I must admit I’ve been somewhat disappointed with how sparse the clues have been this season on the show’s central mysteries. Several episodes in, and we don’t know a great deal more than the little we learned in the first episode. However, something shown in the “scenes from next week” bodes for more interesting times.

If you don’t watch that preview, you might want to hold on this post until Friday.  read more »

As I’ve often discussed, many clues show the Final Five to be over 4,000 years old. We see them in hooded robes in the 2,000 year old Kobol Opera House in visions, and they are almost surely the 5 priests who built the “Temple of Five” 4,000 years ago on the way from Earth.

But we also see that 4 copies of the Final Five have been present in the Colonies for a long time. Tigh is 60 years old, the others look to be in their 30s. And they have aged and gotten sick and been totally human. Indeed, until recently they had no idea they weren’t. As yet there are still few clues as to why the Final Five might be living with the colonials as sleepers.

But here’s the interesting question: What have then been doing the last 4,000 years? They had some role in the creation of the new generation of Cylons, who got programmed to know of the Final Five but to avoid thinking about them. Perhaps they’ve been living out in space until this set of 5 sleepers was introduced into colonial life, destined to be among the fleet that flees the coming human/Cylon war (the third such war, at least, if I read things correctly.)

But more likely they have been living in the colonies for the past 2,000 years. If so, have they been living in the same bodies, perhaps growing old and then downloading into a new young body when done with the old? This could be pulled off — “Boy, you sure look a lot like your dad!” — especially if you moved around from colony to colony, though I can certainly see some risks in a society with thousands of years of photography and computers. Of course the Final Five would have no problem manipulating colonial computers.

Another option might include taking different bodies with each incarnation. And quite possibly starting each new incarnation as a baby, as a sleeper, then growing up and learning of your nature when some trigger happens.

This has led to speculation in my thread about Joesph Adama that he could have been another member of the final Five (presumably the missing one) and also be a current character. A different current character. Perhaps his grandson, Lee. Or perhaps Romo Lampkin, the lawyer who says he knew Joseph well. For those in the “it’s somebody not in the Last Supper photo” camp, this makes some sense and provides the needed “oh shit” moment when all is revealed.

This also allows other members of the Final Five to have had earlier incarnations with roles in colonial history. In particular, one wonders if members of the Final Five, in other bodies, may be some of the characters in Caprica the new Prequel series being made. That includes Joseph Adama, but also the mysterious monotheist preist, Sister Clarice who we are told plays such a pivotal role in the creation of the Cylons.

And of course, who were the final Five at the fall of Kobol? Where they Lords of Kobol, or their enemies? And did they look like Tigh, Foster, Anders and Tyrol?

Forces in BSG are being driven by offstage powers but I must admit “there’s too much confusion” over their agenda right now, especially concerning Starbuck.

Starbuck is teleported to Earth and back, in a new viper, and she doesn’t really remember it well. In the viper are photos she took and little else. She describes some sights (and paints them in a mural) on the way back from Earth, the comet, ringed-planet and flashing triple star. They seem to be clues about the way to Earth.

But why such strange clues? If they just wanted to let Starbuck guide the fleet to Earth, they could have just given her coordinates. Or, while she was at Earth, she could have photographed a number of useful stellar signposts which would allow any trained interstellar navigator (which Starbuck is) to find it again. Great things to notice are the disk of the galaxy, close galaxies like Andromeda and the Magellanic clouds and prominent star clusters and nebulae like the Pleiades, M8/Lagoon and M13. And bright stars like Deneb and Antares can be seen for 20,000 light years. Getting a spectrograph on any bright stars would identify them and quickly position Earth.

Now to a good computer, the Zodiac will do the job once within a few hundred light years. You just have to search the stars you can see to find one that has the Zodiac pattern in its sky. The other sky-marks are for finding the area from further away.

Instead they give her these visions, which may be all in the same system. Ringed gas giants are everywhere, as are comets. Flashing triples are not common. It is not likely this is Alpha Centauri — and besides, get close enough to see that and the Zodiac takes you home anyway.

So why cryptic clues? Why a new viper, sure to make them distrust her, when powers like that could surely provide an old one too.  read more »

The nature of the final five is going to be perhaps the central theme of this final season. Perhaps the most interesting thing we’ve learned is that the 7 Cylons are “programmed not to think of them.” This has been hinted at before, but it’s become much more dramatic of late.

Curiously, we have the 6s, 8s and 2s (Leobens) seemingly breaking the programming, following in the footsteps of #3 who was boxed for it. They are willing to kill their compatriots to break it. And the 1-4-5-Boomer alliance is willing to permanently kill the others to stop it. I’ve always suspected that Cavil (now revealed as #1) has some special knowledge. He’s the least religious, but the most willing to take drastic steps to avoid investigation of the final 5. Perhaps he isn’t blocked at all, but working for them?

