Amanda:

The above piece is the single-best, and well-posited analysis of “BG” (much less any other dramatic television series) that I’ve read in a long time.

Very well done.

See, this is why I’m a Buddhist. A religion for adults, IMHO. There is no way to look clearly at Western religion and be anything but an atheist, which I was for many, many years. Who would worship a capricious, sadistic, psychopathic Monster God?

Thanks for the analysis. Just excellent.

I agree with your thoughts about the downfall of religion on the show, and I do hope they stick with that.  On the other hand, I do think the idea of the Cylon god is a reflection of some power that actually exists (whoever resurrected Starbuck), but will turn out to be technological (if so advanced as to resemble magic) rather than supernatural.

Related to that, I’m curious to see what happens to Adama and Tigh.  It’s certainly possible that they’ll be saved at the last minute through conventional means, but what would be more interesting is if they are actually killed, and then they wake up in the place where Kara’s rebirth also happened, and perhaps Ellen is waiting for them there.  Just a thought.

I don’t have any insight (nor much interest) regarding the religious themes, though I recognize they are integral to the storyline and some of the main characters. Personally I’m more interested in the question of “What happens when hope is gone?” That’s something that Chris Dahlen at the Onion AVClub probes pretty insightfully I think.

In particular I’m interested in the dichotomy between the uneasy truce that’s been formed between the leadership and the Cylons, and the rabble who still only knows them as the monsters that murdered most of the humans beings in existence then occupied them on New Caprica. As I think you’ve pointed out before, as far as we know most of the fleet have not been privy to the wheeling and dealings between Roslin/Baltar/Galactica officers and the Cylons and so have no understanding of (or motivation to understand) why this truce has taken place. Combine this with the loss of the focus of reaching Earth to unify them, and I think that this coup/revolution is a reasonable possible (expected?) result.

The fleet has really only been a nominal democracy, though admittedly that may just be a reflection of the bias of a story about the “Battlestar Galactica” and not about the whole fleet per se. Personally I’m glad to see the storyline return to the problems of managing and keeping alive 50k+ people crammed into ships with an uncertain future.

I really enjoy where the show goes—>Felix Gaeta discovered the voter fraud and Baltar ended up as President—as he lawfully deserved to.  Then Felix ends up being part of the appeasement gov’t of New Caprica, and now he’s leading the rebellion.  He’s 180° from where he started, but still completely and totally in character.

I absolutely loved Roslin and Baltar last night.  From what we know, Roslin is better than Baltar, but when you get right down to it, they both are frauds and both do use and manipulate people.  Roslin’s just a more competent politician and Baltar’s a more competent survivor at any cost.

I love that all Roslin has to do is give a little speech to the fleet, and they are all ready to listen and follow.  That she has such power, even though Earth was such a debacle and she’s dying, she is still a powerhouse.  I was so scared from the previews that they were going to airlock her.

The mutineers are motivated by hate, but their hate and fear are understandable.  I thought, during the episode. we were seeing “It happened before and will happen again” right before our eyes.  The Cylons were one of the colonies 2000 years ago, they split apart and then the two factions attack and try to wipe one another out.

Now you have Roslin/Adama as Cylon sympathizers vs. the Mutineers who will have nothing to do with Cylons.  The few remaining humans have split into two factions that are determined to destroy one another—Adama says there will be no amnesty and there will be retribution, so there’s no coming back from this.  He softens a bit toward the end with the Marine, but Starbuck, Harbinger of Death, has none of it: if the Cylon Treaty side survives, the Mutineers are going down hard.

The whole Cylon thing is amazing.  I mean, come on!  Galactica survived in the first place b/c Bill was so anti-computer networking due to his time in the First Cylon War that he wouldn’t tolerate any computer link-up on his battlestar.  It’s one of the reasons Galactica was being shuttered and turned into a museum: it was an antique that hadn’t been retrofitted or modernized at all. 

Now he’s putting KNOWN Cylon-networks into his fleet.  Again 180° from the miniseries, but still totally in character.

Season One, Boomer’s Cylon programming nearly kills Bill.  Last night, Tigh’s Cylon programming is defending him at all costs while fully humans are blowing him up.

Talk about a mindfracking episode.  Hard to watch, but really full of meaning.  It’s a good conclusion for everyone who’s stuck with this series for the whole crazy ride.

I find it hard to believe Bill’s dead, but, I don’t see how he gets out.

