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Battlestar Galactica
"The Farm"
TV episode
Written by Carla Robinson
Directed by Rod Hardy
Original air date: August 12, 2005
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The Buccaneers make a horrifying
discovery on Caprica; the renegade President Roslin plays the
religious card and makes a break from the fleet with her devoted
followers.
Read the story summary at the Battlestar Wiki
Clone site
Notes from the BSG
chronology
This episode takes place about 1 week after
"Resistance" according dialog by
Gaeta that the fugitive president's ship docked at the Cloud
9 "last week".
Didja Know?
The opening titles show the fleet at 47,857 survivors, due to
the death of four civilians in
"Resistance". Being a Cylon, the death of Boomer seems not
to have been counted.
Starting with this episode, the preview sequence is back
at the end of the opening titles (it was missing from
all the second season episodes up to now).
The resistance character named Sue-Shaun who appears in this
episode was named for Richard Hatch's production company
Su-Shann Productions.
Characters appearing or mentioned in this story
Starbuck
Anders
Helo
Sue-Shaun
Colonel Tigh
Commander Adama
Baltar
Lt. Gaeta
Dee
President Roslin
Apollo
Tom Zarek
Elosha
Simon O'Neill (a Number Four model Cylon)
Cally
Chief Tyrol
Boomer (mentioned only, deceased)
Caprica-Valerii
Leoben Conoy (mentioned only)
Didja Notice?
During the crew's "welcome back" to Commander Adama in CIC,
notice that as he claps, Baltar seems to glance to his side
often; he is probably looking at Head Six, the vision in his
head, and she is probably speaking to him.
Gaeta remarks that that the fugitive president's ship docked at
the Cloud 9 "last week". This occurred in the previous
episode,
"Resistance".
Adama decides to quarantine the fleet and begin a ship-to-ship
search for the renegade president. He tells Tigh, "She can hide,
but she can't run." This is the flipped version of boxer Joe
Louis' (1914-1981) famous quote, "He can run, but he can't
hide," made in reference to opponent Billy Conn, but which has
since been applied to many other types of scenarios,
particularly in the U.S. pursuit of fugitive terrorists.
Zarek hides the president and her entourage inside the freezer of the transport vessel Kimba Huta.
The characters' breaths should be visible if it were a real
freezer, but it's not.
Apollo records his (aborted) speech against his father on some
kind of cassette tape recorder. You'd think a civilization with
the advanced technology of the Colonies would be using digital
recorders by now!
For the assassination of Boomer, Commander Adama finds Cally
guilty only of discharging a firearm aboard ship without
permission, endangering her crewmates, and sentences her to 30
days in the brig for the infraction.
This episode introduces the first Number Four model Cylon
(Simon) seen in the TV series itself, but one was first
introduced (also as a medical practitioner, possibly the same
individual) in
"Important Projects" (Battlestar
Galactica: Origins #3) and
also appearing in several other comic book stories in the
chronology. The Number Four models generally use the name Simon
O'Neill, as revealed in The Plan.
From Simon's description, it would seem the hospital Starbuck is
in was once the Delphi Convalescent
Institute, mentioned in the
Caprica episode "The
Imperfections of Memory" as the institution where Amanda
Greystone spent some time hospitalized after the death of her
brother.
The effects of radiation poisoning described by Simon to
Starbuck are roughly accurate.
It is hinted that Starbuck may have had an abusive parent
(presumably her mother, since she was relatively close to her
often-absent father) when it is revealed in the hospital that
she had all of her fingers broken at some point during her
childhood. The abuse is later confirmed in "Maelstrom".
At 29:22 on the Blu-ray, we see that Starbuck's hospital room is
in the middle of a row of rooms. Yet when we see her enter the
room a couple seconds later, windows to the outside are seen on
the wall to the left of the door. It should be just a solid wall
there, partitioning her room from the one next to it.
At 29:59 on the Blu-ray, Starbuck is seen reading Advance
magazine in her hospital bed.
At 30:39 on the Blu-ray, notice that the small mirror set up at
the foot of Starbuck's hospital bed is cracked more than it was
before, with some pieces missing, an early hint of what Starbuck
is about to use as a weapon against Simon.
The scene at 33:34 of Starbuck bumping into the second Number
Four just before the resistance arrives to rescue her is seen
again in The Plan, with some added dialog from Anders
revealing that the Buccaneers' doctor was also a Number Four.
The infiltration of the
Buccaneers by a Number Four is probably how Simon knew Anders'
name when he spoke of him to Starbuck after she woke up in the
hospital.
24 ships follow President Roslin to Kobol. Tigh remarks that's
almost a third of the fleet. But in "33" is
implied the fleet is made up of about
63 ships, so 24 would be more than a third. If 24 ships is a
third of the fleet, the fleet must be made up of about 72 ships.
In the following episode, "Home" Part 1, Tigh says the 24 ships
make up over a third of the people in the fleet.
After Adama removes the sheet covering the dead Boomer's face in
the Galactica morgue, her eyelids can be seen to move
just slightly.
A large, even scar on Boomer's chest implies her body has
undergone an autopsy.
At 40:40 on the Blu-ray, a 1985
Chevrolet
CUCV M-1009 cargo vehicle is seen in the background.
Unanswered Questions
What did Starbuck whisper to Sue-Shaun at the Cylon infirmary
before smashing the machinery for the farm?
Memorable Dialog