In this review, I discuss both "The Oath" and "Blood on the Scales" as I felt that it was the most sensible approach to discuss them together.
The planning stage of Zarek and Gaeta's coup was only in the previous episode "A Disquiet Follows My Soul" but, like many coups, the seeds were sown much earlier. To trace its origin, you really have to go back to the unfortunately rather lacklustre episode "The Road Less Travelled" in which Kara agreed to cooperate with Leoben and the thankfully much better "Faith" in which the Demetrius crew boarded the rebel basestar. Perhaps more importantly to the events of this two-part story, the latter was also the episode in which Felix was shot in the leg, causing it to be amputated in "Guess What's Coming to Dinner?". That terribly traumatic event, the alliance with the Cylon rebels, the revelations about the Final Five's identities and the cruel twist ending of "Revelations" are what led Felix to where he was at the end of "A Disquiet Follows My Soul" and the beginning of "The Oath". The events of "The Face of the Enemy" helped place these events in context.
I consider Zarek to be the most compelling character in the series' history and this is his best use since his introduction in "Bastille Day" 65 episodes earlier. Over the course of the last four years, Zarek has played the role of an eloquent, civilised man and a politician very well but, in this story, he showed that he was still a terrorist at the end of the day and had always been one. To be honest, I found more than a few of his criticisms of the Roslin administration and the Adama military industrial complex over the years quite valid and I can understand his anger and that of many people in the fleet at the alliance with the Cylons after the destruction of the Twelve Colonies but they lose any claim to the moral high ground as soon as they start murdering innocent people. To his credit, Felix clearly regrets their deaths and, for a time, I thought that Adama might even be able to appeal to the better angels of his nature but I think that both Felix and I eventually realised that he had passed the point of no return. After the deaths of the Quorom of Twelve (in particular), there was no turning back.
The story does do an excellent job at presenting us with both sides of the argument and, while I didn't find the viewpoint of the coup members to be sympathetic as I think that Lee was right when he said that the humans and Cylons would continue fighting each other until one or the other was extinct, I did find it understandable due to not only the history of human-Cylon relations but the events of the New Caprica occupation. If events had proceeded differently, I might even have agreed with Zarek and Gaeta's views but I would certainly never have approved of their methods.
When compared with the events of this story, Adama's coup in "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II" looks very tame, though I still think that was inexcusable. That said, I didn't feel that there was a double standard as regards the attitudes towards the two coups as the key difference lay in the execution (no pun intended!): Adama didn't murder people. It also illustrates just how much Adama and Roslin have come over the course of the previous four years. The first coup serves as an interesting contrast, especially since Zarek was the one who aided Roslin in escaping from the Galactica the last time that her political fortunes were cloudy, to paraphrase Baltar. On New Caprica and in the aftermath of the occupation, Roslin and Zarek even reached an understanding of a sort but that proved to be rather short-lived and, in this story, they return to their natural roles as enemies.
One thing that I was surprised at was the involvement of long-running and likable recurring characters in the coup such as Racetrack and Seelix. On the other hand, I wasn't surprised that people like Gage, Narcho, Connor and Captain Kelly were involved as that seemed true to their previous characterisation and, in the case of the first two, their service under Admiral Cain.
All in all, an excellent two-part story in which everyone, particularly Richard Hatch and Alessandro Juliani, delivers wonderful performances. Having watched Richard Hatch in both versions of "Battlestar Galactica" over the course of the last four months, I have to say that he is an extremely underrated actor and I'm glad that this series - his first television role since two episodes of "Baywatch" in 1995 - helped bring him back into the limelight.
There's so much else going on in this story. What I've discussed is really only the tip of the iceberg.
The planning stage of Zarek and Gaeta's coup was only in the previous episode "A Disquiet Follows My Soul" but, like many coups, the seeds were sown much earlier. To trace its origin, you really have to go back to the unfortunately rather lacklustre episode "The Road Less Travelled" in which Kara agreed to cooperate with Leoben and the thankfully much better "Faith" in which the Demetrius crew boarded the rebel basestar. Perhaps more importantly to the events of this two-part story, the latter was also the episode in which Felix was shot in the leg, causing it to be amputated in "Guess What's Coming to Dinner?". That terribly traumatic event, the alliance with the Cylon rebels, the revelations about the Final Five's identities and the cruel twist ending of "Revelations" are what led Felix to where he was at the end of "A Disquiet Follows My Soul" and the beginning of "The Oath". The events of "The Face of the Enemy" helped place these events in context.
I consider Zarek to be the most compelling character in the series' history and this is his best use since his introduction in "Bastille Day" 65 episodes earlier. Over the course of the last four years, Zarek has played the role of an eloquent, civilised man and a politician very well but, in this story, he showed that he was still a terrorist at the end of the day and had always been one. To be honest, I found more than a few of his criticisms of the Roslin administration and the Adama military industrial complex over the years quite valid and I can understand his anger and that of many people in the fleet at the alliance with the Cylons after the destruction of the Twelve Colonies but they lose any claim to the moral high ground as soon as they start murdering innocent people. To his credit, Felix clearly regrets their deaths and, for a time, I thought that Adama might even be able to appeal to the better angels of his nature but I think that both Felix and I eventually realised that he had passed the point of no return. After the deaths of the Quorom of Twelve (in particular), there was no turning back.
The story does do an excellent job at presenting us with both sides of the argument and, while I didn't find the viewpoint of the coup members to be sympathetic as I think that Lee was right when he said that the humans and Cylons would continue fighting each other until one or the other was extinct, I did find it understandable due to not only the history of human-Cylon relations but the events of the New Caprica occupation. If events had proceeded differently, I might even have agreed with Zarek and Gaeta's views but I would certainly never have approved of their methods.
When compared with the events of this story, Adama's coup in "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II" looks very tame, though I still think that was inexcusable. That said, I didn't feel that there was a double standard as regards the attitudes towards the two coups as the key difference lay in the execution (no pun intended!): Adama didn't murder people. It also illustrates just how much Adama and Roslin have come over the course of the previous four years. The first coup serves as an interesting contrast, especially since Zarek was the one who aided Roslin in escaping from the Galactica the last time that her political fortunes were cloudy, to paraphrase Baltar. On New Caprica and in the aftermath of the occupation, Roslin and Zarek even reached an understanding of a sort but that proved to be rather short-lived and, in this story, they return to their natural roles as enemies.
One thing that I was surprised at was the involvement of long-running and likable recurring characters in the coup such as Racetrack and Seelix. On the other hand, I wasn't surprised that people like Gage, Narcho, Connor and Captain Kelly were involved as that seemed true to their previous characterisation and, in the case of the first two, their service under Admiral Cain.
All in all, an excellent two-part story in which everyone, particularly Richard Hatch and Alessandro Juliani, delivers wonderful performances. Having watched Richard Hatch in both versions of "Battlestar Galactica" over the course of the last four months, I have to say that he is an extremely underrated actor and I'm glad that this series - his first television role since two episodes of "Baywatch" in 1995 - helped bring him back into the limelight.
There's so much else going on in this story. What I've discussed is really only the tip of the iceberg.