TV episode review
US airdate 13 June 2008 (Sci Fi Channel)

The standoff reaches crisis point as D’Anna holds Roslin and Galactica's pilots hostage, demanding the Final Four hand themselves over. As revelations rock the fleet everything rests on Kara Thrace being able to uncover the mystery surrounding her Viper...

This is it. All the pent-up drama of season four comes crashing down in wave after wave of shocks. The season has suffered at times from a backwards-engineered narrative, which has nevertheless been necessary to put the pieces into place – and it now brings us to this moment. With the writers’ strike over, this episode is not an ending, though the last minute could be seen as a kind of open-ended coda. Many more questions remain as to who or what is pulling the strings in the BSG world, but at the mid-season enough tension is jacked up and released to earn this episode high marks.

Roslin's unlikely plan to hold the Final Four for herself immediately unravels as the reactivated D'Anna swiftly turns the tables - she instead holds Roslin, Baltar and Helo's pilots hostage, demanding the Final Four bring themselves freely to the rebel's basestar. She doesn't reveal their names or whether she truly knows who all of them are, and as for the Final Five – well, she isn't telling.

Soon Galactica and the basestar are aiming nukes at each other, neither side willing to relinquish the four who are the key to Earth. Adama and Lee order a risky rescue mission. But as they agonise over whether to launch it, they face the fallout over the revelations of the identities of the Final Four. In a devastating cascade of events it becomes impossible for Tigh and the others to hide any longer, and, exactly as the Colonel feared, they are all facing the airlock before long, as Lee decides to counter-threaten D'Anna with losing her missing brethren.

Tigh's route there is a memorable one, one the fans have been guessing over and dreading since the end of season three. As Tigh finally walks into the Admiral's quarters to deliver the damning revelation himself, the tension is cranked up to unbearable levels. Just as hard to watch is Edward James Olmos's howling, tortured response to the brutal knowledge that his friend of 30 years has never been human. One more thing he thought he could hold on to has been ripped away. His doubts mirror our own - how can this be? Next year's episodes might hold the answer.

Racing against the clock is Kara Thrace. Tipped off by Anders and Tyrol that something within her mysteriously intact Viper is calling to them, Starbuck beings to suspect that the way to Earth may have been under their noses all along. But even if she can get that information to President Lee Adama in time, where do they go from there?

No more will be said about the last five minutes of this episode. Fans should just sit back and draw their own conclusions as BSG delivers a haunting but strangely appropriate mid-season cliffhanger in which everyone is brought back together only to once again face an uncertain road. Owen Van Spall

VERDICT: 8/10