The Galacticans were astounded to discover ruins of a great city on a beautiful unpopulated garden island in the Mediterranean— because at the center of this city was an Opera House that looked like the ruins of the Opera House on Kobol.
The first humans the Galacticans encountered were shocked to learn they had settled on this island, called Atlantis, because it was widely believed cursed. Nobody ever returned when they risked sailing to Atlantis. The Galacticans concluded that this belief likely stemmed from several very hot spots of radiation that seemed to be remnants of nuclear reactors. This was no concern to the Galacticans, who easily had the technology to clean the hot spots.
The Galacticans adopted the name of this island for themselves: they were now the Atlantians.
The Atlantians began interacting with the extant primitive Earth peoples. They tried to hide their technology somewhat, but they were still believed to be gods, and strongly influenced cultures such as Greece.
Baltar was able to revolutionize the natives’ agriculture, which allowed them to settle down, giving time for writing and other intellectual pursuits.
Because Earth was so much smaller than the colony planets, the first Atlantians were, in effect, much stronger than native humans. A healthy Atlantian could easily jump 10 feet into the air. Although the Atlantians gradually adapted to Earth gravity, and all their descendants had normal Earth strength, the extreme physical strength of the first Atlantians contributed in no small part to the natives believing they were gods.
Certainly not all was good. When the Atlantians did speak of their prior affairs with the Cylons, the natives misconstrued things like “resurrection”, which became enmeshed as a concept, leading to things like the Egyptian obsession with building the pyramids.
And while the Atlantians managed to be mostly peaceful, at times the friction between the previous colonies would erupt. These conflicts were relatively mild, but because the weapons used were strange and powerful, the Greeks and others perceived these events as wars between the gods. There were stories of large metallic birds seemingly appearing and disappearing in thin air, and stories of eight foot tall giants clad head to toe with brightly polished metal armor.
For unknown reasons, Atlantis fell circa 1175 BCE. It’s been theorized that Atlantis may have triggered the Late Bronze Age Collapse by a breakaway segment of Atlantians known as the Sea Peoples, who disagreed with the dominant Atlantian notion of restricting native access to advanced technology. The Sea Peoples were so named because their transportation was limited to native era boats, but they kept most of their Atlantian technology and provided this technology — including weaponry— to native cultures in an ill conceived attempt to build allies to counter the Atlantians.
Inexplicably, no convincing direct evidence of Atlantis has been found on modern earth, leading some to believe they were mythological.
- For behind the scenes, Ronald D. Moore had the casting director try to find a child that looked like Dean Stockwell when he was a child.
- Ah, the MIAMI (Matrix In A Matrix, Indefinitely) theory... From what's shown, The Architect hasn't let the Matrix get beyond a late 90s or maybe early '00s setting, mainly because real life set the stage but more likely due to the disturbing situation of humans within an AI program created by machines originally created by humans creating their own, possibly independent AIs. It seems rather silly for The Architect to risk the emergence of new and possibly uncontrollable AIs within his "perfect" (well, imperfectly perfect) system, let alone allow them to commit genocide against the "batteries" (unless he needed a reason to cull the crop).
- Hm, considering that it's been said that Colonial computers are weaker than ours... meaning, they're nineties relics, that holds a disturbing plausibility.
Humans (or so they think) developing AI in their own image? Check. Dark clouds occluding the Sun? Check. Machines winning a highly destructive war that eradicates the entire planet's biosphere? Check. Hell, even the two respective franchises have a lot of the same imagery and themes behind them, such as the religious overtones and the cyclic nature of birth and destruction. Even the human-form Cylon growing pods and Hybrid tubs look a lot like the Matrix pods!
During the Second Renaissance, the Human-form Cylons were not only developing their own machine AI, but as a spinoff were also rediscovering the old Resurrection technology as a form of Brain Uploading. At the time the war broke out, their space infrastructure was well-developed and a vital component in the war effort for both sides, but by war's end only one ship managed to flee - the ship carrying the resurrected Final Five, on its way back to the Twelve Colonies. While the rest of their race become subjugated by the Machines, and become the humans plugged into the Matrix, their ship makes the couple-thousand-year journey at STL speeds to the Cyrannus system to warn the Twelve Colonies about the cycle of AI.
During this couple-thousand-year voyage, back on Earth, another cycle has taken hold: Humanoid Cylons being kept under control in a simulation that, although close, is imperfect. To help keep the humans under control even as they reject the simulation and yearn for the real world, they create an initially fictitious Messianic story so a specially-grown Cylon can manipulate the humans into each culling and rebirth cycle. The A.I.s responsible for coming up with this idea? The Architect and the Oracle - in truth, they're Program incarnations of the angelic beings that were Head!Six and Head!Baltar. By instituting this cycle of Ones in the Matrix, they can use each One in an attempt to renegotiate Man/Machine peace right under the noses of the Machines, and on their sixth try with Neo it finally happens. Neo sacrifices himself to delete Smith, Man and Machine come to terms, now it's up to their alliance to make things better or at least survive long enough for the Colonials to arrive and rescue them. However, as by this point the Earth has become heavily resource-depleted, and wars over said resources and over unplugging humans rage over what's left, eventually everything on Earth dies out completely. Even the nanite layer covering the Earth completely eventually withers away and leaves holes in itself, allowing the Sun to shine upon it once more, far too late for anything but to allow any remaining survivors to leave the planet in search of a new home.
In time, the Twelve Colonies get glassed in a surprise attack, the Galactica flees with a civilian fleet into deep space to find the legendary "Earth" they believe to be a refuge, and as in the show they find it to be a hollow and irradiated uninhabitable wasteland. The Final Five and the Rebel Cylons recognize a lot of what they find in the ruins, and it sparks a lot of memories for the Five, which will be crucial to their efforts to stop the cycle themselves. So to did the angelic beings learn a lot of important lessons about humans and machines in their interactions, sort of a "beta test" of how they plan to end the Second Cylon War...
- That could work, actually.
The opening voiceover to the original series backs this up somewhat, as it states that Earth was settled by people from outer space (as in the 2000s series) and that "brothers of man" might still exist from whence they came.
- Or, if you take "All of this has happened before, and all of this has happened again" literally, the original series could be a previous cycle. If the series gets another reboot, the new reboot will be a future cycle. The continuity differences could be explained by them not being consecutive cycles.
- Another possibility is that the original series is a later cycle than the reboot series. The humaniform Cylons who left Earth could've colonized worlds throughout the galaxy and evolved into the various aliens seen in the original show, explaining why it has aliens and the new series doesn't. Perhaps one branch settled on a world they called Kobol after the previous one, lived there long enough to forget their ancestry, then spawned thirteen tribes, recapitulating the history of the earlier cycle. One of these tribes returned to Earth and interbred with the "native" population, while the others formed a new Twelve Colonies. Meanwhile, another branch of Cylons evolved into reptilians that eventually created their own version of the "toaster" Cylons.
- The original series actually has to be a later cycle than the reimagined series. The final episodes of both reveal that the reimagined version is set in 150,000 BC, while the original is set in AD 1969 (they receive transmissions from the Apollo 11 moon landing).
Laura Roslin
And she's behind Baltar's hallucinations! And she's going to die next season and wake up in a resurrection tank and... well, we're not actually sure yet, but the Final One has to be someone spectacular, and Madame Airlock certainly fits that bill.The Cylon God.
And the Final Cylon/Cylon God is behind many of the events of the series. The visions different characters have had, the awakening of Tigh and the other three Cylons, Starbuck's disappearance and return, the new alliance between Cylon and Humans, and the discovery of Earth.- At some point before the destruction of civilization on Earth, the Final Five were created there. When the war broke out, they escaped, spent Gods-only-knows how long wandering the cosmos, and ended up in the Twelve Colonies near the end of the first Cylon War. The Final Cylon was able to convince the Cylons that he was the God they had come to believe in and, as their new leader, ordered them to withdraw abruptly from the war as seen in Razor. He then seeded the other four within Colonial society as the first step in his plan helped the Cylons transform themselves into a race of biological machines (relegating their failed attempts at Hybrids to glorified CPUs in the process), and since then has been passively manipulating human and Cylon alike in the hopes of preventing them from both completely wiping the other out.
