Battlestar Galactica: Someone To Watch Over Me

March 8th, 2009

Season 4, Episode 17

Synopsis

A sad piano tune plays as pilots prepare for their routine daily mission searching for habitable planets. After updating Lee, Roslin, Caprica Six, and Admiral Adama about the continuing repairs to Galactica, Chief is disturbed to learn the Cylons plan to try Boomer for treason.

After visiting Anders, who is still in a coma, Starbuck visits the bar and complains about the piano player.

At work, Chief recalls his entire relationship with Boomer, which ended with her dying in his arms. Starbuck visits Helo to retrieve a box full of her old stuff that the other pilots saved after believing she was dead. Hera gives Starbuck a drawing of colored dots.

Chief visits Boomer in the brig. She says she’s thought about him every day since her death. Chief gets choked up and puts his hand up to hers against the glass. Chief finds himself in a beautiful, sunlit house, married to Boomer. He snaps out of the vision. Boomer aplogizes, saying she though he’d be okay with “Cylon projection.”

Chief can’t convince Ellen and Tigh to save Boomer. Chief and Boomer visit the dream house, where he meets a child he and Boomer never had.

Starbuck tells the piano player how as a child, her father — a musician — once gave her piano lessons. That evening, Starbuck has a disturbing dream of a young girl playing the piano. Starbuck tells the piano player about leading the fleet to earth and finding her dead body.

Chief begs Roslin to keep Boomer from the Cylons. She doesn’t listen, and signs release papers. Chief storms out of the room. The power goes out. Chief picks up a wrench and attacks a Number 8 model. He sets Boomer free and leaves the unconscious Number 8 model in the brig.

Boomer attacks Athena in locker room, ties her up, and stuffs her in a closet. Helo approaches Boomer in the bathroom, thinking she is Athena, and has sex with her.

The piano player plays a song with Starbuck, and scribbles some notes on manuscript paper. Starbuck takes out Hera’s drawing, which the piano player recognizes as music notes. As they play Hera’s song, Boomer kidnaps Hera and boards a raptor with a heavy crate. As the song grows louder and more confident, Tigh recognizes it and stares in disbelief. It’s the same tune that activated the Final Five.

Athena frees herself from the locker room. Helo calls for the paramedics and sounds the alarm that Boomer has escaped.

Boomer tells Admiral Adama over the intercom that she has Hera aboard. She takes off and jumps away alongside Galactica, damaging its hull. Roslin senses Hera is gone, and collapses in her quarters.

Chief overhears Athena and Helo screaming in disbelief over the loss of their daughter. He runs away in shame and into the imagined house, only to find it empty.

Thoughts

My annoyance with last’ week’s episode was largely alleviated with this one. Loved how the beginning of the episode referred back to earlier ones, specifically the flight crew’s repetitive routine and Chief’s relationship with Boomer. Chief’s desire to rekindle their relationship and having those hopes dashed was cruelly appropriate — you just can’t trust the Cylons. I really feel sorry for Chief’s predicament — last episode he wanted to jump away, now his actions put the only hybrid child into Cylon hands. Let the guy jump away so he can’t cause more damage.

I wasn’t as into Starbuck’s conversations with the piano player, but on my second viewing there are interesting hints that the piano player was imagined. Starbuck is first shown sitting at the bar, her face reflected in a mirror, showing that she is literally, talking to herself. Nobody else at the bar interacts with the piano player. When Tigh confronts her for playing the activation song, the piano player vanishes, indicating he was never there at all. We also learned Starbuck’s father was a musician, and a cassette tape with her father’s music on it has the name “Diedre Thrace.” The piano player is a vision like Baltar’s Head Six, and the musician element may point to Daniel, the “artistic” Cylon with corrupted DNA, and the connection between these two and the Final Five has to be going somewhere. Then we learned of “cylon projection” through which Cylons can send visualizations to one another — which again, indicates a mechanism for all these “head” characters. There are dotted lines being laid that should connect very soon — just like Hera’s drawing.

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