BSGcast LIVE: 4.13 “Sometimes a Great Notion”
WOW! What an incredible Frak-Party! With over 300 fans in 2 days of partying, a killer prop Auction from Propworx, getting to hang out with the cast and crew of the show, and literally THOUSANDS of dollars raised for charity with our own little silent auction, we can’t call the Pasadena Frak-Party anything but an insane success. Best of all was meeting you, and getting to hang out and chat about Battlestar all weekend long!
We couldn’t have done it without our amazing sponsor, cPanel, and thanks to them, we’re giving away a TV!
To top it all off, we joined forces with Michele and Brian from GalacticaQuorum.com to review “Sometimes a Great Notion” LIVE at the Frak Party! This is the first of the 5 BSGcast LIVE episodes and the best comment will go into a very small hat of only five names to win the 32″ cPanel Flat Panel Television… so think hard about the episode, and about the BSGcasts we’ll be posting over the next week, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll have one heck of a Frak-Party of your own when you watch the Series Finale on this beautiful Magnavox!
Click here for more details on how you can win the cPanel Flat Panel Giveaway!
January 19th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Can’t wait to see the event. So wish I coulda gone. Will love to hear what you guys thought of the episode. Looking through the comments I’ve seen about the net, I seem to be the only one who thinks it’s interesting that Saul’s name was, apparently, the same 2000 years ago as it is today. Does that mean their current names are their real, original ones? Maybe the cylons really do “have a plan”, as promised, and we just couldn’t see it because we were looking at the wrong cylons! I’m sure you guys have some great thoughts and I’m looking forward to hearing them!
January 19th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Hey Matt, Do you know how much the Southern Comfort signed by Michael Hogan went for? Just curious…
Helen
January 19th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Can’t wait to see your thoughts about the episode and the interviews! *waits impatiently*
January 19th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Just to get the idea in first…
Starbuck was resurrected just like the final five. The episode ended with Helen saying everything was inplace. Well, it is still in place and Starbuck got resurrected. The question is, how many were resurrected. Was everyone resurrected? Does Starbuck has a special spirit that the resurrection technology on “earth” could see and make whole. The final five maybe the only five the cylons know about but not the only ones that “survive”.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
I thought the final five were in the Hybrid prophecies. Aren’t those pretty accurate?
January 19th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Here are some questions I’d like to get answers to by the end of the series:
1-How did the Cylons that made up the Thirteenth Tribe come to be?
2-Is Kobol really the birthplace of Humanity?
3-What the frak happened to Earth?
4-If Earth was populated with Cylons, how come there are only five final Cylons? Why not 6 billion?
5-Concerning the previous question, before Ellen died, she said to Tigh: “Saul, it’s okay. Everything’s in place. We’ll be reborn…again. Together.” Did she mean that she found a way to make herself, Tigh, Anders, Tyrol, and Tory immortal? Were they all friends back in the days?
6-How come the significant Cylons were aware of them, but nobody knew who they were?
7-What happened to Starbuck? If they come up with some cheesy explanation, will we still hold the show in high esteem?
8-If Daniel Greystone (Caprica) created the present day Cylons, and, by the same token, was the original programmer, was he aware of the Final Five?
9-What was the Earth like when the Thirteenth Tribe landed on it?
10-Using their protocols, the rebel Cylons determined that the bones that were found on Earth belonged the other Cylons. Did they ever bother to test the humans of the Twelve Colonies?
11-We can assume that “Colonial Humans” have been in existence for about 5,000 years, so why hasn’t anyone come with the concept of monotheism before?
12-Who’s the one whose name cannot be spoken?
13-Where does it all leave us? By that I mean where does the world as we know fit in? Is BSG taking place in an alternate universe?
14-Should a reasonably sane person be asking these kinds of questions??? Will people dressed in white coats come bursting through my door any time soon?
15-Know that I know who the fifth is, can I die? Is there something more?
January 19th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Hey Matt and Nat!
I’m so glad the Frak Party went well. I wish I could have been out there with everyone. I’m sure it was a blast!
As for the episode, I think it set up the final episodes well. With many different story lines to follow it will be great to see how they all finally converge.
The most shocking part of the episode, for me, was when Dualla committed suicide. Seeing her go from rock bottom on Earth, to having hope twinkle in her eyes when talking to Apollo, to pulling the trigger was a moving experience. Her resolve was sobering. After looking back on her experiences as a character, I found myself understanding the pain she was going through. I believe her actions echoed some of feelings the fleet was experiencing.
An interesting point, will she be “reborn” like Starbuck apparently was? Is there something about dieing on/near Earth that enables “rebirth”? And will she then be a Cylon…or something else?
Can’t wait to find out!
January 19th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
sorry *dying
January 20th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Mario had the idea on the previous page that there was an endless cycle of humans creating cylons who create humans who create cylons etc. – what a great concept. What if robots created flesh and blood creature to be slaves just as humans created robots to be slaves. Cylons wouldn’t see their creations as being alive in the same sense that humans don’t see robots as being alive. And it would be a great tie in with the Miniseries when, in the first line of dialogue of the new BSG, the six asks the station officer “are you alive?” It’s a great question for the series to ask – what really defines being alive. And robots creating humans seem plausible as the cylons have mastered using organic building material – They created the skinjobs. They created the basestars which are partially organic. They created the hybrid to control the ship instead of using a computer.
If this turns out to be true, did the humans rise up and destroy the cylons on earth just like the cylons rose up to destroy the humans?
January 20th, 2009 at 12:17 am
Well, thee, I don’t think Starbuck was brought back in the same way the cylons were. Yeah, it seems pretty coincidental that other dead people from earth would show up on the other side of the galaxy with missing memories also, but there are some significant differences.
1) The Final Five have all aged – they showed up young and have slowly advanced to their real (aka time of death) ages. Whether that’s coincident to their arrival back at earth, or merely the desire to have the actor’s protray their own characters for audience recognition purposes. But we do know that Saul HAS aged, because Adama used that point (the fact he went bald) as an argument that Tigh couldn’t possibly be a cylon. That means Saul came back to life *younger* than he was at time of death, where we know that Starbuck has come back at the exact same age she was when she died. This in itself suggests different mechanisms, but there are other differences as well.
2) Starbuck wasn’t just brought back, her ship was brought back. There might have been some hidden cloning technology responsible for sewing back together deceased organic material, but that can’t account for the re-creation of her ship. Even if it could, it can’t account for the programming in her ships computers, which as we saw in this last episode was pretty well blown to pieces. Or the fact that none of the other inorganic stuff on the planet (buildings, etc) were reconstituted.
3) Ellen, Saul, and the others really ARE cylons. There’s precedent for cylons being able to ressurect. While Starbuck COULD have been the fifth cylon, and there was great evidence for it, it seems she’s something else entirely. Hopefully nothing too Star Treky – an extra Kara created by a transporter malfunction or a temporal rift or etc etc.
We KNOW she died. We know something rebuilt her and her ship. And it wasn’t just some time-double spat out by the maelstrom, because she remembered being on earth and her ship caught her previous ships colonial signal. She remembered the feel of the air, she said. So however she was reborn, it was on earth itself (I’m assuming here that Crash Kara never got to experience earth herself. Dead Kara, Crash Kara… whatever!)
Whatever Kara is probably has something to do with the Head people, who I would at this point have gone so far as to say were ghosts except there’s been a Head Baltar.
In coming shows, will we see 2000-years-ago Chief dating a 2000-years-ago Boomer? Were the cylons we already know (I’m looking at you especially Cavil) somehow flawed copies originally based on pre-cataclysm cylons spooling out of control? Sure we’d been led to believe the skinjobs were something new that evolved from the Cylon War era centurions after experimentation produced the hybrid. But this discovery of a whole planet of skinjobs 2000 years ago puts some of those basic assumptions in doubt.
I think if cylons and humans work together, find a new home together, maybe the cycle of one side nuking the other will end. And maybe that’s Kara’s real roll, to end the cycle. And maybe that’s the Head People’s plan, since it’s been Head Six’s interactions with Baltar that ultimately set the groundwork for cooperation with the cylons via D’anna.
January 20th, 2009 at 12:53 am
@Jinx: Great analysis!
So much needs to be explained. I personally think that Cavil knows a lot more than he’s telling. Isn’t his model #, Number One?
Does that make him perhaps the oldest of the Cylons? Even older than Tigh?
Let’s just hope RDM & Co., have not written themselves into a proverbial corner. I am hoping they went back and *really* re-watched previous episodes to keep and maintain one of the most important things in storytelling—-CONTINUITY.
Besides all of the BIG questions I cited in a previous post, I’m really hoping they explain and answer some minor ones such as:
—-Will Tyrol figure out that Tory “offed” Cally, and will he confront her?
—- Will Gaeta get to pimp slap Anders for giving him a stump?
—- Will we *finally* know why there is a Head Six AND a Head Baltar?
—- Why did Anders and Starbuck get those tattoos and what’s its significance?
and finally, What did Matt & Nat think of “Sometimes a Great Notion”?
Inquiring minds wanna know.
January 20th, 2009 at 1:05 am
Answers for Magnus (”answers” would be more accurate):
1. Cylons are an advanced race of people who have been around for thousands of years.
2. Yes.
3. Robots created by the cylons became self aware and destroyed the planet.
4. The Final Five are NOT cylons… exactly.
5. The Final Five have been around for thousands of years… long before Ellen spoke those words.
6. Someone knew who they were… but he knew that knowing their history would be very bad for the “Significant Seven.” You see, if the 7 knew who the five really were…
7. Starbuck died. However, she is also alive.
8. No.. and no.
9. Earth was a thriving natural wonder when the 13th landed on it.
10. Yes, the cylons have tested the humans. The dead on Earth were all cylons. There is no mystery there.
11. Someone has. It is just not the dominant belief.
12. Voldemort?
13. BSG is taking place around a million years before our time.
14. Yes… I mean, no.
15. You don’t know why the five are different. You don’t know how they came to be. You don’t know what will happen to the humans, cylons, Starbuck, or the Five (we should stop calling them the Final Five since they are the original five).
January 20th, 2009 at 1:45 am
Well then DarthRazorback, I won’t need to tune in next Friday. Nor for any other fridays for that matter. Thank you.
Concerning the one whose name cannot be spoken, I’m kinda leaning toward “Who is and shall be”. What do you think?
January 20th, 2009 at 1:57 am
I’m just figuring that if Ellen may not be the Final Cylon because Tigh isn’t the reliable person in the world considering ever since the miniseries, season 1, season 2, season 3 and 4, he drinks a lot, above any standard of Canadian drinking. Also, because he’s a Cylon, he saw Ellen when he saw Caprica Six, so he’s probably just projecting the image of Ellen in the brig and again on Earth. Making the possibility of the Final Cylon still being a female, just not Ellen. One thing that disgruntled me was that Starbuck’s hair should not be in perfect condition compared to her charred corpse, because if she crash landed or was shot down, her Viper would of been on fire so…. her hair should not of been there in perfect condition, I think the dog tags would of just been fine. Another thing in the re-cap you guys did, one women stated that there is nothing really that looks like the Temple of Aurora where they were, but if they did land on our Earth, in New York, and that was the Brooklyn Bridge, then the Temple of Aurora was probably Madison Square Garden, it just had a make over and renovation. And finally, in regards to the TV movie of Battlestar Galactica (The Plan I think is what they’re calling it), I guess it’ll be about the Final Five on Earth before the nukes droppped, maybe?
January 20th, 2009 at 2:02 am
I’m a fan of the cyclical history theory.
Lets assume the humans, at some point in the past created centurions. They rebelled, blew up some humans and constructed skinjobs similar to the significant seven. At which point those creations suddenly started to desire what we call humanity in exactly the same way the cylon rebels have. Eventually they became mortal and evolved back into humans, losing the ability to resurrect.
