“Six Degrees of Separation” is episode seven of season one of the new Battlestar Galactica.
Gaius Baltar is looking through a microscope and telling Number Six he can’t see evidence of the divine hand. She asks what drives him to blasphemy. Boredom. He’s spending every waking hour working at the church of the mystical Cylon detector. Number Six tells him there is only one true God. He isn’t her God; he is God. It is important Gaius gives himself over to God. Gaius calls it superstitious drivel that no rational freethinking human being really believes, proving Cylons are little more than toasters. Number Six has disappeared during this rant and he ends up continuing it to Dualla in real life. In the middle of an inconvenient sentence. Gaius says he talks to himself. He’s informed Commander Adama wants to see him in CIC.
Number Six is in CIC and Gaius briefly speaks to her. The commander tells him that Ms Godfrey has brought some very disturbing accusations to his attention and he thinks Gaius should have a chance to answer in person. Gaius asks where she is and is told she’s standing right next to him. And he finally realises the Number Six in CIC isn’t his hallucination, but a real woman that everyone can see. Godfrey calls Gaius a traitor. He let the Cylons into the defence mainframe, betrayed the entire human race and was responsible for the holocaust. She’s here to see him exposed and sentenced to death as a traitor.
Godfrey was a lowly systems analyst at the defence ministry. She worked with Dr Amorak, who was on the Olympic Carrier, destroyed in “33”. Gaius is accused of selling out the human race. True, though he didn’t know. Amorak gave Godfrey evidence that Gaius was involved in the sneak attack. A disc.
The disc has photos of a man entering the defence mainframe on Caprica without permission the day before the attack. Carrying an explosive device. Gaius insists he never did that. Also true. The device destroyed the mainframe. The man is only seen from the back, but there’s a reflection of his face in a monitor. It can be enlarged and sharpened, which Gaeta says will take at least a day. Gaius’s work on the Cylon detector is suspended.
Cally is reading Starbuck’s notes on the Cylon Raider Starbuck flew back in “You Can’t Go Home Again” to Chief Tyrol, who is currently inside it. They aren’t having much luck, though the chief tells Tigh that they are getting there. Starbuck, meanwhile, is being coached to get out of bed by Apollo and Dr Cottle. She’s not happy and heads back to bed. She can’t have any more magic pills, either.
Gaius is speaking to the president; he wants to come back to Colonial One. He can’t; he’s on the no-fly list. He’s saying that Godfrey may be a Cylon – likely true – but the president has collapsed in the middle of the call. Billy puts in a call for Dr Cottle, then has to deal with reporters as he said that over an open line. Cottle sees President Roslin and asks how many of her pills she took. She admits three. Cottle tells her she’s lucky she didn’t collapse into a coma; you can’t cure cancer by overdose. He can give her a shot to get her back on her feet but she won’t like the side-effects.
Godfrey is speaking to Adama in his quarters. He tells her Gaius Baltar is right about how convenient it was that Amorak brought Godfrey a key piece of evidence just before he died. Godfrey says Amorak was paranoid; the thought the Olympic Carrier had been infiltrated by Cylons. They were friends. More than friends. She loved Amorak. Then starts hitting on Adama, finally kissing him. Which raises Adama’s suspicions enough that he calls Colonel Tigh to tell him not to let Godfrey off the ship and put her under surveillance.
Gaius is panicking about the evidence and first tries getting Gaeta to let him near it, then confronts Shelly Godfrey before moving onto really stupid things. The episode doesn’t help with telling whether or not Gaius’s hallucination of Number Six is truly a hallucination or something more. Meanwhile, Boomer gets rather creepy with the Cylon Raider and on Caprica, Caprica Boomer and Helo are fleeing Centurions.