I’d almost call it “Twilight” myself…

Kenneth Hynek • 16th Mar 2009 • Entertainment, Science Fiction • Alia Atreides, All Along the Watchtower, Antarctica, Athena, Baltar, Battlestar Galactica, black hole, Boomer, Caprica, Caprica City, Caprica Six, Cavil, Cylon, Earth, Edward James Olmos, event horizon, faith, Final Five, Gaius Baltar, Gold Star Mothers, gom jabbar, Harry Potter, Helo, Hera Agathon, IV, Julius Baltar, Kara Thrace, Laura Roslin, Lee Adama, Paula Schaffer, pigeon, Samuel Anders, Saul Tigh, Sean Ellison, Sharon Agathon, Starbuck, Sun, Vladimir Harkonen, William Adama, Zak Adama

…except for the fact that “Twilight” is the name of a book and, more recently, a movie based on that book which, if I understand it correctly, is enjoying an immense amount of popularity at the moment, and which has elevated that guy who played Cedric in the fourth Harry Potter movie to the status of sex symbol.

Still, that’s what this — the penultimate aired episode of Battlestar Galactica (it’s actually the first part of the last episode, but aired separately) — felt like, given its title, “Daybreak.” It didn’t feel like actual daybreak, but like that fuzzy confusion between darkness and light that marks the twilight moments between when light first appears on the horizon and when the Sun bursts into view.

A lot of neat and probably important stuff happened in the episode, but precious little of it resolved into something definite.

For the purposes of this review, the episode will be divided into two parts for consideration: “present time” events and flashbacks (of which there are many). Although there is one other thing to discuss first.

As usual, mind the spoilers.

The opening sequence features shots of several things, only some of which are given more explanation later in the episode. First, a picture of the galaxy is shown (Michael Hall notes that the galaxy, assuming it is our own, appears to be “upside down”). The next shot is a bird fluttering about against a strong backlight. The third is a planet, with its parent star just cresting over the top of it (this planet is apparently our Earth, viewed from an angle that just betrays a glimpse of Antarctica).

The fourth shot is water droplets splashing into a pond of some kind, and the fifth in a planet again — this time apparently Caprica, pre-holocaust. The sixth shot is a pan across the skyline of Caprica City, which provides the setting for most of the flashbacks we see in the episode.

There’s been a lot of discussion as to the exact nature of the flashbacks in this episode, and what they might portend. Some have expressed their hope that the various flashbacks do not point us toward a disappointing “it was all a dream” revelation at the end, with the story in all of its four seasons revealed as little more than the grieving/coping process for the likes of Laura Roslin, Gaius Baltar, and/or Lee Adama. Others have noted certain parallels between the scenes and the “present time” events of the relevant people.

Adama’s flashback

This is a short, one-off scene in which William Adama — in civilian clothes — attempts to get himself out of having to do something which he evidently considers to be beneath a man who has commanded, in his words, “two battlestars and three escorts.” The man he is talking to basically tells him that we all have to pay the piper, and that this thing that must be done will only be for an hour anyhow.

I’m not at all sure what this scene connects us to, but I wonder if perhaps it doesn’t show us how Adama came to be on the Galactica to oversee its decommissioning. Yes, I know he was her commander prior to that point, but perhaps he hadn’t wanted to be the one making the speech that marked her removal from service. If so, that single hour has gone on for substantially longer than promised!

The other possibility is that this scene in some way connects to Zak Adama and/or the aftermath of his death. Perhaps Adama was being asked to speak to the Colonial equivalent of the Gold Star Mothers?