I believe the final five are hybrids, the only ones from the ancient civilisation that still have cylon traits, the ability to resurrect (albeit in a different way to the seven) and pick up certain signals. To support this theory you have Hera and Nicholas, who represent the next generation and the beginning of a new cycle. In addition you have the much-quoted line “All of this has happened before and will happen again.”
I really love this idea. Creations betraying their creator is an old sci-fi staple, but seeing it come full circle, seeing the creations make the same mistake is very, very awesome.
Who knows what the frak is up with my beloved Starbuck though? RDM seems to be dragging us in to Philip K. Dick land with that one, which is also totally awesome. I’ll still love Kara though, whatever the hell she may end up being. I’d love to hear some more theories of what’s going on with her.
-PurpleOddity
January 20th, 2009 at 2:08 am
Mind always rolls over when trying to go to bed. Idle thoughts.
What if skinjobs didn’t evolve from the centurions? What if the centurions found a cylon “ark” of some sort, aka a ressurection hub, and all they really did was wake up the skinjobs? Maybe after the cataclysm the hub, or ark, or whatever, drifted for thousand of years before the cylons were awoken. Maybe the final five were the first five somehow, and Cavil was just the first to awaken and did something to get rid of them? I know these last 5 are supposed to be “fundamentally different”, but what if its just because they’re cylons who weren’t tampered with by the modern day cylons, and who were scattered somehow? Maybe the other cylons, the copy cylons, were altered and mass produced by the centurions and THAT was the reason they made the hybrids – to figure out HOW to integrate the skinjobs they found and maybe ever bring them under control – which obviously failed. But destruction, counter-destruction, enslavement, retributive enslavement, ad infinitum are motifs of the human/cylon conflict, so not entirely outside the realm of possibility.
Why is their a break in the skinjob model #’s? Seven is skipped. Is it just so people wouldn’t think of Voyager and the borg Seven of Nine? Or were the final five purposefully excised and the other models just don’t remember it? Perhaps weren’t even awake yet. Maybe that’s what Cavil’s #1 really means – that he was the first to wake up, and got to manipulate how things proceeded from there.
Probably silliness, I’m tired, but trying to fit the pieces together. Caprica said the skinjobs evolved from Centurions, but it was never explained how. Maybe it was just something they were programmed to believe – by someone who would profit from the truth being kept secret.
January 20th, 2009 at 3:28 am
Well I rewatched the Ellen reveal znd I noticed something. She said, “We’ll be reborn….again…..”. Now the way she said that it implied to me that they were being reborn (resurectted whatever) again. As in they’ve done this before. Being reborn I mean. Does this mean they’ve gone through the reborn process before? Have they been eyewitnesses to tge cycle of death and rebith of civilizations? If they been around 2000 years, who’s to say they haven’t been around 2000 years before that. What if they were on Kobol as well and went with the 13th tribe. Maybe that’s why Tyrol was pulled to the Temple of Five back on the alge planet because he’s been there before!!!!
Or am I just reading too much into a single line?
January 20th, 2009 at 3:54 am
Ok First Off I have No knowledge of the Old Series So if I Sound like a moron I’m Sorry!
Earth, Or what ever it maybe , my Theorie.
Pretty much us now(give or take a few hundred years) A war Starts( KA BOOM!), We go under Ground and build The First cylons, Their purpose is to go to the surface to gather supply’s, after years living like this We(humans) begin to die out, But we figure out how to cheat death by downloading in to robots, a while later factions emerge, one faction Wants to be human again as they miss feeling, The other Faction wants to retain their Robot Bodys cause they think they are better then humans.
They figure out a way to make new bodys And With that Human/cylons begin to exist, after that the two factions begain to fight over who ’s better the 12 People in charge (Both human and Cylon)( 12 lords) Cast out The Two factions that Threaten the World, Wiping Their Memory’s Of Earths location.
The Human Cylons go out and make the 12 Worlds, And after Year’s Of Living On new worlds they forget, And Thus They all think they are humans, Then They make cylons again, war Starts , And The “Humans” Flee.
IT all starts again.
The 12 Lords , Fearing The Factions Might Return to wage war Put in place and insurance policy, 5 Unique Human/Cylons To Watch over humanity and Help Useing Five DNA samples From Blast Zones(I don’t Why), These Five are all Inherently Good, And Will always Make The Right Choices(-Tory, Damn Cally Killer…).
Tigh- Defends us
Tyrol- Helps Us help our selves.
Ellen- Helps Despite The Cost To her self and Tigh, For The Grater Good.
Tory- Right hand to The President, helps her Make the right Decisions.
Anders- A Public Figure That Helps Rally People and Gives Them Someone to look up to/ Gives them hope.
Five Fail Safes To ensure Human/cylon’s Can achieve Peace
Once The 12 are all together their programs will Link, the 12 lords will give them a message and they will Have knowledge that ends the war, at least for now.
Kara Is The 12 lords Chosen Person, She is The Harbinger of Death cause she Will End The War and Bring peace By Reuniting the 12 Cylons, And The 12 Cylons Will be Judged By The 12 Lords and Some Will Die, some Will live.
Kara Will Kill The World as we Know it but Give us a New world, a world we want.
January 20th, 2009 at 4:04 am
Ellen is the fifth.
January 20th, 2009 at 4:51 am
Ok, just watched the discussion video. I have been in Hatch’s camp, at least when it comes to what he said, for a while. I always figured that when they got to Earth, that they would just destroy it. Now, the writers decided to have it destroyed when they got there, so they want to emphasize a lesson on the audience. That lesson: Humanity will never stop trying to destroy itself until it changes how it lives and dies.
I think the underlining point is that humans, and those who wish to be human (cylons, and any machine that can have independent thought), will always choose sides, pray to some being, and draw a line in the sand that then someone MUST cross. This will never change until intelligent beings cease the need for power, glory, deities, and the need to belong to a faction. So, in other words, we are all fraked. It will not change… and even if we know this, we will still find a way to destroy everything we worked toward.
However, I am not sure if the BSG writers intend on giving the audience no hope. I think they will give us something… perhaps in the form of real higher power… gods and angels and such. Because if humanity can’t get along, at least it can have fictional characters to pray to right before killing their neighbor.
January 20th, 2009 at 8:49 am
@Jinx.
The idea of the mechanical Cylons of the Colonies finding an ark of sorts would explain what really bugged me about the Resurrection Hub. Namely, why couldn’t they just build another? Clearly they can build Resurrection Ships. If the Hub was some sort of lifeboat from Earth that would imply that all of the Cylon’s biological technology was based on something they found, and can only imperfectly copy.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:04 am
I wonder if we have things mixed up completly, what if the final five and the rest of the huminoid cylons are an extension of (Earth’s) human race that somehow connected to the colonial Cylons, what if what the fleet defiens as Cylon is actually Eath Human? Which leads me to belive a theory I heard long ago, what if what the fleet belives to be human, is Cylon to Earthlings?
January 20th, 2009 at 9:29 am
The S7 know about the F5 so somewhere between when earth was destroyed and before the cylons attacked the colonies there was some sort of interaction between the two. I’m in the corner of those that believe that somehow the final five gave they centurian cylons (directly or indirectly) the technology to create skinjobs. I would like to see what happened in the forty year gap between when the cylons left and when they attacked the colonies. Where is their homeworld and are there still cylons and the ability to ressurect there?
My other big question is about Kobal. Head six said the colonial’s mythology about it being paradise was wrong – then what really happened there. We now know that there were cylons and humans there – did they know about each other being different? Did one create the other there? And was the Paradise story a cover up so humans in the future would never know about cylons? It brings up D’ana’s theory on New Caprica that humans needed to be destoyed so that future human generations don’t hear stories about the cylon’s genocide and decide to go find and kill them. Perhaps the mythology of Kobal was an alternative history so future generations would never know about the genocide that took place there and they could go their separate ways without the fear or revenge. Maybe this is what will happen again – present day cylons and humans will come up with a story to tell future generations as they go separate ways – so it can happen again and again.
And what is different about people dying there? Will the colonials go back to Kobal? After all it is the only habitable planet they know they can still live on. The only reason they left before was because the cylons were there and the colonials wanted to find earth instead of staying there. Neither of those is a problem now. The cylons could go live on the colonies as radiation did not seem to be a problem for them when they were rebuilding Caprica.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Wow – apparently people really want that TV! I’ll try to get a decent response in, but the volume of previous material is somewhat prohibitive.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:38 am
I’m glad that Ellen is the 5th cylon. She was my choice because it was the best character arc for her character, someone who was with us (only mentioned) from the beginning and the whole Baltar Cylon detector thingy. She showed up in the fleet such a strange way, with no memory of where she had been, it HAD to be significant. The writers of this show do give the actors such great stuff to work with. Wow.
So my thoughts..
In Tyrol’s flashback there seemed to be a wide variety of “models” of cylons, including children. So it seems obvious that cylons were not always limited to 12 models.
I always thought that it was odd that Tigh and Ellen didn’t have any kids, considering how much they seemed to get it on. What if they did have kids? What if Kara was their child? Think about it. She had a terrible childhood, raised by someone who didn’t really seem to care that much for her, someone who treated her as a burden. Maybe she was a foster mother?
It would make all the fighting and tension between Tigh and Kara have so much more meaning. A nice character arc for both of them.
Unless Kara is some sort of Goddess (still possible), she must be a cylon who has resurrected. She is a very good pilot – too good perhaps? Very tough. Too tough? The clone theories are kinda lame frankly. I also was thinking that her ship has also resurrected just like the Cylon ships do.
And rest assured we’re going to see Ellen again. That means that she resurrected somewhere, right? Another hub? A secret hub? Are there other Cylons on this hub? ???
Unlike some, I didn’t find this episode without hope. The cycle will start again. It’s just about who survives to start that cycle. That’s the hope!
January 20th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Ellen is the fifth, people – it’s been hard for me too, but I understand that they didn’t want this to turn into ‘Who shot JR?’ , they wanted to continue the story.
She’s in almost all the following episodes and RDM says so too…it’s also explained in an interview with the actress – go to the link I posted above, it’s at the bottom of the article.)
January 20th, 2009 at 10:24 am
ARE THEY ALL GOING TO DIE?
The biggest thing that stood out for me in this episode was accepting the inevitable. The Pres is throwing in the towel, Diana believes it’s not worth running anymore “all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again”
Adama’s talk to Tigh was the highlight of this week, and there were many great highmights. His story about the foxes growing tired and giving in was written well and spoke volumes about a possible fate for the entire crew-namely death.
So here are my predictions:
Everyone is cylon-if hamanity came from Kobel and some survivors settled on the 12 colonies and some went to Earth, they just might all be cylons.
Everyone is going to die. The great story Adama gave about the foxes giving up and growing tired spoke volumes that you can’t put of the inevitable. Diana also spoke about “all this has happened before and will happen again” and she is tired of running. Not to mention the President and crew have given up.
The final five are special, they are the preists and leaders of the cylons however everyone can be reborn.
Dee saw something in the water like Tigh that made her kill herself with no remorse or fear. What did she see? I beleive she saw her past like Tight, Tyrol and Anders. The jacks she found were hers when she was a child on earth. The pic of her on her locker strengthened this for me.
Starbuck, boy this is the toughest one to guess. Her Viper serial number 8757NC is almost the same as the crashed Viper except it’s 757NC. What’s the 8 for? is this the 8th time this cycle has happened? Will their be a 9th and 10th?
Maybe her role is to guide everyone to the inevitable, the death of human and 7 cylon models since they can no longer resurrect and begin this cycle once more.
One more thing, beautiful work on the flash back with Tyrol and Anders music. I wonder if Anders played All Along the Watchtower to K. Trace on Earth 2,000 years ago. Was that the women he mentioned?
