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Written by: Michael Angeli
Directed by: Wayne Rose

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

It was a hard week for the Cylons on Battlestar Galactica. The known, the closeted, even the only imagined to be skinjobs had quite the nasty time this episode. It was also a much less linear story, so we'll break it down by the Cylons and catalogue their suffering one by one.

Let's start with Tory, who got well and truly shamed by Roslin. Poor girl is into Baltar (who wouldn't be?), and her boss makes her feel like a traitor and a whore, then orders her to weasel info out of Baltar on how he knows what he's disclosed to the fleet on his latest broadcast: the Opera House visions Roslin has been sharing with both Athena and Caprica Six (and Hera, but we'll get to that).

So Tory is once again disgusted by her motives in coming to Baltar's bed, as she had been when Tigh ordered her there, but as she hadn't been in any of the times between. This girl needs to stop letting people boss her around, especially when it comes to her sex life...but anyway, she has chosen a very clever tactic for getting Gaius to talk: she plays at being angry and disappointed in him for lying about Roslin, as if she doesn't believe that the Opera House visions are even a credible rumor. He is affronted by the implication that he just made this stuff up, because that would mean he was spitefully lashing out at Roslin rather than nobly informing the fleet of things they have a right to know. So he tells her flat out how he knows about the Opera House; Caprica Six told Romo Lampkin, who told him. He then elaborates that he has known this since during his trial (which makes 100% sense because Romo totally blew him off immediately after the verdict was read--there's no way they're hanging out) and could have used it against her at any time but never did until her actions demanded that someone expose her flagrant hypocrisy, which WOO-HOO! Yay Gaius! I knew I loved you for a reason.

Tory does too, and you can again see her misery as she realizes Gaius is absolutely telling the truth and is a stand-up, awesome guy, who may not forgive her entirely for what she is about to do, which is rat him (and Romo) out to Roslin. But like Tyrol, like Tigh, like Anders, Tory is committed to walking the path she was walking before she knew what she was. She cannot stray from that, and so here she goes, betraying her heart, betraying her new lover, in service of her boss who has been awful to her. Poor Tory.

Now, on our main stage, please turn your attention to the BaseStar, on which Athena, Starbuck, Anders, and a motley gang of 2's, 6's, and 8's have just leapt in right on top of the fleet.

They were meant to make the jump in tandem with Demetrius to prevent just the sort of misunderstanding that’s about to happen, as Galactica scrambles Vipers to attack. The fleet is busy jumping away, and Galactica’s gun batteries are turned toward the BaseStar, and Athena and Starbuck are finding that their communications systems are fried, so they can’t even sing out.

Everything is looking pretty grim for our friends aboard the BaseStar when Tigh, on Galactica’s CIC, realizes there’s something kind of strange about the Cylons showing up and not attacking at all, so he calls a weapons hold. There’s this look on his face of complete uncertainty, and I’m going to tell you this episode is a showcase for Michael Hogan. With one eye, he conveys so much complexity in every scene. Just seriously go back through and watch his face; he’s amazing. In every moment, he’s fumble-footed and terrified of himself, acting purely out of self-preservation at times, despite knowing that what he is doing is SO wrong and, perhaps more importantly, will be nearly impossible to explain when he’s called on it later. What a performance. It’s always impressive when an actor manages to do so much under a thick layer of prosthetics, but even they have both eyes to work with.

But I digress. Tigh takes a squadron of Marines aboard the BaseStar, and he opens up the next storyline of Cylon suffering for us when he demands to know which of the Cylons shot Gaeta. There’s this sick look on Sam’s face.

Which brings us to Sam Anders and the terrible, terrible thing he did last week and will now rightly suffer for. I said last week that I love Sam, and I do, but I love Gaeta most of all, and you shot Gaeta, you bastard! So Sam spends this episode eating himself alive with guilt and horror over what he has done, as Gaeta’s leg is sawed off.

