The Enemy of My Enemy

Now that Commander Adama is back on his feet, things should pretty much return to normal for Battlestar Galactica and the rest of the human fleet, right? Well, Adama is a great leader, but let’s be honest, Saul Tigh really left them in a hole. The two men are determined to pick up the pieces and move on, but they have a lot of work to do. It was hard enough to run the fleet when the President was cooperating with them. Now that she has decided to do her own thing, everything has become increasingly difficult. When you factor in that nobody knows how many Cylons are around or what they’re planning to do, it’s easy to understand how things could get so complicated.As you can imagine, Adama’s return to command was widely celebrated by the people under his command. They admired him, they looked upon him as a father figure, he had already led them through great adversity, and, as I’ve said before, Colonel Tigh managed to be a bad leader and was hated by almost everybody on his command. Unlike Tigh, Adama wants to lead, and when he returns to the bridge, he gives a nice hearwarming speech about how much every single person meant to him. You know, the typical “you are like my family” type of stuff.

To prove he means business, Adama is going to start by finding the fugitives, ie his son and the president, and bringing them to justice for the audacity they showed trying to defend democracy. They are going to find which ship they are on by implementing quarantine procedures. See, the fugitives are like a disease, and to rid the fleet of the disease, you take it through quarantine. Isolate a single ship from the fleet, search it, and if it’s free, make sure that no other ships are able to reach it. Eventually, you are going to find what you are looking for or at least make the people hiding nervous enough that they will give up.

Roslin and Lee Adama have enlisted the help of Tom Zarek in order to hide them among the ships. Zarek was a criminal, and was once considered a terrorist, but holds lots of popular support. He and the President don’t exactly see eye to eye on all of the issues, but now that they are both in the same boat with respect to Adama, they decide to work together. Zarek is keeping them safe, although since their current hiding place is inside of a refrigeration barge, sometimes the accommodations could be a little better. Everybody was ready to go up against Tigh, because he is inept (as if you needed me to tell you AGAIN) and has very little popular support. When they hear that Adama is back, they know that they are going to have to accelerate whatever plan they had and finish it.

Looking to galvanize support for their resistance, they seek to broadcast a message. Who better then to talk about opposing the fleet than the person who used to command the fighter pilots. Unfortunately, Apollo is not up to the task. He strongly believes in the cause, but he still respects his father’s thinking and doesn’t want to speak out against him. Roslin sees that she is going to have to get a little creative. As the series has progressed, she has increasingly bought into the notion that she is a savior who was heralded to save the humans and lead them to earth. It’s the reason why she sent Starbuck to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo, and it’s largely the reason why she even had the motivation to continue in the face of so many difficulties. She has a lot riding on this whole religious prophecy, so why not go “all in” and see where it takes her? This whole messiah thing has been helpful with the Quorum of 12 and the the people she has met individually, why not give the whole fleet a try?

Now, a large part of the President’s plan revolves around getting the Arrow of Apollo and taking it back to Kobol. Place it in a temple of some sort, and you have your directions to earth, which is the promised land. But we know that the Arrow of Apollo was on Caprica. Starbuck was supposed to get it, but she has had a little bit of difficulty getting it back. She was able to beat off the copy of Six to get it, but Caprica Boomer flew off with the ship she had used to get there, which is understandable because Starbuck did try and kill her, but is unfortunate because it was the only way home. Luckily, Starbuck wasn’t alone. Helo was also on Caprica, where he had spent a good amount of time running away from Cylons, and at least a little bit of time knocking up Boomer.

Helo and Starbuck found a gang of humans, led by a bunch of athletes, that was busy carrying out a little bit of a resistance. Being the randy child that she is, Kara slept with the captain, and they had the typical awkward post-coital moment in the morning, but you could tell they liked each other. Starbuck has always wanted to get off of Caprica, but Anders, the captain, feels he owes it to the people who have survived on the planet to keep fighting. He even tells Starbuck that they could use a little bit of professional help since all of their tactics they learned from a few movies. You would think that one of them would have had an X-Box or Playstation when they were younger and played a litte SoCOM or Counterstrike or something, but that was not the case. For her part, Starbuck tells them they should hide in the mountains above the radiation, and wait for somebody to come back and get them.

She may not believe in their cause, but that doesn’t mean Starbuck isn’t willing to use their manpower to help her goals. They are on patrol, planning a raid on a Cylon refueling station nearby, when they are ambushed by some Cylons. Kara is shot, and falls to the ground. Most of the rest of the humans were able to fall back, but she was almost paralyzed by the shot and just goes limp.

