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Written by: Seamus Kevin Fahey
Directed by: Michael Nankin

Cast

Katee Sackhoff (Kara "Starbuck" Thrace)
Mary Mc Donnell (Laura Roslin)
Jamie Bamber (Lee "Apollo" Adama)
Tricia Helfer (Number Six)
James Callis (Gaius Baltar)
Grace Park (Sharon "Boomer" Valerii)
Edward James Olmos (William Adama)

Plot Summary

This episode picks up right where we left off with the mutiny being sparked on the Demetrius by long-time Kara loyalist Helo, so you know it hurts him to do what he's doing here (which only demonstrates how deeply he knows he must do it). Basically the entire crew is sick of Kara's loony bin affect by now, so no one wants to jump to her defense...except the only person onboard who's as nutty as she is lately, Sam Anders, recent closet Cylon and desperately devoted husband.

Really, with all Sam's been going through lately, becoming a widower, discovering he's not even human, finding his wife alive and crazier than before (which is saying a LOT), it's kind of to be expected that he's a total psycho...but I'm going to say even that fails to excuse what he does here. I say this as an Anders fan from the beginning (actually, a Michael Trucco fan from Tru Calling, too): Sam, you son of a bitch. I can't believe you shot Gaeta! Gaeta! The least guilty of anything guy in the entire fleet, the truest, most trustworthy guy left in the human race, okay maybe I'm getting emotional and prone to slight hyperbole, but Gaeta! Sam, you were really looking hard for the best way to piss me off, weren't you?

Anyway, I get the point of having Sam shoot Gaeta in his misguided attempt to stand by his woman; seeing poor wonderful Felix in excruciating pain and terror as fragments of his shattered bones protrude from his horrific wound may be the single thing that could reach Kara through her raving psychosis and make her behave rationally. She instantly goes to Gaeta's side and calls out for a med kit, and you can see the sickening helplessness as she looks at his leg: there is nothing she can do and likely nothing anyone can do for him. Certainly not anyone here on the Demetrius. His only hope for survival is for them to get him back to the fleet and fast. So Kara sees finally that she needs to make the jump to the Cylon Basestar without dragging her poor beleaguered friends along for the ride. Oh, except, that is, for Athena, the one person without whom Helo will be unwilling to return to the fleet in time to save Gaeta. This is not Gaeta's best day ever.

Sam, of course, insists on accompanying Kara on the trip, and then Barolay tags along, expressing her belief in Kara and her desire to be there for the big win. Anyone can see that Barolay is not long for this world. In joining the Kara, Athena, Sam, & Leoben mission, she might as well have put on a red shirt and been given the rank of Ensign.

Meanwhile, back on Galactica and in a much less interesting plotline, Roslin is wearing a bald cap that makes her look Tenctonese and living in sick bay. She wanders over to the bed of another cancer patient who is listening to Radio Free Baltar, and she assumes this is in some way accidental and tries to "help" by turning off his broadcast. The patient flips out on her and screams very reasonably that she has no right and who the hell does she think she is...I can answer that, by the way; she thinks she's a prophet destined to lead the human race to salvation. Of course she doesn't want you listening to her competition.

Ultimately, of course, Roslin will learn important blah-de-blah about the five stages of dying or something from this woman, but I don't care all that much to be honest. Maybe it's my relentless disgust at nearly everything Roslin says and does anymore, or maybe it's that I lost the ability to care about any predicament other than Felix Gaeta's. So let's return to that, shall we?

Gaeta is not looking so good over here on the Demetrius, pale and sweaty and shaking with pain. He notes that they're now refusing him any further doses of morpha lest he OD. Then he instructs Helo not to allow Doc Cottle to amputate his leg, no matter what. Helo looks very uncomfortable throughout this conversation, particularly when Gaeta flat-out says what Helo doesn't want to acknowledge, that the slim chances for fixing his leg are running out every second they remain separated from the fleet, which they are doing at this point solely because Helo won't leave without his wife. Which, hey, even Gaeta doesn't blame him for that, but it's an awkward truth Helo is kind of hating himself over. Or that may be slightly me projecting, because I would be hating myself right about now in Helo's position.

Back to the Raptor of Crazy, with Athena and Barolay along for the ride, they've found the wreckage of the Cylon Civil War, and Kara realizes with rapturous vindication that this perfectly mirrors the crazy painting she's done in her quarters on Demetrius. So we're here now, and she can stop going crazy for a short time anyway.

They enter the BaseStar and it turns out not all the Sixes are down with Leoben's Kara/Hybrid threesome fantasy. There's a moment when the Six in question states her willingness to just kill all the Colonials who have come back with Leoben and take the Raptor. Somehow Athena convinces her that doing so would be futile, because it would take too long for the Cylons to figure out the Raptor's jump drive without help, which would give Cavil's gang more time to find and destroy them. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given that we know the Cylons have a LOT of experience with all the Colonials' tech, and they had captured Raptors on their BaseStar last season that they were able to program to autopilot Baltar over to the disease-stricken ship...but you know what, never mind, plot devices yadda yadda.

