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Battlestar Galactica: The Passage

"Cylons, humans. We're all just trying to discover who we are."

How do they keep doing this?

I didn't think it was clicking for me, and then this story reached right in and squeezed my heart. I started crying when they started to applaud Kat, and kept on crying right through to the end. (I'm easy to tears, but not that easy.) Adama staying with Kat, treating her like a daughter in her final hours, and promoting her to CAG again, was even more touching than Starbuck giving Kat that heartfelt apology and a gift of sleeping pills.

Our pilots were once again on the front lines, carrying the burden of the survival of the fleet. They were heroes, doing the unthinkable over and over again. I was so touched – not just by Kat looking at her dosimeter, knowing she was already dead, and deciding to go out again anyway, but by a hollow-eyed Lee telling his pilots to stay alert and sharp even as his voice was trembling with fatigue. And Starbuck tacking up Kat's photo up on the shrine was so moving. I'm starting to tear up just writing about it.

Meanwhile on the Cylon base star, D'Anna is having some sort of experience when she downloads – "something beautiful, miraculous, between life and death" – so she's started doing it, what? every afternoon before tea? That explains why she had the Centurion kill her. Gaius, the eternal scientist, asked D'Anna, "So while you resurrect, you see the faces of the final five, the ones that no one's ever seen." She didn't confirm. Is that true? It's certainly intriguing that the other five are a complete mystery to the seven we know.

And I think it's hilarious, as well as fitting, that Gaius wants to be a Cylon so that he won't be a traitor any more. Stop teasing us, please. I want to know.

Bits and pieces:

— This week's survivor number was 41,420. Minus two. I didn't think anyone died in the previous episode; they were just beating the crap out of each other. What did I miss?

— Several of the shots of that final Adama/Kat scene were of them behind an opaque sheet of plastic. Symbolic of Kat passing beyond the veil, I think. The blinding light of the star cluster was symbolic of the afterlife, as well.

— Tigh is now back in the CIC. Yes, it took guts for him to return, but I don't want Tigh to be back in the CIC. (Note the parallel scenes of Kat getting a standing ovation when she finished the mission, and Tigh getting one when he returned to the bridge.)

— Does this mean that Helo just got a demotion?

— That reference to the eye of Jupiter had to be about the planet Jupiter in our own solar system. "Find the hand that lies in the shadow of the light." Gaius seemed to think the five fingers meant five faces, five unknown Cylons.

— The close captioning had Zeus instead of Jupiter, Greek name instead of the Roman. They must have thought that wasn't as obvious a clue.

— The Hybrid mentioned the star cluster.

— Adama referred to his wife as Carol Ann. I don't think I remember him mentioning her name before. I could be wrong.

— Was it morbid of me to expect cannibalism to break out? Probably didn't go on long enough, or it would have.

— This episode was written by Jane Espenson, who wrote several wonderful Buffy episodes. It just gives me tremendous pleasure to see the names of Buffy writers popping up on all my favorite shows.

Quotes:

Adama: "I hear they're still eating paper. Is that true?"
Tigh: "No. Paper shortage."
(They both dissolve into hysterical laughter)
Adama: "Not a good sign."
Tigh: "No, sir."

D'Anna: "Could there be a connection between their gods and ours?"

The Hybrid: "Throughout history, the nexus between man and machine has spun some of the most dramatic, compelling and entertaining fiction." This was like an ad for Battlestar Galactica.

This episode was flawed – I found the multiple passages through the star cluster sort of confusing – but the emotions were so true. I was sorry to see Kat go. But what an outstanding exit.

Four out of four stars,

Billie
---
Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

5 comments:

  1. As I was watching this episode and Gaius made his Cylons/humans speech, I thought to myself, 'I bet that's what Billie puts at the top of her review.' :-)

    I made it through until the final scene. When Abama put Kat's name at the top of the board and Kara put her photo on the wall, I cried. Very moving and a good end to one of my favourite 'minor' characters.

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  2. Oh so it is indeed a treesome. So I was wrong in my comment after epsiode 3x08.

    It is kinda confusing that they use Hera (Greek) and Jupiter (Roman) gods. But the latter is probably so that we can identify him with the planet. I wonder where this is going.

    As for Kat, sorry to see her go, but someone had to or the whole mission would be dramaless. Losing some anonymous two civilian ships wasn't going to cut it.

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  3. I think some other people died from the fleet. After all they added for new babies, it's impossible for no one to die in the fleet apart from the main cast.

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  4. Nooooo! Kat! :(

    I liked it, but the whole finding food mission did seem very MacGuffiny... And that bothered me through the whole episode. Which just made me annoyed that we lost one of my favourite non lead members of the cast.

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  5. @Patryk: "As for Kat, sorry to see her go, but someone had to or the whole mission would be dramaless. Losing some anonymous two civilian ships wasn't going to cut it."
    I actually found there to be plenty of drama in losing your sheep in an escort mission. I always feel so shitty about it in videogames lol. They didn't need to be recognizable ships, it all worked for me. Didn't need to lose Kat for that extra punch :( But it was a great send-off. I guess there's still Racetrack at least.

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