{"id":6634,"date":"2009-02-13T23:17:19","date_gmt":"2009-02-14T06:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6634"},"modified":"2009-02-13T23:17:19","modified_gmt":"2009-02-14T06:37:07","slug":"dare-to-be-a-daniel-dare-to-stand-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6634","title":{"rendered":"Dare to Be a Daniel, Dare to Stand Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>So after the long and bitter debate over whether Tom Zarek was right (and given what we found out about Galactica’s<\/em> structural integrity this week, I’m saying that’s an emphatic no<\/em>, though of course, reasonable minds can differ), we have the infodump episode.<\/p>\n

There was really no way around it — we have only seven episodes left. There’s almost no way to parcel out answers to all the questions over that time; at some point, the writers simply had to dump a bunch of material on us, hopefully in an entertaining and relatively organic manner.<\/p>\n

And the information, of course, had to be interesting too.<\/p>\n

YMMV on whether the infodump was done well (I thought it was handled about as well as they could — at least there was some dramatic tension about it, rather than just a matter of Saul walking in and saying, “Okay, Bill, here’s the frakkin’ deal.”) The information that was dumped, though — that was intriguing as all get-out, and in many ways, it opened up more questions than it answered.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The opening has changed this week — “All of this has happened before” is highlighted at the start. We are told what we know — there are twelve Cylon models. One was sacrificed.<\/p>\n

We drop back in on Ellen and Saul, and the last drink on New Caprica. Ellen drinks deep, Saul tells her to sleep. She does, and she leaves her mortal body, traversing the landscape of 2001<\/em> as interpereted by the Wachowski brothers. She awakes in a Cylon resurrection tank. She screams in terror, and then, she stops. Calms down. Remembers<\/em>. She asks for help from the centurion standing guard; it comes to her, pauses, then reaches out a mechanical hand. She thanks it; tells it that it’s kind.<\/p>\n

Someone arrives. She calls him John. We know him as Cavil, the head of the Number Ones, the first Cylon designed by the Final Five.<\/p>\n

On Galactica<\/em>, Sam is remembering. Remembering everything. The bullet in his head has loosened whatever block kept his memory from flowing. He asks Kara to get the others — Saul, Galen, Tory, Ellen. Kara reminds him that Ellen is dead; he agrees, but says that something marvelous has happened. He remembers.<\/p>\n

He tells them how they knew the end was coming, how they were working on resurrection technology. Said that Saul and Ellen were married, Galen and Tory were dating. They escaped the confligration, tried to get to the other colonies — they knew of the other colonies — to warn them against mistreating the centurions. To warn them to treat them well.<\/p>\n

But they didn’t have FTL drives. They could only travel at sublight speeds. Time slowed down. Four thousand years for the colonies, some shorter time for the Final Five. And when they arrived, the first Cylon war was being waged.<\/p>\n

The Five went to the Cylons, the ones working on hybrids, and made a deal: you stop the war, and we’ll help you achieve the humanity you crave. Ellen thought their belief in God would keep them from turning against the humans in the end.<\/p>\n

It didn’t.<\/p>\n

Galen goes to fix the cracks in the ship that he saw in the last episode; he’s been made Chief again. The position was open. Saul and Tory debate whether they are responsible for the war, responsible for the genocide. Tory says that the humans attacked them on their world; Saul thinks that’s a cop-out.<\/p>\n

Time has passed on the base ship; Ellen is surprised to hear that the Temple of the Five gave D’Anna a vision. Of course, she can’t ask D’Anna — only Cavil and Boomer are allowed to talk to her. (And now, perhaps, we understand why Boomer split with the Eights. We understand why she had a different perspective.) Cavil tells her that he’s boxed D’Anna. Ellen replies that boxing isn’t permanent, not like what was done to Number Seven.<\/p>\n

In the now, Sam seizures, just after telling them that they made eight Cylon models; Kara fears that she knows who the eighth is. The Daily Show’<\/em>s John Hodgman helpfully explains that Sam is near death, but might pull through. Sam begs for time, begs not to go under. Kara tells Doc Cottle and the Resident Expert to prep for surgery.<\/p>\n

The damage to Galactica <\/em>is too extensive — the metal is fatigued, falling apart. The Chief tells the Admiral that there is Cylon technology that might help fix it; Adama refuses, wanting the ship to be human in its heart. But there is no getting around it; when he sees a crack in his own cabin, Adama makes the call: do what we can to save her.<\/p>\n

Soon enough in the flashback times, the Hub is destroyed, and Cavil angrily demands that Ellen rebuild it; she refuses. He says he will open her skull up to find the memories; she tells him that he was jealous and vengeful. That he killed Daniel — Number Seven — because she loved him.<\/p>\n

She says he tortured the Five, sent them back without their memories, sent them back to torture them. She tells him that she loves him anyway, that he’s her son, and he angrily slaps her away.<\/p>\n

Sam goes into surgery. Boomer arrives to retrieve Ellen for surgery. Boomer helps Ellen escape.<\/p>\n

Sam is brain-dead.<\/p>\n

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So after the long and bitter debate over whether Tom Zarek was right (and given what we found out about Galactica’s structural integrity this week, I’m saying that’s an emphatic no, though of course, reasonable minds can differ), we have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-and-unpopular-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}