Battlestar Galactica 4x20

I think I had a pretty good track record of predictions.
The solutions to some mysteries were rather more handwaving than I was expecting.
There were some surprises.

I was mostly ok up to first ending.

Second ending was terrible.

End of Line

Battlestar Galactica 4x19 - in which we prepare for the end

I didn't think Ron Moore would make the entire second half of the last season a long goodbye and leadup to a grande! finale! ... but he did. Oh well.

Didja see Zak? You've seen him in the past now... will you see him in the present...

Battlestar Galactica 4x18 - in which time passes

SPOILERS

Not a lot to say. I thought Ron Moore would give us a double-peak - some action around 4x17 and 4x18 and then a grand finale, but it seems now certain it will only be Grand Finale.

Basically we're still in positioning mode, getting everything in place for a major Cylon space home (Cylon "colony") versus human space home (the fleet) final battle / lovefest.

It goes something like - Adama moves flag to baseship, farewell Galactica old girl,
Sam jumps Galactica to see The Beings of Light or whomever is running this show,
baseship Hybrid maybe jumps to Colony?

Zak Adama or The Architect or Beings of Light or somebody (14th colony of hybrid human-Cylons who found peace and enlightenment? Ascended beings? Lorne Greene? I'm running out of ideas) Explains All and then Cylon home and human home learn home is a place where love makes its nest or some damn thing, Hera projects a vision of the Opera House, Baltar and Caprica Six reconcile, the dying president smiles upon them and we all live happily ever after.

(Can you tell I'm getting a bit tired of Moore dragging this out?)

Anyway:
* Kara definitely human - which means her father was NOT Model 7 Daniel
* never plug a robot into your ship (it's like they've never watched Star Trek: The Next Generation - oh wait, that's where Moore practiced his craft)

More speculation:
* Sam has The Knowledge what with being some combination of ascended being and Liam with some access to the music of the spheres that unifies everything
(when you think about Cylon "organic memory transfer" technology, it has to be something about tapping into some sublayer of consciousness, otherwise how does it just pick consciousnesses out of the ether and install them in new bodies - which of course begs the question, why just Cylon consciousnesses? why can't you just pick ANY dying brainwaves out of the celestial harmonies and download them into a new body? surely that must be what happened with Kara?)
* Cavil will end up like Sam, becoming a ship (Cavil has stated pretty clearly he's more interested in being machine than man)

In summary, my current best guess is just an extension of previous "all shall be made one" theories:

Kara Thrace, thanks to Sam jumping her to the right destination, finds the puppet masters, who are either some beings tapped into the oneness of it all ("Beings of Light") or an unknown 14th colony of hybrid Cylon-humans. The future is Cylon-humans. "The end of humanity." Hera is their future. Baltar and Caprica Six are second human-Cylon couple. The end.

PS Ron Moore, please give us one last space fight at the Colony, before Kara and Sam jump in with the answers that bring Peace.

PPS Zak Adama is a Cylon

Battlestar Galactica 4x17

SPOILERS

A good episode, but Ron Moore is running out of time.

Confrontation with Cavil coming.
We're still behind the schedule I anticipated - I thought it would be

4x17 - battle with Cavil
4x18 - more battle with Cavil

Boomer revealed as possibly very bad lady. Cavil we already knew was a very bad robot.

Kara Thrace - chain with ring and dog tag...
where was she for two months?

Dreams of Her Father - Dreilide Thrace - was he Model 7 Daniel? Or was he one of the Others, the Puppet Masters... whomever is sending visions of angels. Ancients? Gods? Beings of Light? 14th Tribe?

My personal opinion continues that he was NOT Daniel.

Hera & Roslin connected
Hera & Starbuck connected
Hera & the First Five connected

See a common element?

Hera knows the song that called the Four... it wasn't completely clear if this was Kara's childhood song but was certainly implied.

In the (paraphrased) words of Ellen: someone is manipulating them all.

Also: Zak Adama is a Cylon.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention one good theme, the theme of loss... remember we're all going to lose Galactica soon. The ship slowly coming apart at the seams, Kara's loss of Sam and her father, the Cylons and Humans lost home, the loss of Hera... one of the things when you come to the end of a series is to try to recognize that loss, the end of our collective experience.

UPDATE #2: We had heard a long time ago about Cylon "projection", when Baltar was on the Baseship and was saying something about it being rather dull, one of them told him something like the Cylons just projected and imagined themselves walking through a forest. This was the first time we saw a Cylon project to another Cylon though. It was also clear that it didn't require physical contact - Tyrol and Boomer were separated by glass. That ability is reminiscent in kind, if not in extent, to the visions that Baltar has of Six and (possibly) the vision that Kara Thrace was having of her father. Is there a Ghost in the Machine? Are they seeing remote projections?