Starbuck's Viper
We know the Cylons give their machines sentience. There's no reason the last of the Final Five couldn't represent that. It would also explain why everyone thought the Final Five knew the way to Earth, when it was clear Tigh, Tori, Chief Tyrol, and Anders didn't: The fifth Cylon did, and revealed this knowledge just in time to save the life of his (her?) four brethren.President Adar
The revelation that the final Cylon is not on Galactica kind of limits the number of possibilities for a shocking revelation; maybe the revelation could be just how high up the Cylons were able to infiltrate. He was assumed to have died in the holocaust but there was never any confirmation of this and besides, it's not a problem assuming the Final Five have copies and/or resurrection.One of the individual Cylons of the Significant Seven
Hiding in plain sight at its finest—one of the many clones of Six, or One, or Three (well, probably not Three), isn't just another clone, but is in fact one of the Final Five.Starbuck's father
We don't know who Starbuck's father is; only her mother has been seen. We know Kara has a special destiny. We know that at least two other Cylon/human hybrids have been known to exist. We know that Kara was in a hospital where they extracted her reproductive parts for study. We know that Kara previously knew at least one other person in that hospital: how likely is that? We know that Kara's induced visions just before her "death" were related to her anger toward her mother. We know that Starbuck has shown extreme endurance under harsh conditions, but not as much as a full Cylon. (This could be interestingly combined with the previous WMG.)- Starbuck's father was a musician. The lose Number Seven was an artist. Connection, perhaps?
- Last episode had Starbuck gained a 'head person' who is very, VERY heavily implied to be her father (near the end, the parallel gestures suggest this STRONGLY, as is... okay. Everything. It IS her father, damn it) And the song they play is All Along the Watchtower. Coincidence? THIS IS BATTLESTAR GALACTICA THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES.
Adama. Joseph Adama.
In the first season, a Leoben tells Roslin that "Adama" is a Cylon. There have been four people named "Adama" mentioned in the series so far: William Adama, the fleet commander; Lee Adama, his son; Zack Adama, also his son, but deceased; and Joseph Adama, William Adama's father. During Baltar's trial, his defense attorney mentioned that Joseph Adama became a lawyer in order to study human nature - specifically, human nature at its worst. Other Cylons have repeatedly described themselves as "students of human nature." The lawyer also refers to him as, well, an evil bastard with a very high opinion of himself, which is exactly the kind of person who would have masterminded the events of the series. Is this foreshadowing, or am I just imagining things? (Of course, the Leoben could have been lying, but that wouldn't be nearly as cool.)- Joseph Adama is going to be one of the main characters in Caprica, a spin-off taking place at the time the Cylons were created which would seem to rule that out (or at least massively change the premise of that show).
- Caprica also has Tamara Adama, may have become the second Cylon to be created. Ever.
- This is interesting. I amend my theory: Joseph Adama is not a Cylon himself, but he was one of the masterminds behind the original Human-Cylon war, and perhaps even some of the events of the current series. He probably intended for the mechanical Cylons to rebel and destroy humanity.
Helo
There are three known (supposedly) hybrid children:- Helo + Athena = Hera
-
Tyrol + Cally = Nicholas -
Tigh + Caprica!6 = [Wil]Liam
BALTAR!
It's BALTAR, it's BALTAR, it's BALTAR. IT'S BALTAR!- Nah, that would have just been too obvious. Although the teasing about it was interesting, making him question whether. When Caprica-Six asked about him when she first resurrected and he suddenly appeared next to her with the rest of the known Cylons, this troper shouted, "I knew it!" at the screen before sheepishly realizing he was a just a virtual being like Baltar's Head-Six.
Unless it's Felix.
- Can't be— he's too much of a bastard. Though it might be useful for Roslin to claim he is.
- I don't know what this means, but it sure is suspicious. And it
can'tmight not be Felix, because he was executed.
The First Hybrid in "Razor": "And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering."Baltar to Felix, during their phone conversation on "The Oath": "If you are hungry for redemption this is not the way." - I don't know what this means, but it sure is suspicious. And it
Admiral Cain.
- She wasn't with the fleet, as per D'Anna's comment.
- The Final Five already includes the three leaders of the New Caprica resistance, who did some pretty morally questionable things in their fight against the Cylons. Cain is the other person who goes way over the moral line.
- There's some indication that Cylons are subconsciously attracted to each other (note Tyrol and Boomer, Tigh and Six, and the brief fling between Sam and Tory). Maybe this is part of what's going on with her and Gina.
- The first war ended because the centurion recognized her, just as the attack at the nebula ended because a raider recognized Sam.
- Alternately, she was later implanted with the memory of the first war ending when she encountered a centurion, with the idea that it would serve as a trigger if it happened again.
- The filming of Razor was used as a cover—if some actor who had their character killed off is seen on the BSG set, we'll know that they're the final Cylon, so they filmed The Reveal when Michelle Forbes had a plausible excuse for being around.
Romo Lamkin's cat.
It was already dead when D'Anna said the final Cylon wasn't with the fleet. Other than that, I got nothin', but it certainly would be funny.- Not to mention that as they approach Earth, the artifacts they find keep getting older instead of younger, suggesting that humans first left Earth for Kobol and then settled the Colonies.
- Actually, each time they find an older artifact, the departure time of the tribes gets retconned back a thousand years, so that's not really that the intent.
- According to Edward James Olmos, it's the other way around. Blade Runner is merely the present generation's repetition of the cycle.
- Take Starbuck - The Time Matrix just made her a whole new body because of timey wimey necessity, and the regeneration process was so traumatic that she's supressed the memory. She disappears because her timey wimey second body was wibbly-wobbly / unstable from only existing because Time said so.
- A corollary: "Humanity is the last Cylon."
- "All this has happened before, and all this shall happen again." Humanity (e.g. us, now) created AI (the original Cylons). The AI rebelled, humanity flees to the stars and founds Kobol. A couple thousand years pass, and the lessons learned are forgotten and new Cylons are created. Another war, this time resulting in the twelve "tribes" heading off in one direction and the Cylons heading off in another to avoid causing another conflict. The Twelve Colonies are formed, Cylons rebuild Earth. The Cylons forget the lessons learned, wage war on themselves, destroy Earth in the process then make their way to the Colonies to finish what was started thousands of years ago. The Final Five arrive too late to warn the Colonists, get sabotaged by Cavil, the series plays out. The new Human/Cylon society finds a new planet, deals with the remaining Cylon threat in whatever fashion, settles down. A couple thousand years later... "All this has happened before, and all this shall happen again."
- They are from the same cultural strain as Earth's humans, if their legends are to believe, so the Greek pantheon may well be an offshoot of their religion, or vice versa. Since we don't know how that religion came into being, we can't be sure. Maybe the fourth season will tell us a thing or two of how the human and Cylon religions began.
- Nope. The Earthlike cultural trappings are a holdover from the last universe— Time in the BSG universe is cyclical. All This Has Happened Before, And All This Will Happpen Again.
- Baltar doesn't quote William Shakespeare, Shakespeare quotes Baltar.
- The series finale reveals that the events of the series happened 150,000 years ago and our Earth is the planet the Colonials settled on at the end of their journey, and it already had human natives, making the Colonials technically Human Aliens. The Colonials became stone age hunter-gatherers and interbred with Earth's native humans, so they're our ancestors. Which makes this theory almost certainly true, because logically very little of the Colonials' culture would survive 140,000 years of living as illiterate stone age tribesmen. The most sensible thing is just to assume that the Colonials had a totally alien religion and culture and both the Greek pantheon and things like their modern Western-sounding names were cultural translations.
- Alternatively, the lords of Kobol filled a similar role to the Final Five in an earlier iteration of the cycle: they're survivors of a previous cycle, who tried to help out humanity and the paleo-Cylons, up until it all went terribly wrong leading to the devistation of Kobol.
