Battlestar Galactica: Face of the Enemy

Saturday, 17 January 2009

By John Keegan Visit Critical Myth for an archive of John's TV Review archives, with more than 1100 entries.   “Face of the Enemy” is unusual in that it is, in both length and content, almost like an episode of the series that had to be dropped from the schedule. Nearly everyone involved is an existing cast member, the story takes place in current continuity, and it will undoubtedly have an impact on events to come with the final stretch of the series. It even manages to fill in a significant plot hole from the third season without missing a beat. The story focuses on Felix Gaeta, his current crises, and his past on New Caprica. To put it bluntly, Felix is a mess. He’s still reeling from the loss of his leg, and it would appear that the injury has led to addiction to painkillers. He’s in a relationship (and a homosexual one, which confirms some suspicions among fans), which helps, but he’s still not in a good place. Felix gets lost in space in a Raptor with low oxygen and too many people, and that’s when the fun begins. Along with the flight crew and a mechanic, Felix is trapped on the Raptor with two Eights. One of them knows Felix personally, and this leads to revelations regarding New Caprica. Despite criticisms to the contrary, New Caprica was never tossed to the curb and continues to have consequences. Eventually people start dying, first in accidents and then in apparent suicide. The Eight that knows Felix promises to help Felix survive and return to the fleet, and Felix trusts her. This is based on his memory of events on New Caprica. As he recalls it, the Eight helped him rescue Colonials in detention, and they were on more than friendly terms as a result. (Gaeta, it would seem, is bisexual when it comes down to it.) But this is where the story shows its surprising depth. The Eight ultimately tips her hand, and Gaeta realizes that she has killed everyone else in the Raptor. More than that, the Eight forces him to see their time on New Caprica in a different light: the Eight was having the Colonials killed, leaving a few alive to convince Gaeta that their little plan was working. In effect, Gaeta could and should have known what was really happening, but he wanted to believe that he was making a difference, and he let that hope blind him to the truth. This is important, because Baltar knew the truth and confronted Gaeta with it in the third season. At that time, it was never revealed what Baltar had whispered into Gaeta’s ear. But now we know, and Gaeta is now forced to acknowledge what he has psychologically repressed for all this time. It also leads him to draw a chilling conclusion: if he could be fooled by hope to ignore the truth about that Eight, then couldn’t Adama and the rest of the fleet be fooled by hope to ignore the truth about the Cylons and their supposed truce/alliance? Whether or not the Cylons are deceiving the Colonials doesn’t matter, because Felix believes they are, and his decisions are driven by that belief. At the end, it’s not clear what he plans to do, but one would think he’s going to confront Baltar. He seems dedicated to undermining the alliance and exposing the Cylons’ true intentions. Considering that there are signs and portents that he might be the final Cylon himself, that would be quite a crushing revelation for him, after what happens here. One thing did strike me as odd. I’ve gotten used to hearing the word “frak” on the show to the point where it doesn’t strike me as unusual at all. Hearing the actual f-bomb, on the other hand, wouldn’t make contextual sense. Unless my ears completely deceived me, Racetrack (played by the ever-lovely Leah Cairns) dropped the f-bomb twice during the course of the story. It was so odd to hear that I actually went back, in each case, and listened again to make sure I heard what I thought I heard! In terms of production value, special effects, and score, this could have been a regular episode of the series. Everything looked crisp and professional, and leaps and bounds above the quality of the webisodes that aired before the third season. In fact, they looked better than any set of online content I’ve seen to date; it certainly blows “Heroes” out of the water in that respect. This really could have been the core of a regular episode. Hopefully, the content won’t be so critical to the resolution of the series that the format, and the potential inaccessibility of it for some fans, won’t be seen as an issue.

 

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