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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

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Welcome to Tor.com’s round-table style discussion of this week’s episode of Battlestar Galactica, “Deadlock.” The participants this week are Rajan Khanna, Pablo Defendini, Jordan Hamessley and Robert Bland. The conversation starts after the cut, and there are many spoilers. So if you haven’t seen the episode, please stay away from this post!

Pablo: This episode was kind of hit-or-miss for me. It felt well-written, and everything hung together well, so maybe it was just the slow pace after the breakneck pace of the last few episodes, but it felt it a bit weak. That said, there’s plenty to remark upon.

I found the dynamic between Ellen, Caprica Six and Tigh to be interesting. As expected, Ellen thinks that frakking the skinjobs is tantamount to incest, even though she’s done a fair bit of skinjob-frakking herself. Granted, she did she didn’t know she was a Cylon when she did the frakking, but still (Cavil did, though, which is weird, but I digress). And, as always, Michael Hogan did an amazing job with his one good eye.

The miscarriage was a surprise to no one, I trust.

Raj, we got some Baltar! While it was great to see someone call Baltar out on being a self-preserving ass, Baltar’s slipping back into drinking his own Kool-Aid was slightly disappointing. I always enjoy Baltar the best when he’s trying to think himself out of trouble—it’s that desperate machination in the service of saving his own skin that James Callis does so well. And, “last fully human offer for help” or not, I find it very hard to believe that the Old Man would give Baltar and his harem heavy ordnance. It says a lot about how tired and resigned Bill Adama is these days.

Raj: Yes! Baltar. But I was a little disappointed as well. I thought he would go a non-violent route and I don’t know where this is going. Except possibly for a bullet in Baltar’s back. He has his very own Judas set up, so that’s what I’m expecting.

I thought this episode was very heavy on the melodrama. It seemed very soap opera, moreso than usual. But there were a couple of really great moments, I thought. Mostly on the Tigh side. I just loved that last scene. It felt incredibly real to me.

But all the stuff with the baby, and there being a crisis just when Ellen tells Six that Tigh loved Adama more than her baby – blech. I didn’t like that at all.

It was great to see Head Six back, but why now? It just felt arbitrary to me.

And I never thought I would get tired of looking at Tricia Helfer, but…

Rob: Well, the soap opera elements came into full swing in this episode. It was interesting how upon Ellen’s arrival her presence seemed to be instant poison. Even when Tigh and Ellen were getting it on (unbeknownst to Caprica), the baby was on its way out, an obvious sign of things to come.  It seems to me that Tigh is holding the moral compass of the show right now, as he said that the “pureness” of anything (be it either Cylon or human) doesn’t seem to be the solution for anyone—and, of course, he and Caprica paid the dearest price regarding this spoken truth as they watched their baby die.

I usually enjoy seeing Baltar, but the scenes with him and his flock didn’t really do much for me either. It just kind of felt like we were going over the same ground here, and I have to say, when I saw them loading up their new high-powered guns, the first thought in my head was, “Well, that was easy.”

Watching Adama watch his ship being repaired was funny in the sad sense of the word. The ship is being reborn and it’s killing him. Yet he seems to be willing to go through the pain of this transformation and although it might seem like he’s falling apart, I think he, like the ship, will come out stronger in the end. The scene with he and Tigh (after the baby’s death) was emotionally palpable. Man, both of these guys are being put through the wringer. I think that was a beautiful scene.

I was expecting a hint as to Cavil’s response that Ellen got away. Oh well. Guess that will happen in the next episode. I’m expecting a BIG response, too. It looks like Anders’ brain is revving itself out of the coma and maybe we”ll be in for another truckload of reveals—but I hope not.  I want things to play out, not be spewed out.

Jordan: This episode upset me. I feel like last week I really started to love the “new” Ellen and after this episode I feel like she hasn’t changed at all. I understand that she sees having sex with skinjobs as incestuous (despite her knowledge of “the swirl”), but Tigh wasn’t aware of the fact that they created the skinjobs until Anders had a bullet in his head. He still doesn’t seem to have memories of making them, so I forgive his new relationship with Caprica. I really dig Caprica now. I feel like she held her own as best she could with jealous Ellen and had no problem telling Tigh and Ellen to shut up when she was having her miscarriage.

What’s up with the Chief’s vote to go to the baseship? I feel like if he cared that much about leaving the fleet he wouldn’t have spearheaded the project to use “Cylon-goo” to save the Galactica. It seemed out of character. I do feel like he will end up changing his vote though.

For all the complaints about the soup opera-esque tone of the episode, I quite enjoyed the exchange that took place over Anders where Ellen found out about Six’s baby. Watching the others watch Ellen’s reaction was really funny to me.

Baltar’s harem has always annoyed me and have now become an extreme annoyance. I’m also expecting Paula to try and kill Baltar, but I really hope she fails. And a big “yay” for the return of Head Six who has now switched to a white dress. Looking forward to seeing Baltar deal with her again.

I agree that Tigh’s rant about “pure” civilizations was one of the best moments in the show along with Roslin’s acknowledgment of the dead cylons.

This episode showed how two best friends deal with the death of their baby. Tigh’s cylon child and Adama’s ship. Seeing the two men come together at the end was the highlight of the episode for me.

I do hope that next week steps it up a bit. I’d love to know more about the new piano in the bar that Starbuck seems so interested in. I’m also looking forward to Anders going nuts when he finds out the others want to leave the fleet and the return of Cavil. Four episodes left… AAAHHH!.

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