Daybreak- The Present and The Road To The Future
So now that I've written a bit about the flashbacks, it's time to write a bit about the present conflict and battle that takes place in Daybreak which eventually leads us to the end. And then . . . holy frak, it'll be done. Wow. I mean, not counting the season four review which I'll post tomorrow, but those take me ten minutes to write so I don't think it should be counted. But this . . . this counts, my friends. This counts, indeed.
I'll try not to weep as I write. But I might, so you've been warned.
For the final time, I hope you'll jump the cut.
1) I really love the transition between Laura's grief in the fountain to the IV drip of her bedside in Galactica's sick bay. Isn't it kind of interesting how the fountain beats down all this water on her, soaking her, as she mourns the death of her sisters and father (and possibly her mother, too, since I believe her mother had already died) in comparison to the small drip by drip of the IV as her own life is about to come to an end. Intentional? High dramatics for others but barely anything for herself? Laura's always been about other people, you know?
2) Oh, yeah, this also has to do with that same flashback but since this is my blog I can do whatever the hell I want. I was just thinking that it's kind of creepy, in retrospect, watching the scene with Laura and the fountain because all of those people are just looking at her like she's completely crazy and just a few years later, in all probability, all those people are dead.
3) The packing up of Galactica is almost complete. The ship is practically empty. Parts are gone and are being distributed to other ships. People have been moved so nearly everyone is gone. Adama's packing up his quarters in order to make the move to the basestar.
It's just so weird. Remember the first moments with Galactica back in the miniseries? Starbuck's jogging through the corridors and she's dodging people, yelling at them to make a hole. It's just teaming with people. Since the beginning, Galactica's been almost a living entity and even as she gets hammered with cylon nukes and New Caprican atmosphere and various internal explosions, and cracking and tearing, she's always been so full of life. So to see her so bare is just . . . Well, for me, it's the signal that this is the end.
4) Starbuck's been trying to work through All Along The Watchtower with Sam. She's been assigning notes to the numbers, trying to look at the music in a more mathematical way. That's a good idea. I probably never would have thought of it had I been Starbuck, but music is very mathematical and so is the universe. It's a good intuitive leap to have made about the music's importance.
5) Meanwhile, Baltar wants a voice in the government because his people now constitute more than half the survivors on many of the ships. Which makes for hell of a nymph squad, yeah? But Lee won't let him have a seat on the government because he believes Baltar's incapable of unselfishness and heroism and thinks Baltar just wants the power for himself.
I actually kind of think Lee's right in not giving Baltar what he wants in this case, not because I think Baltar is selfish and unheroic, but because if you open up a seat for one religion, all others must also be represented and I believe that religion has absolutely no place in government (says the person who's favorite all time character based many of her presidential decisions on prophetic religious visions . . . hey, I've never said I was consistent). Since the new quorum is set up by ship and not planet, it would seem that Baltar's people would be more fairly represented than before, especially if many of the ships are made up of more than half of people who believe in the One True God.
6) Oh, god, one of my all time favorite scenes in the history of ever: The Line.
I can't even describe to you all how much I love The Line. I love how Starbuck and Adama come onto the hanger deck and they have that bright red tape and they just make the line without saying anything to anyone. And then when Adama lets everyone know that he's going to lead anyone who will join him on a mission to find and save Hera from the cylon colony (because Sam somehow knew where it was . . . loose story telling, that). And how everyone who is eligible for the mission goes to the hanger deck and how Adama tells them his plan, explains to them the stakes, and then demands, "Make your choice."
Because this is exactly what BSG has been about. It's always been about the choices we make to become the people we are. There's certainly no doubt that a divine power exists in this universe and that is is having a direct say on the outcome of these people's lives, but that doesn't seem to negate the act of choice and the state of free will. People will always be defined by what they choose to do and how they choose to react (remember my long spiels on action and reaction from past reviews?). And Adama's giving these people a choice as to how they want to move forward. Maybe the mission is unlikely to succeed. Maybe they'll all die. But maybe they'll save the life of a helpless little girl and maybe that's worth the risk. And maybe they can take out the colony while they're at it. So what'll it be? How are these people going to choose to define themselves in this moment?
Wonderfully, most everyone on that hanger deck elects to stay with the fleet. So incredibly true to live. I doubt I'd volunteer to go on a suicide mission.
7) Doc Cottle's first name is "Sherman". Oh, Ron Moore. That's awesome. Thank you for that.
8) One of the more touching moments of Daybreak is when Laura hobbles her way down the line towards Adama, intent on joining him on this last mission, knowing that if she's going to die, she's much rather die alongside him than apart from him. I also love that Starbuck helps support her up. Gods I wish those two had had more scenes together.
