Battlestar Galactica Recap: “Torn”

Title: “Torn”
Original Airdate: 10/3/2006

Previously, Sharon Agathan becomes a lieutenant in the Colonial Fleet. Col Tigh’s one eye leads him on a one way mission. Kara thought she was a mom which was only slightly less horrifying than finding out she wasn’t. Tigh killed his wife for collaborating and blames everyone else for it.

Baseship. Baltar joins FigmentSix on the beach as once again he asks her what she is. Is she a chip in his head? A part of his own imagination? An angel of god sent to help him, she answers again. He hates that answer and wakes up in his bright and blurry room. The music is on the eerie side. Xena and Caprica Six ask Baltar if he knows the way to Earth. He says no until they confess he’s useless to them. So he pulls a Baltar special, feeding them the right mixture of truth and lies to save his life.

41,422. Exactly 13 less than last week. Remember Apollo told Adama that 13 people went missing?

Outside Galactica. The Vipers are on a training mission. Major!Apollo tries to tag out Kat but can’t. Starbuck ignores Apollo’s instruction to stay in formation and takes off after Kat. But instead, she collides their Vipers. Back on the hanger deck, the Chief and Cally take a look at Starbuck’s viper damage. The other pilots are amazed she landed it without a drop of fuel. Except Apollo who’s ticked off. They have an old school screaming match on the hanger deck. Ah, good memories. Apollo grounds her. Meanwhile, drunk angry Tigh gets drunker and angrier. He chases who he thinks is Ellen through the hall. A tiny cute voice yells “Kara, Kara” as Kacey runs up to Starbuck with her arms outstretched. Now that she’s not Baby ‘Buck, she’s not as creepy to me. Starbuck ignores the child and tells her real mom that she wants nothing to do with them.

Now the moment we’ve been waiting for. Fat!Apollo is back to PHAT!Apollo. And yes, I’ve been waiting for a long time to use that joke. Here’s to hoping they vented the fat suit into space.

Gaeta shows Roslin and Adama all of Baltar’s notes for finding Earth. He uses a piece of scripture to determine they are looking for a space babble place called a “lion’s head”.

A-plot- Baseship. Six tells Baltar they’ll find his lion’s head. He says he’s having a conscience problem in helping them find Earth. Can you keep calling it a conscience if you constantly ignore it? Moving on, Six sees the metal hallways of the baseship as a lush forest. Baltar takes a moment to ask FigmentSix if he’s a cylon. He freaks and ask who the final five Cylon models are. There are 12 models and he’s only seen seven. Caprica Six doesn’t want to talk about it and they are interrupted by a problem. A lot of fancy music, blinking lights and water. The baseship that found the lion’s head has a virus. If they let them die and resurrect, the virus could spread to the entire Cylon race and kill them all. They argue about what to do. FigmentSix convinces Baltar to go since he won’t catch it.

A creepy woman in a bathtub rattles off technobabble. The “hybrid” is the brain of the baseship. Her babbles are either ramblings of a crazy toaster or direct revelations from god. Yes, but what kinda gas mileage does she get? Anyways, Baltar goes to the infected baseship. He finds sick and dying Cylons all over the floor. He also finds an old piece of space trash. It’s some kind of booby trap. A brunette version of Six tells him it was left by the 13th Colony to kill the Cylons. Ah ha! The first interesting part of this plot line. She tries to pin the sickness on Baltar and he actually strangles her to shut her up. He then lies to the others and tells them nothing is there. Wow, as much as I love to hate him, I admire how consistently twisted he is.

More lights and waterfalls. The Cylons are still arguing about what to do with the infected baseship. They can’t off a few of their friends to save their race but they can nuke an entire planet of humans? Caprica Six finds the picture of the space trash and knows Baltar is lying.

B- plot- Galactica.  Racetrack calls Sharon “Boomer”. Except this particular Sharon wasn’t Boomer. Helo asks everyone in the room to help them give her a new callsign. Most of the suggestions involve “metal”. Hee. Hot Dog suggests Athena and it sticks. Col Tigh joins Starbuck for a drink. Tigh informs them that if you weren’t on New Caprica, you didn’t do much in the war.  Somewhere in the Pythian scriptures it should mention that Tigh and Starbuck getting along is a sign of the end times. Adama gets the info from Helo about Tigh and Starbuck’s verbal assaults. The piano music starts back up. Oh, I get it now. Both fleets are “Torn”.

Adama enters the mess hall and kicks everyone out but Starbuck and Tigh. He takes her gun and throws it on the table. He tells them to pick it up and shoot him. He’s like a space Solomon. He calls them cowards. Starbuck smarts off and Adama kicks over her chair! WHOA! He tells her she was once like a daughter to him but not anymore. He gives her an ultimatum: shape up or find another ship. She runs off. Tigh puts up a bigger fight. Adama smacks him with a command to stay in his room until he returns to himself. Tigh says that man doesn’t exist and Adama won’t see him anymore. He leaves to go drink some more. Starbuck enters the bathroom and pulls out her knife. Everyone scampers away. She cuts off her beautiful long locks. Ugh, this is so sad. If shorter hair means some chance of happiness for Kara, then so be it.  She goes in search of Kacey to make amends. Where is Anders in this episode??

Athena Sharon and Racetrack find the lion’s head, but freak when they see all the dead raiders and baseship floating around. Uh oh, remember how the Cylons sent Baltar because they didn’t want to get sick? Yeah Sharon’s looking a little pale as we get “To be continued…”

Jo works a boring job in a small Texas town and reserves the right to spell it “ya’ll”. One day she’ll be a novelist, but until then you can read her sarcastic thoughts about TV at http://brickstorm.blogspot.com.