Battlestar Galactica 4.01: He That Believeth In Me
I'm late on blogging on BSG, but that's because I just saw this week's episode last night. Just watching the "previously on" segment at the beginning got me excited, and man, did I miss these characters.


Balthar is as much of a loopy horndog as ever, and now that his trial is over and he's been taken in by a cult that worships him, he can go back to being the funny portion of the show. James Callis can pull the best faces, and his eyes were bugging out of his head as he saw his own face pasted to a holy shrine, and realized these people expected him to be Gaius Christ. But when he finally fell to his knees in an actual genuine moment of compassion, it added a poignancy to his story that lifted it above the mere comic. As he asked the grieving man to just slit his throat, it was the first time we saw something in his eyes in this episode other than "Wow, how much booty will I be getting now??" I love him; he was the major thing missing from that Razor episode that didn't do much for me.

Starbuck has returned, but she doesn't think it's from the dead; as far as she knows, she entered a wormhole, arrived in our solar system, and took photos of Earth and a "gaseous planet with rings around it." Then she came back, and it all took place within 6 hours. No one can believe her -- Apollo watched her die, Adama went through his grief and buried her, and now that Tigh and Anders know they're Cylons, they suspect she could be, too. But you can tell they WANT to believe her. Is she telling the truth? Her plane is brand new, and clearly isn't the fighter that Starbuck used even before she went kaboom. In a touching scene, Apollo asks Adama, if it were his brother who'd come back from the dead and stepped off that plane, Cylon or no Cylon, would he have been immediately put in the brig? Adama can't really answer.

Roslin doesn't trust Starbuck at all, and she's the one who has put the strict rules on her. She goes to Number Six because she wants to know the final five, and if she could just tell her, she'd know the answer. But Six isn't about to help out.

Is Starbuck the fifth Cylon? I don't think so. She's not helping her cause (she's holding a gun to Roslin's head and knocked out the men watching her), but an innocent person who had just found the path to Earth and expected a hero's welcome is probably allowed to go a little crazy upon her return a few hours later, when she discovers a colony that has been mourning her for months and now they think she's a traitor.

I can't wait to see what next week brings. What did you think? Who out there is watching BSG?