Flesh and Bone

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"Flesh and Bone" (credit: Sci-Fi Channel)

Overview

When a copy of Leoben Conoy is captured aboard a civilian ship, President Roslin orders he is to be interrogated, and Lieutenant Thrace is assigned the job. She finds herself facing the possibility that Conoy may have planted a bomb somewhere in the fleet.

Summary

• Laura Roslin has a Chamalla-induced dream in which she sees Leoben Conoy. She is awakened by Billy, who informs her a Cylon has been captured aboard the Gemenon Traveller.
• The Cylon turns out to be Leoben Conoy, and while Adama wants him destroyed, Roslin insists he is interrogated.
• Kara Thrace is assigned the interrogation task. Meeting with her, Adama warns her that Conoy cannot be trusted. Not that he lies, but rather he twists everything into half-truths and masks fiction with the veneer of truth.
• They briefly discuss the Cylon Raider Starbuck is still working on (You Can’t Go Home Again, Six Degrees of Separation), and Starbuck informs him good progress is being made: the avionics are now understood, and they are focusing on the FTL systems.
• Later, Sharon Valerii visits the Raider for a second time (the first being in Six Degrees of Separation), and appears to comfort it by humming.
• Tyrol arrives, and she asks if her previous comments help. He confirms they did, and asks how she came up with the idea. She claims it’s because she’s a Cylon -- something Tyrol doesn’t find remotely funny
• Elsewhere, Thrace travels by Raptor to the Gememon Traveller. Once there, she observes Conoy, noting that he is sweating, before she enters the room in which he is being held, wanting to know what he is doing with his head on the table.
• Conoy claims to have been praying. Their religious differences are immediately outlined as she refers to “gods”, he to “God”.
• When he starts playing games with her over names, she tries to walk out – and Conoy reveals he knows who she is, which stops her. He then claims to have hidden a nuclear warhead somewhere in the fleet, which will go off in just under nine hours.
• Shaken by the fact he knows her name, Starbuck reports the news on the bomb to Adama and Roslin. Adama orders radiological searches to be made aboard all ships and tries to reassure Starbuck that Conoy could have learned her name from anywhere.
• When she returns to the holding area, Conoy continues to question her about her beliefs, outlining the key difference between humans and their religion and Cylons. A meal arrives for Starbuck and she eats, allowing Conoy to finish what is left.
• As he finishes the food, a systematic beating commences, Starbuck convinced that because he is programmed to act completely like a human, Conoy will be forced to react like a human, take the beating until the pain forces him to start talking.
• As this starts, Boomer visits Baltar in his lab and demands he runs a test on her to determine whether or not she is human. Baltar is reluctant to do so, but Six prompts him into doing it.
• Conoy’s beating fails to get him to talk about the bomb, only to talk more about God. As the subject of water has formed a lot of his analogies, Starbuck opts to up the torture by using it, and sends the guards from the room.
• When they are gone, Conoy demonstrates his ability, breaking the chains that bind his wrists and pinning her to the wall. He could kill her, but he doesn’t – he has something to tell her, soon. A surprise.
• On the Galactica, Adama visits the cadaver of the Conoy he encountered at Ragnar Anchorage (Mini-Series), his rage almost causing him to beat the body with a telephone handset.
• On the Traveller, Starbuck commences sessions that involve holding Conoy’s head underwater for increasingly lengthy periods to try and get him to talk – convinced that he is too far from Cylon influence to transfer his consciousness to another body, should this one die.
• Conoy talks – about Starbucks’s childhood and upbringing, demonstrating he somehow knows an lot about her. The duckings continue.
• Baltar finishes a scan on a blood sample from Boomer – it confirms she is a Cylon. Terrified of what will happen if he tells her, he fakes the result to look human.
• In her private quarters on Colonial One, Roslin has another vision of Conoy, prompting her to order a shuttle to take her to the Gememon Traveller
• On the Traveller, Starbuck halts the water torture and Conoy reveals his surprise to her: the humans will find Kobol, and Kobol will lead them to Earth. What’s more, Starbuck’s specific role is to deliver his soul to God.
• At that moment, Roslin arrives and puts a stop to the torture, as it has failed to reveal the location of the bomb.
• When Conoy has been cleaned up and dried off, she tries to reason with him, and he confesses there is no bomb; grabbing her, he whispers that Adama is a Cylon.
• Shocked by this, but her mind made up, Roslin has him ejected into space – fulfilling the sequence of events in her dream.
• Later, on the Galactica, Starbuck prays for Conoy’s soul, while Roslin meets with Adama, Conoy's words clearly having cast doubts deep in her mind.