UPDATE 2009-02-28: I should mention that in the webisodes when the 8 was checking the Raptor's computers, she also referred to this as projection - and one can assume the baseship computer interface technology is similar.

Battlestar Galactica 4x16 - little good came of it

SPOILERS

Not much out of this badly written and rather wildly acted episode.

Baltar's angel likes big guns. Rather muscular monotheism, that.

Saul was... born... much like Zak... who gets a mention at the end of the episode.
Thanks Saul!

Sam Anders, one can speculate, had downloaded into Liam, and uploaded back into his own brain when Liam passed. Rather unexpected.

Cylon-Cylon babies apparently have a lovemeter and god help you if it is pointing at unloved.

Ellen, very calm and composed on the base ship, kinda freaky harridan back on Galactica.

And we got hammered over the head with blended this and blended that.
All shall be blended! Hera blend is the future!

Only four left. Hopefully they will be better than this one.

Battlestar Galactica 4x15 - in which much is revealed

MASSIVE EPIC SPOILERS

And much that was foreseen is true.

It goes something like this:
1. Human vs. Cylon war on Kobol
2. Kobol-Cylon vs. roboto Earth-Cylon war on Earth
3. "All this has happened before, all this will happen again"
4. Kobol-Earth Final Five Cylons are First Five, try to create a new race of humanoid Cylons that won't repeat their mistakes, based on a set of design decisions:
- rather than allowing full reproduction and diversity (as we saw on Earth), there are instead just 7 models, which embody different aspects of the human personality. This limited, balanced set of models will presumably be less likely to turn on one another, since they won't attack either their own models or their six fellow-models
- instead of violent gods of war and the rest of the pantheon, they give them a single, unifying religion of one god of love
- they program them to be unable to reproduce unless they feel true love

(from remembering the mysteries - February 8, 2009)

Other than the belief in God coming from the Centurions themselves, and an extra model, this is basically correct. Some details of reproduction are not clear.

(Also we now have a name for the Colonies-Cylons, generically "Centurions".)

We're slightly off schedule, but nevertheless, as predicted

4x15 - more about Resurrection and maybe we meet Earth Cylons (who are behind everything)

(from Battlestar Galactica 4x13 - January 30, 2009)

* Does Cavil know more about the Final Five and the history of the new Cylons than he's letting on? He is model #1, after all.

(from Battlestar Galactica 4x11 - January 17, 2009)
Speculation... correct.

Very, very early on in the show I had speculated whether it was all a bit "rats in a maze" - the Cylons allowing the fleet to progress, for their own reasons... this appears to also be basically true. It's all Cavil's elaborate revenge on his creators.

I think the remainders of the human race are just rats in a maze for the Cylons.

(from star of battle 2.8 - September 11, 2005)

So just to recap some of the Mysteries:

* What is the nature of the final five, what do they know? What have they been doing? Why are they important?

The final five worked together in a research facility to rediscover "organic resurrection technology" - a lost technology from Kobol. Saul and Ellen were together, Galen and whatshername (Tori?) were together, and then there was Sam. When Earth was destroyed, they resurrected in a ship near the Earth.

where is the Cylon infrastructure?

Presumably at the Secret Colony.

Is the Secret Colony also the Place of Resurrection? It's not clear.
Did the Five leave backup models of themselves, who are the puppet masters behind the behind the scenes? Or is the Place of Resurrection their old ship, still operating somewhere? Wherever it is, it's where Kara was resurrected, gently brain-wiped, and sent on her way.

Next up in the Place of Resurrection:
* Sam Anders

Possibly on the Resurrection lineup:
* Dualla (Dee)
* Zarek
* Gaeta

1 what the 5 have been doing for the last 2000 years

2 who "uplifted" the 12 Colonies Cylons to have humanoid bodies and a belief in One God (unless they uplifted themselves)
2a there is clearly SOME connection to the 5, what with Deanna's vision and the fighters recognizing Sam Anders - did the Five do the uplift? Are there Others?

3 what is the extent and nature of the remaining resurrection technology

(from Battlestar Galactica 4x11 - January 17, 2009)

1. on a very slow boat to the 12 Colonies, with a stop at the Temple of Hope to jigger it to reveal the 5.

Gosh, who could have predicted that. Oh wait, me. (I just had them going in the wrong direction.)

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.

(from who is the puppet master - April 28, 2008)

2. & 2a. The Five did indeed do the uplift. Status of any Others (and Model 7) still unknown.
3. Possibly the original resurrection ship remains, possibly there are additional sekrit resurrection ships, and there's some technology at the Secret Colony.

