Battlestar Galactica "The Farm" TV episode Written by Carla Robinson Directed by Rod Hardy Original air date: August 12, 2005

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?