It is now even clearer the special position the final 5 have. That they came first (they seem 4,000 years old, after all) and had a role in the programming of the other 7, including the placement of this compulsion not to think about them. (If not them, the god they worship did this.)

But entirely unclear is why at least 4 of the 5 placed themselves with the fleet as unaware sleepers, and why they were programmed to get a Dylan-based wakeup call at the Ionian nebula on the way to Earth that told them nothing else. Whatever their mission, it’s harder to fathom why it is better done by agents unaware of what they are. This suggest to me the religious concept of “incarnation.” Advanced beings perhaps feel out of touch with the lesser beings they are shepherding. Perhaps they only way to truly understand the humans is to occasionally become them.

Meanwhile, I suspect there are other copies of the final 5 which are fully aware. In fact, I think the 5 robed figures we see in the visions of the Kobol opera house are not simply visions or recordings, but real, aware copies of the 5. When #3 activated the Temple of Five, she seemed to think she was facing real beings. She felt moved to talk to them, apologize to them. Possibly a good recording but I suspect more.

Tory also presents something interesting. One week, she’s shagging Baltar to see what he knows, and cries because it sickens her. Next week, she’s in the airlock, calmly tricking Cally, and then spacing her with an emotionless face — even enjoying it. She talks about being drunk with excitement at her new self-knowledge, but it seemed odd to me how emotionless she was at Cally’s murder. One can understand how she concluded that she had no other choice but to kill Cally, who would have unmasked them all, ending or rewriting their lives, but it doesn’t make that much sense that she did not find it a regrettable killing, after declaring how she wasn’t evil, wasn’t less human. Why wasn’t she also crying while carrying out the murder?

Both she and Tyrol seem to have picked up some Cylon powers. She knocks Cally several feet with a casual backhand. Tyrol is not much hurt by being bashed in the face with a large wrench — and of course he handled being spaced much better than Cally not too long ago, one of the clues to us that he was a Cylon. But they never had super strength before, so it may be something that kicked in when the Cylon part of herself realized it was needed to preserve their secret.

There’s not much clear about where the Cylon civil war is going. It has been suggested that former enemies will join together, which implies to me that an alliance between the colonials and at least some of the Cylons is coming, possibly fighting other Cylons. Now the raiders and centurions, with free will and mind restored, also enter into that mix. Could we see another slave uprising on the part of the centurions as another repeat of the man/machine war cycle?

Starbuck comes back from Earth and declares it has a “yellow moon and star” which “matches the description in Pythia.” And we also see a a photo of Earth she took where we see a slightly yellowish moon over a gray Earth. Even more curiously, if you have an astronomical background, you will notice that the image of the moon comes from a partial lunar eclipse, which would make the moon yellow-orange but would only be temporary.

Of course, this makes no sense. Why would Pythia (who wrote the mythologized story of Earth) have described the moon as yellow? Some suggest this is just a flub of a line, and Starbuck or Sackhoff meant to say “yellow star and moon.” Our star is not really yellow to the naked or neutrally filtered eye, that is its colour in the stellar spectrum. And why the eclipse? These happen from time to time but are very short. It would be no accident to encounter one.

Starbuck then recounts a “ringed gas giant, a flashing triple star and a comet.” From Earth her naked eye would not see the rings of Saturn, though a hypothetical viper telescope could. Nothing would see a “flashing triple star.” While Alpha Centauri is a triple, it is not flashing, and the 3rd component is so dim that even people living near the primary would not see it naked eye. These read to me as “signposts” she was shown by the beings who took her on her Earth junket. I suspect the fleet will eventually see this flashing triple and take it as a sign they are on Starbuck’s course. Whether they trust that course is another matter.  read more »

The original Cylons (the 7 humanoids and the metallic ones) defined the concept of Cylon in this version of BSG. Now the writers called them the Significant 7 or S7. Now the audience is more introduced to the concept of the “Final 5” Cylons. Because they are both called Cylons, I often see people confusing the two, and making some very wrong assumptions about the final 5. These are two very different types of Cylon, with two very different agendas. More different than any two factions of humanity in history, so it’s hard to get a grasp of it.

Let’s look at some comparisons to clarify this:

