Another good episode.

The tragedy of not finding a habitable world to live on and the planet named Earth in ruins and having to look for a new world to live on has finally sunk in.

Looks like Gaeta is going to be a real s**t disturber. I guess his experience with sweet & evil Eight have really affected him. On one board they say he might be suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

I thought the fuel refinery ship was called the Daru Mozu, in this episode they had a completely different name the Hitei Kan. Unless there are now two fuel refinery ships. My understanding from the miniseries is that Boomer Sharon found only one fuel refinery ship.

Adama and Roslin doing the nasty - Its about time

Here is a preview of next weeks episode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPPTS72CdIo

Gaeta, always had a little man syndrome. Bright and intelligent but gets sent to the Galactica before decommissioning with a Commander who is on Colonial fleets list of lease desirable commanders. Along with Tigh who is a drunk. He sides with Baltar on New Caprica. Sides with the resistances when the Cylon show up and than deludes he is saving lives with the Sharon. The Cylons knew how to push his buttons and maybe the Sharon s don't want to be part of the fleet and are using him now.

Adama played Zarek and knows what makes him tick.

One would expect things to calm down a little after the relentless events of the previous episode, but that's not quite what happens. Instead, the fallout continues, the body count mounts behind the scenes, and the delicate fabric of Colonial society threatens to tear itself to ribbons. More than that, we get a chilling reminder that the heroes of the story are hardly white knights.

Adama is walking around, picking up all the pieces, trying to maintain some sense of order, personal and professional, in the face of crushing loss and despair. Adama also doesn't seem to be doing so well physically; he appears ill. It's impossible to tell if that's just the result of his attempt to contain his psychological and emotional pain or something more medically serious. Whatever the case, Adama is just barely holding things together.

Part of his problem is Roslin's decision to abandon her duties as President. All things being equal, Zarek has every right to step up to the plate and pursue his own agenda in her absence. It's also hard not to see his point of view. Working with the Cylons and trusting in their technology, even when it holds the promise of aiding Humanity's survival, must sound like insanity. After all, as more than one person points out, Humanity wouldn't be fighting for survival if it wasn't for the Cylons in the first place!

All of this harkens back to Adama's initial questions about Humanity's worthiness to survive. Ever since the Cylon attack, Humanity has been at cross-purposes. On the one hand, they continually try to overcome their own worst impulses to fight the enemy and survive another day. On the other, the hope they've held for years now is deliverance. They’ve been striving to find Earth because, in the minds of many, Earth would have magically solved all their problems.

Of course, even if it had been inhabited by the descendents of ancient Colonists, how could it have lived up to expectation? Unless they were advanced far beyond the fleet's standards, they would have been in rather sudden dire straits. As it stands, Earth had become a symbol for the ultimate external solution to Colonial problems.

Yet isn't that what started this entire problem in the first place? Humanity sought to ease their burdens and externalize tasks and responsibilities onto the Cylons they created, never once thinking that their mechanical servants would turn on them. And this is despite a religious order that knew of prophecies and histories that warned of just such a fate! In a very real sense, the Colonists are best defined by their penchant for passing responsibility for their survival and well-being to others.

Which is why Adama, Roslin, and those following them have been portrayed as the heroes of the story, even though they've been terribly flawed and questionable in their methods. These are the people getting things done when the times require it. They're making the hard sacrifices. As a result, it seems unnecessary, even traitorous, for someone with Zarek's reputation to question their right to represent the fleet.

But the episode goes out of its way to show that Adama doesn't really have anything on Zarek. The man can be a rabble rouser, and he has some questionable connections, but Adama blackmailed him into getting out of the way of progress as Adama defines it. (And there's no question that this is Adama's call, not Roslin's; Roslin seems to be going along with it more than pushing for it). This ties back into the notion that some colonies, like Caprica, were more powerful and entitled than others.

Which, in turn, ties into one reason why permanent alliance with the rebel Cylons would be a rather good move. If Adama is serious about moving on from the disappointment of Earth and finding a new direction and path, then bringing the Cylons into the fold and giving them a voice (perhaps a thirteenth seat on the Quorum?) is the best option. It still won't be a perfect solution, because resentments will linger for generations to come, but all the signs point to the notion that merging the two into one society is the only viable course.

There is another source of pressure, of course, and that would be the child of Tigh and Six. Even as the "importance" of Nicholas is wiped out of the equation with an unexpected paternity switch (shall we drag Cally through the mud some more?), this new child points to two things: a possible future for the Cylons as an evolving species, and the unique nature of the Final Five.

The Colonists would be very wise to forge this alliance before the Cylons come to the odd conclusion that they don't really need the humans at all. Or they need to figure out what makes the Final Five so special, such as the strong possibility that they are the end product of the previous cycle's Human/Cylon genetic merge, ala Hera. And all of this has to come to light before the alliance pulls itself apart.

Fresh off the events of "Face of the Enemy", the webisodes devoted to Gaeta, we see him emerge as the fanatical anti-Cylon warrior under Zarek's tutelage. A lot of people in the fleet are going to be willing to march for that cause, and it is not going to be pretty. Gaeta is essentially plotting a coup, and those are seldom without bloodshed.

