The following will contain SPOILERS if you have recorded the show to watch later. Read on at your own risk.
The anticipation that has been building for this season 4.5 premiere of Battlestar Galactica culminated with a well deserved and in my opinion, well written episode of darkness, dispair and shock.
They took the usual darkness that permeates the background of this tale of the stragglers of the human race and cranked it up a whole bunch of notches.
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The Disappointment:
The disappointment of finding out that Earth was ravaged by war infected the entire collective of humanity.
This Earth is nothing but ruins and weeds. It was a planet that was completely nuked over 2,000 years ago.
Our “allies”, the skin job Cylons discover old Centurion parts in the debris. (The original Centurions from the first series)
It turns out that the five final Cylons were alive on the planet 2,000 years ago when it was nuked. The 4 all had flashbacks when they came in contact with parts of the ruined city. Tyrol found his own nuclear shadow that was left over from the attacks.
The first revelation they surmised was that the 13th colony were Cylons who habitated this planet and CALLED IT EARTH. This, to me, says this is not Earth. Just a like named planet. It was this colony of Cylons 2,000 years ago who were devestated by the war.
The Depression Affects Everyone:
The depression is taking its toll. Roslin is burning the prophecies and just doesn’t care. She doesn’t even want her cancer treatments anymore. People are fighting in the hallways of the Galactica. Graffiti on the walls of the Galactica say “Frak Earth”. Admiral Adama confronts Tigh, threatening to kill himself. All that is left of humanity is falling into despair.
The most traumatic casualty of the depression was Anastasia Dualla. In the beginning, she found some childrens jacks in the dust of the wasteland. It made her cry. Later, after a date with Lee Adama, she’s got a glow about her and things look good for a reconciliation with Lee. While humming to herself, she takes off her wedding ring, puts it in her locker and without a glimmer of an emotional clue showing, uses her sidearm to end her life. It was a graphic, quick, shocking and completely unexpected moment that actually traumatized me.
I started getting irrational thinking this was her way to “come back” as the final Cylon, but I also knew that the final Cylon was going to be revealed in the last few minutes of the episode so things had to have happened fast for her to come back.
Back on “Earth”, Starbuck discovered the wreckage of her Viper and what I presume to be her corpse in the cockpit. The body was charred, had blond hair and it was wearing the necklace with her wedding ring and HER dog tags. She built her own funeral pyre and burned the body. Very surreal. So much for DNA verification. Now she doesn’t know what she is. Is she the final Cylon?
Admiral Adama looks to take the fleet away from this travesty of a mistake and asks Gaeta to find the nearest G, F or K type habitable system. Adama announces that they will find the previous inhabitants new home. That’s a promise.
As they’re getting ready to leave, Col. Tigh walks into the ocean and gets his own flashback. He sees himself in the attacks and he’s looking for his wife in the carnage and finds her. He finds Ellen under some debris. More or less, she tells him it’s OK because they will be reborn. Tigh suddenly realizes that Ellen is the 5th of the five. Ellen? Ellen??
I Have Questions:
If Ellen is the 5th, what does that make Starbuck? Is she indeed a Cylon as I am initially believing or is she something else? And where is Ellen? She passed away before the resurrection ships were destroyed last season. And obviously the final 5 did have the ability to regenerate. But there was only one copy of any of them at any one point in time.
It was a traumatic discovery that Starbuck made. Did you get caught up in that? Were you so caught up that you didn’t dwell on how her ship crashed here? She vaporized far away on another planet. Didn’t she?
The holocaust that wiped out this Cylon colony is most distressful. But who destroyed them? Was it they themselves or someone or something else?
Is there something / someone else in the background of all this?
In Closing:
I applaud Moore and Eick for not drawing this out and making us drool all over ourselves for the season. They took their depressing story and made the previous seasons seem like the Macy’s parade.
Oh, and by the way, over on my post questioning who the last Cylon was, I surmised that humanity is the final Cylon. I was off a bit but obviously I was almost on the right track being that the 13th colony turned out to be Cylons. Also, kudos to our readers: Stimcaps, Scott (April 23rd comment) and kirbeegee. Out of the 300+ comments, they nailed Ellen as their choice for who the last Cylon was. At least is wasn’t Boxey!
In the Last Supper picture of the last Cylon post, we now take a look at the image and notice it’s populated with a few couples, and the empty seat is next to Col. Tigh. Ellens seat apparently.
