GWC Re-Watch Frak Party: Home, Pt. 1 & 2
It’s weeknineteen of our planned off-season re-watch of the entire “re-imagined” BSG canon, and it’s time to move on to the season two episodes “Home, Pt. 1 & 2.” So why not join us here for the GWC online frak party? There’s room for everyone, though you’ll have to bring your own snacks…
Feel free to jump in at any point with your comments on this week’s episode as the re-watch is by definition spoiler free. We’ll be in and out, but we’ll definitely take a look at your comments before we start next week’s podcast.
See you here all week!
Galactic Watercooler 
Modern Geek 
Save Eureka 
Eff This Week 
FitSmart
Hey all!
I definitely missed this the first time I watched, but during Adama and Sharon’s (Athena) confrontation on Kobol, we see a flashback of Adama standing over the body of Boomer after his recovery–he asks the corpse “why?” Then on the planet after he attempts to throttle Sharon/Athena and has what appears to be some medical difficulty, she creepily asks him “And you had to ask WHY?” as if his own violent tendency was the reason for the cylons’ actions. Well, that was freaky and I wonder if we were just supposed to be freaked out a bit or if somehow the cylons are psychic.
Dee is pretty awesome in these episodes–best I think we’ve seen.
AKRon, that was a fantastic moment. It also made me wonder, though, if Sharon-from-Caprica really *doesn’t* remember Sharon-on-Galactica shooting Adama, as she (SfC) says she doesn’t. Can’t trust those tricky Cylons! 🙂 I also really like how she asks Helo to trust her on Kobol, and then picks off Meier. What an awesome character! I must not have been watching closely enough the first time around, but I have a whole new appreciation for her as a complex character.
I also agree with you re: Dee. I wonder what her backstory with Adama is — have we heard it? They must be fairly close for her to feel that she can speak as freely as she does.
I won’t comment on Adama building the ship and the starship that left Kobol being called a “galleon,” for fear of reopening a whole can of gach… Oh, sorry, wrong sci-fi franchise…
These are two incredible episodes. One of the themes that resurfaces later on, though, that makes me question Adama’s judgment post-shooting, is this: in “Unfinished Business,” he will bawl out everyone for getting too close to each other, for forgetting that they are military not family (I’m paraphrasing) — or at least, he bawls out himself for letting him get too close to them. But isn’t this where that started? He comes back after his shooting to thunderous applause in CIC in “The Farm,” and makes this big mushy speech about he loves them all, won’t ever take them for granted again… etc. Is Adama allowing his brush with death to cloud his judgment? Of course, it is understandable, and I probably wouldn’t argue Adama’s position in “Unfinished Business” too strongly (anymore than we can push Lee’s case in “Crossroads II” too far that the fleet isn’t eally a civilization). Maybe Adama, like so many of us, just has a tough time negotiating interpersonal closeness. We want it, but, what do you know, it feels scary, so when we get hurt because we grow close to people, we back off…
Speaking of which, maybe Adama should be bearing in mind a little more that he got close to Boomer and got burned… maybe? Of course, getting burned is the price we pay for getting close. “A cost in blood…”
And how sad is it that Elosha gets it? I had forgotten this is where it happened! Man, Roslin makes her a true believe, and then she becomes the first (I think?) post-attack martyr for the Pythian Faith (or whatever we’re gonna call it).
I think these episodes lend support to the idea/impression I have that BSG takes place in our far fuutre … Roslin’s reference to when the colonies “were called by their ancient names.” I *suppose* Gemini could become Gemenon and then somehow switch back to Gemini,all before our time, but it seems unlikely. (Then again, it seems unlikely that “All Along the Watchtower” would just be “in the ether,” so…!)
Final niggling comment: Did anyone else notice that Baltar calls Cheerleader Head Six “Sara”? (I only noticed because I like to watch with the captions on.) Was this just a captioning mistake, or does he actually call her Sara, and, if so, can we assume that this was the name he knew Caprica Six by before the attack? “Sara” is Hebrew for princess and, of course, Sara/Sarah was the mother of many nations by Abraham — biblical parallels to the BSG plot, in which Caprica Six is the metaphorical “mother” of Hera? (And how does that figure, exactly? “I never said I would bear the child” — yeah, but, c’mon, how much wiggle room does that semantic game take??!)
