Battlestar Galactica

Episode #108 - "Flesh and Bone"

This document is ©2005, John Larocque. All rights reserved.

The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They look human. Some are programmed to think they are human. There are many copies. And they have a plan.

Synopsis

In a conference call with CIC, Laura tells Adama, "They found him in the starboard storage compartment. Looks like he'd been camped there for days... The captain identified him by one of the photos we sent out. He's another copy of the man you knew as Leoben Conoy." She tells him he's been locked in a store room under guard, and Commander Adama orders the ship isolated. Lee instructs Dualla, "Order the CAP to fly escort around the Gemenon Traveler and not to approach any other ship in the fleet." Adama and Laura have different ideas on how to deal with Leoben. "I'll send over a team to destroy it immediately." "I want this man interrogated first." "Now, first of all, it's not a him, it's an it. Second, anything it says cannot be trusted. Best thing to do is to destroy it immediately." "I'd like to hear what this thing has to say, it might be important." "I've dealt with this model before. He'll fill your head with doubletalk and half baked philosophy and confuse you." "Then send someone who won't be easily confused. That's an order, Commander. I want him interrogated."

In the Hangar Bay, Kara updates Adama on the status of the Cylon fighter. "We got the entire avionics package figured out. Fire control, navigation, and I think we are zeroing in on her FTL drive." Adama hands her a document. "I did this in a hurry about three weeks ago. It's an after-action report on Leoben. It's a very clever machine, manipulative, cunning. The only problem with Leoben isn't that he lies. That'd be too easy. It's that he mixes his lies with truth. Just remember, he's gonna try to get into your head." "Aw, mom always said there was nothing in there anyway." "Just be careful. He has an agenda. It's a goal you won't understand until later. Your job is to make sure he doesn't achieve the goal." Sharon is humming and caressing the Cylon ship in the hangar bay. She asks Tyrol if her advice helped and he said it did. "You treat this thing more like an animal than a machine and it actually works. Where'd you come up with that, anyway?" "I'm a Cylon." "You know, that's not even funny." "If I could prove that I wasn't, would that make a difference, you know, between us?"

Aboard the Gemenon Traveler, the ship captain and Lieutenant Thrace are observing their captive. The captain asks, "Gods, they go through a lot of trouble to imitate people. Why do you think they do that?" "I don't care why. But the fact that these things sweat, now that's interesting." Leoben appears to be sleeping at the table, but he tells Starbuck he's actually praying. She comments, "I don't think the gods answer the prayers of toasters." She asks him how long he's been hiding and why he is aboard the ship, but he insists on finding out her name. She says she doesn't want to play games, and just as she's about to leave, he guesses that her name is Starbuck and starts cooperating with her. "My mission was to conduct sabotage... I planted a nuclear warhead aboard one of your ships. It's set to go off at 18:30 hours." "You're lying, there's no warhead." "You can't take the chance, Starbuck. Your military training dictates you take it to your masteres and let them decide." "Maybe my training wasn't so good. Maybe I push you out of an airlock and tell 'em you never said a word."

In a conference call, Adama orders the rad team on alert immediately and orders a sweep of the Galactica for radiological devices. "Contact all the captains in the fleet. Tell them to do radiological sweeps of their ships, but emphasize this is just a precaution. I don't want to alarm anyone until we know for sure." Starbuck tells Adama that Leoben guessed her call sign. "Seemed really happy when he found out who I was... Says he's looking forward to spending time with me." Adama warns her not to take any chances. She resumes the interrogation and he brings up religion. "You believe in the gods, don't you? Lords of Kobol and all that? ... So you pray to Artemis and Aphrodite?" She asks him where the warhead is, but he continues. "I was right. See, our faiths are similar but I look to one God and not to many." "I don't give a damn what you believe." "To know the face of God is to know madness. I see the universe. I see the patterns. I see the foreshadowing that precedes every moment of every day. It's all there. I see it and you don't. And I have a surprise for you. I have something to tell you about the future."

