Battlestar Fodder

Battlestar Galactica: The Passage

Starvation threatens the fleet after the food-processing systems are contaminated and the only food source is on a planet surrounded by intense radiation from a giant star cluster. A man from Kat's past surfaces with secrets that could ruin her. Meanwhile, D'Anna continues to search for meaning after death as Baltar tries to learn the identity of the final five Cylon models.

Per usual, at the end of this entry is a section called "Observations, Thoughts and Questions" to further focus on particular plot points and enable specific discussion on, well, things I want to talk about. If you've seen the episode and just want to discuss what happened, skip to that section.

Now...

The Passage: Episode 3.10

Population count = 41,420 survivors (two down from last week)

The Cylons' Search for Meaning

Cue the piano music of the Cylon Basestar. D'Anna is in bed with Baltar and Six again. She tries to sneak out, but Baltar wakes and asks he where she's going. She responds vaguely that she's got stuff to do. After she leaves, Baltar comments to Six that he wonders what all Cylons do during the day and, more particularly, what D'Anna does. Six, barely awake, says that they've all been wondering what D'Anna has been up to. "She's been doing things," Six says. "What things?" Baltar wonders.

Later, Baltar "accidentally" runs into D'Anna in a corridor. He's checking up on her and refutes where she says she's been. "You have dried goo in your hair," he says. "From resurrection." He knows that she's been intentionally killing herself to resurrect over and over. "Death is just a revolving door, isn't it?" he says. D'Anna doesn't respond, but tears up.

Baltar wants to know about the final five. "I could be a Cylon - stop being a traitor to one set of people and a hero to another," he says. He wants a place to belong. He asks her if she's seen his face in the "in-between" place and/or if the final five are in-between. D'Anna can't remember. She's made drawings of what she sees, but can never remember exactly. "Cylons and humans - we're all just trying to discover who we are, aren't we?" he says.

They go to see the Hybrid. Apparently, the Hybrid's semiconscious existence is where D'Anna got the idea to search for meaning in downloading. Baltar approaches the hybrid. He bends down, sticks his hand in the goo and the Hybrid grabs him. She says, "Intelligence. A mind that burns like a fire." "Yes... I'm here," he replies. (Good to see that he's grown humble in his time with the Cylons.) The Hybrid continues. "Find the hand that lies of the shadow of the light. In the eye of the husband of the eye of the cow," she says. Baltar recoils. D'Anna asks if he's alright and then states that everything the Hybrid says really is nonsense. "I don't think anything it says is nonsense," he replies. He tries to sort out what the Hybrid told them. He determines that Hera is sometimes referred to as "cow-eyed Hera." The husband of Hera is Jupiter. (We're mixing Greek and Roman mythologies here... more on that below.) The Eye of Jupiter. D'Anna remembers that the Eye of Jupiter was mentioned in the humans' ancient texts. "Could there be a connection between their gods and ours?" she asks. Baltar determines that there's a planet hidden in a cluster of stars that will lead them to the eye of Jupiter. The hand the Hybrid mentioned is probably some type of artifact and may refer to the five - the five faces in D'Anna's visions. "Now we just have to find the right star cluster and planet," Baltar resolves.

The Fleet's Search for a McDonald's

The fleet is in a pickle - or at least a big vat of vinegar. The food supply has been contaminated and everyone is in danger of starving to death. Athena has gone off to check out a planet that they think might have some edible algae (how do they know this? not sure). Doc, Adama and Helo are on Galactica's bridge talking to Roslin, who is on Colonial One. Doc explains there's only about 7-10 days worth of food left. Athena's mission is very dangerous because she's gotta pass through a giant cluster of stars that give off a high level of radiation. Meanwhile, we see Athena in her Raptor. She's sick and coughing. Her ship is taking some damage from the intense heat and radiation.

Meanwhile, the pilots are rationing and sharing what little food they have. Suspicions mount as Starbuck accuses Kat of hoarding protein bars. Apollo keeps the peace and tells everyone to eat the little they've collected. They eat the scraps ravenously.

Later, Athena returns to the Galactica sick and weak. They hose down her ship as she walks through a decontamination tent. She says she's fine, but her radiation wrist badge is black (apparently a bad thing). The big question is whether or not humans can make the trip - her Cylon construction makes her stronger than they are.

Here's the problem - flying around the cluster will take too long and flying through it will expose the unshielded civilian ships to intense, deadly radiation. They can't get to the planet in one jump - it's too far. They can't bring enough food back to the people, so they have to bring the people to the food. BUT... the civilian ships aren't properly shielded so the people would be poisoned by the radiation levels. Also, the civilian ships won't be able to determine the calculation to make the second jump because the radiation would effect their navigation systems. They'll essentially be blind.

