All of this has happened before… Isn’t that how the saying goes? So shouldn’t we have seen Boomer’s evil plan coming a mile away? I’ll admit, I wanted to believe Sharon Valerii was on the straight and narrow. She’s seen the error of her ways and had redeemed herself, much like when Caprica helped Athena and Hera get back to Galactica way back when. So I sympathized with Tyrol tonight when the realization hit him that he got played.
We’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s talk about Kara and her little identity crisis first. The episode opens with Kara literally going through the motions of her CAG duties. She recites the speech for the viper pilots that she’s rehearsed while going through her morning ritual. While she may seem like the same old Starbuck to the humans and Cylons seated before her, we know it’s just an act. She doesn’t know who or what she is and she has no one to talk to about it. Lee’s busy being absent from the episode and Anders is in a mostly-sort-of brain-dead coma. So Kara takes refuge in Joe’s bar to drink her confusion away and gripe at the man who’s trying to compose on the piano that miraculously appeared at the dive as of last week’s episode.
The piano man gets to talking with Kara and while he continues to work on his music, she finally gets fed up having nightmares and hallucinations of her burnt up corpse and confesses what she knows about herself. He’s all, “I don’t know what that’s about but let’s play music.” The piano man admits that he left his wife when she wanted him to stop playing and Kara throws it in his face that he left his wife and kid for his music. By this point, I think it’s pretty obvious that this guy is Kara’s dad. But the writers threw a neat little curveball into the story.
While the piano man is trying to help Kara remember a song her dad taught her to play when she was a kid, Kara sees him writing down the notes and realizes that they line up exactly the way the “stars” in a drawing Hera gave her did. She pulls the drawing out and confirms it. Kara and the piano man finally get the song down and begin to play it. Just as we’re hearing the melody and realizing that it’s the “Watchtower” song, so do Tori, Tigh and Ellen, who have been hanging around the bar trying to figure out what they’re supposed to do next. Tigh goes over and asks Kara where she learned the song. Kara mentions that her dad taught it to her and when she looks to the piano man, whom she already realized was her father, he’s not there. He was never there. He was just a figment of her imagination, likely inspired by the record Helo recovered for her when he set out to retrieve all of Kara’s stuff that was auctioned off when they thought she was dead. Her dad might not have really been there but the song was very real and that definitely means something.
The Watchtower song is from earth. Does this mean Kara’s dad is also from earth? Perhaps another Cylon who somehow made it over to where the humans were? Let the speculation begin!
Now back to Boomer. The Cylons are all about trying her for treason. After all, she sided with Cavil when the Cylon civil war broke out and now that Cylons have no means of resurrection, a death sentence would be just that. Adama and Roslin are on board with this plan. Sharon Valerii has been kind of a thorn in their side for quite a while now. She did put two holes in Adama, after all.
Tyrol goes to visit Boomer and they start to reconnect. He’s never really gotten over her. Boomer reaches her hand through the door of her cell and when Tyrol touches her, she projects, showing him their dream house. The place they once imagined they would build when they mustered out, before Sharon found out she was a Cylon. At first the projection freaks Tyrol out and he leaves but eventually he goes back and lets her show him the house again. Not only is their perfectly planned out house all laid out for him to explore and enjoy, right down to the wine glasses in the cabinets, but they also have an imaginary daughter, whom Tyrol gets to meet.
When Tyrol finds out Boomer’s going to be tried and inevitably executed, he goes to appeal to Roslin but she’s not moved by his pleas. In fact, she reminds Tyrol that Sharon has a tendency to emotionally manipulate people. So Tyrol knocks the power out, which is no big deal since the dying Galactica’s power’s been flickering on and off a lot lately and he snatches up a random Eight. He switches her with Boomer and Sharon escapes.
Boomer heads off to find Athena. Athena recognizes her immediately but Boomer knocks her out and ties her up in the locker room. When Helo goes to find Athena, he finds Boomer instead, only he’s not able to tell the difference. Boomer takes a time out from her little mission to roll around with Helo on the floor of the bathroom while the tied up and gagged Athena witnesses it from a stall or closet or something. Just when we thought Athena’s day couldn’t get any worse after having to watch her husband frak another woman (even a replica, still, that’s gotta suck), Boomer continues on with her mission. She goes to Galactica day care and picks up Hera, giving her some drink that probably knocked her out, stowing her in a trunk and loading it onto a raptor. Tyrol, not realizing that Boomer kidnapped Hera, helps her get ready to leave. Boomer tells him no matter what happens, she meant what she said.
See, it kind of annoys me that Tyrol let her go after she said that. No matter what happens? Wasn’t he the least bit suspicious or did he just think she meant if she didn’t get away or something?
Athena finally gets loose and goes to tell Helo that it was Boomer in the locker room and that she has Hera. Helo puts the word out and then hugs Athena, who appropriately screams in what I’m guessing was a combination of fear and pure fury.
Adama tries to order Boomer not to leave the hanger but she starts up the raptor and makes a dash for the nearest exit, which is closing. She also spools up her FTL drive. She gets out of the hanger just as the giant door is sliding shut but it clips the wing and she starts flying out of control. She loops around and is headed straight at Galactica when she jumps away, causing major damage to the already beaten up Battlestar. And she’s gone.
It was Boomer’s plan all along to get back on to Galactica and steal Hera to take her back to Cavil. Tyrol made it all too easy for her. Once she’s gone and he realizes what happened, he projects himself back to their dream house and finds he’s alone there. Boomer’s gone and so is their imaginary daughter.
The episode ends with Roslin collapsing on the floor of her office after uttering “Hera.” I thought she was going to have another hallucination but it looked like she was either unconscious or possibly dead.
