonight, we are celebrating your retirement, and all the time I'm about to get to spend with my husband!" She kisses him, loudly, exuberant and beautiful. He's hesitant, and so young, asking if she's okay with that. She giggles, but there's exasperation in her voice. All this time, thinking it was some lack in him that kept the gaps and omissions in their love, when the truth has always been closer to the opposite. Her love burns too hot, and his heart belongs to too many other people ever satisfy her. "Aagh! Saul! All I've ever wanted was to be with you!"
More seriously, now: "Not just weekend liberties, or two week's leave a year. I mean fulltime. You and me." He smiles up at her, delighted to hear her say it. "Together in a house, in a tent... Homeless and on the street..." He hums, joyfully. "Just be together."
They take up their shots and Ellen shrieks. "Don't drop me!" They laugh, and toast to themselves, and the love they've made and continued to make, for forty years and twenty and two thousand. "Yeah!" he howls, and she laughs. She looks down at him, enchanted, and darts kisses at his cheek, but even kissing is not close enough for her, at this moment: she feints left, her arms so tightly around him she'll never let go. In the middle of a strip club, the grace of intimacy, like a church of one.
He holds her so tightly, he'll never let go, in the middle of field, completely alone for the moment, for a lifetime, finally. Her face as she looks across the grasses is unbearable soft, and lovely; a queen, a gazelle. The prettiest girl in the universe. "Here we are," he says. Here we are.
WILLIAM ADAMA
Lying in Bill's arms, in a small makeshift camp, beneath a lean-to flag. She looks at the antelopes through binoculars. They look like blackbucks. Her voice is decidedly close. "There are so many!" She puts on her glasses -- perhaps the binoculars aren't very strong -- and watches them in more detail. He hands shake, and she coughs. Wrapped in a blanket, and his arms. She moves her thumb across his hand, clasped tight. It is a beautiful world. "Does it have a name?" she asks, whimsically. Able to rest.
"Earth," Bill says, after a beat, and she laughs, even though it hurts. "Earth is a dream," he says, as she labors to draw a breath. "One we've been chasing for a long time. We've earned it: this is Earth." Laura allows it, chuckling, and draws a shuddering breath. She can feel it coming. It's been riding beside her so long it's nearly a friend. The girl on the horse. "Oh. I'm... I'm having trouble breathing." It's time. He gathers her in his arms, to her surprise, and carries her down the hill, toward the Mark II. Lee and Kara watch from the comms tent, and see him with her frail body in his arms. Kara nearly weeps for them both, now that she's so strong. Lee sets out for them, and she follows.
All loaded up, he's on the wing when they come around. Lee's voice is so young, and scared, and full of hope, but he knows. "Dad?" Bill explains he's running out of time, and Lee says through his tears that he understands. Lee Adama throws himself into his father's arms, tears running down his face. Memorizing the smell and feel of him. Kara stands back, trying to keep it together as long as Bill's eyes are on her face; giving him her loveliest, most mysterious smile. "What do you hear, Starbuck?"
The tears well up, and she puts her arms around him. He cries, holding her tight. You should go, she whispers after a time, and he kisses her mouth. Laura puts one small hand against the glass, and the Twins hold up theirs. Not waving goodbye, but touching palm to palm. Lee weeps. Kara holds her hand to her heart.
Once she was an orphan.
KARA THRACE
"You know, my very earliest memory of my father was him flying away on a big plane..." Like a car, pulling away from the curb. "And wondering when he was coming back. He's not coming back this time. "No, he's not," she says, and watches his face, measuring loss. Can he take this? "...Neither am I."
Lee looks back at her, neither shocked nor comfortable, neither happy nor sad. I'm here. You're here. This is all that matters. "Where are you going?"
She smiles, at peace. "I don't know. I just know that I'm done here. I've completed my journey." She nods. "It feels good."
They slam down the shots and she raises a finger, impressed with her daring as part of the act. "You and I. Right here. Right now." That's all that matters. I have to cheat to make the pieces fit. She holds her hand up, like a stage magician presenting her latest trick. Lee laughs. "On the table?" He leans in, laughing; she double-dog-dares him. It makes him laugh. He stands up; their laughs are husky and excited. He agrees, and she slides onto the table, slapping it on either side. Her wig is a little bit endangered at this point. Lee leans down over her and she giggles; she arches up to meet his kiss, and shoves a wine glass off the table.