So the Raptor gang is safe for now, it seems, and they get down to business. Athena is approached by a room full of Eights who treat her like she's head cheerleader at Pep Squad auditions. They ask for her help overthrowing the Sixes, and Athena's just disgusted, like, Wait a second, you're already committed to one Cylon Civil War, and now you want to turn against your only allies too? She basically says This is why you guys suck, because you change your loyalties so often that you never develop any real sense of belonging with anyone.

There's this totally awesome moment on the BaseStar's bridge when Sam is watching Athena dip her fingers in the datastream and then he gets so tempted to try it out and see what happens. He's also, of course, terrified of what might happen, especially if anyone notices something happening...but it's almost irresistible to him to try this out. Last minute, naturally, he gets pulled away, but that was such a cool moment for his character's confused journey toward Cylonicity.

Now we get to Barolay and a Six it turns out she personally murdered back on New Caprica. This Six attacks Barolay on the Raptor, and it's a brutal scene, with Barolay's final moments playing out as a kind of unreality, like she's lost and confused, just before she hits the ground dead. It's just awful. And it leads to Sam and Athena pulling their guns on the Six. Kara is sort of inexplicably uncomfortable with their reaction to the murder of their crewmate and friend. Maybe this is residual bad feeling over the last time Sam pulled his gun--no wait, that's probably me projecting again. For Kara, it probably has to do with what Leoben was babbling at her about last week, about how she has lost all her anger and vengefulness in the white hot fire of destiny or what-have-you.

This scene is so fantastic and so affecting; hail to the writers of this show. The Six who just murdered Barolay, as it turns out, has been suffering post-traumatic stress disorder since Barolay murdered her so viciously back on New Caprica. We can't help thinking of Gina, who was so destroyed by the Pegasus gang-rapists that she ultimately nuked herself rather than having to suffer through another day of consciousness. The scene actually manages to leave it uncertain whether the Raptor crew will be able to forgive the Six for her actions after hearing her reasons for having killed Barolay. Even Sam looks like he kind of gets it when he hears her confession. But in the end, it doesn't matter, because we have Natalie Six on hand, and she pulls the trigger right in Sam's hand to execute the other Six. Natalie's ruthless efficiency is kind of what got her into this Cylon Civil War mess in the first place, but you can't help admiring it.

Finally, they get to go see the Hybrid. Turns out in order to jerry-rig the BaseStar to use the Raptor's FTL, they'll have to unplug the Hybrid, which could harm or even kill her. So she'll have to talk her crazy in the next few minutes before that happens. Never one to disappoint with the crazy talk, the Hybrid makes as little sense as ever to a very disheartened Starbuck. After all she's been through to get here, after all she's put her friends through, this bitch can't even be a little bit comprehensible? It's kind of harsh. Finally, Kara's ready to give up on this and head back to Demetrius, so she instructs the Cylons to unplug the Hybrid.

The Hybrid, of course, freaks right the hell out. She screams this horrible endless scream, the combination of a biological entity's fear of death with a mechanical construct's infinite lung capacity. And then Natalie's choice to grant heightened consciousness to the Centurions screws over one of the earnest Eights who had come to Athena earlier; the Centurion sees the Eight holding the Hybrid's lifeline, hears the Hybrid's scream, and decides it should kill the Eight to protect the Hybrid, because inevitably, the Centurions will choose the more machine-like Cylons over the humanoid versions any day of the week. Didn't think it through all that far, did you, Natalie?

The Raptor gang guns down the Centurion before it can do any more damage, and then they watch the Eight die miserably, reaching out to Athena, who almost takes her hand...but then doesn't. See, Athena meant every word about choosing a side and never looking back. Sam tries to comfort the Eight, and it's very touching how for that moment he is the opposite of Athena; he is incapable of choosing his side as definitely as she has, because she always knew her true identity, so she had the opportunity to grok it and turn her back on it. He's still coming to terms with his dual nature, trying to decide whether it means he's been on the wrong side or just a side that would airlock him without a second thought if they knew the truth....

Finally, the Hybrid is unplugged, and in what appears to be her dying breath, she cheerfully informs Kara that she is the harbinger of death, which is so not the fortune Kara came hoping to hear from this oracle. She also says, however, that the visions of the Kobol Opera House Roslin and Athena have had are going to start making sense, and that the "missing Three" will show them "the Five" who are from "the Thirteenth." This is awesome for a general direction for the show, and I expect the viewing audience reacted with gleeful anticipation and probably some high fives. Even I, who don't speak Tori Amos, can translate that one. They need to unbox D'Anna, who will be able to identify the Final Five Cylons, who, it turns out, are originally from the Thirteenth tribe, the one that made it to Earth.

On Demetrius, Helo is twitching with desperation as the clock runs down for them to jump back to the fleet, and he knows they now have to go with or without the team that left on the Raptor. He's just about to order the jump when with perfect dramatic timing, the Cylon BaseStar appears overhead, and Athena greets them over the wireless. Which, can I just say, I love that no one even bothers to argue that any Cylon Eight could have made that call and claimed to be Athena. I love that they trust that Helo knows this is his wife.

Next week: Athena flips out over her daughter's apparent Six fixation. Also, please join me in prayers to Asclepius the god of healing, because I really don't want Gaeta to go the way of Boone (on Lost).