Battlestar Galactica: Final Season (SPOILERS)

Are they actually making that? I haven't seen any news on it in awhile. Yeah maybe that will be an interesting tie in.

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Yes, go here:

http://www.scifi.com/caprica/

Starring Eric Stoltz, which I didn't realize till just now. Cool.

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Ellen had a father, like humans have fathers, because the cylons who went to Earth thousands of years ago developed the ability to procreate. Cavil's body was designed by Ellen and the others, and made to look like Ellen's father, who had been one of the Earthling cylons who had gained the power to have babies. I'll be interested to know how they made him look like her father - cloning, DNA, scan-and-assemble-from-synthetics, what?

To run through this, for my own benefit and maybe it will help you as well: Humans originated on Kobol. The 13th tribe were an early cylon race, and left for Earth either 3000 or 4000 years ago (conflicts exist in the scripts). The cylons had developed the power to procreate and had forgotten the technology of resurrection, as it was no longer needed. The Five worked in a lab together and re-developed the power to resurrect, just in time to save themselves. When the battle-bots attacked the other cylons on Earth, the Five were killed in the blasts, but resurrected on their ship, which was in orbit. They decided to go to the 12 Colonies to warn them against creating artificial life. They got there to find the war in progress already - the "first" cylon war, mentioned in the miniseries having happened 40 years ago. They offered to show the cylon attackers how to resurrect, in exchange for armistice. The war came to an abrupt halt. This was when they created Cavil, who helped with the creation of the other 7 skin jobs. Cavil wanted the cylons to be machines without free will, but the Five wanted them to be more human and have free will, show mercy, have love. Cavil so resented their rejection of his plan that he caught the Five in a chamber and suffocated them, and when they resurrected, he wiped their memories and sent them to live among the humans, so they could (in his view) realise how weak and icky humans are. He figured they'd die and return to him, and he could say "told ya so", but they didn't die during the war. So he started messing with them, appearing as a priest to hear Chief's confession, on the planet with Anders, on New Caprica with the (now even more disgusting) blackmailing of Ellen.



I think I kind of over-wrote all that, but I'm still getting it straight, myself, using Battlestar Wiki.


My guess is that Daniel (the first one, whose copies were slain by the jealous Ca(in)vil, was the father of Kara Thrace. It's pure conjecture, but I think that's going to prove to be the deal. He was "the artistic one", and it would explain her drawings and her apparent ability to not be dead, despite exploding and then burning to bits.

Ellen was telling Cavil that she doesn't have the whole process herself, and would need the other Four to make it all work again. Why they need so many people when Dr Frankenstein did it with just him and a lame hunchback is beyond me.

Interesting article here, with some non-spoiler questions answered by Jane Espinson and her writing partner for "No Exit". The question from Clifton comes from our own NimChimpsky! w00t!!

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THANK YOU, SD! Rep for that post. I heard all this in bits but never sat down and pieced it together in a timeline. A wiki -- why didn't I think to look for one! LOL!

As for Daniel being Kara's father: Brilliant theory, methinks, except for one thing: It sounded as if the Daniel model was made by the Five and is more like the 7 skin jobs. Meaning he cannot procreate.

No?

I do believe there's going to be more about that bit of history revealed, though. It's too fascinating and weird to add in now unless there is another piece of the puzzle attached to it....

Gonna make a point to watch this again soon. Gotta say, though, while it's entirely possible that there's more than one religious parallel for some characters, I thought Cavil was probably supposed to be Cain. He's the first son of the "parents" (Ellen and Tigh, who are Adam and Eve), and he killed his younger brother Daniel (Abel).

Sorry I'm taking so long to rewatch and pontificate with ya'll, but I wanted to say that before someone else did.

It's good, Yods. I think it's a more likely parallel, for sure.

The skin jobs can't procreate with other skin jobs, but as Hera's existence shows, they can with humans. And they can if one is a Five (6 is knocked up by one of those).

