The fruits of Earth.
The goal of the surviving humans for the first three and a half seasons was to find the elusive lost brothers of the human race.
Adama believed that Earth was simply a fairy tale or a myth.
In hindsight, it would have probably been better if it had just been a myth.
On that note, I'm not sure if the chill that accompanied the final moments of Blood on the Scales was due to the phenomenal conclusion to this particular chapter in the saga and the sobering conclusion the stories of Felix Gaeta and Tom Zarek or if it came from the damned cold draft coming down the flu of my fireplace that I forgot to close.
In any case, I don't think the show has ever been more successful.
Galactica has been an emotional rollercoaster over the past few years.
In the last quarter of the mid-season finale it would have been hard to believe that they would be able to top the emotional power of colonial fleet's reaction as they approached Earth even with that sense of dread many of has had that the other show was going to have to drop.
And drop it did when we saw that burned-out, post-nuclear planet that us sci-fi geeks call home.
However, there are those rare television moments when a slobbish, pathetic geek like myself is motivated to stand up and cheer, but I did literally stand up out of my chair this evening and almost let it fly.
Yes, I have been emotionally overcome at times.
Maybe the first time I made out with a girl.
My weird wedding day.
The birth of my children.
But as a testament to how horrific a human being I am, Adama and Tigh taking back control of the Galactica bridge was about as good as fiction can get to those moments.
Yes, I had to stand up, but a simple few fist pumps in the air were as much as I could allow myself without having to commit ritual suicide in shame afterward.
As I have a few times with Galactica since the beginning, as the credits rolled I found myself saying "it just can't get any better than this.
" There is absolutely nothing left this show has to prove and there's no way in hell that they can continue to deliver.
If it ended tonight, sure I'd have a lot of questions I would have wanted answered, but I certainly couldn't ever retrospectively look back at this program with anything but reverence.
At least for Blood on the Scales and season 4 so far, Battlestar Galactica is the best show on television.
Here is this week's State of Galactica report: o Who's gonna die? There's been this somewhat unwritten understanding so far that the final five cylons have to live.
The Cylons were prepared to sacrifice everything to ensure getting them back and there are obviously still a boatload of unanswered questions here.
Now we see that Ellen is back.
Is the preview giving us a view of Ellen resurrecting prior to the resurrection ship being destroyed or is there something else going on? I though Tyrol was a goner tonight as well, I totally believed that he was going to get the bullet.
This, so far has been one of the great things about Galactica, NOBODY is sacred.
Anyone can die in any given episode.
But now we have the fate of Sam Anders left hanging as well.
He looked none too healthy tonight the last time we saw him.
o Mary McDonnell.
Can we just skip over the formalities and present her with the Emmy now? In all seriousness, her work on this show has never been better.
It's rare that the performance of an actor or actress can so deeply and effortlessly transfer the emotions of the character to the audience.
While she has been integral the success of the show since the beginning, I feel that her work in The Oath and Blood on the Scales is her finest work on the show since the beginning.
o I Can't Get No Satsifaction.
I'm torn by the conclusion of tonight's episode.
Part of me is disappointed that they had to execute Gaeta and Zarek, but there was absolutely no other way.
Mutiny and treason really left Adama with no choice, not there was a conflict in Adama's mind.
I imagine that he would have like to have pulled the trigger himself.
Part of me hated to see them executed, but another part of me wishes Zarek could have suffered just a tad bit more.
Richard Hatch did the show good.
His final look over at Gaeta was priceless at the end.
o The Quorum.
Wow.
Didn't see this coming.
The first time in four years that they actually make a smart decision instead of being their normal whining pussy selves and they get executed for it.
Powerful, powerful stuff.
If nothing else, after Gaeta learns of their execution and still goes forward even though he now knows that Zarek is in the wrong it proves that Felix was beyond saving.
That was his final moment of truth, and he failed the test.
o This Week's Spin Off Idea: Felix Gaeta: Psychic Stump.
As is tradition in some legal systems, when a prisoner survives an execution he can not be put through a second execution.
To our surprise, Gaeta survives the massive assault of the executioner's squad and remains in a coma throughout the remainder of the run of Galactica.
However, in the series finale, the colonial government grants amnesty for all those that have been convicted or accused of crimes during the Cylon war, which is Gaeta's loophole to being a free man after the conclusion of the series run.
Wanting to attest for his sins in the coup attempt with Zarek, he decides he must devote his life to good.
Unsure of how to do this, he slowly begins to realize that he has a new found psychic intuition that manifests itself by how badly his leg stump itches.
He convinces a reluctant Romo Lampkin to let hunting down and prosecuting criminals in the new Human/Cylon society.
It seems that every time Gaeta is in the presence of someone who is not telling the truth, his leg stump itches proportionately to how untruthful the person's story happens to be.
In the pilot episode Andy Griffith stars as Matlock who has to face off with Lampkin in the courtroom as Gaeta must use his stump to determine if the star witness in a cruelty to animals trial is being truthful on the stand.
In a sub-plot, Lampkin gets a new cat.
I give Blood on the Scales two Frakkin' gigantic thumbs up and we may have come off the finest two-parter in the entire run of the series.
It just keeps getting better.