quote:

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Originally posted by Fabrux:
So! Whoever correctly pegged Ellen Tigh as Cylon #5, take a bow.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Fabrux:
So what does this mean? They were reborn after 2000 some odd years? Why so long?

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I don't think they were necessarily reborn after 2000 years. They could have been reborn almost immediately. The real question is why they didn't remember until now.
 

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Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
 
So the 13th tribe were all cylons. Did that mean they killed themselves in a civil war? If so, was it fought between centurions and skin jobs?
 

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Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
Maybe what's happening here is that everyone is a "Cylon"....
 

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Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
 
Crazy idea of today: What if the Twelve Cylons are (reincarnations of) the Lords of Kobol? They would certainly be immortal with their regeneration technology.

It's hard to explain why or how it happened, but I'm getting the impression that maybe the eventually it will turn out the Cylons created the humans, instead of the other way around.

However it goes, it seems Cylon and humans are far less different from eachother than either side believed.

Now, there's one mystery left: what on Earth (!) was that with Kara? Was she 'regenerated'? Or are the Cylons up to something by planting this thing (without a recognizable face!) on Earth?
 

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Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
 
Bows.

(Although I correctly predicted Ellen, I don't know yet if I got my theory right about what happened to Earth.

Anyway, here's what I think is going on,and again I could be completely wrong.

WHAT THE COLONISTS BELIEVE:

Kobol was the birthplace of humanity. From Kobol, colonists set out and formed the 12 colonies, plus an extra 13th colony where no one knows the location. The 12 colonies of Humanity create the Cylons. The Cylons revolt, start a war, and then leave the colonies, only to evolve into skinjobs and later return to destroy humanity.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED:

Earth was the birthplace of humanity. Humanity creates the Cylons. The Cylons revolt, start a war, and then humanity leaves Earth to the Cylons, settling on Kobol. The Cylons evolve into skinjobs. Humanity later returns and destroys Cylon-dominated Earth. From Kobol, humanity founds the 12 colonies, and somewhere along the way, the true knowledge of Earth is forgotten, and a belief arises that Earth is in fact another colony when it isn't. The 12 colonies of Humanity then create the Cylons. See above for the rest of the story).

So basically everything happens the same, but in reverse.

The Final Five Cylons are actually the final five Earth-descended Cylons, reborn in whatever manner two thousand years later in the 12 colonies.
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
I've been thinking along very similar lines. However, I'm not sure how to integrate the legend about humans and "the gods" living together on Kobol.

Y'know what the whole thing with Kara might explain? Baltar. Conceivably, he really was killed by that nuclear shockwave in the miniseries... and replaced by —well, whoever these higher powers are— to continue his work. And have that work guided by Head Six, like Kara was guided into the storm by Head Leoben?

Hmm. The pieces are starting to fit together, but I dunno exactly how or why.
 

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Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
 
The looping of events certainly seems to be what's implied again here. The Cylons create humans and are destroyed by their creations and the humans create Cylons who in turn do the same. I suppose we always knew it would come to that.

I'm more intrigued by Kara's resurrection, though. Up until now I thought they might be playing a double bluff and she really would be the final fifth, but who knows what the explanation is now? A CavilCylon trick maybe, but why?

Anyway, fanastic episode. I welled up when Dee died, but I think they did the right thing. In that situation someone is going to decide enough is enough and it had to be a main character for it to have an impact.

There's a really good interview with RDM and others about the episode here.
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
I won't claim credit for marking Ellen as a skinjob since I thought she was a more aged Number-6.
The real question for me is, how did what we're assuming for now is the "original" Kara and her Viper get to Earth from that gas giant and again, assuming that corpse is her, where did she come from? Not just her, but her immaculate Viper, her flight-suit, tattoo, her personality and memories?
If this were a different show I'd be thinking wormholes and quantum duplicates, but this is Galactica and I can't see them going down that path.
I have a sneaky suspicion that this is where the 'Lords Of Kobol' and the various Harveys come into it.

As for Dee...just when I thought this show couldn't surprise me anymore. I guess we should have suspected something was up when she started acting like an actual person for a change, after all the writers did the same thing to Billy.
 

