Battlestar Galactica: “Lay Down Your Burdens,” Part I

Many plot threads are woven throughout this episode, but one of the more interesting threads takes place between Chief Tyrol and Brother Cavil as they discuss the gods’ roles in Tyrol’s (and humanity’s) life. Chief Tyrol is awakened from a dream by Cally; in the process of waking, he beats her, leaving her a bloody mess. Shocked by his attack on Cally, Tyrol asks for religious counseling, and meets with Brother Cavil, a minister/priest/chaplain in the fleet, who also happens to be Roslin’s religious “advisor,” though we rarely see him in this role, unlike what we saw with Elosha in the first season. Tyrol sits down with Cavil at a table and tells him that he wanted to talk with him, rather than a doctor; he explains that it’s because he doesn’t believe that psychoanalysis works, and he is himself a very religious man. Cavil is somewhat loose and sarcastic in his counseling, leaving Tyrol a little perturbed and confused. Cavil explains to Tyrol the “value” of prayer:

Cavil: Do you know how useless prayer is? Chanting and singing and
mucking about with old, half-remembered lines of bad poetry. And do you
know what it gets you? Exactly nothing.
Tyrol: Are you sure
you’re a priest?
Cavil: I’ve been preaching longer than you’ve been
sucking down oxygen. And in that time, I’ve learned enough to know that
the gods don’t answer prayers.

Cavil tells him that the gods won’t determine anything, but rather Tyrol’s destiny is up to him: “The problem is, you’re screwed up. Heart and mind. You, not the…not the gods or fate or the universe. You”—something Tyrol didn’t expect a minister to say. His statement to Tyrol is two edged. While he proports that the gods will not intervene (a theology that is the opposite of Baltar’s Head Six’s theology), even when someone cries out for intervention, he seems to be saying that a person/Cylon is responsible for their own actions, for their own lives. If that person has a problem, they cannot just sit back and expect someone or some deity to fix it; they need to be proactive.

Cavil and Tyrol discuss what happened between Tyrol and Cally. Cavil wants to know if Tyrol is having reoccurring nightmares or dreams. Tyrol tries to lie, but a finely tuned ministerial Cavil sees right through him and wants Tyrol to tell him about the dreams. Tyrol explains that he slowly climbs some stairs on the hanger deck and then walks along the catwalk when he stops. He climbs up on the railing and jumps. Tyrol tells Cavil that he’s been having the same dream night after night for two weeks. Cavil wants to know if he was having the dream when Cally awakened him. He says that he doesn’t remember. Cavil believes that Tyrol wants to kill himself.

Cavil tells Tyrol that he needs to quit ignoring what is right in front of him. Tyrol is confused. Cavil says that Tyrol thinks that he’s a Cylon. He tells Tyrol that he is worried that he’s just like Sharon, who didn’t know she was a Cylon either. Tyrol says that Sharon knew she was going to do something terrible and tried to stop herself. Tyrol wants to know how Cavil could know that Tyrol is not a Cylon. Cavil makes a joke about being a Cylon himself and never seeing Tyrol at any of the meetings. Cavil says that the gods help those who help each other. Tyrol feels ashamed to go back to the hanger deck crew after the accident, but Cavil assures him that they’re the only family he has left, and they love him, especially Cally.

A sort of throw away line in this episode is one from Dualla when she talks with Gaeta about the new planet they have found. She refers to “rivers of milk and honey,” a common epithet for the promised land in the Torah, appearing in Exodus 3:8, 3:17, 13:5, 33:3, Leviticus 20:24, Numbers 13:27, 14:8, 16:13-14, and Deuteronomy 6:3.