Battlestar Galactica: Guess What's Coming to Dinner

Starbuck: "When we meet up with the Colonial fleet, I don't know if they'll feed you or frak you."

I loved the title of this episode so, so much. It wasn't just clever and funny. If you think about the plot of that classic movie, it suggests that the rebel Cylons will intermarry with the Colonials and come "into the family."

Essentially, Six, Leoben and Sharon were saying: We know what we did now. We understand the magnitude. We're repenting in the only way we know how: by giving up eternal life in order to become mortal, like you. Destroying the Resurrection Hub will make all of the Cylons like humans, whether they want to be or not. That's pretty powerful, especially when you consider that they still can't reproduce without the humans. Little Hera is mentally connected to the Sixes, even though she's half-human. It makes me wonder what a combination of the races will really mean.

When Natalie Six was talking about death giving life meaning and how it had changed the Cylon rebels, Kara had a vision of the Hybrid telling her she was the harbinger of death. Maybe that's what the Hybrid meant. Maybe it doesn't mean Kara will lead them to oblivion – only to the meaning of life as it is defined by death.

And I hope Natalie Six isn't dead. Athena can't kill all of the Sixes, and shooting her made no sense. Plus, I always thought that the Opera House Six was Caprica Six. (Maybe it's because, in the vision, she's with Gaius.) Athena shooting Natalie Six was an echo of Boomer shooting Adama at the end of season one. Again unexpectedly shooting a leader who didn't deserve it.

Tigh's spidey sense nearly got him into trouble. Especially since the Colonials now know that the Final Five are somewhere in the Fleet. Adama wouldn't be Adama if he didn't find what Tigh did just a little suspicious. How is Adama going to feel when he learns that his closest friend is a Cylon? How will Starbuck feel about being married to one? Maybe, by the time it happens, the humans and the Cylons will have reconciled. Stranger things have happened. And the Cylon rebels have taken such a huge first step.

The base ship Cylons just acquired a couple of pretty important hostages: the president and the Colonial Jesus. Good job, there. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

Bits and pieces:

— This week's survivor number: 39,673, two less than last week. That would be Barolay and Emily.

— Kara has become so calm. It really jumped out at me in this episode. She used to be so angry and self-destructive, such a wild card. No more.

— Poor Gaeta. I sort of expected him to kill himself, after what he said to Helo in the previous episode. Instead, he sang when he felt a tingling in his phantom limb. There was something really eerie and incredibly sad about it. I guess I can assign symbolism to it: the Cylons, in a way, are the phantom limb of the Colonials.

— Roslin, who was once a great president, has gotten jaded and somewhat imperial. Yes, she's dying, and she has an impossible job; she has every excuse in the universe. But she simply cannot retain her power and keep tromping over the Quorum of Twelve.

— Roslin's bald look improved.

— They deliberately showed us that Roslin was carrying a book entitled Searider Falcon. Why show it to us? Does she have something inside the book?

— Tigh: "We blow the hub and billions of skin jobs lose their bath privileges." Roslin: "Imagine. Once they're gone, they can't come back. Mortal enemies."

Another strong episode. Four out of four stars,

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

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