Battlestar Galactica - Weekly Recap - "He That Believeth in Me"

The first ten minutes of the episode were just jaw-dropping. I knew the scene with Tigh was coming because as always Sci-fi spoils too much with its previews, but it was still jarring. Tigh was mortified. He doesn't want to be another Boomer, and I liked the fact that he left his gun with the others. It's as if he's hoping they'll stop him somehow. Their free will might prevent them doing anything to the people they love.

But then you have Anders and the Raider. I think I held my breath with that scene. That scene was awesome! Anders is panicking. He can't shoot the raider because he forgot to remove the safeties, or did he? Could there still be some programing there that might come back to haunt them later?

Great review!

I thought the episode was great and didn't let me down at all (other than a 'to be continued' to get the final season going). The excitment and energy starting up right where we left off was awesome, it made me feel like it was just last week when I watched the Season 3 finale.

One major comment:

I don't think Kara is the final cylon. In the 'Last Supper' picture that was released it said the final cylon is NOT in the picture. Kara is there, with Anders looking rather lovey dovey (maybe she accepts he is a cylon in the end). However, I do believe Kara is some kind of prophet and for whatever reason didn't die when her viper blew up. While she cannot remember how to get to and from Earth, the fact that she can feel how they are going in the wrong direction (not to mention the drawing of the Eye of Jupiter for years and years), makes me believe she has some internal abilities she has never been aware of. She has been told she has a destiny and that she will be the end of the human race. But is the end of the human race a bad thing? Maybe the end of the human race is one where humans and cylons co-exist together? It would no longer be considered human race, but human and cylons (a stretch I know). Also when D'Anna saw the final cylon, her reaction was very over the top, which makes me believe the final cylon is also NOT Kara. I feel like the final cylon will be someone we never expected, because it would be a let down if it were Apollo, Adama, or the president... all of whom everyone is guessing (and yes at this point it is too obvious that Kara would be a cylon, so that means she is not).

I had read somewhere (MSNBC? Entertainment Weekly?) that it would be somewhere in the middle of the season when the final cylon would be revealed...so maybe there is a character we have yet to meet that is the final cylon.

Either way... I can't wait!

I'm thinking the Final 5 represent a different faction, maybe even the original faction, of skinjobs among the Cylons and outrank the other models. I think they are responsible for instituting the programming that Six mentioned. They could even represent a group of Cylons who wanted to live their lives as fully human and might even be revered at some level by the rest of the Cylon race.

Good writeup. Awesome episode.

A couple typos in your article: "Tigh, in an eerie reverie, pulls out his pistol and shoots Adam in the head", and "Naturally, most of the clue is jumping to the too-obvious conclusion: that she's a cylon."

Anyway some random responses:

He tells her he'd love her even if she was a cylon; she tells him she doesn't feel the same way. Whatever other implications exist, Kara Thrace and Samuel Anders are done.

Kara will eventually find out he's a Cylon, but do you really think she'll shoot him in the head? I think this is just Starbuck's usual bluster. That being said, I do think Lee and Kara will end up together eventually, they've built it up too much.

Why did the Cylons launch such a massive assault on the fleet?

Because it made an exciting cliffhanger? ;) BSG is an awesome show, one of my most favourite ever, but to a certain extent they are making things up as they go, and not everything has some deeper meaning.

Case in point: The 4 new cylons were NOT planned at the start of the show, they were chosen during season 3 (this was confirmed in one of the producer's blogs or podcasts), so questions like "Why did Tigh do XXXX in season 2 if he was really a Cylon?", for example, are meaningless.

If you want a story where everything is consistent, meaningful, and planned in advance from the start, watch Babylon 5 (which btw, IS my favourite show ever).

Further, why did they retreat?

Because otherwise they would've destroyed the fleet and the show would be over. ;) The Raider spotting Anders is just the pretext for the writers to pull themselves out of the hole they deliberately dug for the cliffhanger.

(I'm just saying, I don't expect them to address this any more specifically in the future.)

Roslin interviews the Six, asking her about the final five. The six says that she's programmed never to even think about them. My question: who exactly wrote that programming?

Six talking about how she is programmed to think, and the four new cylons worrying about who they are and whether or not they're going to betray their friends, has got me thinking they're going to start delving into issues of identity and free will.