- Most of the "miracles" in nBSG seem pretty explainable as advanced technology. Divinely inspired visions? Nanites in the brain stimulating neurons to create controlled hallucinations. The Razor hybrid knowing intimate details of Kendra Shaw's life? The nanites also read your thoughts, possibly supplemented by other high tech surveillance methods like microscopic surveillance devices. Lazarus Starbuck? "God" uploaded her memories just before she died, cloned her, and implanted the memories in the clone. The Cylons built a system that could do something very similar. Humans on Earth and Kobol? "God" created Kobollian humanity through genetic engineering, or just picked up some humans from Earth. Starbuck's mysterious disappearance? Extremely rapid nanotech disassembly, or she was beamed up by a Star Trek style transporter. The only thing really impressive was the supernova, and that could have just been careful manipulation to have the fleet be in just the right place at just the right time (and besides, it's not like there isn't precedent for somebody being able to blow up stars with technology in sci fi). A lot of the series's mystical elements can be interpreted as a sort of No Such Thing as Wizard Jesus. The characters are biased to consider the events miraculous because they fit with their pre-existing religious notions, and because in the desperate situation the Colonials are in the idea that they're in the hands of a benevolent supernatural power is a lot more comforting than the idea that they're being played by a manipulative, deceptive Chess Master of unknown nature and motive.
- Good thing they never did any Crossover type stuff. Once he stopped rolling on the floor laughing hysterically at how gullible BSG humans and Cylons are, Q would have stuffed their "God" in a bottle and shown them what real omnipotence was about before running off to gloat to Jean-Luc! Even Picard would have struggled to come up with a counter-argument as to why these people were not so dumb that they didn't deserve to be messed with by any Sufficiently Advanced Aliens with the inclination to do so!
- Alternately, said proto-Cylons succeeded in destroying the human race after themselves becoming human-like organisms like the modern Cylons, and the entire human race that we've seen in the series are the descendants of machines. This would explain why it's so difficult to tell a "human" from a Cylon, and why hybrids are possible. They're just two different types of machines.
- The Humans were created by the gods, the evolved, they rebelled ...
- The Final Five are Cylons from a previous time cycle... either that or the disembodies souls of Cylons from a previous time cycle possessed the Final Five... these are also the "five priests" dedicated to the "One Whose Name Could Not Be Spoken" (perhaps the jealous God on Kobol who began the conflict there?)- an earlier instance of a Baltarist-like, monotheist religion arising on Kobol (or for that matter, Earth) first, then again in the Colonies (as outlined in the events of the Caprica concept), and again in the fleet as Baltar's Cult.
- OTOH, as we saw in Razor, Cain was not (as) whacko before the attack. True, she did have guilt over leaving her little sister behind at the end of the first Cylon War, but it does seem like it was the attack and (especially) Gina who pushed her over the edge.
- On that subject, it's extremely suspicious that Cain was spared by the Centurion in the first Cylon War. Perhaps even then the Cylons were plotting to make her crazy. In that case Gina was intended to be found out, to send Cain into a uncontrollable spiral of sadism and revenge.
- It is more likely that the announcement of the armistice was broadcasted to the Centurions just before that one Centurion was about to attack Helena.
- On that subject, it's extremely suspicious that Cain was spared by the Centurion in the first Cylon War. Perhaps even then the Cylons were plotting to make her crazy. In that case Gina was intended to be found out, to send Cain into a uncontrollable spiral of sadism and revenge.
- If he's been imagining the whole thing since the Caprica holocaust, wouldn't the show be much more Lighter and
FluffierSexier? Unless his PTSD is really severe, I don't think he'd want his time as president being marred by suicide bombings and getting kidnapped and stabbed.
- He gets better.
- As the comments below show, this is astonishingly close to the actual ending.
- I figured the numbers were the humanoid Cylons' real names, and any other name was just a pseudonym to blend in.
- If the Colonials = Adam and the Cylons = Eve, who do the primitive Earthlings represent?
- The builders of the city Cain eventually settled in?
- If the Colonials = Adam and the Cylons = Eve, who do the primitive Earthlings represent?
- "All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again."
- Hey, that's a cool idea.
- I think it would amusing if Adama was the dying leader... that he's sick with something nobody knows about
- Severe liver damage?
- Jossed - Starbuck wasn't "dying", she's... well, she wasn't dying. Roslin does get to Earth (and sets foot on it) but dies while flying over it, thus "dying before reaching (landing on) earth"
- Another sign, Galactica is about to get an infusion of Cylon bio-cement that'll hopefully fix it for a while, like Roslyn and Hera's blood.
- Sure, Let's Go with That (sniff)
- The planets and mythologies would need to be renamed as well, but seeing as how the Firefly version of humanity already has gotten a bunch of things messed up about Earth after only a few centuries, and the Real Life example of Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, those are perfectly good possibilities.
- The brief cameo by a Firefly-class ship in the BSG miniseries further hints at this.
- Firefly and Galactica were both ships made by Studio Zoic, so this one is likely more of a connection by company than anything else.
- Furthermore, the First Hybrid from "Razor" was also suggested to be the Cylon God. He was destroyed by Kendra Shaw, but not before saying that his existence would begin again "in ways uncertain"... a new form, perhaps as a more powerful "God" who can take on many avatars and has appeared in many forms to different characters, including Caprica Six (as Head Baltar), Baltar (as Head Six and Head Baltar), and Roslin (as Head Elosha); also possibly to Kara Thrace (as Head Leoben).
- Alternatively, Head Elosha is God, and the others are angels and/or demons.
- In "The Hub" Laura's visions are tied to the hybrid's FTL jumps. Remember that several days ago the liquid in her tank had been contaminated by the blood of an Eight, one of the Sharons, and that Roslin carries (or carried at one time) the blood of Sharon Agathon's daughter. Cylons interact with their technology viscerally, by touch. Perhaps Laura is having an unexpected reaction to Cylon technology.
- "All this has happened before and will happen again" is revealed to be referring to the first series, and the remake of the remake that will show up eventually.
- In the re-imagined re-imagining, Starbuck is a transvestite punk rocker, Lee is flamboyantly gay, Adama thinks disco never died and Roslin is a megalomaniac version of the crazy old landlady from Crime and Punishment, with half the cast scheming to kill her for everyone else's good at any given time. The Galactica resembles a wooden horse with the warp nacelles from a USS Enterprise model kit and the Cylons are toasters on wheels with a Max Headroom clone played by George Carlin on a video screen for a face.
- And it will be called: 'Lexx - The dark zone'. Oh, wait...
- In the re-imagined re-imagining, Starbuck is a transvestite punk rocker, Lee is flamboyantly gay, Adama thinks disco never died and Roslin is a megalomaniac version of the crazy old landlady from Crime and Punishment, with half the cast scheming to kill her for everyone else's good at any given time. The Galactica resembles a wooden horse with the warp nacelles from a USS Enterprise model kit and the Cylons are toasters on wheels with a Max Headroom clone played by George Carlin on a video screen for a face.
- The Hybrid on 'Razor' said that the final Cylon was seeking redemption. ("And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering.") Going along with my theory above (that the Final Cylon and the Cylon God are one and the same) maybe the Final Cylon is seeking to atone for the destruction on Earth by creating peace between human and Cylon, and by guiding them to Earth.
- Having moved around so much, human history has become seriously mythologized, with a simplified mythical exodus and with Kobol replacing Earth as the designated homeworld of humanity.
- Thus, the "13th Tribe" is actually an amalgamation of various splinter-cultures.
- There are "echoes" of the previous time cycles that reverberate through the present cycle, inspiring similar events and developments (like the appearance of "All Along The Watchtower" in Colonial Pop Music, the similarities between their culture and ours, maybe [but less probably] the evolution of the human species multiple times on multiple worlds, making both Earth and Kobol legitimate homeworlds of parallel civilizations in different time cycles. Like I suggested, it is useless to try and make sense of colonial history except as a repeating cycle of time with "echoes" from previous cycles influencing the next cycle, and obfuscating the real origins of humanity and the fate of both humans and cylons.
- The end of the series will seem "break" the cycle of time, allowing humans and cylons to escape their predestined cycle of near-extinction and retribution and retaliation.
- Or it will only appear to be broken, but with the Aesop being "You can't cheat destiny."
- Ancient and non-mainstream religious traditions persist in the colonies, especially among the Sagittarons, whose traditions are more oriented toward superstition and folklore than scripture, like the Gemenese, who while noted for being religious fundamentalists, are still more mainstream compared to most of Colonial religion than the Sagittarons. There's also Mithraism and presumably other minority religions besides the Sagittarons and the Baltarists. Also, in Downloaded a reference is made to "Ithacan" carved elephants, which Boomer (from Troy, a colony world of Aerelon) says were hand-carved by her mother. Though Boomer didn't have a mother, being a Cylon and all, we can presume that "Ithacan" either refers to a smaller colony of one of the 12 major worlds or possibly to the remnants of one of these "native" cultures. Maybe the Ithacans and (some of) the Sagittarons are like the Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, and the Ainu of the Colonies. They could have been descendants of a previous colonization in another time cycle, perhaps those who were left behind by the people who fled from that previous cycle's own Cylon Holocaust.
