BSG: "Epiphanies"

So these two are out of order, review-wise, because as I insinuated in my "Black Market" review, this episode really should have come after that episode.

...also because it's so much easier to criticize than to praise, and "Scar," the episode I saw today, was a return to form.

So anyways, in "Epiphanies," Roslin's cancer has progressed to the point where she has about a day left, and the orders she's handing down start to get... extreme. (This is another reason "Black Market" should have come first; Moore admitted that there was never really the notion that the black market was evil and needed to be eliminated; he could have gotten around that problem by making the order to get rid of it just another one of Roslin's crazy deathbed commands.)

Roslin orders that Sharon's baby be aborted because it's abnormal and might endager the fleet in some way. Um, Laura? Ever heard a famous quote by Hitler or Stalin (I know the answer's no, but just bear with me anyway) that goes something along the lines of "give me four years and your child will be on my side forever." Raise the kid as a human and chances are nothing can happen! Really, if you're gonna revert to President Airlock mode, your order should be to vent Sharon before she even comes to term. Fortunately, Baltar's been getting not-at-all subtle hints from Head-Six that he needs to protect this kid. And on top of that, everyone keeps telling him that he's going to be President very, very soon, so he'd better start acting like it.

Sharon, unsurprisingly, doesn't take the news very well. (Sharon, surprisingly, is suddenly very pregnant considering her condition at the end of the previous episode.) But there's nothing either she or Helo can do about it. But Baltar can! He suddenly has a brainwave and realizes that the hybrid baby has special blood that can... wait for it...

Cure cancer. At this point I think my jaw dropped a solid foot. See, at no point was this sort of solution even hinted at, and the episode kind of promised us Roslin would die, or at the very least spend a few episodes utterly bedridden. Anyway she's magically cured and Baltar congratulates himself, until he opens a letter Roslin left for him to open after she was dead. It bruises his ego and causes him to give a nuclear warhead to a group that thinks that peace with the Cylons is the way to go. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh wait, the group's leader is the version of Number Six that Baltar liberated from the Pegasus brig. Well, I guess that does make sense. It's not like Baltar had this huge revelation at the very beginning of the series that keeping his pants up might be a really, really good idea.

And Baltar tries to hug her earlier. Here's another problem with this episode; Tricia Helfer actually had to point out to the writers that a woman who was gang-raped wouldn't exactly welcome any sort of physical contact.

Anyway, the b-plot of this episode is the peace movement. A group of humans thinks that peace with the Cylons is a) possible and b) a better alternative to wiping the toasters out of the sky. Good thing you guys waited until after Cain was dead to start your terrorist activities. Yup, sabotaging Vipers and trying to blow up fuel ships is a great way to bring people over to your cause. Hell, never mind Cain; remember what happened when you tried to say "no" to Tigh? That didn't to too well.

So this episode establishes that a) Human-Cylon hybrid baby blood is the most valuable substance in the fleet, and b) there's a group of humans wanting to shut down the military. How come neither of these plot points came up in the very next episode, which was all about a group of humans flouting authority and trading in valuable substances?

But, really, the problem with this episode is the Deus Ex Machina ending. Whereas "Black Market" suffered because stuff wasn't set up ahead of time, this episode is the one that actually does have to handle the apparent end to a long-running plot, and it fumbles it badly. The magic Human-Cylon hybrid baby blood (hereafter referred to as MHCHBB) comes out of nowhere and doesn't get a single mention in either of the next episodes. There's not even as much as an "um, sorry I wanted to abort the kid that ended up saving my life" from Roslin.

Now, as far as what I did like in this episode, because there is some of that. During her cancer-induced delirium, Roslin suddenly realizes that Baltar was frakking Six back on Caprica before the end. At the end of "Black Market," now that she's back on her feet, she asks Baltar to resign. Baltar gives her the exact same answer she gave President Adar when he asked for her resignation: basically, go frak yourself. Poetic.

I liked the way Adama dealt with the college professor who thought peace with the Cylons was the way to go. Strangulation! In situations like this, it'd be a good idea to have a first officer who's capable of reigning in your more violent impulses... oh, right.

I guess it'd be churlish to mention Six's Clark Kent disguise, but in fairness, she's working with people who think a bunch of robots who launched a preemptive and near-xenocidal nuclear assault can be reasoned with.

So that's what I liked about the episode, but really: how did that go in the writer's room? "Here's what cures Roslin's cancer: Magic Baby Blood!"

Now, a word on the whole Deus Ex Machina thing. It means "God from the machine." In ye olden days, Greek plays would end by having a "god" descend to the stage on some sort of contraption and sort everything out for the protagonists. The meaning of "Deus Ex Machina" has since been twisted to mean "resolving a plotline in a completely unforeseen and unforeshadowed way." The series itself ends on a Deus Ex Machina in the ancient Greek sense of the term... but that's been actually set up, back in whatever episode it was where you figured out what Head-Six really was ("The Hand of God," "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part 2," and "Home, Part 2" are the obvious contenders). This is a show that eventually gives us Space Moses, Space John the Baptist, and Space Jesus, so really, "God did it" kind of makes sense in the finale; it's been hinted at all the way through, and especially in almost anything Baltar says in the last season. Compared to that, "Epiphanies" is still a Deus Ex Machina!

Okay, I get that the writers had (and not for the last time) painted themselves into a corner and needed to get out of it (see also: Fat Lee, "Hot Dog is the father," Number Seven). I'd be considerably more forgiving if they'd made clear that a) Roslin's cancer could (and would) eventually return, and b) when it does, the miracle cure won't work again. (I say it's the baby's blood here because that's what it sounds like on screen. It's actually Sharon's fetal blood or some such, meaning she'd have to get pregnant again. And it's not exactly like she and Roslin are really on the best of terms at any point after 3.12, "Rapture.")