Rating: ***1/2
Written by: Brad Thompson & David Weddle
Directed By: Jeff Woolnough
I guess I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the plight of Boomer v. 1.0. You know, the "original" Sharon Valerii, the Boomer who blew a hole in then-Commander Adama's chest in "Kobol's Last Gleaming," and later met her own Lee Harvey Oswald-like end in "Resistance". She spent the entirety of Season #1 struggling with self-doubt and fear about a possibility that was too horrific to fully confront: that she might be, unbeknownst even to herself, a Cylon.
Shooting Adama seemed to be a blatant confirmation of it, at least to everyone else. And becoming an instant pariah to what had been, and you had thought were, your own people would definitely not discourage the impression in your own mind if you were Sharon. But, once again, put yourself in her shoes. Remember that Dr. Baltar had told her that she was "100% human." We know he was lying to her, but she didn't. Despite everything, mightn't there have been some lingering doubt, some grasping for an alternative explanation that could possibly have explained her damning actions? If you were confronted with the terrifying surreality of being something alien to your own self-perception, wouldn't you want to think anything else? Mental illness, temporary insanity? Because having even that last shred of comforting self-delusion ripped away would be a unique incarnation of hell itself.
Perhaps, in light of the above, we can better understand why Boomer shrieked in agony when she awoke in that goobath to see Doral, Six, D'Anna Biers, and one of her doppelgangers standing around her. She incontrovertibly had no more fudging room, no more possibility of rationalization, no more "yes, but"s or "what if"s. She is a Cylon. Like Neo learning the truth about the Matrix, her nightmare has officially come true.
But while Sharon can no longer deny what she is, neither is she able to accept or embrace it. As is always a possibility with "deep cover" agents, she was so submerged in the enemy's culture - which is what made her so effective in her mission - that she has gone over to the other side. Not unlike Boomer v. 2.0, she's a Cylon who prefers to live as a human, to the extent of moving back into her old apartment on Caprica, complete with all her personal effects just as she left them, including a portrait of her old boyfriend, Chief Tyrol.
You wouldn't think this would be a problem, but then you're human, not Cylon. For the latter, such dissident thought patterns are a disturbance to their machine-like conformity. Or, in other words, a programming anomaly, a…virus, if you will, that if left to spread could compromise the whole of "the Cylon," and potentially frak up "their plan."
But then that's not the only problem posed by this "hero of the Cylon." Nor is Boomer its only vessel.
If Sharon Valerii was a hero for plugging the human military chieftain, Caprica Six was a veritable goddess for single-handedly infiltrating Kobolian society and, using her supermodel looks and "ho" skills, compromising the Colonies' entire defense grid and opening the way for the near genocide of humanity. But following the nuclear blast that demolishes Gaius Baltar's country estate and her along with it, she awakens in the same goobath, surrounded by the same Cylonoids, that Sharon will several months later - and with a very similar, if more discrete, "anomalous" mindset.
Similar, but not identical. For while Sharon was a Cylon who would be human, the first thing Caprica Six asked upon being "downloaded" was the fate of Baltar. Yes, it would seem that the stunning blonde bombshell actually fell in love with the weasel-like human genius.
This is yet another side of Six - or, rather, the confirmation that not all Cylonoids are alike. Individuality comes with the skinsack, I suppose, a problem the Cylons (or Baltar himself, in the very near future) evidently did not anticipate when they sought to duplicate and inhabit human form.
Unlike the comely, smirking phantom that has haunted and manipulated Gaius for all these months, his actual former squeeze has been "corrupted" by human love, which has opened her eyes to the moral contradictions between the Cylons' monotheistic pieties and the abhorrent, bloodthirsty means they have used to implement them. In fighting and impersonating their creators, they have become morally compromised like their creators. But because they are so submerged in their own "plan," they can no longer see it.
If this sounds an awful lot like Boomer's plight expounded upon earlier, you get an "A" in irony recognition.
What Caprica Six realizes is that her people have become so hatefully focused on humanity's faults and vices that they have completely ignored and forgotten humanity's virtues, and it is that that has corrupted "the Cylon." But what she also realizes is that if she isn't discrete about this realization, she'll end up "boxed," just like Boomer v. 1.0.
So it is yet another irony that it is Caprica Six to which a D'Anna Biers unit turns as a last resort to counsel Sharon into correcting her "programming anomaly" by embracing her "Cylonness," as is only fitting for a "hero of the Cylon." Of course, as Six points out, individual recognition is antithetical to the doctrine of Cylon "unity," which I suppose was indiscrete on her part, especially given what ensues before the hour is up, but Biers never catches onto it - and, later, never sees the rock coming.