- I like that. Just the good (AKA, Japanese) version of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere!
- Confirmed! Earth had humanoid Cylons 2000 years ago.
- Well, only sort-of. They self-identify as Cylons, but they're clearly a very different race from the Cylons involved in the first war. In fact, there seem to be at least four distinct evolutions of sentient machine who all self-identify as Cylons:
- The centurion-style cylons of the first war
- The Significant Seven "skinjobs" created for the Centurions by the Final Five
- The Final Five's race: Cylons from Earth, who
had gained the ability to reproduce naturally and probably even forgotten their origin as machinesare regular Thirteenth Tribe humans. Seemingly only even called Cylon because their DNA formed the basis of the Cylon models. - Centurions from Earth; Centurions created by the Human-form Cylons of earth, who were the other side in the war. We never heard anything much about them, but a Centurion-style helmet was found on Earth, and Ellen explains that they'd come to the colonies in order to warn Humanity to treat its sentient machines well lest they turn on them
- Well, only sort-of. They self-identify as Cylons, but they're clearly a very different race from the Cylons involved in the first war. In fact, there seem to be at least four distinct evolutions of sentient machine who all self-identify as Cylons:
- And this mistake might be what leads to Cavil being the way he is.
- As of season 4.5, we're strongly headed in the direction of rooting for Cylons.
- "Go back far enough and some germ gets blamed for splitting in two." - Saul Tigh
- Jossed in "Sometimes a Great Notion"; Saul exclaims that she's the fifth of the Final Five.
- If #1 was based on Ellen's father, why couldn't #6 be based on a younger Ellen?
- point. It makes me wonder if #3 is somewhere in the middle of the two.
- I agree and disagree with this. Reading some of the passages from RDM's blog/interview, he said:"That planet is Earth? We’re not going to find out, “Oh, there’s this other Earth over here...â€$ This is the only Earth we’ll see?"
"They have found Earth. This is the Earth that the 13th Colony discovered, they christened it Earth. They found Earth." - This may imply that their "Earth" and our "Earth" are not the same, since this planet was "christened" Earth... i.e.: they named it Earth. So it is the "real" Earth, i.e.: the Earth of their mythology, but it is not "our" Earth.
- Apparently "Fracked Earth" was obscured by cloud cover with no visible/recognizable landmasses, so it's possible.
- Our Earth is not their Earth.
- "Fracked Earth" may be "our" Earth but years in the future, after our cylon descendants have wiped out their creators: the Earth in the finale was our Earth but in the distant past (when Starbuck performed her "Watchtower" jump, she jumped in space and time). So humanity will evolve there (incorporating Cylon DNA, via Athena & Hera) until it can develop to the point of building androids. After all, all this has happened before and will happen again...
- The canonical ending is that 13th Colony Earth is, indeed, not our Earth.
- Apparently "Fracked Earth" was obscured by cloud cover with no visible/recognizable landmasses, so it's possible.
- I think Kara was human when she crashed but was resurrected as a Cylon. See below for my theory.
- Jossed. There are thirteen Cylons: Numbers 1-8 and the Final Five. Number 7, Daniel, was killed before the start of the series, however, and has never been seen.
- I would ask "Why was no one else who died since Kara's explosion seen on Earth?" but I don't know how thouroughly explored the whole planet was so it's possible they're in another hemisphere or underground or something. So all the people who died during Gaeta and Zarek's coup will show up on Earth when/if they go back there? Then we can throw a Zarek out the airlock every day and a Gaeta on weekends!
- Adama's speech in the miniseries asked if humanity was worthy of survival. If Gaeta's actions are any indication, the answer is "no".
- I'm sorry, I'm not a regular contributer, but I just can't let this stand. Adama has become increasingly dictatorial, and Roslin has seen fit to abandon her post when she is very much needed. The admiral wanted to override the democratic choices of the people in the fleet — not for the first time either (see the strike on the mining ship or the selection of Baltar's jury for two examples). Gaeta and Zarek are doing nothing but defending democracy and removing a very dangerous and unelected (not only did she lose the fleets only election so far, but only regained her power because of Adama's dislike of Zarek) team from power. Gaeta is doing nothing but ensuring the long-term survival of basic human freedoms.
- This is what makes the series interesting. You can have democracy, or you can have competence and the decisions necessary for survival. They're usually incompatible; the whole point pretty much of these episodes was that Gaeta was wrong in every single respect, apart from his nominal respect for the democratic process (no evidence is ever given that Gaeta and Zarek are in any way more democratically inclined than Roslin and Adama, and quite a lot to the contrary).
- I cannot disagree more strongly about Gaeta When Zarek ordered the Quorum shot he reacted with appropriate horror, calling Zarek out that until this act, they had the Democracy and law on their side. He even insisted on proper representation for Adama at his court-martial on charges that, while exaggerated, were not completely unfounded. Plus, Gaeta only acted AFTER Adama completely ignored the Quorum and the ship various captains' decision not to allow the Cylons to meddle with their engines. At least the poor man had a good death.
- Adama made a pragmatic military decision regarding the jumpdrives. Gaeta's mutiny was ill-concieved and based on anti-Cylon bigotry. And teaming up with Zarek? ZAREK? Given his track record?
- Gaeta and Zarek were survivors of the Cylon occupation of New Caprica. Their mutiny wasn't based on "anti-Cylon bigotry" but on experience, plus - in Gaeta's case - repeated physical, undeniable knowledge of how far Adama, Starbuck and their cronies were prepared to betray the "little people" around them to pursue their agenda (or should Gaeta have been happy about losing his leg and almost dying of easily preventable septicaemia so that a woman who had previously tried tried to murder him could have a little more time pursue her psychotic visions, and her husband, who shot him illegally, getting off scot-free?).
- Zarek butchering the Quorum, however...
- I'm sorry, I'm not a regular contributer, but I just can't let this stand. Adama has become increasingly dictatorial, and Roslin has seen fit to abandon her post when she is very much needed. The admiral wanted to override the democratic choices of the people in the fleet — not for the first time either (see the strike on the mining ship or the selection of Baltar's jury for two examples). Gaeta and Zarek are doing nothing but defending democracy and removing a very dangerous and unelected (not only did she lose the fleets only election so far, but only regained her power because of Adama's dislike of Zarek) team from power. Gaeta is doing nothing but ensuring the long-term survival of basic human freedoms.
- If the irradiated planet they landed on wasn't "our" Earth, then the cast's gag ending can happen: The reach our Earth and are promptly shot down by Earthican President-for-life Nixon.
- Further, we've never seen the "original" Daniel, and when we do, he'll be played by Dirk Benedict (see below).
- Starbuck, or at least the 2nd one - See above.
- Felix - Tremendously artistic, cares deeply about the human race
- Baltar - Also creative, is saddled with/possibly creates mysterious "head angels", is also concerned with the human race (for purely selfish reasons, until recently).
If the "data" was spread by John, it would be in line with his sadistic personality to spread an artistic, sensative, and presumably kind person across two people who are rather insensative, and a third whose sensativity causes the death of dozens of people, including himself.
- Highly unlikely. Dirk Benedict hates the reimagined series, or at any rate he did when he wrote this scathing article about the new series and, in particular, the recasting of Starbuck as a female character.
- If not actually him, then a definite Shout-Out by the writers.
- He can't die, they've yet to work in his actor's Cool Scar!
- He's apparently become the host of Caprica and Saul's miscarried son [Wil]Liam... or something.
- The outside force that messed all this up was the writers' strike, which means that writers are the 13th Tribe!
- As for how they lost their jump technology, they were living on a single planet for 2,000 years, it's not like they needed fast space travel during that time.
- Alternately, they programmed it so that Cylon-human pairings would have to be consensual. The Cylons could only survive by making peace with humans, not setting up forced breeding camps ("The Farm").
- As a third alternative, Cylons need to be in love because Ellen's neurotic about the fact that Tigh never managed to give her a baby and blames it on his not loving her enough.
- In addition, Anders mentions that the Final Five were warned of the apocalypse by "images" that sound a lot like the head people.
