who is the puppet master?

"...and they have a plan"

So there are three main mystery threads to wrap up:
* what the hell is up with Starbuck and her perfect ship and special destiny
* what's the deal with Baltar/Jebus
* what's the story with the final five, particularly the Chief

and a minor thread
- how was Roslin able to have visions of the future? how was she able to have shared visions with Six and Eight?

Known Cylon models
# 1 Number One (aka Brother Cavil)
# 2 Number Two (aka Leoben Conoy)
# 3 Number Three (aka D'Anna Biers)
# 4 Number Four (aka Simon)
# 5 Number Five (aka Aaron Doral)
# 6 Number Six (aka Caprica-Six/Head Six/Shelley Godfrey/Gina Inviere/Natalie)

# 8 Number Eight (aka Lt. Sharon "Boomer" Valerii/Lt. Sharon "Athena" Agathon)

Unknown Cylons
# 7 [Sam Anders, for sake of argument]
# 9
# 10
# 11 [Galen Tyrol, for sake of argument]
# 12 [presumably the One who will Be Revealed - Zak Adama]

I think Sam Anders is definely a Cylon, what with the barcoded eye, so slot him in at #7.

So who is doing all this? What is the Plan?

I can think of a few possible scenarios:

• The First Hybrid / the Hybrids collectively


• The Architect (i.e. some Mysterious Cylon Creator / Puppetmaster)


• The thirteenth tribe (Earth)


• monothestic religious splinter group (possible 13th tribe leftbehinds) hidden for thousands of years within normal society


• the Final Five themselves (who would actually turn out to be the First Five)


• Lords of Kobol / glowing god ship people

What are they doing?
I can see either:
- building a more perfect union, i.e. a better society
- building a more godly union, i.e. a monothestism-only society

The monotheism theory goes something like this: cult of "the one whose name must not be spoken" (or whatever it was Roslin read from the book) secretly program the Cylons to follow their beliefs, nuke all the unbelievers, give the remaining humans a chance to discover the true path before the arrive at Earth to be tested.

The more perfect union theory is something like: the first five Cylons have a plan to rebuild an integrated, peaceful society from the ashes of the split societies, unifying man and machine. They possibly went ahead to Earth, just in the last 50 years or so, stopping at the Temple of Jupiter along the way to rejigger it to reveal the Final Five, taking advantage of the existing mythology.

Galen is definitely one of them, since he was summoned to the temple, perhaps with memories of one of his model-brothers.

The Final Five, including Zak Adama, await on Earth, to examine whether their Cylon models and human families have learned the necessary lessons.

Or there could be two competing factions, the Kobol-Earthlings, sending Kara her destiny and Baltar his angel visions, and the Final Five, with their separate Plan.

My predictions:
* Sam Anders is a Cylon, model 7
* Tory (President's Aide) is not
* Tigh is not
* Chief is, maybe model 11
* Baltar is just nuts
* Starbuck is not a Cylon, but maybe has some lord-of-kobol-earth thing going on
* Earth fixed up Starbuck and her ship
* [Possibly: Earth is full of monotheistic human fanatics and is going to nuke almost everyone remaining in the human fleet]
* The Final Five, led by Zak Adama, model 12, will bring about a final peace between Earth, the remaining humans, and the Cylons, and will have completed their Plan of Peaceful Union
* Roslin either a Cylon, or she's whatever Starbuck is, special Kobol destiny vision woman

Note: Final Five as First Five aspect of this theory from Steve.

you might be a Cylon if

I hope the writers can keep the show reasonably consistent, and not resort to "the final five are Cylons but not like the other 7 so the rules don't apply".

Characteristics:
* spine glows red during sex (although Steve remarked that essentially this could just be a casemod for Six)
* Baltar's Cylon detector goes all green
* the (unshielded?) radiation in the nebula slowly kills them
* some kinda plastic fibres?
* can plug a fibre optic cable directly into their arm (!)
* can control the Cylon ship and get data through the Pool of Knowledge (it wasn't clear whether this would work for humans). Number Eight said something about "reading data from contact points" when Galacticans went onto a Basestar.
* the disease from the satellite kills them
* the raiders and centurions have some programming to detect Cylon models
* they can read machine code directly, just by looking at pages of printouts
* there is something "different" about their blood, at least Hera's hybrid blood

Any others?

So if the writers are going to be consistent, the Final Five should at least:
* not have been exposed for long periods unshielded to the nebula radiation
(which is a bit of a dodgy proposition for the Chief - wasn't he on the station almost continuously?)
* not have had ANY possible exposure to the satellite disease

Otherwise if it's just "some of these Cylons are not like the others" then that's pretty weak SF. How can you have a mystery when the writer keeps changing the clues?

The above would seem to exclude Helo, since he went and shot up a room full of Cylons dying from satellite disease.

Why

These are the key elements to the Zak Adama theory:

* Leoben said "Adama is a Cylon"
* Lee said something to his father about what would he do if he found out someone close to him was a Cylon

[exact quotes and episodes to come]

Zak as a Cylon would bring in compelling emotional complexity from Starbuck (since she was engaged to him and felt responsible for his death), Admiral Adama, and Lee Adama.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
It would also bring an element of surprise since everyone has been looking at a bunch of Usual Suspects on the ship:
* Baltar
* Starbuck
* Roslin
* etc.

On the element of surprise front, Admiral Cain as a Cylon would be cool too. Or Billy (the President's previous aide). Or Boxey. Well, ok, Billy or Boxey would actually be killer lame.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, Admiral Adama (or "Bill" to his friends) would seem unlikely to be a Cylon, since he survived fine on the station in the radiation that was killing Leoben. Other theories have Joseph Adama as a Cylon, which has timeline issues, or Bill's wife Carolanne - but then both Lee and Zak should be half-Cylon. Surely the final Cylon should also be a "full blooded" one?

I'm not even convinced all of the "four in hiding" that we have seen are Cylons.
Yes on Sam and the Chief, but I don't see how the timeline works for Tigh, and given recent events, it would be a lot more interesting if new President's Aide (whose name according to Battlestar Wiki is Tory Foster) turns out NOT to be a Cylon.

The issue then becomes that we have never seen a juvenile Cylon, and how did Zak become, well... born?

Possibilities:
* Zak switched in after birth by ? unknown Cylon overlord council ? (keep in mind Carolanne thought she was having a girl, both times)
* original human Zak replaced by Cylon at some point
* Zak as secret Cylon experiment, created in a tank but implanted into Carolanne

I don't read too many Galactica blog postings because I hate spoilers, but I really liked the detailed examination of the topic in

A “final Cylon” theory - TimeImmortal.net

I liked it so much that I mentioned it on Digg, and it got Diggdotted. You can still see it in Google Cache. (I should also perhaps attach a small disclaimer that the final cylon posting is just about the only one on TimeImmortal that I have any agreement with whatsoever.)

Zak Adama is a Cylon

Err, like the subject says. End of line.