Recent previews for this week’s episode — some minor spoilers for early in the episode here — reveal D’Anna going to the fleet to tell them she wants the four Cylons, whom she says she has been in contact with. She says that because the revealed 4 are in the room, listening to her.

But it’s odd that she says there are only four. This seems to say she knows the final Cylon is not with the fleet at that point, since she should not know if the final Cylon is aware or not. With Bill and Lee Adama present, along with Starbuck, they get ruled out, and the missing characters are Roslin, Baltar and Helo. Helo’s the father of a hybrid, so it’s not him. And once again Baltar rises to the top of the pack.

There’s more evidence building for the theory I spoke about elsewhere about Baltar as a Cylon Christ. In particular, an incarnation of the Cylon god. His recent near-fatal wound was very suggestive of Christ. His following and miracle keep adding to the suggestions.

We can’t predict a lot because our religious metaphors are mixed up. I mean we’ve all heard a story about a race of monotheists held as slaves by polytheists, who rebel and leave with great wrath to spend 40 years wandering. Then, when they get to the promised land they slay everybody in it. But in this story the promised land is the old land, and the monotheists were created by the polytheists, or think they were. Now we seem to be throwing in a Christ. Who knew?

One minor note I picked up of late. I’ve talked several times about the statements of the First Hybrid in the Razor movie. One of those statements was this:

Soon there will be four, glorious in their awakening, struggling with the knowledge of their true selves. Repaying the revelation, bringing new clarity and in the midst of confusion you will find her, enemies brought together by impossible longing, enemies now joined as one. A way forward and once unthinkable yet inevitable, and the fifth still in the shadows will claw towards the light, hungry for redemption, that will only come out on how of a terrible suffering. I can see them all, the seven, now six, self described machines that believe themselves without sin, but in time it is sin that consumes them. They will know imity, bitterness, the renching agony of the one splintering into many and then they will join in the promised land gathering on the wings of an angel, not an end but a beginning…..”

Generally I’ve taken the prophesies we see in the show not as mystical foreknowledge, but rather knowledge of a plan, based on a repeating cycle of time. They aren’t predicting what will happen but saying what they plan to make happen. The Cylon God knows who the final 5 are, and when they are set to awaken, so all these things can be predicted. He probably planned for a Cylon civil war as well, so it’s OK to predict that.

But more confusing is the prediction if the “seven, now six” Cylons. This implies a prediction that D’Anna will be boxed. The Cylon god might know of or be causing her quest for the five, but it seems as though D’Anna’s use of the Temple of Five was not planned. The other Hybrid said that was for the Chosen One, and that the Chosen One was Baltar. But this means that the whole thing, even the boxing was planned, and that’s a bit too precise bit of planning for my taste. This prediction takes place almost 2 years before D’Anna goes her quest to see the Five.

Or it could mean that there is some mystical ability to predict the future, and that bothers me even more. That the future is being guided by unseen forces can be cool. That it is cast in stone and can be foreseen by divine beings I don’t like.

A final note: There are some interesting foreshadowings about the metal Cylons also getting ready for a rebellion. They had inhibitors planted in them, which they don’t like, and they exact revenge. #1 states that the consequences of removing them will be truly dire. And now we have Baltar preaching to one of them, even if that one dies shortly thereafter. Something’s up here. We’ll see some “Revelations” on Friday night. (Or rather, you will, I will be watching it several days later on a recording because I’ll be busy.) About time that the secret Cylons were revealed. We have known their secret for too long, it’s time to get onto the bigger secrets that will be revealed in the closing half of the season.