In this week’s Battlestar Galactica, the last of the new “summer webisode” characters bit the dust. Alas, poor Jammer, I knew him hardly at all. His death comes at the hands of a secret jury called The Circle, who declares him guilty of collaborating with the Cylons on New Caprica, and shoots him out into space, just as they’ve done with a dozen or so other collaborators in the past few days. The Circle is a creation of de facto President Tom Zarek, and when Roslin and Adama find out, it’s immediately shut down.
In one of the more convoluted shifts of executive power in science fiction history, Zarek makes Roslin his vice president, then steps down as president, thereby making Roslin president, who then makes him vice president as a reward for having ceded the presidency to her. Or something like that. Anyway, Roslin the Wise understands what a quagmire it would be to try any collaborators — how fine the line between justice and vengeance is — and as her first executive action, simply pardons everybody. Smart move.
Meanwhile, the Cylons have a similar dilemma. How do you solve a problem like Gaius Baltar? Apparently, the jury is deadlocked. Three of the “models” want to keep him around, and three want to get rid of him (death? expulsion?). The deciding vote is in the hands of Six, who seems to be having an identity crisis — is she a Cylon, or is she in love with a human, and can she be both? What bugged me about this scene is … what about the other five Cylon models we’ve been told exist? Why aren’t they in on this vote? Are those other five part of a separate group that deals with separate Cylon issues? Were they killed off entirely at some point? And who are the three that voted to keep Gaius around?
In other news, Apollo is apparently dating a jump rope. Which would explain why we didn’t see his wife. There were several notable faces missing this episode actually — Dualla, Boomer, and all the Cylons except for D’Anna and Six. By the way, does anybody remember if Boomer (the one who is part of the fleet now) ever showed up back on Galactica at the end of the last episode? Or is she still out there, looking for Hera? We saw a lot of Agathon this episode, but not her.