General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy

Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy is a ten-part series of webisodes produced for the reimagined science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica, broadcast on the Sci Fi Channel's website during the mid-season break of the show's fourth season, from December 12, 2008 to January 12, 2009.¹ The story follows Lieutenant Felix Gaeta, played by Alessandro Juliani, who is stranded aboard a Raptor spacecraft with a group of passengers including two Number Eight Cylons, played by Grace Park, and begins to die one by one as paranoia spreads.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Ten webisodes of roughly three to four minutes each, released on Syfy.com¹^•³
Release window	December 12, 2008 to January 12, 2009, ahead of the Season 4.5 premiere on January 16, 2009¹
Writers and director	Written by Jane Espenson and Seamus Kevin Fahey; directed by Wayne Rose⁴
Principal cast	Alessandro Juliani (Lt. Felix Gaeta), Grace Park (Number Eight Cylons), Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh), Brad Dryborough (Lieutenant Hoshi)¹
Timeline placement	Six to nine days after the discovery of Earth, between the episodes "Sometimes a Great Notion" and "A Disquiet Follows My Soul"²
Home media	Absent from the Region 1 Season 4.5 and Complete Series box sets; released on physical media only in the Japanese Season 4 Blu-ray²
Total runtime	33 minutes 53 seconds across all ten webisodes⁵

Spoilers

Premise and story

The webisodes are set in the interval between the two halves of the fourth season, at a point when the human fleet has just discovered a ruined Earth. According to the Battlestar Wiki, the events take place six to nine days after the discovery of Earth, between the episodes "Sometimes a Great Notion" and "A Disquiet Follows My Soul," although the webisodes were released online before "Sometimes a Great Notion" first aired.²

The story begins with Gaeta aboard a Raptor traveling to the ship Zephyr for rest and relaxation. A computer error during an emergency fleet jump sends the Raptor to an unknown location beyond the Red Line, the boundary of safe Colonial space. Stranded without a functioning FTL drive, the passengers face the possibility of running out of oxygen before rescue arrives.³ When passengers begin dying one by one in alarming ways, the survivors realize there is a killer among them, and fear, panic, and chaos erupt within the confines of the small ship.¹ The situation sets up a psychological human-versus-Cylon standoff in which everyone is a suspect.⁶

Character revelations

Gaeta's backstory. The webisodes are principally a character study of Felix Gaeta, a secondary character who goes on to play a major role in the series' final plot arc.⁷ In interviews at the time of release, co-writer Jane Espenson, a veteran Battlestar Galactica writer who later became showrunner of the prequel series Caprica, confirmed that the webisodes establish that Gaeta is bisexual, with a past relationship with a Cylon Number Eight and a current relationship with Lieutenant Hoshi, played by Brad Dryborough.⁸ Espenson also said the webisodes were designed to fit into the timeline as viewers were experiencing it, roughly between the two halves of Season 4, and that they take place after Gaeta's leg amputation.⁸

The webisodes also establish Gaeta's drug abuse and give context for his intense displeasure with the human-Cylon alliance that develops in the final episodes.⁴ A French-language academic study of the series notes that a secret revealed in the webisodes, one of the motivations behind Gaeta's later mutiny, is accessible only to viewers who watched The Face of the Enemy.⁹

Production

Although the story was designed to fit into the timeline as viewers experienced it, the webisodes were shot after the regular episodes of Season 4.5 had already been filmed; producer Ronald D. Moore confirmed this on the audio commentary for "A Disquiet Follows My Soul," noting that the relationship angle with Hoshi was added at that stage.⁵ Writer Jane Espenson has said the script was originally written to have the pilot Narcho be Gaeta's male lover, but actor Sebastian Spence was not available when the web series was shot after the season.⁵ Espenson later recalled that work on the webisodes had begun many months before they were shot at the end of the series.¹⁰ The ten chapters ran twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays at noon EST, over the five weeks before the Season 4.5 premiere.¹^•⁵

Availability

The webisodes became difficult to watch after their original broadcast. They are not included on the Region 1 box set for Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5 or on the Complete Series box sets, and although they were listed on the distributor's website for the Region 2 DVD box set of The Final Season, they are absent from the released version. To date, their only physical-media release is the Japanese Blu-ray of Season 4.² The PopApostle episode study attributes the omission to disagreements over creator royalty payments for web-streamed episodes versus television broadcast.⁵

Reception

The reviewer Jamahl Epsicokhan of Jammer's Reviews awarded the series three stars on a webisode scale, comparing it directly with the earlier webisode series The Resistance, which he rated two stars. He judged The Face of the Enemy a much stronger effort with a more solid and complex narrative, while noting that as bonus content chopped into ten mini-acts it necessarily has a filler-like feel and is not required viewing.⁴ On TVmaze the series holds a user rating of 7.4 out of 10 from 13 votes.³ Later commentary has emphasized that the webisodes are crucial for understanding Gaeta's motivations in the mutiny arc, even though their overall impact on the main storyline is limited for viewers who skip them.¹¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026