A guard brings Starbuck food and she starts to eat. He continues, "What is the most basic article of faith? 'This is not all that we are.' See, the difference between you and me is, I know what that means and you don't. I know that I'm more than this body, more than this consciousness. A part of me swims in the stream, but in truth, I'm standing on the shore. The current never takes me downstream." She mumbles, "What was that? Swimmin' in streams or something?" and offers him some of her food. "Thank you. Starving. Haven't eaten in days." She wonders why a machine would bother with hunger. "Part of being human." "You're not human. How's your lunch?" "You know how it is. When you're starving, anything tastes good."

A guard strikes him in the face, and Starbuck asks him if it hurt. "Yeah, it hurt." "Machines shouldn't feel pain. Shouldn't bleed, shouldn't sweat... See, now, a smart Cylon would turn off the ol' pain software about right now. But I don't think you're so smart." "Maybe I'll turn it off and you won't even know." "Hmmm. Here's your dilemna. Turn off the pain, you feel better but that makes you a machine, not a person. You see? Human beings can't turn off their pain. Human beings have to suffer and cry and scream and endure because they have no choice. So the only way you can avoid the pain you are about to receive is by telling me exactly what I wanna know. Just like a human would." "I knew this about you. You're everything I thought you would be. But it won't work. I won't tell you anything." "Maybe not. But then you'll know deep down that I beat you. That a human being beat you. And that you are truly no greater than we are. You're just a bunch of machines after all." "Let the games begin."

Sharon enters Baltar's lab, and he asks her why they call her Boomer. Sharon requests that she be in the first batch of people he tests with his new Cylon dectector. Number Six directs Baltar to ask, "What's the rush?" "I saved your life on Caprica. My co-pilot gave up his seat for you, and I brought you back to Galactica to safety. You wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me. You owe me." Number Six comments, "She shoots, she scores." Number Six instructs Baltar, "I think you should do it. Results would be quite intrguing." Baltar's replies, "The technology for Cylon detection is not quite ready for full-scale implementation. But I could use a beta test subject."

On Caprica, it's Day 25. Sharon and Helo wake up after their night together. Nearby, Doral tells Number Six that she is calling her Sharon now. She reasons, "I choose to think of her as one of them." "Because you dislike her?" "Because in the scheme of things, we are as we do. She acts like one of 'em, thinks like them. She is one of them." "But she's one of us. It would be best to remember that." Sharon #2 reports that she's just had sex with Helo, and Number Six asks, "Does he love you?" "I think so." "Has he said it?" "Not directly." "Then you're just guessing." Doral tells her, "Stay in your current location. We're setting up a cabin for you nearby. Food, water, electricity, all the comforts." Number Six states, "Shouldn't be too hard to convince him to stay and start a life together." Doral tells Sharon, "If not, kill him. Can you handle that?" She runs back to Helo and starts having flashbacks. When she reaches him, she does the opposite of what she's told. She tells him that they have to leave. "I saw the Cylons, they're headed this way. We gotta travel fast, even faster than before." "Why? What's different?" "Everything. Just trust me." "I do."

Leoben tells Starbuck, "I am more than you could ever imagine. I am God... It's funny, isn't it? We're all God, Starbuck, all of us. I see love that binds all living things together." "You don't even know what the word means." "I know that God loved you more than all other living creatures and you repaid his divine love with sin, with hate, corruption, evil. So he decided to create the Cylons." "The gods had nothing to do with it. We created you. Us. It was a stupid frakked decision and we have paid for it. You slaughtered my entire civilization! That is sin, that is evil and you are evil." He mentions the stream again, and she responds that she will indulge him in his obsession. He then says that he has the power to kill her while the guard is away. "Why don't you?" He snaps his handcuffs, shoves over the table and grabs her throat with his hand. The guard arrives and separates them. "You frakked up, pal. Now the gloves come off."

Adama pulls out Leoben's corpse in the morgue and calls Tigh in CIC, who informs him they have 2 hours 9 minutes left. "Spread out the fleet. No ship more than 500 kliks from any other ship. If there's a nuke, let's limit the damage." On the Gemenon Traveler, two guards hold Leoben in place as two others bring a bucket of water. "Tell me where the warhead is. Otherwise you're gonna drown in that bucket." "I can't drown. I can't die." "Right. Commander Adama mentioned that when your body dies, your consciousness is downloaded or transferred into another body, or something like that." "No, exactly like that." "But you see, I've been thinking. Why is a Cylon willing to talk at all? Why does he care if we destroy his body? Won't he just transfer away and laugh at us and all our stupid human ideas... I think you're afraid. You're afraid that we're a long way from home. What if you don't transfer all the way back? What if, when you die here, you really die? It's your chance to find out if you're really God, or a bunch of circuits with a bad haircut." "I'm not afraid of dying." "Someone's programmed you with a fairytale of God and streams and life ever after, but somewhere in that hard drive you call a brain is a beeping message, 'Error error does not compute. I don't have a soul, I have software. If I die, I'm gone.'"