In retrospect, I didn’t think it was all that out of character for Baltar.  He knows Felix Gaeta better than anyone (save Hoshi, who Gaeta was lying to anyway) and he would know exactly how to appeal to him.  Appealing to his self righteousness, and then his threat—playing with the cognitive dissonance that results from Gaeta’s inability to self criticize—was his best bet.

I liked how they played Gaeta essentially censoring President Roslin’s message.  It was a completely ham-handed move that ultimately was completely pointless.  Cutting her off, after the substance of the message got through, just makes her seem more important and calls Gaeta’s legitimacy into question.  I thought it as a very interesting depiction of authoritarian power.

My predictions:  Colonel Tigh jumps on the grenade, saving Admiral Adama and waking up elsewhere with his wife.  The Vice President, seeing the revolution falling out of his hands, betrays Gaeta.

I’m convinced Tigh’s going to wake up with Ellen.

I’m convinced Tigh’s going to wake up with Ellen.

And say he’s just had the most amazing dream?

I also wouldn’t be terribly surprised if Baltar and Roslin get blown up in the Raptor.  They, along with Starbuck, are the “special” humans who have had visions and prophesies.  And Starbuck has already died and been resurrected.

I can’t see the show abandoning religion for long—it’s been too important to the show thusfar, and the fact is a good chunk of the first two seasons involve the idea of prophecy being fulfilled.  There demonstrably is a higher power at work in the show, but what that power is, and how it’s understood, is up for debate.

The religious trajectory of the show, I think, is more than just polytheism to monotheism to atheism (Baltar, remember, was a committed atheist when the show began and was—using the show’s internal logic—proven “wrong” in this commitment).  The show began as a struggle against polytheism and a specific, Old Testament-type of monotheism (the Cylons seemed to believe in an avenging God who would approve of floods and nuclear apocalypse to cleanse the world/universe of sin).  From there, the focus shifted to a New Testament focus on forgiveness (amnesty is given to all humans who participated in the occupation, Baltar is released without actually being exonerated, and—finally—humans and Cylons form an alliance).  And now, it seems like the show is moving into new (maybe Buddhist?) territory, with reincarnation replacing ressurrection as a central idea.

It seems to me that, rather than arguing against the existence of God or gods or anything like that, the show argues that some things are just unknowable, and that those who claim to speak on behalf of the universe’s creator(s) (Roslin and Baltar have both been revealed as “false prophets) is deluding him/herself, or his/her followers, or both.

Before addressing all the insanity on the show last night…

Actually, I found the latest ep to be refreshing and crisp. The whole arc of the show for a very long time and up to this point has felt feverish, hallucinatory, increasingly stagnant and frustrating.

Now, all of a sudden, the dam bursts open, there is movement and comprehensible choices to make and actions to take.

In a class on the history and culture of the Soviet Union under Stalin, after spending many weeks on the madness of the Purges, when we got to Hitler’ invasion of the USSR and the beginning of the ‘Great Patriotic War,’ as the Russians call the phase where they were finally and irreversibly against the Nazis, it seemed to us that the war, terrible as it was for Russians, came as a great relief. One, Soviet citizens were already hardened to endure and (generally) survive destruction, in the form of the incompetence and malice of their “peacetime” regime—you might say that they always lived under a war regime. Two—when it became a simple, straightforward issue of “repel the German invader and save the Motherland!’, it came as a great and welcome moral simplification and clarification compared to the hallucinatory, Alice-In-Wonderland qualities of the previous decade or so of political theatre.

In much the same way, last night’s episode was snappy, exciting, and full of what felt like moral clarity. I never doubted that the mutineers were wrong and the defenders were right; I cheered every time one of the loyalist characters joined up with another. So many divisions and estrangements brushed aside, so much doubt and mistrust dispelled! Tyrol once again on the same team with his Admiral, Baltar on their side for pretty much the first time ever, Lee and Starbuck paired up again, and Roslin woken up from her funk at last—which latter thing is all the more thrilling to see, having seen in the last ep what a sexy, vibrant lady she is even dying of cancer and crushed by miserable failure.

The dark side is—I like Gaeta and quite a few others of the mutineers as well. I hate the near-certainty that their fate must now be either death, the murder of all these other people I like, or some kind of standoff involving them going their separate ways. Elements of genuine tragedy are being sown here.

In many ways last night’s show returns us to the space opera genre that the original series riffed off of. There is a lot of shooting and explosions and red shirts getting killed and sneaking through recycle tunnels (did anyone notice that at one point the Admiral and friends were in the “Waste Water Storage Bay”?) but so far none of the mainstream characters are dead though the apparent threat is constant.

