'Battlestar Galactica' Retro Recap: 'Sometimes a Great Notion'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

​If there’s one thing that has always irked me about television in general, it’s the sheer fact that sometimes a particular series will introduce a powerful, life changing moment into the story, the kind that should have severe repercussions on a psychological level for the people who just experienced the moment in question, only to leave the matter in the rearview mirror a mere week later. And yes, while I fully understand the fact that T.V. is an escape, and people don’t want to see imaginary characters struggle for weeks on end, sometimes trauma and consequences are damn important to a story and shying away from them, does the story a grave injustice.
 
But thankfully, this is a problem that Battlestar Galactica never had to face because its stories dealt with emotional and physical fallout in honest and brutal fashion week in and week out and really, perhaps the greatest example of this comes by way of the next episode of the series, ‘Sometimes a Great Notion’, since this particular tale dealt with the repercussions of the Fleet’s disturbing discovery that Earth was in fact a nuclear wasteland and well, I have to admit that I outright forgot just how dark and powerful this episode turned out to be because my goodness, this really is a hopeless story through and through and of course, there’s good reason for that.
 
Because for the past four years, the Fleet has hung onto the notion that they weren’t the last vestiges of mankind, and that they wouldn’t be trapped hurtling through space forever. They would find their brethren, they would taste clean air and enjoy blue skies once again and all of that…turned out to be a lie. And to make matters worse, this episode also revealed the fact that the Thirteenth Tribe just so happened to be Cylons after all and while that wasn’t quite made public to the Fleet, the lack of hope when it came to mankind’s overall future, tore everyone to pieces in ways I never thought imaginable.
 
For in this tale, we said goodbye to another major character since Dee simply couldn’t handle the devastation that she saw on the planet below, and well…it outright broke her and she did her best to fill her mind with some wonderful memories before taking her own life and this…was just a powerful and sobering and heart wrenching moment to say the least and it damn near broke the Admiral, who felt as though he failed Laura and Dee and everyone in the Fleet and he seemed ready to die as well. But thankfully, Saul Tigh was there for his old friend and did his best to pick him up when he was down, and he inspired the old man to give the Fleet a comforting speech and start the hunt for the new home.
 
But while all of that was fascinating enough in its own right, this episode had a pair of surprises left up its sleeve and in the closing moments of the tale, we saw D’Anna say her farewell and opt to stay on the irradiated Earth to close the cycle of violence in her mind, and we also learned, that Ellen Tigh is/was the Fifth of the iconic Final Five and well, when all is said and done, I needed a moment to process this one, even after all these years. Because this one, didn’t mess around and while I’m thankful that it presented the fallout from such a painful discovery in realistic light, I’m quickly starting to recall that this was merely the beginning of a supremely bleak stretch for the show as the Fleet enters its darkest hour and I’m definitely bracing myself for one tough ride since things are going to get a whole lot worse, before they get any better…

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