“Flesh and Bone”

Sometimes questions are better than answers. It often isn’t true, as it often is annoying and unsatisfying. But at this point, it’s the questions that are more revealing. There is so little we don’t know the Cylons well enough to even know what questions we should be asking.

“Flesh and Bone” gives us some directions to inquire.

A Cylon copy of Leoben is discovered aboard a ship in the fleet after Roslin has a chamalla-influenced vision of Leoben flying away quickly, but not before saying “I have something to tell you.

Adama send Starbuck over to interrogate the Cylon after Roslin overrules Adama’s desire to destroy Leoben immediately.

Much of the episode deals with the ideas of torture, and humanity.

Starbuck chooses to torture because Leoben has said there’s a nuke on board the fleet…and Leoben’s not a human. He’s a machine.

Throughout the episode the highlight was the rapid fire debates on philosophy, religion, and humanity. What makes a human, human? Leoben can sweat and feel pain, but as Starbuck points out, he can turn off his pain.

But if he does that, he’s not as human as he wants to be.

The religion aspect is truly interesting. Given that our society generally believes in one god, it makes it a unique and somewhat unsettling experience to have the “good guys” have multiple gods, while the “bad guys” are almost fanatical about their religion.

Starbuck is very uncaring and harsh as we would expect her to be while Leoben drops the bomb that Starbuck has a destiny of finding Kobol which will lead them to Earth.

Back on Galactica the unfolding of Sharon as a Cylon continues as she asks Baltar to test her out. Interestingly, he finds out that she is a Cylong, yet he tells her that she’s human. I am unsure as to what he gains, but it was surprising.

Roslin begins having nightmares about Leoben that convince her to interrogate him personally. Trying a more softhanded approach, Leoben confesses that he made up the bomb.

He also grabs Roslin and implicates Adama as a Cylon.

Roslin sends him out the airlock, just as in her vision. The poorly conceived portion comes when Starbuck, who had been viciously against Leoben all episode shows concern about his soul. She reaches out to connect with him and later even prays for his lost “soul” that she denied he had. It didn’t make much sense, and maybe it’ll come back to play eventually. If not, it seemed awkward.

Finally on Caprica, Boomer actually turns against her Cylons and runs with Helo for real, trying to escape her fellow Cylons. She has fallen for Helo.

These questions now seep into our mind…

1. The chamalla-induced visions. Are they related to some Cylon tech? Is Roslin a sleeper Cylon? If not, what exactly are they?

2. Starbuck’s relationship with Leoben.

3. Can Cylons truly feel?

Overall this is an intriguing episode which suffers only from Starbuck’s inexplicable reactions at the end, changing the whole feel of the interrogation. It doesn’t hurt it much and indeed the episode generally only serves to draw the viewer in more.

B

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