But I also thought there was an interesting contrast between Laura and Baltar in this scene because Laura, sick as a dog and barely able to move, still chooses to go and manages to will her body forward. Baltar tries to will himself over the line but can't do it. He's sound in body but he still lacks the courage and mental and emotion fortitude to put it all on the line. I doubt that the writers were trying to make a connection between the two, but it definitely stuck out to me. Baltar has the body, but he doesn't have the spirit. Laura has the spirit but doesn't have the body. And, in this instance, the spirit is what counts.
9) Lee was back in his uniform for the strategy sessions. I thought it was kind of strange but suitable.
10) Head!Six tells Baltar that he's going to guide mankind to their end. I'll have more to say about this later in the review.
11) Raise your hand if you didn't cry during Laura's final scene with Cottle. Did you raise you hand? Then I'd like to tell you that you have a heart of stone. Stone, I tell you!
These two have been together since the beginning. He's been privy to many of her intimate moments. He knows her inside and out, literally. And it's such a nice gesture for her to thank him for all he's done because without him, she surely would have died back in Epiphanies or before. And it's clear that she holds a special place in his heart and that he's just going to miss her.
I think it's a perfect scene.
12) Adama makes Lieutenant Hoshi admiral, which I think is a good choice. He was loyal during the mutiny and has been in good stead since transferring from the Pegasus. Romo Lampkin is made the new president. I suppose I don't have issues with this because there isn't really anyone else since Zarek and the quorum are dead and Lee's participating in the mission.
Humanity could have been left in lesser hands, that's for sure.
But I like this scene for the reasons Ron Moore talks about in his podcast (or it might be the commentary). By appointing a new admiral and president, it's basically telling the audience that this mission is very serious, very dangerous, and that it really is unlikely that they're coming back from it. They expect to fail and they take it seriously and they make the necessary moves to ensure that the fleet will still have some guardianship.
13) Tigh did a lot of laughing in this episode. I love his laugh. It's so weird and so not something you'd ever expect to come from that face which makes it all that much better.
14) Baltar finally mans up and decides that he's done being selfish and unheroic (not that I actually believe wanting to live in this case is selfish), but he finally comes clean about the harem to the harem. He says, "I never belonged to you, Paula. You appropriated me." I love that line because it's so true. They appropriated him and he went along with and maybe he believed his message in the end, but he was using them as his cover, a way to keep himself relatively protected and influential. It was selfish. Because he's Baltar.
But the funny thing is that I'm still unsure as to Baltar's ultimate motives. Obviously, the guy is terrified of dying so it's odd that he's suddenly put his life in danger but . . . Lee just called him selfish and unheroic. You know there's a part of him that just wants to prove Lee wrong (they've had a bit of a rivalry since Starbuck and Baltar slept together and she called out Lee's name). But maybe he's just tired of running and wants to stand still for something.
15) I really love when Adama is addressing the people on Galactica just before making the jump to the colony and he says, "[Galactica] will not fail us if we do not fail her."
16) The first two victims of Daybreak who are known characters are Racetrack and Skulls. It's almost sad that I'm not sad that they were killed. I was so put off by their involvement in the mutiny that I wasn't sorry to see it happen at all. Especially Skulls because he was so callous is regards to the murder of Chief Laird, killed just trying to do his job.
17) Well, the mission is what it is. I'm not really going to describe it or anything, except to say that the special effects were really great. The raptor teams, lead by Starbuck, Lee, Helo, and Athena, manage to infiltrate the colony and they spread out to find Hera.
Now, the best part of this whole thing is Boomer's involvement. Here is where she finally answers Laura's question (even though she wasn't there when Laura asked it): Who do you want to be? Here's her time to make her choice and determine who she's going to be. And she chooses to rescue Hera and return her to her parents even though she knows her life will be forfeit.
This, coupled with the flashback scene between a rookie Boomer and Tigh and Adama as they reprimand her for her inability to land her raptor and Adama's eventual choice to give her one more change, makes for one of my very favorite moments of the episode. Present!Boomer tells Athena, "Tell the Old Man I owed him one . . . We all make our choices. I made a choice."
And that choice lead to her death but maybe that choice freed her spirit, you know? I hate to use that kind of terminology. It's so not me, but what if she's let Simon continue to operate on Hera? What if she'd done nothing? Even if she had someone lived through the attack, would she have been able to live with those choices? What's worse? Dying for what's right or living for what's wrong?
18) Caprica and Baltar are ready to fight next to each other and Caprica tells him that she's proud of him. She was always looking for a way to be proud of him. It was the only thing missing from their relationship from her towards him.
Oh, and they can see each other's head!people.
19) Oh, the Opera House.
I don't know how this stuff with the Opera House went down with the fandom, generally, but I love it. I don't care. I'll say it again: I love it.