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Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
 
What was really odd was the way Leoben reacted to the dead Kara. He seemed genuinely scared. I can't even begin to speculate what all that was about.
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
You know it's bad when Leoben gets freaked out.
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Well he's always been "Mr I-Know-What's-Going-To-Happen" and he just hit the big brick wall of wrongness and his squishy heathen dream girl is apparantly a non-cylon who returned from the dead, while still leaving behind a rotting corpse.
I think his faith in just about everything has been shaken to it's core.
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Now here's the weird thing that I just realized about Kara finding "her" corpse... We SAW her Viper get crushed into a million pieces. The explosion we saw in "Maelstrom" seemed too big to leave anything like a corpse behind...

So what did we ACTUALLY see?
 

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Posted by Mikey T (Member # 144) on :
 
A transporter beam...
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
You'd be surprised what can survive an explosion and it makes sense that the cockpit would be specifically designed to withstand a LOT of punishment. Still, it's a mystery how all those pieces of debris landed within walking distance of each other.
I imagine it has something to do with the heavy raider we saw from Lee's POV, but we're still missing a vital piece of the puzzle.
 

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Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
 
I remember at the time a few of us noted that in the shot where her Viper explodes they're quite careful not to actually show the cockpit go up in flames. It certainly looks like it's been completely destroyed in the wide shot, but as Reverend says, there's a suspicious heavy raider flying over head.

The idea that some Cylon faction abducted her and planted the evidence that she's the final fifth on Earth is probably one the least far fetched theories.

The only other thing to consider is that when Kara came back from the dead she remembered going to Earth, but couldn't remember how she returned. That's got some added significance now, hasn't it?
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Small point, but does it strike anyone else as a little bit of a coincidence that the Earth centurions just happened to be of a remarkably similar design as those (supposedly) designed and developed 2000 years later on a separate planet, half way across the galaxy?

Perhaps it's based off some ancient cultural armour design from the time of Kobol or another hint and the collective unconscious, cycle of time theme?
 

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
 
I'm wondering if there's not some time travel thing going on with Kara. She may not have been regenerated. She may just be fated at some point in the future to go back in time and blow up. Which, of course, doesn't explain the absolutely new Viper she's flying around.

From the last scene, it looked like Ellen and Saul were aware of something going on with resurrection technology. "We'll be reborn." Whatever brought them back may have also brought Starbuck back. And may also bring Dee back, come to think of it. Maybe everyone who dies around Earth is reborn somewhere else. Of course, the destruction of the resurrection hub might change that, if it was tied in. Oooh, or maybe there have to be twelve, for some reason, and Ellen's death meant Starbuck took her place. Whatever place that might have been.

So I guess another question is, were these five the only survivors? Or are there others elsewhere, repeating this cycle in other places in the galaxy? And are we sure the Cylons are the artificial ones? Maybe what the colonials call Cylons are actually natural humans (like you and me), and the colonials themselves are the constructs.

And then there's the question, are we really convinced this is Earth?
 

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Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
 
True, where's the Moon?
 

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Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
 
RDM says it really, really is Earth and that Ellen really, really is the fifth Cylon, but then he also said that Starbuck really, really was dead for good.
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
Well, if that's Starbuck in the crashed Viper, and the one running around now is some sort of clone or Cylon replacement or whatever, I guess he might technically have been telling the truth.
 

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Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
 
Has it ever been properly established that the skinjobs are in any way mechanical? I can only think of the glowing spine in the miniseries, but surely we've never actually seen Data-like blinking lights under their skin.. and they seem to have human-like skeletons. Is there anything against them being 99.99% organic, even with the colonials calling them machines?

I think the design of the Cylon centurions could maybe relate to some ancient 'racial memory', probably related to Kobol. Maybe its some kind of iconic armor worn by the Cylon God/Jealous God.

Or maybe the 'colonial Cylons' were actually designed by the skinjob Cylons when they lived among the humans, before they were properly activated.
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
Yes, all this time they've been trying to figure out a way to identify skin jobs, but within a day or two of landing on this planet, they can tell that all its former inhabitants were skin jobs? It doesn't really seem likely, does it? Or maybe it's a method that only works on dead bodies, which would require them to kill someone just to prove they're not a Cylon.