Here's my latest pet theory... what makes the final five "fundamentally different" is that they have free will. Perhaps, this caused problems in the past (we've seen through Caprica Six, Boomer and also D'Anna, how disruptive dissent can be in Cylon society). Perhaps as a result, the other seven models were then created (by the final five themselves?) without absolute free will, to form a more cohesive and/or stable society or something.

As for why the final five all seem to be present in the tiny surviving fleet of humanity (or rather, how the writers are going to attempt to explain it retrospectively), I have no idea. Perhaps they are trying to study how human society copes with issues arising from free will. The Cylons have also shown great interest in trying to understand love.

how did Kara Thrace get back? Either A) She is a Cylon or B) There is another faction, a third party that has yet to reveal itself, with the power to transport Kara back and forth between star systems.

Or C), she's not a Cylon, but the Cylons still saw fit to transport her to Earth and back for some reason.

The fact her ship is brand new is a real curveball. Was it rebuilt, and if so why? Or is it, literally, her ship "brand new" somehow? (ie, involving time travel, an alternate reality or dimension, or something)

I think Alpha Centauri fits the star description, and the moon looks yellow from our atmosphere.

I could be wrong though.

# Why did the Cylons launch such a massive assault on the fleet? I thought that they were done with attempting genocide? Further, why did they retreat? Did they just realize that the final five were active? Did Anders somehow give that Raider a withdrawal order?

My guess is that Cavil is in charge and with D'eanna's model boxed that the opinion has swayed back to wiping them out.

# Roslin interviews the Six, asking her about the final five. The six says that she's programmed never to even think about them. My question: who exactly wrote that programming?

Unknown, but the obvious answer would suggest the final five.

# The final four seem to be doing their best to remain loyal to Galactica and crew. Are they going to hold up? Is it possible for them to be loyal to both the cylons and the humans? Are the goals so different?

Can't answer at this time. At this point we don't know enough to know how they came to be among the humans. I think it is safe to say they are not like Boomer or the other Cylons who were sent as infiltrators. As far as we know there are no other copies of these models.

# Alright, here it is: how did Kara Thrace get back? Either A) She is a Cylon or B) There is another faction, a third party that has yet to reveal itself, with the power to transport Kara back and forth between star systems. Could this faction be "God" / "The Lords of Kobol?" How does this tie into the whole "Al of this has happened before" theme?

Again unknown at this time. I suspect it has something to do with the Beings of Light from the original series.

# More to the point, did Kara really go to earth? The description of Saturn seems to ring true, but earth doesn't have a yellow moon - earth has a gray moon. Further, is there a "flashing triple star" near our solar system?

Hmm.....well under the right atmospheric conditions the moon appears yellowish. Not sure about from space if it is possible however of course the moon is a giant sunlight reflector so couldn't it appear yellow?

He tells her he'd love her even if she was a cylon; she tells him she doesn't feel the same way.

There's another interpretation of Anders, who if I remember correctly was just as much a Cylon hater that Kara is. Now that Anders finds out he is a Cylon, it forces him drop his previous attitude. The only alternative is suicide, right? Second, Anders may actually be, consciously or subconsciously, hoping that Kara is a Cylon. Comfort in company, no? In an earlier scene he tried to find that comfort with Tory, but it obviously was limited to purely physical intimacy, no more.

Oh, and Kara isn't as absolutely anti-Cylon as she likes to think she is. She really loved what she believed to be her cybrid child.

The final four seem to be doing their best to remain loyal to Galactica and crew. Are they going to hold up? Is it possible for them to be loyal to both the cylons and the humans? Are the goals so different?

Tory is the most likely to "fail". I don't remember her ever expressing any anger or hate about Cylons. She ultra political in the negative sense, and as such seems more interested in survival and position. But given how this series likes to surprise us, she'd be the least likely.

And as the relationship between humans and Cylons is becoming less us vs them, and more about accepting co-existance, the role these four play isn't necessarily doomed to hiding their true identity and resisting their Cylon nature or programming. It may be that they end up being bridges of one form or another.