But here’s something interesting about Sam’s agonizing; it’s riddled with this desperate hope that is so beautiful to see. In a discussion with the Four about the mystery of the Fifth, he segues to Gaeta’s predicament in what might at first seem like a non sequitur.

“He sings,” says Sam, face all full of torment. “Gaeta, when he feels the tingle of the phantom leg, to get through the pain. He sings.” And he looks into his comrades’ eyes with such significance, and you realize what he means, what he hopes this fact means about Gaeta, and it’s heartbreaking. He wants Gaeta to be their Fifth, because that would bind them together as brothers, and only that could make it possible for Gaeta to forgive him, because then Gaeta would understand what Sam has been going through and how he could have done to Gaeta what he did. For what it’s worth, Sam, I hope Gaeta’s the Fifth too. Of course, anything that gives Gaeta more storylines, more screen time, I’m down with it. And given the recent events and the way things are charging along, that could as easily mean his seeking bloodthirsty vengeance against you for his leg, and no offense, but I’ll take that too. Sorry, but I’ve made my choice. Gaeta is the coolest.

Alessandro Juliani also has quite the beautiful singing voice. Given the circumstances, and the pure agony of the performance, it is one of the most tragically beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. I just developed an even bigger crush on Gaeta. Wow.

Anyway, the main stage once more. The Cylons who have arrived on the BaseStar are offering quite the deal, one which puts their fate in the Colonials’ hands entirely. That’s a lot of trust they’re apparently willing to grant…but more on that later.

The deal is as follows:

The 268’s know they’re screwed no matter what at this point, because they’ve been exiled, cut off from Resurrection permanently. They can’t go back, and they can’t beat the 145’s (plus Boomer). Their only hope would be to run, but where? And to what end? They’d go cabin fever in a big way, and they’d be on their own for resources, etc., and they have no innate purpose on their own; they’ve lost their way. So they’re ready to change their understanding of their lives, their place in the universe.

Natalie explains that they’ve come to realize that immortality is a barrier to true enlightenment. The ability to resurrect cheapens life and prevents them from committing to anything. Only since losing access to Resurrection have any of them begun to see things more clearly, so they’re prepared to give it up forever to walk this new path. But first, they need to unbox the 3’s, the D’Anna line, because she saw the Final Five, who the 268’s now believe are their ultimate goal.

So they offer to show the Colonials where the Resurrection hub is, so it can be obliterated once and for all. This will prevent the Cylons from downloading ever again (although they built it once; presumably they could do so a second time). All the 268’s want in return is assistance liberating the 3’s…oh, and for the Final Five to be handed over once they’ve been identified, because they belong with their own people.

This is where Tigh wants off the merry-go-round. He and Tory are both in on this little tete-a-tete, and they are both silently freaking out, especially Tigh. Tory’s nervous about being called out as a Cylon, sure, because her boss (who doesn’t like her much lately) is pretty airlock-happy. But Tigh is feeling the floor fall out from under him. Tigh has lost enough, thank you very much, and his love for Bill Adama, his oldest friend, is all he has left in this life. So the rest of his actions in this episode are a little unexpected, because they’re all about his need to prevent this alliance from happening.

Roslin gives it the go-ahead, although she and Bill agree that they should totally double-cross the Cylons and refuse to hand over the Final Five until the fleet has gotten what it needs from them: the way to Earth. So it’s truthfully kind of benevolent on Roslin’s part, and I’m actually proud of her; for once, she’s not just planning to kill them. I guess mortality is a concept that’s hitting home with her in a new way. Tigh and Helo are the other two voices in on this discussion, though, and Tigh’s trying to talk them out of doing anything besides killing the Cylons and blowing the Resurrection hub. Helo, of course, is looking kind of disapprovingly at the lot of them, but since they’re not all talking like Tigh, he’ll follow their orders on this one. He only breaks rank when genocide is on the table. Good man.

