Rapture

"Rapture" An episode of the Re-imagined Series
Episode No.	Season 3, Episode 12
Writer(s)	Bradley Thompson David Weddle
Story by
Director	Michael Rymer
Assistant Director
Special guest(s)	Lucy Lawless as Number Three
Production No.	312
Nielsen Rating	1.4
US airdate	2007-01-21
CAN airdate	{{{CAN airdate}}}
UK airdate
DVD release
Population	41,401 survivors
Additional Info
Episode Chronology
Previous		Next
The Eye of Jupiter	Rapture	Taking a Break From All Your Worries
Related Information
Official Summary
R&D Skit – View
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Listing of props for this episode
Related Media
			@ BW Media
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iTunes: USA

Overview

With an impending supernova, the Colonials and Cylons see their time running out as they endeavor to unlock the secrets of the Eye of Jupiter. Meanwhile, Number Three executes her plan to know the faces of the Final Five and Sharon Agathon tries to get her daughter back.

Summary

Act 1

• Others in Galactica's CIC, particularly Colonel Tigh and President Roslin, become increasingly agitated and shocked as Admiral Adama continues issuing orders to arm and launch several nuclear missiles at the Temple of Five. He instructs Colonel Tigh to enter his launch codes as Adama does the same on his command console.
• In the previous episode, the Colonials warned that they would destroy the continent where the ancient temple resided if the Cylons attempted any landing there. Six Heavy Raiders are now heading to the planet, and Adama is intent on showing the Cylons that he is not bluffing.
• The Cylon basestar command detect Adama's continued missile preparations and become visibly worried that Adama will indeed destroy the Temple. Each of the available models immediately agree to a recall, except for the Number Three model, who defies the command group's consensus, and refuses to recall the last Heavy Raider.
• Galactica notices the recall of all but one of the Heavy Raiders, which gives Admiral Adama a moment to reconsider. After several tense moments, Adama rescinds the launch order and orders his battlestar to stand down.
• The Cylons are relieved as well, but after the Three in the command room leaves in satisfaction, the others realize that the Cylon, a race predicated on consensus and not defiance or distinctive personality clashes, have a serious problem. A Cavil voices that the Threes are out of control, and that a decision regarding their actions must be made, sooner rather than later.
• In their quarters, Helo is angry, saddened and unable to convince his wife, Sharon Agathon of another course of action by way of Raptor or other transport in her desire to rescue their daughter, Hera, in the hands of the Cylons. In the end, both embracing, Helo shoots his wife to force her consciousness to download and resurrect on the Cylon Resurrection Ship to attempt the rescue.

Act 2

• On the algae planet, Lee Adama's resistance movement is preparing. However, the Major and Samuel Anders are still fighting over saving Kara Thrace after her Raptor crashed from a Cylon missile attack. When Anders angrily proposes that he will shoot Major Adama if Thrace is dead, Adama responds that he would oblige Anders if Starbuck was killed, relating his feelings about the downed pilot. Their impasse ends when Adama calls his wife, Lieutenant Dualla, and orders her to attempt reconnaissance and rescue of Starbuck.

• Galen Tyrol and his team continue deciphering the writings inside the Temple of Five for discerning the location of the Eye of Jupiter, believed to be an important artifact that gives further data on the road to Earth. Their investigation does not go well, although Chief Tyrol believes he is close to understanding the writings.
• Admiral Adama and President Roslin meet with Helo and question his wisdom in the Agathon's rescue attempt of their daughter. Adama is concerned that the Cylons may gain critical tactical data from their defected former Cylon agent. When Roslin criticizes Helo, he angrily reminds her that, if she didn't steal their daughter, the Agathons wouldn't be in this situation.

• Dualla and Sergeant Omar Fischer make their way to Starbuck's location, but are soon attacked by a Cylon sniper. After her partner is killed, Dualla scrambles, weaponless, along an alternate path to Starbuck's location.

• Starbuck has survived her crash relatively unhurt except for severe burns on her hands. The pain is so severe that Thrace hasn't sufficient dexterity to inject herself with a morpha shot for the pain. When she hears a noise outside, however, Starbuck suppresses the pain long enough to raise her sidearm at her Raptor's open door.
• Thankfully, Dualla appears at the entrance. After administering a morpha shot, Dualla proceeds to assess the Raptors damage. She tells Thrace that she was ordered to "bring Starbuck to Apollo," describing less of the actual rescue and more of her pain over the "secret" affair between Adama and Thrace.
• Sharon Agathon downloads successfully. Through fortune or design, it is Caprica-Six who greets her at the Cylon rebirthing tank. Agathon seems truthful in her intentions, despite Six's concerns. In turn, Six tells Agathon that the child is ill and is worsening, to the confusion of the Cylons.
• On the planet, Major Adama's team have set a bomb kill zone in a ravine where any Cylon forces must walk through.