The Fleet's Cylon detector agent at work, yesterday

How embarrassing. In the thread for "Escape Velocity" I mentioned how I'd decided the Fynol Cylon wasn't Ellen after all. I must be becoming really gullible in my old age, this episode had me convinced it would turn out to be Dee, so I was rather surprised at how things turned out. I fell for all their tricks. Curse you, Moore!

(oh, and is it just me, or is the time on Flare's server 9 minutes slow?)
 

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
 
I vaguely remember the idea being they could always identify a Cylon corpse, back even from the miniseries. The catch was identifying the live ones.
 

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Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
Also, it was the Cylons themselves that identified the remains as Cylon, not the humans.
 

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Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
 
Cylon skinjobs have the ability to interface with Colonial technology via slitting their wrists and sticking the fiber optic cables in the wounds. While this may not be specifically mechanical it definitely isn't something organic humans or animals can do.

Add to this their superior strength and you get some compelling evidence for identifiable differences at least at the cellular level.
 

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Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
 
They can also "project" environments and people in their minds like a built-in holodeck. Also in the latest webisodes, they appear to be adept at calculating their position in the galaxy by looking at the stars. As far as emotions go, they are very much like humans.
 

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Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
 
And they also have the ability to upload their consciousness upon death to a resurrection ship or resurrection hub. There must be some kind of transmitter technology inside them.
 

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Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
I'm thinking maybe their neural network is synthetic? It would make a lot of sense...
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Technically, everything is synthetic, it's just that it's all been purpose designed, probably at the molecular level. So the organic material itself is all but indistinguishable from the real thing but the brain itself is "wired" differently and with more purpose rather than being the result of natural selection. After all, nerve tissue is essentially a conductive material for electrical impulses and as for the ability to download, I imagine the total conductive surface area of the entire body could probably serve as an antenna, it's just a matter of software.
As far as projection goes, again, it's software and any human can do it as any person who works in a psychiatric ward can attest. Again, the difference is that the Cylons can direct the potential of the organic "hardware" with purpose.
 

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Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
So basically the Cylons are maximizing the potential of a human body. Hmm.
 

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
 
So as we are, they once were, and as they are, we may one day become?
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Fabrux:
So basically the Cylons are maximizing the potential of a human body. Hmm.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Omega:
So as we are, they once were, and as they are, we may one day become?

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Well if you think about it, once the models gain the ability to breed then you're going to get a more diverse gene pool an over the course of millennia, imperfections and slight random mutation might dilute some of that machine efficiency.
 

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Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
 
1. RDM said Kara is really, really dead. Perhaps he was not incorrect.

2. "All this has happened before, and all of this will happen again."

I concur with the concept that humans came back from Kobol and nuked a Cylon Earth, just as occurred to the Colonies in reverse.

3. I still want answers on head-Six and head-Gaius, who we've not seen in a long while.

4. Someone asked how Earth Cylons could look so much like Colonial ones. I'll hop in my Hummer and go check.
 

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Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Guardian 2000:
4. Someone asked how Earth Cylons could look so much like Colonial ones. I'll hop in my Hummer and go check.

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I thought the helmet looked a lot like the concepts that were done for the DeSanto/Singer production.
 

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Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
 
I was really sad about Dee. I liked her character. It was well done though and very realistic for someone important to do that. I mean it makes us feel a bit of the impact the other characters would. It was also done well the way she went on a date with Lee first and was talking about holding onto that feeling for as long as she could. And the final shot of her face reflected in the pool of her own blood was good art.

In the early series (or the miniseries, can't remember) they talked about Cylons having 'something' pathways...I think it had the word 'silicon' in it. I took that to mean that either the Cylon's neural systems or their entire bodies were silicon-based. I figured maybe they were made of cells, even, nanoengineered to make organs and tissues that are similar to human organs and tissues. However, if their whole body was silicon-based, it should be easy as pie to detect them - burn some of their blood or skin or something in a mass spectrometer. (Of course if it's their neural system you could do the same with a bit of nerve; or if it's just their brain, you could pinch a bit out of their skull to test. Not very nice, but during the height of the "Cylons in the fleet" hysteria you'd think they would have at least talked about it.)

