NFB Re-Watches Battlestar Galactica Season Four: “Revelations”

Earth…

Air Date: 13/06/2008

Director: Michael Rymer

Writers: Bradley Thompson & David Weddle

Synopsis: D’Anna and Apollo engage in a dangerous game of brinksmanship over the status of the Final Five, with everything on the line. The return of the Music leads to a closer examination of Starbuck’s Viper that may open the way to Earth.

Review

If there has been a unifying theme in the last five or so episodes, maybe all of Season Four to this point maybe, it is the issue of trust. It started with Adama and Roslin unsure as to whether they could trust the miracle that Starbuck represented in “He That Believeth In Me”, and now it has progressed to problem of how humanity can trust the rebel Cylons – and vice versa. In “Revelations”, probably the heaviest episode of the show to date in terms of the events it depicts and the manner in which it ends, we are presented with this seemingly intractable problem: how can these varying people and factions trust each other? The truce between the human and the Cylons was negotiated in “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?” with both sides making their own plans, and then you introduce the wild card of a Cylon model who was not privy to such deals and isn’t inclined to keep to them either. As D’Anna holds members of the Galactica crew, and Roslin, hostage, as Lee Adama keeps three of the Final Five in a position where he can kill them with a push of a button, and as neither side seems to be in a position to either back down or commit to action, we are treated to a wonderfully tense conundrum, not unlike that set-up in “The Eye Of Jupiter”, which gets a truly incredible conclusion.

It is a little hard to know where to start with “Revelations”, so much is going on, but why not settle up on Tory? Hers has been a fascinating journey to watch in the course of Season Four, from her hesitant efforts to butter up to Baltar in “Six Of One”, through her murder of Cally in “The Ties That Bind” and on into being some sort of power behind the throne for Baltar in “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?”. The culmination of it all arrives here, as she becomes the first – and indeed, only – member of the Final Five to volunteer to go with the Cylons. Tigh, Anders and Tyrol have retained much more of a link to their human sides, for whatever reasons, but Foster was slipping the moment the Music came into her ears, and she severs the Colonial tie decisively in “Revelations”.

And she goes whole hog too. It has been a little difficult to see what kind of game that Tory is playing at times, but as of now we can just say that she identifies fully as a Cylon, and has treated her time in the Fleet after “Crossroads (Part Two)” as essentially that of some kind of saboteur, not unlike Boomer I suppose. Now, when she has the chance, she retires from this role and joins her “brothers and sisters”. Once done, she goes a step further and actively aids their cause as D’Anna has her showdown with Apollo, giving away details of the President’s temperament. Tory isn’t just a Cylon, she’s the “Lets end humanity” brand of Cylon it seems, one who is happy to encourage a game of brinksmanship where the entire Fleet is at risk. One suspects she might actually be happier if she was with the Cavil faction, such appears to be her level of vindictiveness towards her former species. Foster has been an antagonist for a while, but you always wondered a bit about her: from here we can’t really view her as any other way, and seeing where she goes now that she is part of this greater whole will be very interesting.

She is contrasted very ably with Colonel Tigh. It’s always really been him who was going to make the hard call when it came to revealing the true nature of the Final Five: Tory would never until it benefited her, Anders was too scared, and Tyrol seemed to have moved to the point where he simply didn’t care enough. But Tigh, despite his ridiculous behaviour with Caprica Six, has retained his humanity to a very obvious degree, making an effort to live and die as the man that he was his creed for the first half of Season Four. He waits as long as he can, perhaps out of cowardice, perhaps out of a misguided hope that the situation could change again. But when he runs out of options he makes the call. And it isn’t just because of the threat to the Fleet, or to all the hostages on the basestar, but because of one particular hostage: the woman that he now realises that his best friend loves.

So he decides, and we get another in a series of brilliant scenes between Tigh and Adama. Tigh lays it all out, in a manner that leaves us in little doubt that he has been rehearsing the moment. Adama reacts with incredulousness, denial, anger, and then a total breakdown. The range of emotions is varied, the impact devastating. The enormity of what has taken place is made clear by the depth of Adama’s breakdown, which is easily the lowest point we have ever seen for him, beyond “Maelstrom”. This is how much Tigh means to Adama, that this revealed secret will drive him to such a state.