Act 3

• When the Centurions spot the trap, Jean Barolay is forced to detonate it before the Cylons completely enter the blast radius.
• The explosion removes the lower torso of one Cylon, but it, along with the two undamaged units, return fire. The Colonials destroy the legless Cylon, but lose one of their own in the firefight. Having lost their only chance to hold back a Cylon advance, they begin a retreat to the highlands of the planet to await rescue.
• Major Adama calls Chief Tyrol and orders the immediately evacuation and destruction of the Temple of Five lest it fall in Cylon control. A reluctant Tyrol orders his team out and soon follows, with a detonation cord reel to the G-4 packs in his hands.
• Dualla continues to repair the damaged avionics from cannibalizing other datacord from the ship's communications system. When Thrace's pain increases, Dualla (with an apparently less-than-cordial "bedside manner") stabs Thrace's leg with another morpha injection. As she drifts into a sedated delirium, Thrace confesses to loving and hating Lee Adama and her husband. Dualla slaps the pilot both in annoyance and in an attempt to keep Thrace focused on a major problem: the former petty officer on Galactica is not flight-trained and cannot fly the Raptor, while Thrace's injuries make it impossible for her to fly.
• Gaius Baltar, the "D'Anna" Three, and a Cavil prepare to enter the Temple. Baltar's virtual Six appears to remind him, despite Three's feelings, that Baltar himself and not Three is the "anointed one" who is meant to activate or access the Temple's secrets.
• Reunited with the other Colonials at a safe distance from the Temple, Tyrol is reluctant to detonate the Temple's explosives. When Major Adama wrestles the detonator away from Tyrol and activates it, nothing happens. Unknown to them, Cavil, Three, and Baltar have removed the detonator caps from the G-4 immediately after they entered the Temple.
• Chief Tyrol and the team see the atmosphere ripple and pulsate as the star begins its nova. The star's corona (or its effect on the atmosphere above the Temple) takes shape to form a likeness of the circular multicolored starburst-like mandala that decorated the Temple. Tyrol quickly realizes that the star itself is the Eye of Jupiter. The Colonial team goes to investigate.
• The algae planet's home star has made a helium burst of its outer atmosphere. The star is going nova. Everyone, Cylon and Colonial alike, have less than an hour to escape the system.
• Sharon Agathon and Caprica-Six arrive at Hera's room, where Agathon's Galactica predecessor, Sharon Valerii, is tending the child. Valerii is visibly angered at Agathon's presence. When Agathon picks up her crying daughter, the child's cries cease momentarily. Caprica-Six curiously realizes that, while both Agathon and Valerii are biologically identical, Hera is able to recognize her mother.
• Agathon's human first-aid training recognizes that Hera's stomach is too firm, suggesting a possible intestinal blockage. When Valerii comments that the Cylon doctors detected no such problem, Agathon reminds her that the Cylons have no pediatric care experience, having medical experience only with the adult-sized humanoids of their kind.
• Agathon tries to have Valerii remember her love of Chief Tyrol and Admiral Adama, but the former "Boomer" denies her past and rescinds all possibility that humans and Cylons could co-exist, remembering the events on New Caprica.
• Agathon pulls Caprica-Six from Hera's bedside and tells her that, for Hera to survive, she must return her to medical facilities on Galactica. Complicating this, Valerii grows jealous of her inability to help Hera, appearing to become unstable, and physically threatens to break Hera's neck. Agathon pleads for Hera's life as Caprica-Six manages to knock out Valerii. To prevent Boomer from getting up, Six breaks the Cylon's neck.
• Agathon and Caprica-Six agree that Hera (and others that come after her) are crucial to the future of the Cylons (and, by implication, the Colonials). They make their way to Galactica by way of a captured Raptor.