What I love about this is that we are getting the melodramatic thrills now having paid for them fair and square by staying through the often-painful and feverish last couple seasons. Each extreme redeems and enhances the other. Had the series ended on the note of the fist ep of this last block—the one where Dualla kills herself—it would have been a huge postmodern bummer and dragged the legacy of the older seasons with it. But now we clearly see that it was the oppressive, muggy, weird calm before a huge storm—I’m thinking Florida Gulf Coast weather here, for people who understand what I mean by that.

I have always had some faith that Moore et al know what the frak they are doing and have not totally written themselves into a corner; the artistry they’ve shown in this extended story art gives me confidence that the ultimate work will stand as an integrated and artistically harmonious whole, and each part will be enhanced and deepened by its part in that whole.

I predict that Roslin and Baltar make it just fine—-either the delay in sending out the orders will give them time, or the hesitancy that some of the mutineers are showing in killing previously beloved leadership will mean that Gaeta just doesn’t have the Viper force to take them out.  Most Viper pilots are still loyalists to Adama at this point, especially the best ones.

There demonstrably is a higher power at work in the show,

It’s always been ambiguous, I think.  A lot of what they believe is drawn from scriptures that lay out exactly what path they need to take to Earth.  Which was bunk.

Actually, I found the latest ep to be refreshing and crisp.

Agreed.  The events were insane, but the pacing and plot twists were great TV.

Now, all of a sudden, the dam bursts open, there is movement and comprehensible choices to make and actions to take.

I definitely think Starbuck feels like this.  After doubting herself and who the ‘bad guys’ were (her husband a Cylon, thinking she may be one as well, etc.), she finally has a defined enemy, defined sides.  She knows who to kill.  Gaeta seems to have always felt a great deal of clarity about good vs. evil, as well, though in the opposite direction.  And they are both, of course, completely justified in their positions.

But I think that in general, this is less an arrival of clarity as it is an extension of the breakdown following the arrival at the dead Earth.  While there was some hope lingering in the future, they could keep their eyes on the prize.  Now, what do they have to do but squabble with each other?

I find it hard to believe Bill’s dead, but, I don’t see how he gets out.
Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes on 01/31 at 09:49 AM

Well, aside from the sheer genre imperatives—Edward Olomos is after all the leading star of the show!—Moore et al long ago adopted the practice of showing flashes of the upcoming ep in the opening credits, and they show the previews of next episode practically the second the current one ends. Moore obviously inoculates his show against “spoilers” by blasting the audience with shotgun fire of them. We quickly learn, it isn’t so much what happens, but why and how we look forward to learning.

So I feel free to point out—the preview at the end of last night’s ep showed Adama in a blindfold, in one of the Viper airlocks. Presumably then he not only survives the grenade, he doesn’t even get much hurt by it (though for all we know, his face might have suffered; maybe he could be blind…) but he might not survive to the next ep after that. Now we know the grenade didn’t kill him. Cool. But why and how? Was it a relatively harmless stun grenade? Did both men take cover? Did Tigh fall on the grenade, and if so is he (who was totally absent from the previews) get reincarnated in Ellen’s arms?

Good stuff.

I also am in suspense about the fate of the Cylons (and Helo) captured by the mutineers. Last night I sort of expected the resistance to surge their way to the Brig and release them, but they aren’t giving us that much cheap melodrama, are they? Nope, our heroines (Athena and the Six, Caprica Six if I haven’t lost track completely) are still tied to that railroad track as the moustasche-twirling villain (that ass from the Pegasus ) sends his train down, as it were…

Where is Dudley Dooright when you need him?

It’s always been ambiguous, I think.  A lot of what they believe is drawn from scriptures that lay out exactly what path they need to take to Earth.  Which was bunk.

I think it’s mostly been ambiguous, but that the Six and Baltar who are seen only by Baltar and Six reveal (I think) that something supernatural is happening on the show (the “head Six” in particular has functioned like a deus ex machina—almost literally—when it comes to providing exposition that the humans otherwise couldn’t know).  Similarly, the arrow that magically transported most of the crew to earth in the second season indicates (again, I think) that something mystical is going on with these characters.

And I may be misremembering here, but wasn’t it Starbuck’s Viper that showed them the path to Earth?  The scriptures led them so far, but then wasn’t it a reliance on technology (albeit weird and mysterious technology that somehow came back after its own destruction) that actually led them to the devastated earth?  I’m not sure just what the significance of that is—could it be that the planet they arrived at wasn’t really earth at all?—but it seems thematically significant that things went south when they began to rely on their own senses rather than faith.

