BSG 2.19: "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 1"

[annathepiper]

Hooooo boy. Part 1 of the season finale, and lots of things go splody!


Okay, so now we have coming up what are possibly the two scariest words in the entire Colonial language: "President Baltar". The highest of the high points in a pretty solid episode all around, though I must admit that I didn't like this one as much as last week's.

We started off with more mileage we never saw in actual aired episodes, in the "previously on Battlestar Galactica" sequence. A bit more this time around than in previous instances, and this time it was more jarring to me. Especially with something as plot-critical as Starbuck pushing for a rescue team to be sent back to Caprica, I would have really preferred to see that on camera. I also didn't recognize the scene where Lee is smooching Dualla, telling her that he's leaving Galactica and not her. It would have been nice to see that on camera as well, if we're being asked to buy that Lee and Dualla have a relationship going now. It'd be nice to see it, like, y'know, develop.

But to get into the meat of the episode--to start off with a nice "what the frak?!" as we see the starkly lit deck and Cally coming on the Chief's crumpled and twitching form, and then his surging up to beat the living crap out of her. I have to admit that was nicely creepy, though the whole idea of the Chief turning suicidal and harboring a secret fear that he's a Cylon sort of struck me out of left field. I guess it's not entirely surprising; I can buy him getting quite messed up over what happened between him and the first Sharon, and then his having to stand back and let the second Sharon have her relationship with Helo. But it would have been a bit smoother for me if they'd at least dropped a few more hints that the Chief was coming apart at the edges before this.

That said, HAH, I loved Dean Stockwell's priest character. Beautifully bullshit-free. risu thinks he might be a Cylon--and we are quite overdue to get another of the humanoid models revealed--but it'd be really funny if he actually is one and got away with delivering the line about how he knows the Chief isn't a Cylon because HE is one, and the Chief hasn't shown up at any of the meetings. >:)

Meanwhile, yay, about damn time we see a rescue mission being launched to get back to Caprica! I suppose I'm not surprised that this got put off until the end of this season, since this is after all a pretty hefty plot point. Very nice to see Starbuck in full-fledged CAG mode, being Take Charge Girl and organizing everything. I also liked how she effectively shot down any burgeoning objections to Sharon's participation in the mission--and how there was very little actual objection to Sharon's presence. That could have easily become annoying, and they didn't go that way, which pleases me. It's a sign that the military personnel in the Fleet are beginning to accept that Sharon is in fact a defector, and are slowly getting used to having her around.

Nice to see Lee in commander mode as well, giving his briefing to the team... and that little scene in his quarters with Kara was nice as well. A total "aww" moment with him clearly wanting to say something sentimental to her, and her acting like she probably wanted to say something sentimental as well, and neither of them doing so. Anders was a very strong unseen presence there.

Very cool to see the huge swarm of raptors all taking off on their mission--and Racetrack's raptor getting lost. Again it was cool to see that they didn't try to blame it on Sharon, which was something that they could easily have done, and how their raptor's botched jump actually turned into a good thing--because it revealed the SURPRISE HABITABLE PLANET!

Which leads very nicely into the other major plotline of the episode, the campaign competition between Roslin and Baltar. I grooved on how they had clearly dropped all pretense of being civil to one another in private, though they were maintaining it for the cameras. And how Roslin was wiping the floor with him up until the big discovery of the planet. Also, the scene in Roslin's quarters where she was psyching herself up for the debate by ripping all her notecards in half, and when Adama told her about his father snapping pencils before going into court, was quite giggleworthy as well.

Baltar's dismissing the whole notion of settling there until Six browbeat him into listening to Zarek--muahaha. Very amusing that Six is still clearly cranky at Baltar--she kept showing up in black, and she was cold and snarky the entire time. Her little leaning on Zarek's shoulder and her description of him as a "sexy man" was pretty choice, too. >:)

Meanwhile, back on Caprica--yowtch, another raptor lost by jumping straight into the mountain. Grim. But at least a quick way to die.

