Writer: Ryan Mottesheard
Director: Gwyneth Horder-Payton
Grade: B
I’m pretty conflicted over how I feel about this episode. The first time through, it felt like a jumbled mess, and I still think it was a rather artless info dump in spite of the rampant literary references. After thinking about it some more, I realized that the parts with Ellen and Cavil were pretty clear, but the parts with Sam were jumbled, which actually makes sense if we were supposed to experience it from the PoV of Galen, Tory, Saul, and Kara. I still didn’t like it, though. That’s not how I wanted to feel when the pieces started to come together. I wanted to feel in control, not painfully excited and confused. So yes, I’m going to be a brat and say that it was effective, but I still didn’t like it. I think I might have enjoyed this info dump more if the Ellen part had been in one episode and the Sam part in another. Less information overload that way, but I know they didn’t have the luxury of that much time. Ron Moore actually said that the Ellen/Cavil scenes here were originally intended for episode 4x11, and I am glad that he changed his mind about that, at least. I think I would have been much less patient and much less invested in the mutiny storyline if I’d been given all this new Cylon-related information just prior to it.
In any case, while I’m glad to have all of this new information, I wasn’t pleased with how it all went down. Yes, as Ron Moore pointed out in the podcast, having Sam babbling all this information because he had a bullet in his brain was a convenient way for them to be able to stop and start the flow of information when they needed to, but it’s still a very obvious dues ex machina. In addition, the other two plotlines in this episode—Roslin handing the reins over to Lee, and Adama and Tyrol struggling with how to save the Galactica—didn’t really fit with the rest of the material and felt rather shoe-horned in.
And as I mentioned before, the copious literary references did nothing to appease my gut feeling that this episode is an artless mess. Tossing in Paradise Lost, Thomas Wolfe, Sartre, Oedipus Rex, and The Holy Goddamn Bible doesn’t magically make the episode smart and artsy. I’m also not going to accept some bullshit “meta” explanation for why Sam Anders can quote passages from Earth’s great literary works (or why the Earthlons know a Bob Dylan song). If Sam can spout Earth lit, then that means that the entire BSG timeline takes place in the future of our own timeline, period. It also means that the people of ancient Kobol, and thus the residents of the fleet, are descended from Earthlings.
Now on to the stuff that actually happened in this episode! I’m going to do my best to talk about the episode itself and what happened first, and save any speculation and mythology discussion for the end.
First of all, Kate Vernon was fantastic almost beyond words here. I was a little disgusted at the idea of Ellen being some kind of brilliant mastermind when she was first revealed as the Fifth, but she’s completely turned me around on that opinion. I got chills watching Ellen wake up in that tub of goo, terrified almost beyond conscious thought. The way her reaction progressed from bleating cries of terror to ragged screams of horror and disappointment and rage brought tears to my eyes. And then to actually see her regain her memory, her composure, and her complete identity… wow. Vernon was hitting it out of the park from the very first scene of the episode.
I’m guessing the helpful Centurion in that scene was probably instructed to guard her by Cavil, which Ellen obviously realized, thus her, “You can do that much.”
I’m essentially ignoring the Oedipal parallels between Ellen and Cavil because it just felt like Moore was trying to get away with something along the lines of, “Tee hee hee, aren’t we shocking and naughty” by using a story frame from a Greek classic. The lit nerd-ery of it doesn’t make it classy.
Still, in terms of the dialogue, I think Vernon and Stockwell both handled what they were given to near-perfection. It’s true that their scenes felt a bit lofty and Shakespearean, but then I’ve always felt that most of the big speeches that Saul Tigh makes come off the exact same way (New Caprica resistance scenes, anyone?). If the dialogue had been poorly-acted, it would’ve been painful to watch, but I felt like they both nailed it. Something about the way Stockwell played Cavil made him seem so tiny and petulant, and yet so incredibly dangerous for all that.
