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Battlestar Galactica Commentary, Episode Two, "Six of One"

I want to start my entry about the latest Battlestar Galactica episode, "Six of One," with a short note about the premier's rating numbers.  I'd never really paid attention to the actual rating numbers until I started blogging about Jericho last season.  I was quite surprised to find that 7 million viewers was inadequate to prevent the cancellation of the series, mostly because that sounds like a lot of people to me.

Battlestar Galactica's Season Four Premier, "He That Believeth In Me," garnered 2.14 million viewers, and this is cause for excitement.  I know that the show is on cable channel SciFi, so there are different expectations for a show, but Jericho certainly doesn't look more expensive to produce that Battlestar Galactica.   If it is more expensive, then someone needs an efficiency expert.

Besides, I simply don't believe the Battlestar Galactica numbers. It suffers from what I call "The Enterprise Effect."  This is when traditional models for measuring the viewership of a show fail to show the real popularity of a show whose target demographic prefers to watch television on their computers, either streaming or by torrenting the show. Battlestar Galactice has an IMDb rating of 9.1 out of 10.  A lot more than 2.14 million people are watching this show, and it is time that SciFi figured out how to take advantage of that.

Ok, now on to episode two, "Six of One."  The premier ended with Baltar performing a coincidental miracle and Starbuck pointing a gun at Roslin.  We start this week with Tighe barking orders at Helo, telling him to make sure not to shoot the President.  Starbuck tells Roslin that she wants to hate her "so much" because so many people died as a result of Roslin's vision.  Starbuck says she saw Earth in a vision and that Roslin should trust her.  Starbuck gives Roslin the gun and an excellent speech about dedication to the fleet.

The security guys come in with Adama and Tighe and pigpile on Starbuck, who keeps protesting that she is losing the ringing, the way to Earth.  She desperately wants them to understand that the window is closing.  Katee Sackhoff does a pretty good raving lunatic impersonation, given that we've watched her be mostly sullen for three seasons. 

After the credits, we get the oddest montage.  One of the Bathtub Cylons (not the Grotesque on from Razor) is ranting semi-coherently:

"The excited state decays by vibrational relaxation into the first excited singlet state. Yes, yes and merrily we go. Reduce atmospheric nitrogen by 0.03 percent. It is not much consolation that society will pick up the bits, leaving us at ape modern where punishment, not interdiction, is paramount. Please cut the fuse. They will not harm their own. End of line. Limiting diffusions to two dimensions increases the number of evolutionary jumps within the species. Rise and measure the temple of the five. Transformation is the goal. They will not harm their own. That defunct civilization..."

All of this is set to piano music that I should probably recognize, and overlaid with images of the Bathtub Cylon and Boomer doing topless ballet for the Cylon that's trying to find Scott Bakula.  I'm not kidding about the topless ballet part.  After this, we see Six, Xena, and the male Cylon who looks like a generic LA Actor guy (the one from the space station in the miniseries) are trying to persuade Dean Stockwell that the Final Five are in the Colonial Fleet with the humans. They say that the Raiders refused to continue fighting in the last engagement because they were afraid to hurt the Final Five.  Stockwell gets angry because it is against the rules to openly discuss the Final Five.  For some reason, he believes that contacting them threatens the survival of the Cylons.

The Four Doubters (the Colonials who think they are Cylons) are trying to figure out who the fifth Cylon is.  They decide that Baltar might know, and they devise a plan to seduce him for information.  They're not sending Tighe to do the seduciton, which is probably smart.

The Cyclons take a vote on whether or not to reconfigure the Raiders so they will stop worrying about the Final Five.  They're deadlocked, three models for and three models against, until one of the Boomer models switches sides.  This is unheard of, and there's a big fight about whether or not it should be allowed.  We also find out that the Raiders are sentient.  This puts "Scar" in a whole new light.

We cut over to Apollo's retirement ceremony.  This whole plot line is bizarre to me.  You don't just leave the military when your entire species is on the verge of extinction because you feel like being a lawyer.  They give him a fine sendoff in the flight bay, though.  He gets a plaque for his service, a fine military understatement.

Baltar is falling for the Four Doubter's plan.  If a woman looks at him doe-eyed, he turns into Bill Clinton.  Baltar has started to see himself, in addition to Imaginary Six, which is not a good sign for his continuing mental health.  Actually, the two Baltars are pretty awesome... let's call them the Batshit Twins.  The Doubters have sent Roslin's assistant, who appears to really get into the encounter.

Xena gives the other models an ultimatum: stop lobotomizing the Raiders, or else.  She brings Centurions into the meeting room and informs the other models that she has removed the chips that prohibit higher function in the Centurions.  She has given them the ability to reason.  They kill all the other models.  This is fascinating to me.  The Cylons are making the same mistake that the humans made - giving their tools the ability to revolt.  It won't take long for the Centurions to figure out they don't need the humanoid Cyclons at all.

Adama busts Starbuck out of the brig and gives her a ship, telling her to find the way to Earth.  He says he is tired of being afraid to lose things.  He lets her go because he has to believe that she knows the way to Earth.