Remember that until fifty years ago, when the Centurions revolted, there wasn't even a charter of alliance between the Colonies: just twelve worlds constantly at war, like feudal Europe. Within these people's lifetimes. I know it's unrealistic to expect them to get over the Cylon racism, but think about how nasty and ingrained inter-Colonial bias has been, and still must be. At least in Europe there are borders, places where peoples touch and blend and cross the salt. In the Colonial star system, you had to move through outer space to even meet somebody different. And when you left -- like Kendra, like Gaius -- you left forever. You became that somebody different.

Tom leaves, not happy with this outcome, and right up until the second that he orders them murdered, to the thug Marines outside, you hope that he won't. But you know that he will, because Roslin : Zarek :: Pythia : Marx (:: Kara : Earth :: Cain : Survival) and there are like a million different reasons to become a Razor, but only one way. He sends Kelly for Felix, to show him what he's done in his name, and out in that corridor, as Kelly's walking away, they both lose something. Kelly keeps walking, winded like a punch to the gut. But I'll say this for him: Zarek feels every bullet.

1245 and it's a dead body party: the ones that tried to fight, and the ones that tried to run, and the ones that were still sitting in their chairs when they drifted off. Felix throws a John Crichton fit about it ("All I did was rub this lamp! Why do you keep granting me wishes?") and Tom is like, "Dude. Are you stroking out right now? This a coup. Which you began. So that we could do something vague and angry. This is what happens." And I mean, I'll take his word for it. He's been through many a coup. He's broken a lot of eggs over the years, in pursuit of an authority that doesn't chafe him. He's the other side of Dualla, the brighter side of Sagittaron: the side that lives so firmly in the future that he won't stop fighting until he gets there. And if you look at it that way, he's sort of terribly beautiful.