Music to My Frakkin’ Ears – Battlestar Galactica Episode 4.17 Review!
A brilliant episode. The opening montage was mesmerizing. I love it when BSG works composer Bear McCreary’s music into an episode and elevates it to the state of a whole other character…
Which leads me to my foot in the mouth moment of the week: Looks like my snarky comment in last week’s review about the bar getting a piano (yippity-do!) was premature — it was the anchor for which we (presumably) learned the truth about one Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck.
“KARA” RHYMES WITH “HERA”
Two episodes ago, Cavil and Ellen revealed the existence of another cylon model — Daniel, an artistic male, who Ellen favored. Cavil apparently boxed him or destroyed his line out of jealousy.
Although it wasn’t explicitly stated what Starbuck is, from the clues in this episode it seems to me she is a human/cylon hybrid. The piano player, who we come to know is her father, is named Dreilide. Okay, it’s not Daniel — but it starts with a “D”. He clearly taught her “All Along the Watch Tower” when she was little, and in my book that makes him a frakkin’ toaster. And who gave Starbuck the extra little push she needed to remember the activation tune? Hera — the other cylon/human hybrid.
The fact that Kara’s Pop is a hallucination is also a key clue in an episode that was heavy on the cylon projection technology. As Boomer shows off her mad projection skills to Tyrol, Kara is busy confiding in the imaginary piano player that she found herself dead on Earth — something she hasn’t told anyone. The only other character in the series to have this kind of imaginary interaction with a “Head” cylon is Baltar — which makes me wonder if Gaius is a hybrid, too.
If I’m reading the tea leaves correctly, it looks like each side has it’s hands on a hybrid now. Hera may have been whisked away to Cavil’s cabal, but the human fleet still has Kara-Frakkin’-Thrace, and she’s saved them more than once. Then again, she also has that nasty little nickname, “Harbinger of Death”… Bring on the final showdown!
BOOMER: BSG’S HEAD BITCH
Holy crap, that chick is cold blooded. Poor Chief. Has any of the Final Five shown as much confusion and dismay since finding out they were cylon as Tyrol? In the last three episodes alone he has pledged to Adama he’d save the ship with sentient cylon goo, voted to abandon the fleet and go back to the cylon baseship, and pull a jailbreak for his lost love Boomer… The dude is a mess. Chicks can totally do that to you.
Boomer’s manipulation through the happy home projections were convincing because this was a relationship forged in the early days of the fleet. Chief and Boomer were planning that home before she got switched on and capped the old man. In the time Chief spent with Callie, it was clear that the their relationship wasn’t the same — it was more out of slim pickings than love. Can I just say that Aaron Douglas and Grace Park are so fantastic in their roles they deserve their own spin off?
The fact that Boomer not only fraks Chief, then (literally) fraks Helo — my heart totally broke for Athena — then fraks the whole fleet by taking Hera wasn’t even the worst of it. On top of all that, she jumps so close to the Galactica that she damages the ship! What else could she have done to achieve title of BSG’s biggest bitch? Rickroll Adama on DRADIS?
I’M LEAVING THE OLD MAN ALONE THIS WEEK
Adama laid off the booze this week, so I won’t give him crap.
BUT… Did we just see Laura Roslin die??? She is physically linked to Hera because she shared a stem cell transfusion from her to cure her cancer, right? When Hera jumped away from the fleet, Roslin hit the floor. Will I see Bill drowning his sorrows again next week?
3 Episodes and 4 hours left, kids… What do you think???
Nar Williams is the host of Science of the Movies on the Science Channel, which premieres in May. He’s the Geek-in-Chief of the Achieve Nerdvana blog, where he writes about sci-fi, sci-tech, and geek culture. He also co-hosts the weekly video podcast Nerdbunker. Follow Nar on Twitter.
