"No Exit" is an appropriate title for the 15th, season four "Battlestar Galactica," which offers minimal relief from the considerable amount of story exposition its feature characters extoll for more than 40 minutes.
More than 40 minutes become more than 80 minutes for the non-hardcore viewers who will likely have to watch the episode again to understand the canon that two no longer needlessly dead characters, Samuel Anders (Michael Trucco) and Ellen Tigh (Kate Vernon), provide about The Cylon's past before the nuclear holocaust on Caprica.
Both excitement and concern sets in while watching because there is a seemingly practical reason why the more often restrained storytellers behind "BSG" reveal so much interesting background information such as who programmed The Cylons, who it is that is responsible for their skin jobs, what The Centurions hold most sacred, and so forth. Either there are a lot of adrenaline-fueled moments coming, not enough time left, or both.
Beyond this, Vernon's often ambiguously amorous character is wisely given logical rhyme to her hitherto erratic reason by being upgraded to a more prominent toaster status as one of The Final Five Cylons. She becomes an almost too loving god-like character when pitted against the more callous John Cavil (Dean Stockwell), whose hatred for humans is ironically fueled by his own physical and clearly emotional limitations as an artificial version of one.
Stockwell's suddenly more Devil-like character would otherwise be a zealous atheist if he did not know for a fact that his creator is real enough to punish for creating such a flawed being in her own image.
After catching up with the bulk of mile-a-minute dialogue between Ellen and John, humans are portrayed as overall superior to The Cylons in that the latter have no apparent reason to exist other than to improve their ability to resort to the basest sentient act, murder. Further exemplifying this point is the antipathy Galen, Saul and Tory show when they are more interested in hearing what Sam, whose development is hopefully not cut short, has to say than allowing him to undergo critical surgery.
Not to mention the grimly humorous comments made by John Hodgman's character that introduces a questionable balance to the highly charged emotions going on in the scene.
Galen's later motiveless concern for Galactica's precarious structural integrity adds even more moral complexity to The Cylons as a species.
Even though the aforementioned parallels with what Ellen says about The Cylons' actions work, Saul talking with the others as though he is a college student sitting in a dormitory discussing philosophy is outside of the realm of the battle-hardened character. Analyzed from another perspective, perhaps he was dragged into this scene as an incidental admission by the "BSG" writing staff about what they were doing when they wrote the explicatory episode.
More effectively utilized is the Galactica battleship as a pathetic fallacy of how the war against The Cylons has taken its toll on the battleship just as it has on the human race's ability to move on as a species without the help of their hated enemies.
Moving on from "No Exit" is comparably easier given that the writers crafted a fun, albeit long Cylon history lesson that laid the foundations of many existential conversations for "BSG" fanboys. Any other science fiction series would simply slap together a bunch of special effects-fueled action and empty dialogue.
Popcorn rating:(4 out of 5 pieces)
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