Roslin’s flashback

Roslin’s flashback has three main components:

• the aftermath of a baby shower that she throws for her pregnant sister; she and her other (non-pregnant) sister finish the last bottle of champagne, noting that the party guests drank a darn lot
• a visit from two police officers, shortly after the shower — a female officer whose name I forget, and a male officer named Sean — who inform her that her two sisters and father were killed in an accident caused by a drunk driver; she responds to this by walking into a fountain in the Riverwalk district
• a phone call she fields over a plate of sushi about three months later, in which she begs off becoming involved in the presidential campaign for a certain Mr. Adar (we know how that turned out!) and agrees — reluctantly — to a date with a man named Sean Ellison (she notes that the name sounds familiar, and appears to grimace a few moments later as though she just recalled why that was)

The sense I get is that one of two connections exists, joining the middle event to either the last event or the first, in the “alcohol factor” above. I’m thinking that either one of the intoxicated guests from the party was responsible for the death of Roslin’s family members, or else that this mysterious Sean Ellison was the drunk driver, and that it was just Roslin’s bad luck that the two of them had a mutual friend with an interest in matchmaking.

Perhaps it’s left up to us to decide; I’m actually not sure we’ll get an answer one way or the other.

Where some have expressed concern is in how Roslin, when she gets the bad news, goes out into the Riverwalk park and then walks out into the fountain, letting the waters course over her. The closing shot of the flashback is the shot from the opening montage of water splashing into a pond; this fades/cuts to a shot of Roslin’s IV drip in Galactica’s sickbay. I’ve read a couple snippets in which people have expressed worry that this scene, primarily, could point toward the ending being an “it was all a dream” moment.

I don’t personally think that’s the case, mind you. This scene gives us a framework, the precipitating tragedy in Roslin’s backstory that will influence or motivate many of her later decisions. And in some way, it does relate to her present circumstance — especially her cancer — as well, although I’m not sure how exactly.

Roslin is the last of her family, and is herself dying; she will likely die before seeing wherever it is that the Fleet ultimately ends up (this in keeping with the Moses/”dying leader” motif), and will pass away without any children of her own. If nothing else, these sequences establish that, in the new future to which humanity and Cylonity are being moved, the family Roslin will play no part, and have no presence. By extension, those things which Roslin represents will not be present in that new future.

So the question becomes, ultimately, what Roslin represents. Up until very recently, she was one of the most visible symbols of the recurrent cycle of violence in the BSGverse’s history, passionately committed to the idea that man and Cylon were to be forever enemies. She has also represented, I think, the dangers of power concentration in government. Her story and character also has a lot to do with faith, prophecy, and (lately) the rejection of both, and this too is relevant somehow (I think). But I’m not able, at present, to resolve these points into something cogent, so I’ll just leave it there for the moment.

Lee’s flashback

Lee Adama‘s flashbacks, I think, have a lot to do with his brother Zak. The two main sequences with Lee involve:

• Meeting Zak’s fiancé, Kara Thrace, for the first time (and yes, there are some initial Lee and Kara sparks), and cracking wise with his younger brother
• Stumbling into his house, drunk, mumbling about daring (and double-dog daring) someone to do something, only to find a pigeon fluttering about the place — he attempts to shoo away the pigeon

The second flashback corresponds to Lee’s present-day discussion with Baltar, in which Baltar pleads with Lee to allow his movement a voice in the government, which Lee rejects. Some have suggested that the pigeon-shooing corresponds, then, to Lee’s attempts to “shoo away” Baltar’s suggestion (more on that in a bit).

But I wonder if perhaps both of these sequences aren’t meant to have something to do with Zak? Could Lee’s drunken state and his mention of a dare have something to do with Zak’s death? Could Zak have perhaps been killed attempting a stunt that his brother had dared him to try? Could the bird — yes, it’s a pigeon, a “sky rat,” but still… — thus represent Zak/Zak’s spirit, which Lee had already been attempting to drown with booze and is now attempting to drive out, physically, with a broomstick?

Anders’ flashback

This is another fairly short flashback, which — much like the present day — features Samuel Anders floating in a tub of water. But whereas the present-day Anders is hooked up as the Galactica‘s hybrid, Anders in the flashback is back in his persona as a player for the C-Bucs, talking with a reporter after a game. He admits that his interest is not in stats, victories, or trophies, but in “perfection” — the perfect throw, the perfect catch, the perfect block, and the culmination and full realization of the beauty and poetry of creation, math, and physics.

