Sometimes a Great Notion
Monday, January 19, 2009 at 08:00am by GeekBoyBattlestar Galactica is back, for the first of the final ten episodes. The story picks up exactly where it left off last June (which, by the way, was about 3 months too frakking long), with the humans and Cylons standing on the shore of a seemingly ruined Earth. And as far as I’m concerned, it did not disappoint at all. As promised, questions are being answered and mysteries are being revealed.
Here’s the Top 5 for this episode …
1) What happened to Starbuck? Okay, so we still don’t really know. But we do know that when she got sucked into that vortex back in Season 3, her Viper crashed on “Earth” and she died. We know this because she and Leobon actually find the Viper’s cockpit with Starbuck’s body in it. As for when exactly in Earth’s history she crashed, how she’s still walking around seemingly alive, and/or where the shiny new Viper she flew back to the fleet came from, we don’t know yet.
2) This IS apparently Earth. But it’s Earth 2000 years after a nuclear holocaust. No word yet on who started it — the Cylons? the humans? — but apparently nobody won, considering that the planet is still incapable of supporting life two millennia later.
3) The Final Five lived on Earth, 2000 years ago. Tyrol not only has a flashback, but finds a wall with a silhouette of his nuclear-blasted body burned into it. Sam and Tory also have memories of Earth. So somehow, they were here back then, died, and were reborn into bodies that eventually made their way back to Kobol. Which would explain why they became aware of their Cylon nature when they got close to Earth. Although it doesn’t explain how the four of them would have coincidentally ended up back here again, without really overtly doing anything to make that happen.
4) The Thirteenth Tribe was Cylons? After digging up some bodies, Baltar concludes that the “humans” on Earth weren’t actually human at all, but human-looking Cylons. Which means the tribe that left Kobol thousand of years ago was some kind of Cylon. That’s right kids — if this is true, it means that I’m a Cylon, he’s a Cylon, she’s a Cylon, we’re a Cylon, wouldn’t you like to be a Cylon too?
5) And the Fifth Cylon is … Ellen Tigh. Out there in the blogosphere, I’m sure at least a few people are patting themselves on the back for guessing correctly on this one. It fits what we were told — that the last Cylon would be somebody we already knew, but that wasn’t in the fleet. Which Ellen wasn’t, because she was dead at the time D’Anna made that statement. Regardless, the reveal proves more intriguing than the knowledge itself — we learn that Saul and Ellen Tigh were a couple on Earth as well as Kobol, and that in the moment before her death, Ellen tells Saul that they will be reborn together again.
Mysteries aside, there are several poignant moments during this episode. Faced with a devastated Earth, Roslin has a crisis of faith, and burns the pages of her Prophecy Bible. Dualla, seen crying early on as she clutches at Earth soil tainted by radiation, seems to undergo an optimistic transformation, going so far as to reconnect with Apollo … but it’s apparently all just denial on her part. She kills herself with a shot to the head after her date with Apollo, and this sends Papa Adama even further into the drunken funk triggered by discovering that Saul Tigh was a Cylon. He tries to get Saul to kill him, but he doesn’t, instead reminding Adama of his role and his responsibility to the fleet — which Adama takes to heart, ordering the crew to search for the closest habitable planets.
It was a strong return episode, and has me excited about the remaining nine.
By the way, “Sometimes a Great Notion” is the name of the novel by Ken Kesey, whose first novel was the classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But based on what I know of that novel, I haven’t been able to figure out why the writers chose this as the episode’s title.
1. Dave said ( Monday, January 19, 2009 at 9:31 am )
“Sometimes a Great Notion” is about a man living in Oregon, I think, logging and fighting the union and the river as everything he loves is stripped from him. The title is from a Led Belly song:
Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in the town
Sometimes I get a great notion
To jump into the river an’ drown
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....on_(novel))
Relating to the fox story Adama told Tigh, I take it.
And may I say: Oh. Mah. Gawd. I had friends over and I don’t think any of us took a decent breath until it was over. I think I saw Dualla’s suicide coming (it wasn’t a shock to me as she was putting her things away for the last time and then pulled out the gun), but it was still heartbreaking. She had decided on the Raptor back to Galatica that she had had enough, and she didn’t want to go any further. She gave herself one last, nice day, gave Lee a last present of hope, and then … stopped.