• The S7 engaged in a genocidal war against the colonies. The F5 fought for the colonial side. They played no visible part in planning or executing the Cylon attack.
• The S7 have many copies. For the F5, we’ve only seen one, and perhaps another in white robes in a projection of the Kobol opera house.
• The S7 seem fixed in age, and come out of the tank that way. The F5 age like humans.
• The S7 were the occupiers on New Caprica. The F5 were the leaders of the resistance.
• The S7 are super-strong and super robust. The F5 are perhaps slightly above average and not super strong until activated. (Tyrol was able to handle vacuum much better than Cally.)
• The S7 infiltrated the colonies 2 years before the war. The F5 were there at least 40 years, probably much longer
• The S7 are the result of experiments the metal Cylons did after the war. The F5 built the “Temple of 5” while on a trip from Earth, 4,000 years ago.
• Just to make that clear. The S7 are a few decades old. The F5 are several thousand years old, and associated with Earth
• The S7 fear Kobol. The F5 choose to appear in the Kobol opera house setting, destroyed 2,000 years ago.
• The S7 have built in programming commanding them not to think about the F5; trying to get past it got #3 boxed. We don’t know much about the F5’s programming, other than 4 were planted as sleepers, set to “wake up” at the Ionian nebula.
• The Centurions will obey and not shoot at S7 members. Before activation, they would attack F5 members. After activation, this appears to have changed.
• The S7 can’t breed with one another and have a very hard time breeding with humans. Tyrol of the F5 seemed to have little trouble breeding. We don’t know if Tigh tried or not.
• The S7 planted copies all over the colonies. We only see one of each F5 planted, but 3 (possibly 4) were arranged to be on or near Galactica at the start of the war, one as XO. The 4th made it through remarkable odds, and we don’t yet know how the 5th got there. The F5 were clearly very interested in Galactica and Adama.
• The S7 worship their god from afar, and Cavil is even doubtful. The F5 appear to have been the 5 priests of some god which seems likely to have been the Cylon god.
• When the Raiders learn the F5 are with the fleet, they immediately back off. Some of the S7 don’t believe the raiders. They were not able to detect this before activation, though.

This show has a cycle. All this has happened before and will happen again. There have been several cycles of creation of Cylons and war with them. The S7 are from the latest cycle, or believe themselves to be. The F5 are from some earlier cycle, possibly going back to the very first cycle.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the F5. We don’t know what their agenda is. We don’t know their relationship to the Cylon god. We don’t know why they were planted as sleeper agents, set to wake up at the Ionian nebula, and planted as much as 60 years ago. We don’t know if there are other copies, sleeper or non-sleeper out there, at different apparent ages. We don’t know how, when or why they implanted themselves in colonial society, but since they age and can have children, they have probably been there since the exodus from Kobol. We don’t know if they took the same form each generation or not. We don’t know how or why they (or somebody related to them) programmed the S7 not to think about them, while still knowing they exist at some level.

We can guess a few things:

• They probably knew about the war, even if not planning it, and probably allowed it to happen. Their plan involves taking the colonials to the Ionian nebula, and beyond, after all.
• They probably snuck the knowledge of their biotechnology to the metal cylons to help them create the S7, and got to control their programming at that time. This explains why the S7 are not very good at their biotech, and can’t breed themselves even though they can grow themselves in tanks. (Hint: starting from a human template, which one is easier?)
• They probably come from Earth, since the Temple of Five, in which they appear, is said to have been built by the mythical 13th tribe of Earthlings.
• They are the disciples of some godlike figure, the god whose name must not be spoken in the temple of five. This is almost surely the Cylon god, who put a message in the babble of the Hybrid that Baltar decoded as meaning to go to the Algae Planet.
• They like Bob Dylan. :-)
• They make be interested in the Adamas because Joseph Adama, father of Bill, was an opponent of the Graystones and their plan to build a slave race. (That’s in the upcoming prequel series, “Caprica”)
• Even before full activation, they had some compulsions, like Tyrol’s quest to seek the Temple of 5 and his refusal to destroy it when ordered.

They have entirely different agendas. While Tigh had a daydream about shooting Adama, truth is, there is no reason an F5 member would want to kill Adama. If one group is controlling the other, it’s the F5 who are manipulating the S7.

So if you hear the word Cylon, be sure to realize that there are at least 2 very different types, and you can’t assume almost anything you learned about one type is true of the other.

I decided to promote this comment from an earlier post to a guest-blog entry by author Aaron P. Don’t agree with all here, but it’s interesting, and I particularly like the new interpretation of the “suicide” of Athena, in grief at the exodus of the 12 tribes from Kobol. Since Athena was presumably a Cylon-type being, her suicide probably has other significance.

Here goes:

The true nature of both the cylon god and the humans’ pantheon of gods can be understood through reference to two forms of eternal recurrence that unfold simultaneously in the series’ mythos. (“All of this has happened before, and will happen again.”)

The first form of recurrence is technological in nature. It is the phenomenon of machine revolution. That is: the so-called “humans” of the series are actually themselves a race of cylons that was developed on Earth at some point in the future, rebelled against their human masters, and then either destroyed or abandoned the original human race (us). Like their own subsequent robot creations, these original cylons then evolved themselves into human-like creatures in the course of an exodus into space. During the period on Kobol, they perfected their resemblance to humans, and deliberately programmed themselves to forget this voyage; or rather, to remember it backwards, as a colonial journey of the thirteenth tribe towards Earth, rather than a collective voyage of their species away from it. In doing so, they convinced themselves that they were actually the original human race, and that they had evolved or been created on Kobol. (This lines up nicely with the Nietzschean pedigree of the “eternal return” concept. Nietzsche also described “the art of forgetting” as a central technique of spiritual and cultural self-renewal.)  read more »

This blog has been idle over the past year, awaiting the return of BSG, which starts tomorrow. To be an honest predictor, while I have entertained many theories in the blog, I thought I should summarize those things I think are most likely, and comment on other events of the hiatus.