New mystery: What's the deal with Model 7?

You know the answer.
There would be no reason to introduce an extra model this late in the game, except that...

ZAK ADAMA IS A CYLON

In case you're keeping track of models, that makes it

Known Cylon models
# 1 Number One (aka Brother Cavil) - "John"
# 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 "Daniel" - ZAK ADAMA

That Model 7 gap was always there (see original list at who is the puppet master? - April 28, 2008) but its importance was not clear - I assumed it was one of the Earth Cylons who would be model 7.

Earth Cylons (no model numbers)
- Ellen
- Galen
- whatshername
- Sam
- Saul

Zak Adama awaits. In the meantime, you can read his Twitter.

PS John Hodgman? What the frak? I guess the Cylons run Windows. That explains a lot.

Battlestar Galactica 4x14

SPOILERS

Not much going on, very dramatic, but mostly just more positioning.
To my surprise, neither the Admiral or the XO on the Resurrection Train, instead Zarek, Gaeta, and possibly Sam Anders have gone for a ride.

Was that imaginary Six that Baltar was talking to?

Notice Yet Another excuse (FTL chamber damage) for not going far from Earth (and the Place of Resurrection).

It was cool to see the FTL drive.
Zarek's interesting solution to democracy surprised me a bit too.

I'm not convinced about how often half of the fleet can start shooting the other half (and killing at least 50, by the population count) and then all make up and be chums.

Zak Adama is coming soon.
He told me in his Twitter.

Battlestar Galactica 4x13

SPOILERS

Well, they certainly do still know how to do dramatic.

On the other hand, they are really seriously running out of time.
Which inclines me to think they don't have a whole lot left to reveal.

Plus which in fairness, if you're wrapping up a series, you want to give the actors one last chance to show their chops.

Kara shooting the guys was surprising but in her defence, she's quite right that as soon as they mutiny, they are the enemy. Perhaps not the most astute move politically in terms of future reconciliation, but the correct from a ground-level military perspective.

Issues

1) There's a single phone line to the CIC? Err, single point of failure, anyone?
2) If they can block Baltar's wireless at the flick of a switch, why didn't they do that months ago?
3) Admiral staying with the ship is a valid justification. Admiral staying in tiny undefensible room after transport has already left, not so much.
4) They're in a tiny, crowded fleet, on a military ship which is usually on a submarine model, which is to say, every inch of space used AND monitored. I don't get this "forgotten areas of the ship" thing with Baltar's compartment and Secondary Storage.
5) There is a big, big outstanding issue: where is the Cylon infrastructure? There was Cylon space on the other side of the treaty line, one would expect that, if not Cylon planet(s), it at least contained Cylon ship-yards and Cylon people-yards (where the mechanical and humanoid Cylons are built/grown). Six says something like "they are going to kill us because reproduction is the future of the Cylons", but surely they can just make more Sixes? Where is the Six factory?



Prediction

A bit of a risky prediction, but Adama and Tigh both dead, and resurrected in The Place of Resurrection, wherever that may be.

Otherwise, it will be kind of weak drama - a grenade in a small enclosed space and they survive? I don't think so. If they come out bandaged, I will consider it pretty lame.

Also I do have to wonder about the cavalier way in which people run around spaceships with machine guns. Err, there are critical systems in the walls, and oh, the vacuum of space right outside. They do the same thing on Stargate where they machinegun the hell out of the replicators on their ships, while apparently never damaging the ship itself.

The Art of Misdirection

When a magician wants to move a playing card into a particular position, she doesn't make it obvious, she makes it look like she's doing something else very important and entertaining, while accomplishing her goal.

Ron Moore and his team have the same challenge, they have to get everything "positioned for the reveal", leading to surprising answers about the long-term mysteries, while appearing to be running another storyline. There are challenges that BSG faces in trying to tell both the short story (each episode has to be entertaining even for casual fans) and the long story (surprising long-term dedicated fans while answering mysteries).

So Tyrol's baby had to be human so that he could run around doing stuff during the mutiny (with apparently very little concern for the baby). Otherwise he would have been either in the brig, or spending all his time baby-rescuing and escaping.

So it looks to me like they are positioning people for near-Earth resurrection.
It's not clear how far they've gone from Earth, but the implications are that it's not very far.

* Tyllium ship disappears - this means the fleet goes nowhere
* FTL drive upgrades - this means the fleet goes nowhere while they wait for all the upgrades

If we continue with my assumption that anyone who dies on or near Earth gets resurrected (as implied by Ellen Tigh's statement and the fact that Kara is resurrected) - then that means everyone who just died in the firefight on the ship is resurrected, as well as the Admiral and the XO.

