Flesh and Bone (Battlestar Galactica)

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“Flesh and Bone”

Battlestar Galactica episode

Episode no.

Season 1
Episode 8

Written by

Toni Graphia

Directed by

Brad Turner

Production no.

108

Original airdate

UK: December 6, 2004
US: February 25, 2005

Episode chronology
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"Six Degrees of Separation"	"Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down"

Episode chronology

"Flesh and Bone" is an episode of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series.

[edit] Plot

Survivor Count: 47,954

President Roslin sees a copy of Leoben Conoy, a duplicate of the Cylon that Commander Adama encountered on Ragnar Anchorage, in a dream. Soon afterwards, a copy of this Cylon is caught aboard the Gemenon Traveller and arrested. Adama initially orders Conoy to be executed, but the President decides to interrogate him first. Adama assigns Starbuck to go to the ship and conduct the interrogation where she finds Leoben "praying" in the holding room. Starbuck quickly learns the Cylons' concept of a single God and their renouncement of the pantheon of multiple deities that the people of the Twelve Colonies worship.

Leoben dodges questions and resorts to playing games, such as successfully guessing Starbuck's name. When Starbuck tries to leave, Leoben tells her he hid a nuclear bomb somewhere in the fleet that is set to detonate in nine hours. The Colonials lose the initiative in the interrogation. Adama orders radiological sweeps of all ships; in the meantime, Starbuck is told to do whatever is necessary to get information out of the prisoner, which later includes torture.

Elsewhere, Galactica-Boomer continues to suspect that she may be a Cylon agent, and so asks Dr. Baltar to test her with his prototype Cylon Detector. She fails the test (revealing that she is in fact a Cylon), but Baltar, frightened by Number Six's claim that blowing Boomer's cover will turn on her Cylon programming, lies to Boomer about the results fearing she might kill him if he tells her the truth.

On Caprica, Helo and Caprica-Boomer continue to run from the Cylons. Unknown to Helo, Boomer is now genuinely on the run with him after disobeying orders from the other Cylons to lead him on.

Back at the fleet, President Laura Roslin, spurred on by recurring nightmares, decides to talk to the Cylon herself and arrives on the Gemenon Traveller. She intervenes in the torture and apologises for the harsh treatment at Starbuck's hands. Leoben then makes some startling predictions about the future of the fleet. He claims that they will find the legendary planet of Kobol (the "lost" planet where humanity originally came from), and then admits he lied about planting a bomb. Suddenly he grabs Roslin and whispers in her ear that Adama (specifying neither Commander nor Captain) is a Cylon agent. Roslin turns pale at the thought. The guards pull Leoben away. In disgust, Roslin orders him vented into space, saying that you do not keep a killing machine like that around alive. Resigned to his fate, Leoben places his hand on the window glass within the airlock as Starbuck explains to Roslin that Leoben is not afraid to die, but afraid that his soul will not make it to God. Starbuck places her hand on the airlock window where Leoben has placed his hand, and he removes his hand and bows his head in respect. As the airlock vents into space, he looks at her through a window and is then blown away from her, exactly matching a scene from the dream Roslin had earlier.

Afterwards Starbuck prays for the soul of the lost Cylon, even though she is unsure that he had one.