Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II

"Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II" An episode of the Re-imagined Series
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Overview

Starbuck has gone to Caprica. Adama insists Roslin must stand down as President. When she refuses, he is forced to deal with that situation while simultaneously adapting the plan to rid themselves of the Cylon baseship over Kobol

Summary

On Galactica:

• Adama challenges Roslin over Kara Thrace's actions with the Cylon Raider (which occurred in the last episode) and she admits her role in helping Kara Thrace.
• Adama requests her resignation as President. Roslin refuses. He states he is terminating her presidency. When she reveals the press is recording the conversation, he hangs up.
• He isolates Colonial One using the CAP to physically isolate it, and by jamming all communications from it. He then orders Colonel Tigh and Lee Adama to set-up a strike force to take Colonial One.
• Visiting Boomer in sickbay, Adama asks her to fly a dangerous mission: take a Raptor fitted with a Cylon IFF transponder, jump to the Cylon baseship orbiting Kobol and drop a nuclear bomb into its landing bay before jumping clear.
• The strike team flies to an isolated Colonial One aboard two Raptors, lead by Tigh and Lee Adama, and they start cutting their way into the ship.
• Roslin is returned to the Galactica after the failed standoff on the Colonial One and is placed in the brig, while Lee Adama is in irons in CIC for turning his gun on Tigh.
• Boomer and Racetrack arrive in CIC following the success of the attack on the baseship near Kobol, and as he thanks them, Boomer shoots Adama twice in the chest at point blank range, seriously wounding him.

On Colonial One:

• Roslin refuses Adama's final request to yield and her security team ready themselves for an assault and the strike team access the ship.
• A confrontation ensues between Colonial forces and Roslin's security. It is broken only when Lee Adama sides with his conscience, and turns on Tigh. Afraid of a bloodbath, Roslin surrenders and Lee Adama is arrested.

At Kobol

• Raptor 1 has crashed down on Kobol and is on fire, as the crew struggle to get out and remove the bodies of the dead and injured, Baltar becomes trapped by fire in the back of the vehicle.
• Crashdown tries to help him, but Baltar is too terrified to move. Six appears and gives Baltar the strength to escape by giving the impression she is helping him out of the ship.
• As they get clear, the ship explodes, and Baltar wanders into the long grass before collapsing, as the rest of the crew start checking on their injured.
• Boomer's Raptor makes it through the Cylon perimeter around the baseship situated above Kobol, but the bomb release mechanism fails, forcing them to land inside the basestar and attempt a manual removal of the bomb.
• While there, Boomer encounters a number of her "sisters". While she tries to claim she is human, they inform her she cannot escape destiny.
• After she leaves on the Raptor, her "sisters" make no attempt to disarm or remove the bomb. The baseship is destroyed in a massive nuclear explosion.
• On Kobol, Baltar recognises Six "saved" him, and she takes him to see exactly why he has been chosen by God, and she walks him towards the ruined Opera House.
• Entering it, he is shown the "face of things to come", apparently a baby in a crib, the "first of the new generation of God's children" - and he is to be their protector.

On Caprica:

• Valerii has taken Helo to hide near the Delphi Museum of the Colonies.
• She is aware of the importance of the Arrow of Apollo.
• They have discussed the fact that she is a Cylon (rather than a Cylon-created human clone as Helo suggested (Colonial Day)).
• She reveals her relationship with him is important as it brings the Cylons closer to God. She also reveals she is pregnant.
• Starbuck completes her long-range jump and arrives over Caprica. Passing through Cylon lines, she sets down in Delphi and heads for the museum.
• Locating the Arrow of Apollo she is confronted by Six and a fight ensues in which Starbuck is initially badly beaten, before a last-minute rush sends them both over a landing, killing Six.
• Helo comes to Starbuck's aid, and she panics when she sees Valerii, immediately realizing that Valerii is a Cylon. Helo stops Starbuck from shooting her, citing that she's pregnant.

Summary from scifi.com

When Commander Adama learns that Kara disobeyed orders and Jumped to Caprica on orders from President Roslin, he demands the president's resignation, with the implied threat of a military coup. Roslin refuses his demand and sparks a confrontation.

As civil war simmers in the fleet, the conflict on Caprica heats up. Kara completes her mission for Laura: She finds the Arrow of Apollo that, according to prophecy, will lead the fleet to Earth. No sooner does she pick it up, however, than she is thrust into a battle to the death with Number Six.

Meanwhile, Adama sends Sharon and Racetrack in a Raptor equipped with a Cylon transponder, to fire a nuclear warhead that will destroy the basestar. But when the missile release jams, Sharon lands the Raptor deep inside the basestar, to deliver the warhead manually.