I love that Laura hobbles after Hera, forging into the chaos to save this little girl and I love how Athena tries to do the same. And then Laura finds her and saves her from Cavil but then the kid (who seriously needs to stop running away all the time) disappears and Laura and Athena find each other and it's intercut with the footage from the vision and Caprica and Baltar find Hera and take her into the CIC and . . . Yeah. I just love it.
And when the music shifts from the battle music to the melody of The Shape Of Things To Come? I get goosebumps every. single. time.
My one quibble is that I hate how the Final Five are standing in the CIC to represent the five figures Baltar and Caprica saw in the Opera House. The rest of the vision wasn't completely, step by step, an accurate representation of the vision, so the staging of the Five didn't need to be either. I mean, they look ridiculous standing up there stock still while there's a battle raging. You know?
20) But Cavil comes to the CIC and manages to grab Hera but Baltar talks him down. He says, "Our two destinies are entwined by [god's] force. God's a force of nature, beyond good and evil. Good and evil, we created those. You want to break the cycle . . . Well, that's in our hands and our hands only. It requires a leap of fate. It requires we live in hope, ot fear."
Now, I've always found it kind of weak that this speech is all it takes for Cavil to give Hera up (aside from Tigh's promise to give him resurrection) and I always used to have problems with Baltar being the one to deliver the speech that brought peace to these two races.
But this time around, I understood it differently. I think it's pretty smart for Baltar to have given this speech. He was the flood, right? The force of nature that took out humanity. If he was the flood, maybe now he should be the dam. And in his speech he takes God out of the equation. Yes, there is a god, but he's not telling us what to do. We are all victims of our own constructs and that's what gets us in trouble. We need to take responsibility for what we do and if we want to break the cycle, well, then it's up to us to do so. This is where Baltar finds redemption. He's been skirting responsibility from the beginning, but in implicating mankind (and cylonkind), he implicates himself and finally takes responsibility.
Yep, he's definitely the dam.
21) So the Final Five agree to share their information on resurrection technology, but there's a catch: They're going to know everything there is to know about each other.
So what happens? Well, Tyrol finds out that Tory killed Cally. And he snaps in a rage, breaks the connection, and strangles her. Meanwhile, Doral calls "trick!" and chaos reigns supreme and everything goes to shit. Cavil even kills himself, recognizing that the jig is up (though I still think it's odd that the character most intent on resurrection kills himself so quickly). And, well, Galactica pretty much starts to go.
It's so wonderfully fitting that a cylon would experience such a human emotion such as rage that would end such a fragile peace between enemies.
22) But it's a good thing Starbuck was playing around with the music and the numbers because it's up to her to save the ship and she puts in the numbers to the music in as jump coordinates and gets them the hell out, right before Racetrack and Skull's nuke (which a dead Racetrack managed to launch after a piece of debris jostled her arm onto the trigger) blows the whole colony.
23) The jump's hard on Galactica and she breaks her back. But that's okay because Kara's coordinates have lead them to Earth. No, not that Earth. Our Earth! I mean, look! It's Africa! They found us!
Now, when Daybreak first aired I was really confused about a few things, namely Laura's position as the Dying Leader and Kara's position as the Harbinger of Death. It was always obvious to me that "Harbinger of Death" for the human race meant that humanity was no longer what it once was. The humans that Bill, Lee, Baltar, Laura, and Kara were . . . That's not what we are. Hence the "death" part, right? But I felt like Kara actually leading Galactica to Earth and Laura's basic lack of involvement in getting the fleet much of anywhere in season four lead to doubts as to whether or not she counted as the Dying Leader, still. The fact that she actually got to be on Earth II for a while, unlike what was stated in the prophecy, further confused me.
But I think I'm starting to look at it different. Laura's the Dying Leader. Kara's the Harbinger of Death. Baltar was to guide mankind to its end. I think that maybe all three were different sides to the same role. Laura's leadership saved the fleet in the beginning and it was her leadership that managed to get them to that nebula at the end of Crossroads Part II. It was there that they found Kara who was, indeed, the signpost they had been looking for to get to Earth, whether they understood that or not. And that's when Laura passed the baton to Kara. All the clues had been unlocked at this point: Kara, the viper, and the music. So Kara got them to Earth. And everything was wasted until this episode, when the baton was passed to Baltar. It was his words that brokered the peace that enabled things to go forward. Had he not been there, perhaps Hera would have been taken again or killed. And had he been killed, there would have been nothing to "guide". So he does that and passes the baton back to Kara and actually takes them to Earth II.
I don't think this has to diminish Laura's role. I think it just means that these three were three sides to the coin. If a coin had three sides, that is.
24) Lee's decided that to break the cycle, they need to get ride of their technology.
And everyone's okay with that. No, I do not see that as realistic.