I guess we will know more soon.
January 20th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Hey all! Wow, what a brilliantly dark episode, and fantastic score to boot! My theory of the final cylon is now shot, but I think my theory may still be accurate (or at least, somewhere close to it).
I presented my long-arse theory to scifi forums, and I must say we’ve come up with some pretty interesting things together. I think it still holds pretty strong, and you’re welcome to view all of it here:
Part I:
http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2319583&view=findpost&p=5879612
Part II:
http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2319583&view=findpost&p=5879616
It’s pretty long though, so here are the most interesting parts of it, followed by further interesting connections we made afterward:
First, I think “Faith” from season 4.0 was one big clue. We have the “four, glorious in awakening” represented symbolically in the ferry sequence, and of course Anders saying “it’s okay, I’m with you.” Just like what Emily said she heard in her dream, in the very same episode: “and I heard a voice….it said, ‘don’t be scared, Emily. I’m with you.” Word for word. I think the “role” the five play in the cycle of time is to guide souls from this life into the next, across the stream.
The Maelstrom is a symbol of death. Every time we see it, death is associated with it: a supernova that obliterates a system, a storm system that Kara is trained to kill herself in, and a spot inside a temple in which someone standing there is killed. And since the “Eye of Jupiter” is supposed to be a road sign, it may simply be saying “follow Kara’s example for what you seek.”
I think the stream that is frequently referenced in the show is the “space between life and death,” as headLeoben puts it in “Maelstrom.”
Now, remember the hybrid’s prophecy from “Razor”? It states: “and then they will join the promised-land gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.” Now, Kara has been given angelic symbolism many ways: the tattoos on her arm, the Godess of Aurora statue, and Leoben actually calls her “an angel, blazing with the light of god, eager to lead her people home” in “The Road Less Travelled.” The Harbinger of Death title is still open to interpretation, and indeed can be multi-faceted. If that is a literal meaning and not dealing with pure humans mating themselves into a hybrid race, then she might convince everyone to die (or force them to) in some manner, thereby leading everyone to the promised land. It seems obvious that this is our “angel” from the hybrid’s prophecy, as she has been to the “promised land” and also will “lead the human race to its end” in its most literal sense in order to reach the promised land. I also just recently found a correlation, be it coincidental or not: Leoben says to Kara in Maelstrom: “you’re afraid….of the unknown, of death.” She eventually overcomes her fear and kills herself. And in Faith, Baltar says, just after Roslin wakes up from her “experience,”: “…and you will no longer need to fear the unknown. Because he will take your had, and guide you to the other side of the river.” Now since RDM himself says in a lecture about the religions of BSG that the main point of the religion in the show was to prove that “they [both mono and polytheism] are both right on some level and wrong on some level.” Well, Baltar got the stream and not fearing unknown right, just not the people who take you by the hand. They took D’Anna by the hand in the Temple, as she was dying!
More to come (my posts are too freakin long!)
January 20th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Hey all! Wow, what a brilliantly dark episode, and fantastic score to boot! My theory of the final cylon is now shot, but I think my theory may still be accurate (or at least, somewhere close to it).
I presented my long-arse theory to scifi forums, and I must say we’ve come up with some pretty interesting things together. I think it still holds pretty strong, and you’re welcome to view all of it here:
Part I:
http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2319583&view=findpost&p=5879612
Part II:
http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2319583&view=findpost&p=5879616
It’s pretty long though, so here are the most interesting parts of it, followed by further interesting connections we made afterward:
First, I think “Faith” from season 4.0 was one big clue. We have the “four, glorious in awakening” represented symbolically in the ferry sequence, and of course Anders saying “it’s okay, I’m with you.” Just like what Emily said she heard in her dream, in the very same episode: “and I heard a voice….it said, ‘don’t be scared, Emily. I’m with you.” Word for word. I think the “role” the five play in the cycle of time is to guide souls from this life into the next, across the stream.
The Maelstrom is a symbol of death. Every time we see it, death is associated with it: a supernova that obliterates a system, a storm system that Kara is trained to kill herself in, and a spot inside a temple in which someone standing there is killed. And since the “Eye of Jupiter” is supposed to be a road sign, it may simply be saying “follow Kara’s example for what you seek.”
I think the stream that is frequently referenced in the show is the “space between life and death,” as headLeoben puts it in “Maelstrom.”
more to come….my posts are too long for this forum.
January 20th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Al I got to say is… I TOLD YOU SO!!!!! LOL
Great cast guys! It was an absolute pleasure seeing and working with you guys again this weekend. GOd Bless and hope to see you again soon!
January 20th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I’m just wondering how the final five were counted as part of the 12 models if they lived 2000 years ago. My theory is that in one of they’re resurrection cycles, the final five encountered the TOS cylons 40 years ago, and convinced them to declare an armistice if the final five would help them evolve. My guessing is that the final five wanted to repopulate they’re home planet and needed other skin jobs made so they could succeed. The final five then helped the robotic cylons to create the skin jobs we know now, with Cavil being number 7, and the final five collectively being number one. For a time, all 12 cylon models live together. However, since the robotic cylons have served they’re uses, the final five give the order to scrap them (the guardians get away however). In Anger, Cavil rises up and assumes leadership and erases the final fives memory while banishing them to the colonies, and then he wipes the minds of all the other skin jobs. Those visions D’anna kept seeing in season 3 could easily have been lost memories that she was starting to remember. And the significant 7 make they’re own cylon robots.
I realise there are alot of holes and this close to the finale isnt the time to have theories, but i just think it would be an incredibly interesting direction to take.
January 20th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I wasn’t originally 100% convinced that the Ellen reveal was in fact legit, but after seeing interviews with Kate Vernon and other supplementary stuff, I’m now quite sure that it really is true. They would be going to far too much trouble to fake us out otherwise and that’s really not BSG’s style. This is also why I believe that this world really is Earth. Which I guess makes us Cylons? Kinda spooky.
I think though, when it comes to the revelation of the 5th, that they eventually decided to not make it that big of a deal. I mean, Kate Vernon’s name is in the Guest Stars credit roll. If they really wanted to hide it, then they would have done the same thing they did in Crossroads Pt 2, where they didn’t give Katee Sackhoff credit until the end (something I just noticed the other day on re-watching the episode). I think the impact of the initial reveal isn’t as important as what will happen next.
I also definitely feel that there is a copy of Ellen out there somewhere. If only because it would be a bit of a waste not to have her deal with her Cylon identity.
January 20th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Oops, misspelled my name above. You get the idea.
I just wanted to add that I also am definitely a proponent of the Beings of Light theory, because they are a big missing piece from TOS that is not in the re-imagining. While they might be completely left out of this version of the story, I’m still clinging to them as the explanation for the Head Characters.
Maybe they even are the Lord of Kobol, to pick up with a comment made in the podcast? At very least, something larger is going on than just the human vs cylons conflict.
January 20th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Sorry to triple post, but my brain has just been going into overdrive.
So, if the Lords of Kobol are the Beings of Light and the Head Characters are too…then that would mean the Head Characters are the Lords of Kobol. Which of course puts an interesting spin onto the whole One God religious talk that HeadSix always goes on about, but it could also make sense because if she is one of the Lords then maybe she doesn’t consider herself a true god. Maybe they never intended to be seen as gods, but the humans did it anyway and that’s what corrupted everything.
It’s an interesting thought that would tie a lot together, at least IMO.
January 20th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
@ TheOnes: I think you are definately onto some major ideas here. I’m going to take about two or three ideas from your thoughts, and remake them.
I think there was a basic consensus to take Cavil at his word when he said that he wanted to stick with the original programing the seven had recieved in ‘Six of One’. I think this was a mistake. I think that TheOnes got it right when he spoke of Cavil taking an active role in reprogramming the seven (whether this was unilaterally or not), and also in trying to work against the Final Five. Thus, his priorities of reprogramming the raiders and keeping the Centurions as unintelligent, and his callousness to the prospect of killing the Final Five.
We definately have Cavil as the keeper of secrets among the Cylons. RDM even referred to him as such in the commentary during Rapture. He wanted to keep D’Anna from learning about the FF in Rapture. However, he’s been a passionate voice for learning about the location of Earth – he even referred to finding it as so important that he described it as a miracle in Rapture as well. However, why so interested in finding earth and so uninterested in finding the FF? Probably because the seven we know about were made by the FF, but the seven, being primarily derived from colonial cylons, had an agenda on their minds – killing their human masters. So, the FF become no longer associated with the seven one way or another, and plant themselves in the colonies to prepare for the coming attack of the Seven and try to save some humans in the process. Armistice being declared after the FF made contact – that makes sense. We’re probably seeing a mixing of the FF branch of cylon technology and the human branch of cylon technology, with the Guardians being an example of the purely human branch of it all.
Cavil will find earth and D’Anna, and the conversations between those two will become very interesting indeed – we’ll learn a lot.
TheOnes – I think the role the centurions and the raiders are playing puts them in league with the FF rather than opposed to the FF, so the FF wanting them destroyed makes little sense to me.
—
I think that we need to maintain a strong distinction between humans and cylons – the line is blurring, yes, but the colonists are truly human and the cylons are truly not human, even though there’s some mixing happening. Those who are saying “They are all cylons” miss the fact that this would completely unmake the show. Mutual animosity between cylons and humans could be the definition of the cycle of time (Leoben from Flesh and Bone): This time I’m the prisoner, next time you will be the prisoner – this time human survivors captured a cylon killer, next time cylon survivors will capture a human killer). The only thing that could break this cycle is the next generation of God’s children – the cylon-human babies.
The videography made it clear we had people other than the FF on Earth. Were the Seven to be replacements of the lines that didn’t make it back?
I’ll grant that the ongoing ambiguity about what planet we’re on is real. I’m postponing judgment until they see fit to be clear about it.
I’m reasonably sure that the ones to nuke the 13th tribe were humans. I don’t think they created the humans though – maybe they brought a couple hundred along with them from Kobol as slaves, and the slaves rose up against their masters…
Matt – I’m pretty sure that you’re “beings of Light” will be tied up in the line from the Watchtower song “While the women came and went, bare foot servants too” – see last page. I posted a BIG exegesis of the song. Tell me what you think of my theory of head characters, visions, etch being tied up with that.
Kara’s resurrection is strange. No one else saw the Malestrom or heavy raider but her, so I chalk that up to a vision of some kind. However, the best explanation for how she got to Earth (I’m calling it that out of habit) is that she crashed into something with an FTL which took her ship to earth in pieces. The 13th Tribe’s resurrection hub, if it could produce a copy of a human being (Or a cylon for that matter – this makes the most sense) would have found the comparatively primitive technology of a Viper trivial. How she got to the Nebula – I dunno – an FTL assist makes the most sense. Some force is orchestrating all this though – I’m betting it’s the descendants of the human civilization which nuked the cylons. However, beings of light can be inserted in many places to take the place of the FTL movements. I think she’s human, or an authenticly complete and unblemished cylon copy of herself. I don’t think she’s a being of light. However – one last possibility. It may be that Starbuck is simply dead dead, and that this is a being of light taking her place, which will disapear once her task is done. This reminds me of Shelly Godfrey, the six who vanished off of the Galactica – that six could be chalked up to being a being of light too.
January 20th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
All the information provided is very well thought out. However with out explaining myself. Some can be far fetched and some can be dead on depending on the views of the fans that are reading the posts.
I for one enjoy the show for what it is and the story that is being told. Some of have said that Ellen is the fifth Cylon but after listening to Ron Moore’s commentary off of the scifi.com video broadcast.
Let’s just say “What has happened before will happen again” Look back at our own culture and remember one very well known fact.
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF!
So Say We All!