What are your thoughts on this newest episode of Battlestar Galactica? Intense, wasn’t it?
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58 Comments
Has anyone put together a visual timeline somewhere to show the facts? I’m getting confused over all the discussion.
I don’t know how Kara might be exactly there orbiting the planet Earth#1, but it definitely makes sense if she is in fact one of The Thirteenth Tribe human/cylon hybrids. My guess is that she has been to Earth#1 however she has probably crashed into a wormhole that ends up on the atmosphere of planet Earth#1 thus she has died in the action. So when she died, her memories are uploaded by an old but intact resurrection ship somewhere close to the planet Earth#1. Maybe it is not even close to it but it’s programmed as whenever the resurrection of a cylon finishes, it automatically transports the body to planet Earth#1. So this way the blackout of Kara(remember the time gap she is not able to realize when she returns)is explained.
Also don’t forget that the same question about how she has gotten resurrected should also apply to the four of the final five. I think that the correct answer to that question is also the answer of how the four of the final five have gotten resurrected too and we don’t have a clue about it at this point because the four cylons are also clueless.
It seems to me that at the end of the show on Friday that it was not conclusive if Kara was the 12th or if Ellen was. I just didn’t get that but I could’ve missed something. Also I think they are at the real Earth and not a fake one. Because they used star charts and they say in the show that the constellations were correct.
I am pretty confident that Ellen is the 12th. I don’t think that episode would be advertised as revealling the final cylon only to have the revelation be misleading.
I get what people say about Tigh seeing Ellen in previous episodes and if his last line wasn’t “you are the fifth!” I would have thought it would be too ambiguous, but not as it was done – it’s pretty clear she is the final cylon. I think that Tigh seeing her on 6’s body was more of a foreshadow than we gave credit for.
the 12th, in order of possibility is Dee, the entire planet, Kara and Ellen.
Ellen is merely an older version of Six….we will find out in a later episode that Six’s age.
And, Ellen will reappear just as she appeared originally from some unknown parts of the fleet.
IMO.
I disagree about the Ellen / Six link. Moore (I think it was Moore) stated that the final five are different than the previous seven. The final five aren’t regenerated on a ship, they are reborn somehow (my guess). Maybe there is something in the genetic code of subsequent generations that these 5 or reborn, like a recessive gene. I don’t know, just theorizing.
Here is how I see it going, they divide up, have a civil war and at the end, Starbuck causes events to unfold that cause the Battlestar to explode killing everyone that is left and then Starbuck shoots herself in the head.
My take after watching the premiere is that the 12 colonies are the descendants of the 13th tribe who left earth after the nuclear holocaust. Both cylon and human were together 2000 years ago to start over.
As history tends to repeat itself, the cylon and human were killing each other again with the first and conclusively the destruction of the 12 colonies. Resulting in their cooperation again to find a suitable home, starting with finding earth. Now, that the earth is a graveyard, they will start over to find another place somewhere in the galaxy until they repeat the same mistake in thousands of years ahead of them.
The last episode really sucks. It gives no interesting details about the last cylon or anything particularly interesting. It will be hard for the show to end in a surprising way if the rest of the episodes are like the 12th one. The only thing is that Felix is the man behind the uprising and definitely no surprise there, at least for me because I was expecting him to turn into a source of destruction till he has lost his leg, and also the webisodes(face of the enemy) were pointing the same direction.
has anyone picked up on the fact that one of the last episodes that is supposed to air on 2-27-09 Episode 421 is called “Someone to watch over me” I remember in Galactica 1980 the humans were at a modern day earth for and while some of the crew would sometimes go down and visit earth incognito, the fleet and Galactica would stay out of sight and watch over earth in case the cylons showed. I theorize that RDM is going to somewhat remake this episode, except with his usual twists. He’s done it before, paralleing 1978-1980 episodes with modern day ones, the death and ressurection of Starbuck, the return of the Pegasus, water Riots, food contaminations, these were all throwback episodes to the original, and RDM hasn’t done one in a while, think he might be due.
I think that the haven’t found the earth they were meant to find, it’s only theroized that the decimated planet they find is earth, what if they find “our earth” and await cavil and the cylons for a final showdown?
Anyone think of that?
Finally some sensible ideas. Thanks to The Brian. However it’s episode 17, not 21 so we will find it out even sooner.