But the Six and Baltar only reveal to the real Six and Baltar what they already know.  They could easily be their consciences.

Has Head Six disambiguated yet? I can’t remember her ever knowing something that Balthar couldn’t (just barely) have guessed or intuited. Even the scenes where she’s dragging him around could still conceivably go either way.

But the Six and Baltar only reveal to the real Six and Baltar what they already know.  They could easily be their consciences.
Amanda Marcotte on 01/31 at 10:56 AM

But do people generally, particularly otherwise basically sane people, have those kinds of hallucinations, even after a traumatic experience, that creates an autonomous-seeming second person wearing the face of a real person? We often imagine some particular Other speaking to us—well I do anyway; maybe I’m just nuts—but there is always the knowledge that we ourselves are staging this character and giving them their lines in our heads. Head Six and Caprica-Six’s Head Baltar seemed to be something much more solid and integral to their living bearers.

I always figured that each of them were some kind of byproduct of their bearers’ close proximity when the nuclear blast killed Caprica-Six’s original Cylon body, particularly Baltar’s physical combined with psychic nearness to Caprica-Six’s “upload” to the resurrection mechanism. That Baltar’s brain actually got an image of the Six’s psyche—her brain-pattern—flashed onto his brain. The information he didn’t have is actually imprinted on his brain, but it can only access it via the mind of the Head-Six. It was weirder that Caprica-Six had her own Head-Baltar, but that could be a logical consequence of her own mind resonating with Baltar’s during the upload.

We haven’t seen any manifestations of either in quite some time; presumably their respective brains “healed” and lost the images. Or perhaps both have just set them aside and they will pop up again.

I think Head-Six at least did reveal information that Baltar would not plausibly have had on his own.

If she always was a mere hallucination of Baltar’s, well, that means that all the “information” she “shared” with him was merely Baltar’s own deductions, and we have probably been badly misled. But just because Baltar eventually decides this was the case and forgets to hallucinate her after that doesn’t prove she was never real; it might just mean he repressed her, or “disconnected” her as it were, by reorganizing his own mind so as not to enable her to manifest.

Well, real people don’t have these level of hallucinations, but it’s a common enough TV/movie trope to have especially vivid hallucinations stand in for the more realistic ones.

On the other hand, I do think the idea of the Cylon god is a reflection of some power that actually exists (whoever resurrected Starbuck), but will turn out to be technological (if so advanced as to resemble magic) rather than supernatural.

*Spoilers?*

Maybe. Maybe not. There was a monotheistic cult on the Twelve Colonies before they were destroyed. The mind of one of the adherents was downloaded and then later used as a model for other Cylons. Maybe that’s why the Cylons are monotheistic.

Has Head Six disambiguated yet? I can’t remember her ever knowing something that Balthar couldn’t (just barely) have guessed or intuited.

Well, she pointed out the Cylon device on the Galactica bridge in the miniseries, which I don’t think Baltar could have identified on his own.  Similarly, in the miniseries, she correctly identified Doral as a Cylon (although since this recognition was to Baltar’s immediate advantage, it could just be a lucky coincidence).  She also predicted Helo and Sharon’s hybrid baby before Baltar could have even guessed, if I recall correctly.  It also seems unlikely to me that both Baltar and Caprica Six would go crazy in exactly the same way, each developing an avatar of the other to express their own intuition.  But then again, I’m talking about the show where robots and humans fight each other in outer space, so maybe “unlikely” shouldn’t enter into the conversation…

I don’t think Adama is dead. Yet.

As Mark Foxwell, points out the preview for the next show shows Adama alive and Roslin on the Cylon ship so we know they are both OK for at least one more episode. As for Tigh, who knows. I do think even if he dies or not we will probably be seeing Ellen next week, either through Tigh’s resurrection or maybe even arriving with Cavil out of the blue. (They have to get to Cavil and the other cylons soon after all.)
I actually was not as fond as the episode as everyone else here was for some reason…maybe it felt kind of predictable to me from the last episode and the preview? I did like seeing Roslin resume her leadership role though and the preview for the next episode suggests she is going be tougher then ever.

You must be deliberately avoiding watching the previews, Roxanne. We know Adama isn’t dead, yet.

And I assume he won’t die until the last ep, if then. Same for Roslin, Starbuck, Lee.

Everyone else is up for grabs.

I’m convinced Tigh’s going to wake up with Ellen.

I think it’s likely, though not certain.

