'Battlestar Galactica' Retro Recap: 'Downloaded'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

We've seen a plethora of philosophical themes when it comes to season two of Battlestar Galactica, since the show has focused on the need to put differences aside to accomplish wonders and it's also analyzed death and how we deal with it and recently, the show has started to explore the wonder and importance of life, and I pondered in our last retro recap on the notion that perhaps the show was going to find a way to combine all of these three themes as the season comes to a close.

As it turns out, that appears to be exactly the direction the show is headed in because 'Downloaded' did indeed jell all those themes together, but it managed to do it in the most unique way possible, by focusing on the Cylons. Yes, you read that right, this was a true Cylon-centric episode, where we saw Sharon give birth to baby Hera after some medical complications, and we returned to Cylon Occupied Caprica to catch up with the Six we met in the pilot episode, and the Sharon Valerii that served aboard Galactica before her untimely demise, all as part of a larger and more nefarious plan. But before we get too deep into that, let's take a moment and discuss the birth of Hera because that alone was loaded with enough intriguing ideas to warrant an episode of its own.

Because the birth of this Cylon/Human hybrid brought about great fear in the fleet, simply because...the unknown weighed heavy upon the President and the Admiral. After all, there remain Cylon agents in the fleet, who could use the baby to their advantage, leading Adama and Roslin to make a tough call; fake Hera's death and have her moved into a safe place within the fleet where she can grow without anyone knowing her true identity or true biological composition and well, what made this storyline so powerful, was Sharon's reaction to her baby 'passing on.' Because when she discovered that Hera was gone, her reaction was far more human than machine. She went into incoherent territory, nearly killing the doctor and while at first glance this doesn't seem like it lines up with the 'three concepts' mentioned earlier, it absolutely does. It speaks to the importance of life since Roslin and Adama choose to keep Hera alive rather than terminate her existence and their work to get her into the fleet speaks to working together and Sharon's response...says everything it needs to about death.

But the true centerpiece of this episode was the time we spent on Caprica because the Cylons were downright fascinating, since we learned in this part of the story that death and resurrection for a Cylon can be quite the difficult venture, especially when it comes to their memories and a D'Anna Biers model (Number 3, according to this episode) enlists the aid of Caprica Six to help Galactica-Sharon, re-integrate into Cylon society since she's hanging onto her time aboard the ship in unhealthy fashion. Their time together (with the help of a Gaius Baltar specter similar to the Six the real Baltar deals with) reveals a sinister plot to have both models boxed to hide their emotions about humans and the truth about the fallout of the genocide committed against mankind, and thanks to a little additional help from Sam Anders, the two models work out a plan to confront the genocide in question and see if by chance there is a better way to handle the conflict with their creators and the combination of these two working together, believing that mankind should survive and the fact that death gave them a second chance made for a seamless and beautiful blend of the three big themes this season.

So as you can see, this was hands down the most cerebral episode season two has offered to date, and as an added bonus we were treated to the uncommon storytelling device of seeing things from the villain's perspective since we were surrounded by Cylons, watching them try desperately to reclaim the glory of a world they basically burned to the ground, and to top it off, the idea that there are pockets of this society, questioning murder and genocide is equally as fascinating since this race has been hell bent on the extinction of mankind from the start of the series. So it should be interesting to see if Caprica Six and Galactica-Sharon will be able to change the hearts and minds of a society dedicated on hunting down their creators. Either way, I really enjoyed this one and how intelligent it turned out to be and I'm hoping this is a harbinger that the two part season finale will be just as incredible. Until next time. 

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