And am I the only one out there who thinks Cheerleader Six “Sara” is sexier than slinky sultra Caprica Six as we usually see her? 😉
Saw Part one last night – Adama’s gettin’ the band back togetehr!!! 😉
But that scene with Dee and Adama was powerful as hell. The look he gave her when she said “Children are separated from their families” —damn. Was right up there with when Starbuck admitted it was her fault that Zak wasn’t ready to fly.
I’ll see part two tonight….
These are my favorite two episodes of the series. I remember looking forward to Helo being reunited with the rest of the fleet. While watching during the first season I thought the character deserved a joyous reunion after all he’d been through. However, the resulting standoff between he, Apollo and Sharon did not disappoint.
As far as the constellation names, I got the sense that they acquired their new names while on the Colonies. This could suggest the original names came from our past (on Earth or Kobal) and they just got modified over a few thousand years in the Colonies. As the Zodiac is a few thousand years old to us, they could still be in a similar time line to modern Earth. Just a thought, though.
Does any with any real-world astronomical knowledge know if the nebula that Adama identifies when they are “on Earth” (and do you think they really, truly, objectively are?) is a real astronomical object? Apologies in advance if we have discussed this before.
Season 2.0 is just phenomenal, and this is a stand-out. Love the music, love the setting, love the smoky, humid, veil-like atmosphere. I especially loved the way they increased the saturation in all the plant life and the uniforms and stuff. Very cool.
I love that moment on the Astral Queen when Roslin, Zarek, Meyer and Lee are all having it out regarding appropriate action to take on the incoming vessel and then Starbuck starts talking, sounding peeved as ever.
Here’s a question though, sorry if it’s been answered. I wonder how Starbuck and the gang found the RTF farm team? Obviously,the two fleet factions were separated so how did they mange to find Roslin’s flightgroup?
Mike P,
I teach a wee bit of astronomy…Adama calls it the Lagoon Nebula and even mentions it’s other name M8. This is a real designation…the Lagoon Nebula does indeed exist and the M8 designation is also real…stands for Messier Catalog number 8. The French astronomer Charles Messier, cataloged a bunch of “fuzzy objects” which he called nebulae (but not all of which are), in order to prevent false comet reports in the late 18th century. The hundred or so objects are cherished amateur astronomer targets.
Now…Mike P has raised another interesting question…how does Adama know about all this? Does it indicate any possible time frame of colonists leaving Kobol? Is it possible the colonists just happened to wind up with the same name and naming schemes as we do on Earth? Is it possible the writers simply threw in some information that, as it will turn out, won’t be important at all? Why not just make up another name?
Just an FYI…the Lagoon Nebula would not appear that bright or large from our Earth, but neither would all the constellations of the zodiac be visible at one time. (Therefore, they could not possibly be standing on Earth proper.) In order to see a beautiful pink Lagoon nebula, you would need a telescope and a time exposure to see it as we saw it in the episode–human eyes alone are not sensitive enough to see the color.
Gray–I think Roslin asked Starbuck to bring the arrow to Kobol?
Thanks, AKRon — That would be one heckuva lot of “just happens,” wouldn’t it? Maybe M8 and Lagoon Nebula got passed down, generation to generation, and didn’t get corrupted as the constellation names did.
On the other hand, maybe these terms and all of BSG has been “translated” into English for our, the TV viewers’ benefit (the same way the aliens in Star Trek all speak English, e.g.).
Still — I’d like to think this confirms that BSG is our far future. Only one way to find out — keep watching til the end! 🙂
(And thanks for clearing up that they aren’t on Earth proper — which, of course, raises the question: where were they, actually? Still on Kobol? In the “celestial temple” ?)
AKRon – Hi. Just my take on the zodiacal array that was presented: I think that it wasn’t a literal snapshot of Earth’s sky that they saw. It’s more of a representation to clue any watcher about the Colonial origins – kind of like a marker or maybe even like this: They saw the ancient Colonial symbols that identified where they came from. The Lagoon Nebula would symbolize a destination target (in this case, we know now that it was just one of a series of stepping stones that was trailed behind ala Hansel and Gretel style). One could than surmise (as Starbuck did) that as one look into the sky at the star symbols representing their origins, that they would be standing on a facimile of the destination planet, Earth.