I'm thinking Felix is the fifth cylon. He was secretly passing information to the resistance on New Caprica...a resistance led by cylons. The President obviously wasn't impressed by the answer he gave for visiting Baltar just as he was hanging himself...he couldn't sleep? Nah, he knew about the suicide attempt, it's just too convenient. He blatantly lied on the stand during the trial, and looked quite pleased with himself...what better way to redeem himself as someone who the crew originally thought was a collaborator during the occupation of New Caprica, and throw all suspicion off himself? Being the tactical officer gives him unfettered access to almost everything. He served with Tigh before Galactica. He was an aspiring geneticist in college. Wasn't he also a key component in the Admiral's decision to take the cylon detection device offline?

I think Starbuck is God. I used to say this like, "Lemme is God", but now it looks like she actually is. How can she feel the fleet going in the wrong direction when they jump? One point you forgot to mention is that her Viper camera took pictures of Earth, and that the star patterns are what they would expect. How she got there, and came back with a brand new ship...a miracle. God does those kind of things, right?

Baltar is being turned into a god, or more likely a false prophet. He's going to get drunk on power again, you can see it in his eyes. I think this will lead to an eventual uprising, and I think he's going to "out" four of the final five in doing so.

I think Roslin won't be alive to see Earth not because of her cancer, but because she figures out Tory is a cylon. How this ends in her death could go several ways, but the drug treatment likely will play as a significant factor.

However, there is also Hera, supposedly the key to the future. Still scratching my head on this one, except that perhaps it means an exclusively hybrid race, under one god.

Sorry, dp

I knew I shouldn't have watched this. I should've waited until it ended and I could watch the whole season in a day. The suspense!

And, now I have to go back and watch season 3 just to make sure I'm keeping up. Wasn't there a human/Cylon baby somewhere in there?

It seems to me that this is going to end Matrix: Revolutions-like (if you haven't seen it, stop reading). Neo learns that the only way to defeat Smith (and settle the man-machine conflict) is to join with him.

Or maybe not, hopefully not, this show is too good for me to figure it all out at this point.

Oh my, I can't wait to see it on DVD. The show is only in US, my only chance is to wish it published ASAP (sedidence in Taiwan, I got all disks from season1 to season3 already)
I remembered in a past episode Baltar found that composition of Cylon's blood is different from human, if Admiral suspected Kara, why doesn't he ask to test her blood?
By the way, is there anything related to Hera, the hybrid on epidsode1 of season4? Is she a Cylon? or half-half? if she is not a human, then she is a Cylon? wait wait, what is Cylon?

Did anyone happen to catch the sneak preview at the end of the episode? One thing really leaped out at me that may explain the massive attack at the beginning of episode 4.1. Did anyone catch it and is it safe for me to talk about it?

This is kind of random... I know they boxed D'Anna's model... but I had read that she would be back this season.

Think she will be back in a flashback or will they unbox her? If that's possible.

Mike Dojc,
Personally, I didn't think season 3 was as strong a season as 1 & 2. However, I read somewhere that the writers of BSG (I'll see if I can find the quote again. I believe it was on battlestargalactica.com) had to add a little fluff to season 3 so they wouldn't give everything away for season 4. Now, I just need to try to remember where I read that quote.

So does anyone have a good idea why there'd all of the sudden be a spanking new Viper? You'd figure as calculating as the Cylons would be, they would at least make a convincing story with a believable damaged Viper. That fact alone makes me believe that Kara is human.

It just doesn't make any sense that they would grossly underestimate the Viper being a detail that'll get them caught. However, if they build a Viper that is clean, have a Kara that plays possum, then their other operatives could be able to move more comfortably because they are not under suspicion.

One other thing I've thought of, we know that Tigh was tortured, what about Anders and the rest? Did they have any Cylon dealings-with where they might have been brainwashed to believe they are the final four while the real final four can move silently? Or maybe it's just Tigh that was brainwashed.

IT BOGGLES THE MIND!

One thing that has bothered me about the four characters that were outed as Cylons: Three of the four are young enough to have been created and infiltrated into human society post-original Cylon war...Except Col. Tigh. He was in the military during the original Cylon war, presumably before they developed their human form. So, unless he was killed/replaced, I don't see how they can explain him being a Cylon.

...Then they would actually be a whole different group, not the Cylons created by man to serve man.