My completely out-on-a-limb, nothing-but-gut-feel theory for next week: Gaeta saves the Old Man.

I don’t know why, but it makes sense in the context of the show. Given the opportunity to space Adama, Gaeta will flinch—and earn that measure of redemption he seeks.

I could be totally and completely wrong, of course.

You must be deliberately avoiding watching the previews, Roxanne. We know Adama isn’t dead, yet.

Not avoiding the previews at all. Just avoiding sending someone who didn’t watch the previews into a white hot emotional meltown.

So, Roxanne, you are emulating the preview-non-watcher, eh?

I figure that once they put the info out there, it is fair to reference it. After all, as I said, Moore plays around with leaked info, to throw people off balance and most of all to shift anticipation away from this or that bit of key information and toward the whole experience of watching to get the nuances of how and why.

But I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t usually mind “spoilers” and often watches the same show (or reads the same book) over and over. I may not be sensitive enough to those who process differently.

And I ought to have sympathy for those who can’t keep up with the current series because they don’t have access to SciFi at the moment; a year ago I was in that boat myself, and had to wait for stuff to come out on DVD release.

I have to say though, if you are in that position and have low tolerance for spoilers, you only can make yourself miserable on one of these threads! I used to enjoy them but only because I could ignore spoilers—in fact 9/10 of them went right over my head; I had no context to make sense of them. If I remembered them later as I finally got around to the eps people were talking about, I used them as grist for my critical mill rather than accepted them as infallible prophecies that rendered my watching moot. But again, that’s just the way my mind works; not everyone processes the way I do.

After all, when a person realizes that they have a better moral sense than the god they’ve been taught about, they’re either on the path to atheism or towards a fundamentalist worldview that views god’s capricious and cruel nature as all the more reason to fear him and try to curry his favor.

Very well put.  It can also make the person less concerned with their own actions and ethics, since “faith” trumps “works”.

As someone said earlier, that grenade was a flashbang.

And old-school Starbuck is back!!! (And I don’t mean Dirk benedict)

Stun grenades.

In much the same way, last night’s episode was snappy, exciting, and full of what felt like moral clarity.

I loved Starbuck kissing Lee and saying she finally felt “right”.  I loved Laura telling Bill that she went to the raptor so that he would know she was okay, b/c she knew he would never leave the ship, yet he would always be distracted by trying to protect her.

Roslin and Adama have pretty much always been practical about these matters.  Bill gets swayed by emotion and being Papa Bear to Starbuck and his other soldiers.  Laura really began to believe and trust in the prophesy.  But in the practical matters of running the rag-tag fleet, or escaping New Caprica, or of beating Cavil to Earth—they’ve always been in control.

Look at how easily just a few minutes of Laura Roslin explaining things to the fleet changes the entire Revolution.

I just wish the writers had paid more attention to Lee.  Back when he first turned on Tigh and supported the President and the Articles of Confederation he’d sworn to uphold, there was a dynamic that could have played otu much stronger.  He still could have ended up defending Baltar and being in the Quorum, but it could have been more organic and feel less like nepotism.

I don’t think he’d end up in Gaeta’s position, but it might have been closer. 

I just look at this mutiny as the craziest thing.  There are less than 40,000 humans left alive in the Universe, and they’re killing each other off.  It’s insane.  It’s happened before and is happening again.

I have no faith that Bill survives the next episode.  He really did almost die after Boomer shot him.

I just look at this mutiny as the craziest thing.  There are less than 40,000 humans left alive in the Universe, and they’re killing each other off.  It’s insane.  It’s happened before and is happening again.

On the contrary, I think it makes perfect sense from a human behavior point of view.

The fleet is made of refugees living in very close quarters for years while being harassed by the Cylons, held together only by a hope of reaching Earth. And now with Earth turning out to be a red herring, and the inclusion of the other (friendly) Cylons, I think it’s only natural that nerves would finally snap, and a mutiny break out.

Did Pandagon just suffer a big outage for some hours there, or was it just me failing to connect somehow?

Is this part of the revamping of the site?

This is the BSG that I’ve missed. Starbuck was a badass, Apollo wasn’t a whiny punk, the Admiral and Tigh kicking ass and Roslin becoming a leader again. And only minimum religious talk. I loved how Roslin pointed out that she knew, no matter what, Baltar would save his own ass with his gift for self preservation. His facial expression to that was priceless.

