NBSG Qestion - The 6's

[Mayabird]

What I had really, really hoped was the case was that the series had been set in our future, there had been a cycle of violence stretching back to our original Earth, and once they'd returned to the homeworld and come full circle and seen the devastation, they'd all say "frak the cycle" and find somewhere new and do everything they could to make sure it really didn't happen again. And that would be why Hera was so special; she was the symbol of the new order when everyone could actually come together instead of blowing everything up again. Then you could have stuff such as both the dying leaders (Roslin and Galactica herself; it's how Adama likes his women, apparently) making it to the Promised Land, because frak the cycle. Frak old prophesies and ancient temples on algae planets and all that fraking horseshit.

Man, now I feel like writing fanfics. I'm going to shower.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I wrote about this t length in th original BSG Final thread... But what it comes down to is that the end wasn't just Ludditism taken to the extreme, but in fact Nihilism.

What happened really was somewhere along the long RDM Learned about "Midachondrial Eve" which was one lady who evidently was responsible for, what was it, 25% of the humans alive today? All throughout the show we are told "Hera is special Hera is important... Then RDM finds out about EVE and after that, the whole end is basically shoehorned in to make Hera, this "Eve"

That aside... The ending flies in the face of every single aspect of the whole show. It defies Logic, common sense and the action of the colonials since the 12 colonies initial destruction. It isn't JUST That they throw away tech, its that ONE PERSON decides to throw everything away, and NO ONE seems to have a problem with it. More then that, they basically reign themselves to oblivion.

Ludditism at LEAST entails the continuation of a species/race. If they had planned to continue going on, even as Luddites, farming, living as primitives, they would at least be continuing their civilization. What happens at the end however is OBLIVION. They Sacrifice their entire society and resign it to utter and total oblivion. After three years of clinging to every last scrap of their past, treasuring every book, holding on to every memory, every moment, every reminder of what they used to be... at the end they 'suddenly' decied not just not to rebuild, but to utter DESTROY all of that.

Imagine if our society met with a calamity, and after years of struggle, all that remains of humanity, the works of Shakespeare, the great works of art, music, literature, everything great about our society... Imagine us taking it and just destroying it till Nothing remained.

In the end they don't 'break the cycle; because "they" no longer exist to continue the cycle... Saying "well, there was 150,000 years of peace" is also meaningless... If they had never shown up guess what, Earth still would have been exactly where it is now! And all of this ALL of it was just so RDM could turn Hera into Midchondrial Eve..

[Adrian McNair]

Or, I dunno, those are fairly stupid ideas. What I thought was gonna really matter was that the people who assaulted the Colony wound up somewhere different, receiving some different reward for their sacrifice. I also was really hoping for some kind of bone thrown at viewers who wanted a mechanistic explanation for the Angels and for Starbuck.

Emphasis mine. That's precisely one of the things that should have been shown. It would have been cool if after Kara inputs the co-ordinates and Galactica flees the destruction of the Colony that, instead of reaching Earth they wind up in an empty part of space. Before anyone can react something utterly alien and spectacular (a giant space station, a planetoid or maybe a Dyson Sphere) jumps in. Galactica is tractored into a bay of some sort and the crew make their way aboard, unaware of what's waiting for them. At the embarkation area they find every single one of the Virtual Beings that the various characters have perceived throughout the show's run- Virtual Six, Baltar, Leoben, Elosha and Slick/Drelide Thrace, ready to greet them. It turns out they're not hallucinations after all.

The "Virtual" Beings then go into detail about what they are. When Galactica jumped from the Colony it actually jumped through time, 151,100 years into the future. Back in the present once they realised Galactica wasn't coming back, for a while, the civilians panicked and were on the brink of fighting amongst themselves but things stabilised when Admiral Hoshi and President Lampkin restored order. Together Hoshi and Lampkin were eventually able to find a habitable world (Not a second Earth, just a random Earth-like planet) and start a new future for the remnants of the Human and Cylon races. As in the final, the Red-Stripe Centurions were allowed to depart with the Baseship and find their place in the universe. The Colonials were only too happy to see them leave. That's when the bombshell is dropped. The "Virtual" beings are the highly advanced, artificially evolved descendants of the Red-Stripe Centurions.

The Centurions evolved to the point were they could manufacture increasingly sophisticated mechanical versions of themselves, a technological singularity. Their scientific prowess advanced and their intelligence continued to grow. As the centuries passed, they became so far ahead of what they once were that they started to experiment with the fourth dimension, making efforts to develop time travel. But the results were limited, they could either project themselves into the past into the minds of others or just send crude physical objects back. A consensus was reached amongst the Centurion descendants and they decided to do what they could to manipulate history in their favor. So every "hallucination" the characters witnessed (the ones the Final Five saw, the Six Baltar saw, the Baltar Caprica Six saw, etc) was actually a projection from the future. The Centurion descendants reveal what they look like to the Adama and company- they are large nano-technological cubes that can assume any form.

