'Battlestar Galactica' Retro Recap: 'Deadlock'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Shortly after thoroughly enjoying the last episode of Battlestar Galactica, I came to the realization that the show is at a proverbial crossroads storytelling wise. After all, some major plotlines have come to their logical resolution well before the series finale and that’s just rare when it comes to television. Normally everything comes to a head in that all important final episode, but Earth, the mutiny and even the mystery of the Cylon are all matters that have been resolved so really, where does the series go from here as the overall story inches toward an ending?
 
Well, leave it to this series to not provide us with a simple answer when it comes to that, instead, the next chapter in this harrowing tale, ‘Deadlock’, served as quite the character study and light setup for said finale by allowing for something incredibly important to happen in the story, since this particular episode featured a long overdue reunion between a transformed Ellen Tigh and her husband since Boomer brought Ellen back to the Fleet first thing in this one, and well, I was immediately wondering how this flawed couple was going to interact now that Ellen was carrying some newfound enlightenment.
 
And the answer to my query is what made this episode so supremely fascinating, because as it turns out, this couple immediately slipped right back into their respective status quo. Their legendary passion was quickly rekindled since they wasted no time in making love to one another, but that was quickly followed by everything else this couple does so well, i.e., fighting and being as petty as humanly or Cylon-ly possible to one another, to the point where Ellen cast a vote for the Cylons to leave the Fleet and start over on their own, all to get back at Saul and sadly, it seems as though her actions put enough stress on Caprica Six to force a miscarriage.
 
Of course, we will never truly know if it was that, or Cylon physiology, but none the less, that whole sequence of events was somber and painful to say the least for obvious reasons and it put an exclamation point on the fact that this episode was more or less an in-depth extension of the previous episode’s examination of how the Cylons are in essence no different than mankind. After all, Ellen went from sage and collected leader of the species, to the same jealous and vindictive person she was before we discovered her true identity and that matters because another big plot element was introduced in this tale in that…the two fleets are quickly becoming one without anyone noticing it.
 
If anything, seeing all these subtle elements appear now after so many important plot points have been resolved, can only mean that this is the beginning of what the story is building toward for the series finale to settle and what I’m starting to see assemble, I clearly missed when I watched the series the first time around, but I don’t want to dig in too deeply on any of that just yet, simply because I want to speak on all of it when it is properly fleshed out. Instead, I just want to bask in the wonder of an episode that truly brought the Cylons out of the darkness and down to our level and while it’s magnificent that this tale did a fine job with everything I just made mention of, I’m starting to feel a touch of sadness creep in, because our journey through the stars with this crew…is inching closer to its end. Until next time.

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