All Along The Watchtower

I'm personally very excited about BSG returning. It's verging on a year since the climax of season 3 and I really think that a good job has been done in hyping up the show's return in the last 6 weeks or so.

From web adverts, to Letterman, to TV spots and documentaries, it seems that everyone has gone frakking nuts about BSG.

In preparation for the premiere, I thought I'd take the opportunity to re-watch season 3's 2 part finale. I can safely say that it really overwhelmed me on a second viewing.

The main plot of the finale focused on the trial of Gaius Baltar. Baltar is surely one of TV's most fascinating characters. Plagued by hallucinations of his Cylon lover, he could be considered responsible for the genocide of the entire human race. In this trial, he faces charges that he was responsible for the deaths of 5,000 people under his regime on New Caprica. That 5,000 people made up some 12% of the remaining human population. With this in mind, it's understandable that temperatures run high as the prosecution and defence make their case. It's a fascinating trial, dramatic in its own right, but delivered with a real theatrical atmosphere. It's taut and tense and you never really know which way it's going to go. In the end, Lee Adama - Baltar's co-council - is placed on the stand to testify against Admiral Adama for pre-judging the defendant. He gives a speech that could easily have bordered on the cheesy side, but is instead impassioned, honest and from the heart. It gets Baltar off the hook to plague another season with his arrogance and eccentricity.


For me though, that really takes second fiddle to the events that lead to four of the Galactica crew realising that they are, and always have been, Cylons. Since the beginning of the finale, the four had been hearing a melody throughout the ship that seemed to disappear before they could quite figure out what it was or where it was coming from. It was really subtly handled as you never quite knew what it all meant. Possibly a Cylon weapon, possibly something wrong with the ship. I, personally, didn't put it together that it was only happening to the four of them until quite late on in the second part. Indeed, with the dramatic events of Baltar's trial, it seems forgivable that less attention would be paid to the strange song coming from 'the frakking ship'.

Those four are Chiel Tyrol, Sam Anders, Tory (Roslin's Assistant) and, most notably, Saul Tigh. I won't go in to the ramifications of this now, but it seems clear, for the moment at least, that they want to carry on as they were. Serving the fleet.

That song that they'd been hearing was a version of Hendrix's/Dylan's All Along The Watchtower, which plays out in the final scene. It really added something special to the final scene, something that I can't quite put my finger on, but it made me feel something in the pit of my stomach. It was a deep resonance with the events that had just unfolded and were currently playing out. It was perfect.


The final scene had the fleet in a spot of bother. They'd jumped to a key landmark on the road to Earth, only to find power going out across the fleet and multiple DRADIS contacts. Vipers are scrambled, with Apollo chasing a contact away from the melee. The bogey is right on his tail and seems to have the better of him, before it's revealed to be another Viper that pulls along his side. The pilot is Kara Thrace, presumed dead, but here telling Apollo that everything's going to be alright. Perhaps her special destiny has finally come to fruition. She's been to Earth and is going to show everyone the way there. With that, the shot pulls out of the nebula, the system and the galaxy, before crashing back in on Earth, the goal and surely the final destination of this fourth and final season.

BSG has always succeeded in making plot events feel monumental, like they were moments in history documented for us to learn from. Crossroads really brings all of those moments together, to produce a masterpiece in every sense of the word. I'm not sure how the show could improve on this, but after reliving this episode and getting swept up in the hype of the past few weeks, I feel that a very special second coming may be on the horizon.