On Caprica

• After sleeping with Helo, Valerii meets with Doral and Six and informs them of developments.
• Doral informs her that a little love nest is being set-up nearby. Six adds that she must lead Helo to it and keep him there – or kill him.
• Reacting to the instructions, Valerii returns to Helo – and goes on the run with him, leading him away from her Cylon colleagues.

Questions

• Is Conoy's comment to Starbuck concerning Kobol meant personally - that she will find Kobol - or at least recognise it for what it really is?
• How will Roslin react to Conoy's claim about Adama? She has already demonstrated a willingness to readily accept the worst about a person without proof (her reaction to Baltar's situation in Six Degrees of Separation).
• Why is love so vital to the Cylons?
• Was Troy destroyed in an genuine accident, making it a convenient "cover" for the Cylons to create Boomer's "history", or were they responsible for the destruction of the colony?

Analysis

“Flesh and Bone” is another tremendously powerful story to come out of the season one arc. It is the first time that everything meshes with a synchronicity that is simply awesome: season arc development, episode arc, character growth, character revelations, religious insights, Cylon and human motivations – all combine into 42 minutes of magnetic television.

As usual, the featured actors turn in outstanding performances, with Mary McDonnell again adding depth and vulnerability to Laura Roslin. Is the President’s hardened attitude a result of her on-going adjustment to the plight of the Colonials, a direct reflection of her growing determination to beat her cancer, or a result of her acceptance that life for her may not be as rich and as full as she may once have hoped? Or is it a combination of all three? Whatever the underpinning reasons, the last few episodes have seen Roslin develop the kind of hard shell one would expect of a leader in her position; and McDonnell’s portrayal of Roslin as she goes through this transition has been outstanding.

Katee Sackhoff also shines in this episode – alongside Callum Keith Rennie, she has the most time on screen – and she again shows that for a relatively young actress, she has a broad range and depth. At every turn, Thrace’s over-confidence, her flippancy, her inborn doubts, her fear of failure, of being found out – all are so perfectly portrayed through word, look and attitude. But the accolades this week go not to a regular member of the cast, but to Callum Keith Rennie for his portrayal of Leoben Conoy.

Rennie is perhaps best remembered for the (also Canadian-filmed) series “Due South”. At the time, he did not impress – although to be fair, he was trying to fill David Marciano’s considerable shoes. Even so, his appearance in the Battlestar Galactica mini-series also fails to engage.

But in “Flesh and Bone” Callum Keith Rennie proves the faith the producers clearly had in him. His personification of Conoy is a marvel to watch. Not only does he evoke sympathy and concern as he is systematically beaten and tortured, he also maintains a degree of detachment towards the events around him that sufficiently reminds us that, while human-looking, his character is not truly human. By turns he is philosopher, victim, man, child, inquisitor, and agent provocateur – and in all, he is utterly convincing and absorbing. He is a mirror, held up to reflect the angst, the perceptions, bias and insecurity of the human race, as personified by Kara Thrace. Through him we also gain what appears to be a further hint of Cylon capabilities.

Conoy first turns up in Roslin’s dream – causing her to demand he is interrogated, not destroyed on being discovered. During his interrogation, he demonstrates personal information concerning Thrace’s upbringing, and shortly before his death, he again appears to Roslin, prompting her to go to the Gemenon Traveller where he can meet with her and plant a bomb potentially every bit as devastating as the nuclear warhead he claimed to have hidden somewhere in the fleet.

All of this tends to raise the question: are Cylons – or at least the Conoy model – psychic? Does the ability to transfer their conscious minds at the point of physical death enable them to do other things mentally as well?

