Battlestar Galactica 4.21 "Daybreak" Part One

Cafe Society
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Zak died two years before the miniseries events began.

No, that is not the significance of Laura’s scenes. That is certainly relevant, yes. But the importance of her scenes was to show that, unlike the rest of the characters, her life had improved since everyone else lost everything. She had lost her entire world before the Colonies fell, but in the fleet she found purpose, passion, and love. She’s even accepted her inevitable death now.

She’s reached the place the rest of the characters need to get to. And like all the other flashback scenes, it was important for them to show how far these characters had come.

Kara used to be a functional person. How long has it been since we’ve seen that Kara, if ever?

Lee was happy back then… and then got stuck in the fleet living the life he didn’t want. It had been a while since we’d seen that Lee, too – last time we saw him, Dee blew her brains all over Gaeta’s locker right after.

I think the pidgeon was symbolizing Lee chasing something he couldn’t quite catch… but, eh. That sort of allegory always falls flat anyway, for me.

Baltar, of course, we learned nothing new about. Caprica, however, turns out to have been more nuanced from the beginning than we had known of.

The whole point of this entire series is NOT the mystery of what is going on, or the uncertainty of human-Cylon relations – it is how all of that crap affects these characters we’ve come to know over the years. Here, at the end, they needed to go back and show just how much they’ve all changed. And, of course, they’re preparing us for saying goodbye to these mostly annoying people.

But, since they never revisited Bill Adama’s unwanted meeting, I’m rather sure we’ll be seeing Caprica That Was again in the rest of the episode next week.

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I’m not sure about the timeframe, but could it have been about the stealth mission he went on and lost Bulldog or whatever his name was?

Could that have been right after Zak died?

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Nah, he was still drunk and happy from meeting Kara with Zak. Good point about the Bulldog thing, though. Like to see that thread get some actual relevance by picking it back up.

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Gah. Next week better be damn good.

Not buying the whole “We Are Family” singalong felgercarb. Too total, too soon. Especially not buying C6 thinking of such a kind thing to do for Baltar’s dad, not after seeing her snap a baby’s neck just to see how strong it was. She’s changed, sure, but not retroactively.

Everyone in Caprica City did all their decorating at Ikea. Not kidding, just check their catalog. They conveniently have a store in Vancouver, too, I see.

Adama was in a job interview, or at least a coaching session for them courtesy of the Fleet. Notice the suit and tie? Remember that he was going to retire from the Fleet along with his ship.

Lee had to volunteer for the mission if he wanted to have any prospect of being President afterward. If it succeeds, he’s a hero, and his leadership is consolidated. If it fails, Baltar can take it from him. If it succeeds and he doesn’t go, he looks like a wimp.

How did Sam know where the Colony was, if Cavil had moved it? Does becoming a ship’s Hybrid open up a line of contact with the supernatural?

All this screen time spent on Starbuck’s agonizing over what she is since her death, instead of actually finding out. A tragic waste in a show that has been so taut for so much of the time.

One more Ending I Don’t Want to See: A bunch of magical mystery tour shit handwaving away all the religious/supernatural stuff in some “Mankind is not ready to know” dodge.

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He was thinking of retiring two years (or more) after this point in time. Way too early for a job interview, now.

C’mon. This is Lee “daddy issues” Adama. He’s going because the Old Man is going.

Besides, there are thousands of humans left; someone can be found to muddle through as president.

Also, the expedition hasn’t left. I wouldn’t bet on Baltar being left behind just yet.

Yes, Hybrids have a line of contact with something. That’s why they’ve been spouting prophecy. And that is how the basestar Hybrid was able to jump the rebel basestar to the Hub’s location once reconnected.

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Not too early for career transition counseling. If it was an actual interview, the bad taste he got from it might have inspired him to stay in the Fleet instead for as long as he could wangle it.

Could be, but remember he’s tried to be as good a President as Roslin has told him he will be, too. Lee takes his duty seriously, and he sees the Presidency as his duty.

Right, and as I said, that would be Baltar. Lee hates Baltar, whatever you think of his reasons, and won’t let that happen.

Everyone on board knows who stood on which side of the line. Changing won’t be easy.

They’ve been spouting what the Threes and a few others have taken to be prophecy, but the rest took to be gibberish. The evidence isn’t clear either way.

Or from getting that intelligence from Starbuck when she grabbed her arm.