Hmm, maybe another read on that: Maybe Starbuck was wrong. Maybe the ground meant nothing – could just be some open field on Kobol. But the message in the “sky” could still be the same. The twelve symbols are the main group that went in one direction. The nebula represented the direction the remaining group took which appeared to be opposite or, in any rate, away from the others. To find the 13th Colonists, find and head for the Lagoon nebula -await further instructions at that point. 😀
As this would act as a way finding device, I would believe that the 13th colonists wanted to make sure their “bread crumbs” stood out quite clearly. Therefore the nebula and the zodiac / colonial symbols would all be visible and be hyper-real to stand out.
‘Course, all this begs the question as to whether one member or a group of individuals from the 13th colony came back to Kobol to leave this message about their founding of Earth? Than went on to codify their journey / experience as The Book of Pythia? It also seems that the writer(s) underwent a mystical experience as their chronicle was laced with elements of prophesy i.e. description of the President’s condition, etc.
Also, the fact that the Arrow of Apollo ended up in Delphi, Caprica meant that somebody journeyed all the way and caught up with the other 12 Colonies in order to leave that artifact behind, right? What happened to the messenger if that was the case?
However, if the members of the 12 Colonies brought that Arrow w/ them, does that mean that the 13th group broke away prior to the exodus with enough time to send word back somehow that they made it to someplace that they’ve named Earth? Does this indicate that rather than one sudden collaspe of the civilization on Kobol, it was precipitated by a series of events spurring a series of of exodus groups before the final departure that saw the ultimate end of the root society? Maybe this could be one way to explain some discrepencies in the story’s timeline? Maybe the 13th colonists went on their way a thousand or so years prior to the remaining colonists that underwent their own exodus about 2000 years before the start of our little BSG tale?
OK, I’ve gone completely of the reservation from my original post. Sorry about that. In regards to some of these off tangent remarks, what do you all think?
Thanks – Arch.
I always thought they were standing on a BSG version of a Holodeck…though Roslin did say that the tomb area was probably just the “lobby” which made me wonder if they were teleported somewhere…but I still go with hologram.
Ship’s Counselor Dualla…wow, where did that come from?! Mike P wondered about a back story on that. I wonder if there really is one.
Arch — I’m intrigued by the idea that Pythia was a record of the trip to Earth. It also makes me wonder why, if such is the case, would the 13th tribe record the journey in such arcane, mystical, symbolic terms? I mean, even the book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible has clearly recognizable historic and geographical landmarks and referents (however problematic they may prove to be when modern historical, archaeological standards are applied). Perhaps Pythia is a record of the 13th tribe’s “exodus” as recorded by someone who got left behind, hence the reliance on symbolism, etc?
It’s interesting to hear Pythia referred to as a “gospel” (in the opening minutes of “Home II”). Gospel is, in literary terms, a specific genre, basically a biography (of Jesus) with an agenda, with very little reliance on mysticism or arcane symbols. Well, canonically speaking: I guess Pythia could be more like one of the Nag Hammadi “gospels,” or the recently translated Gospel of Judas. But the word “gospel,” as many of you probably know, means “good news” (Gk. evangelion), so I guess Pythia is presenting the trek to Earth as good news — again, for those left behind?
It had never even *ocurred* to me to ask how the Arrow of Apollo got to Caprica. Wow. Always something new to ponder…
OK–now after watching Home Part 2, I am reminded (for the umpteenth time) why I love this frakkin show…..
1) How hot was Head Six?? I mean in sweats, ponytail, little makeup. Scha-wing! But the fact that she was able to switch (pretty convincingly) from “You are the chosen one Gaius” to “Yeah, dude–you’re frakkin’ nuttier than a payday”. And then back again at the end to “Until the end of the human race”. Was just amazing from someone who had very little acting experince before BSG.