More than revealing his true nature to everyone, it is revealing himself to Adama that is clearly the hardest part to Tigh. He is willing to both sacrifice his life and this key relationship in order to do what is right for the majority of humanity, which really puts him on the opposite spectrum to Tory. Indeed, he goes as far as to urge Apollo to pull the metaphorical trigger at the crucial moment, while standing bolt upright in the launch tube, more than willing to die. Whatever Tigh has done, in this he plays a heroes part. Things may have been better off if he had come clean earlier, if he had trusted Adama, but he makes up for it with this effort. He said he would live and die as a man, and is happy to die a man here. His reward is life and a nominal resumption of his status as XO, but if Foster’s role going forward is interesting, what will happen with Tigh, Anders and Tyrol is something else: it seems hard to believe that they will be able to go about their previous lives like they were, and that’s before we get to the events at the end of this episode.

The actual progression of this episode is something to see. Bit by bit it all gets ratcheted up, starting with D’Anna’s hostage taking in the opening scenes, onto the Final Five’s conundrum, then the Tigh/Adama showdown, the aftermath to the same, Apollo’s game of chicken with D’Anna and the final swirling confluence as guns get cocked and Starbuck tries to figure out just why her Viper is so important. The episode doesn’t have the same flow as others that have come before, and I think is the true culmination of the somewhat more serialised format that Season Four has had, but that isn’t a bad thing. Rymer has to inject a sense of urgency, of a situation that is changing minute-to-minute, and he accomplishes that.

One of the key elements of this is the absence of Adama. It’s so painful to see his breakdown, driven by grief and alcohol, until he is this sloppy, maudlin mess on the floor. Everyone has their breaking point, and this is it for Adama. The truth is that it’s like seeing your own father in such a stage for the first time, and it comes as a brutal shock to the system. Adama has been in charge for so long, even when he exhibited faults, like in “You Can’t Go Home Again” or “Sine Qua Non”. He always had a hand on the tiller, and the world seemed safer for it. Now, he’s out of it. Worse still, so is the XO. Helo is presumably the next in line, but he’s on the basestar. So is Athena. Kelly is in a jail cell. Who does that leave to take charge of the military side of things? Starbuck, whom so many do not trust? Gaeta, who is in a state? Are we down to Hot Dog?

Step forward President Lee Adama. He took the job on the basis of being a symbol of hope for the Fleet, but that isn’t what we need right now. No, we need the kind of person who will look down the barrel of a gun and not blink, and that’s what Apollo attempts to provide. Tory tells D’Anna that if pressured Lee will back down, though I’m not sure what she is basing that on: perhaps on the manner in which he came to compromises in tricky situations like “Bastille Day” and “Black Market”, or in how he encouraged the Admiral to retreat from New Caprica in “Lay Down Your Burdens (Part Two)” or not go back there in “Precipice”. Hell, even the man’s marriage was a compromise.

But what Foster perhaps doesn’t realise is that we are no longer dealing with Apollo, this is President Adama. And the person he is channelling is not the man who left Zarek in charge of the Astral Queen or who left the black market to function or whatever else. No, I see Roslin in him at this moment, the Roslin who spaced Leoben in “Flesh And Bone”, who split the Fleet apart in “The Farm”, who was willing to try and steal an election, who ordered Baltar tortured in “Taking A Break From All Your Worries”. Lee is doing what he thinks Roslin would do in this situation, and that is to make hard choices and not back down.

The back-and-forth between Apollo and D’Anna is thrilling as a result. Like the set-up of “The Eye Of Jupiter” and “Rapture”, we have two people vying for an enormous prize, and the only question is to who is more credible with their threats: or are they both equally credible? The drama of the episode is in seeing both sides inch towards pulling the trigger and giving in to the cyclical violence that defines the human/Cylon relationship, and waiting to see if there is anything that can stop this seeming inevitability.