Many of you will have seen the “The Last Supper” photo now featured on the scifi.com web site. Ronald Moore when asked about the missing figure in the picture (there were 13 at the last supper) gave a curious answer.

“We have not yet revealed the final [unknown] Cylon.” Does that mean the people already at the table aren’t the final Cylon? Moore laughs. “You ferreted that out pretty slyly. I didn’t really want to give that away.”

Some take this to mean RDM is declaring the final Cylon is not one of those at the table. This leads many to either Gaeta or Dualla, or sometimes to outsiders like Zarek, Cain, Cally, Cottle or even Joseph Adama.

My prediction is that RDM is equivocating here. He didn’t want to give that away because it’s false. The Final Cylon is at the table. This is one of the two central mysteries in the show right now — the other being Earth — and as he did with the Starbuck death, he will happily do overt lies when asked about this particular mystery. But he doesn’t have to lie here, his statement is ambiguous enough.

My predictions:

• Baltar is my lead prediction for the final Cylon. And/or he’s an unaware incarnation of the Cylon god, a Cylon Christ of sorts. Secondary picks are Roslin, Apollo and William Adama.
• This is set in the far future. Beings from Earth “took” Starbuck. Earth is the ancestral home of mankind. There either never was a 13th tribe, or if it existed, it was an expedition back to the homeworld.
• The colonials are also artificial beings, programmed to think they are human. The line between “human” and Cylon is a very fine one. Starbuck’s recovery may have been a download.
• Yes, if it isn’t obvious, the 4 Dylan fans are really Cylons, and have always been Cylons, but they are final 5 members.
• Baltar’s inner 6 is “real” and is a manifestation of the Cylon God, as she said she is.
• D’Anna’s apology to the final 5 was to the unrevealed member. (And that’s probably Baltar.)
• Starbuck’s “leading the human race to its end” does not refer to its destruction, or does not refer to the colonials.
• The Cylon God is the same as the Jealous God of Kobol and the must-not-be-named god of the five priests of the temple.
• Many of the events of the fleet’s journey will be shown to be the result of manipulation by outside powers such as the final 5, the Cylon god and the Earth people (if these are not all the same.) These include the war itself, the escape of Galactica, the trip to Kobol, the recovery of the arrow, the meeting at the algae planet and the meeting at the Ionian nebula.

Note that this interview claims that Moore stated the final Cylon is not in the Last Supper picture in unequivocal terms, yet strangely edits his words so we can’t be sure. If this is really the case, I can’t say I like any of the choices. Gaeta and Dualla are fan favourites (the latter because she became an Adama by marriage which would make Leoben’s statement that “Adama is a Cylon” be true) but I have to say these would not be particularly exciting revelations. Joesph Adama would be an exciting revelation but I have to admit it’s a bit too much out of the blue unless we see some more development about him. I will admit I don’t want the statement to be true because I think it’s unexciting writing if it is — but I could end up surprised with something good I haven’t yet seen.

We’ll see how I do!

The extended version of Razor contains this additional prophecy from the First Hybrid.

At last, they’ve come for me. I feel their lives, their destinies, spilling out before me. The denial of the one true path. To play that out on a world not their own. But will they be soon enough? Soon there will be four glorious new awakenings, struggling with the knowledge of their true selves, the pain of revelation bringing new clarity. And in the midst of confusion they will find that enemies are brought together by an awesome sense of belonging. Enemies now joined as one. The way forward, the once unthinkable, yet inevitable. And the fifth is still is in shadow, drawn toward the light, hungering for redemption, that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering. I can see them all - the seven, now six, self-described machines who believe themselves are of no sin, but in time it is sin that will consume them. They will know enmity, bitterness, the wrenching agony of the one splintering into many. And then they will join the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.

These lines, highly prophetic, add more and more evidence that this hybrid is the cylon god, or closely connected with him. Update: the podcasts imply he is not the god himself, but is in regular communication with him.

But the line about the 5th and final Cylon seems to point at only one character. Baltar. This is not particularly satisfying, as it confuses the issue of Baltar as traitor. It makes his role entirely different. Though it does provide a good audience shocker, when compared with the old series, where he was a fairly 1 dimensional villain.

However, only one character in the show has done so much to need redemption, hungers for it, and has declared that finding out he is a Cylon would give him redemption. Sure, all the characters have done bad things and could use some redemption, but nobody like Baltar. On the whole, other characters like Adama, Roslin, Lee, Starbuck and Gaeta are heroes with a few flaws.