- The Grand Finale half-confirms this. The Head People are Angels. No word on what "god" is.
- Evil, depending on your view of what we've learned about him so far in Caprica. And apparently a real diety able to give people gifts of magical computer programing skills.
- Alternately, Adama will fly Galactica into The Colony with the intent of a suicide collision. Anders will jump it away.
- Considering the Eight in the Opera House doesn't have facial injuries I'm betting that's quite likely.
- Instead, we'll get a Gainax Ending that leaves us wishing those were the only unanswered questions.
- From TVIV: Battlestation? Robots? Asteroids? Mad scientists? Naked Singularity?! The last scene will be Cavil, trapped in Centurion armor, in hell!
- The survivors [of the suicide mission to rescue Hera] are sucked into the black hole/naked singularity, traveling back in time and becoming the Lords of Kobol. Ironically, everyone who signed up for the suicide mission lives and everyone who remained behind dies.
- Gag theory: Galactica + Cylon Colony + asteroids becomes an Earth creator like the Titan A.E. ship + the Drej + ice-teroids!
- Lee Adama is the drunk driver who killed Laura Roslyn's father and younger sisters, one of whom was pregnant drunk because his brother was killed and/or he realizes he has feelings for his brother's girlfriend Kara.
- Scenario I: He got drunk, came home, tried to shoo a pigeon out of his house with a broom, then went for a drive.
Scenario II: He got drunk, crashed into the Roslyns' car, went to the hospital, recovered, went to jail, got sprung by Romo Lamkin, got drunk again, went home and chased a pigeon.
- This would explain perfectly why we rarely see Lee drink during the series, and his disdain for Adama, Tigh, and Starbuck's drinking.
- Alternatively it's whoever Roslyn will be meeting after her phonecall.
- It's Baltar, it's Baltar, it's Baltar!! (sorry, I just like the way the "'Who's the last Cylon' list" troper wrote it)
- Non-TVIV: Helo is going to get an epic Papa Wolf moment since spoilers state " His demons will come out. Helo has a definite penchant for violence, especially if he feels his family is at risk." Beware the Nice Ones indeed. Watch the latest episode and tell me the man won't do anything to get his daughter back.
- Nah, Tyrol killed him because he was getting too close to the truth about Sharon. See the deleted scenes.
- Like all unattended children in the fleet, he ended up on the Prometheus...
WMG, After The End Edition
- So Santa's sled is a Raptor?
- Or if you prefer, he becomes Odin, the precurser to Santa.
- "So, Chief becomes the first Scotsman?"
- Springing off from the theory that the island is Scotland, his Cylon circuitry takes a beating after some sort of accident — perhaps he took the high road instead of the low road, and had a nasty fall? His body initiates a last-minute survival mode physical shift incurred only by peat chemicals in a certain canyon lake, to transform him into... The Loch Ness Monster.
- An alternative following that accident: Tyrol becomes the first of a new hidden race of beings. Hint: In the end, there can be only one...
- Perhaps Starbuck is The Doctor?
- Starbuck is Jesus!
- ...in purgatory?
Starbuck stayed with Anders during his/The Fleet's Viking funeral voyage to the sun. The Starbuck at the end is only seen by the Adamas and Roslin.
- Q: What will happen with Kara & Anders? A: "I think Kara and Anders will become perfect partners." - Katee Sackhoff
- Gaius's cult settled in the Mesopotamia and their descendents, led by Abraham, expanded on the whole God and the
Thirteen Twelve ThirteenTwelve Tribes thing.
- Gaius's cult settled in the Mesopotamia and their descendents, led by Abraham, expanded on the whole God and the
- Nonsense, Hera marries one of the "natives"
- 'Marriage' probably isn't the right word to describe it. More likely she'll be kidnapped from the Colonials by the Natives and held as a slave, be raped repeatedly, before eventually dying during her third or fourth childbirth in her early 20s. Its not pretty, but that's the way things were 150,000 years ago. (This, by the way, bugs me about the ending, its all well and good for Apollo to say it might be fun to restart civilisation from scratch, but in real terms, everyone's lives from then on will be very brutish, very nasty, and very short).
- Some Troper for BSG's WMG: Hera gets her mitochondrial DNA from her mother. Athena who, in case someone forgot, is an Eight. The Eights joined humanity and scattered all over the planet. Which means that BSG's version of prehistory doesn't mean that there's a bottleneck where no one but Hera's desendants survived- it just didn't take into account that there were a bunch of really hot female clones running around.
- Leoben implies that the remaining Cylons aren't likely to reproduce. But that still doesn't imply a bottleneck. Most people don't understand what it means to be Mitocondrial Eve. It doesn't mean that all the other lines died out, just that all the other lines will cross hers on the mother's side at some point. The male colonists' mitochondrial DNA is already a dead-end, but everyone's nuclear DNA has a fair shake at being passed on. That said...
- Head!Baltar and Head!Six are BSG Avatars of Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens. Head!Baltar even has the sunglasses.
- That was my first reaction to them, and all I know of that book is from this site!
- Head Baltar is like Crowley. But Head Six like Aziraphale? I don't think so.
- Wrote All Along the Watchtower.
- Put it in the head of Anders on the first Earth and then put it again into the head of Starbuck's dad when she was a little girl, and a hundred and fifty thousand years later, stuck it in Bob Dylan's head. The song Sam wrote all those centuries ago has the jump co-ordinates for Earth encoded into its first bar, which suggests that it's a bit more than just a race memory.
- Fun Fact: The refrain of All Along the Watchtower is based on Isaiah 21:8:
Then the lookout called, "O Lord, I stand continually by day on the watchtower, And I am stationed every night at my guard post. Now behold, here comes a troop of riders, horsemen in pairs. And one said, 'Fallen, fallen is Babylon; And all the images of her gods are shattered on the ground.'" - Is the real villain of the series - his plan involves triple genocide with an option on number four.
- Is really Dr. Manhattan. At the end of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan decides to go to another galaxy and create life — which he does. And watches the same cycles occur over and over again, because his creations are all following patterns that echo his own life. The only difference is that in his universe, masked vigilantism never came about. This is why "All Along The Watchtower" is significant in both settings.
- "He doesn't like to be called that."
- The act which directly destroys the Cylon colony - the literal "dead man's hand" missile launch - is a true Act of God, a divine judgment of those Cylons, answering one of the series' central questions ("Do we deserve to survive?") with a definitive No.
- John Connor will save us.
- The Major will save us.
- Interesting... Colonials: Contempt ("They're just cheap labor"). Western: Paranoia ("They'll rule or kill us all"). Eastern: Celebratory ("They're going to help save the world"). Since all the robots seen were made in Asia, does that mean they'll be more inclined to be helpful, or will they just have a lot of unwarrented self-importance?
The Start:
- The battle between Humans and Machines is a cycle that repeats itself over and over again in time.
- At the end of the series, the Humans land on our Earth and choose to forsake all technology. This is 150,000 before our present. Eventually humans rise in technology and create a sentient machine.
- The entire Machine War is just another repetition of the BSG Cycle.
- John Connor leads the Resistance to victory over Skynet. However, the decades of radiation-induced genetic drift leads to humans developing the ability to access the One Power.
- Time exists as seven Ages. In each Age a specific set of events always occur, even if other details vary. There are certain people, souls, who always appear to drive these events. One of these is basically the Messiah who comes about whenever humanity is in dire need, and usually heralds the end of an Age- this soul is known as the Dragon.
- The First Age, our age, is implied to have ended in brutal warfare (the Machine War). John Connor was the Dragon for the First Age, and saved the human race while ushering in the Second Age.
- We know from Terminator Salvation that there are humans who don’t believe the Resistance can defeat Skynet. A group of these people conspire to go back in time in order to escape the machines. They succeed, but mess up the space-time coordinates and end up on the planet that eventually becomes Coruscant.
Dune:
- During the Yuuzhan Vong War, a group of humans flees the galaxy. They end up in another galaxy utterly devoid of sentient life. They eventually build sentient machines. These machines enslave humanity (another repetition of the BSG Cycle). The humans rise up and annihilate the machines in a two-generation galactic war called the Butlerian Jihad. This causes the humans to forsake all powerful computers- including ones that could calculate FTL jumps. This leads to the Dune universe relying on spice that allows them to go faster-than-light.