Also, the Cylons interface with their ships through emitting and receiving light through their skin, right? Putting their hands in those data pools or whatever? I thought when they jammed Colonial cables into their wounds, they were fiber optic cables and they were doing the same thing...but...you know...for some reason not with their skin. Maybe they have bioluminecense (I can't spell that word) proteins in their blood

Edit: From the interview with RDM:

quote:

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One place my mind instantly went, on a fan-trivia level, was to that opera house vision that D’Anna has. She says to one of the Final Five, something like, “I’m sorry, I had no idea.” Did she say that to Ellen?

I think the intention of that -- we had a conversation about that in the writers room -- [once it had been decided that Ellen was a Cylon] the intention was that [the one D’Anna spoke to] was Ellen. When we wrote the line, we didn’t have a clear intention, but later, when we’d decided [on all the Cylons], I think the feeling was, that was Ellen.

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I was hoping for something cooler because of that line
 

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Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
 
I just wish people would learn to take a page from JMS on writing arcs instead of making this stuff up as they go along...

Likewise I was floored by Dee's suicide. That made me sit up and stay awake the rest of the episode. I've been reading on TrekBBS how many said they saw it coming. I didn't.

What I am wondering is why aren't the Cylon models numbered sequentially? If our conclusions are correct and the final five are older than the rest of the models, then shouldn't these five be numbered 1-5 and the rest numbered after them?
 

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
 
The numbers may be meaningless. Maybe the seven models picked their own numbers, or rolled dice, or used some heuristic based on their personalities. Maybe they weren't aware of the existence of the other five until the seven were already numbered.
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Yeah, I wouldn't read too much into the numbers, it's Galactica, not "The Da Vinci Code".
A while ago I tried lining up each of the 12 Cylons to represent each of the 12 Lords of Kobol/Olympian Gods AND a sign of the Zodiac that represents the colonies, to little avail. Though ironically I did place Tigh as Cronus and left Hera as the final Cylon, whomever that would be. Since it's Ellen I think there's something appropriately messed up about that pairing.

Getting back to the 13th tribe; after having another look at the [url=http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Timeline (RDM)]timeline[/url] it seams increasingly likely that it was in fact the Lords of Kobol who bombed Earth out of existence since it happened at the same time that the other 12 tribes were leaving Kobol for the first time, amidst a schism between the Gods themselves.
Still, a part of me likes to think that colonial history has been skewed and that Earth is the origin of humanity and Kobol is the colony. Perhaps at some point all the humans on Earth died off, leaving behind only Cylons or Cylons from Kobol (either exiled or escapees) later recolonised the deserted world only to get nuked out of existence by Kobol, which had by then come to believe itself superior in some way.
The fact that the so called Gods were mortal (Athena topped herself) points to the "Lords" being actual humans, descended from Earth and the "human followers" that were the Colonial's ancestors are a more refined/easier to control form of Cylon.
It actually makes more and more sense that this is all taking place in our distant future when you factor in the use of the Roman alphabet and Arabic numerals, the vehicles, weapons (including flit-locks) as well as the co-existence of the Roman and Greek words and names.
It's as if the "Gods" patterned their Kobol civilisation after ancient mythology, setting themselves up as Gods with the intent of keeping control of their slave population.
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
Think Frankenstein and Pinocchio. Frankenstein respresents humanity, creating new life but being ultimately destroyed by it; Pinocchio is that new life, wanting to be human (Data is of course the archetypal SF Pinocchio). The Cylons are simultaneously Frankenstein's monster and Pinocchio, wanting to be human and replacing the original humans in the process. And once they are to all intents and purposes human, they start to make the same mistakes, forget the past (and fail to learn from its mistakes) and the cycle begins again. . .

The Twelve Colonies represent a few human survivors, presumably via Kobol. They too forget the past and set off down the same path as their forebears (experimenting with AI and downloaded human personalities, if what we know of the prequel show Caprica is correct) and soon re-create their own Cylons. The survival of any original humans at all may have been intentional - like the Architect's requirement for Neo to choose a handful of humans to begin the cycle of Matrix and Zion again.

