Frak Earth.

So yeah, I watched Friday's BSG episode, "Sometimes A Great Notion" (embedded above) and, OK, that was UNBELIEVABLE. If this is just the beginning of the end, I can't even imagine what the next 9 episodes are going to be like.

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, and because I'm strapped for time, I'm just going to post the content of an e-mail I wrote to friends this weekend. It's not a recap, but a random sprinkling of thoughts about Friday's episode.

Warning: SPOILERS.

With everything that was thrown at us, the thing that's sticking with me the most right now is Dee's suicide. They had totally tricked me into thinking she was the Fifth, just about up to the moment she shot herself. When Gaeta left the room and her expression dropped and she took her ring off, I said out loud, "Is she going to kill herself?" I think I hadn't even finished saying the words when she did. I think she just finally succumbed to the despair. Poor Dee has always been there to prop up the Adamas, to give them the pep talks that keep them going, and she was the voice of Galactica, the re-assuring beacon that would call the fighters back home. It's so sad that there was no one to talk her down and call her back in the end.

I've been trying to parse what the title, "Sometimes a Great Notion", means with regard to the episode, and I haven't been able to. Has anyone read the book or seen the movie? I read that Ken Kesey got the title for his book from the song Goodnight Irene, and these lyrics:

Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in the town
Sometimes I get a great notion
To jump into the river an’ drown

I suppose you can connect that with what Adama told Tigh about the fox who just wanted to float downstream and drown in the sea, which I suppose is exactly what Dee did. And what many others wanted to do.

I don't know what it means that Earth was populated solely by Cylons before it was destroyed 2000 years ago. For me, it puts into question what it means to be a Cylon. We know for sure that Chief, Tigh, Ellen, Tory and Anders lived on Earth 2000 years ago, which would make them Cylons; but they are different than the Cylons that humans built and the skin jobs that Cylons built. And I don't think that the Earth Cylons (including the FF) are machines at all. They may be different from human beings in some way, but I don't think they're machines the same way as the 1-8 models are.

Earth was the "Thirteenth Tribe", right? So at the same time as the exodus of the 12 tribes from Kobol, the 13th tribe of cylons on Earth suffered a nuclear catastrophe. I am so confused. If the Five all died 2000 years ago, what the hell have they been doing in the meantime?

I really surprised at the revelation of Ellen as the Fifth, but I think it really works with what has been shown to us so far, especially the episode where she was introduced. Remember all of the speculation about whether she was a Cylon, and how she so mysteriously appeared? I don't think, however, that she is particularly special in comparison to the other Four, like, she's not the Queen or anything. I just think that she didn't hear the signal because she was dead. Whether she has resurrected and if so where, I have no idea.

What is Starbuck? I cannot claim to have even an inkling. I hope that she tells Lee about it. I think that she must have traveled through time, back to Earth prior to the holocaust, and crashed and was somehow rebuilt, using the same technology that Ellen was referring to when she told Saul they would be reborn together. How she got back, how she got a new viper, I have no idea. But there is some kind of guiding hand at work here, and I'm dying to know who or what it is.

Whatever is going on, it's not what Leoben thought it was. You know it's bad when you out-weird the weirdo.

*******

Here is a fantastic Mo Ryan column about the episode, which includes and interview with the show's creator Ron Moore, as well as an essay by the writers of "Sometimes A Great Notion".

I cannot WAIT until Friday!