Then I think they may discover that you can use the resurrection technology, once it's reconfigured, not just to resurrect people who die near Earth but people who die anywhere.

So I think the show will go something like
4x13 - mutiny
4x14 - continuation of mutiny, with Revelation of Resurrection of Admiral & XO at the very end
4x15 - more about Resurrection and maybe we meet Earth Cylons (who are behind everything)
4x16 - more about Resurrection and possible return of Zak Adama
4x17 - battle with Cavil
4x18 - more battle with Cavil
4x19 - wrap up
4x20 - more wrap up

Battlestar Galactica 4x12

SPOILERS

There's not a lot to say about this episode, it's mostly setting up for forthcoming ones.

I wasn't really clear what the big deal was about the ex-Chief's non-baby.

We've got Hera who is (as far as we know) Colonies-Cylon + human,
whatshisname who is (apparently) human + human,
and Six baby who is Earth-Cylon + Colonies-Cylon.

It's not entirely clear what the big deal is,
other than these are maybe the three potential paths for the future (of which only one will succeed?),
or perhaps these represent the three forces that must unite in peace.

Other than that, this whole "dissent in the fleet" thing seems like All This Has Happened Before, All This Will Happen Again.

The scene with Tyrol and "their... our technology is better than... ours" was good.

It seems to me they could be doing more to find out what the deal is with the Five, they don't seem to be even trying to find out any more about the fragments of history that were revealed in the Earth flashbacks.

Battlestar Galactica 4x11

SPOILERS

Prophecy is tricky.

So far I'm doing ok.

one guesses that something like most of the humans left to form the 12 colonies, and most of the Kobol Cylons left to form the 13th colony (Earth)

the Cylords of Kobol? - December 23, 2008

Prophecy... correct.

So we have to wonder, is resurrection possible beyond the ships?
Is resurrection possible for everyone?

There's this problem of Kara.
Her ship clearly exploded.

Was she resurrected on Earth, or in some other Earth-built resurrection centre?

resurrection beyond the resurrection ships? - January 6, 2009

Prophecy... correct.

The Final Five, including Zak Adama, await on Earth

who is the puppet master? - April 28, 2008

Prophecy... wait a second, Ellen Tigh is a Cylon? What the frak?

UPDATE: You can now get your very own Ellen Tigh tshirt. A tigh-in, if you like. ENDUPDATE

Ok, so new mystery: Dee's suicide.
It looked like she found a locket on the beach (along with some jacks), and that made her go crazy. Either
1) The prospect of endless death destroyed her
2) The people in the locket were her ?parents? ?grandparents? and she thought she was the 5th Cylon

Which brings us to the key question: We know the resurrection technology worked for Ellen, and for Kara, and presumably for Chief Tyrol, Colonel Tigh, and Sam Anders.

So either it was just 5 of them who build a sekrit resurrection machine that now resurrects anyone in range (which, you will note, means Dualla will be resurrected),
or it may be broader than that. There were probably billions of Cylons on Earth 2000 years ago when it was destroyed by nukes. Were... ALL of them resurrected? Does their technology resurrect anyone, who dies anywhere? IS ZAK ADAMA RESURRECTED?

Just to recap:
* Baltar's visions: status unknown
* Caprica Six's pregnancy: apparently everyone has forgotten about it
* Kara: definitely resurrected
* Dualla: maybe resurrected
* Zak Adama: maybe resurrected?
* Final Cylon: Ellen Tigh (WTF?) - and maybe resurrected
* puppet masters: status unknown
* Earth nukers: status unknown

So we need to find out:
* what happened to Earth (presumably endless Final Five Flashbacks are Forthcoming)
* what the 5 have been doing for the last 2000 years
* who "uplifted" the 12 Colonies Cylons to have humanoid bodies and a belief in One God (unless they uplifted themselves)
- there is clearly SOME connection to the 5, what with Deanna's vision and the fighters recognizing Sam Anders - did the Five do the uplift? Are there Others?
* what is the extent and nature of the remaining resurrection technology
- clearly someone or something not only resurrected Kara, but also gave her a new and identical ship... some kind of robotic resurrection along with biological?
* Does Cavil know more about the Final Five and the history of the new Cylons than he's letting on? He is model #1, after all.

I still prophecy we will end up with a mix of "all this has happened before, all this will happen again" and Grand Cylon-Human Unification Theory. The Five, trying to break the cycle of war, trying to build a sustainable peace for humanoid Cylons, robotic Cylons, and humans.

And I still want to see Zak Adama.

Webisodes - The Face of the Enemy

Interesting revelation about Gaeta and an 8, also starts the Gaeta - Mr. Hoshi storyline.