Meanwhile, back on the BaseStar, we get a pair of very interesting scenes. Natalie flips out at first and convinces the others that they can’t trust the humans, and they plan to use their Centurions to take over until the mission is safely accomplished, holding the humans hostage until the Final Five are delivered to them.

Then, a little while later, after Natalie has gone before the Quorum of Twelve to present her case, we get the bookend scene, in which she flips out in the opposite way and does something extraordinary.

We haven’t earned the humans’ trust, is basically what she tells the 2 and the 8 she had earlier convinced that the humans couldn’t be trusted. They’re still feeling her on the earlier argument, but she’s even more passionate this time. She wins them over to her new understanding of the situation, which is that in order to be worthy of this alliance, they have to plan to act in good faith, not plan as if they should expect to be double-crossed. They have to be worthy of survival, Adama might say. They have to tell Starbuck not to shoot Cain in the head after all. They have to earn it.

Problem, says Leoben; we’ve already set the expectation with the Centurions that they should move against the humans. And since the Centurions no longer follow orders as perfectly as they used to (thanks again for that nifty idea, Natalie!), it’s going to be complicated to change that plan. Natalie decides that while the others work on that, she’ll head back to Galactica to stall the mission with some excuse or another.

Except we’ll never find out what that excuse might have been, because here we are with Athena, another Cylon in distress this week. Her Opera House nightmares are really getting to her lately, which is understandable; they involve running around with the person who originally stole her baby, only to see the Six who was essentially the next one to steal her baby pick Hera up in her arms. That would be upsetting.

So she comes home to find Hera (who grew like a weed while Athena and Helo were away on Demetrius) coloring endless pages of blonde-haired Sixes. While Athena is distracted by her overloading emotional circuitry as she freaks out over this, Hera slips out of the room and goes a-walking through Galactica’s corridors. Athena chases after her, and after long hallways of nothing, she walks right into a flashback from her nightmares.

Hera has come face-to-face with Natalie, who is being led by Tigh and a Marine squadron to meet with Admiral Adama. It is important to remember that this is Natalie on her way to do the first noble thing she has ever done, to prevent the Cylons from rising up against the humans, to grant the humans her trust for real this time. She just happens to have run afoul of Athena and her bad dreams.

Athena pulls her sidearm on Natalie and instructs Tyrol to remove Hera from the scene. The many Marines on hand automatically point their weapons on Athena, who is, after all, threatening an unarmed ally in the Galactica corridor. But here’s the thing: Tigh is in charge here, and he will do anything to stop this alliance. He orders the Marines to stand down, and he just watches as Athena executes Natalie. I couldn’t help hating Athena just a bit as the best Cylon of this new bunch hit the floor, taking with her the best hope for peace and harmony between human and Cylon.

Finally, back to Roslin and Baltar’s conflict over his public disclosure of her visions. Starbuck came to Roslin and repeated the words of the Hybrid, “Thus shall it come to pass, the dying leader shall learn the truth of the Opera House.” This lit a fire under Roslin, and she demanded Baltar’s company for the journey to the BaseStar, because he is in her visions. (I can’t wait to see him freak right out when he realizes that her visions match the ones he had when he was on Kobol.)

When their party reaches the BaseStar, they plug the Hybrid back in so she can answer Roslin’s questions (which will be high comedy, I swear, watching Roslin try to get straight answers out of the Hybrid), and the Hybrid instantly jumps the ship upon regaining consciousness. Oops. The one potential benefit here is that they might not find out about Natalie’s death until they’ve done whatever thing they were going to do that would prevent the Centurions from wreaking bloody vengeance.

In two weeks: Doc Cottle comes to Admiral Adama with some shocking revelations from his latest exam of Caprica Six, and that leads to Adama confronting Tigh about his “weakness”…is she pregnant? That would mean the Final Five are not incapable of breeding with other Cylons…which really works well with my theories on why that would be the case….

Also in two weeks: Romo!