2) “you asked why” – nothing freaked me out in BSG more than that one line. And that’s saying a lot. Does that mean even in death the models aer still connected? Does this happen during tranfer (after death)? And just the look she gives when she says it….damn
3) You rarely see Starbuck vulnerable. Truly vulnerable. Whiney Lee sometimes, so you expect the shock when he sees Papa Adama come out from behind the rock. But it’s Starbuck who not only looks incredibly vulnerable when she sees him, but she almost seems to shrink into herself. Like this is the one man in the whole universe who could really rock her to her foundation. Almost beyond a father figure. Got me a little fah-klempt….
Until Cylons celebrate Arbor Day….keep up the great podcasts guys!!
Dave
The “Why” moment has got me thinking about Athena and Boomer. I wonder if those two are a special case. Most of the time, a Cylon’z memories aren’t downloaded into another copy until after they die, but obviously Athena was created to mimic Boomer while Boomer was still alive, so something different was done to create her.
We don’t know what, and we don’t know how, but somehow Athena has the memories of Boomer’s life all the way up to (at least) the moment she left Helo behind on Caprica. You’d think that whatever technology allowed the Cylonz to download those memories at a distance would also let them share their memories from other still living models in a kind of collective consciousness, and also to track the RTF just by planting an agent on board and homing in on their brain wave signal. But that’s not apparently how it works.
Maybe…
In the moment that Helo was left behind, the Cylonz realized they had a unique opportunity to pursue their procreation experiments. They must have been planning their farms already, but someone must have decided it was a bad idea from the word go, and, like Sean said, “Dude, why don’t we, like, just TALK to them?” So a new copy of 8 was ordered up, and in the hurry to make the plan happen, a tricky new process was executed to copy and dump a still-living model’s memories into a new body. It worked, but there were weird side effects. Months later, after Boomer died, Athena still possessed a strange, cosmic connection with her soul-doppelganger (RDM mentions this possible, mystical connection in the podcast for the episode, but leaves its cause a mystery).
I imagine Brother Cavil and others were not happy with this plan, and forbade it from ever being implemented again, a point proven when their creation turned against them and joined the Colonials (irony’s a bitch, eh Cavil? Gross old man…).
The big hitch in my theory is that Boomer was still a sleeper agent at the moment she left Helo behind, and there weren’t any other Cylons around to witness it, so I wonder how they got wind of it, learned of his emotional attachment to Boomer, and decided that he would be the perfect subject for this unorthodox experiment, all in time to set it up and make it happen.
Ah, but Baltar saw a Six in the crowd. That might have been an early manifestation of Head Six (which brings up the question, Is she connected with the cylon/s/z?) or it might have been an actual Six, who might have hid once she realized Baltar had seen her. She could be the one later seen with Athena and the Doral.
Stroogie says, “obviously Athena was created to mimic Boomer while Boomer was still alive, so something different was done to create her.”
I don’t see this as obvious at all. Isn’t it just as likely that, just as multiple Sixes exist at the same time (presumably — Shelley Godfrey and Six-on-Cylon-Occupied-Caprica are at least around simultaneously), there are at least two “Model Eights” active at the same time? Plus, we see all those Sharons in reserve (?) on the basestar in “Kobol’s Last Gleaming II.”
Perhaps I misunderstood your comment, but I don’t think we know if Athena was created after “our” Boomer.
Mike P, I think Stroogie meant that Athena has Boomer’s actual memories, which isn’t how the others appear to opperate. As Athena herself later says, “It doesn’t work like that.” (Meaning that they don’t automatically know what the other copies of their model know.)
They might be implanted somehow in an existing Eight. In that case, Athena would probably have her own, parallel memories.
It might be easier to take a backup copy of Boomer’s psyche (assuming they keep one—maybe just for the infiltrators) and grow a fresh body for it. Then give her a debriefing (this might be how they knew to use handcuffs when Boomer went through it) and sic her on Helo. In that case, Athena is an exact copy of Boomer, diverging only since the time of Boomer’s last backup. Thus she has, or had, the same programming for subversion in her, (although possible deactivated since they didn’t expect her to rejoin Galactica.)
Pike — Athena says that, I think, even in this episode (Part 2), but I think her “And you had to ask why?” line mitigates against that… although I suppose Adama said that to a dead Cylon body in the Galcatica morgue, so, who knows how Athena knew what he “told” Boomer. Hm. Well, now I’m just confused again. 🙂 Anyway thanks for the reply.
