Battlestar Galactica Round Table: “Someone To Watch Over Me”

Welcome to Tor.com’s round-table style discussion of this week’s episode of Battlestar Galactica, “Someone To Watch Over Me.” The participants this week are Rajan Khanna, Pablo Defendini, Jordan Hamessley, Theresa DeLucci 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: I really enjoyed this episode; I’ve always liked these slow episodes set to piano music (think Baltar on the baseship). On the other hand, there’s so much tension around the fact that there’s now only a handful of episodes left until the end...and nothing is frakking happening! I suspect we’re in for another infodump episode soon. I’m very surprised that we haven’t seen Cavil yet, and can only assume that he’ll feature prominently in the next episode. Thank goodness for two-hour season finales, right?

Well, it looks like we were all spot-on with the notion of Kara being Daniel’s daughter, and thus a Hylon! It was quite gratifying to see that, and also to get at least a partial explanation as to the importance of “All Along the Watchtower”. This, of course, immediately puts Hera’s fate in doubt—she is no longer the only Hylon out there, and I really wouldn’t put it past RDM and company to make little Hera yet another casualty of Boomer’s treachery. Alas, I predict that things will not end well for the poor beleaguered Agathons. Hell, as much as it would have sucked, I’m surprised that Boomer didn’t just kill Athena when she had the chance. Oh, and frakking Helo while Athena’s stuffed in the locker, there? That was cold, Boomer. Ice frakkin’ cold.

The Chief is also in for a world of hurt—there’s no way that he’s not going to be suspect número uno in facilitating Boomer’s escape. That said, I really feel for him. The projection scenes in their dream house were rather heartbreaking, especially at the end, whe Galen comes back to the empty house, and the montage of flashbacks to the Chief talking about Boomer was a nice touch. I’d forgotten he’d uttered that line about not being with the one he really wanted to be with.

The all-but reveal of Kara as a Hylon leads me to believe that Hylons in general have some sort of channeling ability: Kara via her artwork and Hera via music, even if she didn’t know that that’s what she was doing. And while we havent seen Kara projecting, it’s reasonable to assume that the visions in the Opera House could have been Hera’s infant psyche projecting, and bringing Roslin, Caprica Six, and Athena into her projection, much like Boomer does to Galen in this episode. Given these concepts, I’m willing to make a huge leap here: could Baltar also be a Hylon, and Head Six be his way of creating rudimentary and subconscious projections? It’s a leap, but I really need the Head Characters situation resolved or explained in some satisfying way—it’s always been a compelling device, and I’d hate to see it retconned or otherwise dismissed away.

The big question here is whether Kara will come clean about her corpse, and if so, will the Final Five put two and two together and figure out that there’s a functional resurrection hub (presumably their original resurrection hub) floating around somewhere in the vicinity of Earth?

Theresa: What a beautiful opening. Bear McCreary is doing some of the best soundtrack work on television (he composed a really moving piece for last week’s Terminator, too.) The music just made this episode. 

I thought it was interesting how quickly the Cylons are using capital punishment, now that they’re mortal. Of course Roslin would be down for a good execution and I loved the way she dismissed Chief. Chief, who is a big sucker. I thought the projection house was beautifully shot, but a little creepy. But it’s okay, because Boomer is creepy. I was fine with the romantic fantasy until Boomer imagined their daughter. I’m still not warmed up to the idea of how Nicky was written out of Chief’s life. Like Chief suddenly stopped loving Nicky because he wasn’t biologically related. I have a hard time believing that Tyrol turned his back on humanity as instantaneously as Tory when he discovered his Cylon nature. 

But this episode belonged to Starbuck. While I don’t feel we learned much new here, it was great to get some confirmation on fan theories. Everything about the climax gelled for me: the flashbacks to Kara’s past juxtaposed with her visions of her father in the bar, the four Cylons hearing “All Along the Watchtower,” and Boomer’s escape with Hera.

The sounds of Galactica deteriorating provided another score to the episode until, it, too, came to a head at the end. This had better be the crisis Adama needs to pull himself together. But it’ll be tough with Roslin’s heath also coming to a critical point.

I can’t imagine any one on this show is going to get a happy ending. 

