Battlestar Galactica "He That Believeth in Me" TV episode Written by David Weddle & Bradley Thompson Directed by Michael Rymer Original air date: April 4, 2008

Just as the ragtag fleet warps straight into a Cylon ambush, Starbuck seemingly returns from the dead with claims that she has been to Earth.

Read the summary of the episode at the Battlestar Wiki site

Notes from the BSG chronology

This episode takes place immediately after the events of "Crossroads" Part 2. It is also revealed here that Starbuck was presumed dead for over two months (her death occurred in "Maelstrom").

Didja Know?

The title of this episode is from a quote by Jesus in the Bible, "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live..." The title as used for this episode would seem to refer to Baltar's new status as a cult leader and religious figure.

This season a new preamble is introduced about the Cylons instead of the "...and they have a plan," one used up until now. The new one is "Twelve Cylon models. Seven are known. Four live in secret. One will be revealed." Four of the Final Five Cylons were revealed in the previous episode, "Crossroads" Part 2.

This episode "introduces" the new-head style Cylon Raiders to the fourth season (they were previously seen in the Razor TV movie produced at the beginning of the fourth season, but which takes place chronologically near the end of Season Two).

   The opening titles show the fleet at a population of 39,698. This is down 1,701 since the last seen population count in "The Son Also Rises". The losses must account for those of the Pyxis (about 600) in the teaser of this episode and other losses since that earlier episode, including, probably, others during the Cylon attack in the teaser of this episode. Presumably, it also counts, as a "plus", Starbuck's return to the fleet.

    The number 1,701 is a call-out to show-runner Ron Moore's previous work on Star Trek: The Next Generation (the Enterprise's registration number is NCC-1701). Another nod to 1701 occurs later in "The Ties That Bind", as the number on a weapons locker. 

Characters appearing or mentioned in this episode

    When Colonel Tigh shoots Admiral Adama in Tigh's Cylon fantasy, the bullet goes through the Admiral's glasses and into his right eye. Possibly, Tigh saw it this way because he is missing his own right eye, the result of a torture session at the hands of Caprica Six on New Caprica in "Occupation". Tigh probably also has a secret fear that his programming will cause him to assassinate Adama, just as Boomer attempted to do in "Kobol's Last Gleaming" Part 2.

   The pistol Tigh uses in this vision appears to be a Vektor CP1.

As Anders is about to jump into a Viper cockpit to fight off the Cylon assault when Athena fails to notice that Anders is a fellow Cylon, he begins to hope that maybe the others won't notice either. However, once he's out in space, a Raider scans him through his Viper canopy and apparently registers his Cylon nature and turns away without blasting him out of space.

Jeanne tells Baltar she's taking him to a place the Baltar cult found, an unused compartment on Galactica. How is it there's an unused compartment capable of housing a fair number of cultists considering the fleet was so pressed for living arrangements after the exodus from New Caprica in Season Three?

    The Pyxis, a ship that appears to be the same class as the ill-fated Olympic Carrier in "33", is destroyed here when a damaged Cylon Raider spirals into the ship's engine housing. The Pyxis has been mentioned a few times before in the series, but this is the first time it was seen. It later appears in flashback in "Daybreak" Part 2 and The Plan.

    The commander of the Pyxis was Captain Jules Tarney, who was one of the five judges in Baltar's trial in "Crossroads" Parts 1 and 2. Apparently, he had not yet reboarded his ship after the trial at this point, because he is seen as a member of the new Quorum made up of ships' captains in "Islanded in a Stream of Stars"; what ship he is captaining at that time is not revealed.

When the baseships launch 50+ nuclear missiles at Galactica and the fleet, Adama orders, "Have triple-A target only missiles going towards the fleet. We can handle the hits. They can't." Triple-A (or AAA) stands for Anti-aircraft artillery.

The diagnostic monitor seen in the hangar bay at 20:15 on the Blu-ray is a Samsung SyncMaster model.

    After discussing the mysterious return from the dead of Starbuck, Apollo asks his father, "...what if Zak had come back to us in that Viper? If my brother had climbed out of that cockpit? Would it matter if he were a Cylon? If he always had been? When all's said and done, would that change how we really feel about him?" Of course, if we take the comic books published by Dynamite Entertainment into account, Zak did come back to them in Season Two ("Bringing Back the Dead") as one of the Returners, Cylon clones of dead humans with implanted memories seemingly used for study in the past in preparation for the construction of the humanoid Cylons we see in the TV series.

    Later, Starbuck wonders if she could actually be a clone of the dead Starbuck grown by the Cylons with implanted memories, again similar to the Returners idea from the comic book.

    Starbuck wonders, "...is it possible that they grew me, another me, in a Petri dish?" A Petri dish is a lidded dish used by biologists for growing cell samples, named after its inventor, German bacteriologist Julius Richard Petri (1852-1921). A bit of an "anachronism" (for lack of a better term) for Starbuck to use an Earth scientist's name as the name for a cell-culture dish. But then again, "All this has happened before and will happen again."