BSG musings: the calm after the storm

Tonight's newest episode of BSG was something of a letdown after last week's intense Season 4.5 opener. We now know that Lt. Gaeta is willing to help Tom Zarek resist any alliance between the fleet and the rebel Cylons (Adama is considering the adoption of Cylon technology to update the fleet's FTL drive capability; the rebel Cylons want full membership in the fleet and all rights appertaining thereto).

We also learn that Tyrol's baby was never his: the real father is Viper pilot Brendan "Hot Dog" Costanza (played by Bodie Olmos, Edward's son). This pisses Tyrol off.

We see Gaeta confront Kara Thrace; he harbors a huge grudge against her, since she had almost airlocked him early on in Season 3, and was also partly to blame for Gaeta's losing his leg.

We have no idea what Kara might have confessed to Lee Adama, if she confessed anything: Lee seems more or less normal, so it's possible that Kara never said, "Hey-- I might just be a Cylon, too!" Wild thought: the Starbuck who burned in the Viper was human, but the current 2.0 version is some sort of "Blade Runner"-style replicant. Nah, probably not. I'm still curious to know what sort of technology reproduced both Kara and her Viper; the whole thing reminds me of that classic Star Trek episode, "Shore Leave," in which McCoy is killed but brought back.

Baltar is shown preaching what appears to be a new theology: one that counts humanity as blameless and, Job-like, demands that God appear and account for his/her/its actions.

Adama and Roslin finally get it on, as we knew they should, and Adama himself is seen popping pills and grimacing... is he being set up to die at or near the end of the series?

BSG, like "24," has never been shy about wasting main characters. I've long assumed that Roslin was destined for death; the 2003 miniseries is where we see her get the cancer diagnosis, and her infusion with Cylon blood later on turned out to be only a temporary reprieve. Roslin's arc is a tragic one. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Adama was also headed for an early death. He has too many enemies, has undergone too much stress. He is also, along with Roslin, one of the "parents" of the fleet. A major theme running through BSG is the idea that parents have to die for their children truly to fulfill themselves, and it could well be that, whatever promised land awaits the fleet, Adama and Roslin might not be there to see it.

Previews for next week's show reveal that things are going to get ugly as Zarek begins his mutiny. Gaeta is shown attempting to relieve Adama of his command. The whole situation is a mess, and likely to get messier.

On the whole, though, I thought tonight's episode was a step backward: it felt exactly like those Season 1 and 2 episodes where we saw a variety of power struggles and intra-fleet squabbling. Baltar, one of the most interesting characters on the show, seems to have run his course, having settled into his irrelevant holy-man role. I hope that all these tangled plotlines are actually going somewhere, because tonight's installment felt almost as if it didn't need to be written. It answered none of the series' major questions:

1. What's so reverence-worthy about the Final Five Cylons?
2. What is Kara?
3. What is the ontological status of head-Six?
4. Why is Roslin seemingly telepathically tied to Athena and the Six aboard Galactica? (Theory: the Cylon blood in her veins has something to do with this and with her headache in the nebula at the end of Season 3.)
5. What's the importance of Hera, the half-Cylon child of Karl "Helo" Agathon and Sharon "Athena" Valeri (does Grace Park look like a "Valeri" to you?)?
6. What exactly was the Cylon plan-- the one we were told they had back in Seasons 1 and 2? The phrase "...and they have a plan" was part of the opening title sequence for a while.
7. The Six aboard Galactica appears to be preggers with Tigh's child. How will this play out in the remaining eight episodes?

...and all the other questions I've posed in previous entries.

The Season 4.5 opener, which was filmed during the writer's strike, was apparently written in such a way that it could have served as the series finale, if need be. This might explain the contrast between it and tonight's almost meandering episode. I hope the upcoming chapters are more tightly focused. There's no time to waste.


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