“We’re not a civilization anymore. We are a gang, and we’re on the run, and we have to fight to survive.”
The trial of Gaius Baltar sets up a courtroom that is permeated by history, fraught with tension, and caught between shifting allegiances. For the first time since right around New Caprica, we get a sense of the toll the experience took on the fleet, a sense of the simmering tension that has been building up over the weeks. Director Michael Rymer has his camera pan over the crowd and linger on faces, underscoring the bitterness and betrayal, the desire for revenge, and when the words hit, they hit with an icy bluntness that strikes to the core of the show’s relationships and themes. This is a trial surrounding one man’s life, but the implications of a guilty or not guilty verdict–as well as of the legal process itself–are far-reaching.