Memo to Eric S: No worries, I’m more of a Grace Park guy, myself.
Was it just me or did the opening of this week’s episode, with Six and Baltar singing softly while various foreboding camera work went on, feel more like the opening sequence for a horror movie? Kind of fitting, in a way.
It was kind of odd that, on a show that featured so many characters resorting to alcohol to solve their problems, we didn’t see Colonel Tigh drinking. Come to think of it, I’m not sure if we’ve seen him drinking since he recovered from that nasty bout of excessive drinking and bitterness. Perhaps he’s decided to lay off the stuff for a while.
We sort of had development along the Lee/Kara/Dee/Sam front this week. After some encouragement from Sam, Starbuck was finally willing to ‘break her sacred vows’ and do the whole divorce thing to be with Lee. And Dee pretty much gave permission to Lee to leave. So, of course, he opts to ‘re-commit’ himself to his wife. But since Starbuck and Lee still want each other, all this really does is but as back to where we were at the start of the season, except this time Lee is the one who chickened out.
The major issue of this week’s episode was, of course, Baltar’s imprisonment, and the treatment he received from his captors. I thought it was a bit strange that the guard, who had been paying enough attention that he immediately noticed when Baltar started to doze off, apparently completely missed out on Baltar making a noose, climbing on to his bed and trying to hang himself. Maybe he was only really alert some of the time.
I really liked how the scene with Roslin freaking out at Baltar played out. While I was watching it was kind of rolling my eyes. Roslin’s one of those people who is usually quiet when she’s angry (see when she actually ordered someone to be thrown out an airlock), so her yelling and screaming didn’t seem very believable to me. But when Adama pointed out the likelihood that Baltar saw through her bluff, it became just a bad choice on the part of Roslin instead of inconsistent writing.
Baltar’s status as a possible Cylon apparently pretty much stripped him of any rights. He was sleep deprived, force fed, denied the possibility of a trial (despite his demands for one) and, most fun of all, tortured with drugs. While some people seemed to be a bit uncomfortable with the drugging (and Cottle didn’t seem to be a fan of forced feeding), it wasn’t until after Baltar confirmed he wasn’t a Cylon, while drugged, that Roslin decided he deserved a fair trial. One wonders if Baltar’s treatment will set a precedent for how other suspected Cylons are dealt with in the future.
In regards to the trial, it seems like a lot of it will be focusing on what he did during the occupation of New Caprica (granted the trial hasn’t actually happened yet, but given how people were talking, it seems like it’ll play a major part in the trial). There are a lot of things Baltar could be held directly or indirectly responsible for (in some cases things the humans don’t even know about, like his providing Gina with the nuke that was eventually used to blow up Cloud Nine), but his responsibility for the crimes committed during the occupation of New Caprica is, at worst, pretty much minimal (and if his claims that he knowingly allowed Gaeta to smuggle information to the Resistance are true, then he actually helped bring about an end to the occupation). From what we’ve been shown, there’s not a single crime Gauis could have prevented by standing up to the Cylons. Sure he could have refused to work with them, but then he would have been killed and a new figurehead would have been put in his place. He had no real power and his choices really only impacted on whether or not Gauis Baltar lived. Surely what he did is no worse than any of the other people who worked with the Cylons during the occupation and all of those people were pardoned (well, the ones that weren’t killed in those secret trials).
Much like Boomer before him, I think Baltar’s well on his way to giving up on humanity entirely, thanks almost entirely to how humanity reacts to him. He was clinging to the possibility that he was a Cylon to justify his actions, and even though he’s been deprived of that belief, I don’t forsee him having any qualms with further assisting the Cylons if/when he escapes (of course, his belief that he’s ‘The Chosen One’ should help on that front as well).
There’s no new episode next week, presumably because of the whole ‘Super Bowl’ business, but in two weeks time we learn that the fleet actually does have more than one doctor. But, if the preview is any indication, the other guy seems to be much more with the EVIL!