I like Brad Templeton’s interpretation of this scene:

A flashback for Sam was surprising. After all, he’s not exactly at the level of the other characters, though of course he has become a plot device. This supports the idea that he will use his new control of Galactica to strike the military blow, using it. He will be the perfect weapon. Can we doubt that we will see him make the perfect shot, perhaps even the perfect catch?

I both hope and expect that the Galactica will perform, in her final battle, with both perfection and poetry, entirely due to Sam’s control and relentless thirst for…well…perfection.

Baltar’s flashbacks

These appear to deal with the initial encounters between Baltar and Caprica Six, and also appear to deal — perhaps concerningly — with Baltar’s father, Julius Baltar.

Heh…Gaius & Julius. Get it?

But I digress.

There are two flashbacks for Baltar:

• A scene in a limo with Caprica Six. They flirt and begin to make out, but are interrupted by a phone call from someone that Baltar threatens to sue “for abandonment” if said person does…something. A few minutes later, we learn what has transpired — Baltar’s father has stabbed his personal nurse in the arm out of fear that she’s been stealing his things. Baltar flies into a rage, and the two bicker about Baltar’s being ashamed of his roots. Julius has a few rather distasteful things to say about Caprica Six, who intrudes on the scene and seems oddly taken with the old man
• A second scene, a while later, involves Baltar bringing home a “date” only to find Caprica Six waiting in the living room of his home. After shooing his date upstairs with vague sexual overtones, he confronts Caprica and demands that she leave. He even goes so far as to dial the police before Caprica informs him that she has arranged for Julius to be moved to a new long-term care facility, one in which he can even “get to be a farmer again.” She leaves Baltar with the information card for this facility, called “The Regency.”

There’s two ways of looking at Caprica Six’s interest in Julius. The first possibility is that it was all a ruse to get her into Baltar’s good graces, to effect her plans of sabotage. And to be fair, her actions probably did help her enter into Baltar’s confidence (not to mention his bed), thus granting her the necessary access to the Colonial defence mainframe.

But she seemed genuinely taken with Julius all the same. That and the fact that it seems damned odd to introduce a character out of the blue like this who wasn’t somehow significant suggests, to me at least, that there’s more to who Julius is in the story; he’s not just a prop used by Caprica Six to win Baltar’s trust, but is himself significant somehow.

Hopefully not in this way, but one never knows. Edward James Olmos did say that the eventual explanation of Starbuck‘s return was rather dark and disgusting, and he seemed somewhat surprised that the network allowed it to be portrayed as it was. The speculation linked to at the beginning of this paragraph certainly satisfies the “disgusting” criteria.

There isn’t a lot that happens in the “present day” aspect of the episode; it basically sets up the finalé and the events that will transpire therein.

The Choice

We knew this was coming, and it is by far the main part of the episode; Adama decides to go after Hera Agathon and asks for volunteers to step forward to crew the Galactica on what will surely be a one-way mission. Much of the rest of the “present day” portions of the episode build toward, or proceed from, this event.

And to be fair, it’s a fairly simple event. Adama and Starbuck place a long strip of red tape down the middle of the hangar deck, and volunteers are asked to stand on the starboard side. It looks as though about a third of all assembled opt to join the mission, including the predictable players — the Final Five, Lee, Kara, Roslin (who manages to rouse herself from her bed), various Marines and pilots, and (apparently) most/all of those who were incarcerated for their role in the recent mutiny, including Racetrack and Skulls (who has evidently recovered from being shot). Caprica Six also joins up, and I’m betting that Baltar will have done so as well by the time the next episode airs.

So that’s it, then: the Galactica will in fact be sent out in style, in a last-ditch attempt to rescue one little girl from the clutches of the Cylons, secured safely away in a massive facility called “the Colony.”

The Colony

“The Colony”, incidentally, is just massive — in the shot below, which I have cribbed shamelessly from Brad Templeton’s discussion of that facility’s shape, two Cylon basestars can be seen (they are indicated by the arrows) for scale. Since we know that each basestar is approximately 5 km across, we can only infer that “the Colony” is altogether huge.

