It is often said that to reach the end of any journey, one needs to look back and see where it all began. It’s from this vantage point that the first part of the BSG series finale “Daybreak, Part 1” starts out and in doing such, provides us with some greater insight into these characters and through it, the significance of the choices they’ve made and probably will make in the final two hours of this remarkable drama series.

Watching the flashback scenes of what life was like on Caprica, we now learn that many of the series characters had in fact lost much of what mattered to them well before the fall of the thirteen colonies. The Kara we see traipsing around the apartment getting the place ready for her first dinner with her fiancé’s brother is almost unrecognizable from the Starbuck character we’ve known from the start, making the psychological impact of Zack’s death and her sense of responsibility for her part in it that much more palpable than it was before. When Adama wraps his arm around Kara later in the episode, reminding her that no matter what has happened she is still his daughter, serves to reinforce this reality, that those who knew Kara when she was engaged to Zack have seen the tectonic shift in her emotional grounding. Adama’s gentle words to Kara at this point also serves to remind her and all of us that the bond they have over that shared grief transcends any concerns over the nature of Kara’s existence, that such issues ultimately don’t change who she is or what she means to those around her.

Compare this now to the Lee Adama we’re shown during those days on Caprica. Instead of the self-assured, do-gooder we’re accustomed to seeing, we see a Lee who’s clearly lost without a purpose, stumbling about his apartment in a drunken stupor. The scene where he finds that pigeon in his home that he vainly tries to chase away is evocative of the listlessness he clearly feels at this point in his life. The imagery of the bird seeing freedom just outside those windows but being unable to figure out how to get out there reflects Lee’s state of mind at this point, with his annoyed utterance “stupid frakkin’ bird” being said as much to himself as it is to the pigeon. Clearly, Lee is trapped in his current life on Caprica as much as that bird is trapped in his house. But just as he is unable to get the bird out to freedom, he’s also incapable of freeing himself from whatever shackles are holding him down in his life on Caprica. In this short scene, Moore reveals to us that even before this journey had begun, Lee was in many ways like the bird in his apartment, fluttering around the place trying to figure how to get out to a place where he could be free (remember his admission to Dee about how he didn’t want to be rescued when his Viper was destroyed during the attack on the Cylon Resurrection ship?). The sudden scene switch to Lee as the head of the fleet’s government and his obvious comfort in addressing the concerns and fears of all those around him tells us that finally, the bird had broken out from this cage of glass and metal and is now flying about, free in the air where it belongs.

We also get some valuable insight into the character of Gaius and with it perhaps a glimmer of the true nature of Head Six. In the first scenes featuring Gaius and Caprica Six in the limousine, Caprica Six makes the observation that unlike her, Gaius is a person who prefers that others do things for him, something that becomes more apparent with Gaius’ attempts to bribe the nurse to stay with his dad for another night. Of course, this is hardly a revelation in regards to Gaius since his narcissistic attitude was clearly evident to everyone around him from the beginning. And yet, from the scenes with Gaius’ dad, we finally understand the nature of his narcissism – it’s not that he’s in love with himself as it is he’s in love with what he’s transformed himself into and in particular, how it removes him from the working-class, ‘people of the land’ lineage he originally came from. This move by Gaius to distance himself from his true origins is no doubt the key reason for the spite and hatred Gaius and his dad have for each other as both now represent what the other despises most. The sad irony is that this also makes it impossible for Gaius to truly understand his father who, as Caprica Six points out, is in many ways like Gaius in being a complicated man who is nonetheless capable of being contented “by the most simple of things”.

The fact that Caprica Six was capable of making his father happy, something that was clearly elusive for Gaius, might in some ways explain the existence of Head Six and Gaius’ burgeoning need for Caprica Six’s aid. As the only person who ever seemed to understand his father, it’s possible that Gaius created Head Six as a means to sustain this persona he’s created for himself while at the same time seeking out the one person who was able to help his father and thus perhaps himself. In some ways even, Head Six is the bridge between his true origins and the reality he has built for himself. That’s why it’s clear that his hesitation to join Adama’s mission to rescue Hera has less to do with a selfless act for the greater good than his desire to try to gain some ground with Caprica Six in the hopes that she might be able to help him in the same way she did for his father. His conversations with Lee regarding his followers having a seat on the government reinforce the comment Caprica Six made to Gaius in last week’s episode of still being the same person he was on Caprica; despite all the twists and turns that Gaius has taken over the last four years, he is still in that same position of wanting others to do the work for him.

