Hero

"Hero" An episode of the Re-imagined Series
Episode No.	Season 3, Episode 8
Writer(s)	David Eick
Story by
Director	Michael Rymer
Assistant Director
Special guest(s)	Carl Lumbly
Production No.
Nielsen Rating
US airdate	2006-11-17
CAN airdate	{{{CAN airdate}}}
UK airdate
DVD release
Population	41,421 survivors
Additional Info
Episode Chronology
Previous		Next
A Measure of Salvation	Hero	Unfinished Business
Related Information
Official Summary
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Listing of props for this episode
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Overview

A figure from Adama's past returns to haunt him. His return raises questions about why the Cylons launched their initial attack against the Twelve Colonies.

Summary

On Galactica

• Galactica detects three Raiders. Much to the surpise of the CIC crew, two Raiders are pursuing a third. Starbuck and Kat are dispatched. After destroying the pursuing Raiders, they go after the third.
• In CIC, Adama orders Kat and Starbuck to escort the Raider to Galactica, after hearing Bulldog's communication squaks.
• Kat and Starbuck escort the Raider in. In the hangar bay, Adama and the party that meets the Raider, surprised at the fact that a human appears to have piloted the craft. A visibly weak Bulldog salutes Adama; Adama returns the salute.
• Over a meal (noodles eaten with chopsticks) Adama asks Bulldog how he escaped. He relates a story of plague on the Basestar and escaping after killing a Number 3 with a blow to the nose delivered through the cell bars.
• Bulldog is debriefed by the president with Adama present, where they tell a (decidedly shaky) story of a mining facility too close to the Armistice Line. When it is concluded she asks Adama if he is going to tell her what really happened. He replies that it is his mess and that he will deal it. After she leaves he kicks over a table in frustration.
• Bulldog goes to see Saul Tigh in his quarters shortly after Adama talks to him. Saul informs Bulldog that he was shot down by the Valkyrie to get rid of evidence.
• At the same time, Adama confesses the mission's actual specifics to Lee, and his belief that he provoked the Cylon attacks on the colonies. Aghast at first, Lee then tries to console his father, blaming the admirals in command and saying that he was "only one man." Adama responds, "It only takes one."
• Starbuck reviews the gun film from the fight with the Cylon Raiders and realizes that they were deliberately missing their target, letting Bulldog get away. She goes to Saul Tigh with this information, who deduces that Bulldog was sent there by the Cylons to kill the admiral.
• Tigh finds Bulldog in the process of killing Adama and stops him. Bulldog has flashbacks to being let out of his cell.
• Later, Adama presents his resignation to Roslin. Bemused, she refuses to accept it, and points out that the Admiralty may have been trying to provoke a war, and that he cannot shoulder the entire responsiblity for the holocaust on his shoulders. She then tells him that his penance will be to accept a Medal of Distinction for his long years of service, and to be a hero.
• After sending Bulldog off to a berthing on another ship with a uniform, Tigh and Adama sit down for a drink in the admiral's quarters.

On a basestar

• In a dream, Three is trying to avoid marines on Galactica. The marines corner her against a hatch labelled End of Line. The marines raise their weapons and Three tells them to shoot.
• As the shots go off, Three wakes up in bed with Baltar and Caprica-Six. She has apparently been having a sexual relationship with Baltar and possibly Six as well.
• In the Cylon control room Caprica-Six questions Three about her bad dreams. Caprica asks if the dreams are about Baltar and Three tells her that it's nothing like that, but does not elaborate.
• Three gives a centurion orders to shoot her, and then delete any information regarding the incident. The centurion obeys and shoots her in the head. In the moments before she is downloaded, she experiences images from her dream mixed in with memories from New Caprica and other more cryptic scenes.
• Three awakes in a rebirthing chamber where a worried Caprica-Six tries to help her recover. Three tells her, "There's something beautiful, miraculous between life and death."

Questions

• Were the Admiralty's fears valid, or was the Cylon force that destroyed the Colonies built up just since that mission?
• Did humans taken prisoner well before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies provide the original genetic pool for the humanoid Cylons?
• Did Bulldog know of or see other human prisoners during his three years of captivity?
• How was Bulldog directed to the precise location of the fleet?
• What class of battlestar does Valkyrie belong to?
• Why would a "Stealth Ship" in enemy territory break radio silence?
• Was Valkyrie's mission the only one the admiralty undertook or were there others?
• Was Laura Roslin right in speculating that the admiralty might have sent Valkyrie in order to provoke a war?
• Why did the Cylons have one craft jump in and fire on the stealth star, then jump out? Then send in two more ships to finish the attack? Could the first ship have really been a Colonial ship sent by the admiralty to expose the stealth star?
• Who were the white-robed figures Three saw in her vision before downloading?
• Were the Cylons on the baseship where Bulldog was held really sick?
• Does Bulldog have information regarding the other humanoid Cylon models that nothing is known of?
• How did Baltar's status change from torturee in "A Measure of Salvation" to an apparent sexual relationship with Caprica Six and Number Three?
• Was Adama's whole command staff transferred from the Valkyrie to Galactica after the failure of the recon mission?
  • Geata's statement about serving with Adama for the prior three years during the miniseries.