Cavil’s argument that “My forebears on the Centurion side of the family were the slaves of humanity, and I want justice for that” would have been laughable if he hadn’t actually managed to pull it off. He was so enraged at the enslavement of the Centurions that he… did the same thing himself? What a hypocrite. And his little speech about digging around in Ellen’s brain to find the resurrection information is a big red flashing indicator of how much he’s probably tampered with the programming of the other six Colonial Cylons. It looked like Boomer realized it, too. If he was responsible for what happened to the Five, it stands to reason that he was responsible for Boomer being sent out as a sleeper agent, as well.
Despite the fact that Ander’s medical drama was basically a story mechanism to allow for the info dump, Trucco and Sackhoff sold the material pretty well. Trucco’s “word salad” scene was particularly well-done—he captured Sam’s frustration well. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, and I also wanted to give the poor guy a hug. Sackhoff did her usual fantastic work, bringing back the concerned Kara from “Lay Down Your Burdens.” Katee amazes me, she really does. Almost everything Kara said in this episode was about either Sam’s medical condition or her desire to figure out if she had some kind of connection to the Cylons. And yet, even considering she spent some scenes with a surgical mask covering everything but her eyes, it was also obvious that she felt guilt and regret over her past treatment of Sam, and that faced with losing him, she remembered how much she loves him. None of this was really verbalized, but it was there in her face, her tone, her body language.
I must admit that for some strange reason, I’m getting a little TV crush on Galen Tyrol. It’s very strange that it would pop up now, in the last half of the final season, but there it is. It probably has something to do with the way his character has progressed of late. In the past, even before we knew he was a Cylon, he always seemed cranky and stressed-out. Discovering that he’s a Cylon didn’t really seem to help with that, either, but then a few other things happened. He was publicly exposed as a Cylon. The fleet found Earth. And he’s been able to spend some time with other Cylons. He’s mellowed quite a bit of late, to the point where he now seems calm and content in the face of so much horror and despair. I suppose he’s found himself, as they say. He seems comfortable in his own skin for the first time, and it’s made him oddly attractive in a way that he never was before.
And Galen’s boyish sniggering after Sam revealed that he and Tory were once in love makes me smile every single time, and I’ve seen the episode three times now. That information certainly puts an even weirder twist on “The Ties that Bind.” For one thing, Tory murdered Cally Tyrol, but don’t forget that she also started to put the moves on Tyrol in the bar, which Cally witnessed. She was also in the room at the end of this episode, when Galen received the call from Adama—you can see her blurry shoulder and arm right in front of the camera (the shirt matches what she was last seen wearing outside the OR). Thankfully, they were both fully-clothed… I had pretty much the same reaction to the thought of a Galen/Tory romance as Starbuck and Tyrol himself, so I desperately hope they don’t try to force these two together now, in the last few episodes. I quite adore Galen Tyrol these days, and he deserves better than to be paired with one of the least likable characters in the series, who has, by the way, been largely ignored in the post-hiatus episodes. It’s fine if they want talk about their crazy past, but if these two start sleeping together out of boredom and loneliness, I’m going to be irritated. The fact that Tory murdered his wife just makes that possibility gross, not dramatically interesting.
The storyline with Adama and Tyrol was interesting to me more because of what it means for Galactica, and the fleet in general, than because of Adama’s characterization. Having just come out of a mutiny based on a) allowing Cylons to board every ship in the fleet, and b) installing Cylon tech on said ships, Adama’s desire to use human workers and to refuse Cylon technology is unsurprising. It’s also not surprising that after getting piss drunk and finally noticing a crack in the wall of his quarters that he’s probably seen many times but never really paid attention to, he would change his mind about using the Cylon technology to repair his baby. It’s pretty cut and dry (except for the fact that he didn't run the decision by one single other person).
The more interesting aspect, for me, is that the only home of the characters I love is literally falling apart, and how can that be anything but heartbreaking? And of course, there’s the parallel between Roslin getting a Cybrid blood transfusion to cure her cancer, and Galactica being strengthened by some kind of Cylon biological resin. If this comes to pass, the Galactica will become a symbol of racial union, which seems to be the final outcome the series is heading toward.
