Season 1, Episode 08:
Flesh and Bone
The episode begins with Roslin having a dream while resting onboard Colonial One. She is standing between a group of Colonial Marines and a copy of Leoben Conoy, and moves towards the latter. Suddenly, she is woken up by Billy, who informs her a Cylon agent has been discovered and detained aboard one of the ships in the fleet.
While Bill wants to kill the Cylon, Roslin asks to have him interrogated after finding out it is a copy of Conoy. Subsequently, Bill assigns Kara to oversee the interrogation, and warns her that Conoy will use half-truths and deception to try and hide the truth.
Bill also asks how work is coming on the Cylon Raider, and Kara replies that it is close to being fully operational. At the same, Boomer once again visits the Raider and hums a song while touching it. Tyrol arrives and asks her how she knew that her previous advice would work, and Boomer ironically jokes that she's a Cylon.
Meanwhile, Kara travels to the Geminon Traveler, where Conoy is being detained. She arrives and discovers Conoy in an interrogation room, slumped on the table and sweating. He tells her he was praying and when her attempt to talk with him produces no immediate result, she moves to leave—only for Conoy to tell her that he knows who she is, and that he has hidden a nuclear device in the fleet, which will detonate in nine hours. Shaken by this, Kara continues to talk with Conoy about her beliefs, and offers to share a meal with him. As he finishes, Kara begins beating him, intending to get the information out by physical force.
On Caprica, Sharon wakes up after the previous night's consummation with Helo, and goes to meet with Doral and Six. They tell her that she has to take Helo to a prearranged "love nest" so that he won't go anywhere—and if he doesn't want to go, she will have to kill him. Hearing this, Sharon goes back to Helo and tells him they have to keep moving, in full disregard of the Cylons' instructions.
On Galactica, Baltar runs a test on Boomer to determine if she is a Cylon or not. When he finishes the scan, he discovers the test results are true, but instead of telling Boomer she's a Cylon, he fakes the result to show she's human. Elsewhere, Bill pulls the corpse of Conoy that he killed on Ragnar Anchorage out of storage and becomes enraged over it.
Kara's beatings do little to make Conoy talk, so she tries waterboarding instead. When she sends the guards from the room, Conoy breaks free of his restaints and pins her against a wall. He tells her that he doesn't want to kill her, and has a "surprise" in store. Soon after, he is restrained again.
The water torture commences as Conoy keeps bringing up Kara's childhood experiences, indicating that he knows about her life. Afterwards, he tells Kara that he knows that the fleet will find the lost planet Kobol, and that its discovery will lead them to Earth.
On Colonial One, Roslin has another dream of Conoy, and decides to go over to the Traveler to interrogate him herself. Just as Conoy is explaining that Kara will deliver his soul to God, Roslin arrives and stops the torture.
Roslin talks to Conoy, only to discover that the bomb threat was faked, but he then throws his arms around her. He then tells her that "Adama is a Cylon", just before being pulled off. Incensed, Roslin has him ejected into space via airlocking.
Later that night, Roslin meets with Bill and tells him about what happened to Conoy, though his words leave her unsure if what he said was true. Elsewhere, Kara prays for Conoy's soul…
Tropes:
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Kara's torture of Leoben.
- Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story: Boomer's past.
- Deadpan Snarker: Doral gives a deadpan congratulations to Sharon after she reveals she's had sex with Helo.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Roslin's dream about Leoben and the Marines in the opening sequence.
- Fantastic Drug: Chamalla, which eases cancer symptoms but causes hallucinations.
- Foreshadowing: When Adama warns Kara not to let Leoben get into her head, she says her mother said there was nothing in there anyway. It sounds like a throwaway joke... until Leoben accurately guesses the physical and verbal abuse Kara suffered from her mother.
- Heel–Face Turn: Sharon, who goes on the run with Helo after a Doral copy tells her that Helo will be killed unless he goes to the assigned "love nest".
- Hive Mind: Cylon models supposedly share a collective memory, as demonstrated by Sharon dreaming about Boomer leaving Helo behind on Caprica.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Kara using waterboarding on Leoben, and physically beating him to boot.
- Manchurian Agent: Head Six warns Baltar that Boomer's Cylon programming will surface and kill him if he reveals the positive test.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: The torture sequences were heavily influenced by what was happening at Guantánamo Bay, which had (when the episode aired) been a constant source of controversy in the United States.
- Seers: Roslin, and possibly Leoben.
- Thrown Out the Airlock: Roslin orders Leoben be thrown out of the airlock. The way he's pulled out into space matches the dream she had at the beginning of the episode.
- Torture Always Works: Averted. Leoben has the upper hand throughout the entire interrogation, and only reveals what he wants to both Kara and Roslin in order to complete his mission.