Analysis

• Adama and Roslin know each other well enough by now to tell when the other is lying, or is not fooled by a lie, even when others around can't.
• At the end of the episode, Saul Tigh appears to be attempting to try and deal with his guilt over his wife, but he does not seem to want his job as XO back, at least not any time soon.
• Adama's feelings of guilt over his actions during Valkyrie's mission seem to shed new light on the motivation for his speech at Galactica's decomissioning ceremony at the begining of the series. Also, they explain his near-monomania with safeguarding and/or rescuing those under his command or protection.
• The Cylons seem to have been able to detect and destroy The Stealth-Star that had only entered two kilometers into their space. This seems suspicious given the fact that they were unable to detect the Blackbird, presumably a far less sophisticated design. Either the Cylons had more advanced detection equipment on the Armistice Line, or they had advance knowledge of Bulldog's mission.
  • It is only speculation that the Blackbird's stealth capabilities were less effective than those of the Stealth-Star. The reason that the Blackbird went undetected by the Cylons is that its hull, at Helo's suggestion, was made of carbon composite. There is no way of knowing whether or not this was true of the Stealth-Star.
    • In addition, the Cylons near the Armistice Line would have known to look for stealth ships, as they probably suspected that the Colonial fleet would try to gain intel on Cylon military status. After the destruction of the colonies, it is unlikely that the Cylons believed that the Colonials were still in possession of any kind of stealth fighter and would not attempt to detect one.
    • The fact that the Cylons expected penetration by stealth ships suggests that they may have done their share of Armistice Line violation.
• Bulldog's story is even less believable given the fact that it took Kara Thrace several hours to gut a Raider and learn how to fly it. Granted, the Raider Kara captured was damaged, but it would still have taken Bulldog some time to adapt the raider for his own use.
  • As the episode implies that Bulldog was deliberately released by the Cylons in an effort to direct his anger towards Adama, it is possible that the Cylons allowed Bulldog to gain a working knowledge of the raider.
• Bulldog probably could have stolen a Heavy Raider, which unlike the light versions seems to have a crew compartment and perhaps piloting controls, but then the production crew couldn't have re-used the captured-Raider prop from "You Can't Go Home Again" on the flight deck set.
• That Kara Thrace goes to Tigh with her findings is an acknowledgment of their shared semi-pariah status and the connection that was shown in "Collaborators" for the first time
• The last two scenes of "Hero" appear to have been edited to ensure that the final scene was with Adama and Tigh. Right after the celebration scene, Adama is seen giving Bulldog a new uniform, but Adama is wearing his everyday uniform. In the final scene with Tigh, Adama is wearing his dress grays from the celebration. It appears at the very least, the two scenes were in reverse order, meaning the episode originally ended with Adama giving Bulldog his new uniform.
• The architecture of the place Number Three visits between life and death is similar if not identical to that of the operahouse on Kobol which Baltar and his internal Six entered in "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II".
• Three's flashbacks after being shot indicate her to be the same individual who was killed on Caprica by Caprica-Six in "Downloaded" and who found Hera in "Exodus, Part II". It is of course possible that some of these recollections are the result of memory-sharing rather than direct experience.
  • If she is the same Three that died on Caprica, that leaves the question how it can be that she didn't get the Opera House experience on her first death, even though she was stuck in limbo for thirty-six hours because of the massive casualties at the cafe in Downloaded. It is plausible that this Three wanted to die because she'd never experienced death before.
    • It is also plausible that God is only just now trying to tell her something.
• There's at least one other doctor of some kind in the fleet, because Cottle instructs Bulldog to report to him.
• The Cylons appear to know the current location of the fleet.

Adama's Dossier

Laura Roslin reviews a dossier prepared for her by Billy on her first day aboard Galactica. It includes large photos of the battlestar Galactica, a photograph of the CIC crew of the battlestar Valkyrie, a (mostly illegible) certificate bearing Saul Tigh's name, and a cursory biography of William Adama, reprodued in full below:

Commander William Adama

• Born H5/21290 and raised on the colony of Caprica, in Qualai, a small coastal community
• Mother, Evelyn Adama, an accountant.
• Father, Joseph Adama, a prominent attorney who specialized in criminal defese and civil liberties.