"Oops!" Zak shouts from the couch, asleep. "Something's broken..."
What isn't? The moment ends, and Lee climbs down. They are ashamed. She snatches at a placemat, to put the table in order, and hops down to fetch his jacket, looking at Zak on the couch. She holds out a hand, slowly, but when he takes it in his it's less a shake and more like holding something else. Their skin is touching. "It was nice to meet you, Lee Adama," she says. The lights in their eyes say it: this link will never end. This moment, the awful moment of their attempts and broken tries and promises. They belong to each other now. "Likewise, Kara Thrace."
She holds his eyes, remembering. "So what about you? What are you gonna do? Today is the first day of the rest of your life, Lee." He takes his cue from her tone. "Well? I always thought when this was all done I would, um, uh, kick back." She nods. "Relax, spend the rest of my days doing the absolute minimum humanly possible." She's so close to weeping; keep talking. Say the words. "And now that you're here?" He is young, coltish and excited, almost shouting. "I want to explore! I want to climb the mountains, I want to cross the oceans, I want to... Gods, I can't believe I'm saying this, it sounds so exhausting. I must be crazy..."
She's gone. He looks every which way. He is alone. Will he weep? Why would he? "Goodbye, Kara. You won't be forgotten." Lee Adama stands alone, on a ridge between this and something else, in the wind of a new world.
Lee Adama wakes up on the couch, still wearing last night's clothes. The pigeon marches around near him; he never did win that fight. He laughs and stares at it, sobering, and it rises up, suddenly, with a powerful flap of its wings. It heads out the door, and is gone. Free.
LAURA ROSLIN
Laura looks at herself in the mirror, in her negligee, as Sean Ellison calls to her from the bed, hunky as hell and as happy to see her. "Hi," he grins, and she pulls at the edges of her robe, toying with the ties. "Sean, it's been a lovely evening. Really lovely." Sean looks down, already disappointed. "But I'm afraid we won't be doing this again?" She reassures him that he's wonderful, and he invites her into the bed again, smoothing the sheets with one strong hand. She shakes her head and apologizes again. "You can show yourself out."
Confused and disappointed, maybe a little stroppy and rightfully so. She goes back into the bathroom, like he's already gone, and sneaks a cigarette, waiting for him to leave. His steps are heavy as she dials the phone. Sean Ellison is not the way to touch the world. Not for her.
"Hello, this is Laura Roslin, I'd like you to give a message to Mayor Adar. Tell him that I will be joining his campaign." She drags on the cigarette and smiles kindly: "Thank you! ...All the way to the end," she answers. "No matter what, all the way to the end." She smiles at her reflection.
Laura breathes raggedly, smiling down at the flamingos on the coast, completely in love. "So much life!" Bill nods. "It's a rich continent." He banks the Viper tenderly so she can see more, so that he can give her more of the world. Always more. She deserves it all.
"More wildlife than all the Twelve Colonies put together," he laughs. He loves it too. He looks so young, for a moment.
"Just looking for a quiet little place for that cabin," he says, as her hand drops softly at her side. "Maybe a garden. I don't have much of a green thumb, so I hope that you do..." He sees her face, the peace in her. It's over. So much life!
He kisses her hand, holding her wrist, sobbing into her skin. He slips his wedding ring over her hand, right for a widower, and kisses her hand again. Bill breathes, sobbing, and flies, and finds the perfect spot.
"Right there. I'm going to build it right there, Laura." He chokes back his tears and lands the Viper. He looks so old, for a moment.
KARL AGATHON
Romo sees the settlers off as they depart, in lines for their Raptors. It's daybreak. The last are Saul and Ellen, coming up over a small ridge, holding hands. Never to be parted again.
Down in the valley there's the three of them: the Fightin' Agathons. Helo's on a walking stick, rhapsodizing about the game on the planet. He claims to be a pretty good hunter, and Athena laughs, more joyfully than she ever has. The great weight off her shoulders: turncoat, prisoner, bereaved mother, warrior. He asks why she's laughing, and Athena reminds him of the buck he missed, on Caprica. When they fell in love.