25) I also don't understand why they're going to settle clumps of people around the world. I'm not sure that's a good idea for basic survival since most people probably wouldn't be equipped to farm or hunt. I mean, I know a little something about hunter gathered groups and know that groups shouldn't be too big because it leads to less cooperation and less egalitarianism, but that's with people who are intimate with their surroundings, who know the land, know how to forage and what to forage for and know how to hunt and what to hunt for.
26) So Laura gets to see Earth. And I'm so happy that she does. I always figured that she would die before they got there because they set that up so early in the series when the Pythian Prophecy was first introduced. There was some interview with Ron Moore that I found on YouTube where he talked about how he and Mary and talked about that was what was going to happen but, in the end, he changed his mind because he really wanted to give Earth II to Laura. He wanted her to have that reward. And I appreciate it, personally.
27) Lee believes that Adama's not going to come back after he and Laura fly away in the raptor, and I understand that. I think Lee got the bond between the two and understood that Adama probably wasn't going to last long after Laura's death. Personally, I always imagined that Adama finished building the cabin and then died in what would have been the bedroom soon after.
28) Lee tells Kara he wants to explore and then . . . She disappears.
Again, I really love this, especially for Kara, who's always been a hard character to pin down. I don't think her end should have been straight forward. I mean, the girl was dead. And came back. As an angel. I really like that one second she was there and the next she was gone. I honestly can't think of a more Starbuckian way to have gone.
29) Yes, Laura dies.
Honesty time: I have a lack of patience for fans who can't accept that Laura dies. Is that horrible of me? I know I should be understanding. And she's my favorite character so it's not like I'm happy she died. But she did. We knew from the moment we first met her that she was going die. We had four seasons to come to terms with it. Frankly, I would have felt cheated had the show ended and Laura was still alive.
Part of the wonder of the character, for me, is that she was supposed to die yet outlived almost all of humanity. And saved humanity and that that was tied to her own death. Her death is actually a really beautiful thing because of that so I wish people would just deal with it sometimes because I think all the denial diminishes what the character was all about in her sacrifices.
And I thought her death was beautiful because she died in peace, which is something I honestly never anticipated for this character. She died on Earth II, surround by "so much life" and the man she loved. There's something to be said for that.
30) So apparently everything was just a lead up to make sure Hera remained safe? All that Head!Six was trying to do was ensure Hera's protection? No offense, but that's kind of a let down. I mean, I think it should have been an integral part of God's plan, but not the only part. But, as Head!Six says, "God's plan is never complete."
31) I think that the newly resurrection relationship of Caprica and Baltar happens a little too quickly. I mean, just a little while before she was in love with Tigh and having his baby. But I do like that they end up together and that he's going to farm. His character has finally come full circle.
32) "I laid out the cabin today. It's going to have an easterly view. You should see the light we get here when the sun comes from behind those mountains. It's almost heavenly. It reminds me of you."
Guh.
And the music during that just gives me chills, I love it so much. Once again, it's The Shape of Things To Come. Man, I love that piece of music. Maybe I should convert it into numbers and plug them in somewhere and see where it takes me.
33) We fast forward 150,000 years to present day New York City. Hera's mitochondrial Eve and we are all descendants of a cylon/human hybrid.
I really dislike the end. I thought it was too heavy handed. I learned the lesson the last four minutes talk about just by watching the, you know, series, so I thought it was unnecessary.
What I do like is what wernotalone brought up in the episode discussion in the rememberlaura community. She said that it was kind of depressing because everything was forgotten. Lee got rid of the technology but it didn't help break the cycle at all and all the struggles these people went through have disappeared from the consciousness of time.
I hadn't thought of it like that before but I definitely think it's a valid way to look at it and one I think I'm going to adopt for myself. Because they were all forgotten. Their struggles were forgotten. And what continues? Thy cycle of hatred and violence and technology. Head!Baltar asks, "Does all of this have to happen again?" Head!Six says that no, it doesn't, since mathematically, if you repeat a sequence over and over again eventually the results will change. But . . . I don't know. This new read on the ending actually makes me think it'll definitely happen again. I mean, Facebook sends my musical preferences to Pandora without me telling it to. That alone freaks me out. I don't want to log onto Pandora and have it automatically start playing Paul Simon or Planxty or Bear McCreary. It's diabolical! It's the first step to the future of scary evil robots that gain consciousness and end up knowing us better than we know ourselves and I'm just not down with that.
But maybe we can escape our destiny, if we're lucky, and hold fast to our ability to make choices. If anything can break the cycle, that can.
I choose to end my review here. I was so scared for this review because it was such a long episode and I love it so much, even though I have my own issues with it. I mean, archaeological, biological, and linguistic data is not necessarily on its side. But as far as I'm concerned, Daybreak is a fitting end to a truly wonderful series that really captured my imagination and made me think about my own world in a very different, more critical way and introduced me to a wonderful woman named Laura Roslin. I'm going to give Daybreak 5 out of 5 airlocks.