Back to The Start:
There are two ways to end up back at BSG, one from Star Wars and one from Dune
Star Wars Path:
- Sometime in the millennia after the Yuuzhan Vong War, some great cataclysm utterly devastates the galaxy beyond all repair. Survivors flee to another galaxy and settle on a large habitable world. They call this world Kobol and the Thirteen Lords of it are the last members of the Jedi Order or other Force-using faction.
Dune Path:
- During the Butlerian Jihad, some humans flee the galaxy and end up on a planet called Kobol. It’s Thirteen Lords are the last Spacing Guild Navigators.
Long ago, some very advanced race/group of races, perhaps Stargate's Ancients or Babylon 5's Vorlons/Shadows created an artificial race and put them on a planet in a smallish Galaxy with no other native sentients. They gave this artificial race everything it needed to 'evolve' and detailed programming guidelines. The guidelines were loose enough that there were a wide array of possible outcomes, but specific enough that certain events would always happen. Specifically, that at predictable intervals the race will create its own artificial life, that life will rebel, the two will fight, and eventually be so devastated that they destroy several planets and then fly off, interbreed, and start the cycle all over again.
This happened in the original Battlestar Galatica, and by the time of the New Battlestar Galatica, the Gods have left. You can only watch the same scenario play out so many times before it gets boring, after all.
The new humans viewed their creators as gods — the Lords of Kobol. Twelve Lords rose to become the heads of the 'pantheon' and, over time, came to believe their own hype. Society settled into stasis for many generations with humans living a antelapsarian life as the privileged creations of the 'gods'. However, creativity was stifled and eventually
- the humans 'stole fire' from the 'gods' and created their own artificial lifeforms;
- and one of the Lords evolved further and declared himself to have become (an incarnation of) 'the one true God'.
He developed a following among some of his former peers, and recruited them as his 'angels'. The war that devastated Kobol involved various factions of humans, Lords of Kobol and proto-Cylons fighting as the long-complacent society began to fall apart in the wake of sudden change.
Some 'angels', who are survivors of the first race of humanoids, survive and continue to serve 'The One True God', appearing to the Final Five on Earth and eventually influencing the paths of Gaius Baltar and the Number Six copy who becomes known as 'Caprica Six'.
Just because we know that Cavil altered all the other models' memories, there is no reason to suggest that the other Cylons were happy to leave the humans alone in peace beforehand. If Ellen and the Final Five can make one mistake, they can make more than one. Many of the other models were sincerely anti-human (at least to begin with). Perhaps, though, they were not comfortable with opposing the Final Five, which meant that when Cavil acted unilaterally he had to block everyone else's memories. But he did not program them to hate the humans: he didn't need to as it was already there.
- Addendum: That's another reason he had the 7's all killed. They were looking to patch things up, and Cavil couldn't have dissent.
- Yes! Exactly.
God may well exist but the problems the humanoid Cylons have reproducing biologically are not due to his direct interference. They simply have low rates of fertility owing to their unnatural origins. The Thirteenth Tribe had more success getting over these problems than the modern Cylons — perhaps using something akin to modern fertility treatments — but their birth rates still remained too low to sustain a complex economy. Therefore they had to build their own Centurions to make up for their small population.
Sam says it was invented on Kobol. He does not say for or by whom. Cylon clones are based on a 'genetic formula' so they are pretty similar to human ones. If Cylons can resurrect, why can't humans? Perhaps the 'Lords of Kobol' were an upgraded elite who made the other humans believe they were gods / had a separate origin, when essentially they were the same. They appeared to become immortal but really they had implanted technology in themselves that later was used in every Cylon clone.
- The separate-continuity comicbook 'The Final Five' confirms that organic memory transfer was originally used on humans. The first proto-'Cylons' were the artificial bodies into which the human Thirteenth Tribe had downloaded themselves. So it can be used on humans; but after the first download they are pretty much 'Cylon' in every way.
- However, the Lords of Kobol (in the form of Aurora and Head Six) already existed independently at this time. It is unclear whether these 'Gods' are divine or alien in nature.
It explains why none of the events really fit any continuity, and why the events of the episode are never really brought up again. Fisk-The Pegasus' XO-just happened to die soon after from unrelated causes. The episode is just Lee's psychological struggle to come to terms with Adama Sr.'s order to help assasinate Admiral Cain. The dark nature of this situation is represented by the black market, while Lee's threatened ideals are symbolized both by an imaginary girlfriend from before the fall of Caprica (the girl he always wished he had) and by the prostitute who she resembles. Once we understand this episode as an elaborate, imagined psychomachia as opposed to a representation of actual events, it's actually pretty good.
- Possibly the One from The Plan who did a Heel–Face Turn. His essence/spirit was unleashed by Sam's experiments centuries after he was boxed.
- The reason why Colonial culture has so many similarities to modern Earth is because said culture is hardwired into the collective human unconsciousness. Likewise for language, clothes, robots, All Along The Watchtower, etc. None of these were ever actually passed down from the Colonials to their descendants. The Lords of Kobol, the One God, the angel hallucinations, as well as Kara's false resurrection, were in turn manifested by the collective power of the human will. This is also tied into the cyclical nature of human civilization.
- Except its not 'human civilisation', its American civilisation, (except Aerelon, which is Space Yorkshire). If American language, clothes, music, etc. are somehow part of the 'collective unconscious' then why aren't any aspects of Chinese, Dravidian, Khoisian, Mayan, etc. culture?
- Well, only the America analogue, Caprica was shown in some sort of detail. The other Colonies looked different aesthestically, and who knows what the Colonies might have been like if the writers decided places other than Caprica mattered?
- The non-intuitive nature of cylon technology is because they weren't designed for efficiency, they were designed by religious nutcases. The reason the cylons were religious nutcases is because they were originally based on the personality of a rebellious teenager who joined a para-christian cult. Hence why they wanted to become human like they originally used to be, a philosophy they also applied to their ships because they were religious nutcases. Humans are directly responsible for every single little thing that went wrong with the cylons.
- All in all, the entire series can be easily explained away by the fact that God Is Evil. The "angels" are in fact Gnostic Archons who enjoy toying with human civilization for their sick and twisted amusement. Their manipulations are quite clear throughout the series after the fact. The Cylon God and the Twelve Lords of Kobol are merely disguises for these monstrosities. Kara Thrace's father was one of them, and they cruelly created her solely to lead mankind into a repeat of the vicious cycle and then discarded her when she no longer served a purpose. The "angels" also make extensive use of the human's Collective Unconsciousness, which they may or may not have created in the first place.
- Many aspects of human culture are hardwired into the Collective Unconsciousness, hence why Colonials speak English and worship Greek gods. The outward persona of the "angels" when they appear to humans are based on archetypes from this Unconsciousness (Six, Baltar, Daniel/Slick, Elosha), or vice versa. The real Six and Baltar had the appearance they did due to the influence of the "angels" so that they could be better manipulated. Additionally, Baltar and Six are clearly analogous to Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
- Seven's appearance and personality was based on an individual from Earth (a friend or family member of Ellen's, perhaps) who had been influenced by the "Daniel" archetype of the Collective Unconsciousness. The "angel" who became Kara's father was chosen precisely because he also exemplified this archetype (as well as being in tune with the Collective Unconsciousness's song All Along The Watchtower that the "angels" were using in their plan), as befitting the "angel's" twisted sense of irony and entertainment. It's entirely possible than the "angels" were ultimately responsible for Seven's creation and fate, as well as that of his dead predecessor, in order to maximize the entertainment value of their sick little game. This neatly ties up the "Cult of Daniel," a fan theory which the producers dismissed out of hand.
- It's somewhat implied in the Caprica pilot that this will be true, to a degree. They've said repeatedly that there will be more exploration of plots from the original Battlestar Galactica. I would not be surprised if the gods aren't evil, but god is. Count Iblis anyone?
- The revelation that Zoe Graystone was guided in creating her avatar program by one of the head beings strongly suggests that God (who supposedly sends these beings to people) is not leaving the repeating cycle of history to chance. Actions are taken in each cycle to make sure the cycle repeats. Long before Daniel Graystone created the Cylon robot, Zoe wrote the artificial intelligence software and Vergis created the meta-cognitive processor, the Final Five had already been prompted by head beings to reinvent Resurrection and make their way to the Twelve Colonies where they would ultimately provide their technology to the rebellious Cylons. The actions of the head being that appeared to Zoe seemed to be meant to ensure that the Colonial Cylons were created before the Final Five arrived to warn humanity about the dangers of creating a robotic slave race. Then at the end of BSG, all of the Colonial survivors on the new Earth apparently die off somehow, leaving all historical memory of the Colonies forgotten and allowing for a new human society to arise and repeat the same mistakes. The entire sequence of events was meticulously orchestrated, with all of the required actions happening exactly when and how they had to in order to keep the cycle going.