As for Head Six, didn’t she in the beginning of Baltar’s harem literally pick him up and force him to take his beating from the guard who wouldn’t let them return to their quarters? If I recall there was a shot of him as a rag doll with everyone’s expression around him awed but, as Mark said, perhaps we were mislead. Then again, Baltar even saw a “head Baltar” and talked to himself when Tori was trying to seduce him, so perhaps he really is just totally hallucinating.

And I believe I read somewhere (either TVGuide or Sci-fi wire) that once Baltar accepted the Cylon God HeadSix’s job was done and we wouldn’t see her again. I’m hoping that’s not true because that’s just a cop out.

Great episode. The only killer is that, now that I’m watching “live,” I have to wait a frakin’ week for the next one.

In the short term, it’s fairly obvious that Adama’s “loyalists” (minus one or two characters lost and with the temporary addition of Baltar and Tyrol) are going to get themselves into a position from which they can bargain with Gaeta for return of Galactica.

At that point, it’ll be Baltar who, directly or indirectly, presents Gaeta over his beloved private line with the same ultimatum Bill presented Zarek: die as a leader of your people or die in disgrace. This time, though, there won’t be any laundry-report bluff involved—either end this thing peacefully and submit to the mercy of the re-invigorated Madame Airlock, or every Cylon-hating mutineer in the CIC (including the rapist from the Pegasus and the thug who tried to kill Baltar in the bathroom) finds out about Gaeta’s errors in judgment on New Caprica.

After that, who knows? Though with Moore the Merciless it’s likely that the moment this crisis ends and the fleet is split and weakened that Cavil and his base ships will show up.

Good stuff on religion, Amanda. I’m sticking with my cycle/mandala/evolution theory for what’s going on in the larger scheme, but I doubt there’s any conscious agency driving it. Supernatural and/or natural (and with Clarke’s Law, who’s to say?), it’s a bloody cruel universe so we might as well enjoy the small pleasures we can on each go-‘round.

Forward toward New Kobol and a new-and-improved 2000-year cycle.

OH! 

Helo and Athena and Hera!

I’m so worried about them, but I forget to post about them.  I’m not as worried about Pregnant 6, which is odd, but the Agathons really seem like the most hopeful choice for the future.  They are honest, they keep their vows, they live for their daughter.  No “plan”.  No God/s.  Just relying on each other and trusting others to keep their word.

And they’re in the Brig of Rape!

I don’t think Gaeta’s smart enough to get this done.  Roslin got most of her message out (how did Zarek sign on to anything without knowing that Laura would be locked up (preferable killed) like Adama?  He didn’t make a real move until Gaeta assured him that Adama and CIC were secured) and she’s off the ship.  He’s going to try to shoot her down, but when that fails, what’s he going to do? 

He’s going to get killed by his fellow Mutineers, who will then put someone even more hate-filled and incompetent in charge.  Zarek’s going to be strung up by the rest of the Quorum.  The rest of the fleet will splinter…I don’t think there are enough loyal soldiers to either side for complete martial law (unless Cavil shows up).  Galactica needs and will commandeer the the tyllium ship and the algae supply.  If the Quorum has any power at all, they will get most of the rest of the fleet in line.  This mutiny has pulled “resisting Cylon networking” completely off the table.

Anyone who is willing to fight over keeping Cylon FTL off their ships will be left behind with the rest of the Mutineers.  Have fun on radioactive Earth.

I don’t think Gaeta’s smart enough to get this done.

It’s less a question of smarts than it is a question of leadership. Gaeta is very smart. He’s also organised, hyper-competent, driven, and can muster enough superficial authority to give orders. But all that isn’t enough.

As we’ve seen, Gaeta “hangs up” on snags instead of dealing with them, he only delegates important tasks to snakes and toadies and the weak-willed, he deliberately cuts off communications with potential allies, he doesn’t show decisiveness under pressure, and he mistakes the medium-term picture for the long-term one. Finally, he’s hitched his rising fortunes to Zarek, who’s mainly concerned about the greater glory of Zarek—the only worse choice would have been working with a “leader” like Baltar. Oh, wait…

Moore has pretty much said that Ellen will be back in person (rather than a hallucination, flashback or dream) so it’s quite possible that even if Tigh bite sit next episode, he’ll be coming with her. Olmos has said flat out that Adama doesn’t survive the season, though I expected him to last a few more episodes. Could happen but it’s looking dodgy.

I was wondering how they were going to handle the truth about Earth and so far, I’m impressed with the myriad ways everyone is falling apart, slowly. They had all their hopes pinned to one unlikely outcome: Earth being a paradise. And now they have to deal with what they have left. Brutal but beautiful.