"That's not fair," he chuckles. They swing her between them. "Hey, don't you listen to Mommy, Daddy is a great hunter!" Athena shakes her head. "Mommy's gonna teach you how to hunt. Real hunting. Yeah, and I'm gonna teach you how to build a house, and how to plant crops..." Helo laughs, and lays claim to hunting. They hold hands, watching Hera run across the grass. When Athena calls her daughter's name, she runs right back again, right into her mother's arms.
GAIUS BALTAR
"Hera," Gaius says, watching them play together. "Will she be all right?" The angels speak. "She survived, thanks to you. Both of you." Caprica stares at them, full of love and trust. "And that's it? That's all God wants of us?" As though God's plan is ever complete. "Great," mutters Gaius, and her angel laughs, speaking in that clipped way he has. "I think it's safe to say that from now on, your lives will be less... Eventful." He crosses his arms, and Caprica smiles. And they're gone.
She's wearing a black dress in the Caprica City market; she kisses his cheeks and he keeps the shades on. They walk, and he stares around suspiciously, speaking softly. He's in love.
"I've been thinking. I may be able to help you out after all. About that thing you were asking about before. Getting a peek into the defense mainframe." The Six is overjoyed. "It would mean a lot to my employers..." He makes it clear that's not why he's doing it. "How would it make you feel?" He takes off his sunglasses and looks into her eyes. She speaks precisely. "I'd be very grateful," she says, touching his face. He smiles, to ward off the intimacy: "We'll put that to the test. Because if anyone finds out, I could get my head cut off." She jumps, at his words and sudden harshness. "So I'll count on your discretion." She looks down, and up into his eyes. Imagine the eyes of someone who's shown you their worst, and knows that your kindness is inexhaustible. The trust. "The things men do for love," he grins, and she stops short. "Love... Gaius?" He waves it off and continues walking. "Yeah, well... You know... You know what I mean, don't you." She laughs at him, and they head off into the world.
Gaius strokes Caprica's face, looking into her eyes, and they pick up their bags, heading across a meadow. He points at the hills. "Over there, between those two peaks. I saw some terrain that looked good for cultivation." That wonderful old song, again, soaring into something majestic, and sad, and honorable, and lovely. "Cultivation?" she asks. "Yes," he says, and slows. They stop walking. He looks down, suddenly still. "You know, I know about farming," he says, and it breaks him open. He can't look at her. Another wall falls down: the first lie. We're all, deep inside of us, every age we've ever been. That boy deserves love. More, and more, and more love. She touches his face.
And somewhere long ago, Gaius looks across the table and sees the man for the first time. "I know who you are, Felix. I know who you are." He looks so young.
"Hey," she says, as he wipes at his tears. "I know." All of this, sinner and saint and President and tinfoil king and more. Julius's son; son of Aerilon. Dirty hands, sharp wit, broken heart, a thousand endings. All of these at once, that's the man she loves. Someone to be proud of. She kisses him, and his back gets straighter. "I know you do."
He nods, and they set off, with their arms around each other. Into the world.
WILLIAM ADAMA
"I laid out the cabin today. It's going to have an easterly view. You should see the light that we get here. When the sun comes from behind those mountains... It's almost heavenly."
This is her grave, marked with sticks, a cairn of stones. Not in fire, or water, or air: only earth, the solid ground. Something to stand on, someone to be proud of. Only earth, because she was his, and he was hers. I want you to know what I like.
"It reminds me of you."
2009
Hera walks down the hill, with her father's walking stick. She looks up at the sky, and the wind rushes over her, across the grasses and the sands, the oceans and islands and forests, and the rises on New York City. It's 150,000 years after Earthfall.
"At a scientific conference this week at the Smithsonian institution in Washington, the startling announcement was made that archeologists believe they have found fossilized remains of a young woman who may actually be Mitochondrial Eve. Mitochondrial Eve is the name scientists have given to the most recent common ancestor for all human beings now living on Earth." It's Angel Six, reading over Ron Moore's shoulder; both angels are delighted by this, although it's not quite as meaningful as it seems: it means not that she is the mother of us all, but only that we carry her mitochondrial DNA, which passes down only from a mother to her children. I'm proud, then, to have a little Athena in me, but more excited by the spark of Cylon we all got to have. "She lived in what is now Tanzania, over 150,000 years ago..."
"Along with her Cylon mother, and human father," Chip Baltar grins at her, as they walk away through Times Square. She gestures around them. "Commercialism, decadence, technology run amok. Remind you of anything?" Chip smiles. "Take your pick! Kobol, Earth -- the real Earth, before this one -- Caprica, Before the Fall..." Their arms around each other are comfortable and affectionate, like twins. "All of this has happened before," she muses, and he wonders if it really does have to happen again. She smiles.