Once outside her ship, however, Sharon is greeted by dozens of Sharon avatars, all Cylons like her, welcoming her home. She retreats, but is told that she and her fellow Cylons will meet again. She and Racetrack escape the basestar, which explodes.

Mission accomplished, Sharon returns home to the Galactica. She warmly accepts Commander Adama's thanks and praise for a job well done — then she coldly shoots him, point-blank, in the chest. --This section ©2005, SCI FI. All rights reserved.

Questions

• Are Adama's wounds fatal? (Answer)
• What will be the public reaction when news of Roslin's arrest finally breaks through the communication's embargo? (Answer)
• Who will take over as the civil leader with Roslin in the brig and Baltar "lost" somewhere on the surface of Kobol? (Answer)
• How will Tigh rise to the demands of command?
• What is the baby in the crib? (Answer)
  • The offspring from Valerii and Helo?
  • The future offspring of Baltar and a corporeal Six? (Answer)
• If the Cylons understand the significance of the Arrow of Apollo (and by extension, the Tomb of Athena), why don't they use them themselves to find Earth?

• Might they possibly also want to open the tomb in order to find and in turn sabotage Earth for the remaining fleet?
• If they want the humans to find Earth, why try and prevent Starbuck from taking the Arrow in the first place?

• Are the Cylons genuinely interested in Earth, or has it simply been a means to bring them to Kobol?
• Why didn't the sound of Starbuck's Raider landing attract Helo's attention sooner? He's across the road from the museum, and so could hardly fail to see it touch down, or see Starbuck climb the steps to the museum itself.
• How did Six know Starbuck's name so readily? Is this a pointer to her being in communication with her "sister" in Baltar's head? Or having been in communication with Conoy (Flesh and Bone)?
• Did Boomer sabotage the bomb release mechanism, thus forcing herself into landing on the baseship?
• Why didn't Racetrack raise concerns about Boomer's ability to survive in a vacuum on their return to the Galactica? (Answer)
  • For that matter, is there a breathable atmosphere inside Cylon Basestars? Previous episodes seem to imply that Humano-Cylons actually cannot survive in a vacuum.
  • It was established in "You Can't Go Home Again" that Cylon bio-mechanical technology requires oxygen, just like humans.
• Did the IFF transponders genuinely work, or did the Cylons simply allow Starbuck's Raider to pass and the Raptor to reach the baseship in order for Starbuck and Boomer to continue along their "paths"?
• How many operational Raptors does the Galactica have? Water gives the impression she had five. A total of six are used in Part I and Part II of "Kobol's Last Gleaming". (Answer, wth qualifier)

• Not necessarily. In Water, Tigh only said that there were five systems within their "Practical Jump Radius". If one raptor each was adequate for survey purposes, there would have been no reason to deploy the sixth.

Analysis

An extraordinary ending to a remarkable first season; not by any means a traditional cliff-hanger episode so frequently used by sci-fi writers, it nevertheless fulfils the same purpose by both bringing several of the on-going arcs of the season together, without actually tying the thread together nor leaving them dangling in the wind. The result is to confirm much of the speculation developed throughout the first season, while simultaneously opening the overall arc of the series by providing both crises and a glimpse of the future.

As with “Kobol’s Last Gleaming, Part 1”, music plays an important part of the episode – particularly with reference to Baltar’s visions in the ruins of Kobol, where the string orchestration used in the teaser of Part 1 becomes the motif for Baltar’s transition from confused pawn to willing participant in the Cylon’s plan. Similarly, music is used to indicate Boomer’s shifts between her human and Cylon selves. And the counterpoint couldn’t be more interesting: while both utilise strings, the harmony around Baltar’s enlightenment indicates - as Six points out – the rhythm of his life falling into line with God’s will, whereas the discordant working of strings around Boomer’s contact with her “sisters” underscores the final collapse of her human will, opening the door to her Cylon personality to take control of her conscious actions and shoot Adama when the time comes.

And it is with Boomer that some of the arcs of season one draw together: yes, Valerii on Caprica is pregnant; yes love and procreation were the keys to Cylon desire with her and Helo; yes her true nature would be revealed to her crewmates – if not directly through her actions in shooting Adama, then certainly through Starbuck’s return to the Galactica. While Starbuck is liable to be thrown into the brig on her return, that’s no reason for Tigh and others not to believe claims about Boomer in light of what she has seen on Caprica and what has happened in CIC.