Six is being discrete, but she's still playing a role in which she doesn't really believe - the mirror opposite of Sharon, who is honestly rejecting her true nature, but almost identical, in a mirror opposite sense, to the man she loved. Who, much like her phantom "sister," makes himself comfortable in her mind's eye and starts her to talking incoherently to herself.
Irony upon irony upon irony. Six as the li'l devil on Gaius' shoulder who looks like an angel, and Baltar as the li'l angel on Six's shoulder who looks like the devil. It's all quite fascinating, and I never took a single Psychology course in college, either.
Unsurprisingly, Six's discretion is worn down by Sharon's stubborn humanocentric resolve. The process is brought to a head when Starbuck's boyfriend, Sam Anders, and his guerrilla gang blow up a restaurant popular with the occupying Cylonoids. Dozens of the latter are…well, not killed, but is "transrelocated" a word? How about "forwarded"? Yeah, that works. Dozens of Cylonoids are "forwarded" in the blast, which also has the effect of trapping Anders in a buried stairwell with Six, Boomer, and D'Anna Biers.
In other circumstances I can think of plenty of worse fates than to be confined in close quarters with Lucy Lawless, Grace Park, and Tricia Helfer for an extended period of time. This was not, however, one of those other circumstances. But then Anders didn't have to do or say much, as he served as the unwitting stimulant to bring the dissidence of Six and Boomer to the surface. Which proved to be abundantly inconvenient for Biers, who will take, by Six's estimate in the dialogue, at least a day and a half to download again. Setting Anders free, the two ersatz women vow to band together to save "the Cylon" from themselves - and ultimately "save" humankind as well.
Meanwhile, back in the ragtag fugitive fleet, a "baby" was being born. And that is the track that limited this ep to a triple instead of a home run.
To summarize, Boomer v. 2.0 gives birth; President Roslin - who tried to have the hybrid child aborted in "Epiphanies" only to have her own life saved by its blood instead (another exquisite irony) - is determined that she will not be allowed to raise the little "girl" (named Hera, after the wife of Zeus in Greek mythology - wonder what the writers are foreshadowing with that…); so she concocts a scheme, with the reluctant connivance of Dr. Cottle, to clandestinely abduct little Hera and fake her death so that the remaining Cylonoid agents in the fleet won't know that she, and whatever part of their "plan" she represented, still lives.
What we have here is a case of an entire strategy based almost entirely upon supposition. This was the case in "Epiphanies" with the "oddities" Cottle found in the fetus' blood sample which were never elaborated upon, other than the one that, you know, saved the President's life, and it's still the case. Boomer v. 2.0 has proven herself to her captors time and again. She's saved the fleet numerous times. Indeed, it was she, back on Kobol, who said, "Not all Cylons are alike." It's difficult for me to see what possible long term "deep cover" purpose her presence could have since there is no "cover" at all and if she'd wanted to compromise the defenses of Galactica or Pegasus from within, she's had ample opportunity before now. And, seriously, as I've pointed out before, with the Cylons' apparently overwhelming resources, why would they need an agent on the inside to compromise the human survivors' meager defenses?
This, of course, gets back to the whole nebulous question of what the Cylons' "plan" is. Why obliterate human civilization and let the 49,550 survivors…well, survive? What would they be seeking to learn from or about humans if they've already made up their minds that their creators are despicable, irredeemable vermin to be exterminated? And what possible intrigue - which, again, isn't necessary to the diaspora's destruction - could arise from a Cylon defector raising a hybrid daughter conceived in love with her human spouse?
What does Roslin fear? That humans would start interbreeding with Cylonoids? That mankind would be eliminated genetically instead of in a flash and a roar? What fate does she think is being averted by stealing away little Hera and deceiving the Cylons about her continued existence? All we got in the dialogue was Admiral Adama saying, "If it's good for the Cylons, it's probably bad for us." And that assumes that…all Cylons are alike.
In the mean time, what fate is being hastened by perpetrating that harrowing fraud upon the baby's "mother," who was screaming "YOU KILLED HER!!!!!" at Dr. Cottle before grabbing him by the throat and trying to strangle him with her bare hands?
We shall soon find out.
Next: Starbuck rescues her boyfriend, the presidential election, and a prospective new planetary home - another wave of insanity is about to begin.
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