It is also positioned over a “naked singularity” — basically, a black hole sans an event horizon (that’s not quite true, but will do for the purposes of explanation). One notable thing that distinguishes a naked singularity is that, if one were to exist (their existence is still hypothetical, and possibly contraindicated by other theories), light would actually be capable of escaping it; it would thus be observable to an outside observer.

This appears to be the case in the episode, by the way; when Racetrack and Skulls discover the facility and the singularity it is in orbit around, they are pulled toward the center of the singularity, which appears rather like a star partly occluded by clouds.

Hera and the Cylons

Hera, it seems, has expanded her musical drawings to now include full scores; she is seen drawing a series of rows of her “dots” (five rows, I think). It should be noted that Cavil, observing from nearby, only sees dots; he doesn’t recognize what is actually being drawn.

As was noted previously, Cavil and his allies have something malign in mind for the daughter of Helo and Athena; Cavil very obviously intends to have the little girl subjected to all manner of experimentations. This is no doubt, again, an expression of his sadism, since if he really wanted to examine her genetic code he could have just asked Boomer to get a skin sample.

But ultimately, Cavil can’t resist the urge to cause fear and terror in others, from which to derive enjoyment. So Hera faces the threat of becoming a collection of specimen pieces as we enter into the final episode of the series.

You know, I was watching the Dune miniseries a while back, and for whatever reason I can’t — when considering Hera’s present plight — help but think of Alia Atreides and how she works to bring about the consolidation of her brother’s power, delivering the fatal strike to Baron Vladimir Harkonen with the Atreides gom jabbar as the endgame of Dune unfolds.

There’s been a lot of speculation that I’ve seen regarding how the Colonials could hope to a) defeat Cavil and b) defeat “the Colony.” Part of how that will come to pass will no doubt involve Boomer, who in this episode is visibly upset with how Cavil and the others are treating Hera. She will no doubt lead some kind of Centurion/Guardian rebellion against Cavil, possibly at the cost of her own life, and this will in part be his undoing.

But I can’t help but wonder if Hera might also have a role to play, as Alia did, in effecting Cavil’s final downfall.

There’s also the question of the larger fate of “the Colony” itself. Certainly, being situated over a singularity, it would seem to be reasonable to assume that it might itself be plunged into the black hole and thus destroyed. Exactly how this could be achieved is…questionable, given the sheer size of “the Colony” proper; even at full speed, the Galactica would be little more than a fly on the windshield if it attempted — per Hera’s vision — to play the role of battering ram.

(The one possible exception that I can think of is if Anders attempted to jump the Galactica into the middle of the facility, and then jump her out again, using the wake of the jump to rip the Cylon base’s guts out, to use Saul Tigh‘s phrasing for it. Of course, that would pretty much use up the Galactica’s allotment of jumps, and she would likely crack like an egg when she arrived at…wherever she’d be headed for. Earth, for example.)

At any rate, “the Colony” is positioned just over the singularity, and there is (of course) only one safe spot into which the Galactica can jump, which may or may not be a Lagrange point between “the Colony” and the singularity. And it’s at near-point-blank range. Also, it would appear that “the Colony” is quite close to the Fleet, only a single jump away.

So this is it, then. As Theoden might have said, it is before the black hole that the doom of this age will be decided.

Speaking of Anders…

…it would seem that Anders was somehow aware of the location of “the Colony,” although how this could be is not explained. It also appears that he has not been of significant assistance to Kara in her attempts to reason out the meaning of “All Along the Watchtower.” But I think that Anders will have a huge role to play in the next episode, and I suppose the real question is whether he survives to the end of the series. I had previously thought he wouldn’t…but am now not nearly so certain.

I’m honestly curious; how did Anders know where “the Colony” was? Moreover, why is “the Colony” so darn close to the Fleet?

Helo and Athena

They’re still struggling, with Sharon Agathon apparently unable or unwilling to forgive her husband for his unwitting role in the loss of Hera. She also appears to be convinced that Hera is already dead, whereas Helo remains steadfast in his conviction that his daughter can be saved.

I’m still not happy that the writers decided to play hell with these two; they were the one example of something halfway decent in the series, of something that actually demonstrated that humanity could make things work well. And now they too are in tatters.