The only thing that can do that is to find Earth, and that’s what drives the crisis point. The road opens up towards that promised land in more ways than one: both in terms of divining the galactic location, but also in both sides finding a way to come to peaceful terms with the other. If “Revelations” has a flaw it is that the method whereby the first part of things is figured out is a bit weak, after so many waypoints, twists and turns on this road: just a signal coming out of Starbuck’s Viper, with it all a bit much to say that the Final Five were the key. In the end, Thrace flicks on a radio and that’s it. If the very end of the episode was different, I would have had a lot more to say here of a negative bent, but in the end you have to put the whole thing down, in many ways, as yet another cosmic test for all involved.

The second part of the equation is carried out much better though, as Lee asserts himself in the role of President and stops trying to be Laura Roslin, and stops trying to be his father as well. Instead, he goes back to that idealistic man who has made deals for the greater good before, and will make the biggest deal possible in this moment. In offering both a hand to D’Anna, and a place on Earth, he gets through the cycle of violence. The intractable problem has found its answer. In order to find the salvation of Earth, all of these people have to work together to save themselves. Once they do, all that’s left is to get their reward.

Which leaves us with the conclusion. Oh, the conclusion. The set-up is so amazing. Adama is brought out of his stupor. He makes the decisive call of everyone, Colonial and Cylon, jumping to Earth right then and there. He gives a speech. The Fleet celebrates. The music swells. It was perfectly done to make it seem like a glorious moment had arrived, one where the journey was going to be justified, where dreams would come true. Watching these moments for the first time, I figured that the remainder of Season Four would be about defending Earth from the Cavil-led Cylons, and preventing a repeat of the attack on the Colonies. I was excited by that idea, and I’ll happily admit, delirious at the scenes that were playing out in front of me. When you see characters that you like, are engaged with, and have been for some time, it is very special to see this kind of explosion of positive feeling.

And then. What an incredible moment of television is the very last scene? And not just the factual nature of what is presented, but that slow pan, the slack-jawed faces, the vista of destruction and the manner in which the show makes clear what has occurred without actually having anyone come out and say so. Everything that we have seen in “Revelations” up to this seemed to be indicating that human/Cylon cooperation was needed in order to get the prize of Earth but now, just like that, the reward is revealed to be nothing but an irradiated rock, presumably unliveable. The impact, coming as it did after that montage of joy, is like an earthquake. The emotional power of this moment, the sheer devastation of it, still hits me hard 14 years later. The Cycle, Starbuck’s Destiny, the Pythian prophecies, they have all come to naught. And, just in case anyone has forgotten, there was a six month wait for the next episode. Once the shock left, you’re just left with a tantalising two word question, that will dominate the last ten episodes of BSG: what now?

Something’s changed. I just don’t know what it is.

Notes

-I love that Starbuck greets Apollo by calling him “Mr Prez”. Here’s one person who isn’t going to be intimidated by the office.

-Apollo’s memory of being sent to his father’s study as a child is a potent one, almost idyllic, in comparison to what we learned about his childhood in “A Day In The Life”.

-I like that focus in on Adama’s empty chair as Starbuck remembers Leoben’s comments on how children must eventually replace their parents to reach their potential. The chair looms large for Apollo.

-D’Anna orders the Colonials to be taken hostage, and the Centurions don’t need a “please” this time, unlike “The Ties That Bind”. She’s firmly in charge.

-Roslin’s order to Adama is blunt, and begins a subtext where you wonder if Lee Adama is better off trying to be her when it comes to the Presidency, or should try and be his own man.

-He’s not a big part of this episode, but the time is coming when Gaeta is going to take centre stage. I love this look at him here, dishevelled, stressed, struggling with his new reality, but with more than enough pride to refuse an offer to be relieved. That mix is going to lead to bad places.

-D’Anna tells us that four of the Final Five are in the Fleet…so where is the Fifth? Somewhere else?

-It’s perhaps a little convenient, that the Four of Five all happen to be in the hanger for the Cylons arrival. On that, it appears that Tyrol is back among the deck crew.

-You have to admire Tory’s guile in this scene, in how she finagles her way onto the basestar without giving the game away. That manipulative streak is only growing.

-Adama makes a very important gesture as the crisis becomes acute, deferring to his son: “”Your call Mr President”. We’ve come a long way from “Crossroads (Part One)”.

-The count is down eight, presumably casualties from the battle depicted in “The Hub”.