When she wakes up, Starbuck is in a hospital, but she doesn’t know how she got there. It’s obvious that she has had surgery, and a doctor comes in to see her. Right away, Starbuck wonders if he is a Cylon, and so asks “Are you a Cylon?” I never understood why people ask this type of question. If a person is not a Cylon, they aren’t going to say “I’m a Cylon” and if a person is a Cylon, they still aren’t going to say “I’m a Cylon,” especially the humanoid Cylons, because if they said they were a Cylon that would defeat the whole purpose of trying to look human.

Questions of Cylon-ness aside, the doctor does weave a pretty convincing tale about how she got there and what happened to everybody else. When he tells her that Anders died from wound sustained, she is sort of shocked, but still doesn’t really believe him. She is recovering from surgery, so she can’t exactly make a great escape, but she is starting to get a little wary of the hospital after a few days. For instance, why doesn’t she see anybody else or hear anything else? There is the one doctor, but what about nurses or orderlies and such? What about patients?

The first question is easy to answer. You know, there were these nuclear bombs that took out most people and the Cylons didn’t say “Oh, you’re a candy striper, in case you want to aid the future resistance by taking care of the wounded, we’ll let you live.” The second part is a little more difficult to answer, but is also a plausible excuse. Most of the patients there are there for acute radiation poisoning. They don’t so much scream as they just lie there and let their organs sort of liquify. Plus, they don’t know Starbuck. If she was carrying any disease, you have to keep her isolated.

These sort of explanations are good enough, and with all the pain medication she is receiving, she’s about as happy as can be expected. But strange things start happening. After a pelvic exam, the doctor starts going into this whole spiel about how she is one of the few people on earth who can bear children, and it’s important to procreate and whatnot. Starbuck never wanted kids, and thinks this line of questioning is a little strange, and then the doctor really starts to hit home. He noticed that every single one of Kara’s fingers were broken, often repeatedly, and usually in the same place. They are old fractures, having healed since childhood, and are likely signs of abuse, abuse that Starbuck doesn’t want to admit happened.

So, Starbuck isn’t really having any luck on Caprica, but what about the rest of the folks back in the fleet? On Galactica, Chief Tyrel is pleading for Adama to have some leniency with Cally. She did kill Boomer, but let’s be honest, it wasn’t like a lot of other people didn’t want to do the same thing. During this sequence, the two of them have a little bit of a back and forth about the Cylons. “Did you love her?” “She was a machine.” “I knew her for two years, she wasn’t a machine,” “How could you love a machine?” and again “How could you love a machine?” Tyrel is sort of confused by all of this, but admits that he did love Boomer. Adama tells him that Cally has to be held 30 days for illegally discharging a weapon, and then leaves him with a little bit of information. You know Chief, “You’ll see her again.”

Yes, the people of the fleet know that Cylons look like humans, but they didn’t realize that they copied each other. There’s another Valeri out there, and they’ll probably bump into each other at some point in time. Now wouldn’t that be an awkward meeting? I’ve said before, I think Cally and Chief will get it on, if for nothing more than they spend so much time together. Wouldn’t it be funny if Boomer returned to Galactica. “Oh hey, Sharon, sorry, you actually shot yourself, then the captain. You recovered, but this girl killed you. She’s now my girlfriend.” It’s the type of scenario we thought only Dynasty writers could come up with.

That Adama always has great showmanship; he leaves them asking for more each time. However, he really does have bigger things to worry about than some junior engineer in the brig. Roslin has just given her little manifesto to the people. Follow me! I have this mythical arrow which will lead us to earth! I am dying, so I can save us! Sounds kind of crazy when you think about it. She says she is going to give a signal and then jump back to Kobol. Anybody who believes in her can follow.

It may seem that Adama would be worried, but he actually isn’t doing anything more to stop it. If some people want to follow her on that suicide mission, it might do the whole human race some good to have all of the crazies out of the picture. Besides, how many people are actually going to follow her? Well, after the President gives her signal, 24 ships follow, or about 1/3 of the entire fleet. I wonder if the inmates really are running the asylum nowadays.

