I was a bit torn on how I felt about last night’s episode of BSG.

There wasn’t much action, and we didn’t get many answers.

But the more I thought about it, the better it seemed.

Though it seemed the episode would be All About Starbuck, Boomer was really the focus and the key.

Honestly, until amost the very last, I found the entire storyline somewhat of a puzzle.

Why would she beat up Athena? Why wouldn’t Adama and Roslin take into consideration that Boomer risked her own neck to bring back Ellen Tigh? Why did she want Hera?

See, I’d been thinking the past couple of weeks that the reason Boomer sided with Cavil lay solely with the fact that Ellen was there, and she wanted to ensure nothing would happen to one of the Final Five. She didn’t really break with her line; she did it to save a Final Fiver from the insane Cavil.

Wow, was I wrong.

It all sort of clicked when Tyrol went back to the “home” he shared with Boomer and their child and found it utterly empty, abandoned. Now, there still is the question as to whether it truly was abandoned, or if he just wasn’t able to project his wife and daughter in the same was as Boomer. And she did, after all, tell him that no matter what happened or what anyone said, she did truly love him.

I believe she did love him at one point; maybe still even does, in some sort of way.

But her abandonment by Tyrol after she had shot Adama and he thought he was still human and her subsequent “murder” by Callie (whom, let’s face it, we’d always known loved Tyrol) scarred her deeply.

We saw that way back in Season 2, when we saw her and Caprica Six back on post-apocalyptic Caprica, and the pair basically decided they needed to come to peace with the humans, rather than kill them all. Boomer felt more human than Cylon.

Then when she helped rule over the humans and saw the resistance and the complete inability for either side to accept the other – and saw Tyrol seemingly happily married to Callie, with a baby – on New Caprica, it seems something broke.

We’ve gotten so used, over the past couple years, to seeing Sharon as Athena, and forgot about Boomer, for the most part.

Yes, Boomer told Athena that Hera was still alive, and we saw Boomer when there was that fateful vote between the Cylon models and she split with her line, but we haven’t really thought about her much, no?

So Boomer was being honest with Ellen when she told her that Cavil was teaching her how to be a better Cylon and less human. It seems she wanted it that way; she believed she would feel less emotional pain if she were more in touch with her Cylonicity, perhaps?

The irony in all this is that by making the Final Five believe they were human for all these years, they made them, well, feel human. Except for Tori, they all are extremely in touch with what it means to be human, and the Tighs in particular don’t seem to want that to change. Anders is so excited to have gotten all his memory back that he’s a bit hard to read, even though he truly believes the mission they were on – to warn the humans not to exploit the Cylons and for the two races to live in harmony – was right and just and the only way to stop the cycle.

I realized today that unless this effort succeeds, the next cycle has already begun  – a people wandering the stars, looking for a new home. Instead of being split into 13 tribes, one of which heads off in a completely different direction, they are one tribe – for the moment. However, the Cavil faction of Cylons is still out there, and could still end up being the spoiler and settling somewhere and starting the cycle all over again a few thousand years from now.

And so that brings us to Starbuck.

I believe the mysterious, non-existent piano player was actually Starbuck’s father and/or Daniel. Starbuck has some deep connection to the Cylons, that much is obvious. But what does that song have to do with everything? It connects Starbuck, her father, the Final Five and Hera.

Once again, a piece of music is key. (Bear McCreary must be pleased.)

And whatever connects Hera to the Final Five and Starbuck also connects them somehow to Roslin. Don’t forget, she had the Opera House visions. And she knew immediately when Hera was taken.

Is it possible that there are more hybrids than we realized? Is it possible there is this One True God who is connecting these people in an effort to stop them from killing one another?

Three more episodes. Next week: “Islanded in a Stream of Stars.” (Link to preview.)

As Galactica continues to deteriorate, Adama resists the need to abandon the ship and Baltar emerges as an unlikely voice of hope.

Is it just me, or is that supposed to sound not only as if they are an island in a stream of stars, but also as if someone (I) landed in a stream of stars? Obviously some significance, but what, exactly, I will have to wait six more days to determine.

So Say We All: The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival hosted here on Tuesday. Come to read some of rather interesting articles about BSG. Submit links here.