The scene between Roslin and Lee was a good one, aside from feeling a bit out of place in this episode. I was glad to see Laura Roslin passing the reins to Lee, although I’m not sure what’s up with her keeping the official title of President. Does she want to hang onto it out of pride and sentimentality in the face of death? Does she feel like she has to keep the title for some reason? Neither of those explanations really works for me—the first one is weak and a little selfish, and the second one doesn’t completely make sense. As the last living member of the Quorum, and with Zarek dead, it seems like Lee would automatically be VP. He’s served as interim President before, and Adama elitism issues aside, he doesn’t seem to be a particularly hated figure among the fleet. If Roslin declares herself unfit—which she seems to think she is—that would make Lee the President, right? So…. why can’t she do that? Still, as I said, it was a great scene between them. Lee’s “I’ll try to be smarter. And wronger.” was quite cute. Roslin’s cough, and Lee’s look of sadness and concern, really hammers home the nature of their relationship; they love one another dearly, even if they never say it out loud.
New Information
-The Colonial Holocaust seems to have been masterminded and engineered almost entirely by John Cavil.
-John Cavil was named after, and apparently based on, Ellen’s father.
-According to Sam, the Earthlons came to the Twelve Colonies because they knew the descendents of Kobol would try to create artificial life again, and they wanted to warn them to “treat them well and keep them close.”
-The form of “organic memory transfer” used by the Earthlons came with them from Kobol, was forgotten when they started to sexually reproduce on Earth, and was then rediscovered and put into use by the Final Five.
-According to Ellen, the Temple of the Five was originally called The Temple of Hopes, and was “built by the 13th Tribe 3,000 years ago when they left Kobol. They stopped and prayed for guidance during their exodus, and then God showed them the way to Earth." Ellen insists that the Five had nothing to do with the supernova in “Eye of Jupiter.”
-The “One True God” concept came from the Colonial Centurions.
-Sam says that the Five on Earth were giving warnings about the coming destruction. “Back on Earth, the warning signs that we got, they looked different to each one of us. I saw a woman. Tory, you saw a man. Funny, no one else could see them. Galen, you thought you had a chip in your head.”
-The mystery of the absence of a number seven Cylon was finally revealed—his name was Daniel, he was a sensitive artist type, and Cavil destroyed him in a jealous fit.
-Something big is coming. Anders said, “Saul, stay with the fleet! It’s all starting happen right now—it’s the miracle, right here. It’s a gift from the angels. Stay with the fleet!”
Speculation and Show Mythology Musings
-Given that Starbuck has articstic inclinations herself, and her father was a composer, it seems highly possible that Daniel, the missing Seven, was her father. It wouldn’t explain everything about her story, but it would help. Furthermore, her mother’s physical and emotional abuse, combined with her insistence that Starbuck has a super-special destiny, somehow make perfect sense if she knew or suspected that Starbuck was a Cybrid. If this is nothing but a red herring, I’m going to be supremely pissed off. Trying to fuck with the audience by introducing a completely unnecessary red herring this close to the end of the series would just be fucking tacky. I’m also going the speculate that Daniel was based on, or at least named after, Daniel Graystone from the new Caprica series.
-In a deleted scene from “Kobol’s Last Gleaming,” Elosha apparently mentioned a “jealous god” on Kobol who wanted to be elevated above the other gods. Given that Ellen modeled Cavil specifically on her father, and the ancestors of the Earthlons were from Kobol, it definitely seems like there could be a connection there. I don’t necessarily think that Ellen’s father is the same being as this “jealous god,” but her father could have been one of his descendents.