I'm going to leave you, one more time, with some Bear McCreary. Anyone up for a little Easterly View?
I'll try not to weep as I write. But I might, so you've been warned.
For the final time, I hope you'll jump the cut.
1) I really love the transition between Laura's grief in the fountain to the IV drip of her bedside in Galactica's sick bay. Isn't it kind of interesting how the fountain beats down all this water on her, soaking her, as she mourns the death of her sisters and father (and possibly her mother, too, since I believe her mother had already died) in comparison to the small drip by drip of the IV as her own life is about to come to an end. Intentional? High dramatics for others but barely anything for herself? Laura's always been about other people, you know?
2) Oh, yeah, this also has to do with that same flashback but since this is my blog I can do whatever the hell I want. I was just thinking that it's kind of creepy, in retrospect, watching the scene with Laura and the fountain because all of those people are just looking at her like she's completely crazy and just a few years later, in all probability, all those people are dead.
3) The packing up of Galactica is almost complete. The ship is practically empty. Parts are gone and are being distributed to other ships. People have been moved so nearly everyone is gone. Adama's packing up his quarters in order to make the move to the basestar.
It's just so weird. Remember the first moments with Galactica back in the miniseries? Starbuck's jogging through the corridors and she's dodging people, yelling at them to make a hole. It's just teaming with people. Since the beginning, Galactica's been almost a living entity and even as she gets hammered with cylon nukes and New Caprican atmosphere and various internal explosions, and cracking and tearing, she's always been so full of life. So to see her so bare is just . . . Well, for me, it's the signal that this is the end.
4) Starbuck's been trying to work through All Along The Watchtower with Sam. She's been assigning notes to the numbers, trying to look at the music in a more mathematical way. That's a good idea. I probably never would have thought of it had I been Starbuck, but music is very mathematical and so is the universe. It's a good intuitive leap to have made about the music's importance.
5) Meanwhile, Baltar wants a voice in the government because his people now constitute more than half the survivors on many of the ships. Which makes for hell of a nymph squad, yeah? But Lee won't let him have a seat on the government because he believes Baltar's incapable of unselfishness and heroism and thinks Baltar just wants the power for himself.
I actually kind of think Lee's right in not giving Baltar what he wants in this case, not because I think Baltar is selfish and unheroic, but because if you open up a seat for one religion, all others must also be represented and I believe that religion has absolutely no place in government (says the person who's favorite all time character based many of her presidential decisions on prophetic religious visions . . . hey, I've never said I was consistent). Since the new quorum is set up by ship and not planet, it would seem that Baltar's people would be more fairly represented than before, especially if many of the ships are made up of more than half of people who believe in the One True God.
6) Oh, god, one of my all time favorite scenes in the history of ever: The Line.
I can't even describe to you all how much I love The Line. I love how Starbuck and Adama come onto the hanger deck and they have that bright red tape and they just make the line without saying anything to anyone. And then when Adama lets everyone know that he's going to lead anyone who will join him on a mission to find and save Hera from the cylon colony (because Sam somehow knew where it was . . . loose story telling, that). And how everyone who is eligible for the mission goes to the hanger deck and how Adama tells them his plan, explains to them the stakes, and then demands, "Make your choice."
Because this is exactly what BSG has been about. It's always been about the choices we make to become the people we are. There's certainly no doubt that a divine power exists in this universe and that is is having a direct say on the outcome of these people's lives, but that doesn't seem to negate the act of choice and the state of free will. People will always be defined by what they choose to do and how they choose to react (remember my long spiels on action and reaction from past reviews?). And Adama's giving these people a choice as to how they want to move forward. Maybe the mission is unlikely to succeed. Maybe they'll all die. But maybe they'll save the life of a helpless little girl and maybe that's worth the risk. And maybe they can take out the colony while they're at it. So what'll it be? How are these people going to choose to define themselves in this moment?
Wonderfully, most everyone on that hanger deck elects to stay with the fleet. So incredibly true to live. I doubt I'd volunteer to go on a suicide mission.
7) Doc Cottle's first name is "Sherman". Oh, Ron Moore. That's awesome. Thank you for that.
8) One of the more touching moments of Daybreak is when Laura hobbles her way down the line towards Adama, intent on joining him on this last mission, knowing that if she's going to die, she's much rather die alongside him than apart from him. I also love that Starbuck helps support her up. Gods I wish those two had had more scenes together.
But I also thought there was an interesting contrast between Laura and Baltar in this scene because Laura, sick as a dog and barely able to move, still chooses to go and manages to will her body forward. Baltar tries to will himself over the line but can't do it. He's sound in body but he still lacks the courage and mental and emotion fortitude to put it all on the line. I doubt that the writers were trying to make a connection between the two, but it definitely stuck out to me. Baltar has the body, but he doesn't have the spirit. Laura has the spirit but doesn't have the body. And, in this instance, the spirit is what counts.