Mert: Every episode list I’ve come across confused the crap out of me because they aren’t at the number I expected either.
B
Yep. It’s right. The episode numbers sometimes just confuse us really. Also I still think the last episode is crap. It’s boring to watch Roslin running aboard the ship for ages and watching Adama brush his teeth not for once but twice! The remaining episodes are numbered but the producers/writers are still into too much unnecessary details rather than mind-blowing puzzles and twists of the climax.Ans also there is no clue whatsoever if the resolution would make us all happy or otherwise. I just wish for the best and the rest is up to them. It will either suck or rock
Final Cylon….. everyone, we were told Ellen to throw us off.
Kara? Perhaps when ellen says, ‘everything is in place’ to Tigh, that they would be reborn, is the same thing that regenerated Kara and her ship, identically. Maybe there is an old spacestation not too far from this earth???
This station could have stored the information of the final five, then sent their consciousness, specs to the cylon homeworld.
For all we know, Kara’s consciousness was sent to the Cylon Homeworld, she was regenerated and sent back to galactica as a hidden spy or weapon, just like Boomer, but deadlier! Afterall, she was gone 3 months, someone had to build her, and the allied cylons would be unaware of this.
At this stage it is the only plausible thing i can think of. Maybe Humanity is not the Fifth cylon, because not everyone is having flashbacks or maybe eventually they will, perhaps the final five were the ones that proposed this new technology and sent it to Caprica, where their consiouness and programming got into Capricas machines and humanity killed off by the cylons, although at the time, it would have been seen as emerging technology, which was 2 thousand years ago.
So many possibilities, I’m gunna miss this show when it finishes!
Matt, I hate to break it to you but we are going to be watching Ellen in 7 episodes tormenting Saul. She is the final cylon. She’s known this for 2 years now. Which is and of itself, a mind blower for me.
Check out my latest post on this over at
http://tinyurl.com/de4hzm
Here’s the long version if that doesn’t work: http://screenrant.com/battlestar-galactica-news-episode-recap-brusimm-5162/
How come you say Ellen has known that she is the final cylon for 2 years??
Did you read the article I linked to in my last comment?
About 1/2 way down that article, next to her characters image in the post, she said it herself in an interview. Moore picked her early on.
Oh wait you mean Kate Vernon has known Ellen is the final cylon for 2 years. A little clarification after reading your other post.
Sorry
Sometimes I rush things up like reading articles properly. A habit I got in school that never left me 
AAAHHH, sorry, my bad. I get so excited about some things, that I leave out the subtle info.
yea, Vernon knew. I sometimes reference the actors as their character names… bad habit. SORRY FOR THE MISLEAD everyone.
Thanks for setting it straight Mert.
Well, back to the office grind for a few. Later all!
How could Ellen not be the fifth. She cant be alive 2000 years previous and 2000 later. Unless shes magic or a frickin robot. I read on the Sci Fi channel that part of the story line in the new Caprica series is that the two warring families both lose a daughter and create a cylon model of each. Could the Starbuck angle be tied into this. I think the little details that a small percentage of fans think of as boring make it seem more real. That way you feel each death a little more as opposed to somebody from Trek dieing and you not giving a crap.
Wow it is one helluva cliffhanger at the end of the last episode-”The Oath” But I guess Col. Tigh is expecting the marines to throw a grenade ergo he aims so cautiously to shoot it before it explodes to minimize it’s affect. So they must be still alive because it’s imperative for them to stay alive for the good sake of this show, right?
It was in fact Earth…
wasn’t there a knocked over Statue of Liberty in the destroyed Earth episode?
I didn’t realize something like the remnant of the statue of liberty. Are you sure about it? And it would be very helpful if you would upload the image on the net. I watched 10th episode again but there were only the buildings and a bridge, no knocked over statue.
Sorry – if the final five can regenerate, they would come back looking younger. Saul has aged over the last 20 years, so his starting point is a young Saul Tigh. If he was regenerated he would have to be as a young Saul Tigh.
Ellen comes back looking the same age. That doesn’t work. It’s a stupid obvious point, and one the writers failed to realise.
They fracked it up. There is no other way to see it and it frustrates me that I waited so long to see the plot turn to rubbish.
btw- I wonder about the possibility of seeing the cylons at some point in caprica. Does anyone know precisely when in the prior storyline the cylons were inserted into the human population?
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