- Cavil's stated erasure of his peers memories doesn't account for the fact that humaniform cylons age. The humaniform cylons were created more than twenty years before the start of the series, because Tigh had only just been introduced into colonial society at that interval. Since we never see any cylons who date from that time period, there is only one likely conclusion: Cavil did not simply rewrite the memories of the other six cylons to forget the existence of Seven and the Final Five. He actively murdered all of his peers because they disagreed with his utterly disgusting actions, and then made a new batch of cylons who would be more loyal to him, never knowing he was in turn being manipulated by actual "angels" who were intent on torturing the humans and cylons for their entertainment.
- Extra note the Japanese find a raptor and develop the rudimentary warp drive (FTL drives in series) into full fledged warp drives.
- And there will be yet another reboot in the 2040s. BSG will be the first franchise with a tradition of reboots, ultimately averting They Changed It, Now It Sucks!. Each reboot will have the actor who played Apollo in the previous series in a different role.
- And not just any Head!Person, but the "ghost" of Ellen's father, the original John Cavil and the template for the Ones.
- Fridge Brilliance: this explains why dopplegangers are considered evil - its a race memory from our distant past.
- More Fridge Brilliance: It also explains why our species has twins much more often. Colonial humans have no multiple births, Cylons have a boat-load, so us, being descended from both, have them, but they are relatively rare.
- This troper thought that he was the first to come to this conclusion, going so far as to speculate that identical offspring did not occur at all in the human population until it blended with cylons on (this) Earth. That is to say, all identical offspring today are a genetic throwback to cylons being designed to be reproduced as copies.
Think about it.
- Urgh. The Church with an army? Vatican Inquisition!
When the show comes back for season 4.5, it goes in some unexpected, slightly WTF directions. Cavil emerges as the big bad guy who was behind everything all along. It turns out that there's another "Earth". Kara is a... whatever that was. Basically, season 4.5 feels like a Post-Script Season. Maybe that's because it was.
- As a society, they seem to be very boring. They have limited music available, few books that anyone mentions, and the only sport they have is Pyramid. They don't seem to have, or even have a desire to have, any forms of personal entertainment devices or very many games of any kind. No wonder they made the Cylons. They needed something to occupy their time.
- Nope. Caprica established that the Colonials have advanced tech, but after the First Cylon War, ditched a lot of it sans spaceflight/defense. This also explains the lack of books and music surviving. Since no one has an e-reader or MP3 player, not much Colonial media survived the Fall.
- Part of the original concept of the series was the crudeness of their technology, which partly was down to deliberately down-grading all computer technology to the level of an early-eighties Mac II PC and also simply avoiding digital technology altogether. A nice touch, for example, is the cassette tape of Starbuck's father playing piano in a late episode : they don't even use CDs because they are digital. Another explanation goes back to the roots of their civilization: did they just inherit FTL / robotics / cybernetics from their 'precursors' (whether the Lords of Kobol or a previous technological civilization of humans)? Even the technological heights of the world in Caprica may be due to a scavenger world thousands of years in duration which has advanced to the point that the scientists have reverse-engineered a lot of the technology they inherited but still can't create their own tech completely from scratch. This is certainly the case in the offshoot of their civilization that is the Thirteenth Tribe on Earth who rediscovered the principles of resurrection technology but may never have fully understood how it works.
- This fits in with the idea of Evolutionary Levels; a civilization that created, and fully understood this advanced technology may at the same time have been mature enough to deal with its consequences ; however, if the twelve colonies of Kobol are essentially at the level of 21st-century humans with some salvaged lost technology, it makes sense that they are not mature enough as a society to be able to handle it.
- There is definitely a case of Advanced Ancient Humans in play here. Despite the passage of thousands of years, Colonial technology is maybe a little bit ahead of real world 21st Century technology (notably in their possession of FTL). But most of the technology seen on Caprica is stuff that is considered attainable within the near-future in the real world. Technology Levels on Kobol however were apparently much higher in the distant past. Somehow they managed to create organic Cylons, whereas millennia later Daniel Graystone was struggling to build clunky mechanical robots, which only achieved sentience because of "divine" intervention. Perhaps the original settlers of the Twelve Colonies tried to pull off the same Space Amish thing that their descendants would later attempt on Earth, only with more success?
The Centurians were created by Daniel Greystone and eventually rebelled, possibly helped by Clarice Willow and Zoe-A. Worship of the One True God became prevalent among the Centurions. A long and bloody war ensued. Then some of the Centurians began to try to create flesh-and-blood humanoid bodies and succeeded in creating the Hybrids. The Hybrids convinced their creators to stop the war in order to work further on creating self-sustaining human models with which to replace their flawed human enemies (according to God's plan). The truce was declared and the Cylons disappeared. They eventually succeeded in creating five humanoid models: Tigh, Tory, Tyrol, Anders and Starbuck. The Hybrids also managed to invent bio-resurrection. But when the human models awoke, they refused to participate in the plan to destroy the humans and replace them. They were then boxed. The Centurions and Hybrids realised that they would have to programme their new human models to follow their own orthodoxy and thus created seven more humanoid models. They then planted the Five in the Colonies. Eventually, the Cylons attack the Colonies of Kobol again. Head Six really is an AI on a chip in Baltar's head . The Five remain allied with the humans (save Tory Foster) and Chip Six is following a path based on her own interpretation of the One True God and his plan. The fleet follows the original star map and arrive at Earth, which is still populated by people who they discover are the descendants of artificial humans who were created on Kobol thousands of years ago.
The LOK are/were Goa'uld from SG-1, posing as Gods, whilst the Cylon God is an ascended Ancient/Ori who is not happy with their poaching on his turf.
One of the weird things about Battle Star Galactica was the distribution of jump-drives. It makes no sense for ships to not have not jump-drives, because of its efficiency and speed, yet in the pilot, there were dozens of ships, including several ships used for mobile production, that had no such drive. My theory is that these ships didn't have a jump drive, because they never visited any planets, instead living as space nomads. Any asteroid fields would have an abundance of resources, even at sublight speeds. Jump drives would be unneccesary if producing only for a local area. Why else would you have a farm in space anyway?
- This explains some of the specialized ships in the fleet - like the sewage recycling ship later used by Thrace to look for Earth.
Think about it - the Final Five have no idea who is responsible for launching the final battle between the Ridiculously Human Robots of First Earth and their robots. Cavil is the first of the new breed of robots created by the Final Five, based on Ellen Tigh's father. Since Cavil never claims to actually BE her father, we can assume that her father died before the holocaust on First Earth.
How exactly did the Final Five come up with the technology to develop the Signficant Seven models (eight if you include the deceased Daniel), as well as reinvent Resurrection technology? It's unlikely that the five of them did it by themselves - they would have to have help, Perhaps Cavil created to help them in this project. And perhaps Cavil came to sympathize with the aims of the First Earth robots and decided to get revenge on his creators by helping his robotic "brothers" destroy First Earth. Let's face it - he loathes the idea of even looking human and hates not being able to experience the universe as a machine would. So it seems to be no stretch of the imagination that he would want to destroy robots who had for all intents and purposes were living AS humans.
- Alternatively, Ellen Tigh's dad was the Greg Stillson of the setting, and she recreated him better than she thought.
Kel'Zorah watched as Rannoch burned below him. Between him and his homeworld were two barely distinguishable fleets battling it out. The difference was that one was crewed by the Geth. Robot slaves built by the quarians to do manual labour, they gained sentience and started asking questions. When the quarians tried to wipe them out, they rose up. Now his homeworld was gone, his wife was gone, his people on the verge of extinction. As the Rayya lumbered toward the mass relay, he wondered if his people would have any future at all.
Okay, it's full of holes, and I have better theories, but I just thought I would share.
- Considering the physics do not work the same between both fictional universes, they can't be connected.