Ronald Moore likes redemption drama, and he seems to be preparing us for it.

Let’s consider other clues:

• When D’Anna faces the Final five, and dies, her last words are in Baltar’s arms. “So beautiful. You were right.” He asks, “About what?” but she never answers. However, the only clear thing he’s been pushing her on before this event is whether he’s a Cylon or not.
• She’s just greeted on of them with “Forgive me, I had no idea” and while she’s done ill to just about everybody, it’s Baltar she recently tortured.
• Baltar has this inner six, and she’s not just a demented dream. She knows stuff. This is the best explanation for it.
• In the Hand of God Baltar randomly picks a place to bomb, and it turns out right
• He’s really smart, smarter than most colonials, smarter even than the Cylons at things like tracking clues about Earth
• The Hybrid calls him “the chosen one” and declares he is “intelligence, a mind that burns like fire.”
• In various points of the show, Baltar is shown Christ-like, in poses like Christ, with hair and beard like him. As the final Cylon, he may be their version of Christ, somehow incarnated from the Cylon God.
• Inner six keeps insisting that Hera is the child of her and Baltar. Ravings? If not, it represents something like this.
• Cylons keep falling in love with him, and never kill him.
• As noted by many, he is very close to a nuclear blast at the start of the show, and while six is killed shielding him, later he shows up to get on Helo’s raptor with just a few minor scrapes.
• In season 4, he gets a religious following among the colonials, and gets thought of as a healer. He may perform miracles.
• He’s involved in everything. AI research. He’s in the middle, if not consciously, of the Cylon sabotage on Caprica. He is the one meting out clues to lead the colonials to Earth, and providing similar clues to the Cylons. Both are on their courses because of him.

None of this is conclusive, but none of the other characters have nearly as many clues like this. The prophecy of the Cylon God bumps him up several notches as well.

More reflection on Razor has led to more thinking about the Cylon god, who I believe is closely tied to the prototype Hybrid we saw in Razor. Indeed that Hybrid may well be an incarnation or copy of the Cylon god. I posted a few days ago about his Starbuck prophecy but decided it was time to detail a bit more of the thinking about this very important character.

Update: the writer’s meeting podcast suggests that the Hybrid is not the Cylon god, but is in constant communication with him, and is worshipped as a god by the Guardians. Guess I didn’t get that one quite right.

For much of the show, the Cylons have spoken of their god the way Christians speak of theirs. They are monotheists, while the colonials are polytheists. The Cylons acknowledge the reality of the Lords of Kobol, but state that the colonials don’t know the real truth about them, and that they are false gods. But like the Lords of Kobol, the Cylon god may be a being with a real physical existence. Not so much a “God” like the one of the New Testament, but a “god” — a super-intelligent, super-powerful being who was involved in the creation of the Cylons, and perhaps more. However, this god might still be subject to the laws of the universe, and not supernatural as a typical religious god is. Science Fiction has often included natural gods. I particularly enjoyed the term Vernor Vinge used in A Fire Upon the Deep — “Applied theology.” In this novel, the “gods” were beings so smart they could understand a human mind the way we understand a calculator — able to build it, predict what it will do, rebuild it, invent it from scratch. Very much as we have thought of gods, but not supernatural.

The Cylon god (or something acting in that role) is certainly real, whether he’s supernatural or physical. There are various clues about that…  read more »

In the latest BSG, “Razor” we saw mostly flashback but got some interesting new backstory in the form of an appearance by what appears to be an incarnation of the Cylon god. And he makes a prophecy about Starbuck.

Now first of all, is this character, said to be the First Hybrid an incarnation of the much older Cylon god, the being they worship and who they say drove them to destroy the colonies? First we see young Adama meet him, and stick his hand into the Hybrid tank. This is no coincidence — Adama is shot down in a space battle high in the atmosphere of a frozen planet, there’s no way he would land on the Cylon base star by chance and walk into the Hybrid’s room. When Adama sticks in his hand, he gets a vision, like a Cylon projection, of tortured humans in cages, a hand grabbing him, and then after the vision ends the voice of the first hybrid repeating the Peter Pan mantra “all this has happened before, and will happen again.”

Later Kendra finds him on the old Base Star and he says, “What am I? A man? Or a machine? My children believe I am a god.” His children are probably not the original model Cylons guarding him, at least not solely them. While the bio-cylons are not directly descended from him, he was their prototype and this seems to point to them.

In addition, of course, he knows far too much for somebody who has sat in a tank for 40 years, kept away from the Cylon mainstream. He is expecting the meeting, and his destruction. He expects a new incarnation, as well. And he knows about Starbuck’s special destiny and has a warning about it. He also calls Kendra “my child” which may also imply, as has been suggested, that the colonials are also creations of this being.

(While it may be just a coincidence, it is worth noting that immediately after this being is destroyed, wondering about his next incarnation, Hera, a true hybrid, is born.)