But the most dramatic revelation had to be in the character of Roslyn, not only because the event that leads her to that emotional coldness that’s been her source of strength to keep pushing ahead is a powerful and heartrending one, but also because it highlights the significance of her admission in last week’s episode regarding her sentiments about finding home again in Adama. In that first scene at the end of her younger sister’s baby shower, we clearly see a Laura Roslyn we’ve never seen before, one that’s infused with a joy and effervescence for life and family. When the police arrive to inform her of the death of her entire family – her dad and her two sisters – that moment when she turns away and addresses the officers to leave, you could feel the chill entering the room; it’s a testament to Mary McDonnell’s performance that in that moment, her inflection sounded very much like the Laura Roslyn we’ve grown accustomed to hearing over these last four years.

Indeed, the subsequent scenes showing Roslyn tiding up her place – a task her sister told her to stop and take a break from – evoked the no-nonsense, let’s-just-move-on Roslyn we know, the one who told Adama a few episodes back how he needed “to clear his head” to deal with the unpleasant realities that they faced. With this character reveal, we now understand the weight of those words, and that possibly it’s something that’s been her mantra ever since that painful day back on Caprica when her whole world was torn asunder. The next scene showing Roslyn walking into the fountain, resting against the rock formation and opening her arms to the cascading water is powerful in its imagery, prefaced by the bubbling of grief shown on Laura’s face before she takes her walk into the wading pool of the fountain. Her embrace of the falling water was her physically clearing her head of this pain, of washing herself of her old life, a life that now had no meaning given the loss of her whole family. Indeed, when she picks up that picture of her dad and her two sisters, we see her abruptly shaking her head, as if attempting to deny herself that this should have any meaning or importance to her.

Although Adama’s scene on Caprica is rather cryptic for the moment (I’m assuming we’ll be given more insight into the relevance of that short scene in next week’s two-hour finale), we still are given a wonderful Adama moment in this episode on board the Galactica after he encounters Hotdog collecting the pictures of all the lost pilots. As Adama walks down this corridor, looking at the images left on the walls because there’s no one left who knows who these individuals are, it’s a poignant reminder of what the fleet is about to leave behind. As Gaius admits to Lee in an earlier scene, Galactica has been a repository for both the fleet’s hopes as well as a reminder of the life they left behind. This corridor was very much what a memorial is – a tangible connector to some past loss that we don’t want to forget or lose touch with. And yet, the almost barren walls reflect the reality that they now have to cut ties with that past life and accept the reality of starting anew, with some new way to define who or what they are. The moment when Adama stops dead in his tracks after seeing the picture of Hera is an important one because he realizes that Hera is not another fragment from their past lives; instead, she is very much a reflection of the new lives they must now start, if not perhaps the very key to that new life. Adama’s fixed stance just outside the corridor for such a long time reflects his own internal battle to not only finally accept this reality, but also his coming to the realization that he has one final mission to complete, one last person who is in need of his saving them.

Granted there were some gaping plot holes like how they were able to find the location of the Cylon Colony – simply asking Anders while he’s hooked up for that information is just a tad too sloppy. Although this is the first of a two-part episode, I doubt they’re going to explain this relevant point further as there are larger series issues that need to be resolved before the series ends. Another moment that was equally disappointing was the casual scene shown between Helo and Tyrol. Given Tyrol’s part in the abduction of Hera, I couldn’t see why Helo would even want to speak to Tyrol, let alone what he could gain from such a conversation. Yes, it was nice to see that Tyrol was being held accountable for his part in Boomer’s escape. However, his release soon after at the episode’s end made this scene feel a bit too much like a throwaway one that really would have served the storyline better had it been included in last week’s episode. Regardless, given the continued stellar performances of the actors, it’s easy to move past these points in order to enjoy the more significant portions of this part of the final episode.

When BSG resumed earlier this year, Moore and Eick assured fans that ‘all would be revealed’. In “Daybreak, Part 1”, they certainly have gone about doing just that by shedding light into who these characters were before the apocalypse, not only so we can better appreciate the transformation they have undergone, but also where they are headed. As I said at the start of this review, the only way to truly appreciate how this journey will end is to understand how it all first began.