Military Service

D6/21311 First comission, Battlestar Galactica, fighter squadron
E4/21312 Commendation for shooting down Cylon fighter in first combat mission.
D5/21314 Mustered out of service post-armistice
R6/21317 Served as Deck Hand in merchant fleet and as common […] aboard inter-colony tramp freighters
D1/21331 Recomissioned to Fleet
D6/21337 Major: Battlestar Atlantia
R8/21341 Executive Officer: Battlestar Columbia
C2/21345 Commander: Battlestar Valkyrie

C2/21348 Commander: Battlestar Galactica

This provides us with some interesting information. The fields in the format X#/##### appear to be dates, with the five-digit string following the solidus apparently corresponding to the year. This corroborates various points of information supplied to us thus far:

• We learned in "The Hand of God" that Adama's father was named Joseph, and was a civil rights attorney. This was mentioned again in "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I"
• We learned in a scene cut from "Valley of Darkness" that Adama joined the fleet toward the end of the war, and was attached to Galactica as a fighter pilot.
• We learned in "Act of Contrition" that Adama was serving on Atlantia during his thousandth landing, which indicates that he was still a flight officer at that time. Given his rank of Major, he was likely the CAG on Atlantia.
• The date of the Armistice is correct at 42 years before the present, as stated in the Miniseries and accounting for the passage of slightly over two years since that time.

We can also deduce some interesting new information:

• This episode marks the 45th anniversary of Adama's commissioning, which puts it in the year 21356, and makes Adama 66 years old.
• Adama spent three years in between being mustered out and finding a job on a tramp freighter. We may speculate that it was during this time that his relationship with first wife Caroline deteriorated.
• Adama spent a total of 14 years serving in the merchant fleet, a much longer time period than we had been lead to believe.
• In "Torn", Adama told us that he and Tigh met 30 years ago. That would be 21326, which (correctly) puts it in the middle of Adama's merchant fleet service.
• We know that Adama was a major by the time he arranged for Tigh to be reinstated in the fleet (Scattered), which means that at least six years past in between Adama's recomissioning and Tigh's.
• Ronald Moore told us that the flashback scenes in "Scattered" took place 20 years before that episode, or in 21334. In fact, they appear to span at least an eleven-year period between 21326 (Adama and Tigh's first meeting) to 21337 (Adama's promotion to Major)
• The first Colonial Day, marking the unification of the colonies, was probably in 21304. The one celebrated in "Colonial Day" was the 52nd, and it is now two years later.

If the five-digit string following the solidus is in fact the year, as seems inescapable based on the above, the letter-digit sequence before it must indicate the position in the year. There are 260 unique letter-digit sequences of that format, which may indicate a shorter year in the Colonial calendar (a year of twenty-six ten-day weeks?) However, our knowledge of Colonial timekeeping is too incomplete to draw any conclusions.

It is astonishing to learn that the Colonials have (or believe they have) over 21,000 years of recorded history. By comparison, Pythia was said to have recorded her prophecies 3,600 years ago (The Hand of God) and the exodus from Kobol took place just 2,000 years ago. On earth, Human civilization is only about 6,000 years old.

Adama's resignation letter at the end of the episode appears to be dated in an entirely different format. It's difficult to read clearly, but it appears to be dated "27/89/9923".

Notes

• In Adama's flashback, the admirals are wearing their decorations on their day uniforms. This contrasts with most Colonial Fleet officers shown thus far, who only wear their decorations on their dress uniform sash.

• Both Baltar and Sharon Agathon appear in this episode, but neither one has any lines.

• In Number Three's dream, the door at which is she is shot by the marines is labeled "End of Line". As well as being a metaphor for death, this is a statement repeated often by the Cylon Hybrid.

• This episode shares some plot elements with the TNG Episode "The Defector", written by RDM. Notably, beginning with a dramatic chase delivering a dubious ally into friendly hands that is later shown to be staged. Additionally, both episodes feature plots revolving around a contested border.

• Dualla apparently served on the Valkyrie; she can be seen in the background standing behind Adama and Tigh in the flashback scenes.
  • That person in the scene is most likley not Dualla, it's not easy to see because the flashback-scenes in the CIC have (deliberatly) not the best quality.

• Admiral William Adama names Major Lee Adama to succeed him as commander of Galactica in his resignation letter.

Noteworthy Dialogue

"There's something beautiful, miraculous between life and death." - Number 3 to Caprica Six

Official Statements

• A video blog gives an insight to this episode during filming.

Guest Stars

• Barry Kennedy as Admiral Corman
• Lucy Lawless as Number Three
• Carl Lumbly as Lt. Daniel Novacek
• Donnelly Rhodes as Doctor Cottle
• Matthew Bennett as Number Five
• Rekha Sharma as Tory Foster