Review

Boomer had an interesting line of foreshadowing in the prior episode. She speculated that "a dark time" was coming, and she was right. Certainly a dark time for the colonials, but what's going on with the Cylons? After the events of Downloaded, and given the events of this episode, could possibly a civil war have erupted within the ranks of the Cylons? What is their plan? Has their plan changed?

We get some mixed messages from Cavil. He said that the occupation of the colonies was an error, that the war heroes have managed to swing opinion over to their side, that the Cylons made mistakes, had become corrupt, and needed a new beginning. He said pursuit of the fleet was another error, that Cylon and man will now go their separate ways, and that the Cylons have other plans.

But then of course, as soon as the Cylons get lucky enough to stumble on the fleet and their new planet, they take over the place. Was Cavil simply lying to Roslin and Adama, or were the plans and ideologies that he outlined simply overruled eventually? Notably, the Cavil Cylon model claims to be an atheist. Purportedly, the Cavils have been telling the others that there is no god for years. But if the Cavil models and the heroes of the Cylons were responsible for the change in ideology, why does it appear that the war heroes were the ones who greeted Baltar on New Caprica in the ending? We're getting way too many mixed messages from the Cylons in this episode.

The election itself was interesting. Do you steal the results of a democratic election to prevent someone who is clearly the wrong choice from becoming president? The moral dilemma was nicely explored. There was great scoring during the election ballot counting scenes as well. Equally great was the scoring when Baltar was inaugurated president and Gina blows up Cloud 9. (Dubbed Something Dark Is Coming on the soundtrack.) Finally, the music played when the one year jump ahead ensued (dubbed One Year Later on the soundtrack) and at the end of the episode was also quite impressive.

Gina blowing up Cloud 9 was a bit of a confusing plot point as well. I understand why she did it. Certainly the root cause was her suicidal nature. Maybe there was also a secondary intention to provide the Cylons with a possible way to find New Caprica eventually. But what gets me is why Baltar gave her the damn nuke in the first place. It was a loose thread left over from Epiphanies and now we have our answer. And that answer still doesn't make sense. We have no idea what Baltar thought he was getting out of giving a Cylon a nuclear warhead, but whatever advantage he thought it would bring him, he was clearly wrong. For such an important plot point, it sure wasn't explored very well. That, and it's vaguely ridiculous that nobody thought the Cylons would find that planet, especially after the nuclear explosion. That's just unforgivable.

Moreover, why did Adama not attempt to depose Baltar when Cloud 9 was destroyed? He knew the nuke was stolen from Baltar's lab, so the logical thing for Adama to wonder at this point is why the nuke was detonated aboard Cloud 9 instead of Galactica. The only answer is that Baltar gave it away to somebody, since he's the only one who had authorization to do anything with it, and that it didn't fall into Cylon hands until after it was already transported off Galactica. If I were Adama, I'd be very suspicious of Baltar, especially given Roslin's recent admission of having seen Baltar in collusion with Six on Caprica. The last time the President of the Colonies did something fishy (Roslin ordering Starbuck to find the arrow), Adama outright declared martial law. Baltar being responsible for a Cylon setting a nuke off on a ship in the fleet isn't a comparable offense?

On top of that, why have no Cylon agents apparently been activated during the one year gap, such as the D'Anna model from Final Cut? Was she inadvertently killed when Gina blew up Cloud 9? Also one year later, Dee is mentioned as a lieutenant, yet is apparently the XO of Pegasus. Not a major problem here, but it seems Apollo ran a pretty loose ship. Is the ship full of nothing but ensigns now?

So it's pretty clear by now that as a season finale this episode was rampantly careless, but you'll notice my rating is pretty generous for a remarkably carelessly written episode, so what's so good about it? Well, the Cylon invasion of New Caprica is a fairly obvious but nice parallel the Nazi invasion of France and the fleet's escape is a nice parallel to the Allied evacuation of Dunkirk. Finally, Baltar's surrender a nice parallel to French Marshal Philippe Pétain's surrender to the Nazis. If this trend continues, New Caprica will become a Vichy France and a resistance movement will begin to take shape. This is kind of an enormous cliche, but I like it.

More importantly, the jump ahead one year and the Cylon occupation open up all kinds of fun possibilities for how season 3 stories will play out. I have an enormous respect for RDM and David Eick for having the bravery to shake up the premise of the show like this and I hope season 3 pans out as well as I imagine it will. But I must also certainly hope that the stories in season 3 are treated with more care than they were in season 2. There were a lot of technical and continuity goofs in season 2, along with some plot holes and some very important unanswered questions. Most of this stuff was of little importance, but it adds up. And at this point, I think the audience has gotten tired of all these little things that have added up.

So while Lay Down Your Burdens is a successful and entertaining pair of episodes, it doesn't compare at all to Kobol's Last Gleaming which just came off as a far more coherent, solid, and moving season finale.