"This time, I bet no." She plays dice, with the universe. "You know," he says, "I've never known you to play the optimist. Why the change of heart?" She lays it out in math: "Law of averages. Let a complex system repeat itself long enough, eventually something surprising might occur. That too is in God's plan." He leans in, over his sunglasses, with a darker voice. "You know It doesn't like that name." She makes a face; it doesn't like any names at all. It doesn't need them. It is immanence. It's the singularity, already and always. He puts his hands to his temples, smiling. "Silly me. Silly, silly me..." God is wild magic, nameless and implicit in us all: as the angels walk past a panhandler, none the wiser, his radio starts playing Jimi's "Watchtower." And up above him on the news, Aibo does the Macarena, and another robot, and a small army of obstinate tin soldiers, playing fife and drum. Two children kiss another model on its brightly colored face. That scary Japanese woman one makes her faces. The angels walk away, through the crowd, to find the thing.
THE END
So what's the problem? Few things, but big ones. Two things particularly, which line up with the odd conclusion in a particularly gruesome way. They both have to do with imagination, unfettered imagination, creation. The things you've created, and your responsibility toward them.
The show has been sketched out a year at a time, brilliantly; it is a living breathing thing, which lends it all the power it has. The problem, for me, is when that stops being true. When the plot isn't left alone to figure itself out, because an endpoint has been decided, and nobody feels like doing the work at the end of the season to tie all the threads together.
Fanboys, sometimes they hate the fact that stories work this way. They want it all stitched up ahead of time, with a plan on the books. I don't really understand why, but I know that there's not a show on television, or a novel ever written, that works that way. Things change, stories evolve and grow up, or the people creating them change, or lose interest. But fanboys, sometimes they are loud. So the showrunner has to say, "I know what the last thing is." The last image, or the last word of dialogue, or who's left standing. Maybe it's true, maybe it's a bluff.
It would be better if it were a bluff. Because you can't have it both ways. You can't say that the story tells itself, pat your back egregiously for the "artistic" details you've chucked in for no clear artistic reason, while also reassuring the fans -- whose opinions don't really matter anyway, because all you owe them is a story, including me, which is why I feel comfortable writing about this -- that there's an endpoint, a reason for it all, a final mystery. That all will be revealed.
Trust the story, and it will be. I think what I reacted so violently to, this finale and the last one, was the exceedingly inorganic, forced nature of the revelations, at the last second. Not organically developing out of the story told over the preceding nineteen episodes, and the threads of deeper meaning and juxtaposition that they afford, but a determined weeding out of tools and images that didn't fit the finale, when it was time to write the finale. That's distinctly irreverent, toward the material, toward the story itself, and to your writers. I think what happened here was less a issue of forethought and planning, and more a loss of nutsack at a crucial moment. A dedication to reaching ideas long plotted out, working against the grain of the story itself, to arrive at treasured endpoints that no longer signify.
Not that the finale wasn't intuitively written. Which is the second issue, because while it's a fine story, it turns against the preceding flow of the narrative in some pretty stark ways that, assembled, seem pretty revealing.
Let's start with Tory, not because I love her so much or anything, because what is there to love beyond the gifted Rekha Sharma? Not a lot. She was the mystery ingredient in the Final Four, the "most exciting" open-ended character, who in the end got the least interesting, most cardboard-villainous story of all. Thinking back to the balance of the Final Five, above, let's think about her for a second. Tory Foster is not Slytherin, she's Ravenclaw -- Ellen's Slytherin -- Tory is Air, Mind, the Invisible Girl, Thinking, taunted and haunted by dark emotions she can't see directly or ever explain, shooting out dark roots into Intuition and Sensation in order to stabilize herself against these shadow emotions and fears. (Compare Buffy's Willow Rosenberg, for an easy example.) The Final Five have lost their Thinker; it's no surprise that soon after, they give up even the touchstone of transcendence, shooting Sam into the sun as an artifact of technology, and become the Final Three.
What's troubling is that these Final Three, eventually, will agree that this is okay, even appropriate. Laudable, even. The show claps Galen on the back for severing the group's ties with the infinite, breaking a peace accord through murder, and eventually damning all but three Cylon models to death. Which, whatever, that's fine.