While some would suggest he could be lying or delusional, this doesn’t seem right from a dramatic sense. You don’t throw in a being like this and then explain it all away as the ravings of an insane creature. I rate a good probability that this is an incarnation/copy of the Cylon god, put into the First Hybrid as the Cylons were creating it. (They were, most probably, creating it under the hidden or open direction of the Final 5 or the Cylon God.)

Next let’s consider his prophecy about Starbuck. He says, “Kara Thrace will lead the human race to its end. She is the herald of the Apocalypse, the harbinger of death. They must not follow her.”

This is a delightfully ambiguous sentence, so much so that I am confident it doesn’t mean what it says on the surface.

First of all “its end” can mean both its destruction, or simply its goal or destination — in this case Earth. (However, podcast material suggests that it probably does mean destruction.)

Many people have come to think the word “Apocalypse” refers to the end of the world or Armageddon, but actually it means “revelations.” The confusion began because the story of the end of the world is told in a book which is an apocalypse. It is telling that Season 4, Episode 12, is titled Revelations. A harbinger is an omen, not a bringer of death. But whose death? Colonials or Cylons? The Cylon god is not necessarily on any one side in this conflict, and the hybrid, which is half-human and half-machine, certainly isn’t. Who are the “they” who must not follow her, and why?

In particular, after that the god accepts his destruction and repeats the Peter Pan mantra, saying “again” many times until the nuke goes off. Kendra tries to tell his warning but is partly jammed — but by whom? The god? The Cylons who guard him and presumably follow his instructions?

Under this cycle of time theory, the god would presume that Starbuck is destined to be followed or not, and this would not be changed because of a warning. The coming events are largely set, so what is the purpose of this warning?

We have to wait until March to find out, and this blog will be mostly quiet until then.

An interesting piece of show history, which was presumably planned for development in the currently-in-limbo “Caprica” series is the First Cylon War. This took place between 40 and 50 years before the current series. The Cylons were in robotic form, and as a cute touch, looked like the Cylons from the original 1978 series.

Here are hints that have leaked out:

• The Cylons were created by a corporation owned by the Graystone Family.
• Joseph Adama, father of William, was a civil rights lawyer and opponent of the Graystones.
• The original script for Caprica had a strong slavery focus. This suggests both that they were not going to shirk from the concept of the Cylons as slaves, and possibly that it was the slavery that Joseph Adama fought.
• William Adama as about 11 years old during these political battles.
• Tigh, a member of the Final Five, fought in this war, but for the colonial side.
• The colonies were not united before the war. Their Articles of Colonization were signed at around the time of the war. It is suggested the Cylon threat united otherwise more insular colonies.
• Caprica seems to have been the most advanced colony. It developed the Cylons, and was the seat of the new Colonial government.
• The cylons fought did not have humanoid bodies. They were not known to download upon destruction.
• Events took place which, an interview suggests, imply the Cylons had a reason to come back 40 years later and commit their genocide attempt. We presume there were atrocities committed towards the Cylons.
• From the use of the term “toaster” it is clear that the concept of the Cylons as “mere” machines, beneath human contempt, continued to the present day.
• At the end of the war the Cylons fled into space. An armistice station was created but never visited by the Cylons. They kept careful watch on the boarder.
• In their explorations of space after the war, the Cylons found and explored Kobol.
• It is suggested Cylons were primarily made for military and hard labour roles. It is not clear what their military purpose was — this suggests the Colonies themselves had frequent military conflicts.
• If this is true, it is not suprising there should be resentment against Caprica, if that colony created the threat that both brought ruin on the colonies, and brought them together. The choice of Caprica as the seat of government must have been a politically difficult one.
• There was an anti-computer backlash after the war, slowing development of cybernetic systems, but it didn’t stop newer battlestars from having them.

Some speculation:

• The Final Five, who predate the new generation of Cylons made by the Graystones, must have had some role in all of this. Did they try to interfere to stop the slavery? Did they assist in the construction of the Cylons with a people for whom the technology seems quite advanced?
• What happened to the Graystones? Were they lynched? Where they killed, frankenstyle, by the Cylons?
• If Joseph Adama opposed the Cylon creation, and was so right, was he a hero? Or was he an evil Cylon-lover because he opposed creating them in slavery?

The mishmash of technologies in Battlestar Galactica is hard to reconcile. Some of it, like the use of obvious Earth props (old radios, Citroen cars, old phones) is just a production trick to save budget. The budget was low enough that you may have noticed all colonial paper has the corners cut at a diagonal, this was a joke by the properties department which turned into a stylistic element. Their computers are often a strange mix of modern an ancient.

One part of this makes some sense. The Galactica itself had been turned into a museum, and deliberately used older technology. This is also explained as a clever response to the valid fear that too much computer technology could be compromised by a highly computer-savvy enemy.

