Battlestar: Galactica 2.5: "The Farm"

Written by Carla Robinson
Directed by Rod Hardy

In which Starbuck falls in a firefight, only to find herself in a very unusual hospital where the doctors have a hidden agenda, while Adama and Roslyn struggle for control of the fleet…


This episode is a great example of a series firing on all cylinders. I was a bit concerned after the first season, because I thought that the series would actually suffer a sophomore slump. If anything, the writing staff has raised the bar. It’s astonishing to think that the writers actually had to remove some of the subplots to keep the story moving forward; there’s so much depth to every situation as it is.

The situation on Caprica makes a lot more sense now. Helo was meant to fall in love with Boomer, because the Cylons are trying to become God’s perfect progeny…yet they cannot reproduce in a manner that mirrors natural evolution. So they built more and more human aspects into their programming, hoping to use their human creators for experimentation. Only they weren’t expecting something like love, the basis of human community and commonality, to infect their own.

Boomer becomes the blurred line between man and machine. She’s mechanical in origin, but she’s also human enough to mate with a human and feel human emotions. More importantly, she’s human enough to risk everything for love. To many, like Starbuck, she’s the ultimate threat, but in reality, she could be humanity’s greatest hope.

It makes me wonder whether or not Baltar is meant to be some kind of corrective factor in the overall experiment. Six is controlling Baltar and preparing him to support any and all actions necessary to make the breeding experiments work. He’s been conditioned, at least partly, to believe that it is a holy cause. But what will happen when he realizes what humanity is being kept around for? Once the experiments are over, the Cylons will stop toying with humans, one would think.

Unless there’s more to it. For Boomer to be biologically compatible with Helo, she had to be largely biological herself. The Cylons probably need a minimum number of unique genetic samples to use for their purposes, to allow for genetic diversity. They have plenty of test subjects on the 12 colonies, but they can’t all be free of genetic damage after all those nuclear blasts. Then again, who knows how many people were secretly culled prior to the attack?

This is a highlight reel for Katie and the character of Starbuck. Someone else put it perfectly: you never doubt, when watching the character, that she’s a real person. She’s got plenty of strong points, but a self-loathing quality that runs deep. It must be a joy to write and portray such a complex character. More importantly, it’s amazing how complex many of the other characters are.

Adama, for instance, comes back a changed man. He’s got some serious issues with emotional control, and he’s shaken by the thought that someone so close to so many people has turned out to be a machine. It cuts to the heart of what it means to be human. But Adama brings up the central point: how much further can the Cylons take this before they effectively become human themselves? Or has it already happened, and they just don’t realize it?

Roslyn is on her own interesting path. When does “playing the religious card” turn into believing one’s own mystique? And what happens when a religious movement outgrows the one who began it? Religious leaders sometimes become martyrs when followers recognize that they can become more “pure” if the leader dies in the name of the faith. I’m seeing parallels to the early “Dune” novels here; Roslyn needs to be very careful, or she’s going to take quite a fall.

Like the rest of the episodes this season, I always feel like I could go on and on in my praise for how character-driven the series has become. It’s fascinating to see how these extreme circumstances force these people to reveal their strengths and weaknesses. When people say that this is the “anti-Trek”, that’s what they mean: Trek was never able to embrace this kind of character-based drama. Thank the Lords of Kobol that Ron Moore has.

Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 3/4

Final Rating: 9/10