June 19, 2008
Without getting into spoilers for the mid-season break, all I can say is, damn. Someone tell Ron Moore that the Magnificent Bastard is supposed to be a character, not the showrunner. 'Cause apparently if the writers strike had continued, this would have been the series finale.
Well, things started picking up in the previous episode ("The Hub") and they kept that pace up for the whole show. D'Anna takes all the Galactica pilots still on the basestar hostage, and threatens to do them all in if Lee (now president) doesn't hand over four of the Final Five. (The fifth, it seems, wasn't/isn't with the Colonial fleet.)
After Tori eagerly jumps ship to be with "her people", D'Anna spaces one of the pilots to prod Lee into speeding things up with the other Finals. And Tigh shows that he's got himself a set of big, mechanical, brass ones when he outs himself to Adama, then tells Lee to threaten to shove him out the airlock if the Cylons don't stand down. And says to bring Tyrol and Anders along for the ride.
Standing in the airlock, Tyrol and Tigh both look like they're ready to die, and probably think at this point that there's nothing left to lose. Both their wives are dead -- Ellen by Tigh's own hand -- and both probably feel they'd be killed once they were discovered anyway. Why not go out on your own terms, right?
While Lee's trying to work up the nerve to commit cold-blooded murder and Baltar tries to talk D'Anna out of some more helmetless space walks, Starbuck discovers that her magical Viper is picking up a Colonial transmission from Earth. Instead of, y'know, picking up a phone she runs what appears to be the full length of Galactica to tell Lee that they've been given the way to Earth.
After a little speechifying (Lee could stand to study under Captain Picard here) the Cylons and Colonials say to hell with scouting and just start jumping in the direction Kara's plane said to go. An indeterminate time later, they flash-foomp into low orbit over a pretty blue planet.
Gaeta says the constellations match, so this must be Earth. Adama gets on the 1MC and tells everybody that they've found their new home, hallelujah, So Say We All. Lee does his imitation of Bobby Flay, and hops up on the DRADIS console for a fist-pump. A jubilant Colonial crew suits up and drops through the atmosphere...
...to find a nuked mess of what used to be a city. Possibly Brooklyn, according to people online who're familiar with the NYC cityscape. Nothing's growing, the sand makes a Geiger counter go nuts, and the buildings have all basically collapsed into jagged metal heaps. The now-stricken Colonials and Cylons stagger, unbelieving, across the beach, until one simply mutters, "Earth."
Fade to black, thanks for playing, see you in 2009.
I teased the writers a bit, and I didn't really go into a lot of detail, but this was a damn good episode. It basically grabbed a hold of me in the teaser and didn't let go until about 5 minutes after it went off the air. No meeting up with the Federation, no Adam and Eve retelling, no flying motorcycles. Just the planet they were looking for, dead. Goddamn.
I have nothing else I can contribute, so I'll have to do like I did with Iron Man and tell you to just watch it. Watch the last few episodes, you have time.
And now, if you'll forgive some fanwank, I have a wild-assed idea about the Cylons and the Final Five.
OK, the Cylons. Why are the Final Five not the last five model numbers (1-6 are "regular" Cylons, then Sharon's an 8)? Why is there a 7-5 split?
Because it was originally supposed to be 6-6. Well, actually, 1-1.
After the meat-machine hybrid experiment shown in "Razor," two fully-humanoid Cylons were created: The ones we now call Cavil and Tigh. With a newfound addition to the decision-making process -- emotion -- they came to strong disagreement over the human "problem." Cavil, as now, wanted to kill every last man, woman and child in the colonies. Tigh wanted to find a means of eventual rapprochement.
At this time, resurrection technology and memory-sharing were being developed and both Cavil and Tigh saw the need for more than two models of humanoid Cylon. Tigh, however, felt that the ability to resurrect and share memories would remove the two advantages humans had: uniqueness and the desire to stay alive.
Taking a cue from the Colonials' own mythology, Cavil and Tigh decided to have 12 models of Cylon. Cavil and his creations would be 1-6, Tigh's people would be 7-12. Cavil's first creation was Leoben (#2), who enjoys a good mindfuck. Tigh's first attempt was Sharon (#8) who was young and impressionable.
Too young and impressionable, as she was convinced to side with the "original" six. That's why Sharons tend to "lose themselves" in each other's memories: That ability was added on later.
That's why Sharon, number 8, is out of order.
And since I'm going to shown to be horribly wrong about this, I'm going to leave my WAG about Earth/Terra out of here :)