Adama decides that the radiation-shielded Galactica will shuttle groups of civilians through the cluster. Simultaneously, the shielded Raptors will each shepherd a civilian ship (each equipped only with a skeleton crew) along the same route. Five trips of two jumps each will be required to transport the entire fleet to the planet. Naturally, the midpoint - when the emerge in the center of the cluster - will be the most dangerous part. There, disoriented by blinding light from the star cluster, the Raptor pilots must each establish the exact location of their civilian ships and transmit jump coordinates to them before they can make the last jump.

The Company of Good People

In the ready room, Apollo and Starbuck are telling the pilots about the plan. Each pilot has been assigned a civilian ship for each round of jumps. Since the radiation will make them disoriented and nauseous, Apollo tells them that stimulants will be issued. Kat objects, though. She says that because they're starving, they don't have anything to burn in their metabolism. The stims will make them sicker. Starbuck mocks her saying that Kat used to like the stims. Apollo capitulates - a bit - and says that the stims will be discretionary.

Later, civilians are boarding the Galactica in preparation for the first round of jumps. Dee is greeting them and telling them the do's and don't of the ship. Kat passes a scruffy-looking man named Enzo in the hall. He turns and calls to her. She calls her Sasha, though. She pauses and slowly turns to him. She approaches and hisses "Sasha and you were a lifetime ago. Stay away from me!" "Do they even know who you really are?" he replies. She pulls him into an out of the way place in the cargo area. He'll keep her new identity safe for food. He assumes that all Galactica's crew is getting three squares. Kat says that she has no food. He doesn't believe her. "Remember, I know who you are and how to make you happy." he says touching her. "Get your hands off me!" she says and pushes him back.

Meanwhile, Tigh is dressed up all nice and pretty in his uniform. He walks to the door of the CIC, but hesitates outside. Adama sees him from the inside and smirks. Tigh enters. Gaeta and Dee pause and look at him as he enters. The CIC crew clap as he enters and cheer "Welcome back!" Gaeta does not clap and does not look happy. I guess he hasn't exactly forgiven Tigh for almost killing him.

The Raptors launch and the mission to feed the fleet begins. Apollo warns them not to stay beyond the radiation limit - their wristbands will turn from white to black. The ships jump into blinding light, disorienting the pilots. Kat spots her designated ship. Apollo and Starbuck find theirs, but Hot Dog can't find his. The Galactica is taking damage. They've reached the max amount of time they can stay in the cluster. They must jump. Hot Dog still hasn't found his ship. He begins to freak out and beg for them not to jump. They have to. Hot Dog's ship - the Adriatic - is lost forever.

Back and forth they jump. On the fourth trip, Kat also loses the ship she was assigned to guide - the Karina. When the Raptors all land on the Galactica, we see that all the pilots are sick from radiation exposure. Hot Dog comes out of his decontamination wash vomiting. Everyone is in terrible shape. They are weak and broken, but Apollo tries to rally them. They only have one more round of ships to shuttle to the planet. They can do this. They have to do this.

In Adama's quarters, Tigh is going over the list of people healthy enough to help harvest the algae. The algae isn't exactly what folks had imagined, though. The processing of the food will take some time and everyone is complaining about it. "I hear they're still eating paper, is that true?" Adama asks. "No." Tigh responds. "Paper shortage." They look at each other and laugh delirious, hysterical laughter.

In the hangar, Enzo is pursuing Kat again. They argue. Starbuck witnesses the heated exchange and tracks down Enzo afterwards. Offscreen, we presume he tells her everything. Starbuck corners Kat and demands an explanation. Kat finally confesses that she used to be a drug-runner and Enzo was her supplier. She lied about everything to become a pilot aboard the Galactica. She even got her name from a child that died two days after the Cylon attack. She and Enzo were "truckers" - they moved things. Starbuck says that's one of the ways they suspect the Cylons infiltrated the Colonies - they were brought in by criminal types. Kat says that they never moved Cylons - mostly because they didn't know the Cylons had models in human form. Kat wants to know if Starbuck thinks she's a traitor. No, not a traitor. "Accept who you are," Starbuck says. "You lied your way into the company of good people." Kat winces and begins to cry. "Starbuck don't tell the Admiral - please. Let me tell him myself," she begs. Starbuck just glares at her and says "Gods." Kat cries.

Kat retreats to the locker room where she prepares for the last round of jumps. Her radiation sickness is bad - her hair is falling out and her wristband is black. Over and over in her head she hears Starbuck's words "Accept who you are." Kat looks determined. She switches her wristband with Helo's much whiter band because she knows that she'll be pulled from duty if they know just how sick she is. Kat find Enzo. She has a romp with him and then heads off for her fifth passage through the cluster.