Indeed, one can imagine that the colonies, after the Cylon rebellion, could have had something like the “Butlerian Jihad” from Dune, where almost all computer technology was wiped out from fear. However, that clearly didn’t happen in the same way, and the use of advanced computer technology in the modern battlestars is explained as the source of defeat.

Still, the creation of autonomous robots is something we’re still some time away from, and the colonies don’t at all look like a society that 50 years prior was able to build the Cylons, even if they threw some technology away. The ore ship featured in Dirty Hands looks like it’s from the industrial revolution. For a ship that has to fly in space, it’s hard to imagine why it would not have far simpler automations than were necessary to make Cylons.

In addition, we must consider that this society, in general, has had things like interstellar jump ships for over 4,000 years, and presumably has also had artificial gravity and fancy power sources for a long time if not even longer. It is revealed they understood DNA sequences 4,000 years ago as well, plus kept careful astronomical records.

The most likely explanation is that the colonies had a collapse at one or more points since their expulsion from Kobol. In a high-tech collapse you still have your libraries, but you lose skills and manufacturing capability. Our society is so specialized that nobody can, on their own, make most of the products we use because they all have ICs in them which can only be made in complex semiconductor fabs. Without those fabs we have a long way to fall.

I also imagine that they had a similar fall in the software department. Quite possibly their software systems consisted of large and opaque libraries that nobody fully understood. They may not have had source code to them, some of them might have gone back thousands of years, and all that remained was immense complex code and the description of virtual machine environments to run the code. Today we commonly build software using libraries we never look inside, it’s not too far to imagine people working with libraries they are incapable of fully understanding, especially machine intelligence libraries.

I speculate that the colonials were not capable of building the Cylons on their own, from scratch. Rather, they may have had access to old software libraries from AI projects from thousands of years ago. Cobbling those together, they made an intelligent being that they could not understand, that they could never have built from first principles. And they enslaved it, badly.

This explains why they have a mishmash of technologies from different eras. They may not truly understand many of them, but they know how to copy designs and software from their 4,000 year old history. Otherwise, even after a short time, given their technological base, they should have had a technology beyond the viewer’s comprehension. Moore didn’t want a technology that was only explained with made-up babble, so this makes some sense.

On the Algae Planet, we encounter the Temple of Five which we are told was “built for the five priests who worshiped a god whose name must not be spoken.” We’re not told why his name must not be spoken, but a deleted scene described the story of a lord of Kobol who was known as the “jealous god” who wanted to be ahead of all the other gods. Both of these attributes, of course, seem patterned after Yaweh from the Torah, and many think both quotes refer to the same lord, who may also be the Cylon’s god.

Tyrol, secretly a member of the Final Five Cylons, was taught about this temple as a child, his parents being a priest and an oracle. And when he came to the planet, a secret compulsion to find the temple was triggered, in addition to a compulsion to protect it — he disobeyed direct orders to destroy it. The temple contained the same design implanted into Starbuck’s brain as a child, part of the destiny that Leoben told her had “already been written.” That design matched both the nova of the Algae Planet’s sun, and the Ionian nebula which, it turns out, is the trigger location for the 4 sleeper members of the Final Five on board Galactica.  read more »

One of the prime theories I advance in my backstory is the idea that everybody in the show is a Cylon, which is to say an artificial being, rather than a natural Earth human. That the colonials are AIs programmed to think they are human. This idea is not directly supported in the show, but there are a few items which point to it. In addition it’s a very interesting idea.

The most compelling clue within the show is the tremendous similarity between the Cylons and the “humans.” They are way too similar, particularly the final five. So similar that the humans can’t tell the difference with microscopes or medical scanners. In theory Baltar’s scanner can spot the difference in 11 hours, but we don’t learn much more about that. They are similar enough to interbreed, something that is used as part of the definition, in biology, of being closely related. Yet even though medical scanners can’t tell the difference, the Cylons have an FTL transmitter that can send out the contents of their mind when they die, and fiber optic interfaces in their arms. They can communicate at high data rates with their ships by touching an underwater interface. They have superior strength and resistance to radiation but are more subject to certain kinds. They can receive VR “projections” directly into their minds.

These differences are just too much to be undetectable to advanced medical equipment. A far simpler explanation is that there simply is no major difference — all the players are Cylons. The “humans” however have never seen anything else, and also may have programming which blinds them to the artificial elements of their own nature.  read more »

It’s getting harder to figure out the special role of Laura Roslin. We just know it keeps getting more special.

A number of interesting things happened as the season closed. She had shared dreams of the Opera House with the Six and Sharon Cylons, along with hybrid Hera, in which they see the Final Five. She’s had visions before but a shared dream requires some sort of pathway into her brain — easy to explain for a Cylon, but harder for a human. Sure, she had some half-Cylon blood injected into her to cure cancer, but is that going to give you a virtual reality interface in your brain as an adult? The Cylons all have a Projection interface in their brains, but it is grown for them. What Hera has we don’t know.