-Tory’s smile as she is introduced to the other Cylons is remarkable. Rekha Sharma really does nail a mixture of actual joy and deviousness.

-Baltar thanks Roslin for not letting him die in “The Hub”: “I love living”. It’s a well-worded sentiment, but does speak to the self-interested streak within Baltar.

-Foster is portrayed as, quite literally, looking down on Roslin in the reveal scene, and you can’t get much more appropriate for her attitude now.

-The murdered hostage comes a little out of nowhere, and I did think the CGI could have been a bit better. It’s never raised again after this episode, which I do think is a bit strange.

-You know that plot pivotal things are about to happen when we get the return of the Music with a capital M. It ratchets up the tension considerably as it happens.

-Anders and Tyrol claim they have been “compelled” to go back to Starbuck’s Viper. The meeting in “Crossroads (Part Two)” was similar, but Tyrol has been “compelled” before, as far back as “The Eye Of Jupiter”.

-The soundtrack for Tigh’s march to Adama’s quarters is our introduction to “The Signal”, one of the stand-out examples of McCreary’s work for this season, thumping and vibrant, but also just tense.

-Adama’s reaction is perfectly pitched. He approaches it logically at first, bringing up how long they have known each other: “Think about this. When I met you, you had hair.” But you can see in his face, the fear that this is for real.

-It gets desperate then, with Adama bringing up the possibility of Tigh being implanted with some chip during “Occupation”. It’s as much of a reach as it was for Baltar in the Miniseries.

-The montage of Adama’s breakdown might be one of the most heart-breaking moments of the show. He way he throws back the whiskey, how he collapses to the floor. This is a man who has left the station.

-Apollo comforts his father, holding him like Mary held Jesus. It’s destroying Lee too, this sight, but he has enough reserve in him to urge his father to pull himself together.

-At this most terrible moment, Adama thinks about “all the people I sent to die” for something that is now shattered for him. That’s how much his world view has been destroyed. It calls to mind a similar sentiment from “Hero”.

-“I can’t kill the bastard”. With this, Adama washes his hands of the whole affair, deeming himself incapable of the kind of command needed. Apollo steps up: “I’ll take care of it”.

-Apollo is so angry about the state of his father that he just levels Tigh, but perhaps more devastating is his reply to the question of where Adama is: “Where you put him”.

-I do love the manner in which Apollo gets on the phone to D’Anna and doesn’t waste any time asserting himself. The pain of seeing the state of his father combined with the perception of Tigh’s betrayal has put him in a very new place.

-The jig is up for Tyrol and Anders as Tigh reveals who they are. Tyrol’s mute acceptance is a nice touch, with the arrest probably coming as something of a relief.

-Starbuck’s reaction is pitch perfect really: just mute shock.

-Like the idea of these advancing Centurions collaring the humans on the basestar so much I will overlook the dodgy CGI.

-A nice positive moment for Baltar when he volunteers to be the one who enters the Cylon CIC to reason with D’Anna. Then again he must know that his own life is on the line if both sides start shooting at each other.

-Love the dynamic here as Baltar is placed against Tory in a battle to influence D’Anna. While similar in many respects, there’s a fundamental difference in their philosophy, regards how you should live a life untainted by guilt or traditional morality.

-The music for this series of critical moments is “The Alliance”, which strikes me as a cross between “Resurrection Hub” and “The Signal” in tone, operatic, tense, fluid. It’s a really good accompaniment to the unfolding drama.

-Baltar’s logic is good: reminding D’Anna that Lee is more like his father then some might be willing to admit, and that she hasn’t been brought back into this cosmic game to wipe out humanity.

-Starbuck’s dash to the launch tube is certainly dramatic, but doesn’t make much sense: there are means of radio communication within Galactica.

-Some good camera work makes the point that we are, quite literally, a push of a button away from all of this being decided one way or the other.

-I like Starbuck trying to get through to Apollo by bringing up how the signal is a “message from beyond”. It sounds ridiculous, but there it is.

-It’s “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?” again, as the Cylons parley aboard Galactica, only this time they brought some Centurions with them,

-Apollo rejects the misery of the “Cycle” and extends the hand in one of the series’ most potent exchanges: “All of this has happened before…” “…but it doesn’t have to happen again”.