Leoben then tells Starbuck what he thinks he knows about her. "I know you, you're damaged. You were born to a woman who believes that suffering is good for the soul, so you suffered. Your life is a testament to pain, injuries, accidents. Some inflicted upon others, others inflicted upon yourself. Surrounds you like a bubble, but it's not real, that's just something she put into your head. It's something you wanna believe 'cause it means that you're the problem, not the world that you live in. You wanna believe it because it means that you're bad luck, like a cancer that needs to be removed. Because you hear her voice every day, and you want her to be right." She has him dunked in the bucket again.

Baltar prepares Sharon's test results from his Cylon detector. "Green, you're a normal human being. Red, you're an evil Cylon. Should take a couple of minutes." He notices she has an accent from someone from Aerilon but she says she's from Troy, which Baltar remembers was the name of a mining settlment destroyed by a tragic explosion. Baltar's computer comes up red, and Number Six comments, "Congratulations, Doctor. You've just uncovered your very first Cylon." He's panics and tells Sharon that it's a little more complicated than green or red. Number Six continues, "She probably doesn't know. Probably thinks she's just another girl from Troy whose entire background vanished in a mysterious accident. Should be interesting to see how she responds when you tell her the truth. I'm guessing her Cylon side will take over and break your neck before you can give away her secret. Let's find out." Baltar has now changed the results on his monitor and announces the news. "Congratulations... You're not Cylon. 100% human, and very, very bright green as well... You couldn't be more human if you tried. "

Aboard Colonial One, Laura sees a vision of Leoben. "I have something to tell you." She wakes, calls Billy and instructs him to take her to the Gemenon Traveler to see him in person. Billy tells her they have one hour before the supposed bomb goes off, and prepares a security detail for her. Aboard the Traveler, Starbuck has finished her torture session, orders the guards to leave and accuses Leoben of being a machine that enjoys pain. He quotes scripture. "All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again." "Don't quote scripture. You don't have the right to use those words." "You kneel before idols and ask for guidance and you can't see that your destiny's already been written. Each of us plays a role, each time a different role. Remember, the last time I was the interrogator, and you were the prisoner. The players change, the story remains the same. And this time, your role is to deliver my soul unto God. Do it for me. It's your destiny and mine. And I told you I had a surprise for you. Are you ready? You're gonna find Kobol, birthplace of us all. Kobol will lead you to Earth. This is my gift to you, Kara."

Laura arrives. "What the hell is going on here?" It's a machine, sir. There's no limit to the tactics that I can use." "And where's the warhead." "I don't know." Laura states that eight hours of torture has produced no information, but Starbuck replies that Leoben thinks he can see the future. "Says he knows our destiny, our fate. He says we're gonna find Kobol, and that it's gonna lead us to Earth." Laura orders him cleaned up and apologises for his treatment. It's now four minutes left, and she offers him a truce. "I've come here to tell you that this conflict between our two peoples does not have to continue... Tell me what I need to know and you will live." "The warhead doesn't exist. I made it up. The Lieutenant was right. I was too far out. I didn't wanna die, so when I got caught, I made up a story to buy some time." "I see. Thank you for the truth." "Don't be too hard on Kara, she was just doing her job. The military, they teach you to dehumanize people." He then pulls her close and whispers into hear ear. "Laura, I have something to tell you. Adama is a Cylon."