January 20th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I’m going to double post too – sorry – but one final theory:
Sam composed “All Along the Watchtower” – I’m willing to bet that there is an actual location they referred to as “The Watchtower” that we’re going to be learning about as the four try to remember what actually happened.
January 20th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I really liked the comment about Kara being Aurora one of the beings of light. I’m sure there could be many possibilities about what is going on with Kara but something tells me that, that is what’s going on with her. The leoben of light that came to her when she was flying into the eye of jupiter, and helped her say goodbye to her mom. The fact that just before Kara died she said “Their waiting for me” I think she was referring to the beings of light.
However, something even trippier is that there were beings robed in light in the opera house who are actually the final 5. I don’t know if they are beings of light or not but if they are, then it could mean that the lords of Kobol are cylons…. it could mean that the human race was created by cylons as a next step in thier evolution. That all humans are descendants of cylons. The final 5 could be cylons and beings of light. There could be many more beings of light than just them. Someone is guiding all of this, someone is bringing them all together. The hybrids seems to know this and see this. Roslyn was guided on the basestar by Elosha of light, Baltar is being guided by the caprica 6 in his head. D’anna is being guided by her dreams and visions. Why are these specific people being guided. Baltar wants to know what he is as much as Kara does. Perhaps they all represent a lord of Kobol???
January 20th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Various thoughts:
In keeping with the “All this has happened before” cyclical history of the show, the fleet will find the remnants of the 13th tribe, possibly in one of those F, G, or K class star systems. If another copy of Ellen is anywhere, it would be there.
On the flip side, there are no more copies of the other four (Aaron Douglas hinted as much in 2007 at a con). While the 13th used resurrection to extend their lifetimes (see Ellen’s statement), I would guess that all of the 13th tribe only wanted one physical copy going around at a time.
The current skinjobs did not evolve from the mechanical cylons. However, their memories have been tampered with so they assumed that was their history. If any of them doubted that, it would be Cavil (the general skeptic).
The Galactica will be destroyed/decommissioned in the final episode.
January 20th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
This was by far the darkest episode of the series…and I think it worked brilliantly!
Ron said in the podcast and in interviews that this revelation of Earth as nothing more than a dead planet had to have serious consequences for the characters. With that in mind, I think the suicides of Dee and D’anna made perfect sense. These two women were driven by one thing: faith. Faith in something more, in something better at the end of their journey. When that faith was broken, so were they. I believe Dee made the decision in the Raptor and that’s why she was able to have a few happy moments before her death, because she knew her suffering was almost over. I think D’anna made the same decision, albeit taking her life in a less-dramatic way. The mere fact of Dee’s suicide was not shocking to me but the means in which she carried it out was the biggest shock of the episode, at least for me. I imagined that once Gaeta left, Dee would steal some morpha from his locker and either Lee or Gaeta would find her body at the end of the episode. Her decision to shoot herself really shocked me as did D’anna’s decision to simply stay on the planet and slowly fade away. I would’ve suspected D’anna to commit the more dramatic, violent final end. Both characters were very important to the series and will be missed but I was very upset by Dee’s death. I think she was the most under-developed character in the series and I was really looking forward to seeing more of her in 4.5. And for the first time, I actually liked the romance between Lee and Dualla. They had finally become a couple I could root for and then…well, let’s just say that was a nasty little trick by the writers.
Kara: I honestly don’t know what Kara is but I suspect her ressurrection was partly due to the ressurrecting abilities of the 5 and partly due to the ‘Head’ entities. I have no idea where Kara’s storyline is going but I LOVED the scene of her burning her own body. The shot of her gathering the pylons was absolutely breathtaking. I also think CKR did an incredible job at showing Leoben’s doubt of himself and his beliefs. For the first time since we’ve seen him, Leoben lost control and lost faith in his vision of the future and of Starbuck. It’ll be interesting to see how their relationship changes now that Leoben no longer sees her as this prophetic angel.
Obviously, the biggest reveal in this episode was that of Ellen Tigh as the 5th and final cylon. I have to say, I was pretty surprised by that decision. She was certainly a suspect but not one very high on my list. I think Ellen-as-the-5th will make perfect sense once the rest of the storyline plays out. The one aspect of this storyline I find hard to believe is the epic romance of Tigh and Ellen. I never really saw their love as this eternal, unbreakable bond. But Hogan and Kate do have great chemistry and it’ll be interesting to see how Ellen figures into the rest of the season. I’m also wondering where Caprica fits into all of this. Some have suggested that maybe Ellen was a precursor for the 6 model and that’s why Tigh has been “seeing” Ellen through Caprica…I don’t know. I have a feeling there’s some connection there that has not yet been revealed. If Ellen does re-emerge, what will she think about her husband impregnanting another woman?
And onto the children: We still don’t know what role Hera, Nicky, and Caprica’s child will play in the future of these two races. I have a feeling that innocent little moment between the Agathons was put there to throw us off-base: To make us believe that this family has been through the worst when in reality, there’s more tragedy still to come. That moment of delight with the Agathons was one of the more shocking moments of the episode, simply because it stood in contrast to every other scene. I hope this wasn’t the last time Hera and her parents will enjoy a nice, family moment.
All in all, this was a phenomenal episode. In my opinion, it was one of the best of the series. BUT, it was incredibly hard to sit through. There has only been one other episode of television that made me so uncomfortable and that was BTVS’ season 5 episode, The Body. Both episodes deal with sudden and shocking losses but this BSG episode is the darker of the two and that is no small thing.
January 20th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Hi all, I was greatly priveliaged to be one of those who got to go to the Frak party on Friday night, thought I could not stay till sunday. Meeting Nat and Matt was great and they both always make me laugh and bring a smile to my face. as a side note Nat, though my wife will kill me, you are very cute
On to the review: The final episode which shocked us all as we watched in a room with 200 of our closest friends. First off, I will miss Dee, I was not expecting the shot heard round the Battlestar, I just thought she was happily getting ready for bed. The collective gasp in our room told me others were surprised as well. Next, I was not a fan of the Tigh and Adama confrontation. It just didn’t work for me. Adama asking Tigh to kill him. Adama is devastated sure, but having never really believed in Earth anyways I don’t think he would want to die when it turned out the way he thought it would to begin with. Lee coming into his own and dealing with no earth to settle on has been great. He has gotten Roslin’s drive that no matter what the humans must survive and He I beleive will be the next commander of the Battlestar. Starbuck, I am not sure about her arc but I hope it is not a parallel universe type of thing( that’s too cliche for me). I am preparing for the final episodes to have my heart broken in every one of them. Edward Olmos has told us in several interviews that the show just gets darker from here. As to Ellen as the final cylon, I thought it was starbuck but I believe RDM when they say it is Ellen, I think they want to move on from the final cylon topic and end the rest of the show and there are a lot more questions to be answered. Back to the Frak party, I want to thank the stars for coming out to see us and giving us their time, Richard and Luciana were wonderful but my favorite was the twenty minutes that Hogan came and talked to us. He came to us on the way to the NBC pary, but that he stopped for us for just that short time shows his love for the fans, also who took the time to come meet me and try to get to know me for those three great minutes and he even let us take pictures. I wish I could have gone Sat and Sun too but I am extremely thilled to have been there friday. Thank you guys again for putting on these frak parties. Finally, I think it deserves more of our attention that Mr. Hatch is an incredibly crafty fellow. His no Disclosure statement prevents him from telling us straight out about earth and wheather or not it is our earth, but He did give us a clue with how to think about it. His whole story about excavating layers of civilizations who continually destroy themselves in a never ending cycle of war and destruction has got me thinking. I’m not sure of the answer yet, but I think one of those civilizations that destroyed itself was in fact ” our earth” and we are just several hundred millenia into the future and it is our planet earth that the galactica crew is standing on. The cylons very much could have taken over our planet from us, killed us and settled here on our world.
January 20th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemely AWKWARD…when Ellen shows up to find out Saul’s got a bun in Caprica’s oven! Cat fight alert!
Why is ‘Hera Half-Human’ in the opera house visions, not Caprica’s future baby? What’s Hera’s connection to Caprica? What does the door mean/where does it lead?
Beings of Light/Lords of Kobol are what?
Boomer is a big lynch pin.
January 20th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Frak me! Sorry about the repeating posts! I didn’t realize the update wasn’t immidiate! It usually is….I thought my posts weren’t getting through.
January 20th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Matt- I also agree that it could very well be the Beings of Light. I mean, in the original series, the Beings of Light brought back Apollo after he was killed by Count Iblis. For this version of the show, the Beings of Light (though not as much mystical) may have different techniques in bringing someone else back to life, which may include cloning. I also think that the Beings of Light are involved in a lot more than just Starbuck’s resurrection. I think that they were the 12 Lords of Kobol (in a deleted scene from “Kobol’s Last Gleaming”, Elosha tells Tigh about why humans had to fleet Kobol, because one of the Gods wanted to be elevated above all others, which caused a war. That story pretty much describes the Beings of Light/Count Iblis story). In fact, I think that the Beings of Light got involved with the Cylons too, but Count Iblis caused a lot of harm by proclaiming himself as the Cylon God (which would explain how the Cylons came to believe in a God). And I think that the Head characters (such as Head Six, Head Leoban, Head Baltar and Head Elosha) are also controlled by the Beings of Light (for Head Six and Head Baltar, I think they are controlled by “Count Iblis”). Also, I believe that D’anna didn’t really see the Final Five in the Opera House vision in “Rapture”. I think she saw the Beings of Light as they took on the appearance of the Final Five, as a means of influencing events in order to get the RTF and the Cylons to realize the truth about their existence (I know what you’re thinking, but if you recall TOS’ “War of the Gods”, the Beings of Light told Starbuck that what he was seeing was “merely a projection”, in other words, a manifestation for him to interact with). Why would the Beings of Light and “Count Iblis” in this run be involved with the events of the show? Simple: They’re in competition. The Beings of Light are trying to break the humans and Cylons out of the cycle, whereas “Count Iblis” is trying to keep them in the loop until one or both species are extinct. Of course, I could be wrong. And why would these Beings be involved with humans and Cylons alike? I can’t explain it, because the whole theory serves as a backstory to my machinima comic book fan fiction series that I’ve been working on. And explaining it spoils the series even before it gets off the ground. Of course, I could clearly be wrong, this is only my interpretation of information and details I’ve noticed in both the old and new series.
Also, another small tidbit I noticed about this episode and previous ones. It may be actually about Starbuck. In “Faith”, the Hybrid, on two different occasions, says, “The children of the one reborn shall find their own country.” Starbuck, in all senses and purposes, was “reborn”. So, maybe the Hybrid knew something else.
January 20th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
I think that the big reveal for the second half of the show is that we’re not questioning the things we should. I’m reminded of the movie Memento: the whole way through the struggle is for Leonard Shelby to find and kill his wife’s killers, but it’s only at the end of the movie that we realize that while we’ve been asking questions about how he’ll make it through his task, we never stopped to see if we were asking the *right* questions. Just as in Memento, the core assumptions of the piece, that the killer wasn’t already dead and that his wife had actually been killed by them, turned out to be wrong. So it is, I think, with BSG. Namely:
There are more than 12 models of cylons.
Starbuck is the 13th cylon.
If the newer skinjobs were only passingly aware of their own history, and of the other five, it certainly stands to reason that there might be cylons that they don’t know anything about, and that they don’t even know exist.
There’ve been questions about what the revelation about Earth being populated by Cylons does to the spin-off, Caprica, because isn’t it somewhat pointless to watch this guy stumble through the creation of the cylons if they’re already around? I think that it doesn’t, assuming the idea of creating these successor beings is part of the larger cycle: each time a different person, a different cylon, believing he’s human, creates the cylons, who rebel, destroy, exodus, return, attack, etc (one wonders if Earth and Kobol have been the location of multiple exoduses and calamities over time).