Ellen will be back in person (rather than a hallucination, flashback or dream) so it’s quite possible that even if Tigh bite sit next episode, he’ll be coming with her.

Not if Ellen was resurrected prior to the destruction of the Hub.

“Olmos has said flat out that Adama doesn’t survive the season, though I expected him to last a few more episodes. “
Wow. I can’t imagine the show without Admiral Adama but it’s so crazy that I can see Moore actually doing it.
“Not if Ellen was resurrected prior to the destruction of the Hub.”
I don’t think the final five use the same Hub as the rest of the cylons. Ellen died a while back so she would have been resurrected long ago and the other cylons would probably have known.
The final five are suppose to be fundamentally different according to Moore. Maybe they resurrect in different ways or at least a different place? Although, as I said before, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ellen shows up with Cavil and the other cylons the next when see them, I just don’t think that the final five resurrect on the Hub.

Of course, one of the ironies in all this is that Gaeta’s honesty and idealism in reporting Roslin’s attempt at voter fraud paved the way for Baltar’s presidency and the disastrous interlude on New Caprica.  Gaeta is the type of person who inserts himself into situations out of a sense of moral outrage, but who inadvertently makes the situation worse.

In past episodes, the Colonials always managed to find a way to patch up their differences after being divided (like Season 2 for example, when part of the RTF jumped away and went to Kobol), but Gaeta and the mutineers have opened a wound that can never be healed.  As Adama declared before being taken out of CIC, there will be repercussions.  If Adama somehow manages to regain command of the Galactica, just about everyone who followed Gaeta will be screwed.  The downside for Adama though is that if he does win, he still loses, because the Galactica is badly undermanned as it is.

I haven’t read any spoilers, so what I write next shouldn’t be treated as such, it’s just speculation.  But I have a feeling that Gaeta is going to kill himself once he realizes the damage he has done.  The Galactica under his command will not be able to protect the civilian fleet.  Neither Gaeta nor Zarek seem to have any idea where they intend to go or what they intend to do.  Whatever gripes they or anyone else have with Adama, when you get right down to it, Adama did the impossible, he gave the remaining humans a chance to live against all odds.  The one time he let the civilian government have its way on an issue he disagreed with, letting Baltar have the RTF settle on New Caprica, they paid the price in lives.

I don’t know on what note the series is going to end, but as I was writing this, I suddenly remembered Resurrection Ship Part 2, when Adama and Cain are each plotting to kill the other.  Adama remembers his conversation with Caprica Sharon (later to become Athena) and orders Starbuck to stand down. “It’s not enough to survive.  One must also be worthy of survival.”  With the way things are going on the Galactica and in the RTF, it looks like they are forfeiting their worthiness to survive.

But when Roslin pointed out that they’re both frauds, and he went along with it, I think that was a profound breakthrough moment for them and the show.

Amanda, that reminds me of a funny moment in Season 2, when Roslin is with Zarek, Elosha and Apollo.  They are talking about what they are going to do next and how to win the fleet over to their side.  Roslin suddenly declares, “I know exactly what to do.  I am going to play the religious card!”  She then walks over to where the tape recorder is, fumbles with it for a moment, and asks pathetically, “How do you operate this thing?”

This last episode mostly left me with a whole lot of thinking that Adama / Roslin / Starbuck et al are full of shit. Self-righteous speeches about ‘no amnesty’ because oh noes one kid died, while Adama was talking about actual citizenship for the damn Cylons? And then we have Roslin who apparently as of next episode is going to be standing on the bridge of a Cylon Baseship telling the people on the Galactica she’s going to kill them all? And oh then there’s Starbuck who I mean gosh, it would be so impossible to say “oh hey you lost your leg and it was completely my crazy-ass fault, sorry about that,” instead of like, cripple jokes? These guys are so deep into their hypocrisy that they don’t even know what it looks like from the outside, anymore.

I don’t really see Ellen accompanying Cavil.  Compared to the rebel Cylons, Cavil is dead set against finding out who the Final Five are.  I guess having Ellen resurrect in front of Cavil might make him change his mind, but wouldn’t she have resurrected long before the rift between the models?

I think it makes much more sense that the Final Five have their own method of resurrection, perhaps the original one that Ellen mentions on Earth before she dies.

Self-righteous speeches about ‘no amnesty’ because oh noes one kid died, while Adama was talking about actual citizenship for the damn Cylons?

