GALACTICA

This week’s episode of the new Battlestar Galactica is about religion. We’ve already gotten a fair amount of religion in the scenes where Baltar (an atheist) talks philosophy with his hallucination of Number Six, the hot blonde nymphomaniac Cylon.

But via this week’s otherwise poorly done episode, we get a full dose of religion as “Starbuck” interrogates a Cylon prisoner.

Ron Moore thinks it’s really funny to make the Cylons devout observers of a religion that seems very much like Christianity, while the Colonials are more secular and their religion is a polytheistic one reminiscent of pre-Christian ancient Rome.

The original Battlestar Galactica was also about religion, and you may want to read some of my previous posts such as Mormon influences in “The Living Legend” and All I need to know about Mormonism I learned from Battlestar Galactica.

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A lot of this episode makes no sense. Why is a Viper pilot assigned to interrogate a Cylon? Shouldn’t some sort of scientist be doing this? Why jettison the Cylon at the end? Wouldn’t it be wiser to keep it around for study? People accuse the old Battlestar Galactic of not making sense, but at least back then they were smart enough to keep their captured Cylons around for scientific investigation.

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I was surpised to discover that Baltar really does have a working Cylon detector. Up until now, we were given every indication to believe that his Cylon detector was a lot of BS. But what is Baltar going to do now that he has learned that “Boomer” is a Cylon? I guess what Baltar does is up to the writers. His duty is to test the detector on a few humans to make sure that it’s really working, and then inform Commander Adama that “Boomer” is a Cylon. But if the writers want to make Baltar into a more despicable sort of person, they will have him keep the knowledge to himself to use to his own advantage. I’m suspecting the latter will happen.

This week’s episode focuses on Gaius Baltar who is my favorite character in the new series. (In the old series, I’d have to pick Starbuck for favorite.) And this episode seems to give me the most to write about of all the episodes so far this season.

First of all, we still have the mystery of Baltar’s hallucination of Number Six. We don’t know if it’s just Baltar having mental problems, or if, back on Caprica, the real Number Six who he was seeing implanted some sort of Cylon device into his body that causes him to have those hallucinations.

But no matter how you look at it, this does absolve some of Baltar’s guilt regarding the destruction of the colonies. He’s either mentally ill, or the Cylons have powerful ways of controlling the human mind. Whichever is the case, it means that Baltar is not fully capable of using proper judgment in making decisions.

And then I should also point out that Baltar didn’t know he was helping Cylons. He did give Number Six access to the computer system that he shouldn’t have given her, and yes that was illegal and done because the sex with her was so good, but he didn’t think he was endangering all of mankind by his actions.

From a moral standpoint, I say that Baltar can redeem himself if he builds a working Cylon detector and roots out all the Cylons still in the fleet. So far we’ve only seen four models (Boomer, the tour guide, the guy in the space station, and Number Six); we have no idea what the other eight models look. What we can be pretty sure of is that there are up to eight Cylon spies living with the fleet.

The writers of the show left us another mystery regarding Shelley Godfrey. Was she a real physical Cylon spy, or did the same device implanted in Baltar’s body which makes him hallucinate Number Six also cause many other members of the fleet to hallucinate her as well? Number Six, who usually gives Baltar advice, was strangely absent during the period of time between his accusation and exoneration. We are given the opportunity to believe that Number Six set the whole thing up to make Baltar seem more important.

But if Shelly Godrey was just an hallucination, wouldn’t her lack of existence have shown up on security tapes?

Others on the internet have commented on Adama’s inability to be seduced by Number Six. Good for him, but I have nothing else to add.

When Boomer and Helo had sex, Boomer’s spine lit up with a red glow. Human spines don’t glow red when we have sex. So there is a physical difference between humans and Cylons that causes the Cylon spine to glow red. This physical difference should be easy enough to detect if Baltar could just figure it out.

In the original classic series, there was an episode “Murder On the Rising Star” in which Starbuck faces a trial for murder. I previously wrote about that episode in my post Law in Battlestar Galactica.

In the episode “Litmus,” the term “tribunal” is carried over from the original series, but in “Litmus,” the tribunal is more like a grand jury, whereas in “Murder On the Rising Star,” the tribunal was a trial court.

But unlike a grand jury, where the witness is traditionally immune from prosecution for anything he testifies about (at least such is the case in New York State), the tribunal in the new Battlestar Galactica offers no such protections to the witnesses.

Regarding the right to remain silent, in the United States the trier of fact is not allowed to use an invocation of the right as evidence of guilt. Strangely enough, there is a debate in the episode over whether that holds true in the Galactica universe. The sergeant/prosecutor (who appears to be a lesbian who hates men—hey don’t blame me for that description, I didn’t write the script) tells Chief Petty Officer Tyrol that his invocation of his right to remain silent will be used as evidence of his guilt. But later on, Commander Adama tells President Roslyn that silence is not evidence of guilt.

In the original classic series, there was always a tension between Commander Adama’s need to do the right thing, and annoying rules that got in the way. Usually this was seen as a conflict between Adama and the Council of Twelve (too bad all those mystical Mormon analogies are missing from the new series). In “Litmus,” the writers set up a similar conflict, between the power of the tribunal, and Commander Adama realizing that the tribunal was a witch hunt and walking out on it. Luckily for Adama, the guards were more loyal to him than the abstract concept of the rule of the military—or maybe he wasn’t lucky, he knew the guards would obey him and not the man hating lesbian.

In other developments, the Chief ends his relationship with Sharon, and furthermore seems to suspect her of leaving the hatch open. Yes, of course it was her. I was also surprised to discover that Number Six, the sexy nymphomaniac Cylon that Baltar hallucinates seems able to hurt him physically. Oooh, I love the way she manhandled him.

The title of the episode is a misnomer because Starbuck does return home. Someone tried to be too tricky picking a title. I don’t like it.

In the classic series, when a pilot got stranded on a planet it was usually a nice Earth-like planet inexplicably populated by humans, and maybe a Cylon or two. But in this episode of the new series, the girl “Starbuck” lands on an inhospitable moon.

Interestingly, we discover that the Cylon Raiders have a biological brain mated with a mechanical ship body. Kara figures out how to fly it back to the Galactica (reminiscent of the episode from the classic series where Starbuck has to fly a Cylon Raider back to the Galactica).

But the best part of the episode: the nymphomaniac Cylon that Baltar hallucinates was wearing a hot outfit (sky blue and very revealing). Wow!