It could be argued that Conoy’s knowledge of Thrace has been gleaned from records – perhaps her military file; maybe she revealed things to Boomer on the Galactica, and she was able to communicate them elsewhere. BUT the way in which the half-drowned Conoy talks about Thrace’s mother and upbringing seems altogether too personal, as if he is, through describing the events, reliving them – and we see this reflected in the intensity of Thrace’s look. There is more here than has been gleaned from official records and half-revealed anecdotes relayed through a third party.

“I see the universe. I see the patterns,” Conoy states with the conviction of a man speaking the truth. “I see the foreshadowing that precedes every moment of every day. It’s all there. I see it, and you don’t.” These are the words of a man convinced of the fact that he knows what is to come; how things will end, even before time has run its course, and as such, it is hard not to accept that, somehow, he has the ability to foretell the future.

Or is it merely that through words, through the persuasion of his “half-baked philosophy”, Conoy can influence, twist, turn and manipulate to bring about the events and situations he requires in order to give himself the appearance of precognition? Is there any way we, the audience, can tell if Conoy can “see” the future and thus determine how much of the truth he is telling? Well, apparently there is.

As his time runs out, he reveals his surprise to Thrace: “And I told you I had a surprise for you. Are you ready? “You are going to find Kobol, birthplace of us all. Kobol will lead you to Earth. This is my gift to you, Kara.”

You are going to find Kobol. The essence of truth – we know that this is indeed what will happen; the Colonials will indeed find Kobol; this much is apparently certain from the title of the two-parter that concludes season 1: “Kobol’s Last Gleaming”. So Conoy is telling a degree of truth.

But is he telling the whole truth? On the surface, this comment seems pretty direct. But one thing we have learnt in this series is that nothing is ever quite what it seems. Messages are always delivered in layers. And if we strip away the surface gloss to this comment, we come across a deeper meaning: "You are going to find Kobol….This is my gift to you, Kara". There is no mistaking the meaning here: Kobol will be found – but it will be Thrace who realises the fact of the matter. He is almost saying that while the Colonials may find Kobol, it will take Thrace to realise that it is Kobol.

Turning to Conoy’s appearance in Roslin’s dreams: is this again an indication that he is in some way “psychic” - or are Roslin’s visions of him simply a side effect of the Kamala extract she is taking? His appearances almost seem to manipulate events and bring about the results he desires / has foreseen: his appearance in her initial dream forestalls his simple destruction on capture; his later appearance brings Roslin to the Gemenon Traveller, where he can impart his lie concerning Adama to her. So to dismiss both visions simply as the results of her taking Kamala may be an over-simplification of the situation.

But assuming for a moment the dreams are a side-effect of Roslin's treatment, what does this mean for her? Precognition would seem to fit with the parallels the series has shown with Greek mythology. Could it be that the Kamala is "helping" Roslin to become a Sybil, a seer of future events?

However, there is a third explanation: that, as Conoy states, everything that happens in this episode – indeed, everything within the series as a whole – is preordained. That there is indeed a deity manipulating things, drawing both the Colonials and Cylons towards an ultimate goal.

Away from the central action, we begin to see the pieces fall into place around Helo on Caprica, with the motivating force behind the Cylon’s activities once more focusing on love.

“Love” is a theme that resonate throughout the episode – and indeed, has resonated through the series since Six’s first on-screen appearance with Baltar. As he is interviewed for a news broadcast, she enters his house, a look of adoration on her face. Then, after the interview, as they start to make out, she asks him in a child-like voice, in need of reassurance, “Did you miss me Gaius?” Still kissing and undressing her, he replies, “Can’t you tell?” and her tone grows more petulant, “Your body misses me. What about your heart…your soul?”

Intent on sating his lust, Baltar remains flippant, “Yeah, those too.” Six’s voice returns to one of need. “Do you love me Gaius?” When he does answer, she stops him from kissing her, making him look her in the eye. “Do you love me?” It is something he cannot answer except to ask her if she is serious. For a moment there is hurt in Six’s expression – which she covers and still proceeds to have sex with him.

Do you love me? The need is real. Could it be that, in carrying her primary mission of sabotage through Baltar, Six did actually come to love him – she actually, if accidentally came to experience that one emotion, that one driving force of life that the Cylons have equated to Godhood, (“God is love”)? If so, it would further reinforce the fact that whatever is in Baltar’s head is not a product of his own mind.