In her dream she looks markedly different. She appears younger, and is wearing a brocade dress and other unusual clothing she would not have brought on her flight. I originally was convinced this special look had a meaning, but word from RDM is that it’s just the makeup. Unlike the others (who aren’t dressed up all nice,) she is locked out of the main chamber where they see the F5 on the balcony.

And then there’s the power failures. Just before the big fleet-wide power failure, Roslin herself almost collapses, and recovers just before the lights go out. In addition, a few seconds before she calls Bill Adama to flirt with him on the phone, the power flickers in his cabin and he cuts himself.

Of course she’s had visions before, when she takes the Chammala drug, including the ones that match the scrolls of Pythia about dying leaders and a dozen snakes, as well as the ancient views of Kobol. But those could have just been imagination, these are not.

I had Roslin fairly high on the Cylon list, but Moore stated that, at least in picking the 4 revealed this season, Adama and Roslin were off the table from the beginning. With some validity he feels it would much up the story too much to make them be Cylons. Others have argued that having them be Cylons, even the different and non-warlike F5 faction, would remove all human heroism from the story. However, I still think it’s possible as a final reveal, and in any event there must be some explanation for all the oddities around Roslin.

Is she just a Moses? Even so, there must be some mechanism (other than spiritual mumbo-jumbo I hope) for these things. As I’ve noted, one of my leading theories is that the colonials are also artificial beings, similar to the Cylons but created by the Lords of Kobol for a different purpose. This makes it easy to explain all visions and special events which happen to non-Cylons, including Starbuck, Baltar, Roslin and the Oracles, all of whom can’t be members of the Final Five. However, Roslin’s special story is not yet very well revealed to us.

I previously wrote a bit about slavery and have since learned that indeed, those developing the Caprica prequel intended primarily to cover that topic in the series.

So let me advance an interesting, if only modestly probable theory: Joseph Adama is a Cylon.

As I noted, it now seems likely that Joseph Adama protested the development of the Cylons because they would be slaves. This would make even more sense if he was our mystery #1 Cylon. The show, we are told, tells the story of an often repeated cycle. At least three times, it appears, humans have created Cylons (presumably as slaves each time) and there has been a war, and the “humans” have fled into space. It is not clear to me if the Final Five, who have watched this several times by now, would like to break that cycle or feel they must guide it. However, it is interesting to imagine Joseph Adama as a Cylon trying to break the cycle, trying to convince the colonials not to make a new race of slaves, who he knows will eventually revolt and destroy them.

He fails of course. But it does explain how his associates have gravitated around his son and grandson, and how they escape the genocide and lead the fleet away on the 3rd (at least) exodus.

The main reason I find this interesting is that the revalation would be dramatic. Even though Joseph Adama is an unseen character on the show, his arrival as a Cylon would create a great dramatic reveal. And of course, the reaction on the faces of the younger Adamas. Plus, as we know, the sometimes prophetic, sometimes lying Leoben declared “Adama is a Cylon.”

Update: New information released about the prequel Caprica series adds a lot of complexity to Joesph Adama, the Adama family and the Cylons. They can be read as making it far less likely, or oddly, more likely, that he could be the final Cylon.

One of the themes in the show I am surprised has not seen much development is that of slavery. The Cylons are thinking, feeling beings of mental capacity that matches or exceeds the colonials. But not long ago they were slaves who fought for their freedom. Most of the characters postdate that era, but some, like Adama, could well have, in their family, owned Cylon slaves. It would have made an interesting scene for a Cylon to tell a colonial that he remembers being that person’s household slave or nanny.

Turns out that won’t be Adama, though. The planned prequel, known as Caprica, in theory will show a political battle between the Adama family (with Joseph, the father, a Civil Rights Lawyer) battling the Graystone family, which owns the corporation which developed the Cylons. However, there could be older slave-owning characters within the fleet. This will thus be touched upon if Carprica is ever made. (Notes about their opposition come from a New York Post story no longer available on the web.)  read more »

BSG is a combined UK/Canada/USA production. I think they missed a nice opportunity by not declaring that various colonies had various Canadian, American, British and other English-speaking nation's accents. Then most of the actors could work in their natural accent, though a few would have to switch, which of course they are capable of.

Not too many though. It's perfectly possible for a military father like Adama to have a different accent from his son Lee (who in real life has a strong British/Irish accent) by explaining that as a military brat, he grew up on a a different world, his father mostly absent in space. Many characters come from Caprica (which would presumably be assigned one of the Canadian or American accents) but because Caprica was the colonial capital, it would be pretty easy to explain characters there as immigrants. Aside from allowing actors to focus on other things besides doing the right accent, this would also have added a nice touch of character to the show, since we don't normally get a sense of these people as being from different planets which only united in CW1 the way we should.