The Hour Is Getting Late: Clues, Betrayals, and Double-Crosses on "Battlestar Galactica"

I offered up my theories about Kara Thrace, the piano player, and Cylon projection last week before the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica ("Someone to Watch Over Me") had aired but now that it has, I'm wondering what many of you thought of the episode and its clues about the true nature of Kara Thrace.

Written by Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, "Someone to Watch Over Me" offered an installment that was heavy on atmosphere and character development, delivering a slow burn that escalated in the last few minutes to become one of the most emotionally wrenching conclusions to a single episode of Battlestar Galactica to date... while also keeping our interest piqued for the last few episodes of this brilliant series.

It had us learning something about Starbuck's parentage and Boomer's true allegiance, while also featuring Bear McCreary's gorgeous and haunting arrangement of "All Along the Watchtower."

As I correctly surmised last week, Slick, the mysterious piano player in Joe's Bar who connected with Kara, was (A) not actually there in the flesh and (B) was her father. Both of those things are exceptionally important to exploring just who and what Kara Thrace really is. The truth is that the piano player wasn't in Joe's Bar (as clearly shown by the fact that Kara is sitting alone at the piano) which points to the use of Cylon projection technology. Which means that either Kara is subconsciously using this technology herself... or someone is projecting onto her, much like the relationship between Gaius and Head Six or between that of Tyrol and Boomer in this week's episode. So who is projecting then? I don't think it's Kara sub-consciously; something is pulling her strings and it points to the man known as Dreilide Thrace.

It's worth noting that the world "dreilide" is German for third eyelid or third eye: the inner, hidden eye that is the gateway to the soul, the unknown, the higher powers that mere mortals can't perceive with their physical eyes. Daniel, as we know, was artistic and therefore in touch with higher powers of creativity, spirituality, and, based on the name, perception.

Via Cylon projection technology, Kara converses with this enigmatic figure and recalls her childhood and accesses part of herself that she had long closed off after her father left her and her mother (the part of her that was attuned to piano-playing and therefore the mysteries of the universe). Via her connection with her sensory memories and this figure, she is therefore able to play "All Along the Watchtower" on the old piano at the bar... a song which has significant meaning for the Final Five.

How does Kara do this? It's a song from her childhood, she explains to an incredulous Saul Tigh, and she's aided by the drawing that Hera gives her, a drawing that fills in the notes missing from her memory. So how did Kara learn this song? She was taught it by her father, Dreilide Thrace, a concert pianist whose best known work (which Helo returns to Kara) is entitled "Dreilide Thrace Live at the Helice Opera House." (Gee, could that be the same opera house we've seen in numerous visions?)

Which means that Dreilide is either a survivor of the holocaust on the planet Earth... or is so intimately familiar with the Final Five that he learned the song from them and passed it onto his daughter Kara. I posited last week that Dreilide was actually a Daniel, one of the Model Sevens who managed to escape Cavil's murderous rage and secreted himself among the humans in the Twelve Colonies and I absolutely stick by my theory after watching "Someone to Watch Over Me."

Kara is therefore extremely important for several reasons: for one, like Hera, she is a rare member of inter-species cross-breeding and could represented the blended future for the human and Cylon races. And, more interestingly, Simon knew this when he had her ovaries removed on Caprica... or her true parentage is actually unknown to Cavil's people, which could make Kara an ace in the hole when it comes to taking down Cavil once and for all.

Someone had to have known Kara's purpose and background: after all, they arranged for her download into a new body after her death in the nebula, even granting her a vision of her mother just so she could learn not to fear death. This person, I believe, was Dreilide/Daniel himself, who then recreated Kara's Viper, wiped her memories, and planted her back in the fleet.

(And if Kara were to conceive a child with Sam Anders--who, yes, will download to a new body, as I predicted--it could be the product of not one but three different races. Now wouldn't that be interesting?)

As for Boomer, she showed her true colors in this week's episode. Her rescue of Ellen Tigh was just a ploy to gain access to the Galactica... and, more specifically, to Hera Agathon. Boomer cleverly plays on Tyrol's deep romantic feelings for her in order to escape from the brig, even promising him a domestic future that could never be and sharing this fantasy with him via Cylon projection. It's a way to worm into his good graces, twist him round to a shared sympathy for her situation (vis-a-vis her imminent trial and likely execution for treason among the Cylons), and enable her to grab Hera... after having sex with Helo (while a bound and gagged Athena was forced to watch).

Does Boomer care for Tyrol? Perhaps somewhere in her damaged psyche, she does. But she's so filled with self-loathing and has been so corrupted by Cavil's warped view of the universe and their place in it, that there's no hope for redemption for Boomer. She made her choice the second she stepped on that Raptor with Ellen and managed to "escape" from Cavil's base ship. She engineered the circumstances for her escape from the brig, threw Hera in a box and even had Chief help her load it onto her ship... and then still managed to blast off while the pods were retracting and warped away dangerously close to the Galactica, knowing full well what the spatial disruption would do to the hull. (I'll also go so far as to say that she knew the structural integrity of the hull was compromised ahead of time.)

Does Boomer want to destroy everything that she believed in as "Boomer": love, loyalty, duty, home? Does she want to annihilate the very "human" essence of herself? Sadly, she'll learn that she's mistaken: in the end, no matter how much we might try, our pasts cannot be recovered nor recovered from.

What did you all think of this week's episode? What are your own theories about Kara and Dreilide? How does it all tie into the Opera House? And what is going to happen next? Discuss.

This week on Battlestar Galactica ("Islanded in a Stream of Stars"), Adama resists abandoning Galactica, despite the massive damages it received at the hands of Boomer, and encounters an unlikely voice of hope in the form of Gaius Baltar.