Act 4

• Inside the Temple of Five, Baltar quietly notes a Colonial sidearm left behind while Cavil and Three example the structure. When the virtual Six points out the only mandala on a raised section of the floor, Baltar notes it, and Three gravitates to it as well.
• The nova's effect or light is being channeled through the central spire's crystalline mechanisms and activates a beam of light on the floor's sunburst.
• Cavil attempts to stop the Three from using the beam, questioning Three's intentions not to find Earth in as much as seeking the forbidden information of the Final Five. He points a gun to shoot Three, but Baltar shoots and kills the Cavil from behind.
• Three walks into the beam and immediately sees the vision of the five she's seen before. Unlike before, however, she is able to discern the specific faces. Three stands in front of one face (not visible to viewers) and immediately recognizes it, apologizing to the being for past transgressions before the vision abruptly stops.
• Dualla manages to fly the Raptor away to space, with Starbuck's guidance.
• Admiral Adama orders an immediate Raptor rescue of everyone on the planet after the Cylons baseships immediately retreat to escape the pending nova shockwave.
• Baltar holds Three, who apparently suffers mortal damage from the use of the Temple's vision mechanism. Baltar tries to get Three to tell her what she has seen; specifically, Baltar wants to know if she saw his face among the image of five beings. However, Three dies before he gets an answer.
• Baltar drops Three's body and stands in the starburst, attempting to see the vision himself. However, the Temple's illumination from the star has ceased, and so has the vision mechanism. As Baltar prays to God to help him, the barrel of a Colonial sidearm comes to rest at his head, and Chief Tyrol is holding it. The Chief sarcastically greets the deposed president and pistol-whips him unconscious.
• Raptors are seen flying away from the planet and to Galactica. The battlestar is under full sublight power, escaping from orbit while buying time for the Raptors to land and for the battlestar to prep for an FTL jump.
• Galactica escapes the remains of the algae planet as the star's shockwave tears through its system.
• Chief Tyrol and his group unload a body bag from his Raptor onto a gurney. He stops the gurney and discreetly shows Colonel Tigh that Baltar is inside, alive but unconscious. Tigh orders Tyrol to have Baltar taken to the brig.
• Samuel Anders and Kara Thrace reunite. Lee Adama and Dualla, each on opposite sides of Thrace and Anders, see this as well. Adama moves to embrace his wife.
• In a briefing, Tyrol, Lieutenant Gaeta, Roslin, Admiral Adama and Helo analyze the new nova and compare it to the Temple's mandala, realizing that the Thirteenth Tribe must have wanted anyone who followed after them to look for this symbol, or specifically, another nova. Gaeta finds a similar nova over 10,000 light years away, in the Ionian system.
• Helo is fascinated over a picture of the temple's mandala. He makes his way to Kara Thrace's quarters and asks if she had any photos of her old apartment on Caprica.
• He finds a painting that Thrace had made on one of her apartment's walls. It is virtually identical to the temple's mandala, which was created 4,000 years before. When Thrace sees this, her mood darkens. She tells Helo that she had doodled this symbol often as child because she liked it, having no prior source for the symbol. She relates something that a Leoben Cylon told her over a year before: Thrace had a destiny, and, according to Leoben, it was already pre-written.
• On the Resurrection Ship, D'Anna-Three downloads successfully to find a Cavil sitting next to her tank. Cavil notes curiously that at least Three will not have to go through the process of resurrection again, and explains why.
• The other Cylons believe that Three's delusions of messianic intentions have revealed her as an inherently flawed design. Three counters that it is not wrong to seek ones own purpose, that the search for who and why the Cylons were built is an important task.
• The decision has been made to box the entire model. Three tells Cavil that he and the others will see the faces of the final five one day, but with a press of a button by Cavil, Three and all of her kind are deactivated.

Questions

• Why did D'Anna die?
• Who did D'Anna recognize as being one of the final five?
• Why are the identities of the final five kept a secret? Why would the other seven Cylon models not know the identities of the final five, and why would the Cavil model want to prevent the others from learning about them? Do some or all of the Cylons not want to know and why would this be so?
• Have we seen the last of Number Three?
• Does a mechanism exist to revive boxed Cylons, given that their memories and thoughts still exist in cold storage?
• What will become of Boomer?
• What is the connection between Starbuck and the Eye of Jupiter?
• What is Starbuck's destiny?
• What will President Roslin and Admiral Adama do with Baltar now they he is back in their custody?
• Has Roslin and Adama's relationship soured now that Adama knows of Roslin's involvement with hiding Hera?
• What will happen to Caprica-Six now that she is on Galactica?
• Will there be any consequences to Athena's actions?
• Did the Cylons realize the significance between the mandala and the nova?
• With the temple destroyed, what is the significance of Baltar being the "chosen one" rather than D'Anna?
• When Cavil told D'Anna to look at the damage that her convictions had done, was he referring to all of the other Threes who had been boxed, to the Cylons as a whole, or to something else?
• How were the Cylons able to "box" all the Threes? Were they executed or were all resurrected because D'Anna's death triggered their own deaths?
• How did the crew of Galactica know that the Number Eight returning with Hera was the real Sharon?
• Were the marines that followed Tigh as they greeted Athena originally supposed to keep Athena under guard just in case she was indeed another Number Eight, or were they already informed about Caprica-Six?
• What did D'Anna mean when she told Baltar that he was right? Was she saying that he was a Cylon or was she referring to something else that he said to her earlier?
• Have any of the Number Three models escaped the boxing by fleeing for their own survival? Or have they all gone "quietly into the night"?
• Is the "jealous god", the god of the Cylons, and the god that the Temple of Five was dedicated to, all the same entity?

