“Crossroads: Part 1” is episode nineteen of season three of the new Battlestar Galactica.
Roslin is in a building. She hears a child, Hera, and follows her. As does Athena. But Six gets Hera before either of them. Then the president wakes.
Gaeta is telling Adama that the fleet is ready to jump and that there are maybe twelve more jumps before they find the nebula. The trailing Raptor has seen no sign of the Cylons. Adama wants the Raptor to wait another six hours before leaving to catch up.
Tigh is tuning the wireless in the bar and Anders tells him to go back; he almost had it. Seelix asks him what. The song. Doesn’t she hear it? She doesn’t.
On Colonial One, Tory is telling Gaius Baltar’s prosecutor that Roslin wants Gaius charged with genocide for the Cylon attack on the colonies. The prosecutor can’t make that stick; there’s no evidence. As for Roslin seeing Gaius with a Six on Caprica, she isn’t going to put the president on the stand to tell her drug-induced hallucinations. Tory says if she won’t, they’ll find someone who will. The prosecutor says she’s visiting as a courtesy, not to discuss strategy. She will charge Gaius with what she can prove. But she does serve at the president’s pleasure and if the president decides to replace her, she’s sure other lawyers will take up the case. If there are any.
A member of the press visits Gaius’s cell. To get him to bless her sick child. Gaius tells her he isn’t any form of god and doesn’t have special powers. She won’t accept it and so he eventually says he’ll do his best. He asks Six how many that is. Five. Not including the 30 to 40 letters. Gaius says celebrity trials bring out the crazies. Six doesn’t seem to think the woman was that crazy.
Racetrack’s Raptor leaves Galactica to stay behind in an asteroid thicket as the rest of the fleet jumps.
The prosecutor starts the trial by talking about measuring loss. Numbers are used when it gets too vast to comprehend. But they started counting the living. 44,035 people settled on New Caprica with Gaius as their leader and protector. 38,838 escaped. 5,197 were killed, left behind or disappeared. Gaius was entrusted with their lives. But he chose to side with the Cylons and actively sought the death of his fellow citizens. He should pay the ultimate price.
Lampkin – and in the previous episode, “The Son Also Rises”, Apollo joined him – says the defence is going to change the plea to guilty. What choice do they have? It’s obvious his client is guilty. A killer and a traitor, no better than a Cylon and what do we do with them. Someone shouts throw them out the airlock. Lampkin says Gaius sold them out to their enemy, and therefore he is their enemy, and one good thing about a time of war is we can slaughter our enemy for payback. Let’s just kill him now. It would be easier, simpler, the justice of the mob. It’s what they want. Especially President Roslin. It’s what she’s been wanting for over a year, ever since Gaius beat her in a free and fair election of the people. But Gaius’ only real crime was bowing to the inevitable. He saved the lives of the people on New Caprica. Roslin would have seen them dead, victims of a battle they had no chance of winning. Lampkin is glad she wasn’t president, when the Cylons said surrender or die. Lampkin owes his life to the decision Gaius made. As does Roslin.
The trailing Raptor detects basestars and jumps out before a missile hits. In CIC, Adama says they need to search the fleet for tracking devices. Roslin suggests asking Caprica Six. Tigh asks why. Because Caprica Six doesn’t want the Cylons to have Hera, and Roslin believes she’ll lay down her life for Hera. It doesn’t hurt to ask. Adama agrees. Apollo ends up smelling Roslin’s tea as she walks away.
Tigh speaks to Caprica Six, who tells him the fuel ship has a unique radiation signature. Her Gaius is reassuring her, telling her that Tigh lost someone close to him. Caprica presses Tigh on this until he hits her and she hits him back.
Tigh ends up testifying when drunk. That doesn’t go so well. He and Anders have both been hearing a song. Them both hearing it when no-one else does is strange. The fleet is getting closer to the nebula, Helo warns there’s a storm coming and as Tom Zarek warned, things are getting messy.
The story continues in the next episode, “Crossroads: Part 1”.