Battlestar Galactica: Not Without My Hybrid Daughter

As Galactica undergoes massive structural repairs, we take the time this week for an introspective look on the debilitation, decay, and demoralization of Kara Thrace.  We begin with looking at a brief day-in-the life of Kara: offering the last known tube of toothpaste in her daily briefing to the pilots before they–now human and Cylon– head out to look for an inhabitable planet.  The speech is the same every day.  She has said the same words every time.

Roslin and Lee have formed a new government with representatives from every ship.  The Cylon Baseship representative–a Number Six–presents herself and asks that Boomer be transferred from Galactica to her Baseship so she can be tried for treason and executed.  They aren’t pleased that she sided with Cavil during the Cylon Civil War.  Galen looks on and is concerned.

Galactica experiences regular tremors and power outages and we, like Adama, know she is falling apart, a visible sign of the recent mutiny.  Kara is also falling apart without Anders, who remains in a coma but with inexplicable brain activity.  She spends her off-duty time at Joe’s Bar, where a mystery man is playing the piano and trying to compose a song.  The song is getting on Kara’s nerves but still she stays and listens, egging on the composer.  She gives up on that and visits Helo’s quarters to get a box of her old things that people collected after they thought she died.  Helo got as much of it back as he could; the only item she takes is a music tape.  Oh and little Hera gives Kara a drawing of what looks like planets.

Galen is having his own issues, obsessing over Boomer and remembering what they once had.  He visits her in the brig and they Cylon mind meld or something.  Anyway they envision the house on Picon they dreamed about, including their daughter.  Galen, who we recall lost his wife and what he thought was his son, is drawn to these shared visions and how neither he nor Boomer ever stopped loving each other.  He asks the Original Five to stop the trial of Boomer and then beseeches Roslin not to extradite Boomer to the Basestar. Roslin tells Galen Boomer is just preying on his emotions.  He won’t hear it, and since no one will help, Galen decides he’ll help Boomer escape.

Back at the bar, Kara strikes up another conversation with the piano man; there’s a meeting of the minds as they start to compose the piece together.  As he starts writing the second movement, she says it’s similar to another composer, explaining she knows about music because her father played and taught her how to play.  (So the tape she got from Helo was probably of her father.)  We cut to flashbacks of Kara as a child but we never see who he is.  On her own, Kara dreams of herself as a child playing a piano in a Galactica hangar bay; she is jolted awake when the child turns around and sees her charred corpse from Earth.  She tells the piano man about her apparent resurrection but he does not have any answers.  He talks about leaving his wife because she wanted him to stop playing the piano once they had a kid.  Kara thinks he sounds just like her father.  Hmmm….  The mystery man tells Kara she should play the piano again, particularly that song he taught her that she always liked.  But she hasn’t played since her father left many years ago.  She tries but stops and tells him to play instead.

And here’s where it gets interesting.  Galen causes a power outage, kidnaps a random Eight working in Galactica, and swaps her with Boomer all before the power comes back on.  Boomer walks in on Athena who knows it’s Boomer but not fast enough–Boomer knocks out Athena and puts her in a storage locker and takes her clothes.  Helo walks in on Boomer washing her hands; he wants some goodbye Cylon love before she, or rather Athena, goes on a six-day mission.  They do it in the bathroom while a tied up Athena watches from inside a locker.  It’s incredibly graphic and clearly Boomer’s been listening to Aphrodite in a Nightie.

Back at Joe’s Bar, Kara is playing a song while the man writes it down.  She realizes the notes match what Hera wrote on the paper she gave to Kara.  As the man plays the bass part of the song, Kara stumbles in with the melody.  We cut to Boomer, now disguised as Athena, taking Hera out of daycare and then getting Galen to help lift an unusually heavy crate into a raptor.  We cut back to the bar where Kara is playing “the Song” with the man.  Tigh, Ellen, and Tory are sitting nearby and are shocked that someone else knows the tune.  Kara realizes the man next to her is her father and that he taught her this song when she was a child.  Tigh asks Kara where she learned the piece and we see that she is alone at the piano: the man, her father, was an image in her head.

A beaten Athena stumbles into the briefing room and Helo learns the truth and that Hera is missing.  They act quickly to stop Boomer from getting off the ship, but Boomer is one step ahead and plans to jump–the shock of the jump will shatter part of Galactica.  In her chambers, Roslin senses the imminent departure of Hera and begins to shake.  Adama orders the closing of the flight deck but he isn’t fast enough: Boomer barely makes it out and jumps away, blowing out a portion of Galactica.

With Hera gone, Roslin collapses, and Galen realizes he unwittingly helped Boomer kidnap Hera.  In the Galactica nursery, Ellen, who’s clearly the brains of the Original Five, explains that Cavil must have orchestrated everything: her escape with Boomer so that Boomer could get Hera to Cavil.  The importance of Hera, while still unknown, is clear to Ellen, because how else could the child have known the Song.

We end with Kara listening to the recording of her father, Dreilide Thrace, while laying on a comatose Anders.  To the music, we see Galen in the imaginary house he made with Boomer–the house is empty as Galen frantically searches for the lies implanted by a very ruthless Boomer.

For just the final segment, I thought this was a great episode, but here’s the rub.  With only three episodes (four counting this one) left, is this the most effective way to wrap up the story?  This episode was very artsy and beautifully done but at this point I have to wonder if we’re just going to wrap everything up in a very unsatisfying way.  We shall see.

P.S. What’s the spread on Dreilide Thrace actually being the lost Number Seven, Daniel?  I’d say it’s a pretty sure bet at this point.

Season 4, Episode 17: Someone to Watch Over Me (originally aired February 27, 2009)

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Photographs courtesy of Carol Segal and NBC Universal