Analysis

• The five figures in white bear a striking resemblance to the occupants of the Ship of Lights from the Original Series.
• Because D'Anna recognized one of the figures in white which must have been programmed into the viewing mechanism 4000 years previously, it can be concluded that there is some substantial connection between whomever the Temple of Five was dedicated to and the Cylons.
• If the five priests are actually the Final Five (this has not been determined to be more than assumptions), then the Cylons are using ancient genetic templates as indicated by their susceptibility to a virus that the rest of the human race was immune to.
• The basestar command apparently does not require consensus of all models, or need not have them to have a representative at the command center. Simon and Number Five are not seen during this episode. Of course, since there were only seven models at the time, four models casting the same vote is decisive. This is exactly what happened when Six, Eight, Leoben and Cavil voted in favor of recalling the Raiders.
• Despite no longer being XO, Helo is still included in high-level briefings. This may reflect another facet to his current duties aside from mere Raptor jockeying (this may also be supported by the fact that he is more often seen in uniform rather than flight suit or fatigues currently).
• Battlestar Wiki contributors confirmed the similarity between the symbolic Eye-of-Jupiter image in the Temple of Five and the painting seen in Kara Thrace's old apartment (Valley of Darkness) prior to this episode (see this talk page).
  • According to the RDM podcast, the image in Kara's apartment was a mandala that the actress had decided to paint before the actual shooting occurred.
• The tension between Athena and Boomer reaches a climax when Athena attempts to rescue her daughter. It has become clear that Boomer, like Athena, was presented with two choices, but unlike Athena, did not choose the path that led to forgiveness. Though both Eights had suffered persecution from the Colonials, but Athena, partly due to her love for Helo and Adama, chose to forgive, Boomer allowed the failure of New Caprica to push her over to the belief that humans and Cylons should go their separate ways.
• Boomer comments that Cavil believes that the Cylons aren't supposed to have children. This is unsurprising, given that model's lack of religious faith and belief that the Cylons shouldn't be emulating humans.
• Caprica-Six continues her defiance against Cylon society by choosing to believe in a possible new future between Cylons and humans. This particular Cylon, ever since her deception that led to fall of humanity, has consistently shown increasingly human traits. Like her decision to save Anders by killing a Three to pave the way for a possible new future between Cylons and humans, her decision to kill Boomer to save Hera echoes those same beliefs.
• The rescue of the people on the algae planet occurs in an extremely short amount of screen time. This is reminiscent of the short amount of screen time that was given to Galactica retrieving her fighters before jumping away from the Battle of New Caprica. As noted in prior podcasts, the producers may be conserving their special effects budget for later episodes. Furthermore there just isn't much time available in each episode, so not everything can be shown in detail, which makes it necessary to compress events.
• The survivor count decreased by one at the start of this episode counting the loss of one of the civilian combatants during a gunfight on the planet's surface.
• Hera, according to Caprica-Six, is able to distinguish her mother from the other Eights. Whether this indicates that Hera inherited a Cylon ability is yet to be seen. At the very least, on an emotional level, Athena and Hera have a mother-daughter bond that does not exist with Boomer.
• According to the RDM podcast, Boomer's jealousy and rage developed over time, especially when she became Hera's primary caretaker. When it became apparent that Hera was not responding well to Boomer, she slowly developed a resentment towards Athena, because according to the Cylons, Hera existed because of God's true love. This implicated that the reason that Boomer and Tyrol were not able to conceive was because they didn't have true love between them. This, and Hera's response once Athena arrives, eventually led to the rage Boomer showed.
• After the initial stand-off ends when Adama decides to not nuke the planet, the defiant Three model states that no one would do such a thing over just one ship. However, ironically, that is exactly what Adama himself fears in "Hero" when he believes that the one recon fighter that crossed over into Cylon territory was what eventually led to the genocide of humanity.

Notes

• Prior to the airing of this episode, James Callis revealed that Gaius Baltar returns to Galactica in this episode. 

Noteworthy Dialogue

• Chief Tyrol finds Gaius Baltar standing alone in the Temple of Five:

Tyrol: Welcome home, Mr. President. (Pistol-whips Baltar, knocking him unconscious)

Guest Stars

• Michael Hogan as Colonel Saul Tigh
• Tahmoh Penikett as Captain Karl Agathon
• Aaron Douglas as Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol
• Nicki Clyne as Cally Henderson Tyrol
• Kandyse McClure as Lieutenant Anastasia Dualla
• Alessandro Juliani as Lieutenant Felix Gaeta
• Brad Dryborough as Lieutenant Hoshi
• Michael Trucco as Samuel Anders
• Alisen Down as Jean Barolay
• Eileen Pedde as Gunnery Seargant Erin Mathias
• Diego Diablo Del Mar as Hillard
• Dean Stockwell as Cavil
• Callum Keith Rennie as Leoben Conoy
• Aleks Paunovic as Sergeant Omar Fischer