And anyway, to repeat, how would Sam have learned the Colony’s location? The Godsnet would have to extend to all of Cylondom. Maybe it does.

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I don’t think that Sam has anything to do with it. He was just there as window dressing as Kara figured out the meaning of the song she reconstructed last week. They plugged him back in, but she came up with the location by figuring out mathematical location information hidden in the song. Kara is the supernatural one, not Sam.

His repeating “Kara is the death” line really makes me hope that next week they at least explain what they hell she is. Is she human, cylon, hybrid or something else? Is she a reincarnation of the Lord of Kobol who committed suicide? I’m expecting a heavy handed twist around all that foreshadowing that they have been doing about her. Something like the way the Delphic Oracle’s predictions would always turn out in Greek myth. I’ll be ok with that as long as it fits the story. But if it’s left hanging I will be a very unhappy camper.

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You did hear it…

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Nope. Adama says he has something to ask Sam (although he has Kara ask the question). Later, Hot Dog is telling others that Adama learned the location of the Colony from Anders (which they all think was fracking crazy). Then Racetrack confirms that they got the jump coordinates from a fracking Cylon when she jumps her Raptor there (Sam is the Cylon; no one knows what the frack Kara is).

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It would tie in nicely with those visions of Caprica-Six, Roslin, Athena, & Baltar all chasing Hera through the opera house.

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Well Hera is the supernatural one. They just figured he could tell them what the notes meant. Sam might not have known on his own. They could have just asked the Hybrid on the Basestar too, if everyone plugged into the Hybrid network knows where the colony is.

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There’s been a lot of hints about a place between life and death, and that the Hybrids were connected in some way to it. Anders took a bullet to the brain, went brain dead, came back with some funky brain waves, and now Hybridized. Why wouldn’t he know where the Cylon colony is? Adama didn’t ask before because he didn’t think they should put the resources into rescuing Hera before.

Was I the only one that thought she killed Baltar’s dad? Baltar was gobsmacked that his dead would ever be happy anywhere; I took that as a sign she was lying.

Did anyone else find it funny that after we see Lee dealing with the Fleet strip mining Galactica, SciFi airs a commercial selling props of Battlestar Galactica off?

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I think she had to have some time to seduce him and gain access to the computer network, so I think she really found a place for him.

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If she did something nice for Baltar’s dad, it was to gain Baltar’s trust so she could get information from him. It wasn’t retroactively making her nice. It was all in the game.

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Are we assuming that all the incidents shown in this ep took place at the same time? The Zak scene had to have been at least two years before the miniseries, but could the Baltar scene have been closer to the destruction of Caprica? What about the Bill Adama stuff? Clearly they took place over a span, since the Roslin scene where she was eating sushi was 3 months after the scene where her family died, so I don’t think you can use Zak’s appearance as a marker for saying that all the events depicted took place at the same time.

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The flashback with Baltar and C6 in the limo showed them still not well acquainted, which we know from the mini-series, is 2 years before the Fall. On that very day, C6 finds out about Baltar’s dad. I don’t think there’d be too much gap between that scene and the one where she has displaced him to the retirement home. Maybe, a week or two. That sense is further reinforced by the fact that Baltar is surprised to find C6 at his ?beachhouse. If it were many months into the acquaintance, I guess she would have been a regular visitor (or have moved in) and he wouldn’t have been surprised. I think all the initial flashback scenes of each character are meant to be contemporaneous.

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So we lynch Ron Moore next Saturday at, say, noonish?

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He said “frakking”. It was less distinct, but definitely correct Caprican pronunciation.

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I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who was slightly jarred by hearing that. I got a similar feeling a couple episodes ago when somebody mentions one of the civilian ships(Can’t remember the name) which is named after a specifc place on earth.

And to some extent with “Hero” with the Battlestar Valkyrie, which sticks out like a sore thumb with it’s Norse Reference in a civilization dominated by Greek Myth.

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I immediately assumed that the flashback events were not coincidental in time. There’s no reason they have to be and, as you point out, two events with Roslin happened three months apart so they can’t be anyway.

Well, “Olympic Carrier” is an obvious one, since it’s indirectly named after a mountain on Earth. There was also a battlestar Columbia, which doesn’t fit the Greek/Roman naming convention.

I sort of discarded the whole “alien human culture” thing a long time ago; it’s impossible to make it work.