Architect wrote:”‘Course, all this begs the question as to whether one member or a group of individuals from the 13th colony came back to Kobol to leave this message about their founding of Earth? Than went on to codify their journey / experience as The Book of Pythia?”
I think about this sometimes too. It sure seems that there was some contact between the 13th Colony and the others…either someone from the 13th went back or someone from the original 12 visited the 13th. In addition to the Temple of Athena having info on Earth, there was the fact that The Temple of Jupiter (name?) in Season 4 was mentioned in the human scriptures too. I’d like to see this explained, but I think sometimes we give the writers too much credit…they’re great on BSG, but they can’t always think ahead.
Mike P, Yeah, I wasn’t so much trying to reduce the confusion, as codify it. I don’t know if we’ll ever find out what Athena’s origins are, but it’s intriguing that either one leads to a slightly different take on her character.
Mike P-its OK i watched all os season 1 and 2 in like 5 days so all the eppys, now, dont make sense, i cant remember what happened in which, and i dont own the DVDs
I think Athena and Boomer are substantianly different. Soley based on the fact that whatr would it do to your though process if you found out your whole life was a lie and you were a cylon? I think this was seen in the episode which must be not named when she tryed to kill the baby
I wonder if Adama was somehow unknowingly channelling information to the Cylons when he was talking to Boomer’s corpse? Maybe he is the fifth and final Cylon after all…?
These episodes have so many great moments. Everyone pulling guns on each other, Lee telling Starbuck he loves her, the planetarium show, and HeadSix doing her best Starbuck impression. Love it.
I hesitate to say this……… (could be bad memory of mine) … and this is not tore-ignite the ship thing again…..but, the model (lets call it that 🙂 ) that Adama is applying varnish(?) while he talks to Dee. Now, that model does not seem like the one we see in the backgrounds, or when he’s rigging it in other cconversations, or the one he destroys. It certainly does not look to be a multi thousand $ model.
So is it a bad body(ship) double? Or am I just imaging it?
As far as the “Asking why question?” goes, I always thought that Athena was refering to the ‘Why does humaninty derserve to survive speach?’ that Adama gave in the Miniseries. There would have been pleanty of time for the knowledge of that speech to be downloaded from dead Boomer and enter the Cylon mainframe to be accessed by the future Athena. But it is creepy none the less that he was just asking a similar question to the Boomer corpse.
Also regarding the Map to Earth, it would seem that the map could only be constructed by those who had already been there. That’s why it seems to me that humanity must have originated on Earth, and then the 13th Tribe returned during the Exodus while the others continued on to the new Colonies. Therefore the Tomb of Athena could have been constructed before the Kobol exodus and the Colonists would have taken the Arrow of Apollo with them in case they ever wanted to track their old buddies down.
That still leaves the question of when were all the other signposts to Earth recorded and constructed (i.e. the Lion Head Nebula and Eye of Jupiter), and how they made it into the scrolls of Pythia. Were their exsitance first recorded on the original trip from Earth to Kobol?
Phil, I have been leaning towards that idea that humans originated on Earth and that the BSG storyline happens thousands of years in our future. But that would mean that our future descendants will revive Greco-Roman mythology for some strange reason!
Unless, of course, we find out that everything is just an offshoot of ancient Greeks and Romans that someone left Earth back in the day and seeded Kobol…that’s too “out there” for me though.
Hey Radio Picon-
I actually favor the second view. Such a scenario would suggest the existance of some form of ‘real’ Human and Cylon god(s) though, but then again I’ve often been accused of being “Out There.”
Picon — Given that lots of people today are looking back to ancient religions for inspiration and spiritual guidance (I’m thinking of “neo-pagan” traditions, or even ancient ones like Wicca that continue today), it’s not too far-fetched that Greco-Roman mythology might make a comeback. What’s a little harder to swallow is that, in humanity’s far future, there would be only one religion, shared among 12 planets. So far, all we have seen of religious life in BSG is belief in the Lords of Kobol; Cylon monotheism; and agnosticism/atheism (I know they’re not the same thing, flame me not — just categorizing for convenience’s sake ). Realistically, it seems like any civilization the size of the colonies is gonna have more than those three options (really only two, since, presumably, no humans are monotheists).
