Battlestar Galactica - “Sometimes A Great Notion” (recap)

By Julia Diddy
Fancast.com

And so Battlestar Glactica careens back onto our radar screens, guns a-blazin’. Spoiler warning: this episode runneth over with countless “What the frak?!” moments. If you haven’t yet watched it, but have every intention of doing so, don’t ruin the bittersweet agony by reading ahead.

Onward……

Following their arrival on that giant piece of scorched sod that is passing for Earth nowadays, everyone is suitably gobsmacked. Colonel Tigh stands on the shore, observing the devastation. Helo reports no signs of human life. D’Anna confirms that she has received the same intel. The whole damn planet was nuked about 2,000 years earlier.

“It’s perfect,” says Roslin. “We traded one nuked civilization for another…….”

Dualla digs up a game of jacks from the burnt soil. On the shuttle back to the ship, she’s losing it.

The search party returns to a hangar packed to capacity with expectant faces. Roslin opens her mouth to deliver the bad news, but can’t manage to get any words out. Just a sad shake of her head.

Remaining on Earth, Starbuck and Leoben are rummaging off on their own, and find remnants from a viper crash. Leoben finds a piece of the wreckage with a number on it. Starbuck starts freaking out. It’s the same ID number from her viper.

The rest of the posse is excavating bodies – Centurian bodies, to be specific.

Back on the ship, the Cylon allies, along with Adama, Roslin and others, are examining some of the remains of the victims. It’s not one of ours, say the Cylons. “We’ve never seen this design.” The retrieval efforts have unearthed 250 skeletons or so at the landing site – but they’re not human, exactly. None of ‘em. The 13th tribe was a bunch of Cylons!

In a quiet moment between them later on, Adama reminds Roslin that she needs to tell the people something. Anything. Only she’s not looking like she’s gonna be saying anything coherent any time soon……..

Back on earth: Tyrol sees the writing on the wall – literally. He comes across a piece of the ruins that looks reeeeeeally familiar to him. He flashes back to his life before the nuclear blast.

Starbuck and Leoben are walking and talking. She’s annoyed that he’s changed his tune toward her. Now why would he do that?

On the ship: Dualla seeks out Apollo, who, like the others, is taking it all a bit hard and hiding in the pilot briefing room. He’s is bummed out about all those pilots who gave up their life for a dream that has bit the dust in such inglorious fashion. Apollo reminisces about the good times on Pegasus that he and D. shared. She laughs and remembers how he told her they’d have to keep the human race going – smooooooooth pick-up line, although it’s being recalled so poignantly now. These two really seem to be reconnecting. Awwwwwww. Also, she thinks he maybe ought to address the people if Roslin isn’t up to the task.

Back to Starbuck and Leoben: Starbucks sees something ahead in an open field and pushes past Leoben. There’s more wreckage. The pilot’s corpse is still in the seat. And, uh, don’t look now, but it has blonde hair. And it’s wearing her dogtags.

She wonders if she’s the harbinger of death that has led them all to their doom.

“What am I??!?!?!” she screams to Leoben. He freaks out and backs away from her. Girl, when even other Cylons are running as fast as they can away from you, you’re probably not something good.

Anders finds a guitar, reminisces about playing it once for a lady friend. Tyrol is huddled on the ground. He remembers life on Earth, too . So does Tory Foster. They are confused as to how they got to the colonies. 2000 years is a long time to forget, Anders points out.

Back on board, Laura is now a Bible burner. Screw the frakkin’ prophecies! Adama wants to know why she skipped her treatment, and if her immediate plans include just laying down and dying already. “You shouldn’t have listened to me,” she says. She was wrong about everything, and boy, is she taking it hard. She sends him away. She stokes the fire with some more pages from that useless book. Burn, sucker – burn.

Back on Earth: alone, Starbuck takes her own corpse and wraps it up, builds a funeral pyre, and attends her own funeral. There’s something you don’t see every day.

On board: Apollo is reliving his speech to the people. He and Dualla have enjoyed a night out. The spark has been revitalized! But he’s gotta go take care of some stuff. She and her man kiss goodnight and part ways.

Dualla goes to her locker. Gaeta can’t believe she’s all aglow and happy when the Earth is in ruins. He leaves. Dualla pulls out a gun and blows her brains out.

Apollo is standing over Dualla’s body in the morgue. Dad comes in to join him. He has no answers to offer his son, just hard liquor. Apollo leaves, and Adama cries over Dualla’s body. “What did you do?” he asks. “I let you down. I let everybody down.”

Adama takes more swigs from the bottle, and a gun, and goes looking for Tigh. This ought to be good. And it is. Oh, it is!

“Sit down, Cylon!” he barks to Tigh when he finally finds him. Here’s another BSG first: Adama appears to be waaaaaaaaaaay more drunk than Tigh! “Did they program you to be my friend?” he asks. “Instill in you all the qualities I most respect?” Tigh tries explaining that he was his friend because he wanted to be. But Bill’s looking for trouble, not reconciliation. He tells Tigh that his wife was smarter than he gave her credit for. You know, how she was constantly on the prowl, looking for a real man, because that’s precisely what Tigh wasn’t. He even reveals that Ellen once approached him. And not for small talk, either, goddamn it! Rather, “like a dog in heat.” Finally, Tigh’s renowned lack of patience kicks in, and he holds a gun to his old pal’s head.

But then Tigh realizes that Adama wants to die. “You don’t have the frakkin guts to do it yourself?” he barks. He says it’s the one time he can’t help him, and refuses to do the deed.

Adama downs another glass of the hard stuff despite Tigh telling him they’ve both had enough. (Wow. Too much for even Tigh is probably the kind of drunk that borders on what corpses must be thinking as the embalming fluid courses through their limbs.) Adama tells a quaint story about his crazy old fox-hunting uncle. The dogs would get a whiff of a fox, and………..well, it’s crazy how a pack gets whipped up into a frenzy like that. The fox often used to jump into a stream and drown itself. Tigh thinks the nostalgia for suicidal foxes is all well and good, but they can’t just swim out to sea themselves. Not now. He reminds Adama that they still have a ship to run and people to lead to salvation. Wherever the frak that might be now.

Apollo is changing the population count on the board. Minus one. Starbuck finds him. She needs to talk, too, but before she can deliver her little piece of news, she notices that he looks like hell. He tells her that Dualla committed suicide.

Adama and Tigh go back to their posts, and Adama’s all about moving on and finding the next safe haven. He tells Hoshi to check and see if their new Cylon allies want to come along for the ride. He then addresses the fleet, and tells them that the 13th tribe suffered amazing devastation, they needed a new home, went looking for one – and of course thirteen succeeded. What they accomplished, we can accomplish, he reminds the people.

Back on Earth, D’anna and Tigh sit amongst the ruins. She’s devastated, too. Tigh tells her not to count the old man out yet…he’ll find us a new home. D’Anna asks Tigh if he ever gets tired of fighting, if he ever just wants to give up?

Ask a silly question………..

We next see Tigh walking off the shore into the water – he’s soon chest deep, but before he can make like a fox and drown himself, his hand comes across a familiar remnant. He flashes back to his former life on Earth as a corporate stooge when the planet was attacked and his office building was crumbling. Ellen calls to him, trapped beneath some rubble, but she tells him it’s OK – “Everything is in place. We’ll be reborn together.”

Standing in the water, Tigh now remembers his death – but is that really the sort of thing that infuses a fellow with the desire to live?

WOW. Stay tuned. (Like you could keep yourself away at this point.) And if you want to retrace the steps that brought us here, catch past episodes from earlier in the season (which was a lifetime ago, already) right here on Fancast.

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