Jammersreviews

Note: This review contains significant spoilers.

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Battlestar Galactica: "Blood on the Scales"

Gaeta and Zarek take control of the fleet and intend to put Adama on 
trial for treason, but must contend with pockets of resistance still 
trying to quell their mutiny.

Air date: 2/6/2009 (USA)
Written by Michael Angeli
Directed by Wayne Rose

Rating out of 4: ***

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
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"Blood on the Scales" is a suspenseful and effective hour, but 
notably inconclusive. While it wraps up the overall events as put 
forth in last week's superb and exciting "The Oath," it does not put 
to rest half of the many issues raised there. This episode is 
satisfying as a resolution to the action and as the final word on 
some of its characters, but it does not live up to "The Oath." And it 
is my sincerest hope that what happens here is not the end of the 
story concerning this earth-shaking mutiny.

"The Oath" was a great cliffhanger because it was an action-oriented 
meditation on character (Adama/Tigh and their defiant last stand on 
the basis of principle; Adama/Roslin and their parting of ways, in 
their minds possibly forever) and it made you thirst for more. It was 
not an OMFG cliffhanger in the sense that I wondered whether Adama 
and Tigh were still alive at the end (because I didn't). Pretty 
obviously, that had to be a non-lethal stun grenade that the marines 
threw into the airlock, designed to disable but not kill them.

So if this episode's pickup is the fairly obvious sight of marines 
taking them into custody, there is the cliffhanger's ace in the hole: 
the exciting conclusion to Gaeta ordering Roslin's Raptor to be shot 
down. Hot Dog is one of the pilots ordered to engage the target. 
Narcho is another. Narcho is one of Gaeta's mutiny soldiers. Hot Dog 
is not. The way this plays out is logically sound, plenty exciting, 
and very nicely executed as a piece of directing and the usual CGI 
brilliance from Gary Hutzel & Co. Roslin escapes to the rebel Cylon 
baseship, where they must plot their next move. Roslin suggests 
hiding the ship in the middle of the fleet where Gaeta cannot easily 
open fire on it.

The meat of the story is in the war of wills that goes down between 
Adama, Gaeta, and Zarek. They say two's company and three's a crowd, 
and that certainly proves true here. While Gaeta and Zarek were on 
the same page in their desire to take power away from Adama and 
Roslin, they have a very different notion of how the game should be 
played from there. Zarek would preferably shoot Adama and Tigh and be 
done with it.

But Gaeta does not simply want to grab power and take over. He needs 
to make the case as he sees it in his mind, and to show why Adama is 
in the wrong here and why his own hands were forced in staging the 
mutiny. He insists on court-martialing Adama for treason. It's 
telling that the primary audience for Gaeta's case is Adama himself. 
This is not a show trial. Gaeta mostly wants an admission from Adama 
that he coddled the Cylons and that he betrayed his promise to 
protect the fleet. Not that Gaeta for one second intends to make this 
a fair trial. There's only one judge, self-appointed: Zarek. Nor does 
Adama intend to lie down and negotiate anything from this mutineer. 
Watch how he throws his admiral pins down in disgust.

Romo Lampkin is enlisted to defend Adama in this tribunal. For once, 
Lampkin's shrewd insights into human nature do not in any way grant 
him an advantage. He knows that this trial is a sham, that his part 
in it is a farce, and that he must go along with it or probably be 
shot. But none of that knowledge is useful in any way. He holds no 
cards. You know it's not a good day when Lampkin's brilliant legal 
strategy is to beg Adama to cave in to his captors' demands and make 
some sort of statement, if only to stall desperately for time.

I think the key moment in the episode, for better or worse, is when 
Zarek explains to the Quorum that he is taking over the government 
and that Adama has been removed -- and the Quorum rejects him. When 
it's clear they won't support his power play, Zarek has the entire 
Quorum executed in a hail of machinegun fire. I have mixed feelings 
about how this goes down. While it makes for a stunner of a scene and 
I believe Zarek to be capable of this sort of take-no-prisoners 
approach, I think it's too shortsighted a move on his part. Isn't 
Zarek smarter than this? Why overreach by such an obscene margin? Why 
not simply throw them all in a cell, somewhere out of sight and mind? 
(Nitpick alert: Shouldn't opening machinegun fire inside the close 
quarters of Colonial One compromise the cabin, or at least leave 
bullet holes?)

Zarek should know from Gaeta's past behavior that this is not what 
Gaeta signed up for, and that it's the sort of move likely to give 
Gaeta pause and jeopardize the entire coup. As Gaeta says, "We had 
the truth on our side!" And now they don't. Zarek's response: "The 
truth is told by those left standing." Speaking to Zarek's character, 
this clearly crosses a line that previously had not been so bluntly 
violated, and it makes it easy to see Zarek as a murderous thug and a 
hypocrite rather than a man with a legitimate point of view.

Such a cold-blooded show of force essentially says that, to Zarek, 
winning over "the people," which is the cause he has always 
supposedly championed, is no longer important. It's now all about the 
power play, and finding out who's with us and against us. Those 
against us will be amputated, because they are contrary to the only 
possible course of action available to the fleet, which is the 
expulsion of the Cylons. Really, this wipes away any remaining 
possibility for the audience to side with Zarek, because the moral 
gray areas are obliterated. It made me wonder what really makes this 
guy tick. "The ends justify the means," I suppose. I think that's too 
bad, because up until this moment, Zarek's argument had merit (even 
if the mutiny wasn't going to solve anything).