Mike…yes Colonial religion is a little vague isn’t it? One way that the writers could explain this is to say that their religion is a collection of different scriptures and different people emphasize different ones or don’t believe in any at all, in other words, there isn’t much of a canonized doctrine. (If they actually have any sort of canonized “Bible” I guess Pythia is apocryphal?)
They could also say that, at the Colonial level of civilization, religion has faded to almost nothing, whereas historically many offshoots and sects might have existed. This could explain why there isn’t much diversity in spiritual thought anymore.
About the monotheism: In the miniseries, when Leoben and Adama are trapped on Ragnar Station, Leoben says that maybe God made a mistake when He created humans. Adama doesn’t even blink at the mention of a single God (although by that point he may have had some suspicions that Leoben was a Cylon, so the God thing was the least of his worries).
Later, in “Act of Contrition”, Starbuck tells the nuggets to call her God, as in the proper name for a singular deity, not “a god.” I thought I read or maybe heard in an RDM podcast that there were small sects of monotheists in Colonial society (possibly marginalized and persecuted), and the Cylon religion grew out of the toasters’ exploration of those ideas. Though that’s never been established canonically, the above references may suggest that the Lords of Kobol don’t have a monopoly on religious and spiritual thought in the Colonies.
Stroogie — Interesting points. I hadn’t heard that bit about persecuted monotheists. Hm.
I also remembering hearing Adama use “Jesus” as a swear word in the miniseries. The “real” explanation is that the series format hadn’t been quite hammered out yet, I guess… but maybe that is another vestige of past human religions in our “BSG future” (if indeed it is?).
Strogi
good point though i belive that there would be a large sect who might just belive in 1 god
Stroogie: “Later, in “Act of Contritionâ€, Starbuck tells the nuggets to call her God…”
I just want to point out that it’s not inconsistent. Polytheistic religions tended toward having “a” god as the household god (i.e., the one the participants were most concerned with.)
Thus, you can read Starbuck’s statement as, “I’m you’re household god now. Nugget.”
Mike: I think you’re totally right about the series format not being hammered out yet. Since those examples happened early on in the show, and haven’t happened since those first couple of episodes, it was probably just a slip. The “Jesus” moment definitely stood out in to me in the rewatch, though.
Pike: Good point about the household gods. From the hindsight of the next couple seasons, that’s probably what Starbuck meant (or what the writers would say she meant). But back then it seemed pretty cut and dry what she meant. Or, in the vein of reading-way-too-much-into-this, maybe it was a foreshadowing of Starbuck the White. 🙂
Stroogie, yeah, the “Jesus” slips are always add-libs (ad-libs?) by the actors. The “God” thing was definately written into the show, so I’m sure they justified it to themselves (although I’m not sure if my take is the same as theirs.)
And now we come to the episodes that blew wide open the mysteries of Earth and the meaning of the cyclical nature of time, as has been discussed here with the questions of how the map of Earth showed up in the form that it did on Kobol, given that life supposedly *started* on Kobol and *then* went to Earth. A lot happens in these episodes, so forgive me for the length of the post. My thoughts on “Home Iâ€:
1) The first scene shows just how much Adama has changed; the old Adama is all about people, but here he snaps at Dee that what people the Fleet has lost doesn’t matter, only the ships and resources that defected to Roslin’s rebellion are important.
2) For some reason, I always forget that this is the first episode in which Helo is actually back with the Fleet. I wonder if, in addition to Helo’s personality and his love for Sharon, part of the reason Helo has such different views of Cylons than most of the rest of the humans is that he didn’t share the early experiences of the rest of the Fleet. With the exception of meeting that first Six, who he didn’t figure out was a Cylon until much later, Helo was first confronted with the humanness of the humanoid Cylons–Sharon pretending to be human–before discovering and eventually accepting their mechanical aspects. Oppositely, the rest of the Fleet started out with the notion that the mechanical Cylons had found a way to “look like us nowâ€; comments from the guy on the ship Leoben was found on about whether Leoben’s insides were made of wires and circuits and his surprise at Leoben sweating show that the Fleet, quite naturally from their perspective, saw the humanoid Cylons as machines with a false human veneer on the outside, whereas Helo came to see Sharon as human in the essentials but different in some ways.