The writers wouldn’t just let everybody go to Kobol without the Arrow of Apollo, right? Oh, you are so correct. On Caprica, we see that the group of humans who were ambushed when Starbuck was shot are going over the surroundings. There must be some clue to where she is. And wouldn’t you know it! There is Anders. Now why in the would the doctor lie about Anders – unless the doctor is a Cylon! Ha! Knew it right when I saw him! They aren’t having any luck, but there is Sharon to help them. She loves Helo, the father of her child, and doesn’t want to let him go. She knows a lot about what the Cylons are trying to do, and knows where Starbuck is.

As for that hospital, Starbuck is starting to wonder more and more. She woke up one morning and saw that there was an extra scar, low enough on her abdomen that they were either fiddling with her reproductive organs or giving her a brazilian wax. And you know what? Those drugs were good, but why in the hell was he so eager to give them to her all the time? She is able to avoid a dose of the pain meds, and goes on a little reconnaissance around the hospital. Whoever runs this hospital has decided to use really nice gowns, and not those paper things that flash your ass to everybody. There is the doctor, and there is that blonde Cylon she killed awhile back. If there is an exact copy of that woman, that woman must be a Cylon, and the doctor must be too.

She knows she has to escape, and doesn’t really have a plan, but the next time she sees the doctor, she stabs him in the neck with a mirror shard. She makes her way through the hospital, knocks out the Six with a fire extinguisher (Starbuck HATES that bitch), but along the way, she stumbles upon something strange. There is a room with a bunch of human women, all with a bunch of tubes sticking out of their lower half like some strange anime movie gone wrong. The women are all pregnant, and they are forced to be there. All of those tubes are their to keep the babies alive, but it is also killing the women. Kara tries to rescue one of the Caprica Buccaneers, but there is no time. The woman tells Starbuck to kill the power. All of the women will die, but at least they won’t know the pain of having to raise a bastard Cylon baby.

Starbuck kills the power, cries, makes her way outside, where she sees a copy of the doctor. Quite convenient that so many of them are around, no? It’s also quite convenient that the humans looking for Starbuck made it just in time to kill the doctor before he can do anything to Starbuck. Some of the metal centurions come out, preventing an escape, but a big Cylon ship comes by and kills them all off. It’s Sharon, of course, and she flies everybody out to safety.

You must be wondering what the deal was with all of those machines connected to all of those vaginas? Yes, so was I, but Valeri was there to answer our questions. The Cylons are religious, but the one thing that they couldn’t do, but they know God wanted them to do, was produce offspring. They can copy each other, but that really doesn’t count. Unable to conceive on their own, and with few human volunteers, they have had to use force to get the human women pregnant, which explains why the doctor was so happy to see Starbuck was fertile.

Aha! But what about Boomer and Helo, and Gaius and Six? See, the Cylons have a theory. They aren’t able to procreate because they are missing a key ingredient, which is love. I think that they are missing another key ingredient, which is alcohol, which has helped procreations move along seemingly since time began. Then again, I’m no doctor or Cylon, so what do I know?

After Starbuck saw the baby harvesters, she wanted to take the Cylon ship, search out these other places, and save the women there. She had a reason to stay. In a rather disjointed sequence, Starbuck and Anders talk. Oh look, Starbuck wants to stay! But Anders now understands her higher calling and tells her to go! Remember, you said you would come back! And look, I’ve been hiding the Arrow of Apollo in a septic tank! I would complain about this more, but whatever it takes to get the rest of these people back to wherever is going to be helpful. The three-planet story line was a little too confusing, and now that a bunch of the fleet is headed back to Kobol, spending much more time on Caprica really isn’t necessary.

Starbuck, Helo, and Boomer take the Cylon ship and head home. As always it is likely to be an interesting little reunion. I wonder what Tyrel will do when he finds Helo knocked up his girlfriend. I mean, it was a copy of his girlfriend, but he must of had the hots for her for some time, and even though she is a Cylon, Tyrel has to be pissed.

Outside of a few scenes where they were trying to be overly dramatic, this was a great episode. Answered a lot more of the questions we had for the Cylon’s motivation to have babies, and did a good job with the main conflict between Adama and Roslin. We also got a great look into Starbuck’s character, and although Katee Sackoff kind of overacted during some emotional scenes, Starbuck is a great personality and we never mind the extra information. Knowing how the Cylons are looking for love to procreate also made me think that perhaps Billy is a Cylon. He has the hots for Dualla, and we already have the humans as the fathers; there has to be a human as a mother around here sometime. Perhaps that extra scar Starbuck has will mean something, but until then, we can speculate.

What did you think of this episode? Was that strange scene where Adama talks to Boomer’s body in the morgue a little freaky for you as well?