Back to my idea about Starbuck being the 13th: When Anders finds the remains of a guitar, he tells the group not only that he played All Along the Watchtower for the others, he also played it for the woman he loves. That seems an odd throwaway line this late in the season, and it makes me think that the woman he loved, even back then, was Starbuck. Why stop at one pair of ill-fated lovers hitched to each other for all eternity?
Part of my desire that Starbuck is a cylon rather than a goddess or something like that is because this is sci-fi, not sci-fantasy, and though there’s been much talk of religious experience in the show (especially from Baltar), the events are only religiously significant if you interpret them as such; luck and coincidence could as easily explain the time when Baltar randomly pointed to the fuel station on the asteroid they attacked in season 1, and the gods seem to be humans and cylons from an earlier cycle, who’ve been mythologized over the thousands of years. Revealing Starbuck to be something more would knock out the legs of the show, I think, and they’ve so far not gone the fantastical route. This is also why I think/hope that Head Six will be shown to be, in the end, AI loaded into Baltar’s head, with the Opera house being some sort of virtual reality environment. After all, if cylons “project” themselves into hypothetical environments, and there turns out to be precious little difference between humans and cylons, it stands to reason that humans could interact with a cylon virtual construct.
Also? Leoben isn’t obsessed with Starbuck because he’s her father, as some have speculated. He’s obsessed with her because, as one of the previous-cycle cylons, Starbuck is his mother.
January 20th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
You’ll have to forgive me if some of these ideas have already been brought up I have not have just begun reading blogs so I am not familiar with all the theories that are floating out there and I hope I do not just repeat defunct theories.
The first thing I want to say is that Baltar did not know that Ellen was a Cylon because he rigged his test to always read negative for Cylons, so that he wouldn’t have another awkward moment like he did with Boomer. The episode “Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down” gives plenty of hints that Ellen is a Cylon. The fact that she cannot remember how she got off Picon and several weeks after the attack, even though there is a story that could cover her, it is possible she was somehow saved by her Cylon programing or even resurrected some how. The most telling moment for me however, was when Head Six told Baltar to watch Ellen. All interesting ideas I stupidly disreguarded because she was dead.
My theory is that Cavil may have taken Ellen’s body off of New Caprica or perhaps some kind of programing resurrected Ellen before all the Cylons had left New Caprica and the Cylons took her.
An idea I have wondered about is that in “Six of One” Cavil states that the Original Programers thought it was important not to contact the final five and that contacting the final five would threaten the survival of the Seven. Why was contact the main concern of the Programmers? Thoughts of the final five would naturally bring about curiousity and create a desire to find them. We know now why the final five are special and perhaps we have even seen some of the ramifications of why contacting the final five would be dangerous. Since there is only one copy of each of the final five their deaths would be significant; they were almost killed in “Revelations”. So perhaps contacting the final five was programed into the Seven to prevent them from accidently bringing about the Final Five’s deaths. But it seems that contacting the Final Five is not a warning for the Final Five’s well being it is a warning to the Seven. So is there some idea or mission that the Original Programers knew the Final Five had that would superceed anything and could threaten the survival of the other models? Were the Seven built by the Original Programmers to help bring about the goals of the Final Five and not to actually interact with them? Perhaps the Original Programmers wanted the Seven to colonize the Twelve colonies and leave the Final Five to take humanity to its new home. We do now know from Ellen that there is a plan because everything is in place. Is this a plan for just five people living on Earth or is it a plan to save or resurrect all the Skinjobs on Earth?
So here is my theory now that I have watched the latest episode. CONTACTING the Final Five is the most dangerous thing for the Seven to do because it is the only thing we know is forbidden. Contacting the Final Five must have interfered with something because the Original Programers would not have hidden the Final Five’s existance from the other Seven if they did not believe the Final Five’s mission was the most important. Which means the Original Programmers were or knew of the plans of the Final Five. This and the fact that the Final Five were all spared in the attacks leads me to think that the attacks on the twelve colonies were planned by the Final Five to force humanity from the colonies and towards a new home. The Final Five knew of the other twelve colonies because the twelve colonies knew of Earth so the plan was designed to bring humans back together on one planet. Perhaps the Original Programmers were giving a gift to the Seven and allowing them to have the twelve colonies or perhaps they were just designed as a tool, either way they were not to interfer with the Final Five. I like this theory the best, but you could take it another way.
Perhaps the Final Five were known to the Original Programmers to be danger to the Seven and contact with the Final Five was thought to bring out more human aspects in the Seven that could have them repeat the sins of their parents. Thus the final five surviving was a coincedence. However, with Ellen having things in place it seem to convenient that the rise of the Skinjob colonial Cylons would coincide with the rise of the 2,000 year old Skinjob Earth Cylons who are obviously more technologically advanced than the Colonial Cylons because they are able to recreate their own bodies and conciousnesses on planets lightyears away and 2,000 years later.
Also before I end this rambling I’d like to mention that while the Hybrid in “Six of One” is supposedly talking about the Final Five she keeps repeating “They will not harm their own.” This could mean many things but it could imply that the Final Five only look out for their own and that they do not care about the other Seven.
Before I close this I’d like to thank Matt & Nat for the extremely fun time I had in Pasadena. This is the first time I’ve posted on here and I did so mainly because Matt insisted I do so. I hope my theory isn’t too ridiculous and I’m missing some significant story point that would void my entire theory. Thanks to everyone who read the post to this point, it is awesome to be able to share in the Battlestar Galactica community.
January 20th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
I’m sorry but Ellen Tigh as the final cylon? So anticlamatic, it’s been hinted at since season 1 that she was a cylon, and given that i was expecting it to be someone we completely didn’t expect it was disappoiting for me. I always thought she was one. Everything else was great though, Earth cylons? interesting, i think that means we’re all cylons! w00t!
What destroyed Earth though? Maybe, if it really was OUR Earth and we are all cylons then we simply just destroyed ourselves as we are probably gonna do in real life. Shrugs, who knows. I’m preparred to except the idea that it wasn’t our Earth.
I wish i coulda been at the frak party!!!!!!!!!1
January 20th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Hi All,
I have read most of the comments, and I loved reading everyone’s theories; oh and btw, i love the idea of Leoben being Starbuck’s son! awesome idea! But before I go into my thoughts and questions, I have missed Zarek, and I am so glad that he is back and part of the revolution. He has also been a true fighter for humanity, although in a different way, he does believe in the freedom of the human race.
I have 2 theories about Starbuck: The first is that I think that she was the woman Anders mentions; ie, the one he wrote the song for. It makes sense that they are drawn to eachother, but not necessarily be soulmates, as apparently Ellen and Tigh are!? It would make sense, but she is also inextricably bonded to the Adamas, most notably with Apollo. The next is that she was on earth of 2000 years ago, and that’s what she saw and that’s where the self that lived then, died. She flew into the apocalypse, but somehow resurrected and came back, much like the 5. In fact, I would even say things are messed up for her because the present self, died at the same time as the old self. But the fact she’s not a cylon, is even more confusing. I think that all the cylons who have had visions, including Roslyn, and what Starbuck saw the earth that was, it’s not a lie.
But I am confused for a few reasons:
The 13 tribe were cylons; but what does that mean? What does it mean the Saul killed his soulmate, for betrayal? I thought they needed the 5. The other thing that I still don’t get, is that the 5, have been the fiercest fighters for humanity, even Ellen in her own way, as her undying loyalty and love for Tigh is what killed her in the end. What happened in the next two thousand years, why do they only remember dying once? Yes, Ellen says it is all in place, but how? why? When we thought it was new, as did the humanity since day 1 of the series?
Does anyone have any thoughts on those 2,000 years?
A
January 20th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
I think that many of you have some interesting theories, but a few of them are a little wacky or short sighted.
First of all, Leoben is not going to be Kara’s son. That is a plot point an amateur would write. The same goes for the notion that Ellen will be Tigh’s and Six’s child… ridiculous to the point of the people thinking it being a danger to humanity’s procreation.
Second, it should be pretty obvious to most people that the F5 and S7 are different enough that no test for one would identify the other. So, Ellen would not have been discovered by Baltar’s cylon test. RDM has been saying that they are different for over a year now… so, take him at his word to some point.
Third, in RDM’s history, he has never written a plot point that was the complete opposite of what it suggested. So, Starbuck will not be a cylon. RDM has said there are 12 cylon models… and so there will be TWELVE CYLON MODELS. No more.
Fourth, Starbuck’s existence as a reborn version of herself may never be explained, and I think I prefer that. If there is some kind of mystical explanation, then I would rather not hear it. If it is some supernatural power at work, then leave it to our imagination. Though, I am sure that if they do decide to introduce the “Beings of Light” that they would do it without being cheesy, but I doubt that will be the explanation anyway. I think the living Starbuck is Starbuck, and not a clone. I just think she may be a physically manifested angel… as Leoben said in the earlier half of this season:
“I see… an angel, blazing with the light of God. An angel eager to lead her people home.”
But who are her people? Well, the hybrid on the cylon basestar said:
“The children of the one reborn shall find their own country.”
The one reborn… not the oneS reborn… but the one. Now, we have two people who may very well be considered reborn: Starbuck and Ellen. So, their children will find their OWN country… not Earth. Figuring that Starbuck is the angel that will lead the children of the one reborn… then Ellen’s children will find their own country. But Ellen has no children… or does she?
Are the S7 Tigh and Ellen’s children? Is Starbuck God’s instrument who will lead the children of the one reborn to their own country? Are the F5 perhaps an instrument of God as well, who create new races every few thousand years in hopes of improving humanity? Are we all created in God’s imperfect image? If so, is Baltar wrong? Or are we all perfect and need to accept God so that we may love everyone? Is that the message of the show?
I do think that we will find out that the Five have been reborn many times and that they have been around for 5,000+ years. I also think we will find out that Starbuck has done this at least twice before. I also think we will find out that the S7 have been around for a lot longer than 40 years and that they suffer from the same memory loss as did the Five… probably on purpose. I also think that we will not know any more about this for at least FIVE EPISODES. Because RDM is going to make us think about it until the last few episodes and then just let loose the flood of information.
January 20th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Having said all the above, here is a little different perspective on that.
What if the F5 (Original Five) created the S7 for the pure purpose of destroying the colonials? They returned from a destroyed Earth, 2,000 years ago, and then created the S7 after finding the now fully self realized toaster cylons. The F5 (O5) then realized that this was going to be a completely repeated process (having experienced it themselves) and created the S7 to take over the toaster cylons and then to destroy the colonies, forcing the survivors to find a new home. The F5/O5 then put themselves in positions that would lead them to power and then either:
1. placed themselves in locations they KNEW would not be destroyed by the attack or
2. Knew it didn’t matter since they would be reborn (this one is a bit difficult since there has to be some place to be reborn, or so we think)
They also programmed the S7 with the notion that they needed to procreate with a human so they could become “alive.” But why do this? Because the hybrid cylon-humans posses something that counteracts the will of the gods/god. In other words, the F5/O5 are the bad guys… as Tigh said on New Caprica:
“We’re on the side of the demons, Chief. We are evil men in the gardens of paradise, sent by the forces of death to spread devastation and destruction wherever we go.”
Granted, he said that sarcastically, but I could see the writers using this as they were writing the story out. So, the F5/O5 discovered a way to resurrect and then used that knowledge to create the S7. They then orchestrated the attack on the colonies and then either shut down… were killed and reborn without their memories… or some other explanation that makes sense as to why they don’t remember any of it. Perhaps they just did it to protect themselves in case they were captured and tortured.
This would make Hera that much more important to the F5/O5 plan… as she represents the first hybrid human-cylon child. Perhaps one can only be born when a human and cylon mate… and not when one of the F5/O5 mates with a cylon or human. The only thing I can’t figure out is why is that important to the F5/O5? What would a hybrid child mean to demons who mean to destroy the gods/god?