Convenient and kind of nice that the first people they find are in fact the remains of Anders' entire crew--and oh good, Anders is in fact there. Another "aww" moment where he embraces Kara, and we get the obligatory razzing back and forth between them before OH SHIT THEY'RE UNDER ATTACK.

Any bets on whether Anders is in fact going to survive the finale?

And I reiterate: "President Baltar". Scary, scary, scary words!

Comments

[smeehrrr.livejournal.com]

I have a question - if that raptor jumped into the middle of a mountain, why was the transponder still working?

[annathepiper]

DAMN good question. solarbird asked the same thing!

I hope the answer isn't "because the writers were being clueless".

[solarbird]

I have a possible answer; it depends upon how the jumpdrive works. If they're swapping spacial coordinate sets - something for which the math actually exists, if not clue one about how to engineer such a thing - then somewhere out in space there's a little chunk of raptor-shaped rock flying away, and the raptor appeared perfectly intact inside of a mountain - and then plammoed into a solid rock wall at tremendous speed, with all its initial vector intact. It promptly turned it and its occupants into toothpaste, but the blackbox with the transponder survived.

[risu.livejournal.com]

Don't be silly. The inside of a mountain isn't a *bad* place!

It's a happy place!

Where raptors can chase dogs and rabbits and run in the tall striations and eat nothing but the best cylon brains *all day*.

[solcita.livejournal.com]

I bet no. Which is sad, because I like Anders. =P I offer as proof the grim-faced Starbuck in the previews for next week. Sigh.

[annathepiper]

I like Anders too, despite the fact that I'm a Lee/Kara girl. But all my suspicions are that they'll bump him off--since if nothing else they can't really keep him around if they really are heading in a Lee/Kara direction. (And they seem to continue dropping hints about that; that scene in Lee's quarters last night certainly read to me as both of them looking all sentimental at each other.) And cool though BSG is, I kind of doubt they'd set Kara up with two hot guys at the same time. ;)

Plus, killing off Anders just feels like a likely thing to happen in a season finale, to really drop the bomb on Starbuck. She gets all the way back to Caprica with her rescue mission, only to have her boyfriend blown up before her eyes. That'd be the kind of grim thing I'd expect BSG to throw at her.

But I also acknowledge we might be surprised in this! After all, I didn't expect the Pegasus to make it to the end of the season either. ;)

[janne.livejournal.com]

Carefully shielding my eyes from BSG spoilers since I'm years behind, just wanted to go 'coo' at the icon. Haven't seen that before, I think :) Very nice.

[annathepiper]

You haven't, because I only made it last night! I wanted something with some green to it, to better reflect the current look of my journal. And also, something closer to the current state of my hair, even though I don't have a hat that looks like that one. :)

Re: sweeeeeet

[solarbird]

Kinda like how the Roslin cancer cure hasn't aged well
<snickers> That kind of implies it wasn't rotten to the core to start with, and it clearly was.

Man, I hated that moment more than anything. What a brutally horrible idea.

Re: sweeeeeet

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

The TWoP recapper had said something about Gina shooting Roslin, but just in the cancer. Later he said "Dammit I wish I hadn't given them that idea."

Re: sweeeeeet

[annathepiper]

That golden glow thing has been recurring every time we go back to Caprica, yeah, and it's cool. They did a similar thing on Kobol with a sort of ultra-green effect. I wonder if it's done the same way that they did the color filtering in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

I don't really have a huge problem with the thing with the Chief being so abrupt, specifically because of the point you bring up; it's just a small part of me that would have liked to see a slight bit more warning that it was coming, is all. But then, given that we've leaped ahead in time by another month or so with this episode, I can buy that this has only come up for him during that interval.

fleurdelista sez that the Lee/Dualla line was in last week's episode, but while I remember a scene between the two of them there, I'll have to go back and check for that specific line. :) Just because it's nagging at me now!

I could find myself suspecting that Sharon's improved status among the military may be connected to her baby's blood having saved Rosin, but that'd be pure conjecture on my part. I'm with you, it'd be nice to get at least a hint of an acknowledgement about that, but I'm not thinking we'll get it.

