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Starbuck manages to prevent a mutiny by taking a Raptor to the Cylon baseship rather than the Demetrius (with some help from Anders and his gun). There, she talks to the hybrid that wanted to see her and hears her prophecy. Meanwhile, on Galactica, Roslin meets a dying woman who convinces her that Baltar isn’t full of crap and that maybe she should listen to what he’s saying.

When Anders shot Gaeta in the leg to prevent him from initiating the jump back to the fleet, it wasn’t treated like your typical flesh wound in your typical sci-fi show. No, Gaeta continued to scream in pain and they had to give him morphine (or, as they called it, “morpha”) before he’d shut up. Then the decision to wait until the last possible second to jump back to the fleet became even more dramatic, because, as Gaeta pointed out, every minute they were there meant it was more likely he would lose his leg when they got back.

And, as intense as that was, it didn’t match the scene where one of the Sixes recognized Lt. Barolay (who might as well have been wearing a red shirt when she went along on this mission, if you know what I mean) as one of the members of the resistance on New Caprica who drowned her earlier body. After the Six backhanded Barolay so hard that she died, the humans almost shot her, but were afraid it might destroy the fragile truce they had going. So, instead, the Six known as Natalie pulled the trigger herself to make sure the truce continued.

Anders has really come into his own as a character, especially considering he started out as a former sports star/super guerilla fighter. Between his unwavering love for Starbuck no matter how badly she treats him and finding out he’s one of the Final Five, he’s now one of the most interesting people on the show.

The prophecy seemed pretty simple on its face, but as with most things of that nature (and everything that comes out of a hybrid’s mouth), there can be more than one meaning. I agree with the interpretation that the Three (D’Anna) needs to be unboxed in order to identify the Five, but I disagree with those who think that Starbuck being the “harbinger of death” who leads everyone to the end means that everyone will die. The “end” could easily mean earth, and death could mean anything from killing more Cylons, to the death of a certain character. As for the dying leader knowing the truth about the opera house, it sounds like Roslin is going to find out who the Final Five are before she dies.

The wait on Demetrius was pretty tense as well, especially the countdown and Helo’s attempts to delay the jump every second he could. After all, it wasn’t just Starbuck he’d be leaving behind, but also Athena, the mother of his child. Maybe it’s just my lack of understanding the mechanics of space travel as they exist on this show, but couldn’t Demetrius jump back to the fleet, drop Gaeta off and let Adama know what was happening, then return to their location and wait for Starbuck and her Raptor crew? It seems to me that if the old man was willing to give Starbuck two months to look for earth and she was that close to finding it, several more hours wouldn’t make that big of a difference.

The Roslin scenes were pretty good, and Deep Space Nine’s Nana Visitor did a great job as a cancer patient about to lose her battle with the disease. I’m usually surprised by the way things go on this show, but I have to admit I’ve seen Roslin’s conversion to believing in Baltar’s “Cylon” God coming from a light year away. At least they’re handling it well and dragging it out rather than making it an overnight deathbed conversion. I could’ve done without the cheesy “crossing the river to heaven” scene, though (as well as Mary McDonnell’s badly-done bald cap at the beginning of the episode, which made here look more like a conehead than a chemo patient).

Just as I expected, this second half of the two-parter provided all the excitement the first half was missing, and together the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And I’ll leave you with one last thought: Temporarily, at least, a Cylon baseship is going to be part of the Colonial Fleet.

Here‘s a link to last week’s first part.

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