Another element that is finally revealed is what the Cylons really want out of Baltar – but this in itself raises questions. Not only about his relationship with Six, but also about the future of the Helo / Valerii storyline, and those questions centre on what he saw in the crib.

That he was seeing into the future is clear: but is the child he sees the product of Helo’s relationship with Valerii, or his own (future) relationship with a corporeal Six? On the one hand, much of what is seen points to the child being born of Valerii: she admits her condition to Helo (and thus opens the door to him remaining on Caprica with her while Starbuck returns to the Galactica with the Arrow) and the Cylons were apparently aiming for her to become pregnant by Helo (or at least, Doral and Six showed no surprised when she reported her lovemaking with him). But – Six’s words to Baltar as she prepares him to see the future are interesting: “You are the guardian and protector of a new generation of God’s children,” – a somewhat neutral explanation that comes before she smiles, catches her breath and adds, “The first member of our family will be with us soon, Gaius.” This could be a reference to the fact that Valerii is pregnant; however the shift to the possessive “our family” and “with us” could be seen to indicate the child could be Baltar’s own.

And again, how much more of an effective guardian and protector will Baltar be, if he is in fact protecting his own offspring, rather than that of another Cylon / human relationship? And if this is the case, where does that leave the Valerii / Helo relationship?

This episode also reveals some more about Six: if the offspring on the crib she sees with Baltar is that of Valerii and Helo, then it would more or less confirm that she is in contact with corporeal Cylons elsewhere – how else would she know of the developing Valerii / Helo situation otherwise as it started after her “death”? Similarly, it is interesting to note the degree of savagery involved in the beating Six gives Starbuck. In many respects, it mirrors the beating she gave Valerii in “Litmus”; at the time, the viciousness she showed seemed to be linked to the jealousy evident between her and Valerii. We now know that Six has been affected by Baltar’s reaction to sleeping with Starbuck (“Kobol’s Last Gleaming, Part 1”); could the physical beating Starbuck receives be a manifestation of the jealousy she feels for what happened on the Galactica, transmitted to her corporeal sister?

But the key question is what will happen to Adama? It is very hard to conceive of the series progressing without his presence. While the ensemble cast is one of the best put together on-screen, and while many of them – Callis in particular – have put in powerful performances, it is fair to say that Olmos is very much the anchor of this series. Without his strength and gravitas, Battlestar Galactica could end up drifting very badly. Therefore, while it will be interesting to see what new dynamics may develop while Adama is out of commission – how will Tigh handle the vagaries of command, who will he nominate as his XO, etc, – it is essential Adama’s presence is felt sooner rather than later in the next season.

While discussing Adama, it may be interesting to note that his shooting almost brings the story full-circle. As he was dying on Ragnar Anchorage, the Cylon agent Leoben Conoy warns Adama that, “Sooner or later, the day comes when you can’t hide from the things you’ve done” (Mini-Series). Adama has waged war on the Cylons – both as a young officer during the Cylon War and now in his efforts to protect his people and the fleet. He has just been responsible for the destruction of a Cylon baseship, complete with many copies of Valerii; and now Valerii has shot him.

And how will the fleet react once word of Roslin’s arrest breaks through the communications blackout the Galactica inflicted on Colonial One? What can the civilians do? In many respects Adama holds all the cards – or would do, were he in a fit condition. His ship is the key to the protection of the fleet. She is pretty much unassailable, and without her facilities, 16,000 people in the fleet would very soon be without water (“Water”). Therefore, it is hard to see anyone stepping too far out of line when it comes to making major decisions: where the fleet will go, what it will do, etc. But within the civilian community, it is hard not to see repercussions: Roslin has been arrested; Baltar is missing, possibly dead. Who is available to take the civil reigns? Wallace Gray (“Colonial Day”)? Tom Zarek (“Bastille Day”; “Colonial Day”). Is it a coincidence that not too long before, at the Quorum of Twelve, Zarek himself raised the spectre of a military coup – and that’s more-or-less what they now have on their hands?

All told, this episode generates outstanding drama that demands a successful renewal and second season. It brings what has been an excellent first season to a powerful close, reflecting the almost unbroken run of quality drama evidenced by the show. Indeed the overall quality in terms of production, writing, casting and acting more than demonstrates both Ronald Moore and David Eick are correct in limiting the show to 13-episode runs.