Certainly, it is the question of love that appears foremost in this episode – both with Conoy, who returns to it time and again in his references to Cylon religion, and more particularly with Valerii on Caprica, where the first question she is asked after her revelation to Doral and Six that she had sex is “Does he love you?” The question is immediately followed by a dismissive “then you’re just guessing,” when she admits he had not actually said as much.

Following the interview with Doral and Six, two things are clear: Valerii has fallen for Helo. That much is evident from the flashbacks of her time with him. She also very much shares the memories of Boomer back on Galactica – at least up until the point where Boomer left Helo on Caprica, indicating the various incarnations of a specific humanoid Cylon share experiences throughout their existence – although this may be limited by the distance between one another.

Did the Cylons anticipate that any love expressed by a human might be reciprocated by one of their own? If they wish to experience love, then it is hard to see how they could avoid coming to this conclusion. Indeed, it might well explain Doral’s question to Valerii in “Litmus” when Helo sets out to “find” her: “Are you prepared for the next step?” A comment that at the time appeared to have implications well beyond the beating she then received at the hands of Six.

Again, putting these items together – the fact that different incarnations of a Cylon humanoid share experiences and the attempts to have Helo fall in love with Valerii on Caprica – goes a long way to explaining Six’s very apparent sarcasm and vindictiveness towards Valerii, as witnessed in “Litmus” (“He doesn’t love you,” and the unnecessarily-harsh beating she then gives Valerii), and her jealousy towards Valerii shown in this episode (“She acts like one of them, thinks like one of them. She is one of them”). Why? Because if Baltar’s Six did indeed fall in love with Baltar, then Six on Caprica may well have experienced some of it for herself – a vicarious thrill, the very thing the Cylons seek – but it is down to another to achieve the goal of having a human fall in love with her, not Six.

Layers in layers, clues and counter-clues, wheels within wheels. All are revealed and all light the path of the story while simultaneously obscuring the truth behind what is happening. Glimpses and shadows of what might be happening, and what might yet come to pass are shown; but like the insidious nature of Conoy’s half-truths and riddles, they serve to weave a story that even here, more than half-way through season one, inspires discussion, evokes enthusiasm and engages the imagination. Long may it continue!

All told, “Flesh and Bone” is the strongest story yet to come out of Battlestar Galactica – more than that, it is one of the most thought-provoking and evocative 42 minutes of television drama ever broadcast.

Notes

• This episode takes place within 24 hours of those portrayed in Six Degrees of Separation.
• Galactica’s medico has apparently been successful in his quest for Chamalla – Roslin is now using it in her fight against cancer.
• There are 47,954 survivors in the fleet, presumably including Galactica’s crew, as the figure has fluctuated between 45,000 and 50,000 over the past few weeks in rounded figures.
• Laura Roslin may have precognition, and / or Cylons may be psychic.
• Boomer believes her family were all killed – together with almost her entire past in a “tragedy” that destroyed the colony of Troy.
• Baltar’s Cylon detector works.
• Baltar now knows Boomer is a Cylon.

Noteworthy Dialogue

Conoy to Starbuck, towwards the end of his interrogation, just before Roslin's arrival

Conoy: Each of us plays a role; each time a different role. Maybe the last time I was the interrogator and you were the prisoner. The players change, the story remains the same. And this time – this time – your role is to deliver my soul unto God. Do it for me. It’s your destiny. And mine. (PAUSE) And I told you I had a surprise for you. Are you ready? You are going to find Kobol, birthplace of us all. Kobol will lead you to Earth. This is my gift to you, Kara.

Statistics

Guest Stars

• Callum Keith Rennie as Leoben Conoy
• Matthew Bennett as Aaron Doral
• Christina Schild as Playa Kohn
• Biski Gugushe as Sekou Hamilton
• Eric Breker as Gemenon Traveller Captain

Writing & Direction

• Written by Toni Graphia
• Directed by Brad Turner

Production Notes

• Series 1 (2004 / 2005)
• Production Number: 1.08
• Airdate Order: 8 (of 13)

First Run Air Dates & Releases

• UK Airdate: 22 November 2004 (Sky One)
• US Airdate: 25 February 2005 (Sci-Fi Channel)
• DVD Release: 28 March 2005 (UK)

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