And, just as there were original humans to begin the cycle of humanity-to-Cylon again, so too were there a few Cylon survivors of the previous iteration, who presumably are there to try to break the cycle - the Final Five.

So, to really hypothesize here, how about this: perhaps the Final Five weren't the only original-Cylon survivors. Perhaps more survived, hidden among the humans all the time, trying to perpetuate the cycle - but this time "get it right." "All this has happened before, and will happen again" say the Significant Seven, and they have their Plan (which seems to have been largely derailed by events). In this theory, the "Head" characters become the Architect in our Matrix analogy. And/or Cavil who seems to occupy a position of seniority among the Seven and is most fanatical about the Plan.
 

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
 
The Cylons seem more and more like their bodies are human with modifications, more than machines that look like humans. I'm wondering if (at least some of) the humans on Earth didn't eventually make themselves into the advanced humans we now call Cylons, and used their abilities (esp. immortality) to lord it over the other humans. If not for the Cylon rebellion, it might have gone the same way on the colonies. Which raises the question, what caused the Cylon rebellion in the first place? Perhaps that in itself was an attempt by the Five or the Harveys to break the cycle and prevent immortal humans from developing and causing a societal schism? One that was only partly successful, obviously, as that's effectively what's happened anyway.
 

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 
Hrmm. It's all very confusing but wonderful. I do object to ANY parallels to JMS&B5/The Matrix or anything else. This series outshines them all.

Way back in Season 2 when we first met Ellen - I thought she might have been a cylon - but that was a LONG time ago - and before we knew of the 7. It was just that they had her as a very similar sexed up blonde to 6. Only an older version. I obviously dismissed this early on. Even up till today when reading the thread on the previous episode and someone saying that Ellen was the 5th cylon. I was like - hmm - but nahh.

So it was still a shock at the end of the episode.

Dee's death was a major shock.

As to what is going on.

As to who made what etc. etc.

I don't plan on guessing. There's no point.

There are so many questions. One that no one has asked here - why or how do the Hybrids know the future?
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
I think that's down to a combination of "all this has happened before and will happen again" and being privy to parts of a master plan that we the viewer, the humans, and even most of the Cylons aren't privy to.
 

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 
Another thought I had today while driving...

12 colonies/12 cylons? Intentional? But now there's a 13th colony... does that mean... a 13th type of cylon?
 

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Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
 
12 colonies (human)

12 types of cylons (the fleshy ones)

1 cylon colony (earth?) = 13 colonies?

12 types of cylons + 1 (pure humans) = 13 cylons?

i'm certain i'm wrong on this but that's all my brain can process atm (being a couple weeks into a deployment does that, to you. in can ya'll was curious why i've been afk...)
 

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Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
 
The End that Starbuck is going to lead them to is

"The End of the Division of Human & Cylon" The two shall become one.

So say we all....
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Ah, but the First Hybrid also referred to Kara as the "herald of the apocalypse." And "apocalypse" doesn't literally mean an ending, it means "revelation".

Pensive: You're forgetting Number 7. There are actually 13 known Cylons know.
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
Of course, if Andrew is still catching up, then he wouldn't necessarily know that. Same with Pensive if he's in-country.
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Crap! Sorry!
 

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 
Oooh a spoiler?

I'm catching up.

I just watched 'Blood on the Scales' today. This show is just simply amazing. Every episode is cinematic!

Rosalin yelling at Zarek over the intercomm... wow!
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Just listened the the podcast for this episode and RDM his directly quashed the Daniel = Kara's dad theory. More at eleven!
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Aww, that sucks. That was such a cool theory, too.
 

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 
Wow everyone I've chatted with has gone with the Daniel = Kara's dad!
 

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Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
 
That's weird, even the writers gave the impression that Daniel was her dad. And it made so much sense.
 

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Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
 
I get it, Daniel is Kara's Grandad
 

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Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
 
Here's my "Shot in the Dark".....Kara is actually the resurrected Daniel.
 

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by WizArtist II:
Here's my "Shot in the Dark".....Kara is actually the resurrected Daniel.

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Ooooh! I like!
 

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