Battlestar Galactica: I Believe In Angels

Once again we have a slow episode, only this time nothing interesting happens.  To be clear, a lot happens but nothing happens, you know?  Let’s make this quick.

With Boomer’s kidnapping of Hera, everyone, well mostly Ellen and Kara, thinks Hera is the future of human and Cylon races and a way to stop the cycle of violence betwixt man and machine.  Once again we hear exposition about something being bigger than all of us, but what that is, we still do not know.  Adama is tired of the talk of destiny and superstition and is not having it even as he reluctantly sends out a reconnaissance ship to look for the Cylon colony.  They learn that it was moved just before the Cylon Civil War.

Laura is back in sick bay waiting to die.  To pass the time she has more visions of Hera in the Opera House and then gets high while reminiscing with Adama.  Caprica-Six is also having visions and speaks with Gaius about how he’s still a creep.  Well, we knew that.

On Boomer’s ship back to the Cylons, she learns the hard lessons of motherhood, namely that children can be fussy.  But still, it breaks her robotic heart to hand Hera over to Cavil for whatever he plans to do to her.  We’re supposed to have sympathy for Boomer but I just can’t muster any.  Of note, Cavil tells Hera that she’ll have new playmates soon.

From listening to Gaius’s spiel about angels among us, Kara talks to him (while she’s on the can) about doing some sciency things to figure out what she is.  While he’s playing Mr. Wizard, Kara visits Anders, who’s now hooked up in a tank like a Hybrid but he’s still unresponsive.  Kara wants to put him out of his, or maybe her, misery and makes to shoot him in the head.  He suddenly wakens, grabs her hand, drives the ship’s circuits wild, and reminds Kara that she is “the harbinger of death” and “will lead them all to their death.”  What a romantic!  They unplug him before he can jump the ship without authorization.

While all of this high level drama is going on, Galactica is falling apart faster than ever with Exhibit A being a Six getting sucked out into space and Exhibit B being a lot of injured crew.  At a funeral service for the deceased repair crew, Gaius reveals that Kara Thrace died and returned to them.  She, like Della Reese, is an angel among the fleet.  I suppose she didn’t like the comparison because Kara slaps his face, and a very angry Adama clears the deck.  In the end, I’m surely not alone in my confusion over the motivations of the main actors and the reactions by those in attendance for this scene.  But Lee and Kara have a long-needed, but brief, heart to heart, and Kara puts a photo of herself up on the memorial wall.

The new Kara plugs Anders back in and asks him about the music and the pattern therein (not The Pattern).  While they sit and wait, we turn to the two old friends, Adama and Tigh. Adama has another breakdown but reluctantly decides to decommission the old girl and to transfer the passengers and salvageable parts to other ships.  Tigh, though, puts up a good fight but in the end he listens to Adama and they drink scotch while figuring out how to wrap up the last two episodes of this series.

Season 4, Episode 18: Islanded in a Stream of Stars (originally aired March 6, 2009)

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Photographs courtesy of Carol Segal, NBC Universal and IMDbPro