Battlestar Galactica season 4 episode 2 review: Six of One

Last episode had one hell of a cliffhanger, with Kara Thrace pointing her sidearm at the President’s (soon to be Gail Porter-esque) head, demanding to be heard and believed. She has a point – the entire fleet went for Roslin’s visions and lots of people were sacrificed on Kobol to get the map to Earth, which could have been an ambush just as much as Kara’s route might be. Roslin’s not having any of it, however, and when Kara offers her the gun and asks to be shot, she actually takes aim and pulls the trigger. The fact that she misses almost doesn’t matter. She genuinely took a shot at Starbuck. I may never forgive her. We’ve seen Roslin’s airlock-happy dark side before, for sure, but only when concerning Cylons. This feels like the actions of an increasingly desperate President, determined to survive to see her people find Earth.

Anyway, Kara is thrown in the brig and writhes around on the floor shouting ‘WE’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!!!!!11’, while getting angry at Admiral ‘Atheist’ Adama. That is, until Lee comes in looking terrifyingly City boy (pinstripe suit, excessive Brylcreem). He not only says he believes her, but that he now understands what it is to have a destiny and all this sharing of spiritual quests results in some pretty heavy petting. Since season two, Lee and Kara have misinterpreted what the rest of the world requires as a greeting. No handshakes or awkward hugging for them, it’s all about the inappropriate PDAs.

Anyway, after that little love-in, Lee exits (I hope you’re all enjoyed the extensive alliteration of this review) and there’s a cheese-topped leaving back-pat-a-thon (obviously different to the cheese-topped back-pat-a-thon earlier where Lee drinks shots of what can only be described as Mountain Dew, or watered down Swarfega) as he gets aboard a Raptor to start his new life as a lawyer/politician with Tom Zarek and the Quorum of Twelve.

On to the Cylons, who are having a bit of a tiff. The raider who scanned Anders and recognised him as a Cylon has meant that they’ve all started thinking for themselves instead of following orders. But you can’t really revoke their flight status and throw them in the brig, so instead, Brother Cavill wants the reasoning bits of their brains hacked out. This is where they all wish they hadn’t boxed Xena, as now, when they vote, there’s a tie. Cavil, Kevin Spacey’s frown double and Dr Simon are for the lobotomies; Six, Eight and Leoben are most certainly not.

The vote gets swung, surprisingly, by Boomer, who says they need to make sure they can fight. Six is horrified – no Cylon has ever voted against their model before. As Cavil says, things are different… Six’s response is to remove the inhibitor chips from the centurions, and let them decide what they think about their fellow metal Cylons being tampered with. Their reaction? Cavil, Kevin and Simon are sent to Silicone Heaven Pulp Fiction style, with lots of colander-like body holes and slow motion falling over. What’s going to happen now the eight feet tall metal killing machines can decide for themselves who they want to off? I guess we’ll find out next week when the chop-happy three download and wake up!

Finally, there’s a couple of neat twists. Firstly, Kara gets what she’s after, and is sent to find the way to earth in a poo processing ship with perpetually teeth-sucking Helo. More interesting, however, is Gaius. If Baltar’s not the final Cylon, he seems to know an awful lot about what Tori et al are going through, and not only cos they get it on. Caprica Six seems to have loaned him… um… him. Instead of being able to see Number Six as a projection of his subconscious, Gaius now sees himself in the same way, to which he brilliantly exclaims ‘oh my giddy aunt!’ I kept waiting for him to say to him ‘money can be exchanged for goods and services’. Sadly not.

Anyway, he also speaks of the music our final four all heard, describing it as ‘like the distant chaos of an orchestra turning up, then somebody waves a magic wand’ – it doesn’t get much more specific than that. Does Gaius know who the five are? What about the one that ‘will be revealed’? Rumour has it, our freshly discovered Cylons feature heavily in the next few episodes, so watch this space… they’ve got to give us the answers eventually.