Title: Battlestar
Galactica: Fourth Season Premiere Episode – “He That Believeth In Me”
Stars: Edward James
Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Jamie Bamber, Katee Sackhoff, James Callis, Tricia Helfer,
Grace Park, Michael Hogan, Aaron Douglas, Tahmoh Penikett, Alessandro Julianni,
Michael Trucco, and Grace Park
Writers: David
Weddle & Bradley Thompson
Director: Michael
Rymer
Executive Producers:
Ronald D. Moore and David Eick
Running Time:
Approximately 43 minutes without commercials
Media: SCI FI
Channel Original Television Series Season Premiere (NTSC DVD Screener)
Fourth Season
Premiere Friday April 4, 2008, at 10pm (ET/PT)/ 9pm (CT)
Network: SCI FI
Channel (Check your local cable/satellite listings for channel)
TV Rating: TV-PG
Reviewer: Mark A.
Rivera
The fourth season
premiere of Battlestar Galactica is all about faith. Faith in a higher
power, faith in your friends, faith in yourself, faith in strangers, and even
faith in your enemies. The episode entitled “He That Believeth In Me” begins
right where the third season finale left off. Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) is back
from the dead and claims to have found Earth. She even seems to have a strange
psychic link or sixth sense about it in her mind that tells her whether or not
the fleet is on the right course. The trouble is, as one should expect, no one
believes her because to them she has been dead for two months while she has no
awareness of being dead let alone the passage of time. Meanwhile the revealed
four out of the five remaining humanoid Cylons are trying to cope with the
knowledge that everything they thought they knew may be a lie.
We see them struggle
with each other, but for the most part, they are still somewhere between shock
and denial and more than anything else, I’d say they are more afraid of
themselves than they are anything else. There is a great sense of unrelenting
doom here as well as a sense of futility because while humans take some solace
in death as a form of closure to the hardships of life, Cylons usually have
their consciousness download right into a new body aboard a resurrection ship.
So there is no escape from destiny, which is perhaps the other major theme that
runs throughout this episode and the series as a whole as personified in the
ever-changing role of Baltar (James Callis), who haplessly finds himself in one
unlikely position after another, flying by the seat of his pants. I think one
could argue that in a sardonic way, Baltar is like the comic relief at times and
yet he is still one of the most human characters on the show. From having the
burden of knowing he is at least partially responsible for the near extinction
of the human race, to having others expect miraculous things from him because of
his reputation on both the Colonial and Cylon sides, to being forced to make
life and death decisions as the President of the Colonials to finally being
placed on trial and having most people still wanting him dead despite being
acquitted in season three. Now Baltar is being seen as a messiah by an expanding
flock of young groupies filled with enough women to satisfy Baltar’s only
other base instinct outside of to survive no matter what.
The episode features
a fantastic action sequence in space that ranks with the best space battle
sequences in the series and from my perspective as a critic on the outside
looking in, I can say that Executive Producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick
have got their Poker faces on for the audience and I am unsure if we are going
to get any firm revelations any time soon, but at least I feel we are getting
somewhere and on a show like Battlestar Galactica, that is very
important.
Battlestar
Galactica premieres
tonight on Friday April 4, 2008, at 10pm (ET/PT)/ 9pm (CT) on the SCI FI
Channel.
© Copyright 2008 By
Mark Rivera – The Brooklyn Critic
All Rights Reserved.