The primary themes that pervade the new Battlestar Galactica are Resurrection and Reincarnation. The Cylons literally resurrect in new bodies when they die and the Colonial scriptures begin with the phrase “All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again”. A key scene about colonial beliefs occurs when Roslin asks Starbuck to fetch the Arrow of Apollo in Season 1. She says that time is cyclical and that each time through a person plays a different role. She mentions that the last time through it could have been that each of them was in the same room but playing the opposite part. Sounds like metaphysical mumbo jumbo so far doesn’t it? I know at the time I just dismissed those lines and gave them little thought.
Then Caprica came out. Since both shows were in development during the same period it seems safe to assume that questions would have been left unanswered at the end of BSG that would later make sense with Caprica. The problem was that Caprica was a real stinker for the most part but it did have a gem of an idea that I thought was quite good and fit in nicely with the themes of BSG. One of the leads is a young girl who creates an accurate representation of herself that lives in a computer simulation. When the main character dies her avatar lives on. As characters realize the implications of this they begin to demand resurrection technology for humans. Graystone wants to develop the idea for profit, the mob wants it for control, and the religious zealots want it to offer their followers a chance to go to a real heaven they can see when they martyr themselves for their cause.
So, the question I ask is, what if a civilization that had lived tens of thousands of years prior to the events in BSG had developed this same technology, had created accurate avatars of people to live in their simulation, and then just left it running? How long until those avatars become bored with a simulated paradise and want to recreate realistic lifespans where they can experience children, hope, heartache, and anything else we enjoy as living creatures that make us feel human? They could live life over and over and over again, each time as something new and different. Sometimes male, sometimes female. Sometimes rich, sometimes poor. High technology or stone age. In each life they “look and feel human” as BSG announces at the beginning of each show, so they forget what they really are.
This idea answers a lot of questions. It explains why the animals mentioned in BSG and Caprica are exact equivalents to animals on Earth. It explains why the technology is so similar, and it explains why the styles and mannerisms are so similar. The “angels” in the show can be thought of as Avatars that are aware of their nature and exist outside of the running program so they are more aware of why the program is being run and what “God”, or in this case a type of system administrator who manages the program is trying to accomplish. It explains why during all of BSG they never found a planet with intelligent life on it until they reached Earth, there simply aren’t enough avatars in the program to populate an entire galaxy. And I think it explains some of the stupid moves by characters at the end of BSG - they were compelled by the administrator to start from scratch to live life anew. The Earth we see at the end may or may not actually be our Earth, it may be that we’re the creators of this AI which is why we have a hard on for our own constellations and the show ends many thousands of years in our own future in a simulated New York that developed much like our own version did.
If this was what the creators intended would you find the ending more satisfying? It makes me wish Caprica had been better, I really do think they intended to answer questions and I wish they had a few more seasons to flesh it out.