On its last mission, the Galactica is taking escalating damage. Systems are breaking down. Adama tells the Raptors that they have to jump, but Kat can't find her ship. After having lost the Karina, she refuses to leave without her ship. Her Raptor is starting to take serious damage. The other ships jump away. Kat is facing her own death from radiation poisoning, but won't leave. The Galactica and the fleet anxiously away for her to jump to the planet. Somehow, Kat miraculously finds the missing ship and leads them through the jump. They both rendezvous with the rest of the fleet.

Back on the Galactica, Kat has to all but crawl out of her ship - her new wristband is black now too. She stands at the doorway of the Raptor and raises her arms in triumph as the rest of the crew claps. She then collapses. In sickbay, Kat is still alive but very sick. Starbuck appears as Kat had requested. Kat doesn't want their last encounter to be the last things they say to each other. Starbuck apologizes for what she said about "good people" and doesn't fault Kat for trying to escape her past. Starbuck gives her a bottle of sleeping pills - enough to euthanize herself if she wants to go that route. Kat is going to die. "Thank you," Kat says. Starbuck leaves as Adama enters.

Adama tells Kat that he is making her CAG again - a position she held from the colonization of New Caprica to Apollo's return to the Galactica. "Sir, you know I'm not getting out of here, right?" she asks. "What you did was harder than facing a bullet. You did it without putting others in harm's way. I don't know if I could have done that," he says. She thanks him and cries. She wants to tell him about her past, but he stops her. He doesn't want to know. When she was CAG, she inspired people and made them feel safe. Her past can't change that. Adama takes a chair and sits next to her. He's staying. He says he loves the sick bay. It reminds him of his son Zack's birth. He tells her how his wife Caroline had been convinced both times she was pregnant that she was having a girl. The sons were a surprise. "Did you want a girl?" Kat asks. "Yeah. Three's a good round number," he says.

Later, Adama goes to the briefing room and moves Apollo down in the ranking chart and moves Kat into the slot of CAG. The pilots look on in reverence. Starbuck goes to the ship's memorial wall and puts up Kat's picture. She stands staring at it. Apollo looks on from behind her.

The end.

Observations, Thoughts and Questions

Is it just me, or are other people confused why they mixed Greek and Roman mythologies here? Previously, the show has referred to the Greek gods of Zeus and Hera. Of particular note, the Oracle mentioned Zeus to D'Anna back in Exodus, Part 1. Jupiter is the Roman version of Zeus. His wife is Juno, not Hera. Yes, I suppose they could be mistakenly switched by monotheists like the Cylons, but I don't think the Greeks would be calling Zeus by the Roman name Jupiter. As such, I don't think the "ancient scrolls" of the humans would make the switch either. I know they switched the baby Hera's name to Isis (an Egyptian goddess) when she went into hiding, but naming a person is very different than referring to a god him/herself. Anyway, I was confused about the switch.

This episode was written by Jane Espenson - a longtime "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" writer. (There's a decent Q&A interview with her on TVSquad.) I loved Espenson's work on "Buffy." Seriously. Really excellent writing. Here, though, it didn't feel like any of her sharp wit came through. I understand that she's used to writing comedy and this is NOT a funny show, but the only scene I can point to that seemed like it "could" have been written by her was the quick banter between Tigh and Adama. Additionally disappointing was the fact that this lone scene was more like a throw away the producers left in to give a nod to Espenson's strengths. I'd be very interested to find out what great lines might have been edited out. What did other folks think?

Starbuck is still pissy. I'm soooo bored of her growling. I don't think she's got to be giddy as a schoolgirl, but SOMETHING else would be nice.

I'm sad that Kat is gone. She was a good character - one of the few who could challenge Starbuck. It's a shame that she had to die off right after we learn some interesting stuff about her!

When Dee is greeting the civilians aboard the Galactica, she says a very welcoming, "If you leave this area, force will be used." Well, Enzo left the area.... a lot. He didn't seem to have much trouble. What constituted "the area"? Everywhere except the CIC? I'll just chalk it up to him being a slick character who can probably weasel his way in and out of just about any situation.

Why doesn't Athena join in on the jumps? She knows the mission. She's stronger than the humans physically. The only thing I can assume is that she was too sick from her original mission to join in (though she looked pretty healthy in the CIC when they were plotting the big mission).

The next episode - the "Fall Season" finale cliffhanger, "The Eye of Jupiter," airs December 15 at 9pm ET.

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Note: Copyright to all images is held by SciFi Channel/Universal Pictures

Posted by Shannon on December 9, 2006 3:40 PM
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I was undoubtedly brain dead after a long week, but the scene with Baltar and the Oracle left me in a near-coma. I just didn't get it. Perhaps I'm quite dumb.

Nonetheless, it's sad to see Kat go. I agree with you, Shan. She was an excellent foil for Starbuck, and lord knows Kara needs a good foil now and again.