Notes

• This episode takes place directly after those of Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I
• There are now 47,887 survivors in the fleet, a net loss of 10 since "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I".
• Cylon vessels are indeed capable of very long-range jumps
• Delphi was once a cultural centre on Caprica, and apparently held a lot of historical / religious artifacts
• Cylon basestars appear bio-mechanical, like Raiders
• In Water it was established that the Galactica had at least 5 Raptors on board: Adama orders Raptors to survey local star systems for water bearing planets, 5 are dispatched. This episode reveals Galactica has at least 6: 1 is destroyed over Kobol, one crashes on Kobol; three take part in the raid on Colonial One, 1 simultaneously carries a nuclear warhead to the Cylon basestar,
• According to RDM's podcast, during the Starbuck/Number Six fight in the Delphi Museum, Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Helfer themselves actually perform the entire fight scene, with no stunt doubles.

Nods

The use of IFF transponders by the Cylons is an indirect nod to the original series, in which Apollo and Starbuck use an IFF-type device to identify their Raider to Colonial forces when they launch an attack on a Cylon Basestar (The Hand of God (TOS))

Noteworthy Dialogue

• When Adama congratulates Boomer for destroying the basestar over Kobol:

  Commander Adama: Congratulations to both of you. You carried out a very difficult and dangerous mission, and you did it...despite any...personal misgivings you may or may not have had...and for that I'm very proud. Thank you.

  Racetrack: Thank you, sir.

  Boomer: Thank you, sir. (pulls out a gun and shoots Adama in the chest)

• In the Opera House on Kobol

  Gaius Baltar: I don't understand.

  Number Six: Life has a melody, Gaius. A rhythm of notes that become your existence once played in harmony with God's plan. It's time to do your part and realize your destiny.

  Gaius Baltar: Which is what, exactly?

  Number Six: You are the guardian and protector of the new generation of God's children. The first member of our family will be with us soon, Gaius. It's time to make your choice.

  Gaius Baltar: But I don't understand what you're talking about. Really, I don't understand-

  Number Six: Come. See the face of the shape of things to come.

• On the Colonial One

  Colonel Tigh: Madam President, no one needs to get hurt here.

  Laura Roslin: Then why don't you get off my ship, Colonel.

  Colonel Tigh: I'm placing you under arrest.

  Lee Adama: No...no, we're not doing this.

  Colonel Tigh: I'm in command here, Captain.

  Lee Adama: Colonel, this is wrong!

  Colonel Tigh: You're relieved! Fall back. Madam President, I would-

  Lee Adama: (pulls a gun on Tigh) Men, lay down your weapons.

  Colonel Tigh: Have you lost your frakking mind?

  Lee Adama: Colonel, tell these Marines to fall back!

  Colonel Tigh: This is mutiny. You know that.

  Lee Adama: Yes I do, but you can tell my father that I'm listening to my instincts, and my instincts tell me that we cannot sacrifice our democracy just because the President makes a bad decision.

Official Statements

• Regarding Lee Adama and his development (and setbacks) incurred over the course of Season 1 (2004-05), as stated by Jamie Bamber:

I think he's his own man. I think he's a natural leader, but I don't think he's realised that yet. We are exploring it.

At the end of the first season he's on his own again. I mean, he's always been an isolated figure in the first place because he doesn't really belong on the Galactica. He doesn't even intend to be there but then the end of the world sort of catches him on the hop and that's where he has to make a start. He cuts a role out for himself as the "CAG," something he perhaps wasn't intending to do.

And I think he comes into his own gradually. He surprises himself. But then again, at the end of the first season he disobeys an order, so that's basically burned all his bridges that he had with the crew of the Galactica.

So he's a lone thinker in many respects, but I think more and more you'll see him start to come out with true leadership qualities. [1]

Guest stars

Tahmoh Penikett (Helo)
Aaron Douglas (CPO Galen Tyrol)
Lorena Gale (Elosha)
Alonso Oyarzun (Socinus)
Nicki Clyne (SPC Cally)
Jim Shield (Karma)
Leah Cairns (Racetrack)
Warren Christie (Ground Crew #1)
Jen Halley (Ground Crew #2)

External Links

"Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II" at scifi.com

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Re-imagined Series definition: in military parlance, directive to continue the attack; otherwise used to refer to journalists ^{(TRS: "Maelstrom")}

Re-imagined Series definition: the process of using the FTL engines to make an near-instantaneous apparent faster-than-light transport of a ship from one point in space to another

Re-imagined Series definition: nerve center or "bridge" of a battlestar, see: Combat Information Center

Re-imagined Series definition: transponder-based system to positively identify friendly spacecraft (TRS: "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II")

Re-imagined Series definition: Executive Officer, e.g. Saul Tigh

Re-imagined Series definition: all-purpose vulgarism; Colonial version of "fuck" (see: frak)