Only at the same time, Lee is warning us about our science outstripping our souls. Just after sending Simon the doctor and Cavil the atheist genius into a black hole, and a little while before the Smartest Man in the Twelve Colonies decides to become a farmer. Because courage, not intelligence, is what earns you love, and the right to exist. And right about this time the Fleet is giving up all intellectual progress they've ever made, and lying down in the grass and praising themselves for it, because technology and intellect and progress and mental strength are not "the best part of ourselves," any more than Tory Foster deserved to live. Human progress is typified in the glorious decadence of Caprica City, where if they're not fucking they're puking on themselves: "Commercialism, decadence, technology run amok" are inscribed as natural human endpoints, and the Hybrid and Lee agree, at different points, that cities and civilization are the root cause of all evil. And even though I personally found the characters' resolutions -- yes, including Kara's, and the angels' -- completely satisfying, that can go on the list too. The story steps up to the brink spiritually on at least three fronts, and then tosses up its hands, saying those lynchpins of the series no longer signify. Not for the lack of answers, but for suggesting that the questions themselves aren't worth asking.
I submit to you that coincidental or not -- and that's a pretty long list, to be a coincidence -- this is not only offensive and misguided, but vile. You have to look in the darkest, sweatiest ugliest places to find God, and the story here tells us that you're better off just pretending those places don't exist. Wrap your hands around the shadow's throat, or your enemy's throat, or around the blow-up dolls that Cylons are after all, and submerge the holiest part of yourself in forced amnesia and bitter denial, tell yourself that development forward leads inexorably to bisexual strip clubs and casual intercourse outside the bonds of marriage, and killer robots? All the cool kids are going agrarian? That's an old man's game, afraid and lost and tired, and the show is worthy of better than that.
Human development on the individual level is self-organizing: toward strength, wholeness and transformation. That's what a soul is: the natural desire to cross the line from here to there, to move and to progress. If not for a higher purpose, then at the least from of curiosity. Everything that rises, every single thing, must converge. I haven't seen a story this... hateful, this reductive and frightened and shrinking, in a really long time.
Why on Earth should anyone, anywhere, ever retrograde? If you don't like the thesis, generate the antithesis and pull it together with your hands: don't wipe the board. I don't think I've been more grossed out by any statement of this show's characters than the order not to "underestimate the desire for a clean slate." Anyone who honestly wants a clean slate wants to die. The question is, "When Will the Work Be Done?" And the only answer is: Never. You don't get to lay down your burdens, the rough spots are all you ever had. That's called life, and it's just as sweet and just as brutal as the angels, and the Gods. You can't tear pages out of your history. That's as weak as declaring bankruptcy, and morally reprehensible. It is profane.
You can't total out a human soul, can't ask for a factory recall, can't stalk your inner Tory and choke her to death, because she's not going anywhere. That just gives her more power over you, and you become uglier for it. You learn from her, you integrate, and you grow. Anything else is a warp in the design that you cause, out of your own cowardice, and laziness.
The future is always better than the past. Even Voltaire knew that, and he invented this trite shtick. If you can't believe that -- if you fear the future you're creating, for yourself -- you're done. Because there's no point: end it today, or stop bitching and apply yourself to making it better, because essentially the implication is that nobody knows how to save the world, but you, and nobody but yours will ever figure it out. That is dead. That is death.
I can't get around it, and I can't get past it. This is all me talking, I don't know anything about the people that brought this story to life, not really. And it's just an hour, or half an hour, out of something I will always love. It's not a dealbreaker. I'm already signed to do Caprica and The Plan for TWoP, because I do believe in this story. I love it. I love for its ambition, and its strength, and its excellence, and its hope. I love the people who have worked so hard to create something so beautiful, that has informed so much of my life for so many years. This is not a write-off. This is a personal problem with particular and personal conclusions that pushed personal buttons.
If any of the retrogressive themes in this episode were present, or even foreshadowed, in any other episode of the series, it would be lessened as a whole. But as the finale to a story, it's cool shit that doesn't mean much, other than telling us a lot about the mindset and the environment -- a given time, a given location -- in which it was produced. But no matter how hopeless it seems at this point in the story, the fact remains: We start every week in prayer: for more light, more wisdom, more strength. That will never change. Keep rising.