-It’s been clear from the beginning of the series that there’s some kind of connection between Colonial society and technology and our current Earth. It seems even clearer now that the events depicted on BSG are our own society’s future. The Greek gods, the similar political and military structures, the controversy of monotheism, the Bob Dylan song, the constellations in the Tomb of Athena, Sam and various other characters making references to Earth literature, and so on—all of these things indicate that Earth culture was passed on to these people. It’s also possible that all the information was passed along by the Head Characters, who are possibly angels, but I just can’t accept that human life evolved exactly the same way on two completely different planets. As far as I can figure out, there was an exodus from Earth to Kobol, then there was another exodus of synthetic humans from Kobol back to Earth, and then an exodus of more “normal” humans from Kobol to the Twelve Colonies.
-What the frak was up with Pythia? The most elegant answer is that she was the Kobolian version of a Hybrid. All of the prophecies on this show have come from either a Hybrid or from the Scrolls of Pythia, so that’s a pretty direct connection. Not only that, but Pythia knew of Earth, and even some of the “road signs” along the way, despite never having been there. Given the kind of information that Hybrids seem to have access to, it makes sense that Pythia was a Hybrid of some kind. Of course, it’s also possible that she got some of her information from the gods and/or the Head Characters, or that she was just parroting some old garbled legends about Earth. Still, I’m pretty sure that Pythia referred to the Temple of the Five in her prophecies, so I’m discounting the latter possibility. She couldn’t possibly know that the 13th Tribe built a temple on their way to Earth or that 5 would be a significant number in a few thousand years, unless she was a Hybrid or was given the information from the “gods.”
-I’m very curious what the 13th Tribe found when they got to Earth. I’ve posited that there was an exodus from Earth, but what caused it? Did everyone leave, or did some stay behind? If so, did the Cylons of the 13th Tribe commit mass genocide on them all when they got to Earth? If the planet was empty, what kind of condition was it in? Was the exodus caused by global warming? Perhaps the planet was quickly becoming uninhabitable, but it was a cycle that could have righted itself a few thousand years later, leaving the planet empty and livable for the 13th Tribe. Or was the exodus from Earth caused by the first iteration of this destructive AI/reincarnation cycle we’ve been following on the show? When the Cylons arrived, was it a wreck of a planet much like what the fleet found, and they were able to withstand the radiation and repair the damage? Or had the planet healed itself over time to become capable of supporting intelligent life once again? You get the idea…
-Something is fishy about the history known by the Twelve Colonies. For one thing, the ancient texts seem to indicate that something pretty dark and ugly happened on Kobol, yet they’re not very clear on what that was. We also know that the people of Kobol were pretty technologically advanced, given the “organic memory transfer” technology. That level of advancement seems out-of-sync with the superstitious and garbled ancient texts. I’m getting the impression that upon settling on the Twelve Colonies, the Kobolians destroyed their own tech and embarked on an elaborate scheme to pull the wool over the eyes of future generations, perhaps in order to try to break a destructive cycle. Although that still doesn’t explain what’s up with the Scrolls of Pyhtia—I’d think that if they were trying to cover their tracks, it would behoove them to not leave information about the 13th Tribe and their destination lying around.
-How exactly did Tory suffer at Cavil’s hands? Ellen doesn’t even mention Tory when she’s listing the ways in which Cavil tormented the Five, nor has the overall story of the Final Five paid much attention to her. I’m tempted to believe that perhaps Cavil and the Tory who arrived at the Colonies were secretly in cahoots…
-Is it possible that the Colonial Centurion’s belief in one God came from the ramblings of the First Hybrid that we saw in Razor? I’ve only seen the movie once, so I’m not sure if he talked about God, but it seems possible. Although from what I’ve read, the emergence of monotheism is going to be a factor in Caprica, so maybe that’s not where the idea came from…
-If the concept of a single God came from the Colonial Centurions, why would Ellen say that God showed the 13th Tribe the way to Earth? Was this the Cylon version of a retcon?
-Where did Sam go? He can’t be gone for good. Is he having some kind of near death experience in the Opera House? Did he somehow end up in Caprica’s belly, hence the baby beginning to kick? (Please no on that one….) Is what happened to him programming or is it a human-like physiological reaction?
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