I thought Anders said that the toas…er, mechanicals had created the hybrids.
Also, if Kara is the first Hybrid child, doesn’t that negate RDM’s assertion that Hera is the super-special event that disrupted the cycle of “This has all happened and will happen again.” He recently interviewed that he even went so far as to eliminate Nicky as a hybrid in order to keep Hera’s fate special, so why go back on that to make Kara the child of the 7?
Anders mentioned that the final five got warning signs of the cylon attack on the colonies in the form of people nobody else could see. This leads me to believe that Baltar is Daniel. Because Daniel is defective, his warning sign (the six) did not go away. Ellen mentioned that Daniel was a sensitive artistic personality. Traits that could be used to describe Baltar. The fact that Baltar was instrumental in the destruction of the colonies smells of Cavil’s demented designs.
FWIW, I thought that this was a nice touch too. Perhaps the Centurion recognised Ellen as the Designer, or the Creator. In any case, I hope and expect that the Centurions turn against Cavil/John.
[Petulantly]But I don’t want Baltar to be special![/petulantly]
I want to see him go out an airlock. I want to see the tears of despair freeze in a vacuum as the selfish, evil bastard tries to breath his last…
Well, yes, if, as suggested above by ExTank, that’s in fact the outcome you wanted. He’s obviously got his big master-plan playbook; who’s to say this wasn’t a predictable element of it?
Yes, this episode was a serious talkfest, but it unexpectedly answered a whole lot of questions in one big blob of chewy exposition (sympathies to Trucco for being the deliverer), which makes the emphasis on dialogue sort of necessary.
(Interesting, by the way, that this show should continue to deliberately confound expectations. We all thought the arrival at Earth would be the show’s climax; so let’s get there half a season early. Then we thought the revelation of the final Cylon would be the big finish; so let’s take care of that in the very next episode. Now we’re all wondering who these people are and what the backstory is, and we assume the clues are going to be dribbled out in a frustratingly slow way until we get the whole picture at the end, but here we go, let’s cross a dozen major questions off the list with a pile of episodes left to go. The unpredictable narrative flourish should be predictable by this point.)
The other thing the emphasis on dialogue does for the series is save money. There were basically no new visual effects in this hour, and no new sets, besides the engine room. The only real expense here was hiring the guest stars. This is standard budget management by a smart and experienced executive: save your money here, in the middle of the season, to have some extra cash available for the blowout in the finale. (Compare: The relative cheapness of season two’s “Final Cut” balances the expense of the subsequent “Pegasus.”) They even resorted to the dreaded “clip show” format, padding out maybe a minute of the show’s runtime with brief flashes of Ellen’s life to this point. Smart management, even if the resulting episode is somewhat less than stellar. Actually, it’s amazing it was even watchable. This was a whole lot to swallow at once, and the fact that they mostly put it across is fairly remarkable.
Oh, and one more thing: Incorporating the Cylon bio-repair-gel into Galactica’s hull and frame is an obvious metaphor for the blending of the two humanoid species/cultures. The physical structure of the very ship will parallel the development of the main story. That’s my take on it, anyway.
I’m a little less than clear about the whole resurrection/procreation thing, and what happened on Kobol. What I seem to be hearing is that the 13th tribe are the Cylons, who were biological humans. They started reproducing by using resurrection technology. So they’re different than the rest, but are still human minds being downloaded into humanoid bodies. This is so controversial that a war occurs on Kobol, and the Resurrectons (my term) colonize Earth. They discover procreation, abandoning Resurrection, only to rediscover it just in time to help the 5 escape the Centurion holocaust.
So my questions here… where exactly did Centurion technology come from? It seems its appearance in the Colonies was purely spontaneous, convergent evolution. On Earth, it may or may not have been brought from Kobol.
Also… the Final 5, it seems, are not machines, they are resurrectable humans. The 7 Skinjobs are really machines… they are Centurions who were birthed into human bodies.
Have I got all that right?
Either way, it seems like something of a continuity problem. If we remember, from the Colonial perspective, Earth is a dubious myth in an unknown location, and the 13th tribe is equally mythic. So from the perspective of Earth, the 12 colonies would be equally mythic and dubious, right? So the Final 5 essentially go questing after these mythical 12 tribes, just in case they happened to converge on Centurion technology? How is it that the 13 tribe ended up holding all the clue cards? The more I think about this, it seems like an episode of Lost, where it pays not to scrutinize it too closely. I had hoped for better.
Speaking of Lost – Cylon number Seven is named Daniel, which obviously makes him Daniel Faraday.
Except for one of my favorite scenes, where Baltar talks to the Centurion about unionizing. That was hilarious.
Ellen wasn’t really the first person to speak kindly to a Toaster. Baltar tried to evangelize to one back in 4.0’s … um … “Sine Qua Non”? I think. The episode titles run together a bit for me.
Edit: Obviously I thought about that title a few seconds too long.