I think Cavil has things in common with both Cain and Satan. The whole thing about having a plan that rejects mercy and free will, and wanting to be recognised and praised by his maker... all that is in line with Mormon dogma about what happened before the world was made (Revelations 12), with Cavil in the role of Satan. They've tossed in some cool elements from Christian dogma in the past. They've also given a nod to Eastern religion - Anders mutters that the bullet is in a vascular convergence that anchors the thought to the chi or something like that, and obviously lots of astrology and Greek/Roman mythological characters. I like that they've woven all that together into a meaningful backdrop for the story.

OH duh, on the interspecies procreation. I was thinking you meant Kara was a full cylon. But yes, she could be a half-cylon like Hera.

Every so often I have to offload stuff from the DVR onto DVDs, and I'm doing that today -- moving the first four episodes of this new season of BSG onto a DVD. That means watching them as they record, which I'm doing now.

I've had a few stray thoughts of the "Hmm, that's interesting" variety lately. They don't tie together or anything; they're random.

*** This whole concept of adopting cylon technology in order to help the fleet. Adama rails mightily at first against the idea of using the resin to shore up the hull and infrastructure of Galactica, especially when he hears that it's biological in nature and will "mature" (grow) into the cracks and seams of the ship.

I find this fascinating because if it were more typically "cylon like" in ways humans might better understand (machine-like, metal, structural), he'd probably have had less trouble with it. But the very fact that it's biological -- and therefore more humanoid -- is what creeps him out. I think it's a great twist that the machines have come so far that they use what makes us human -- biology -- in new ways, as part of their technology as well. Something humans don't do.

*** Last week we saw Adama splashing water on his face in his little bathroom in his rooms. I love shots like these, but for different reasons than most people. I saw a box of tissues there on the counter, in a stainless steel tissue box holder. While other people might be thinking plot-related thoughts, I was sitting here thinking, "I wonder which ship in the fleet is still manufacturing boxes of tissues for everyone."

I told ya -- random.

*** I get the whole "we need at least one human to procreate" thing (except for the Final Five). But why is that so? Because it's not clear that, for instance, it's the biology of the female or male cylons that is the problem with them procreating with each other. If anything, it would seem that it is the male biology that the cylons haven't mastered, since both skin jobs who got pregnant were females. So apparently they have enough of the female reproductive system down pat that it is receptive to fertilization, pregnancy, and birth. So, is there a problem with male cylon biology, or the combination of the two genders, or am I grasping at straws here? Is it just a random coincidence that both Athena and Six are females?

FWIW, I'm assuming it's random -- seems too late in the series to bring up subtleties like this and explore them -- but it would be a fun side issue to explore if they had time. Maybe the prequel series could eventually get this far down the road.....

Your point about the biological resin is a good one, I think. Lots of symbolism there. It's a harbinger of the melding of man and machine that the series has been building towards since the very beginning.

I like your observation that its the human aspect that makes Adama reticent (heh, get it?). It's The Uncanny Valley, really; the principle that, as something gets more human-like, we tend to find it increasingly appealing (dolls, anthropomorphized cartoon characters), until it reaches a certain point, where we suddenly find it repulsive (mannequins, ventriloquist dummies). The more human something becomes, the more sensitive we get to the ways in which it isn't.

Fighting machines may be difficult, but at least the battle lines are drawn. When Cylons can look like humans, and have technology that is alive, the idea is, in some ways, far more unsettling than the simple prospect of extinction. The Cylon war upset the characters, but the revelation that anyone could be a Cylon was what really freaked them out.

Yes, but what about the tissue boxes??

Yeah - I need to watch Friday's episode again!

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Just be sure to keep an eye out for that tissue box! I need answers!

Another random thought I forgot (because it was random):

-- I loved when Tyrol broke the FTL drive in Galactica, and we got to see the cool gears and machinery down there operating and moving so fluidly for a minute. Very cool. Was that the only time we've seen the insides of that area of the ship?

LOL! I wonder about things like that, too. Like when someone turns up in a new outfit. Or like, who's making Roslyn's wigs? Or all the candles burning around photos of Baltar? In that same scene, where Adama splashes his face in the bathroom, I thought about the pegboard walls, and how utilitarian the more hidden parts of the ship are. Fishing Cabin in Space!