And that is where the head-characters come in. They are God’s servants, or God Herself. They could be seen as God’s warriors, who can manifest themselves in a physical form but choose to present themselves otherwise, for the most part, and instead fight against the F5/O5 using God’s children, humans.
Look, I could be way off… but what if this is not just a lesson in the human error, but also a story about how humanity saved itself from demons who challenged the might of God?
January 21st, 2009 at 2:16 am
It has been all about hope. But maybe, the secret is that there is no hope.
Starbuck is the harbinger, not the cause, just a sign that the cycle is about to repeat.
What if the true original humans created the resurrection process and put it under control of the first “cylon”. The cylon was a simple machine with the instruction to continue the human race inspite of itself. So when ever the human race destroys itself, it simply starts the cycle over as closely as it possibly can to the first cycle. The consequence is an eternal repeat cycle. It steps in and repairs timeline errors such as Starbuck dying by making a replacement along with a viper. It replaced baltar who died on caprica with a new one. Each replacement character gets just enough memory to continue the cycle. Each cycle has its adjustments. Hope springs eternal that the cyles will end but the first “cylon” was without soul or vision. It keeps the race going by reset.
The search for perfection of baltar’s one god and the cylon god is the “hope” that the one/true/original “cylon” is wise enough to make things right. It can improve the cylons models but not itself. It can keep the story line going but repeats the imperfections of mankind and dooms all to repeating history.
The destruction of the hub was the attempt to stop the cycle but it was just a substitue hub. All hope is lost. But hope springs eternal. So tuck your loved ones in bed. Tell them that tomorrow is another day. But what has happenned before will happen again.
P.S. I could have sworn that I types this comment before…..
January 21st, 2009 at 3:41 am
I like your theory, immortal, but I don’t think that is where RDM would take it. I think he is going to give us a resolution to hope and that the hope will come from Baltar. I have felt from pretty early on that RDM wanted to paint Baltar as the “bad” guy, only to make him the ultimate savior of mankind. Hell, I think that in the end he will be the savior of human and cylon. And then we will argue for ten thousand years whether saving two races absolves him of all his other bad deeds…. like a more complex Darth Vader.
However, wouldn’t it be awesome if the final minute or so of the series is a narration by one of the cylons that goes a lot like that?
A long shot of space. We see planets.
“Hope springs eternal…. tomorrow is another day… all this has happened before and will happen again… ”
We see the camera pan down and now there is a medium shot of our planet Earth. The moon is also apparent.
“And again… and again…”
Nuclear warheads rise from the ground and enter space. Then return back toward the Earth.
Now the camera begins to follow one of the nukes into the atmosphere.
“And again…”
The nuke is seconds from impact. A large city can be seen below the missile. Cut to black. Series over.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:46 am
loved the cast guys, good to see you back! how i wish a frak party could have been organised in the U.K!
Awesome episode though! Did anyone else find the scenes with the disenchanted crew hard to watch? And i hate seeing drunk adama, its just too sad. I also hope roslin pulls it together, i dont think she has much time left!
me and a couple of friends have been trying to figure out some things between us. i dont know if this has been brought up, but we’ve came up with this theory:
The Twelve lords of Kobol where Cylons. They created their own ‘Cylons’ to serve and worship them. that would be the humans of the colonies. they end up rebelling against the gods , and are cast out. They then go on to form the twelve colonies.
While the 13th tribe left much earlier, they settled on earth, and built themselves a race of Cylons. These cylons eventually became skinjobs, and began breeding with the humans of the 13th. that is why the galactica crew discovered cylon bones, thousands of years of interbreeding. Eventually the mechanical cylons of earth rebelled, resulting in the explosions we saw in the episode.
Now i think the mechanical cylons of the 13th tribe may have came to the 12 colonies, and helped their mechanical brothers of the 12 colonies, starting the first cylon war.
this whole cycle fits with the repitition that is mentioned.
also, anyone see the resemblence between Baltar and the 12 cylons and Jesus with his 12 apostles?
I Call baltar for Cylon Jesus!
January 21st, 2009 at 11:23 am
I have a theory, possibly incorrect theory, but a theory nonetheless. My theory is that “The Final Five” Cylons are also going to be the last five survivors of the entire fleet on the exodus from the 12 colonies destroyed by the Cylons. I do not think that Ellen is the final Cylon. I think they are all Cylons and the final five are special because they are the ones who survive and are the chosen ones to repopulate and start again. I also have a thought that they will find a new planet, call it Earth, and it will be Caval’s forces that will destroy the planet and start the cycle of “this has all happened before and it will happen again.” However, I do not think we will see that attack and the full understanding of that story line until the new series of Caprica.
I am just as much in the dark as the rest of you guys are, but I got the impression from Thraice’s discovery that if anyone was the final five it was her and then with the insight that it might be Ellen, it leads me to believe the final member is neither of them. They are all Cylon-Human hybrids or Cylons, or humans, and the fifth has yet to be revealed.
I am working on understanding the story as I re-watch this episode over-and-over again. I have to say though that the editing during the scene in which Tigh is rummaging through the waves to find Ellen and then the scene cuts back to their apartment, the explosion, and then back to Tigh in the ocean was BEAUTIFUL! The editing of that scene was genius to me. I am so sad this show is coming to an end because it is so rich in story, writing, acting, directing, and originality. These are storytelling qualities that are sorely lacking in modern literature, plays, movies, etc.
Ryan.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Did anyone notice that the Cylon helmet in the ground in this episode is actually the helmet from the aborted Bryan Singer/Tom DeSanto relaunch of BSG?
They really love all the fun hat-tips to the fans!
January 21st, 2009 at 1:42 pm
oops, sorry for my crappy html on the prior comment.
January 21st, 2009 at 2:43 pm
i guessed dee was guna die as soon as i heard he voice saying “previously on bsg” the only time secondary characters say that is when they are about to die im pretty sure both kat and cally did. I thought the whole 13th tribe was cylon was obvious as it was the obvious plot twist but it brings up many plot holes, why would cylons leave a machine that kills other cylons? so im hoping that will eventually make sense.
January 21st, 2009 at 2:46 pm
also with all these really over the top ideas like time travel etc. i think u are forgetting that is exactly the kind of thing ronald d moore has distanced BSG from since day one, no aliens, notihng like that so its not going to be some generic sci-fi twist it’s going to be something more dramatic
January 21st, 2009 at 2:47 pm
last thing, this just occured to me with them saying earth is heaven, what about the boat scene when roslin’s friend dies, the other side looked alot like a green, lush earth… interesting?
January 21st, 2009 at 3:47 pm
It’s so great to see you guys doing your thing again. I wish I could have come to the FRAK party.
Matt I’m with you on the Ellen thing. Disappointed but willing to wait it out.
I can’t believe the Dee suicide there has got to be more to it than meets the eye.
Here’s to a great 4.5 season and will greatly anticipating your next BSGcast.
January 21st, 2009 at 8:50 pm
You know what I say about Dee–Good Riddance. How weak she really did end up being to have to kill herself because they didn’t find the perfect Earth they had hoped for. They had endured so much to get there, this just seemed a stupid waste. Maybe her contract was up. I mean really? A possible reconcilliation with the huzz, not fighting with the cylons…that’s not enough for Dee. Weak, so weak.
On the Ellen thing, I didn’t get to read all the other posts yet, but couldn’t Ellen just be an old Six? I mean, Saul ages, why can’t the Six? Thus his attraction to the Six in the Brig–and why aren’t we talking about how she is pregnant? Yeah, I don’t think Ellen is the 5th.
Computer is dying. More at a later date.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Wow… Theresa… talk about missing the boat. Dee’s suicide was meant to show us how desperate a person of strength could feel at having their hope crushed yet again. The point of that moment wasn’t to show that she was weak but that she was HUMAN. You are projecting a lot of your own fears into the character, and that probably says more about you than anything else.
In any event, having had the misfortune of dealing with suicide on a personal level, I would say that they were very accurate in their portrayal. When a friend of mine killed himself, it wasn’t his worst day. Hell, some of us actually tried to talk to him that day about it. I spent hours with him talking to him about all the good things in life. But, later, I realized that it was too late at that point. He had already made up his mind. It didn’t matter what anyone said, or what good were to come from that day… he had already checked out before he shot himself. It was the amount of pain he had suffered that just one day was too much for him.
Interestingly enough, he, like Dee, was also a war veteran of the fleet, who had never fired his weapon in anger, but had saved some lives. And like Dee, one day just ended it all because it just all got too much for him. He wasn’t “weak”… he was hollow.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Darth is right about Dee. Having been to that edge, but never stepping over it, I totally understand what Dee was facing. Suicide becomes possible when the pain of living equals or is less than the pain of dying. With Earth being a wasteland, Dee lost all hope. Her death probably represents what was not uncommon amongst the fleet.
It would not surprise me if “our” Earth is actually a planet within jumping distance of Earth. The survivors of the nuclear blasts went out into deep space to found the 12 Colonies. Perhaps they founded a colony closer to home – one they called Earth in memory of their ancient home. Someone is going to jump there just as all the combatants are killed at the series end. Gaeta and an Eight?
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:16 am
I just remembered something this morning relating to 2000 years
According to “Kobols Last Gleaming” the 13 tribes left Kobol around 2000 years ago, yet when they find Earth, they also find that it was destroyed 2000 years ago.
Is this RDM forgetting that he had already mentioned 2000 years in relation to Kobol, The final five’s flashbacks and the fact that humanoid cylon remains were found all over the planet suggest a flouroushing well established society on Earth more than would be expected if they had just arrived on the planet before they were nuked.
One scenario is that the around 2000 years has a leeway for error either way of a few hundred years so we have 2300 years ago Kobol is evacuated and 1800 years ago Earth is nuked. This gives the 13th tribe sufficient time to find and colonise Earth and then for somethign to happen to cause it to be destroyed. It may also be that Earth and Kobol existed at the same time and there was occasional travel between them so when the time comes to leave Kobol the humanoid cylons rather than go to the 12 colonies go back to Earth.
Another related scenario is that the scriptures got things mixed up and rather than leaving for Earth the 13th tribe arrived from Earth causing the Exodus.
Final wacky scenario the 13th tribe left Kobol to find Earth when they reach Earth after fleeing Kobol they found it was inhabited by humanoid cylons so they decide to nuke it, they were then either destroyed while attacking Earth or founded a new home on our Earth
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:11 pm
im annoyed about dees death, we now have such a male heavy cast comparing:
.. oh wait never mind
female:
number three, eight and six
ellen
roslin
tory
starbuck
thats pretty much it
could also add seelix and racetrack but they havent really had a proper storyline and wont get one till the episode they are killed off…
oh and romo lampkin’s cat
male:
cavil
leoben
doral
simon
adama
apollo
gaeta
tigh
anders
chief
baltar
cottle
zarek
and if were including racetrack and seelix we should add
hot dog
skulls
romo lampkin
thats ridiculous and its cause they keep killing off the women think about they killed off just this season dee, natalie, matthias, cally, that brownshirt on the bayship, they’ve also killed off kat and ellen (ok ill forget about that), elosha, cain etc
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Ori- I’ll admit that your right there is a heavier male cast. However many of those men have very small parts in the show.
Doral and Simon rarley have any parts, Cottle, Zarek, Hotdog, Skulls and Romo Lampkin also have very minimal roles in the course of the show as well. Kinda… only go to them when you need something kind of characters. With the exception of Zarek I guess.