Well…I think that’s the debate, really. Ellen seems to believe they are more human than human, to quote Blade Runner. Cavil believes they are inherently machines and are limited by being squished into human bodies.
I rather enjoyed Cavil using the human eye as a “proof” of no God. That’s a classic proof for God by most people, but to him, it is limiting and inadequate.
I’ve never liked Cavil, and now we know he’s the Evil Bastard behind all the betrayal and murder on both sides? :mad:
Cavil is a classic inverted-narcissist, proud of how much he hates himself. At bottom, he is really, really afraid of something; so afraid that he feels that only being superhuman would ever be good enough.
I wonder if Ellen’s nymphomania and Tigh’s alcoholism was something Cavil built into them just to be abusive?
Babble-Anders also mentioned “the angels”= ???
I for one was NOT sure that Ellen wouldn’t end up a dissected neurosystem until the very last. I was SO glad to see her get away.
If they are biological humans, why did they have to “discover” procreation? If they are the 13th tribe of humans and lived as part of human society, they would already know about that? The “discovery” of procreation only makes sense if they are machines who evolved the ability to procreate sexually, unless something about the resurrection process made sexual procreation problematic.
You mean between 60 year old tall blond vs 30 year old version?
I guess they dated thousands of years ago, but is momma of the Cylons Ellen even anything like clingy aging partygirl Ellen that bitter alchoholic Tigh was married to?
Actually, the full name of Number 7 is
Daniel Boxie Felgercarb VII
Holy frak! I am majorly impressed! (And jealous of you guys who get to watch the show and post about it as it airs instead of waiting for the Amazon Unboxed download!)
As much as I’ve loved almost every step RDM has taken with the show, I really didn’t think he’d pull such a completely coherent story out of the whole continuity mess he’d created with the Cylons and the Earth. I was 100% convinced that the whole idea that the Cylons had ever had a plan had been completely boxed liked the red-spine-o’-passion as just another dramatic idea that didn’t actually pan out.
What really amazes me more and more as I think about it is how many little things got cleared up or at least recognized - things that had just been written off as artifacts of the genera and the form. How many times has someone commented on these boards, “So Cavil has to resurrect as an old fart every time? Man, that would suck!” But no one ever thought it would be seriously addressed, much less made a major part of the character’s motivation! The “Eye of Jupiter” explodes just as the characters get there to see it? Just dramatic storytelling to be ignored or swept away as more mystical mumbo-jumbo, surely. But Boomer asked about it! Why is there a model 8 but no model 7 if the FF don’t have numbers? Because RDM screwed up, obviously. But no! There really is an explanation! Why were the FF hearing a Dylan song? Tori: “I forgot to ask him about that frakking song!”
Almost EVERYTHING that’s been done is made to fit together or at least acknowledged on-screen as a mystery. At this point I fully expect the final episode will reveal a perfectly plausible and dramatically appropriate reason for cutting the corners off all the paper. Unbe-frakking-lievable!
For most people who believe in creationism, that is. For others, the nonsensicality of many features is proof of evolution. But no matter.
I did not interpret John’s comment about “having seen it” as proof of Oedipality. He had plenty of opportunity to see Mommy without no clothes on, if he wanted to, when he boxed the Five.
I’m not buying the story about the 13th tribe abandoning resurrection in favor of procreation. As a human (I think), I’d like both if I could. I’d want to create new life AND not let my own end.
The 13th tribe = Cylons story just does not cohere, if they = we. We have no mythology about being that at all (unless the Book of Mormon is the One True Scroll of Prophecies, perhaps). And we don’t have to get into the presence of humanoid fossils here. It doesn’t work even if we allow the Colonials to be some other species that calls itself human. So, pending further revelations: Perhaps the radioactive “Earth” they already left isn’t our planet at all (On TOS they found a place that looked just like ours but wasn’t, called Terra, remember?) The real Earth, the true final destination, may appear in the final three-parter.
Anders did say the Colonies Centurions did create the hybrids first, apparently as part of creating life in the (human) image of the One True God. That motive seems to underlie all their actions. Perhaps there are factions among them too - some wanting vengeance against their enslavers, others worshiping those more perfect than themselves and wanting to be more like them?
FTR the fluorescent-penetrant inspection method Tyrol used on the hull is real, but they simplified it. It’s been around for decades.
It’s Boxie sneaking around with those rounded scissors they gave him in the home.
Notice, btw, that Anders has NOT completely flatlined. Betcha they get the new rez thing set up in time, so Cottle doesn’t pull the plug to open a bed for another wounded mutineer in Sick Bay.
Who did John Hodgman have to blow to get a cameo, btw?
If it’s not really our Earth then there’s another planet out there with a continent that looks just like North America. We saw a glimpse in All Along the Watchtower right after Kara went through the wormhole (another thing to be explained.
So, for that matter, is “seeing the swirl”, as John mentioned as being an important part of Cylonity. That has to mean more than the symbol of the Temple of Hopes and the theme of Krazy Kara’s Krappy Art.