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

Kara "Starbuck" Thrace is still alive and kicking. How? Is she a Cylon? Did "God" save her? Is she just that badass?

This has been a part of a regular feature for Look Again.

As promised, this series is going to be providing you with two articles per week on the subject of everyone's favorite scifi show, Battlestar Galactica. Today's installment is a look back at the season 4 premiere that aired on Friday, April 4th. Check Yasmin's column on Thursday for a look at the music of BSG.

In today's recap I'm going to write in three parts: first, I'm going to summarize the episode very briefly. Then I'm going to take a look at some of the scenes that I thought worked really well - as well as those that I thought fell a bit short. Finally, I'll end on a speculative note as I try to address some of the questions raised. As always, There Are Spoilers Below!

BSG Premiere - Recap

This episode picked up literally where last season's fantastic cliffhanger left off. Lee Adama is wondering what the frak is going on and why Starbuck is suddenly alive again, while the four main characters who just learned that they are cylons (Tigh, Tyrol, Tory and Anders) are each sort of reeling. As the Cylon fleet engages in an all-out assault, Adama orders all vipers to be scrambled. Tigh, in an eerie reverie, pulls out his pistol and shoots Adama in the head - or so we think, until the camera spins and we realize Tigh was having some sort of weird waking nightmare. He blinks in horror, pulls himself together and begins giving orders.

Anders, meanwhile, is sent up in a viper - panicking the whole time that he may turn on his friends. Just as the battle is at its fiercest, a Raider comes face to face with Anders. It scans his ship, like some sort of bar-code reader, and Anders' eye glows red in response. Immediately the entire cylon fleet breaks off and jumps away.

Gaius Baltar, whisked away by cultists at the end of the season 3 finale, finds himself in an abandoned compartment with dozens of beautiful women who seem to worship him. When he is asked to heal a dying boy he is at first frustrated - once he's had time to think about his situation, though, he makes a sincere prayer to the monotheistic god for the boy's life. He goes so far as to offer his own life in recompense - and later, when an angry citizen puts a razor to his throat, he maintains his plea for death. This humility is really a new chapter in the life of Gaius Baltar: for maybe the first time in the series he's acting out of something other than concerted self-interest. The sick child is miraculously cured at the end of the episode. Something fishy?

The final major plot point deals with Kara Thrace: she only remembers being gone for 6 hours, she doesn't remember her Viper exploding and she has no idea what happened. She only knows she went to earth - or so she says. She describes a planet with a yellow moon, with a ringed gas giant in its solar system and a triple-pulsar in the vicinity. Naturally, most of the crew is jumping to the too-obvious conclusion: that she's a cylon. The Adamas don't want to believe it but Admiral Adama cannot risk the fleet trusting her - she demands that the fleet follow her directions to earth but Roslin won't have it. As the episode ends, Kara Thrace has disabled a handful of guards and burst into Roslin's quarters with her gun drawn. To be continued.

BSG Premiere: Review

There were several scenes in this episode that were just fantastic. The first genuine "Wow" moment came when Tigh hallucinated shooting Adama - when it happens, in real time, the audience has no way to know it's a hallucination. It feels real, and the devastated looks on the faces of the onlookers are heartbreaking. When this happened, all four of us that were watching this together just leapt out of our seats - we were stunned, and the fact that it turned out to be a hallucination somehow failed to make it all better.

If Tigh is a cylon, he must hold on to his humanity - if he doesn't, everything is lost. The struggle on his face, in this scene and others, is palpable. He's a cylon but he refuses to let that get to him - he won't be another Boomer, and it's going to be sheer strength of will that ensures it.

Another thought-provoking scene saw Lee Adama talking to his father upon Starbuck's return. The topic of conversation at first is whether or not she's a cylon, but Lee cuts to the chase: what if it had been his brother, Zak, that got out of that viper? What if they found out that Zak had been a cylon all along, and had now come back to them? Would they love him any less?

The Admiral is silent. The series has come far since the first season - no longer is anything black-and-white, no longer does the rigidly-defined us-vs-them dichotomy work. No longer is the great worry "What if [trusted character X] is a cylon?" Now, the great concern has become "Given that Cylons have infiltrated every aspect of the fleet, what exactly are their intentions?" We've moved past the point where the Cylons are this completely alien Other - now we've got two protagonists seriously discussing how they'd react if their Brother/Son turned out to be a Cylon. What does that say?

Finally, on the other end of the spectrum let's talk about Kara's reunion with Anders. She's on the verge of stressing that she might be a cylon and he tries to comfort her: if she is a cylon then she always has been a cylon and it wouldn't change anything and he'd love her just the same. Her response is chilling: "You're a better person than I am, Sam, because if I found out you were a Cylon I'd shoot you between the eyes."

Anders, of course, is a cylon. This doesn't bode well for their relationship. My girlfriend says this scene was really emotionally manipulative, and I agree to some extent - it really takes advantage of privileged audience knowledge to evoke an emotional response. We feel sad and scared for Anders. However, I also think this scene really works, and on a variety of levels: first, it's completely within character. Kara is this great quintessentially human hero, and a big part of that is that she's deeply flawed - she's incapable of feeling compassion for the enemy, she's a warrior with a chip on her shoulder and she can't afford to let that go.

I also feel like this serves as a metaphor for a lot of relationships. It seems like eventually couples break up because one person loves/needs the other one more, and this emotional inequality causes all sorts of relationship stresses that culminate in a really sad breakup. We've all been through this or watched friends, right? Well what the hell do you call this scene if not an emotional inequality? 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.

BSG Premiere: Questions

Finally, here are some nagging thoughts that this episode left in the back of my mind:

• 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?
• 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?
• 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?
• 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?
• 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?

Ok, this has gotten long enough for now. I'm curious for your thoughts - did my summary leave out anything important? Where there any scenes you particularly liked? What do you think about the various discussion quests? Please comment below because as always the comment thread is probably going to be a lot more comprehensive and interesting than the article itself.

Thanks for reading!

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	Don't expect answers in final season of 'BSG'	Associated Press	Sun Apr 6	1
	Characters Lost in Space on 'Battlestar Galactica'	BuddyTV.com	Mon Apr 7	0