I know the "paper shortage" scene seemed out of place, but it was awfully nice to see Adama and Tigh bust a gut (and it was pretty funny).

-- Posted by: mac at December 9, 2006 8:32 PM

Despite being disappointed with most of season 3, I actually thought this was a pretty good episode!! The food mission was interesting and Kat's heroism and death were good drama. Also, for the first time I really dug the story on the basestar. D'anna killing herself and resurrecting everyday, and drawing pictures of what she saw before resurrecting, along with Baltar getting involved to try to solve the mystery of the five figures she sees (and whether they are the other five cylon models) was a good continuation of what we saw previously and is turning into a story.

On the flipside, I will say that one gripe I had was that Kat's new backstory felt a little forced upon us. It felt like the writers put it in solely because they wanted to make her death more of a tragedy and realized that we don't know that much about her other than the fact that she was a stim junkie for a while. What they should have done was dropped that backstory on us several episodes back before killing her off on this episode, perhaps with some references to the backstory.

Another gripe I had was that there was no build-up to the contamination of food and the food shortage. The writers just jumped right into it without any explanation of what contaminated the food and how. On last week's boxing episode, everyone was well-fed and happy. This week, they are completely out of food after most of it was contaminated. It is unclear how much time went by between the two eps. It would have been nice to build up to this over more than one episode and explain it further.

Also, in case you didn't notice, they showed a botanical cruiser as still being part of the fleet in this episode. (You'll see it as one of the ships that made the jump at the same time Kat stayed behind by herself to look for the lost civilian ship. It's about 47 minutes into the show if you still have it on your DVR.) Showing that ship raises several questions. Why don't they eat whatever's growing on that ship? Of course those of us that noticed the ship can only assume that whatever was growing there was contaminated too. This is the sort of thing that could have been explained if they spent more time on this story, perhaps with a build up to this over more than one episode. If the botanical cruiser was contaminated, why didn't they clear it out, decontaminate, and grow new stuff on the botanical cruiser? Yes it may take a while to grow fruits and vegetables, but they could have also planted other edible plants that don't take as long (perhaps something from grass family? algae? who knows?), instead of going through all of that trouble to get some algae from that planet. Maybe there would have been enough time to grow something else edible between the time the food was first contaminated (which was obviously sometime before the day this show started) and the 7-10 days they had left at the start of this episode. A final question regarding showing that ship is how many botanical cruisers are in the fleet anyway? I recall that they left one behind with a little girl on it during the mini-series for some reason--maybe it didn't have an FTL drive or something. Anyhow, I guess that wasn't supposed to be the only botanical cruiser. (If it was, they certainly messed up by showing it again.)

Lastly, good point about the Greek vs Roman mythology Shannon. I had watched the show with the closed captioning on and noticed that Baltar and D'anna said Jupiter, but the closed captioning said Zeus. Maybe it was a mistake?

-- Posted by: Hurley88 at December 10, 2006 12:11 AM

I have LOVED this season!!! Except for this episode. It was way too depressing (even for battlestar standards) and I just couldn't get emotionally invested in Kat. It would have been more effective if the story revolved around a more fleshed out character, but then again I don't want the same fate to befall any of the regulars on the show. Anyhow I am rambling. I will say this though, the last two scenes with Adama and Kat, and then the briefing room were FANTASTIC!!!

-- Posted by: djloop at December 11, 2006 9:23 AM

I mostly agree with djloop - I have enjoyed most of this season, in spite of the grumblings around me - except for this episode, for exactly the reasons djloop said.

On the Zeus/Jupiter subject - I'm guessing that although Hera is the wife of Zeus, they decided to change the clue to "Eye of Jupiter" to correspond with the "Eye" -that is the enormous storm visible from space - on our own Jupiter of this solar system. If they're all on their way to Earth, they'll find the planets orbiting this sun with us - so if they find the way to the "Eye of Jupiter", then Earth is just a hop, skip and an FTL jump away.

-- Posted by: Taphi at December 11, 2006 5:02 PM

I think that Dualla says that she will use force if they DONT leave the area. Everyone was there in the first place because they thought that there was food, but then Dualla says 'There is no food here. If someone said that there was, then they were lying. Leave this area or we will use force.' (or something like that)

-- Posted by: Chris at December 11, 2006 6:05 PM

I love the show, didn't like this episode (other than the Tigh/Adama scene). They've never really explained how the fleet is fed, all of a sudden we're to believe that the entire system is screwed and the only place to get chow is through the flaming hoop. Too complicated. Too much drama condensed in too short of an episode, having to share room with the Baltar sex-sandwich scenes. I'll miss Kat, she was an interesting character and it showed a clear career progression of the characters (which I thought was remarkably realistic and interesting).

-- Posted by: J at December 14, 2006 2:38 PM


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