9) Lee was back in his uniform for the strategy sessions. I thought it was kind of strange but suitable.
10) Head!Six tells Baltar that he's going to guide mankind to their end. I'll have more to say about this later in the review.
11) Raise your hand if you didn't cry during Laura's final scene with Cottle. Did you raise you hand? Then I'd like to tell you that you have a heart of stone. Stone, I tell you!
These two have been together since the beginning. He's been privy to many of her intimate moments. He knows her inside and out, literally. And it's such a nice gesture for her to thank him for all he's done because without him, she surely would have died back in Epiphanies or before. And it's clear that she holds a special place in his heart and that he's just going to miss her.
I think it's a perfect scene.
12) Adama makes Lieutenant Hoshi admiral, which I think is a good choice. He was loyal during the mutiny and has been in good stead since transferring from the Pegasus. Romo Lampkin is made the new president. I suppose I don't have issues with this because there isn't really anyone else since Zarek and the quorum are dead and Lee's participating in the mission.
Humanity could have been left in lesser hands, that's for sure.
But I like this scene for the reasons Ron Moore talks about in his podcast (or it might be the commentary). By appointing a new admiral and president, it's basically telling the audience that this mission is very serious, very dangerous, and that it really is unlikely that they're coming back from it. They expect to fail and they take it seriously and they make the necessary moves to ensure that the fleet will still have some guardianship.
13) Tigh did a lot of laughing in this episode. I love his laugh. It's so weird and so not something you'd ever expect to come from that face which makes it all that much better.
14) Baltar finally mans up and decides that he's done being selfish and unheroic (not that I actually believe wanting to live in this case is selfish), but he finally comes clean about the harem to the harem. He says, "I never belonged to you, Paula. You appropriated me." I love that line because it's so true. They appropriated him and he went along with and maybe he believed his message in the end, but he was using them as his cover, a way to keep himself relatively protected and influential. It was selfish. Because he's Baltar.
But the funny thing is that I'm still unsure as to Baltar's ultimate motives. Obviously, the guy is terrified of dying so it's odd that he's suddenly put his life in danger but . . . Lee just called him selfish and unheroic. You know there's a part of him that just wants to prove Lee wrong (they've had a bit of a rivalry since Starbuck and Baltar slept together and she called out Lee's name). But maybe he's just tired of running and wants to stand still for something.
15) I really love when Adama is addressing the people on Galactica just before making the jump to the colony and he says, "[Galactica] will not fail us if we do not fail her."
16) The first two victims of Daybreak who are known characters are Racetrack and Skulls. It's almost sad that I'm not sad that they were killed. I was so put off by their involvement in the mutiny that I wasn't sorry to see it happen at all. Especially Skulls because he was so callous is regards to the murder of Chief Laird, killed just trying to do his job.
17) Well, the mission is what it is. I'm not really going to describe it or anything, except to say that the special effects were really great. The raptor teams, lead by Starbuck, Lee, Helo, and Athena, manage to infiltrate the colony and they spread out to find Hera.
Now, the best part of this whole thing is Boomer's involvement. Here is where she finally answers Laura's question (even though she wasn't there when Laura asked it): Who do you want to be? Here's her time to make her choice and determine who she's going to be. And she chooses to rescue Hera and return her to her parents even though she knows her life will be forfeit.
This, coupled with the flashback scene between a rookie Boomer and Tigh and Adama as they reprimand her for her inability to land her raptor and Adama's eventual choice to give her one more change, makes for one of my very favorite moments of the episode. Present!Boomer tells Athena, "Tell the Old Man I owed him one . . . We all make our choices. I made a choice."
And that choice lead to her death but maybe that choice freed her spirit, you know? I hate to use that kind of terminology. It's so not me, but what if she's let Simon continue to operate on Hera? What if she'd done nothing? Even if she had someone lived through the attack, would she have been able to live with those choices? What's worse? Dying for what's right or living for what's wrong?
18) Caprica and Baltar are ready to fight next to each other and Caprica tells him that she's proud of him. She was always looking for a way to be proud of him. It was the only thing missing from their relationship from her towards him.
Oh, and they can see each other's head!people.
19) Oh, the Opera House.
I don't know how this stuff with the Opera House went down with the fandom, generally, but I love it. I don't care. I'll say it again: I love it.
I love that Laura hobbles after Hera, forging into the chaos to save this little girl and I love how Athena tries to do the same. And then Laura finds her and saves her from Cavil but then the kid (who seriously needs to stop running away all the time) disappears and Laura and Athena find each other and it's intercut with the footage from the vision and Caprica and Baltar find Hera and take her into the CIC and . . . Yeah. I just love it.