Re: the bio-spackle, I think Adama is balking at the idea that his ship is going to morph into something less familiar - something it wasn't before. I actually had a "final cylon" guess that got a lot of guffaws: the Galactica herself... Looks like I wasn't so crazy after all, eh? Ehhhhh???

BTW, I've watched that ep three times now and it's still fascinating. There's just a metric ton of info in there. When the person appeared to each of the final five on Earth, and warned them of the coming war, no one else could see the messengers. Chief thought he had a chip in his head. (doh!! that strikes a chord!) Can't wait to see what it all means.

I've watched it twice, and I know I'll have to sit with a notebook and pen and hit "pause" a lot and write things down to remember it all. It might not have been dramatically the best way to get the info out there, but I'm still thrilled it's there and have decided to let the dramatics slide in favor of the information itself.

Bio-spackle. LOL!

And yeah, I thought of the same thing with the candles! Who the HECK is making CANDLES? And is Roslin actually wearing new frames on her glasses (from some earlier season, I mean)? If so, who's still making new eyeglass frames? I worry about this sort of thing.

Okay, no one's commented on the recent episode, "Deadlock."

Been thinking about it a lot. Loved Tigh's clear assertion that pure cylon doesn't work, pure human doesn't work. Stick with the fleet, which is what Anders said too.

I know we've seen this coming for ages now, but I'm liking all the pointers toward a blended culture: cylon goo in the ship now, Hera (with Caprica's baby now dead), cylons putting up pictures in the gallery (although it's silly to see, like, 20 of the same model hanging there), etc. etc. If they don't end the series that way, I'll be totally stunned beyond words.

As for characters: I'm not thrilled with all the Final Five gabbing because I'd rather be seeing flashbacks or something. I'm finding Ellen's presence oddly confusing at times and some of her backbiting with Caprica beneath her "new" openly cylon character. (I realize they're trying to remind us of her more human days and qualities, but it feels a tad haphazard.)

I'm bored with Baltar and that whole storyline, which has felt like a post-script for a LONG time now. And to think I adored Baltar for so long. I think they gypped his character with this plotline of his.

Adama's become whiny and pouty. I think Tigh is the true loyalist here, not Adama. I think Roslin is now only an addendum, unless the whole Opera house stuff comes back at the end and we find that something's been misinterpreted or something like that... blah blah blah.

As for Cavil and crew: I now assume that the writers got rid of the resurrection hub precisely so that we can see a truly happy ending. Because now, if Cavil and his crew are destroyed, they are truly gone. Before, that would always have been looming over the heads of the survivors on ANY planet they'd land on.

Four episodes left. They had better get these people on an inhabitable planet and soon ... because I will be disappointed if they only HINT at such a thing but never show us any scenes of domestic tranquility. I feel we've earned a glimpse into the happy ending and happy future.

Just wanted to throw this idea out there and see if anyone else agrees or sees the likely possibility of the Daniel model, whom Ellen says was "tainted during the incubation process" may have actually mutated from male to female, like the twist from the original Starbuck being a male and now the new series having changed that to being played by a female, maybe Kara Thrace is really Daniel the 8th model? It would explain what happened with her being able to go back to the colony after making it to Earth, etc... So what do you all think?

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Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that possibility. I just thought, "Can't be Kara, she's female."

The only little hint we have is that Ellen also said that all of the Daniel copies were destroyed. Now, of course, there could have been that ONE that got through or somehow escaped Ellen's notice in some way, so I don't mean to imply that what Ellen says is gospel. It is merely what she believes based on facts she knows herself.

I just found it odd for them to throw out the idea of an eighth model so late in the series, and then just not do anything with that big piece of information. Your idea (or something like it) would certainly explain both questions -- Daniel AND Kara.

The idea is weak at best, but it would help explain many things. Like why Leoben has such a strong bond to her, why he finds her so "special". Why her and Sam hooked-up in the first place, why she has the "visions", shes artistic....it would explain alot now that i think about it...