-The President has given the four Cylons an “amnesty”, and we’ll see how that works out. Does this imply that being a Cylon is a crime in itself? Or is treason the four have been accused of?

-“So, the question is, where do we go from here?” Lee might as well be speaking for the entire audience really.

-When asked if he is ready to take the Fleet to its new home, Adama just says “I don’t know”. The kind of breakdown that he suffered is hard to come back from.

-It’s a nice scene between Apollo and Roslin as he prepares to step back from the Presidency and she hints he might have more work to do. It’s a reconciliation after “Crossroads (Part One)”.

-Adama is adamant that this is the conclusion of the journey, “the end of the line”. One can understand his willingness to just have it all over with.

-He suggests that a mass jump, without recon, to Earth is a necessary “hard six” roll, and boy isn’t that ironic considering what a hard six actually is.

-The track that plays over the conclusion is “Diaspora Oratorio”, and it is a hard listen. It’s just so hopeful, so uplifting, a song for the end of a journey. It does great work in making sure the final scenes are as big a gut punch as they can be, and is beautiful in its own right. The lyrics, in Latin, are a literal ode to the Fleet’s arrival at Earth: “Brothers and Sisters, Enemies and Friends, Embrace, For we have come home”. McCreary has called it his “most significant musical achievement” in BSG.

-Love Adama to Gaeta as the Fleet’s position is confirmed: “Take your time”.

-This is one of Adama’s more restrained speeches, but it works, as he sums up how the Fleet’s inhabitants have all lost much but now the journey is over. It’s accompanied by a great montage of the Fleet celebrating, most notably the people on the refinery ship from “Dirty Hands”.

-The explosion of joy in the CGI, it’s incredible. Having Apollo whip the jacket off and mount the DRADIS console was an inspired choice.

-“Revelations” takes the time for some specific reactions here: Baltar with his cult; the Agathon family; Tyrol with his son; Tigh with a bottle, because not all issues can be solved; and Starbuck speaking to the picture of Kat in the memorial hallway from “The Passage”. They’re all good snapshots.

-Anders comes up behind Starbuck in this moment, but she doesn’t turn. She said she’d kill him if he turned out to be a Cylon, and she even said it in that hallway, back in “He That Believeth In Me”.

-The descent into Earth’s atmosphere is little less than a race between all the ships. One thing is that the view of the planet from the orbit, with clear skies, doesn’t match with the nuclear winter we see shortly afterwards.

-Roslin said she wanted to see Adama pick up “that first fistful of Earth”. Well he gets to, a dead looking clump accompanied by a clicking Geiger counter.

-No music here, and that’s as it should be. After the beauty of the last few minutes, the lack of such audio marks this out more as a devastating event.

-How perfect is Mary McDonnel’s delivery of the one word that marks this last scene? “Earth…”

-The slow pan that follows might just be the very best shot of the entire series. Its languid pace is just perfect to let the horror build in the viewer, the unavoidable conclusion that Earth is nothing but an unliveable husk.

-While it goes unstated, the specific ruins this advance party is standing in is meant to be the Temple of Aurora that Apollo and Starbuck talked about earlier.

-Off in the distance, we see the ruins of a city, that at the time I thought might be San Francisco because of the bridge, but of course it wasn’t. It’s enough for it to be vaguely familiar, and yet inherently different. The filming location was a beach south of Vancouver.

-Incredibly, Ronald D. Moore was prepared for “Revelations” to be the final episode of the show, if the concurrent writers strike had prevented production from continuing. How depressing would that have been? I suspect the final scene might have been cut out if that had come to pass.

Overall Verdict: “Revelations” is a humdinger. Even before those last iconic few minutes, it’s a fine episode, full of tension, great performances and a progression of plot that marks it as one of the most momentous 42 minutes in the show’s entire run. And those last few minutes are simply stunning, constituting an incredible twist, that exhibits bravery in its conception and excellence in its execution. This is another top tier episode, in a show that has been firing on all cylinders since “Guess Whose Coming To Dinner?”

We’ll take a weeks break at this point, and when back it’ll be non-stop to the conclusion of Season Four.

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