Wow.
2. GeekBoy said ( Monday, January 19, 2009 at 10:33 am )
So how did that story go again? Some foxes are being chased by hounds. They reach a river. Half of the foxes swim across to the other side and escape. The other half are afraid to swim, and get killed by the hounds. And one gets halfway across, stops, floats out to the sea, and presumably drowns. Something like that. So yeah, that ties into the river theme in both the song and the novel. When Tigh first started walking out into the ocean, it seemed like they were making us think he might drown himself.
3. Jason Toney said ( Monday, January 19, 2009 at 10:42 am )
I thought it was quite the amazing episode. It’s not like the show shies away from despair but all the scenes in this one were especially terrible.
The most brilliant bit of work for me — besides the finest acting Kandyse McClure has ever given in her role as Dualla — was the scene right before her suicide when she and Lee are recounting his speech to the fleet. To show the speech would’ve showcased a hero moment and changed the tone of the episode but to give us this intimate retelling? It’s enough to know that we’re going to get past this but not enough to make us feel really good.
One of the best acted episodes ever of the series. And that’s saying a lot.
4. sandra said ( Monday, January 19, 2009 at 11:21 am )
I just want to know who/what Starbuck is. The fact that Leobon was so obviously freaked out by the fact that this wasn’t something he expected freaked ME out.
When we found out that the 5th was Ellen I was a little underwhelmed, but the fact that she said essentially, it’s ok, this is all part of the plan, that’s what got me.
5. Jason said ( Monday, January 19, 2009 at 5:22 pm )
This was such a bleak episode. I’m not sure what I was expecting after waiting so long, but this definitely was not it. And that’s what makes this show so damn good. What the hell is Starbuck? Did Cylons come back to the 12 colonies to create other Cylons?
Also, wondering if any of you have seen the Face of the Enemy webisodes?
6. Greater Czarina said ( Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 1:42 pm )
So, it seemed to me that the thirteenth tribe is/was the Final Five. That they created the regeneration ship, uploaded themselves upon death, and flew off to either found the Colonies or to blend in with the already-existing human race they found in the Colonies.
As for Starbuck, I’m thinking that she’s a different “race” of Cylon, the ones who were the other side of the war that obliterated Earth. And that they are still around Earth somewhere with their own regeneration abilities, which they used to recycle her and her Viper.
All speculation on my part, but that’s where I’m at right now. And I agree, it was an outstanding episode. Just the background players sitting around or going about their tasks looking so defeated and hopeless – brilliant imagery.
7. GeekBoy said ( Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 2:04 pm )
Hm. As I understand the history of things, the Thirteenth Tribe started at the Colonies and moved away to eventually settle on Earth. Then the Final Five moved back to the Colonies after the destruction of Earth. So since human-looking Cylons presumably weren’t possible until after the Colonies created robot-looking Cylons, I’m not sure the chronology as it stands now supports a Final Five = Thirteenth Tribe scenario. Unless, as I’ve postulated in the past, there’s time travel and/or some kind of time loop involved.
I’m wondering if the Thirteenth Tribe were normal humans who traveled to Earth and created their own version of Cylons, parallel to what was being created by the Colonies. This would explain why the First Seven and the Final Five seem to be different from each other. Maybe the Final Five instigated the creation of Cylons in the Colonies after they came from Earth?
As for Starbuck, my assumption has been that she’s a half-Cylon, like Hera. Her mother was held prisoner by Cylons during the First War. But I’m not clear on why that would give her the ability to be dead but not dead.
8. Jason said ( Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 3:22 pm )
There’s a theory out there that all humans are cylons descended from the 13th tribe, though that wouldn’t make much sense with them being able to examine the human looking remains and determining that they were cylon.
9. Jack said ( Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 6:28 pm )
I was totally thinking Starbuck was the cylon, which is probably what they wanted us to think, until they did the Ellen reveal. I didn’t see that coming.
Made me start to wonder if Starbuck herself did some kind of time travel thing to get a new Viper and fly back to Galactica. I haven’t perfected my theory, but that was the only explanation I could think of.
RIP Dualla. Another thing I didn’t see coming, but sure enough, the clues are all there if you watch it again.