BSG: The Eye of Jupiter

Between the occupation of New Caprica and Baltar's subsequent Basestar vacation, the writers needed to come up with a frakking good idea why the audience wouldn't get to see all 12 Cylon models running around.

And the idea the writers came up with was good enough to breathe another season and a half of life into a show that was beginning to lose its traction. (Is that really a fair assessment? Try to picture the way the bulk of Season 4 would have gone if the Final Five were just models 7 and 9-12, as opposed to being fundamentally different from the others.) Enter the Final Five, the five not-yet-revealed Cylon models who aren't in contact with the other seven.

Baltar mentioned them first in "Torn," and then everyone started using the term, presumably because they were programmed not to think about the Final Five, and that extended to calling the Final Five the Final Five.

Then in "Hero," the Cylons engaged in an absolutely insane plot to get a former prisoner to kill Adama, which told me all I needed to know about the Final Five; namely, that the other seven weren't in contact with the Five, and that the likelihood of any of the Five having sleeper programming was practically nil.

So now we come to the Algae Planet, or as I like to call it, Overexposed Planet Number Four. Caprica was overexposed with a gold filter, Kobol was overexposed with a green filter, New Caprica was overexposed with a blue filter and tons of fog (except in "Unfinished Business" for some reason), the Algae planet was overexposed with a blue filter, and Earth will just be plain overexposed.

Anyway, on this planet is the Temple of Five, which was built by the Thirteenth Tribe but apparently contains some sort of clue about not only the location of Earth, but also the identities of the Final Five. Talk about convenient.

Actually, no, please do not talk about convenient. There are two different conversations in this episode where characters go out of their way to say how totally random it is that both the Colonial and Cylon fleets converged on this planet at once, and that it must be the will of God, the gods, or Ronald D. Moore. This is what we call "lampshade hanging," and we don't need none of that!

Baltar, because he actually is a genius, managed to decipher a riddle spoken by the Basestar's hybrid, and that led them to the Algae planet. Meanwhile, the humans only found the planet because they were looking for food to eat. Which group is supposed to be the ones interpreting religious scrolls looking for Earth again? Anyway, Roslin gets right down to business interpreting religious scrolls as soon as Tyrol reports back that he's found a temple that looks surprisingly like the main part of Ragnar Anchorage... I mean, a temple that was built by the Thirteenth Tribe.

(Now, with the benefit of hindsight, you might be tempted to think that there's something significant to the fact that Tyrol found the temple. I submit as counter-evidence the fact that Anders didn't.)

Anyway, once another 20 episodes elapse and we get around to "Sometimes a Great Notion," the gaps start to get filled in as to how this can be both a Thirteenth Tribe temple and a Final Five identifier. But for the time being, we're all "huh," and "what?"

Anyway, the temple supposedly contains the Eye of Jupiter, which points the way to Earth. The Eye of Jupiter is denoted as this red, yellow and blue mandala thingy. Tyrol is tasked with finding the Eye while Apollo and Anders try to hold off a Cylon ground force. Anders is well aware that his "two-timing bitch of a wife" (her words) is cheating on him with Apollo. Naturally, there's an incredible amount of tension... and also ridiculously oiled biceps. (There's a similar scene between Starbuck and Dee in the next episode, but with out the subtext. That's probably because we just had "The Passage," where Starbuck and Kat got so close that every male audience member was yelling "Kiss her!")

Starbuck won't divorce Anders, and Lee makes up his mind not to cheat on Dee, which puts them both pretty much in hell for the next couple of episodes. But not to worry, becuase Starbuck gets shot down, Anders flips and tries to go rescue her, but Lee won't let him because he's too important. Apparently nobody else is capable of leading a bunch of civilians.

Incidentally, this is a repeated problem in the show: the plot contrives to send a character somewhere or keep a character somewhere because that character is too important. Starbuck is the best sniper, even though she's a pilot (and a card shark, tactical genius, Pyramid pro, painter, pianist, and clairvoyant). Boomer is the best Raptor wrangler, even though Racetrack steps in as soon as she's out of the picture. Anders is the only capable resistance leader. Apollo is the only person qualified to be Acting President.

Meanwhile, the Cylons show up. Lucy Lawless is still tricking you into thinking she's the show's Big Bad, but it's starting to become clear that she's on a mission of her own and the others are about to rebel. Just to hammer that point home, Dean Stockwell shows up for the first time since New Caprica to hurl massive amounts of snark at pretty much everyone (it's what he does, and he's so good at it that they went and made an entire movie of him doing almost nothing but). In this instance, he offers the Colonials Baltar in exchange for the Eye of Jupiter. Naturally, they don't take the offer. Baltar and D'anna jump in a Heavy Raider and head towards the planet, but Adama threatens to nuke the temple (and the surrounding area, including Apollo and Starbuck) so the Cylons can't find the Eye.

And, oh yeah, the sun's about to go supernova.

This was sort-of, kind-of the Season 3 midseason finale, because they went on a quick break afterwards. No, it's not as good as the Season 2 equivalent. That's because this episode has to service so much more than just its own cliffhanger. Since the Final Five are so much more important to the overall mythology of the series than the Pegasus ever was, we have to focus on that aspect of the story a lot. But since there's a rather simple explanation for the Temple of Five being both of the things that it is, and since that explanation gives the entire game away, a massive sleight-of-hand which basically amounts to "don't think about it too hard" is employed.

So what did I like about this episode? Ironically, the same thing I didn't like that much about "Water." Grace Park is better here than she was there. Her characters are more interesting. The scene between Boomer and Athena is great, and the scene where Athena finds out her daughter is still alive is even better.

The scene where Roslin confesses that she kidnapped Hera is great. I normally wish they would go back and stick the deleted scenes back into the episodes more often (as in "Pegasus" and "Unfinished Business"), but I'm glad they didn't in this case, because the snippet of that scene that made it into the episode is so much better than the full-length version that can be found elsewhere on the DVD. (Roslin second-guessing herself and asking Adama what she should do? We don't need to see that. I like Roslin the most when she's absolutely sure that the choice she made was the lesser of two evils.)

I guess I liked the scene between Anders and Lee, even though I thought the plot was trying a bit too hard to force these two to cooperate, when really Anders could just have gone off and rescued Starbuck. (Lee's a character I get about 99% of the time, so whenever he does something that doesn't make any sense to me, it tends to throw me. Anders isn't that important; he just told all the civilians to make bombs and whatnot.)

And Dean Stockwell makes a welcome reappearance. But still, when you compare this to "Pegasus" and especially "Revelations," the other two midseason cliffhangers, this one comes up so short. (Obligatory swipe at Doctor Who: yes, it's better than "A Good Man Goes to War." That goes without saying.)