Jammersreviews

Note: This review contains significant spoilers.

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Battlestar Galactica: "Revelations"

A deadly standoff ensues when D'Anna holds Roslin and others hostage 
and demands Adama turn over the secret Cylons aboard Galactica, who 
supposedly know the way to Earth.

Air date: 6/13/2008 (USA)
Written by Bradley Thompson & David Weddle
Directed by Michael Rymer

Rating out of 4: ****

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
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D'Anna knows who the Secret Four Cylons are. And she's not telling. 
She's a narrative wild card. She wasn't part of the alliance 
negotiated between the Colonials and the rebel Cylons. She came late 
to this game, and she's setting new rules. And because she has 
leverage and uses it, the situation quickly becomes a standoff that 
threatens to spin out of control.

D'Anna holds the Colonials, including the President Roslin, hostage 
aboard the basestar. She makes an announcement: She will hold the 
hostages until the Secret Four are turned over to her. But this 
creates a real problem for Admiral Adama and President Lee Adama. 
They don't even know who these four Cylons are. The only ways this 
stalemate can possibly end is either in bloodshed or with the secret 
Cylons turning themselves in.

Now let me quote myself from my review of the second-season BSG 
episode "Sacrifice": "At this point in my movie- and TV-viewing life, 
I'm almost willing to say that any pitch that can be summarized 
as 'hostage situation' should be thrown out by whomever is 
potentially producing it." Good thing I used the word "almost" in 
that sentence, or else I'd have to eat those words. "Revelations" is 
the most riveting hostage standoff in recent memory. Old conventions 
can be made to work in your favor if there are real stakes involved. 
And the stakes here couldn't be bigger: Lives of major characters 
hang precariously in the balance, as does the secret surrounding 
Earth.

And because this is a BSG hiatus launcher, there's no telling what 
will happen or where the story might end up. The season-ending 
cliffhanger used to make me groan because it was an obligatory 
cliche. But BSG has for me single-handedly revitalized the 
cliffhanger with its track record of shocking unpredictability. The 
suspense level is amped up in "Revelations" in part simply because I 
knew it was a midseason finale.

One interesting point worth pondering: D'Anna says four Cylons are in 
the fleet. Not five. Does that mean the final Cylon is *not* in the 
fleet? Is the final Cylon a character on the basestar? Or is D'Anna 
lying?

When D'Anna makes the rules of the game clear, it creates a real nail-
biter. She knows who the secret Cylons are. They know who they are. 
And we know who they are. But all the other characters must play this 
deadly chess game in the dark. Immediately, the secret players start 
quietly jockeying for position. Tory, the other wild card here, 
craftily gets herself aboard the basestar by offering to take Roslin 
her medication. Tigh tries to stop it, but he can't without giving 
himself away. (Once aboard the basestar, Tory swiftly burns her 
bridges. When the president tries to reason with her, Tory's response 
is: "I'm done taking orders from you.")

Tigh immediately becomes the key player here, because he's in Adama's 
inner circle as the rules of engagement are being established. It 
puts Tigh in the bind of all binds. The screws continue to tighten 
and options diminish: D'Anna proves she means business and airlocks a 
hostage, promising more will follow. (There's an inspired extreme 
long shot where a tiny body goes flying across the screen amid the 
fleet.) It could be that in this chess game, the only way to ward off 
the disaster is if Tigh outs himself. Watching this unfold is 
deliciously excruciating.

Meanwhile, Tigh, Anders, and Tyrol try to figure out how they might 
know the way to Earth. Supposedly they do know, but they have no more 
information about Earth, until...

The radio static and musical signals return in the minds of the 
Secret Four, like at the nebula in "Crossroads." They are drawn to 
Kara's Viper. They don't know why. So they must solve the mystery 
before the hostage situation explodes. To buy time, Tigh marches into 
Adama's quarters, where he...

In one of the most edge-of-seat scenes on this series, Tigh confesses 
everything he knows to Adama. "*I am a Cylon*." Adama tries to 
explain it away, using all the facts that we as viewers would 
ourselves use to debunk this belief. It's a fruitless endeavor. Tigh 
*knows* he's a Cylon. And with this knowledge he puts himself forward 
as the most possible valuable leverage to use against D'Anna. It's 
brilliant. It's selfless. It could very well cost him his life. And 
it's 100 percent Saul Tigh.