Pablo: I agree on the capital punishment bit. I suppose it makes sense though: Cylons don’t really have the same deep-seated aversion/fear/respect/whatever to death than humans do—its never been a permanent thing for them. It makes sense that now that they have the option, they would flirt with it. I too was intersted to see a Six on the quorum, and Cylons in the ready room (were they all Sixes? I don’t remember seeing any Eights there), but this episode did a much better job of marking the passage of time, especially through that opening sequence, which I agree was beautifully executed.

I actually found Roslin’s dismissal of Galen a bit odd: I read it as indication that Roslin is now very comfortable giving military orders that would otherwise be issued by Adama. The Chief’s sideways glance to the Old Man for confirmation reinforced that feeling. It was a very little touch, and a subtle piece of cinema, but to me it spoke volumes about the state of the Old Man, and how much Roslin has been stepping up to fill not only her position, but the power vacuum left by Adama’s checking out.

Rob: I really really liked this episode, but man, they better start answering some questions because there are WAY too many loose ends here...

Roslin is dead. She has to be. If not, then that means she’s in a coma. Great. Another person in a coma. Maybe she and Anders can have a “coma conversation” via Cylon projection. I mean, come on, RDM & Co. have to start making some decisions here. If she is dead, however, then that means Adama has to wake up and reassert himself.

Even though Cavil wasn’t present in this episode, his machinations surely were, and I really enjoyed that. Boomer stealing Hera. Precious. I didn’t see that coming.

Kara, Kara, Kara....the big mystery. Yeah, it’s pretty clear (even though it’s not yet fact) that Kara is Daniel’s daughter. Thus, she’s a Hylon. Cavil would presumably know this, of course, but he sure doesn’t seem all that concerned about it. He’s more interested in Hera. I wonder why. As for Kara’s resurrection, I’m stumped. Truth be told, I’m not even sure the carcass she found of herself is even from the same timeline as our current Kara. We saw (from Apollo’s POV) Kara die in her ship—it exploded to smithereens. It just didn’t get damaged and then crash land somewhere: it blew up into little bits. That particular corpse that Kara found doesn’t fit that death. It’s incongruous. How old was that corpse? Anyway, when she does fess up about finding her body, hopefully the Final Five will be able to figure something out. Because I sure can’t. Another thing: what did the Cylons do to Kara many many episodes ago when they (actually Simon) had her in a hospital bed? Remember, she and Anders had had sex and then she was taken captive. Was she pregnant? Had they taken her fertilized egg (she Hylon, Anders Cylon) and done something with it? Or maybe not; maybe they had simply cloned her. Like I said, so many loose ends....

I feel bad for the Chief. I suspected (in the last episode) when he had agreed to leave the Fleet to join the Cylons it was because of Boomer. I figured he wanted to reconnect with Boomer and he knew that couldn’t possibly happen in the Fleet because of Boomer’s assassination attempt on The Old Man. Even if that had been the case, what a pipe dream that was!! Cylons wanting to off her because of her allying with Cavil. Good stuff. I agree, the Chief is headed for a world of hurt. If he’s not found out, he’s going to do something BIG. Even if he is found out, he’s going to do something big...

Jordan: I was really into this episode.

I loved all of the stuff with Kara and her vision daddy. She is totally a Hylon and I’m looking forward to her sitting down and talking with the Five. Tigh’s eye was fantastic when he heard her playing the song.

I don’t think Cavil knows about Starbuck. I think it is possible that the reason why Kara’s dad left was to protect her from Cavil.

I was totally duped by Boomer. All week I was looking forward to seeing Boomer and Chief reconnect and I was physically upset when she boned Helo and stole Hera. I understand that Boomer has issues with loyalty and such because of her past on Galactica and how she found out she was a cylon, but she is totally an example of Cavil’s manipulations. I hope she dies a painful death, because her actions in this episode were just plain cruel. Seeing Athena crawl to Helo and both of them understand what Boomer had done was heartbreaking. I will say that Grace Park deserves some props.

So we’re back to Hera being super special and wanted by everyone again. I can only imagine how pissed Starbuck is going to be when she finds out all that is going on with Hera, now that she knows there is a connection. I’m still curious as to why Roslin is so connected to Hera. I agree with Rob that it will be really frustrating if she is in a coma next week.

I do want to see Anders wake up or one theory I’ve heard that I’m sorta interested in is that Anders could become Galactica’s hybrid. Dude’s got a lot going on in his head and he just needs to be hooked up to something that can read it.

I want more answers.