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Battlestar Galactica: The Hub

June 8th, 2008

Season 4, Episode 9

Battlestar Galactica: The Hub

Synopsis

The basestar with Roslin, Batlar, and a crew of viper pilots jumps away in search of the Cylon resurrection Hub. During jumps, Roslin imagines herself aboard an abandoned Galactica seeing herself on her death bed, accompanied by Elosha the religious leader who died on Kobol (Home (1)).

Cavil and Boomer unbox a Number 3, in hopes of stopping the Cylon civil war. Roslin asks Helo to bring this Number 3 to her, before the hub is destroyed.

To destroy the hub, several heavy raiders will tow vipers with their engines off to avoid detection. The viper pilots don’t completely trust the Cylons, and Sharon tries to defuse their concerns. Meanwhile, Baltar talks to a toaster Cylon about the unfairness of the Cylon hierarchy and the gospel of the Cylon religion.

As the rebel basestar jumps to the location of the resurrection hub, Number 3 kills Cavil, and Boomer runs away. The vipers are launched and the hub’s FTL drive is taken out. A missile hits the rebel basestar and Baltar is severely wounded.

Roslin bandages up Baltar, who near death and drugged with painkiller, confesses that he gave the Cylons the access codes which allowed the initial attack on Caprica. Shocked, Roslin tears off Batlar’s wrappings, intending him to bleed to death.

The hub is destroyed and Helo and Athena return to the rebel base star with Number Three. As the rebel basestar jumps away, Roslin has another vision of her own death and Adama’s sorrow. Roslin then feels sorry for Baltar and rebandages him, saving his life.

Helo delivers Number Three to Roslin. Three confirms that she knows the identity of the final five are, and jokes that Roslin is one of them. She then says she won’t divulge their identities until they return to the fleet.

The rebel basestar appears at the rendezvous point where Adama waits, alone in a raptor. He’s happy to see Roslin and she confesses her love for him.

Thoughts

The Good

  • Roslin’s vision of herself in the hospital bed, is reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • The importance of the hub’s destruction is vast, as the Cylons are now mortal, which will surely change their entire approach to life and possibly their conflict with the humans. It also places much importance on the surviving Cylons within the fleet (Number Three, Athena, pregnant Caprica Six, and the final five) as if any of them die, that’s it. This may be the final five’s best defense toward death at the hands of the humans – with their knowledge of earth, they are more valuable alive than dead.
  • Number Three’s announcement to Roslin that she’s one of the final five was timed just right – I thought, she’s joking, then she’s serious, then not. Great moment, and I guess my favorite candidate for the last Cylon has been eliminated.

The Bad

  • I was fairly disappointed that the hybrid didn’t divulge any useful information as to the nature of Roslin, Athena, and Baltar’s shared visions.
  • Also disappointed that Baltar didn’t die. It did serve to “humanize” Roslin but truth be told, I’m ready for major characters to start biting the bullet. But what will Roslin do with the information? Will her sympathy extend to preventing justice served for his crimes?
  • Lastly, I’m displeased with the “hooking up” of Roslin and Adama. It’s yet another thing I didn’t want to see this season and it looks like it too shall come to pass.

Conclusion

All in all, this episode was more exciting than the one previous, but several plot developments (or lack thereof) were lightly annoying. Still, I’m really amped up for the next episode (Revelations), the last of this first half of season 4. I read elsewhere that this episode could have served as the show finale in the even the writer’s strike wasn’t resolved, so it should be twelve kinds of awesome. Fingers crossed.

Next Episode: Revelations
Previous Episode: Sine Qua Non

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  • I get the feeling that TPTB have started a bunch of things during the series that just aren't going to get resolved properly unless they get some serious treatment in part 2 of this season, like:

    - Starbuck's story - where the heck did her Viper come from when she "returned from Earth"
    - little Nicky the secret Cylon child
    - Hera herself... got to be more to her.. plus she seems to be ageing quickly
    - Gaita..? Dee...?
    - Tory killing Cally
    - the shared visions between Roslin, Caprica-6, and Athena
    - Tom Zarek - there's got to be more to happen with him
    - now C-6 is pregnant...
    - why aren't there any more worries about food or fuel?
    - the Galactica itself probably isn't in great shape since the New Caprica rescue/atmospheric plunge and burn
    - the fact that they haven't run out of things like medication, alcohol, basic supplies like clothing, weapons/ordanance...
    - I expect the series to end with Galactica's destruction, among other things


    But I expect next week to be quite good, too. :)
  • Totally - with a list like that, how will the show tie up any of those
    threads satisfyingly? Each one - say "why does Batlar see Head Six and share
    visions with Roslin and Sharon" could have a whole show to itself. I don't
    think they could save it all for the last episode and do some huge
    mega-solution without any one of the topics getting short shrift. This is
    why I have been jonesing for answers for quite some time or hoping
    characters die so we don't have to think about their parts in the plot or
    even their candidacy as the last of the final five.

    Lastly, Tom Zarek - I happened upon another (admittedly weak) bit of evidece
    for him being the fifth cylon. All the other four have "T" in their names:
    Colonel Tigh, Samuel "T" Anders, Tory, and Tyrol. The only other characters
    I can think of with "T" are Starbuck (Kara Thrace) and... Tom Zarek. But
    there's a lot of other evidence for him being the last of the final five -
    always on the outskirts of credibility and jockeying for power in the fleet
    in illegitimate ways. Plus, the tie in of having him be the key to the whole
    series would be a neat tie-in from the original to the reimagining.
  • See, I think they're royally screwing Zarek's character over in the series because he's coming across as very, very weak, a pushover, even, because now he's given up the presidency twice with nothing to show for it except his life. He really hasn't done anything significant except helping Lee get his seat on the quorum (for reasons that still aren't clear).

    I think they have to pull off some kind of major plot twist in order to make him relevant. Making him the 5th could help but it would have to be done perfectly in order to have credibility.

    You know, I totally forgot about Head Six and Head Baltar... mainly because I think that TPTB have forgotten, too...
  • Jason, I wanted to send an email -- but I was too dumb to figure out your address... ;-)

    Your single-post pages are throwing a javascript error -- try running your site through Firebug to catch it. Cheers!
  • Thanks - I think I solved it by disabling a plug in. Will have to revisit to
    see if that really fixed the error. I'm using Firefox 3 which doesn't seem
    to support firebug...
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