The most tender of the final Battlestar Galactica episodes thus far - but laced with a powerful wind-up punch ...
Just what you'd expect, come to think of it, in a story starring Sharon "Boomer" Valeri. She tells Tyrol that she's thought of him every night "since I died in your arms". She's in the brig now, about to be sent off with Six to stand trial, over her collaboration with Cavil. She takes Tyrol via projected illusion to a beautiful place, where they live, in love, and just for deep good measure have a teenage daughter...
It's all reminiscent of the place Kirk is inhabiting in that Star Trek movie in which he meets Picard ... and it's just as falsely convincingly real. And all the more effective for inhabitants of the sunless Galactica world...
Back on which, Tyrol gets Boomer out of the brig - he's desperate, his plea to President Laura fell on deaf ears. (But she'll soon get hers.) Boomer knocks out Athena, makes love to Helo (well, a little more rough than that), and ... steals Hera. It's apparently all in Cavil's plan - Boomer was sent back to Galactica to get Hera.
One good result of this is that it may have killed Laura. I'm sorry to say I'm not the least bit sorry to see her go - with the exception of the time she went wild against the mutiny, she's been a boring, deadening character this year.
Meanwhile, Starbuck has a lengthy interlude with a piano player, who turned out to be her father, who somehow had taught Starbuck how to play the Dylanesque Cylon theme when she was a girl. Does this mean she's a Cylon? Not necessarily ...
But what is the case is that Boomer's blast into the faster-than-light speed, so close to Galactica, may have put the ship over the non-reparable edge ... unless that organic resin can start kicking in.
See also: Battlestar Galactica, Final 1: Dee, Ellen, and Starbuck ... Final 2: Baby and Mutiny Make Three ... Final 3: Galactica Alamo! ... Final 4: Shout-Outs to Lampkin, Lee, Tyrol ... Final 5: (Almost) All Explained ... Final 6. The Necessity of Hyrbrid
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Comments
Going to look over on some SciFi forums now. I was totally confused by this episode.
I keep thinking of that Bobby Darin song "Somewhere, Beyond the Sea." It's popped to mind ever since the episode when Saul walked into the water back on Earth and remembered about Ellen. I still wonder how this story can possibly end. In the back of my mind, it seems the future (in that universe) belongs to the cylons, not the humans.
Boomer's dream world creeped me out from the beginning, but I'm not sure I like this development with her. Or, more, with Tyrol. What did he think he was doing? The only place she had to go was back to Cavil, and if she really had rebelled against him she was going to have to take back something useful to get herself back in, so I can't figure out what he *expected* to happen. Maybe I'm missing something.
My take: This was not the right earth and that Hera' drew a start chart where another habitable planet exists. The 13'th cylon could be Starbuck's father Delride, the corrupted cylon Daniel Ellen spoke of. The Cavil Cylons are coming back, and there is really going to be a Reckoning.
So maybe there is going to be hell to pay. Over and over again. I think there is a new Resurrection facility somewhere; the 13 tribe cylons even spoke to Ellen about rebuilding one just after she resurrected, and there might have been time before she returned to Galactica. Or - maybe that's what they are building on Galactica.
It's so much fun to speculate on this series.
I also think the Kara Thrace father arc may be setting up the new BSG movie that is in the works, as well as the prequel series Caprica. Oops - are both of those still in the works? Who ever knows with SciFi.
We're not really dealing with "toasters" here. The Cylons are what are known as "posthumans" in science fiction circles. They're dealing with many of the issues we do, but many of the ground rules have changed. The "eternal verities" of traditional drama aren't as eternal as they once were.
I felt an increasing feeling of dread throughout the episode. I love this show for its lack of comfortable bullshit, but it is getting to be a bit much. I find myself hoping that the Deus ex Machina "Ship of Lights" of the first Galactica series would show up and give us some hope.
Of course, in the new Galactica, the powerful, saintly beings of the Ship of Lights would be fucked up too.
I think I agree with the idea that Hera wrote out a star chart to someplace. Perhaps a habitable world the original 5 had seen on the way to the 12 colonies. Somehow Starbuck's father encoded it into the Dylan song he taught her.
Alas, I forgot there are going to be further series/movies. I fear we will have to wait for them to get any real answers.