The positive impact this does have on the story, however, is to 
further up the ante of unease and raise the stakes: *This* is where 
the fleet is headed if the mutiny cannot be put down -- into an utter 
chaos of survival of the fittest.

The progression of the plot is solidly engaging. The Cylons are 
notably alarmed over the fact that the fleet is falling apart over 
the issue of their presence. Roslin has to convince them not to jump 
away. And there's a certain irony to be found in the fact that Roslin 
is able to circumvent Gaeta's jamming frequency and get on the air 
again by virtue of Cylon technology -- the very issue that sparked 
the mutiny in the first place.

Some other important beats in the story:

* Kelly's crisis of conscience is interesting. (For that matter, 
bringing back Kelly as a character is interesting, and I enjoyed Tigh 
calling him the "brig rat.") Not everybody is fully sure about this 
mutiny, and their loyalties to the Old Man don't necessarily die 
easily. At one point Kelly has Tyrol dead to rights, but lets him go. 
Later, he switches sides and helps Lee and Kara.

* Tyrol goes crawling through the tunnels of the ship for basically 
the whole episode, until his last-second pulling of the plug on the 
FTL drive. Having him scurrying in tunnels the whole hour frankly 
seemed kind of silly. But it did allow us to ultimately see the inner 
workings of the FTL engine. One question: What's the significance of 
the mysterious crack on the wall in the engine room?

* At two points characters are wrongly informed of the deaths of 
others. Zarek lies and tells Adama that Tigh was killed trying to 
escape. Later, Gaeta tells Roslin that Adama has been executed when 
he actually hasn't been. In the latter case that might've been a 
really bad idea. There's nothing quite like seeing the full wrath of 
Roslin unleashed: "I'm coming for all of you!"

* In a bit of guerilla diversionary strategy, Lee throws a grenade 
down a hallway toward some marines without pulling the pin -- but 
also without telling Kara he didn't pull the pin. Kara: "Not funny." 
Lee: "Would've been if you'd thought of it." It's nice to see these 
two bantering again.

* There comes a point when Anders is shot and seriously wounded, and 
Kara stays behind to try to get him to sickbay. Anders' fate is left 
completely unresolved as the episode ends. (Unless you count Lampkin 
killing his guard with a pen and agreeing to help Kara as a notice of 
resolution.) This felt more like a forgotten loose end than a to-be-
continued for next week.

* Baltar. What a funny and sad bastard. He can barely live with 
himself for running from danger yet again. But it wasn't fear of 
death that made him run this time; it was the fact that he was so 
utterly sick of his pathetic cultists, who worship him "like a fan 
club."

* Did you notice how Zarek tries to give orders in CIC late in the 
episode? Gaeta sure did. One gets the feeling that even had this 
mutiny succeeded, Zarek and Gaeta would not have been compatible for 
the long run.

Naturally, the mutiny is ultimately thwarted by the crucial actions 
of a few individuals at key moments, including people like Kelly, who 
perhaps did not conceive of the full consequences of the mutiny. I 
thought Adama's storming in to retake CIC was a great pulse-pounding 
moment, even though the episode itself does not begin to address the 
crux of the underlying issue, which is that the ship was so divided 
that this mess happened in the first place.

We don't see it here, but there should be hell to pay for what's 
happened. Adama promised there would be no forgiveness, and I want to 
know exactly what that will mean on his pragmatic Galactica. Given 
how many supporting players participated in the mutiny, there will be 
hard questions to ask and answer. Lines were drawn, which means 
relationships and trust among the crew have been destroyed. The 
Quorum has been killed, meaning the government is in tatters. What 
comes next? The episode doesn't even begin to go there.

And there needs to be some on-screen hand-wringing over all this. 
Roslin, for one, needs to face up to what her willing absence 
permitted. Yes, Earth was a debacle. But shirking her 
responsibilities has proven that there are even bigger debacles to be 
had. "Blood on the Scales" doesn't even hint at these issues. Its 
mission is to deal with the mutiny, and that's all it has time for. 
It feels, as I said, inconclusive. The episode has a lot going for 
it, but there are scenes that feel starkly absent, even if those 
scenes may very well show up next week.

But this episode does a particularly good job dealing with Gaeta as 
an individual. The final conversation between Baltar and Gaeta is 
perfect in its tone. After everything that's happened -- after this 
hellish transformational arc that this character has gone through -- 
the guy is able to let the anger go and approach what he did with a 
clear perspective. And he has no regrets. He seems like the old 
Gaeta, before he became bitter and took on the weight of his self-
righteous cause. "I just hope that people realize eventually," he 
says, "who I am." Baltar replies, "I know who you are, Felix."

It's such a straightforwardly effective scene, made all the more 
significant because of all that has transpired between these two men, 
and because now all that can be put aside for this moment of 
reflection. Baltar's compassion for Gaeta is intriguing. Is it driven 
by guilt, loyalty, or the simple need to empathize with this man who 
used to be his only friend?

When Gaeta and Zarek face the firing squad, sitting side-by-side, 
there's an almost whimsical note to it. Zarek gives a bemused half-
grin, as if to say, "Well, we did what we did, and this is how it 
worked out. Case closed." They knew what they were doing. They were 
comfortable with the choices they made. And now they will face the 
consequences.

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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@jammersreviews.com