The wild card in all of this is the rise of Baltar's cult, still percolating in the background. Given his previous leanings, would he marshal his followers to back Adama's alliance with the Cylons? It seems like a reasonable assumption, but with Baltar, who can say? It would be rather interesting if Adama and Roslin were forced, by circumstance, to ally themselves with Baltar. The way things are going, however, anything seems possible.

One final word: Ron Moore did a bang-up job with the direction of this episode. He avoided the usual pitfall of trying to introduce "trick shots" to prove that he has a unique perspective to show, and his style meshed with what has been prevalent to date. Moore had some great comments to make about the experience on the official podcast, and I would recommend that to those interested. He also mentions that a longer cut of the episode will be on the eventual DVD set; something tells me that will be the case for most of these final episodes.

One thing that Lost and Battlestar Galactic continue in failing to do is for the survivors to ask why and access how they got there and why they are there? You have Tigh, and the final Cylons and no one is asking them how they got to the Colonies or what is the Cylon plan? If I was Tigh I would be picking the Cylon seven and other fives brain to find out what happened? How did I get to the colonies? Why arent you supposed to know about us.

People just accept the circumstance without looking with any introspect on what is going? The survivors have had markers in space leading them to Earth and then you have Starbucks return, how? She magically reappears with a ship that can point to earth, how and why? No one asked those questions. Why did they get led to a dead planet and what was the goal of bringing them there?

That were both shows have failed, no one asked questions. Everyone accept that second Cylon war was a consequence of their past sins. When they have proof that some manipulation of the event external to the Cylons and Humans has taken place. Earth nuked? Who did it and are they still waiting to finish them off?

'A Disquiet Follow My Soul' is a good episode. It seem that 'Earth' was settled by another race of Cylons. Were these Cylons human-made or lizard-made? There is also a mystery about Kara and the Final Five in this episode. What are the answer? I guess we;ll find out in a future episode.

Demaster2,

You made me think. So I went and found a posting I made somewhere else...

I apologize for my absence. Orion has been out hunting (for a while).

There is still a question that hasn't been answered. How did cylon tech re-emerge among the 12 colonies. Did someone "discover" something (like a lost ship, a lost city buried in the desert) and then reverse engineered things?

Or is there some more fundamental aspect or feature to the universe that colonial humanity hasn't re-discovered - but the hybrids - and Leoben - have discovered. Isaac Asimov had a short novella where Humanity moves a massive super computer into hyperspace - where it resides for eternity. Until the last star winks out. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html It was titled "The Last Question".

Could the final five be linked to a ...massive cylon tech thingie that has been tucked away in another dimension? Why should all of the final 5 be on the 12 colonies at the same time. Why not staggered across time? Did something happen for them to caused them resurrect on the 12 colonies when they did? How old is Tigh? Perhaps the re-discovery of cylon tech (or whatever it was) occured about 10-15 years before the first Cylon War erupted.

All I'm asking...is what precipated the final 5 to come to the colonies - and the re-emergence of cylon tech.

Additional Note: In the Foundation Series and the "Robot" series by Asimov, Humanity experiences two distinct expansions and collapse of civilization. The first is earth based. It collapses. Later, there is another expansion. Another collapse. And another rebirth. When they find Earth, its a ruined earth. And yes...in the Asimov universe, they do find a robot intelligence, robots that look like humans, and "paternalistic" guiding intelligence that guides humanity....

And one more thought.

Did you see the stress fractures inside Galactica's FTL compartment? Galactica is wearing out. She ain't got much more fight left. One more major (or minor) engagement and she is finished.

These are stress fractures. Several sci-fi writers have thrown in this plot device. All ships and planes over time begin to develop stress fractures. Big G has been had the living *#$! beat out of it. The main hull has taken several nukes. A ship 4600 feet long weighing several million metric tons? Dodging, weaving, and getting pummeled. Its a giant lever receiving incredible amounts of force and torgue. Its going to take a toll.

This ship was probably in need of a overhaul or refit of its main drive system - and parts of the hull - when Fleet signed the decom order.

Big G is wearing out. Like all great ships, her time is coming to end. She will fight to the end.

I think Asimov invoked "stress fractures of the drive system" in his books. I know Elizabeth Moon invoked "hyper dimensional" cavitation that cripples a ship in the Vatta Series. Many writers have done it.

My guess is that the fractures are growing. Each jump makes it worse.

We know how this is going to end. Adama doesn't have a ship yard to repair Galactica. Hell. That would require opening up the hull - sort of like how the Essex Carriers after WW2 were cut open, the flight deck removed and rebuilt. Or when the Modern Super Carriers have part of the hull opened up to remove/refit nuclear reactors.

But its all ok. Galactica has a job to do. Her job is to save humanity at all costs. Just like Big E in WW2, when they had a giant banner on the flight deck that said "Enteprise vs. Japan." Now its "Galactica vs. Extinction of Humanity".

I saw we start a poll on how Galactica ends her long career.

Jump drive failure?

Pummeled by nukes when the drive fail?

Massive hull breach when the forces are to great?

Collision?

Does it just stop working?

Do Adama blow up the ship?

Will Adama go "down" (or UP) with the ship?

Maybe he dumps her into a star?

An atmosphere? (galactica breaksup/burns up as she impacts the atmosphere)?

Abandons her in high orbit? On a large asteroid?