US Air Date: 04/03/07

Writers: David Weddle & Bradley Thompson

Director: Michael Nanki

Essential viewing for BSG fans as Kara plunges to her death. Haunted by dreams and hallucinations she seeks help from a religious oracle, only to be further frightened when she’s told that both Leoben and her mother’s abusive behaviour is simply part of her destiny. Still disturbed she joins Hotdog on patrol where she spots a Cylon Heavy Raider. It doesn’t appear on Dradis but she pursues it towards a radiation-ridden planet, into a cloud that is identical to a colourful mandala she painted years ago that has been in her nightmares. Kara is forced to turn back only seconds before her ship would have been destroyed by the dense atmosphere and her fellow pilots, who didn’t see the raider, question whether it existed. But Lee Adama insists she is capable and says he will fly as her back-up. When they go on patrol Kara again sees the raider and plunges into a mandala shaped murk. With crushing atmospheric pressure of the maelstrom destroying her ship she is shown as if in a dream returning to her old apartment where Leoben leads her into a vision of her past. It reveals that six years ago, on the day Kara became a fleet officer, she learned of her mother Socrata’s terminal cancer. Kara’s mother responded viciously to Kara’s attempts at sympathy, causing Kara to leave.
Now Kara comes to believe that she ran because she is unable to face mortality. Leoben tells Kara that her mother waited for five weeks for her to come back. Kara says that she was afraid and that she couldn’t watch her mother die. Leoben says that it’s not too late and that she’s still waiting. In flashback Kara sees her mother in bed and tells her something is about to happen and she’s not sure if she’s ready. Her mother says that she can do it and then her mother takes her last breath. Kara questions whether the man in front of her really is Leoben and he says he is simply the one who is here to help her discover what “hovers in the space between life and death.”
The scene cuts back to the cockpit. Kara reaches down for the eject level and tells Lee she’s not afraid. There is a sound, some have speculated it is Kara ejecting, and then Kara’s Viper breaks up and explodes.