BSG: Rapture

In two of the best scenes of the season, Athena has Helo kill her (because suicide is a sin, and the only Cylon who ever kills themself but nobody else simultaneously is Cavil - twice), and then Helo bitches out Roslin about kidnapping his daughter. Since at the end of the day Roslin is a power-hungry lunatic who would just as soon send everyone who disagrees with her out the airlock, I don't really mind seeing some righteous fury on Helo's part.

And yes, I do mean that Roslin is a power-hungry lunatic. She's arguably the best representation ever of a true benevolent dictator; she really does only want more power as a means of safeguarding the fleet, but it's not clear she even ever wants an election in the first place, she tries to steal that election, she lets a former terrorist be VP because it's the easiest way to get her power back, she hedges forever on the notion of giving Baltar a trial, and once he's acquitted she mocks the notion of a trial and tries to give herself more power so she can just outright execute the next traitor who comes along.

(When all is said and done, though, she's legally the president, and if Zarek wants to complain about that, maybe he shouldn't have given up the Presidency so easily. I mean, he was willing to make a big issue out of it in Season 4; why didn't he grow a spine a season earlier?)

All right, with that political side-track over with, back to the episode. The Cylons turn five of their Raiders back, but one presses on, over the will of the group.

Watch these episodes back-to-back and wonder what precisely made Cavil change his mind. In "Jupiter," he was all "it doesn't matter how long it takes to find Earth" (which fits, given that he alone of the Seven knows what's down there). Suddenly, he says there's too much of a risk. Cavil should still be in covering-his-tracks mode, as he is at the end of the episode when he boxes D'anna. He should relish the idea that he can get Adama to nuke his last best chance to find Earth. (Maybe he's just maneuvering to try to box D'anna already. I don't know. I don't know if the writers knew at this point. I'd really like to know when the writers knew who the Final Five were, and what Cavil's role was.)

Down on the surface, Dee finds Starbuck and gets her doped up on drugs. Starbuck confesses that Lee won't cheat, but Dee's having none of that. They manage to take off, eventually, after Dee manages to slap Starbuck a good one under the guise of keeping her lucid.

Anders and Lee manage to stop the Cylon advance, except that D'anna and Baltar conveniently sneak in the back door after Chief leaves. They unplug all the bombs - and again, note that Chief can't bring himself to detonate the temple. Then it's vision time, and D'anna gets to see the faces of the Final Five, prompting an aneurysm or something. Then it's Baltar's turn. Funnily enough, he does get to see one of the Five's faces, not that he'd know it. Then he gets pistol-whipped and brought back in a body bag.

The star goes nova, and with the episode's running time almost out, everything gets nicely wrapped up by the editor.

Oh, and while that tense battle was going down on the planet, Athena managed to download to a Resurrection Ship (which Caprica-Six just happened to be on), shuttle over to the Basestar where Hera was, rescue her, and then somehow convince Caprica to come back with her. Why, I'm really not sure.