As for the mystery of Kara Thrace, when she "died" she was sent to 151,050 years (fifty years after the Centurion Descendants' time travel technology had been perfected) into the future but the process did actually kill her (she was burned alive and her Viper was trashed). The Centurion descendants found her, created a copy of her and her Viper and sent her back in time. The first attempt was a failure and this Kara copy crash landed on Cylon Earth, just before Galactica and the fleet found it. The second attempt was successful. The second Kara copy ended up in the Ionian Nebula during the battle. The process of travelling through time did have an unintended side-effect- a fleet-wide power outage.

In the end, the Centurion descendants cure Roslin's cancer and send Galactica back in time to the new world that the Colonials and Cylons discovered and are in the process of settling. Their lives are now their own. Roll credits.

Sorry for my silly, convoluted ramblings. It's just my attempt to answer some of the more pressing questions of the show.

[Themightytom]

They couldn't leave the Galactica on teh moon, they sent the fleet into the sun so that if Cavil's cylon's happened by they didn't stumble upon them.

Now this was of course based on the assumption taht the Cylons wouldn't fuck with the natives of Earth who happened to be GENETICALLY COMAPTIBLE with colonials? That I didn't follow, why would the cylons not just conclude they were ALL colonials and wipe out everything on the planet. THATS where having a couple escape ships would have been handy.

I found it staggeringly inconsistent the way they tried to retcon six. What she loves baltar so much she cares for his elderly father, but picks up and infant and snaps its neck just as a warm up for helping nuke a dozen planets?

AND WHY THE F WAS SHE SLEEPING WITH SAUL??? That mini "6's baby" arc was such a waste of screen time. I preferred her as the sinsiter foil to baltar's humanity as depicted in seasons 1-3. The opera scene was a complete cop out.

I can see how head six could have been an angel but Starbuck was something else. She was seen by many and she directly manipulated her environment. possibly you could make the case her spray and pray technique was because she wasn't trying to hit the centurions. Governor Tarkin ordered her to miss as part of lord Vader's plan She was jsut a hallucination people iamgined shooting around like crazy but could effect no real change. in that case I would have to know who was piloting the raptor back to galactica, who painted the mural on the wall etc. Starbuck as an angel seemed to get more powers than head Six, she msut be something else.

If she was an angel, she's kiiiiind of a bitch, because that means the real kara definitely was lured into a mental breakdown and a grisly death to allow them to plant a hallucination That would be fucked up. I will still go with the "Starbuck was party cylon and downloaded into a new body at the last second and that whatever faction built her viper had the ability to teleport or cloak her from lee when he turned around. Or she hypnotized him. With magnets.

[Anguirus]

Right, that's the other thing I forgot to mention. The writers didn't really understand what Mitochondrial Eve was, so their inhuman efforts to get the cast to the point where Hera could have been ME were all the more ironic. What they want is the most recent common ancestor of all living Homo sapiens, and who gives a frak about the MRCA of our mitochondria? Moreover, it boggles the mind that such an individual would fossilize and somehow be later identified as an individual MRCA. I don't even know how you'd go about it, although someone savvier in genetics might have an idea.

The intended message of the series only comes through if you assume that the cultural heritage of the Colonies did enrich our culture greatly (which was the "Chariots of the Gods" stuff oBSG pursued). The problem is that there is no mechanism by which the Colonial landing could have transferred this heritage. It all comes back around to handwaving.

I found it staggeringly inconsistent the way they tried to retcon six. What she loves baltar so much she cares for his elderly father, but picks up and infant and snaps its neck just as a warm up for helping nuke a dozen planets?

Eh, as a Six fan I'll field that one. She's not really any different from an agent who is just starting to go native, but isn't willing to violate her oath yet (Gina, the other spy Six in the show, was adamant that she was a soldier). There appeared to be some genuine compassion for Baltar's father, but it was also a way to accomplish her mission. As I said, they show you the moment when Six falls in love with Baltar. She's not in love with all humans everywhere, so she just tries to save Baltar (and what she did to the infant is something like a semi-deliberate mercy-killing).

[Johonebesus]

I'm rather fond of the idea that the series is set in the same universe as Stargate. The "angels" were ascended beings, possibly not even originally human. They weren't as strict about the no worship rule as the ascended Alterans would later be, but they still didn't like to directly interact with the physical world. So they appeared only to select individuals and mostly encouraged them into certain behaviors rather than telling them exactly what to do or even giving them detailed information that they shouldn't know. They raised Thrace up and then allowed her to come back with limited memory, just as the Alterans would later do with Jackson and Orlin.

The Lords of Kobol were a small number of Alterans that survived the plague. For whatever reason they created a population of modern humans, just as they did in the Pegasus galaxy, and then dwindled and died out.

This still doesn't solve every plot hole, but it fills in a good number. If I could write fiction I might do some sort of crossover depicting the modern Earth finding the descendants of the Cylons. It would be neat to see a battlestar built by a future earth with shields, beam weapons, and drones.

[Bilbo]

(and what she did to the infant is something like a semi-deliberate mercy-killing).

The expression on her face made me think she had no realized how fragile a newborn child is. She didnt mean to kill it. As far as we can tell Cylon Skinjobs are all born fully grown. What experience does 6 have with infants? Now mix in her greatly enhanced strength and an accident is possible.