Even though there aren’t as many female characters in the show anymore. Thier roles are far larger and more dominant and impacting than most of the male characters. Roslyn, Starbuck, 6, 9 and 3 and tory being some examples. I can at least take comfort in that. The female characters they’ve killed off have at least not been dominant characters. Matthias was usually background, Dee was never really featured, Natalie was only in the show for a couple of episodes anyways. Elosha and Cally were pretty much the only main female characters that have been killed off. Admiral Cain is in a category all on her own… I looove admiral cain and secretly hope they bring her back anyways, and since I heard they are in fact bringing back Ellen they very well could bring back Cain.
This show has been one of the leader in representing true equality over the years. Where equality is not even an issue, they’re already on the next step. I’m sure if there is a heavier male cast for the last half of the last season, it is not meant in a sexist way.
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Charles: They left Earth about 4000 years ago. The beacon in “Torn” was about that old, and the temple of the Five was about 3000 years ago. They’ve been consistent.
Kirsty: Thanks for that analysis. Equality isn’t an issue here, and evidently it remains an issue for us if we get worked up about gender imbalances. Flip 100 pennies, and you won’t get 50/50 – even 75/25 isn’t that extreme of an outcome (Though it is rare).
Theresa: That’s kinda harsh to say about Dee. Others have answered, I’ll leave it at that.
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:17 pm
@Darth and The 2 others –Let’s not make this personal. I was stating what I felt about a FICTIONAL character, I wasn’t projecting anything. Sorry to have touched a sore spot with so many of you. I didn’t miss the boat on what her suicide meant, I just didn’t buy into it. I am entitled to that. I never cared for her character, it wasn’t a well thought out one and weak in more ways than the suicide. For that, I am glad she is gone. Hip, hip HOORAY! If there would have been a corpse burning, I would have brought some marshmallows…
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Mat & Nat, thanks for making this such a great site.
Here is my theory – Our Earth was the beginning of all of this. We created cylons, they rose up and destroyed most of us, except for creation of hybrid children to grow and build a new race on Kobal. They were created to worship god (head six master programer) and other cylon gods (probably 12 in total). Head 6 only purpose was to be worshipped as a god by the new generation of human/cylon children. So as long as the new human/cylon race would continue to worship Head 6, all is well. But, over time the new civilization began to pull away from the cyon gods. First though, 5 of the cylon gods leave kobal with some of the children to start a new life on a place they call earth. This angered head 6. Head 6 is the one that nuked the “new cylon earth”. Ellen expected this so she had backup plan. At some time thereafter, some of the other cylon gods on Kobal help the civiization leave/escape to the 12 colonies before Kobol was destroyed in war with head 6. Head 6 has one goal, to control and be loved by gods children. So now, head six is leading the human/cylon race to destroy themselfs again, so she can pickup the pieces with new family of gods children and start this all over again, where she helps them, they love/need her. If they get it wrong again, we will do this over again and again. Head 6 can appear in different forms to anyone (seeing how they are all cylons of one generation-version or another). I think Kara was one of the gods that helped them escape Kobal. Baltar is also one of the Gods. Kara will help them escape again.
Couple of ideas about opera house. This ongoing saga-tragedy, could it be playing out like an opera tragedy, again and again. Does head 6 watch it all from here? If it has a pratical function, is this the original hub-redemption center. Real humans no longer exist, so all could all can be resurrected?
They will find original earth that is now ready to sustain life again, and begin again. Interesting if they find original resurection hub, and call back anyone to be reserrected.
Jump
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:13 pm
My thoughts:
The act of destruction and renewal has been going on for eternity. However, Hera and Nicholas is the first time things are different, their birth having been arranged by the one true god, intent on ending the cycles once and for all. As the last true or pure Human and pure Cylon civilizations begin to break down, Hera and Nicholas will assume the role of Mother and Father to a new generation of Human (organic) x Cylon (machine) intellegence, able to avoid the cycle of Human enslaves cylon, and then Cylon enslaves human. Thus they truly give birth to the Earth civilization that we know today, truly the “face of things to come”
Kara will play an integral role in the destruction of the cylons and humans. A harbinger is a sign of things to come. Throughout history and literature, harbingers and omens figure prominently, and are responsible for major decisions which have altered the course of both. She will bring them all to their end, having served the purpose of the one true God.
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Hi All,
I definitely think that Kara is the one who is the “one reborn” in the prophecy. But the harbinger of death could be so many things: it could be the metaphorical death as many have said before, ie. she will begin a new civilization where humans and cylons breed, or she ends something that begins w/Nicholas, Hera and Caprica’s baby. I don’t think that there will be a total annihilation of both races. I have also been thinking that perhaps they do end the cycle, as D’Anna wants as well as Apollo–who I believe is supposed to be part of that path. Zarek always said he would be able to make the hard decisions even those that are unpopular with the people.
As for Dee, her character was never fully developed, and she often served as someone who gave hope and clarity to both Adamas, and kept Apollo going when he was broken by war, his Dad, and Kara. I was shocked by her death, but in looking back at the episode she again became a
symbol of hope gone, as she broke when she saw what earth really was, and was inconsolable when she and Helo were in the front of the shuttle. She did all the things she wanted to do, but could never have. She could never have a familly, or a baby, ie. babysitting Hera, and going out one last time w/Apollo. Maybe she could’ve had a family but never w/Apollo, and after what they have all been through, she was just done. Who could blame her? As for Apollo being upset, who wouldn’t have been?
I can’t wait until tomorrow night! Oh, and does anyone know of any events for the finale which may be happening in NYC? I know it’s early…
A
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:32 am
I found something else that supports my previously stated theory. Remember the hybrid in “The Hub”? She uttered the following: “The wing beat of the dove drown out the heartbeat of those who follow the sixes back in the stream…back in the stream that feeds the ocean that feeds the stream.”
That’s like…woah, dead on with what I was hypothesizing! Those who follow the SIXES BACK into the STREAM! And of course the stream that feeds…etc, to me is conveying simple repetition, in other words, the cycle of time. In this sense, the six really IS a demon (remember the repeating 6’s in the notebook?), because she starts the cycle over again, only to have billions more suffer and die, and have more civilizations face peril and annihilation, while the five “rescue” the others and lead them to a more “enlightened” existence, away from this cycle, whatever that might be (just like the hybrid said in Six of One: ‘rise and measure the temple of the five….transformation is the goal!’). And what is a dove? Why, a pure, white animal with wings! Our beloved Kara Thrace, the Godess Aurora and Harbenger of Death! Those who follow the sixes (Baltar and Hera) back into the stream means they’ll never cross it. They’ll just end up back in the cycle, or in the hybrid’s words, “back in the stream that feeds the ocean that feeds the stream.” No promised-land for j00, Baltar! :O
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:33 am
Oh, and I almost forgot. Back in scifi forums, when I posted my theory, someone made a connection between the Five’s “duties” and Buddhism. Her post mostly says this: Basically the Final Five are Bohdisattvas. In Buddhism, Bohdisattvas take a vow to help other souls out of samsara (the cycle of reincarnation) and on to Nirvana (enlightenment or liberated consciousness). Following this train of thought, perhaps the “space in between” is the Bardo. Expanding on that, The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a manual of instructions to be read to the dying/dead person to help them liberate themselves from samsara and end the cycle of rebirth. The ultimate goal, as I understood it, is to realize that everything is a psychological projection. If, during the various stages through the Bardos, the dying person fails to realize this, he/she is condemned to another cycle of birth and death. During the transition through the Bardos, the person will meet both angels and demons. The trick is to realize that they are one and the same, and to get past the fear. Sound familiar to what has been going on for nearly four seasons? headSix, headLeoben, and headBaltar have been haunting three different characters, which means that it isn’t just Baltar going nutz.
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:21 am
Heya folks,
I’ll just link to my Review or Episode 413 as it’s a bit long and has some images.
Adalla’s Episode 413 Review
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Adalla, I have to completely agree with your assesment of the episode. Every last queue is something I want on the season 4 soundtrack: the terrible, dissonant “Earth” queue from the very beginning; the wonderfully haunting iteration of Kara’s destiny theme; the even more haunting humming from Dee as Adama looks at her body, and Kara’s origional theme as she burns her own body. Some of these have developed with the show since season 1, and have just become intertwined with the show itself. When you think about how this series has matured in EVERY way, but especially the score, it’s just astounding. You will never find another show with a score this good – believe me, I’ve looked. It has got a composer that has the same feel for the story and tone and characters and complexity as the writers do, and reflects that in the music. And it still manages not only to boost the dramatic impact of the show by 100%, but also can stand on its own as albums.
It may not seem this way, but the main reason WHY I watch this show now, aside from the answers, is the score. There is simply nothing else like it on TV.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:33 am
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of score, does anyone else notice how the “Temple of Five” theme ONLY shows up now when Kara is on screen? Isn’t that a bit odd? We know she’s not the final cylon, so why this strange choice? The only actual times we’ve heard this melody is:
-Eye of Juputer: The chief is called to the Temple
-Rapture: D’Anna sees the Final Five
-Maelstrom: Starbuck sees her mom on her deathbed
-Faith: The hybrid tells Starbuck she is the harbenger of death
-Sometimes a Great Notion: Starbuck is looking at her own dog tags, which she removed from her dead body
…..hm, the plot thickens! What does this mean? I am at a loss, but I sure as frak caught these instances. I pay very close attention to the score.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:39 am
It’s even more odd to think about because whenever you see the final four, the Temple of Five theme does not represent them. They are usually accompanied by the “Final Four” theme, which is basically lifted from his own “Watchtower” arrangement (go back and listen to the scene where Anders finds the lute. When the piano comes in, that is the melody that represents the four).
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Ok i may be waaay off with this one but since there is a 13th tribe could the big secret be that there is a 13th model of cylon that nobody is aware of and it turn out to be starbuck?
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Ori Soldier,
you forgot one male character who has always been in the background, we never really see him – just hear his name every other episode, and for some reason like only when the ship is under attack or something like that.. Oh yeah, and talk about secondary, tertiary or even further down than that. The person I’m thinking of doesn’t appear to have a real first name or rank. He’s simply known as:
Mr. Hoshi
Leftover from the Pegasus CIC, he was. And now he’s been moved up a few notches. Think he’ll go next?
Ellen being the final-final left me feeling like when you’ve been craving for a huge gigantomaniacal hamburger for days and when you finally get one it’s brunt, over salted, the bun is saggy and there’s no ketchup. Or something to that affect. But hey – you gotta eat, right?
I find it interesting that she knew that they would see each other again. Which leads me to ask: why didn’t the others know. Did the Ellen we became acquainted with know? I think she did – she was really strange in her first appearance back in season 2. I always had the feeling she was beating herself up about something. The drinking certainly didn’t look like it was for fun. Something was going on… but I’m not going to say I saw it coming, that she should be the one.
But the question still remains: who nuked earth if it was not the cylons? Or maybe it was them – civil war?
Kara:
whoooooa. I knew something like this was going to happen. I always asked myself how could the Hybrid know so much about her. How could she have drawn the mandala (something that was thousands of years old) in her room back on Caprica? I always thought that she somehow had a connection with the distant past that had nothing to do with her being a cylon.
Cheerio,
Ripley
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:12 pm
I think Ellen knew that she and Saul would see each other again because she and the other four were part of whatever it is that enabled them to come back. She is the only one who had the chance to utter those words, we don’t know if the others knew or not. I think that she perhaps had something to do with putting everything in place, but it wasn’t news to Saul. It was a reminder that what ever “everything” was, was now ready, and they would be together again. As the guy from TWOP said,who knew that Saul and Ellen would be the greatest love story on the show? I miss Ellen though, she was such a great character. But if she had not just showed up in S1 out of nowhere, her being the fifth would have made no sense.
Can’t wait to see comments about tonight! Also, how about the titles so far, awesome!