3) The reporter that asks if Adama just made up that he knows the way to Earth brings up a good question. Adama claims he knows where Earth is. Then Roslin claims she knows where a map to Earth is. Didn’t Roslin’s quest for a *map* to Earth suggest to a whole lot of people that Adama must *not* have a map, if the President, whom the average citizen would guess Adama would have told what he knows about Earth, feels she has to go off on her own to find it? And then when they come back with a map to Earth, doesn’t that imply that nobody had a clue where they were going before, thereby discrediting Adama? Or maybe everybody was just so happy to be back together and finally on the way to Earth that they didn’t really care that the Commander just got caught in his own lie at that point?
4) In Baltar’s musings, he mentions the “Euclid River.†Unlike all the other Earthly references in BSG, Euclid is an historical figure, not a mythological figure. Hmm… Can anybody think of any other direct references that are historical, not mythological?
5) All this talk about returning to Kobol exacting a price in blood: both the downed Raptor early in this season and the Tomb of Athena search team are attacked and lose people to the Cylons, but both also have bloodshed from humans turning on humans (Baltar kills Crash when Crash turns on Cally; Sharon kills Meier because of the position Meier’s treachery against the Adamas puts her in). Maybe it’s a stretch, but it echoes everything Head Six said about murder being humanity’s defining art form. Kobol seems to bring out characters’ true natures and brings everyone face-to-face with his or her own demons.
6) I really like the scene with Lee, Kara, and the Pyramid ball. There’s a sense of the brother-sister relationship that dominated most of the first season with some hints of Lee having other feelings for Kara (and Kara not taking him seriously, since she only has eyes for Anders right now).
7) I love the scene between Adama and Dee. The acting is great, and I especially appreciate how Dee grabbing the Commander’s hand to get his attention mirrors the end of the Season 1 cliffhanger when Dee holds Adama’s hand after he has been shot.
Aw, what the heck. I might as well go ahead and double-post… Some more thoughts about “Home, IIâ€:
1) Notice how Gaeta says that jumping into the atmosphere is “impossible†with a ship the size of Galactica? Just wait ‘til “Exodus II,†Gaeta…
2) Sharon’s take on human religion is confusing. It sounds like Sharon says “your God stood†and watched Athena throw herself off the cliff, but the Cylons are the one with one god; the Colonials are polytheists. Huh? The other odd thing is that everybody is going to the Tomb of Athena, and Sharon recites how Athena died, throwing herself off the cliff in despair. We also know that Athena is a goddess in the Colonials’ pantheon. Do the Colonials believe their gods are all dead, which would differentiate their theology from that of the ancient Greeks, whose gods had the same names but were all alive and partying on Mount Olympus? I don’t know what to make of all this.
3) Starbuck truly does have a “special destiny;†her visions and strange journey of discovery are completely different and separate from everyone else’s (Athena, Six, Roslin, Baltar, the Final Five…everybody with visions, except maybe Leoben and not-creepy vision-Leoben), which seem to revolve around the Opera House and baby Hera. Is that why Head Six says Baltar is in “dangerous†territory when he jokes that Starbuck might be the mother of his secret love child, or, based on the nature of Simon’s interest in her in “The Farm†and Leoben’s interest in her during the New Caprica occupation, do/did the Cylons really think Starbuck is going to bear the prophesied child, which begs *a lot* of new questions?
4) Yay, Billy!!
5) Aw, who doesn’t love Doc Cottle’s “Will you stop going crazy in there?â€
6) I’m with Phil; I thought when Sharon says, “And you ask why?†to Adama, she’s responding more to his speech in the miniseries about how humanity never really asked why it deserved to survive (her answer here meaning “You don’t deserve to live, since you act like thisâ€), a memory she could very well have, and it just happened to creepily coincide with what Adama said to Boomer’s corpse.
