Battlestar Galactica: No Exit - Who the Frak is Daniel?
For those newcomers that have not watched Battlestar Galactica for the last 4 years but have decided to hop in for the last 6 episodes at least you got some of the original opening narrative from the credits. You also got to join the program at the exact precise moment when the show went totally batshit crazy.
Basically, Galactica has hung like a giant piñata full of secrets for the last several years. Every once in a while one of the small children at the party would take a swipe at it and few handfuls of candy secrets would come out. Tonight, the tall, mad kid took the vicious swipe that slashed open the gut of the paper mache beast and the secrets poured out. No Exit gave us a lot information.
In some respects, the episode reminded me of the finale of the X-Files series. There was so much information to extract that the unweaving of the tapestry it had built required a lot of talk. I think the writers masterminding Galactica may have hit a realization that Chris Carter and the X-files didn’t as it approached its end.
The lesson that Galactica seems to have learned is that you can’t wrap up years of mythology in one or two 60 minute chunks of TV, so it’s letting the answers unfurl themselves over the entire final stretch run of the series. That’s why we found Earth at mid-season. That’s why the revelations have come fast and furious since. In between, we had the two-parter of the mutiny provide some of the best straight up drama in the run of the series breaking up the head-spinning revelations.
While I’m starting to get a little stand-offish about the whole Cylon back-story, I’m still okay with it. I want to leave some secrets for the finale, I guess. As far as No Exit is concerned, Kate Vernon really stood out. Her portrayal as the mommy Cylon was a bit of a turn around. As Ellen Tigh she was a rather sleazy, unseemly character. As Ellen the Cylon she gave her most appealing performance on the program yet and really demonstrated her range as an actress as she traded barbs with Dean Stockwell’s Cavil about the Cylon’s nature and evolution as well as the fate of the final five. All of their scenes together were quite tasty.
I’m not sure that they can pull off this new twist in the mythology, though. Now we suddenly have a scapegoat for the colonial holocaust in Cavil. We’ve pinned this all on Dean Stockwell’s character. We’re going to get some fireworks before this series is out, and I have a feeling that Cavil, or “John” as we now know him, is going to meet a rather bad end. At least, if there’s justice he will. Ron Moore may just screw us all and have the bad Cylons win.
And so, this week’s State of Galactica report.
• Who the Frak is Daniel? So the writers mistake in season one, leaving out the “7” model when doing the counting, now becomes a key piece of the puzzle. Oh, great! Now that we finally know all 12 Cylon models, we have to go on the “Who’s the 13th” run. WHO THE FRAK IS DANIEL, DAMNIT?! My call…honestly, the easy call, is Daniel is Zak Adama. It all fits. The discussion in No Exit was about how Daniel was “flawed” and “imperfect” so Cavil destroyed the line completely. Zak was an A-1 Frak Up when it came to learning how to be a pilot. Starbuck had to fake him through flight school and he had an “accident.” The Cavil/Ellen conflict also mentioned how Daniel met his end in an unfortunate manner. Mark my words…unless I’m wrong of course.
• Who the Frak is Daniel, Part 2: The Cheap Way Out. If it’s not Zak Adama, Ron Moore’s “cheap” way out is almost too ugly to consider. This would be Tigh and Six’s baby. Booooo. This would just suck major Cavil penises. On a side note, seeing Saul Tigh get all giddy about feeling his baby kick was just weird as hell.
• Sam I Am. I have nothing to say about Sam Anders. He was a talky little aphasic bastard tonight that did most of the bean spilling. For more information on aphasia, you might want to read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat or other books by Oliver Sachs that cover nuerological disorders. Sorry, got sidetracked. I think the most interesting thing is that they’ve finally taken Sam Anders, one of the most dull characters in the series up until the end of season 3, and made him pretty interesting.
• Here’s Boomer! It comes full circle, folks. All the way from the original mini-series to now. Tyrol and Boomer ARE going to end up together. Whooda thunkit? Just as all the Boomer/Tyrol shippers had finally started to fall into the obscure, dark corners of internet fandom here it comes.
• Admiral Lush. Edward James Olmos is truly the man when it comes to his portrayal if William Adama. Over the past year we’ve seen him rip the character apart at the seems. With every command decision he makes that completely conflicts with his instincts not to trust the Cylons the only thing he can turn to to ease the conflict is another cup of the devil’s hair tonic. Pretty soon, the A.A. that you may use to abbreviate “Admiral Adama” may have to stand for something else. The only question is will he ask Saul Tigh to be his sponser? Gods, grant him the serenity to accept the things he cannot change…
• This Week’s Spin-off Idea: Family Tighs. After the conclusion of the series run, we have an uncomfortable situation between Saul, Ellen and Six. Saul still has feelings for Ellen, but loves Six. 
They all move in together and decide to raise the Cylon baby together. They name the child Jim Beam Tigh. Ellen, now revealed with her true Cylon personality is obviously a flaming liberal, tree hugging naturalist while Saul still retains his hard-nosed, conservative militaristic personality. They butt heads constantly while trying to raise the child, who grows and learns to call Ellen “grandma.” In the pilot episode, Saul comes home drunk and throws up on the baby.
No Exit is another landmark episode for Galactica, but now with so many secrets coming out it’s all unfolding a little too easy. While Kate Vernon and Dean Stockwell were great, this whole new dynamic with the history of the Cylons, their deliberate creation in the image of humans, and their very human roots is something I’m still not sure is going to work. Still, it doesn’t matter tonight because I’m remaining highly entertained. We toned down the action this week to get some story out of the way, but it was all vital to the final few episodes of the series. Let’s get all the background info out of the way early so we can get some real drama, action and emotion packed into the final two-hour finale without having to the spend ¾ of it with talk.
I give No Exit two full-on little Tigh fetus big toe kicks through Six’s stomach up!
Technorati 
Del.icio.us 
StumbleUpon 
Digg 
Facebook 
Mixx 
Reddit
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
One Response to “Battlestar Galactica: No Exit - Who the Frak is Daniel?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
February 14th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
“Jim Beam Tigh” hahahahahahahah
I really enjoyed the episode but Adama’s back and forth or half hearted trust of the Cylon’s is odd to me. While all the story setup is great I wanted more information about the ship. Yeah, it’s 50 years old but what’s the service length for it.
I’m still picking Thrace as the 7th. A real frak up that was also an artist? I would definitely pick Thrace from that description.