The ensuing Adama emotional nuclear explosion that occurs is a raw 
and heartbreaking performance by Olmos. It depicts nothing short of 
utter devastation. This man has a breaking point, and we've passed it 
and then some. Tigh's outing turns Adama's world upside down. Not 
only is Adama's best friend of 30 years a Cylon, and not only has 
every military decision Adama ever made now the punch line of a cruel 
cosmic joke, but now Adama has to put Tigh in an airlock and use him 
as currency. "I can't kill the bastard," Adama sobs to Lee. He 
literally cannot do it. So Lee steps up to address the crisis in his 
father's stead.

On the macro tier of the story, the brilliance of "Revelations" is 
how fate assembles a big picture from the jigsaw puzzle of all the 
characters in order to not simply point the way to Earth, but force 
the humans and Cylons to do it together. In addition to the Secret 
Four, this puzzle can only come together with the involvement of 
Resurrected Kara and her Viper (which begins receiving a mysterious 
signal, and is the only piece of equipment that does so); the 
renegade Cylons; and even Baltar, who reasons with D'Anna long enough 
to cause a crucial delay. And, of course, a higher power to make all 
of these coincidences play in perfect concert. Sure, this is all a 
construction of clever writers, placing the available pieces where 
they best make sense. But it's done well and done organically, and 
the spell of the story is never broken.

Ultimately, Tigh is in an airlock with Lee's finger on the button, 
who demands D'Anna stand down -- and it doesn't look like she will. I 
honestly didn't know whether Tigh would live or die -- I really 
didn't. Airlocking Cally in "The Ties That Bind" made possible this 
scene's palpable sense that anything could happen. It generates 
unbearable suspense, even while making use of that old standby: 
crosscutting back and forth to a character who's desperately running 
through hallways with crucial information to stop something awful 
from happening.

And how awesome is Saul Tigh? He has no regrets whatsoever about his 
choices here. He stands up straight and prepares to face death like 
the man he always has been. As the moment is drawn out, Tigh looks 
straight at Lee and says, "What are you waiting for, Apollo? *Do* 
it." It's a great line that elevates this character (and Michael 
Hogan, who plays him) into a stratosphere of awesomeness.

But Kara's word of her discovery stops everything at the last 
possible moment. As quickly as the crisis seemed headed beyond the 
point of no return, it's completely defused. She has found a signal 
leading back to Earth. Lee negotiates a halt to hostilities with a 
Yes We Can speech; everyone can go to Earth together. In a way, for 
this brief moment, Earth has saved everyone.

I must also admit I was blindsided by the idea that once this 
agreement is reached, *we are going to Earth right now*. I really 
didn't see it coming. I expected another clue to Earth, not the full 
solution. Again, it's a testament to this series defying 
expectations. The moment of truth has arrived, Earth is in reach -- 
and yet here's a character kernel not to be overlooked: Adama is 
still deflated, his spirit crushed. It takes Roslin to lift him back 
up.

But we're not kidding around. We're going to Earth! We get it all: 
the spine-tingling epic sweep, the dramatic musical score, the shot 
of the fleet in orbit of a blue planet, Adama making a grand fleet-
wide announcement, characters celebrating and hugging. Nice stuff. 
Even nicer: Tigh sits alone with a bottle. Even Earth is not going to 
solve all our characters' problems. And then...

There's that doozy of a final shot of a devastated Earth. Adama picks 
up that first handful of dirt, and a Geiger counter clicks away. In 
addition to the implications of this scene, I must praise the 
technical skill. It's a tour de force of stage direction that gathers 
all the characters in a single, wordless tracking shot. I could 
easily write another 500 words on just this shot and how it breaks 
down all the characters and silently, implicitly comments on all of 
them. But why do that? You get the picture, and can form ideas of 
your own. One thing is certain: The dejection is palpable.

What happened to Earth, what does it mean, and what do we do now? 
This ending is not a cliffhanger; it's another brilliant, giant 
question mark -- the biggest one yet on this series. If there's a 
major statement being made here, above all else, it's that there is 
no quick fix in the "Battlestar" universe. For this extended journey, 
the destination, and all hope, has resided on Earth. Now they have 
found it. But apparently finding it has resolved nothing.

Earth may have allowed the Cylons and Colonials to come together, but 
now they are here, and they are going to have to deal with each 
other. Earth is not going to save these people. They will have to 
save themselves.

Somehow. I don't know how.

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Copyright 2009, Jamahl Epsicokhan. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this article is 
prohibited.

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Jamahl Epsicokhan - jammer@...