She orders, "Put him out the airlock." "You can't do that, not after he told you the truth." "You've lost perspective. During the time I've allowed him to remain alive and captive on this ship, he has caused our fleet to spread out, defenceless. He puts insidious ideas in our minds more lethal than any warhead. He creates fear. But you're right, he is a machine. And you don't keep a deadly machine around when it kills your people and threatens your future, you get rid of it." "He's not afraid to die. He's just afraid that his soul won't make it to God." Starbuck and Leoben are on the opposite sides of the glass, touching the pane with their palms, and looking at each other. Then the door is opened and he is sucked out of the vaccuum, just as in Laura's dream from earlier. Later, at her locker, Starbuck pulls out two images and starts praying to them. "Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer. I don't know if he had a soul or not. but if he did, take care of it." In his quarters, Adama meets with Laura. "Hell of a risk you took today." "Something I had to do." "Care to tell me why?" "President Adar once said that the interesting thing about being the President is that you don't have to explailn yourself to anyone." She looks at him funny and he asks, "Something wrong?" "No, nothing at all."

Ron Moore's Commentary

5/25/2005 -- Leoben was starting to talk about things that were more Buddhist -- consciousness, enlightenment and reincarnation. I thought it was interesting to marry those notions to the idea of one deity... Six's belief system and the way she practices it is very specific to her character and her model of Cylon. She is sort of a Madonna/whore made real and has a very strict, if odd, sense of God and what God wants. Leoben is more of a thinker and has a more esoteric idea of how things work in the universe. But they both proceed from the same root, that they both believe there is one God who sets everything in motion and has a real sort of impact and interaction with the universe. (source: beliefnet)

6/2/2005 -- "Flesh and Bone" is not a simple retelling of Abu Ghraib, nor does it try to "teach" you that torture is bad. In fact, the show portrays an officer faced with the nightmare scenario of having a prisoner who claims to have planted a nuke somewhere in a civilian population. Do you agree with Kara's actions? Was she justified in what she did? Is it okay to torture a machine? Do the ends justifiy the means in this scenario? The episode does not attempt to answer those questions and it leaves to you, the viewer, the choice to draw whatever conclusions you wish to draw. It is neither a leftist slam against the Bush administration, nor is it an apologia for them. And it is Laura Roslin, the civilian "leftist" who both lies to the Cylon and subsequently throws him out the airlock. (source: Colonial Fleets message board)

Commentary

Starbuck calls Leoben a toaster, an expression previously used by Baltar in "Six Degrees of Separation" and the miniseries.

According to Leoben, the main difference between their two religions is that the Cylons look to one God and not to many.

"God loved you more than all other living creatures and you repaid his divine love with sin, with hate, with corruption, with evil. So he decided to create the Cylons." Here Leoben is repeating ideas he told Adama in the miniseries. A component of that belief is that God gave souls to the Cylons. Starbuck believes that the Cylon is a man-made machine, a "toaster," and describes the genocide of the human race -- as a sin and evil. She describes his religion as something that was programmed in him. God and the streams are a fairytale. "I don't have a soul, I have software."

Leoben seems to know a lot about Starbuck. He said that she prayed to Artemis and Aphrodite and that she believed in the gods. "You're everything I thought you would be." He described her as someone who believes she is damaged or bad luck. "It's something you want to believe because it means that you're the problem, not the world that you live in." Starbuck spent a lot of time with the Cylon fighter on the moon in "You Can't Go Home Again?" Could this be the ultimate source of his information? Did he receive signals from the ship on Starbuck? Is there some sort of shared consciousness among the Cylons?

According to Leoben, the most basic article of the Colonial faith is "We are not all that we are." "I know that I'm more than this body, more than this consciousness. A part of me swims in the stream, but in truth I'm standing on the shore. The current never takes me downstream." Leoben may be referring to his soul, which exists beyond the timeline and his mortality. He believes that his soul or consciousness is transferred to another Cylon upon point of death. This is also a point Number Six made to Baltar in the miniseries.

"All this has happened before and all of it will happen again" is a core component of the Colonial scriptures and appears to be key to the Cylons as well. It is quoted as part of the Pythian prophecy in "The Hand of God," and again in "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I." The latter also features a variant of the line, "Each of us plays a role, each time a different role."

Leoben said that the last time, he was the interrogator, and Starbuck the prisoner. What is he referring to?

"I see the patterns. I see the foreshadowing that precedes every moment of every day." This reflects a Cylon belief in a predetermined universe. It's also consistent with the role playing and things occuring in cycles, a theme from the Colonial religion. He told Starbuck it was her destiny to deliver his soul unto God, which in a way she does, by praying for his soul.

