The first episode of the second half of Battlestar Galcatica's last season, "Sometimes A Great Notion," as promised, picked right up where "Revelations" left many months ago--on scorched "Earth." The question for the unspoiled, Who is the Final Cylon (FC)? was answered: Ellen Tigh is the Final Cylon. Congrats to those who figured it out on their own. I really didn't know but had been spoiled so was unsurprised. *There was still a shocker however.
Lots of the pictorial spoilers were headed down the right path but some, like the one above could in no way prepared us for the depth of reaction that the Fleet would have to discovering Earth to be a complete nuclear wasteland.
Want the best first-hand account of this episode? Go to BSG composer Bear McCreary's Battlestar Blog for a vivid explanation of how he composed the score for an episode he describes as "an assault on the psyche."
McCreary goes into a great deal of detail offering up huge bits of conversations he had with the showrunners about what they wished to convey in this pivotal, mind boggling episode. There were many extraneous circumstances surrounding the making of this eppy and many adaptions had to be compensated for. You would never know this listening to the score, which in large part is unlike any score Bear has done for BSG.
Tyrol gets a clear picture of himself living here long ago.
Answers on the table: The whole planet was cylon.
A couple things of note happened on Earth.
Kara found herself.
This made her deeply unhappy and made Leoben really uneasy, especially when she brought up that "harbinger of death" quote from the cylon Hybrid earlier in S4.
If only she'd had that line to use on Leoben back on New Caprica--he would have given her some space.
Kara kept the truth of the discovery from everyone but Leoben (who was a witness to Kara discovering herself) and she ended up cremating her own remains. Eww.
Leoben and Kara on New Caprica in the "dollhouse." From their first meeting he has bugged the hell out of her.The Cylons regard him as their most spiritual. Leoben is very intense. Callum Keith Rennie did a great job with the role throughout the series.
They found the remains of 2000-yr ago nuked cylons--no humans on "Earth."
The Cylon-like metal head-thingie looked kind of hokey.
*This is Dee losing all hope, even though Helo is trying to comfort her.
Later, back on the Galactica, she ends up putting a gun to her head which I still find shocking. The first shot must be the actress practicing for the scene because there's no mess--blowing one's brains out entails splattering <ick>.
Director Michael Nankin told me, “Dualla takes the nuked Earth harder than anyone while on the planet. There is a moment in a raptor, on the way back, where she privately makes the decision about what she’s going to do: She’s going to give those around her every ounce of strength and optimism she has left, and then she’s going to pull the trigger.”
Bear McCreary's Battlestar Blog
Dee, moments before putting a bullet in her head. Poor Gaeta. He's the last one she talked to and she'd just been on a date with Lee so he's pretty devasted.
Dualla's "Death Mask" (her reflection in a pool of blood)
While Tyrol, Samuel T. and Tori remembered snippets of their lives 2000 years prior on the now-nuked earth, Tigh delayed the big revelation: Who is the FC (Final Cylon)?! until the last minutes of the show (which ran over about 3 minutes).
Samuel T. remembers playing : "All Along TheWatchtower"
Tyrol in the marketplace moments before Earth was nuked.
Tigh finally remembered. When he dug Mrs. Tigh out of rubble from destruction of Earth. He could not save her but she assured him that "everything was in place" and they would be "reborn together", and would thus see one another again. That is when Tigh uttered the backwards line that had been a clue.
Ellen is in the rubble underneath him. It appears that the Final Five-type cylon has a life span and is reborn after each death--to live out another life.
Ellen (Kate Vernon) and Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan) on New Caprica before he killed her for colluding with the Cylons. Ironic now, since they are both cylons.
Death, Destruction, Decay, Despair
Full video: Battlestar Galactica: S4E13 "Sometimes A Great Notion"
From The SciFi network's You Will Know The Truth.
27. Photo of Dualla as a child on a red bike. The photo is hung inside her locker door.
28. Still: Kara is sitting at an ancient-looking piano with a guy identified as Xeno Fenner,the foreman on the tylium refinery ship Hitei Kan, previously seen in S3E13.
29. Graphic: A countdown clock:
Official SciFi Video Recap: "Sometimes A Great Notion"
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