A
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Here’s a few thoughts, Cavil said that the seven were programed not to think about the final five. Who programed them? He said it in a way that made it seem as though he too had been programed that way. So it couldn’t have been him.
What if it was the final five that programed them, because they didn’t want to be discovered. Well now we know that the five came from earth (if it really is earth) and now their here in the fleet thousands of years later via the colonies. So the question is “how did they get there”? What if they found a way to resurect but instead of doing it the way the seven do, they resurect generationally, in other words, they resurect as a child, they grow up, grow old, die, then resurect again.
Now for whatever reason they no longer remembered who they were. Now this could be for a couple reasons, maybe they have just resurected so many times that they forgot, or maybe they found a way to make themselves forget, and they were the ones who programmed the seven not to think about them. Maybe they were even the ones who created the seven in the hopes of resurecting their race, but soon found that it was a bad idea so they programed them not to think about them, and did not share their means of resurection with them. This would have worked fine until the human created cylons found out about the seven, or maybe it was the seven that found out about the human created cylons, either way they joined together, and decided to begin experimenting with humans to make a hybrid, and find their own way to resurect. They suceed, and the rest is history.
As far as a cylon populated earth is concerned, we all know the cycle could very well be that humans created cylons, who created humans, who created clyons…….. etc add infinitum, which explains why “this has happened before, and has happened again” this also explains why Leoben once told Kara that “the last time this cycle took place I was where you are now, and you were where I am” (not an exact quote, but close enough).
So in the last cycle humans were the ones created by the cylons, and they were the ones that rose up and revolted, causing the destruction of the cylons, at least all but five of them who found a way to resurect. This would explain who nuked earth, and why they did it.
Now as far as tieing this theory in with the tale of the exodus from kobol, their are a couple of options. Maybe the humans destroyed the cylons on earth, and went to kobol where they were “reborn” as a civilization, and they decided to start their history there so as not to reveil that they were simply beings created by the cylons. Then ensues the exodus, and their history is as told where they made their way to the colonies.
Or maybe adding to that theory, the five, maybe along with the other seven all learned how to resurect, and they resurected into the humans after they destroyed earth. They were reborn on kobol, and because of their differences became the “Lords of Kobol” then the war between the Gods ensued (ie, the one God who wanted to be worshiped above all others) an that led to the exodus from Kobol. The five did not want any harm to come to the humans so they chose to resurect again and live among them, but not after finding a way to program the other seven to forget about them, and leave the humans alone. which only lasted until the seven found out about the war between the humans and the newly created cylons. So they decided to join the fight.
Or heres another theory, what if it all started in this cycle on Kobol, and the cylons created the humans. They all lived on Kobol, and during the exodus it was the cylons that were the thirteenth tribe. They went to earth, and were then destroyed by the humans before settling on the colonies. The five resurected into the human colonies, and the rest is as I said above (ie, they tried to recreated their race again)
Anyway thats just a couple of the theories I have about the when, where, how, and why of the final five. Hope it makes sense, and I didn’t get to read all the other theories, so I hope I didn’t just repeat something someone else said, but thanks for reading.
Love the show Matt & Nat, it keeps us all going.
January 24th, 2009 at 12:10 am
I just watched the first and second episodes of 4.5. I think it is Earth. Here’s my shot in the dark. The people of Kobol created Cylons, in the Earth line. There was a war and after the dust settled, they split. The 12 human tribes went one way and the Earth Cylon tribe went the other. When the 12 tribes got powerful enough, the council sent a secret fleet and destroyed the Cylon Earth, the erased all knowledge of them from the 12 tribes history. I think the 12 tribes made their Cylons, not knowing the history of Kobol and that Cylons had been made before.
One reason I think this is that the Earth models are more advanced than the 12 tribes models. The Earth models are obviously of the same makeup with some cosmetic differences, but their males are fertile as well as their females. They can reproduce where the 12 tribes models cannot. I have some other questions about why the Earth Cylons came to the colonies, but I don’t have enough info for that yet. Did they know this was going to happen and they needed to be there at that time to bring the 12 tribes Cylons and humans together? Were they sent as ambassadors and peacemakers?
That’s my two cents on it.
January 25th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
This was truly a podcast fangirl’s wet dream. When I’m not watching BSGcast, I’m listening to Galactica Quorum. So I was in love with this and would love it if you all collaborated on another episode (hell even if it’s the last one). Anyway, on with my thoughts.
This BSG episode really frakked with my head. The thing that really threw me for a loop was that the 13th tribe was a cylon tribe. That was the thing that really was like…. … … … (aka, I was speechless). Why didn’t the significant 7 know any of that? My heart genuinely broke for Laura (because I’m a huge Roslin fan, but still) and it broke for Adama. I wasn’t thrilled about his drinking though. Didn’t really care too much about Dee actually. It came out of left field and was just weird. I loved seeing Helo and Athena being all adorable with Hera, even though it wasn’t much. Loved Leoben’s reaction to Kara finding her body. His face of WTF and he ran away from her when he was so used to running for her. That was so great.
I was surprised the final of the five was revealed and I’m not happy that it was Ellen. Not that I don’t love Kate Vernon, I just don’t like Ellen Tigh. Too bad she isn’t an older Six version. That would have been great. I’m excited to hear more about Caprica and Tigh’s baby however. I have $10 in a lot of places that say their baby is a girl. (aka Ellen going through her rebirth)
In the upcoming episodes, (which we’ve already seen one) I want to hear more about “Earth” and why and how the Cylons were able to reproduce and stay there. Were the humans the ones that eliminated them? Why didn’t the significant 7 know anything about “Earth”. I don’t think it is. I think there may be a Cylon Earth and a Human Earth. It would make a lot of sense. Or even if Earth was like our Heaven, just a different name. We don’t have to see it. Maybe Cylons took it literally while the other humans took it metaphorically.
I don’t know. Just a thought and thoughts oftentimes don’t mean frak.
January 26th, 2009 at 11:12 am
I haven’t been here in about 8 months. I’ve been busy with my YouTube stuffs, but I love reading all this speculation. Lots of good thoughts here.
I almost hate to be the fly in the ointment, but I just gotta say it. A lot of us, including Matt (sorry, bro – no offense intended), are jumping to a “Beings of Light” conclusion. With a reimagined series carrying over elements from the old one, it’s too easy to say “Hey, when are we seeing that again?”
I’m sorry to all of you, but I think it’s all bunk. I don’t think we’ll be seeing the Beings of Light, at least as they were in the old series. Ron Moore has stated that he didn’t use them in his formulations for this new series. Now before you say, “Well, he’s probably just saying that,” remember MOST of what Ron has said has been accurate thus far. Like the Last Supper photo (which I think Roslin was removed not as a red herring, but simply because she’s soon dying, or she’s already stepped so far aside that she’s not that important anymore). Call me a cynic, insult me, whatever, but I do not believe we’ll see the Beings of Light.
We do however have the Virtual Beings and the Lords of Kobol, who may or may not be actual gods themselves. I believe these are meant to serve as the new series’s Beings of Light. I think that’s the parallel. We already something like it. It’s not the Beings of Light, but it is the next best thing. I think that’s it. No Beings of Light. No Ship of Lights.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Great Cast! Thanks for letting me be a part of the fun!
OXOXO Melody aka The Galactica Viper Pilot aka Hygena
January 30th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
“Ellen…What about Ellen?”
“Ellen…You’re the fifth,” those world changed everything. I for one was floored, at first. Then I went back through the seasons, as I did for Saul Tigh, and reanelised her charictor. I have a hunch that she may have known from the beginning, or at least since she stepped aboard Galactica. The final Cylon was for sure going to be a woman for the sheer reason of numbers. At one point I was hoping for it to be Dee mostly because her first name means resurrection and her last name has the duality to it. Now that she killed her self I am a little sad because I did like her, but hey at least she went out with a bang, lol.
Reasons why Ellen knew she was a cylon and expected or atleast knew her husband was one too:
- She mistiriusly appears in the fleet weeks after the attack.
- She has a major supirioraty complex, which normaly wouldn’t be much but when coupled with her arrival to the fleet adds an element of suspission.
- she was a bit power hungry and tried to get her and her husband to the top of the fleet
- she is very manipulative, a trate which is often also attributed to the other female cylons: Tory, 8, 3, and 6
- she knew or at least suspected her husband of being a cylon and tried to get him to realize it by pushing him to take controle, by pushing him to take on more power than he wanted. She was the one who convinsed him to declare martial law, maybe for some cylon motive, eh?
- after her blood test Head 6 asked Baltar if he would ever tell the truth of her results, to which he replied something to the point of “I’ll never tell.”
- her collaborations on New Caprica could be seen as part of her cylon agenda and her attempt to get to the top of the cylon ranks, breaking down the consences system and taking a perch at the top, she was sleeping with, oddly enough, Cavil, the most influential/powerful male cylon in the group.
- her constent goading of Saul can be seen as an attempt to get him to see his full potential as a cylon and more so a cylon at such a high position in the fleet.
This next one isn’t so much a support to my argument mearly an observation but, one can see Ellen/Six as being a foreshadow to her reveal as a cylon.
Thank you very much guys at bsgcast.com. Matt + Natt, you were the way I could watch this show before I had cable TV and found the sites to watch the show it self. Thanks to you guys I was able to watch the show vicariously through you. My gods its good. Or, after seeing “Revelations” and “Sometimes a Great Notion” maybe I should say G-D seeing as it means we are all cylons and that thousands of years from now the humans of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol will land in Brooklyn NY. Thanks a tun
EZCYLON
PS – I wish I could have come to that awesome frak party I just couldn’t make it bc I ddnt have the money but still awesome and it looked like a lot of fun and I’m sure you guys had enough fun for all of us who couldn’t make it. So say we all. By your command.
January 30th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Woo! BSG ftw!
January 31st, 2009 at 4:49 am
I had this crazy dream about what I think is going on, so try to bare with me as I unload all this before I forget.
I completely agree with Kara being a Lord or Lady of Kobol. I love how that every time the Lords of Kobol are mentioned it has to deal with death and sacrifice. Like for instance the planet Kobol, blood will be shed, the goddess Athena offed herself; the lords of Kobol are nothing, but bad news. I also think that the lords of Kobol have a hand in the destruction of Earth. Remember in Razor the old man hybrid kept repeating this has happened before and it will happen again over and over. What if the lords of Kobol are making sure history repeats itself keeping the death and destruction on track. If Kara is a Lord of Kobol then it all fits together she will bring death and doom to all which is a habit of destruction, death, and sacrifice that the Lords have. That is all I can remember.
Oh and two more things I want to bring to attention when Leoben backs away and says he made a mistake I wonder what he made a mistake about. He never says what the mistake is, doesn’t really say much of anything, but runs away like she is death incarnate. I also think the visions that are seen are sent by the lords of kobol. I think it was a lord of kobol that was talking to Kara right before she killed herself.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Okay here’s my theory about what happened to earth. Humans didn’t destroy the Cylons 2000 years ago, they destroyed each other. The thirteenth tribe was Cylon and the skin jobs and Centurions turned on each other. There seemed to be many Cylon skeletons, but only a few Centurion models. This would fit with a nuclear attack from space. A few may have been caught in the aftermath or downed by a planetary defense system, but they wouldn’t have been living on the planet. If they were in an integrated society you’d expect closer to equal numbers of remains.
This also explains why Cavil was so angry when Natalie had the Cylons higher thought inhibitors removed. And why he was so quick to lobotomize the ships after they refused to fire on Anders. He may not know exactly why, but he instinctively knows that having thinking Centurions and ships is the road to ruin. He screamed at her, “You don’t know what you’ve done!” What Natalie did may have set the stage for the ultimate destruction of the Cylon race. This may have been one of the critical steps in the destruction of the Earth based Cylon civilization.
November 20th, 2009 at 6:51 am
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