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| Sunday, June 8, 2008 09:17 PM |
| On the Viewer - Battlestar Galactica ("Faith") |
 by Fëanor |
Lots of spoilers ahead, as usual.
As this episode opens, when Gaeta moves to jump the Demetrius back to the fleet, Anders shoots him in the leg. That I didn't expect! Starbuck moves quickly to treat the wound, then offers a compromise: she'll go alone to the base ship in the Raptor. Helo agrees, and says they will wait for her to return for 15 hours, at which point they will be have to jump back to the fleet, or risk being considered overdue and lost. (Unfortunately for Gaeta, the longer they wait, the more likely it is that his leg will have to be chopped off when they get back to the fleet.) Surprisingly, a number of other members of the crew volunteer to go with Starbuck and Leoben on the mission. After the jump, Starbuck finally sees firsthand an image from her vision; the comet she thought she saw is actually a fragment of a burning ship. They make it to the baseship and there's a really neat moment where Anders nearly touches a Cylon control panel, which he could theoretically interface with, but is interrupted before he can do it. That would have been interesting! Then things go horribly wrong again when a Six recognizes one of the humans as the woman who killed her on New Caprica, and she takes swift and final revenge. The Six had apparently been dealing with serious psychological issues over the murder. Another Six defuses the situation with more violence. It was the only way to keep the peace, but still a little shocking. Finally Starbuck gets to meet the Hybrid, but can't make anything out of its random babbling and orders the jump, which requires them to unplug the Hybrid. As they start to unplug the Hybrid, it screams, and one of the self-aware Centurions doesn't take this well and starts shooting. The Eight doing the unplugging is mortally wounded before they can take the Centurion down. But somehow these events cause the Hybrid to have a moment of clarity, and she drops a pretty wild prophecy on Starbuck (paraphrased, with help from Battlestar Wiki): "Thus it shall come to pass: the dying leader will discover the truth of the Opera House, the missing Three will be used to find the Five, who come from the home of the Thirteenth. And you are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end." Woah! As the Eight is dying, she reaches out for someone, and Anders obliges, comforting her as she passes away. Then they decipher some of the Hybrid's prophecy: the boxed Threes need to be unboxed, because one of the Threes saw the Final Five, would recognize them, and the Final Five are from the home of the Thirteenth Tribe, meaning they can show the way to Earth. Of course, we know the problem with that interpretation: at least four of the Final Five don't have any conscious knowledge of Earth! Of course the dying leader must be Roslin, and she has indeed been dreaming of an Opera House. But the most ominous bit is definitely the part about Starbuck leading everyone to their doom. That doesn't sound good!
While all that craziness is going on, Roslin is enduring treatment at the ship hospital and meets another dying woman there who finds comfort listening to Baltar's religious radio addresses. After getting off on the wrong foot, Roslin and the woman become friends and begin talking seriously about death and religion and belief. Roslin tries to understand why anyone would swallow anything Baltar has to say, and the woman explains that Baltar's message is a comforting one, and that his talks about a river match up with a powerfully real dream she's had about traveling across a river and seeing all her dead relatives on the shore. Roslin later has a similar dream; she sees her own relatives on the shore, and tells them, "Not yet," but sees the sick woman cross over and embrace her relatives. When Roslin awakes, the woman has died. It's a rather eerie and moving sequence, and sways even Roslin into thinking that maybe Baltar is onto something after all.
This is a powerful episode, that does indeed talk a lot about faith, as the title indicates. Prophecies I always find fascinating, and this particular one and how it is delivered is very cool, and it will be really interesting to see how it goes about being fulfilled. Anders, who I originally thought was a pretty dull character, has become really interesting ever since he found out the truth about himself, and he has a lot of neat little scenes in this episode. Lots of surprising moments of violence and lots of emotional resonance. The sequences with Roslin and the dying woman, while a bit cliche, are moving and realistic. So yeah, plenty more good stuff here. I'm already watching the next episode, and downloading the two that come after that. I might actually be caught up soon! |
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