Adama’s reversal

Fiercely atheistic Admiral Adama of the episode prior wound up reversing his stance on the issue of faith and destiny yet again, in his decision to go back and retrieve the picture of Hera from the memorial wall, and in his decision to go and rescue her. Ostensibly, this is because he was able to garner the location of “the Colony” from Anders, but there’s more to it than that; by the time he asked Anders where “the Colony” was, it was already set in his heart to attempt the rescue.

He flipped, in other words. Which was nice to see.

Baltar’s plea

There’s a scene in which Paula Schaffer informs Baltar that his movement enjoys more support that any of the others, which is presumably a reference to religious affiliation more than anything else. Baltar is moved to ask Lee Adama for a representative for his followers in the government, pleading with him:

Baltar says that Galactica has been more than a battlestar and has been a symbol for their hopes and dreams. He says that when Galactica is gone, “this life” will be over and a new one will begin. That new life will include a new way of thinking. Baltar says that he’ll do anything to help. He then says that he represents thousands of people and that he wants them to have some representation in the government.

Now, Baltar does attempt to argue that it isn’t for him that he’s asking this, which Lee simply doesn’t believe. And Lee has a point: Baltar has never done anything which wasn’t self-serving to some extent. Significant in this scene is that, whereas he might have responded with further argument (as he has done in the past, Baltar opted to concede the point.

There’s something significant to that, I think, which I think is related to what Caprica Six did for his father in his flashbacks. It came up in discussion that it would be out of character for Baltar to suddenly pick up a gun and leap out to defend others, and it was noted that:

Actually, I think a character arc where Baltar learns that he isn’t some special being — just an imperfect human being — would be the turning point that might move him out of his self-absorption.

In a sense, that’s what took place between Baltar and Lee. And I think, in a sense, that Baltar’s flashbacks build into this, if we assume that Caprica Six’s actions where Julius Baltar was concerned were motivated by genuine compassion for him. She becomes the example that Baltar can look to, of a truly selfless act, in choosing what next to do now that he has himself admitted that he is wholly and totally an imperfect, untrustworthy man.

So what will Baltar do next? I imagine he’ll join the volunteer mission, and do his part in the battle. Possibly, this will cost him his life, but it will nevertheless fulfill the Opera House vision in which he plays a role in safeguarding Hera. I also rather like Brad Templeton’s thought that both Athena and Helo would die on the mission to save Hera, leaving her in the care of Baltar and Caprica Six:

Athena and Helo die. But before they do, they become convinced either by virtual beings, or by the Final Five, that it is god’s plan that Baltar and a Six raise Hera.

Actually, Brad Templeton’s “How would I end it?” article is just worth a read in general — lots of good stuff in there. But that point, specifically, struck me as being poignant, and possibly prophetic.

Well, there’s the attack on “the Colony” yet to be seen, and it promises to be an incredible fight. The Galactica apparently gets boarded, and Anders likely orchestrates what will be an amazing performance by the dying ship in this final battle. Meanwhile, the rest of the Fleet comes to some fate, some final destination…which might have been hinted at with the Antarctica-bearing planet from the opening sequence. Certainly, the placement of “the Colony” near a black hole suggests how it will meet its fate, rather than becoming the final home of e.g. humanity or the Centurions/Guardians/Raiders.

(Unless the series’ ending will pay homage to another piece of black hole-centric fiction?)

Pace Brad Templeton, I might post an “how I want to see it end” article later this week. For now, I’m thinking that the series will, pace these speculative spoilers, end the Fleet and the surviving Cylon models up on Earth. Lisa Paitz Spindler thinks that the various clues we’ve been given point toward a final revelation that all this transpires in an alternate universe, which I concede is a possibility.

But if so, I wonder if the writers will be able to steer clear of the temptation to take us down the black hole? Or will that be how it ends, presented in a suitably vague way so as to leave open the question of whether anyone survives? And if so, will the naked singularity — which, remember, is theoretically capable of emitting light — take on the appearance of Kara’s mandala as the Fleet and “the Colony” plunge into it?

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