7) Are the stone monoliths in the Map to Earth Light Show meant to *be* Stonehenge or to *be like* Stonehenge? As AKRon pointed out, the Light Show fudges on the constellations being visible all at once, so it could be meant to actually be Stonehenge, even though it doesn’t quite look like it (no lintels). Or, it could be that it’s just *similar* to Stonehenge, maybe the Stonehenge of an earlier iteration of the cycle of history. Neither way makes it very simple because there’s still the problem of if everything *started* on Kobol, how could there be a representation of a place on Earth, which the 13th tribe supposedly went to *after they left* Kobol? Unless maybe life did start on Kobol, then out to Earth and the Colonies, then the Colonials make a pit-stop back on Kobol before going to Earth, and then everybody goes back to Kobol again before the cycle starts all over, with some historical and mythological residue and a few artifacts (like Stonehenge) left over from previous cycles? My head hurts just thinking about that…
As much as I like the fact that Sharon’s “And you asked why?” question has a distant referent in the miniseries, the visceral nature of Adama’s reaction to the comment points to it probably being intended as a callback to his question of Boomer’s corpse. (That, and the fact that the producers chose to include that moment in the “Previously on…” montage ).
My high school English teacher told me, when we were reading “The Odyssey,” that even the ancient Greeks could talk about “God,” acknowledging that there might be some sort of uber-God behind all the gods and goddesses of Olympos. Of course, that might have been true of people like Homer, but maybe not the average Greek on the street; and surely the folks in the BSGverse tend to take their gods pretty seriously or not at all — not much middle ground there, so… for what it’s worth (or not).
Re Phil’s comment about Helo’s return to the fleet, the only person who seemed happy at all to see Helo was Kara and that was all the way back from the episode on Caprica after she laid out Caprica Six. At first Lee commented that he thought Helo might be a cylon too. Oh, how funny was it when Helo referred to Roslin when he said “are we going to listen to the nice lady?” and then Lee informed him that she was the President! I had forgotten that and I was cracking up!
I really enjoyed it when the team makes it to the tomb and gets transported and sees all the constellations, but at this point, it would seem pretty hard for anyone standing in that tomb to ever disbelieve the scriptures again, since they all experienced something THAT hard to explain any other way than the idea that their religion is TOTALLY real. Probably a pretty hard thing for someone like Adama/Zeus.
Starbuck showed such a wide array of emotions in these past couple of episodes, from her reunion with Lee and his hello smooch and her subsequent “happy to see you too Captain,” then her despair kicks in after leaving Anders/experience from the Farm, she goes for solitude to play with her Pyramid ball, but once Lee starts bugging her like a schoolboy, taking her ball and not giving it back, she finds a way to turn on a dime after he sneaks a friendship “I love you” in his speech to her, she starts goading him about it and essentially makes him run away after that… GLORIOUS! After that, the two seem to settle back in with one another on Kobol, but once she sees Papa Adama, she shrinks back into the role of puppy dog Adama’s girl that just wants a hug.
After the past couple of episodes where Baltar had been quiet and sort of hidden away in his corner, he and Head Six come back with a vengence in pt2 of Home. He pisses off Head Six and she makes him pay for it until the end of episode, making him FLIP OUT, thinking he’s really just nutz. It’s hard to believe that the way it was shot, Head Six seemed to be the least sexy when she was completely naked in that chair, compared to everything after that (sweats and pulled back hair, then classic red slink dress). Oh, how creepy was the instant cutaway, one second, naked in chair, next moment, sexy in sweats saying Baltar is Mayor of nutberg.
What I forgot all about from Home was the conversation between Adama and Billy (again ANOTHER reason miss Billy) I knew Roslin saw Billy like a son, which made the scene a few eps back when she was still stuck in a cell and she woke up screaming from a nightmare (a nightmare we actually witness in one of the deleted scenes, which was in actuality a pretty frakked up nightmare to have), but I completely lost track of the comment that Roslin saw Billy as future Presidential material (although a bit Edipis creepy hearing him described as seeming a lot like a young Pres Adar from Roslin’s POV, when we know that she had had an affair with Adar and at the same time sees Adar in the man she now sees like a son to her).
Kappa “Aw, who doesn’t love Doc Cottle’s “Will you stop going crazy in there?”
How about Baltar’s CRAZED response “I’M NOT CRAZY!” Again, I was cracking up.