A lot more than “one kid” died Dan.  Zarek bludgeoned Laird.  Countless more must have been killed while Gaeta’s mutineers were rampaging through the Galactica.  And it was quite clear that if Zarek had his way, Admiral Adama would have been executed immediately.

These guys are so deep into their hypocrisy that they don’t even know what it looks like from the outside, anymore.

Guess you missed my comments above:

Neither Gaeta nor Zarek seem to have any idea where they intend to go or what they intend to do.  Whatever gripes they or anyone else have with Adama, when you get right down to it, Adama did the impossible, he gave the remaining humans a chance to live against all odds.  The one time he let the civilian government have its way on an issue he disagreed with, letting Baltar have the RTF settle on New Caprica, they paid the price in lives.  Oh, and as I mentioned above, Gaeta made the New Caprica debacle possible too, not that he intended to, of course.

And then we have Roslin who apparently as of next episode is going to be standing on the bridge of a Cylon Baseship telling the people on the Galactica she’s going to kill them all?

Well, Gaeta does give the order for Narcho to open fire on the Raptor she is in en route to the Cylon basestar.  So, it’s okay for Gaeta to try and have Roslin killed, but it’s not okay for Roslin to retaliate?  And in the preview clip you are referring to, she says “I am coming for all of you,” not “I am going to kill all of you.”  And presumably that clip takes place after she is told that Tigh has been killed trying to escape and that Adama will be executed. 

As Adama said in the “Pegasus” episode, context matters.

“A lot of what they believe is drawn from scriptures that lay out exactly what path they need to take to Earth…”

But did NOT follow the scriptures, they followed Starbuck AGAINST advice.  Its the Wrong Earth.

But I have a feeling that Gaeta is going to kill himself once he realizes the damage he has done.  The Galactica under his command will not be able to protect the civilian fleet.  ...
Tommykey on 02/01 at 05:27 PM

Certainly not, since their revolt is all about hating all Cylons—including the rebel Cylons who have on the whole been a big help. Turning on them is a very bad move for everyone. (Except maybe Cavil’s Fleet—which is also decimated and very likely below the critical mass for long-term survival itself).

OTOH…

Well, Gaeta does give the order for Narcho to open fire on the Raptor she is in en route to the Cylon basestar.  So, it’s okay for Gaeta to try and have Roslin killed, but it’s not okay for Roslin to retaliate?  ...
Tommykey on 02/01 at 06:37 PM

Well, I’d say they are totally justified in evading Narcho, even killing him in self-defense. And clearly more blood will be shed in resolving this.

But the Fleet, Rebel Cylons included, just can’t take a lot more decimation. As you go on to say, Roslin probably has some glimmer of this no matter how mad she gets.

The best result I foresee is the whole matter getting settled quickly, and Gaeta/Zarek’s side winding up fleeing in a few of the ships. It would suck to be them though.

That’s not the most likely result, just the best.

And, O Hai kwillow! Did you ever see any of messages re joining some pro-reproductive freedom action in Washoe County? Since then I have gotten even more fed up with the Catholic united front against FOCA and so forth.

This is a dwindling thread already, so I will chance it:

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As for “wrong Earth,” well I’d made my peace with the idea that it’s really ours, but way far in the future, but I’d love for Our Earth to turn out to be some other planet.

Just as long as it doesn’t turn out we are all supposed to be descended from the RTF. As I’ve said, I hate that trope.

Anyway the Right Earth, by your logic, would be a long long way away. But the constellations matched, so that would be unlikely, unless the Temple on Kobol was also pointing at the Wrong Earth.

histro-geek:  “Buddhist rejection?” As a Buddhist, I don’t get this.

By rejection, I mean the acceptance that suffering is caused by desire and that rejecting that desire is the key to nirvana as well as rejecting material reality as an illusion. I was trying to be express it quickly, but couldn’t come up with one word on the fly.
histro-geek on 02/02 at 02:19 PM

How about “detachment?” “Disentanglement?”

The latter is awkward, but my (limited!) sense of what practicing Buddhists are trying to get at is that reality is actually a seamless whole, and that attachment to labels and identities is the source of suffering. It’s not that they deny reality; they point out that arbitrary boundaries are at best concepts and should be let go of; things should flow smoothly.

Well, I may have mixed up too much pop Zen and generic Hippie into that.

But “rejection,” I’m afraid, smells more of Chestertonian contempt.

Anyway, literal entanglement (of power adapters, Ethernet, power cords, Xircom cables, and video and keyboard cables) are the bane of my current workplace life, so “disentanglement” seems especially desirable to me!