Leoben willingly submitted to the interrogation. As seen when he snapped he handcuffs, he had it in his power to kill Starbuck or escape. Part of this may be due to super Cylon strength and stamina. Starbuck questioned why he was going through the interrogation and speculated that this was an act of self-preservation, that the Cylon was so far away from home that his soul wouldn't be transferred to another body upon death. This is the reason Leoben gave Laura Roslin when he lied about planting nuclear bomb aboard a ship.

Leoben told Laura Roslin that Adama was a Cylon. She ordered him flushed out of an airlock and described his ideas as insidious. According to Adama, the Leoben model mixes lies with truth. Laura found Leoben's statement believable enough to pursue it "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down."

Laura attributes her dreams to the side effects to the chamalla extract treatment. Is there some kind of connection between these dreams, and the Cylons?

"You're going to find Kobol, birthplace of us all. Kobol will lead you to Earth." How did he know this? What is the connection between this, the Colonial scriptures, the Cylon religion, and Laura's chamalla-induced dreams and visions. The Colonials find Kobol in "Kobol's Last Gleaming."

Starbuck prayed before two brass symbols at her locker. One was a helmeted figure with a sword (possibly Athena), and another was a figure with a bow and arrow (possibly Artemis.) Based on her acts of prayer in several episodes, she is a genuine follower of Colonial religious beliefs.

Discovering how the FTL drive works on the Cylon fighter becames an important plot point in "Kobol's Last Gleaming."

Sharon tells Tyrol she's a Cylon and he doesn't want to believe her. "If I could prove that I wasn't, would that make a difference, you know, between us?" Sharon is implying that Tyrol already suspects she's a Cylon, and that this one of the reasons they broke off their affair.

Sharon asked Baltar to test her with his Cylon detector because deep down she knows she's one of them. She brings up Helo giving up his seat for Baltar on the Raptor as proof that he owes her this favor.

"He shoots, he scores" was a sports phrase first pioneered by Toronto hockey radio announcer Foster Hewitt in 1923.

Important background of Sharon is revealed here. Baltar notices she has an accent from someone from Aerilon, although she's actually from Troy, location of a tragic mining accident. As Number Six put it, she probably thinks she's just another girl from Troy whose entire background vanished in a mysterious accident.

Baltar's self-preservation instints were his reason for fudging the evidence and declaring her "green" (human.) Number Six told him that Sharon would likely kill him if he told her the truth.

The Helo Caprica storyline takes an interesting turn. Sharon's human instincts are strong enough that Number Six choses to think of her as one of the humans, and not a Cylon. The Cylon plan as Doral and Number Six explained it, is for Helo to remain on Caprica with Sharon and start a life together, which incldues mating and presumably raising a family. In short, Helo is to be the biological father of a human/Cylon hybrid race. Doral told Sharon that if Helo doesn't cooperate he must die. Her reaction upsets these plans, when she tells Helo to leave the area immediately. This indicates her feelings for Helo are strong enough to override her programming.

"I like bringing a deeper sexuality -- that scene with the raider, for instance. That was fun to play with... That singing I did in that scene wasn't scripted. I just started doing humming a Korean lullaby with the raider." -- Grace Park (Boomer) on 4/14/2005 (source: scifi.about.com)

Deleted Scenes

Leoben's transponder (#2 on the SciFi site) -- The captain of the Gemenon Traveler is talking to Starbuck in the cockpit. "He was carrying this when we found it." "What is it?" "No idea." "Well, send it back to Galactica, they can look at it at the lab." The camera focuses on a transponder device sitting on a pillow. She asks, "Where is he?" "Down in the store room, this way."

Baltar's conversion by degrees (#1 on the SciFi site) -- After Baltar tells Sharon she's a "very bright green" he reassures her, "There's nothing to be worried about any more. You couldn't be more human if you tried." She then leaves the lab and he says, "Oh my God." Number Six appears and remarks, "Gaius, you referred to God, singular. All those moments like this that remind me how much I love you." In the pilot episode, Baltar also said "Oh my God" at his house, just before the nuclear attack on Caprica.