Jammersreviews

Note: This review contains significant spoilers.

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Battlestar Galactica: "Six Degrees of Separation"

Claiming she has conclusive evidence, a copy of Number Six appears on the 
Galactica and accuses Baltar of being a traitor who helped the Cylons in 
their sneak attack on the Colonies.

Air date: 2/18/2005 (USA)
Written by Michael Angeli
Directed by Robert Young

Rating out of 4: ***

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
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Your mileage on "Six Degrees of Separation" might very well depend upon how 
entertaining you find the performances of James Callis as the animated Gaius 
Baltar. Here's an actor who seems equally at home in the role of the 
cool-headed egomaniac as in the role of the completely panicked guilty 
innocent. In a way, that's been his role since day one, but "Six Degrees" 
takes it to an extreme when Six appears in the flesh.

It begins with Six spouting her usual religious Cylon rhetoric, until Baltar 
gets fed up and tells her enough is enough. Perhaps he's speaking on behalf 
the audience, which by this point may be finding the dialog that Baltar is 
having with Six (in his head) is becoming a bit repetitious. After Baltar 
explodes in frustration, Six leaves him. Being left by your fantasy woman 
must be its own special kind of insult, but of course the nature of Six's 
existence in Baltar's head has its own ambivalence.

Almost immediately after this confrontation (in what one is tempted to 
suspect cannot be a coincidence), a woman named Shelly Godfrey turns up in 
the CIC of the Galactica and accuses Baltar of being a traitor. Godfrey 
claims to be a colleague of Dr. Amarak (see "33") but is actually a version 
of Number Six in the flesh, which everyone else can see, and which puts 
Baltar in the odd position of mistaking a person (or, more to the point, a 
Cylon) for a hallucination.

Godfrey has in her possession an octagonal CD that she says contains proof 
that Baltar helped the Cylons attack the Colonies by accessing the defense 
mainframe. Personally, I would question the credibility of anyone who 
possesses an octagonal CD (or DVD, or whatever), since there can be no 
functional advantage for a spinning disc to have such a shape unless, 
perhaps, Godfrey has a career in gimmicky marketing.

On the octo-disc is a digital surveillance photograph showing a man of 
Baltar's height and build compromising security on Caprica. Godfrey claims 
that a digital enhancement will reveal Baltar's face in a reflection. Baltar 
cries foul, saying he's the victim of a frame-up. Lt. Gaeta says the 
enhancement will take about a day and will answer the question of who's 
lying. I was reminded of "No Way Out," in which Kevin Costner must race 
against the clock to put himself in the clear before an enhanced 
photograph -- which he knows he is in -- reveals his face. The twist in "Six 
Degrees of Separation" is that Baltar isn't actually guilty of being in the 
photograph but is guilty of something else.

We've seen these issues of guilt/non-guilt with Baltar before; it's 
practically the definition of his character. This episode plays like the 
culmination of that theme, in which Baltar's possible guilt comes into the 
public eye and his conviction starts to go down in the court of public 
opinion. The episode also plays like the culmination of the James Callis 
panic-attack performance, featuring every possible permutation of Baltar 
trying to think his way out of this rather uncomfortable jam. For example:

-- There's the scene where Baltar desperately calls Roslin on the phone to 
tell her that he believes Godfrey may be a Cylon, only to have Roslin 
collapse on the phone because of her illness.

-- There's the scene where Baltar follows Gaeta into the restroom and takes 
the stall next to him, and begins asking him in a hilariously loud and 
increasingly desperate whisper how the photo enhancement is proceeding.

-- There's the extension of this scene where Godfrey shows up in the (coed) 
restroom, and Baltar confronts her, ending with his announcement, "No more 
Mr. Nice Gaius!"

-- There's the scene where Baltar is up against a wall and retreats into his 
fantasy where he finally admits to a nonexistent Six, "I love you!" and begs 
her to come back. This proclamation is predictably self-serving in its 
timing.

-- There's the scene where Baltar's desperation reaches its end and he 
attempts a direct (and futile) assault upon the computers processing the 
photo enhancement. Even this ends in failure; he can't get the picture of 
himself on the monitor to go away.

-- Eventually, Baltar has landed in a jail cell and prays to God for 
release, and vows that he accepts Six's God as the one and only God.

These scenes walk a tightrope act between broad comedy and convincing 
terror, because we find ourselves simultaneously rooting for and against 
Baltar. We root for him because in this case he's actually innocent, and the 
crime he's guilty of we can in many ways forgive. We root against him 
because -- well, he so self-serving and narcissistic and hopelessly pathetic 
that he *deserves* whatever happens to him.

Meanwhile, "Shelly Godfrey" is free to walk the ship, and in one scene she 
tries to use human loss as a way of seducing Adama in his cabin. Adama isn't 
buying it, and Godfrey's move only raises his suspicions.

In addition to taking us even more directly into the hyperkinetic mind of 
Baltar, the episode keeps the supporting characters under watch with 
vignettes: Roslin's illness leads her to overmedicate, which brings a 
chiding from the ship's no-BS Dr. Cottle (Donnelly Rhodes). Starbuck 
grudgingly begins rehab for her knee injury, sparked in part by a perfectly 
orchestrated use of reverse psychology by Colonel Tigh. Meanwhile, Sharon 
has some insights about the captured Cylon Raider -- perhaps more insights 
than she reasonably should. On Caprica, Helo and Boomer have comfort sex in 
an environment otherwise devoid of comfort; one begins wondering if the 
Cylons' entire motivation is to either learn the purpose of or take control 
of humanity through sexuality, and if so, then why.

But mainly the show is about the trust put in Baltar and how that trust 
erodes in the face of a false accusation. At one point Adama says that if 
Baltar is guilty, he has made fools of those who lead what's left of 
society. Are Roslin and Adama therefore fools, even though he's innocent of 
this particular crime? There's a scene where Baltar is in the brig and 
Roslin tells him that she believes that he is guilty of something, even if 
it isn't this. It's an interesting notion about gut instincts, although the 
story doesn't really get to the bottom of it. Once Baltar is cleared, Roslin 
drops the matter. Perhaps she drops it out of pragmatic necessity. The story 
doesn't specify. Was this on the writers' minds? It should've been.

One of the understated pieces to this story is the friendship between Gaeta 
and Baltar. It might be said that Gaeta is the only friend that Baltar 
really has. It might also be said that Baltar doesn't really appreciate that 
fact because he's too wrapped up in his own little world.

And then Godfrey, under surveillance as a possible intruder, mysteriously 
vanishes from the ship, much to Adama's ire. How did she do that? And is it 
a coincidence that Six reappears in Baltar's mind right around this time? 
One of the episode's pleasures is the way it toys with the nature of Six as 
a possible figment of Baltar's imagination, or possibly as a real 
spokeswoman for the Cylons. The net effect of Baltar's implication and 
eventual clearance is that it makes him possibly less susceptible to future 
suspicion and therefore more powerful, and at the same time more under the 
thumb of Six/God. Was that the plan all along?

Sneaky, those Cylons. I just wonder what it is they're doing that makes all 
this methodology worth the trouble.

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Copyright 2005, Jamahl Epsicokhan. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this article is prohibited.

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