And when the music shifts from the battle music to the melody of The Shape Of Things To Come? I get goosebumps every. single. time.
My one quibble is that I hate how the Final Five are standing in the CIC to represent the five figures Baltar and Caprica saw in the Opera House. The rest of the vision wasn't completely, step by step, an accurate representation of the vision, so the staging of the Five didn't need to be either. I mean, they look ridiculous standing up there stock still while there's a battle raging. You know?
20) But Cavil comes to the CIC and manages to grab Hera but Baltar talks him down. He says, "Our two destinies are entwined by [god's] force. God's a force of nature, beyond good and evil. Good and evil, we created those. You want to break the cycle . . . Well, that's in our hands and our hands only. It requires a leap of fate. It requires we live in hope, ot fear."
Now, I've always found it kind of weak that this speech is all it takes for Cavil to give Hera up (aside from Tigh's promise to give him resurrection) and I always used to have problems with Baltar being the one to deliver the speech that brought peace to these two races.
But this time around, I understood it differently. I think it's pretty smart for Baltar to have given this speech. He was the flood, right? The force of nature that took out humanity. If he was the flood, maybe now he should be the dam. And in his speech he takes God out of the equation. Yes, there is a god, but he's not telling us what to do. We are all victims of our own constructs and that's what gets us in trouble. We need to take responsibility for what we do and if we want to break the cycle, well, then it's up to us to do so. This is where Baltar finds redemption. He's been skirting responsibility from the beginning, but in implicating mankind (and cylonkind), he implicates himself and finally takes responsibility.
Yep, he's definitely the dam.
21) So the Final Five agree to share their information on resurrection technology, but there's a catch: They're going to know everything there is to know about each other.
So what happens? Well, Tyrol finds out that Tory killed Cally. And he snaps in a rage, breaks the connection, and strangles her. Meanwhile, Doral calls "trick!" and chaos reigns supreme and everything goes to shit. Cavil even kills himself, recognizing that the jig is up (though I still think it's odd that the character most intent on resurrection kills himself so quickly). And, well, Galactica pretty much starts to go.
It's so wonderfully fitting that a cylon would experience such a human emotion such as rage that would end such a fragile peace between enemies.
22) But it's a good thing Starbuck was playing around with the music and the numbers because it's up to her to save the ship and she puts in the numbers to the music in as jump coordinates and gets them the hell out, right before Racetrack and Skull's nuke (which a dead Racetrack managed to launch after a piece of debris jostled her arm onto the trigger) blows the whole colony.
23) The jump's hard on Galactica and she breaks her back. But that's okay because Kara's coordinates have lead them to Earth. No, not that Earth. Our Earth! I mean, look! It's Africa! They found us!
Now, when Daybreak first aired I was really confused about a few things, namely Laura's position as the Dying Leader and Kara's position as the Harbinger of Death. It was always obvious to me that "Harbinger of Death" for the human race meant that humanity was no longer what it once was. The humans that Bill, Lee, Baltar, Laura, and Kara were . . . That's not what we are. Hence the "death" part, right? But I felt like Kara actually leading Galactica to Earth and Laura's basic lack of involvement in getting the fleet much of anywhere in season four lead to doubts as to whether or not she counted as the Dying Leader, still. The fact that she actually got to be on Earth II for a while, unlike what was stated in the prophecy, further confused me.
But I think I'm starting to look at it different. Laura's the Dying Leader. Kara's the Harbinger of Death. Baltar was to guide mankind to its end. I think that maybe all three were different sides to the same role. Laura's leadership saved the fleet in the beginning and it was her leadership that managed to get them to that nebula at the end of Crossroads Part II. It was there that they found Kara who was, indeed, the signpost they had been looking for to get to Earth, whether they understood that or not. And that's when Laura passed the baton to Kara. All the clues had been unlocked at this point: Kara, the viper, and the music. So Kara got them to Earth. And everything was wasted until this episode, when the baton was passed to Baltar. It was his words that brokered the peace that enabled things to go forward. Had he not been there, perhaps Hera would have been taken again or killed. And had he been killed, there would have been nothing to "guide". So he does that and passes the baton back to Kara and actually takes them to Earth II.
I don't think this has to diminish Laura's role. I think it just means that these three were three sides to the coin. If a coin had three sides, that is.
24) Lee's decided that to break the cycle, they need to get ride of their technology.
And everyone's okay with that. No, I do not see that as realistic.
25) I also don't understand why they're going to settle clumps of people around the world. I'm not sure that's a good idea for basic survival since most people probably wouldn't be equipped to farm or hunt. I mean, I know a little something about hunter gathered groups and know that groups shouldn't be too big because it leads to less cooperation and less egalitarianism, but that's with people who are intimate with their surroundings, who know the land, know how to forage and what to forage for and know how to hunt and what to hunt for.