I hope the priest isn't a Cylon myself, it'd just be funny if he was. And I'm just wondering if we'll pick up another humanoid model at all in the finale, since we've only had two revealed this season. But they can't reveal all of them too quickly, and we're up to six now!

[fleurdelista.livejournal.com]

I also didn't recognize the scene where Lee is smooching Dualla, telling her that he's leaving Galactica and not her.

It was in the episode when he got his promotion -- I actually remember it.

[annathepiper]

Huh, I'll have to go back and check. I do remember a scene where they're all tangled up together on a bunk (and Dee does have cute feet, I must admit), and I remember him telling her that he'd been promoted to Major, and lingering for a moment over the scar from his bullet wound and telling her how he'd been cleared for full duty. But I don't remember the "I'm leaving Galactica, not you" line. I'll look. :)

[fleurdelista.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was at the end when he got the promotion to Commander.

Timing of the rescue

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

Let's think Iranian hostage rescue. There's certainly a political element to it.

Re: Timing of the rescue

[annathepiper]

Ooh yeah. And I wouldn't exactly put it past Roslin to realize that it might be politically expedient to have this rescue mission go out, so close to the election. Generally altruistic though she is, she's demonstrably politically opportunistic as well.

Though it's tough to say. I thought that I saw, in the "previously on..." sequence, Roslin lying all ill-looking in bed talking to Starbuck about the Caprica survivors. But nothing about any clearing of the mission after her cure. I didn't see anything about it show up in recent episodes, so I wonder if there might be deleted scenes that cover this.

[kieri.livejournal.com]

I listened to the podcast for this episode after I finished watching it last night -- which led to me being up until 1 am, but it was worth it -- and thought it was pretty darn interesting. Moore's wife chimes in from time to time on this one, and it's pretty amusing.

Near the end, though, they talk a little about next week's episode -- only vaguely, mind, no spoilers -- and Moore's wife chimed in, "The first time I saw it, I didn't speak to him for 24 hours." And he goes on to talk about how it's a big risk, and how a lot of people might hate it, and how things in the RTF change a lot in those 90 minutes.

Needless to say, I am more than a bit freaked out at the possibilities those statements bring up. I don't think Anders dying would be enough to elicit that sort of reaction; hell, it's almost expected at this point. I'm much more worried that we're going to lose someone else, someone we really love.

If he kills Kara or Lee or Adama or Roslin or Helo, I will be VERY VERY UPSET.

(Baltar he can kill. Even though I quite like Callis' acting.)

[annathepiper]

I seriously, seriously doubt they're going to kill off Baltar. From a story perspective, it makes no long-term plot sense. They've spent two seasons building him up as a progressively scarier force with which to be reckoned in the Fleet, and now that he's finally come into a position of power, it would be highly dissatisfying to me if they turn right around and kill him off before he has the chance to wreak suitable havoc. It would be especially annoying given that they bumped off Cain earlier in the season, too, just as she was promising to bring a high level of tension to the Fleet power dynamic.

I figure one of two things is going to happen. The first is they're going to kill off a principle member of the cast, and honestly I don't buy that they'll do that at this point. They had a chance to kill Roslin earlier in the season, and they didn't do it. They've shown themselves willing to kill off side characters, sure, but we know now that the guy who played Billy was getting out of his contract and needed to be bumped off anyway.

The other possibility is that someone else major is revealed to be a Cylon. We ARE overdue for another humanoid model to be revealed. In a season closer, though, someone major in the cast being a Cylon would be required to have suitable season-closing impact.

solarbird also brings up an interesting possibility--that Starbuck winds up staying on Caprica, possibly becoming involved in whatever Caprica-Six and the original Galactica-Boomer, the Boomer Starbuck originally knew, are about to pull. One might even go so far as to say, 'the impending Cylon civil war'. If we're going to get more interesting Cylon mileage on Caprica, if part of the storyline needs to continue there, it would be given more weight if we had a principle member of the cast. I could see that having major season-ending ramifications, to be sure.