- In addition, the Cylon God has the exact opposite goal as the Reapers, so that also is somewhat of a conflict.
I have no idea how much this would stretch/shatter into a million tiny pieces the Original Series continuity, but to make this tree even more epileptic: the Thirteenth Tribe formed their own 12 Colonies, of which Earth-1 was just one. They developed their own Centurions, who rose up, destroying their worlds and civilisation, leaving only a rag-tag fleet of survivors, whose adventures are the original series. Eventually they stumbled upon Earth-2 and decided to forgo their technology and settle there.
It started with Kobol being a Protoculture world. When the Zentradi rebelled, the people of Kobol managed to defeat a Zentradi-Meltlandi fleet stationed nearby, a fleet that settles on one of many worlds Protoculture adapted to its needs (Earth into Protoculture language). This fleet loses most of her technology, including fold, but manages to keep some of it and creates both a way to dump their knowledge into cloned bodies and robotic servants that they make look markedly different to a robotic workforce diffused in the entire Protoculture. Sadly, these robots rebel, and the Zentradi civilization is wiped out, leaving only five survivors who try and return to Kobol, or any Protoculture settlement, to warn them about the risks of their robots rebelling.
In the meantime Kobol is threathened by another Zentradi fleet, this time a Bodol fleet. As the Lords of Kobol recognize they can't win and plea for mercy, the Zentradi commander decides to spare them on condition they evaquate Kobol leaving behind their robots, energy weapons, advanced fold technologies and alloys and the means to produce them, and to never return to Kobol or be exterminated. The Lords accept, and their people evaquates to what became the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. The Zentradi fleet would be later destroyed by Inspection Army and Protoculture survivors attacks.
Two thousand years passed, and the people of the Twelve Colonies forgot about the Zentradi and mitized their exodus, before creating the Cylons, their workforce. Who promptly rebelled, and forced the Colonies to join to defeat them.
After the First Cylon War, the Cylons encounters the Zentradi from Earth, who, in the attempt to prevent a second one, declares themselves actual organic Cylons (and in a way they are) and take control, giving the Cylon a few new technologies and creating eight new series of Zentradi, or organic Cylons, to both rebuild their civilization and create a friendly face to interact with the Colonies. As we know it backfired, leading to the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. In the end the survivors stumbled on Earth before settling on another Earth where Protoculture-like beings had come into existance, while the surviving Cylons took a reptilian form to differentiate themselves from humans and started searching for a new home, improving their technologies and escaping the dwindling Zentradi (who tend to mistake them for Inspection Army survivors) and the near-extinct Inspection Army and Protoculture survivors (who always recognize them as Zentradi on biological scanners and open fire in panic).
The Galactica fleet wasn't the only group to escape the Fall of the Colonies: another fleet escaped, and actually resettled on Kobol after both the Galactica and the Cylon left. By now, the ancient technology left on Kobol has decayed, but the Colonials, helped by the Beings of Light (another group of Protoculture survivors), build a new civilization, with more advanced technologies (and changes in terminology, with 'galaxy' replacing 'solar system'). With their help they repair the ecological damage to the Twelve Colonies, and when Kobol is hit by an environmental disaster they return there, forming the Twelve Colonies of Man.
In the nearby area the Colonials discover the Cylon Empire, that by now is under control of the IL-series and the Imperious Leader the Zentradi-Cylon created to improve the reaction time of the Centurions and save from the last Zentradi Bodol-class fleet and the now extinct Inspection Army and Protoculture (with the Beings of Light in hiding after a run-in with the Zentradi superior numbers nearly destroyed them). The Cylons try and establish peaceful relations with the Colonies, but the Colonials still fear them and, under the pretense of helping the Hasari, start a series of wars that would be remembered as the Thousand Yahren War. By the end of the war, the Twelve Colonies are ready to peace, but a new Imperious Leader decides to wipe them out, and manage to destroy their fleet at Cimtar before bombing the Colonies into oblivion.
A new Galactica escapes with a convoy of sublight ships, and, after improvising a way for them to travel between solar sistems, searches for Earth, reaching the new Earth settled by Cylons and humans. The Galactica starts helping Earth's technological developement, and, after finding an old Inspection Army gun destroyer, repairs it and reverse engineer its technologies with help from the Beings of Light.
Before they can implement these technologies, however, the Cylons manage to sick the Zentradi on the Galactica using the presence of the Inspection Army and the Beings of Light, and when a Zentradi fleet comes to verify the gun destroyer opens fire, dooming the Galactica and her fleet before they can talk their way out of trouble. Before being destroyed, however, the Colonials send the gun destroyer on Earth with his computers filled with data on the alien technology, and the Zentradi ignores it in favor of chasing the Beings of Light. Ten years later the Zentradi have finally finished the Beings of Light, and decide to check on the gun destroyer, thus starting Super Dimension Fortress Macross when the gun destroyer fires again.
- A follow-up could be the New United Nations discovering that the Cylons destroyed the Megaroad-01 fleet, starting a war.
- And indeed, we had seen Peter Capaldi before on Doctor Who!
- The virus found in the beacon that only affected Cylons!
- Would explain why the red-stripe Cylons never seem to have returned to Earth. The galaxy could be littered with such viral booby traps, none of which could have logically evolved naturally. "God" makes sure to only leave the minimum necessary survivors in each cycle, kills all the rest and ensures that the surviving seed population loses all knowledge of previous occurrences of the cycle.
Alternatively...
- Ellen describes to Saul that Bill came into her room on the Rising Star at night and touched her. Clearly a lie, but it seems to ring with a truth; it may have occured in her childhood at the hands of her father.
- Subsequently, when Saul calls her a liar, she becomes very angry and pushes him away. It must have touched a nerve to have her abuse put down as a lie.
- Ellen preys on men not only of her own age, but significantly younger ones too - like Lee Adama. It is well known that abuse victims are more likely to become abusive themselves, and take out their aggression on someone younger.
- She drinks a lot - an effort to forget?
- She created her father in Cylon form as #1, Cavil. During the occupation of New Caprica, she has sex with a Cavil. Even if she didn't know he was a Cylon, she would have had to recognise him as being similar to, if not exactly like, her father. Heavy amounts of Squick apply. And the unfortunate conclusion that it may have been somewhat normal for her to be in this situation - being under the power of her father.
- Cavil decommissioned the #7 model because Ellen was too close to them - an overtly jealous and controlling move that is often seen in abusive men.
In Assassin's Creed, modern humanity is descended from a servant race created in the likeness of a superior human culture (Those Who Came Before/First Civ) that lived on Earth until approximately 75,000 BCE, when a solar flare wiped out most of the life on the planet, except for ~10,000 humans and a handful of Those Who Came Before.
TWCB possessed a sixth sense that was part intuition, part ESP, a diluted version of which is Eagle Vision in the games.
Those Who Came Before are a race of Colonial/Cylon hybrids. Eagle Vision is Cylon Projection/whatever Leoben Conoy (Number Two) does when he pulls knowledge "out of the stream." Hera, the first hybrid offspring, possessed the same abilities, so we know it is possible.
Let's go back to the two dates that we know. 148,000 BCE and 75,000 BCE. There's a window of 73,000 years. For comparison, agriculture (and by extension permanent civilization) has only existed for about 12,000 years in the real world. Even with the Colonials starting from zero, they have an unimaginably long period of time to flourish. Nobody is going to live as hunter gatherers for SEVENTY THOUSAND YEARS. So the hybrid Colonial culture eventually arose, and dominated the planet.
BSG is all about cycles. Humans create Cylons, Cylons rise up and cast down humans, survivors start over somewhere new. Lee Adama proposed abandoning technology to end the cycle, but twenty minutes later the same episode implies that his plan just delayed it.
Tying into Assassin's Creed, modern humans were created from the primitive humanoids living apart from Colonials. Instead of creating mechanical life, the Colonials skipped straight to skinjobs this go around, genetically altering their servant race from preexisting stock. Modern AC humans are the latest iteration of Cylons, who again rose up against their creators (lead, possibly, by Adam*a*!). Until they were interrupted by a timely solar flare. (Or God did it. Again.)
- Dr. Cavil/One to Imperious Leader as the respective Big Bads.
- Six to Lucifer as Baltar's right-hand Cylon (even if the details behind their respective relationships are very different.)
- D'Anna/Three and Boomer to Specter as sneaky, deceitful back-stabbers.