26) So Laura gets to see Earth. And I'm so happy that she does. I always figured that she would die before they got there because they set that up so early in the series when the Pythian Prophecy was first introduced. There was some interview with Ron Moore that I found on YouTube where he talked about how he and Mary and talked about that was what was going to happen but, in the end, he changed his mind because he really wanted to give Earth II to Laura. He wanted her to have that reward. And I appreciate it, personally.
27) Lee believes that Adama's not going to come back after he and Laura fly away in the raptor, and I understand that. I think Lee got the bond between the two and understood that Adama probably wasn't going to last long after Laura's death. Personally, I always imagined that Adama finished building the cabin and then died in what would have been the bedroom soon after.
28) Lee tells Kara he wants to explore and then . . . She disappears.
Again, I really love this, especially for Kara, who's always been a hard character to pin down. I don't think her end should have been straight forward. I mean, the girl was dead. And came back. As an angel. I really like that one second she was there and the next she was gone. I honestly can't think of a more Starbuckian way to have gone.
29) Yes, Laura dies.
Honesty time: I have a lack of patience for fans who can't accept that Laura dies. Is that horrible of me? I know I should be understanding. And she's my favorite character so it's not like I'm happy she died. But she did. We knew from the moment we first met her that she was going die. We had four seasons to come to terms with it. Frankly, I would have felt cheated had the show ended and Laura was still alive.
Part of the wonder of the character, for me, is that she was supposed to die yet outlived almost all of humanity. And saved humanity and that that was tied to her own death. Her death is actually a really beautiful thing because of that so I wish people would just deal with it sometimes because I think all the denial diminishes what the character was all about in her sacrifices.
And I thought her death was beautiful because she died in peace, which is something I honestly never anticipated for this character. She died on Earth II, surround by "so much life" and the man she loved. There's something to be said for that.
30) So apparently everything was just a lead up to make sure Hera remained safe? All that Head!Six was trying to do was ensure Hera's protection? No offense, but that's kind of a let down. I mean, I think it should have been an integral part of God's plan, but not the only part. But, as Head!Six says, "God's plan is never complete."
31) I think that the newly resurrection relationship of Caprica and Baltar happens a little too quickly. I mean, just a little while before she was in love with Tigh and having his baby. But I do like that they end up together and that he's going to farm. His character has finally come full circle.
32) "I laid out the cabin today. It's going to have an easterly view. You should see the light we get here when the sun comes from behind those mountains. It's almost heavenly. It reminds me of you."
Guh.
And the music during that just gives me chills, I love it so much. Once again, it's The Shape of Things To Come. Man, I love that piece of music. Maybe I should convert it into numbers and plug them in somewhere and see where it takes me.
33) We fast forward 150,000 years to present day New York City. Hera's mitochondrial Eve and we are all descendants of a cylon/human hybrid.
I really dislike the end. I thought it was too heavy handed. I learned the lesson the last four minutes talk about just by watching the, you know, series, so I thought it was unnecessary.
What I do like is what wernotalone brought up in the episode discussion in the rememberlaura community. She said that it was kind of depressing because everything was forgotten. Lee got rid of the technology but it didn't help break the cycle at all and all the struggles these people went through have disappeared from the consciousness of time.
I hadn't thought of it like that before but I definitely think it's a valid way to look at it and one I think I'm going to adopt for myself. Because they were all forgotten. Their struggles were forgotten. And what continues? Thy cycle of hatred and violence and technology. Head!Baltar asks, "Does all of this have to happen again?" Head!Six says that no, it doesn't, since mathematically, if you repeat a sequence over and over again eventually the results will change. But . . . I don't know. This new read on the ending actually makes me think it'll definitely happen again. I mean, Facebook sends my musical preferences to Pandora without me telling it to. That alone freaks me out. I don't want to log onto Pandora and have it automatically start playing Paul Simon or Planxty or Bear McCreary. It's diabolical! It's the first step to the future of scary evil robots that gain consciousness and end up knowing us better than we know ourselves and I'm just not down with that.
But maybe we can escape our destiny, if we're lucky, and hold fast to our ability to make choices. If anything can break the cycle, that can.
I choose to end my review here. I was so scared for this review because it was such a long episode and I love it so much, even though I have my own issues with it. I mean, archaeological, biological, and linguistic data is not necessarily on its side. But as far as I'm concerned, Daybreak is a fitting end to a truly wonderful series that really captured my imagination and made me think about my own world in a very different, more critical way and introduced me to a wonderful woman named Laura Roslin. I'm going to give Daybreak 5 out of 5 airlocks.
I'm going to leave you, one more time, with some Bear McCreary. Anyone up for a little Easterly View?
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