# Battlestar Galactica#11-Sometimes a Great Notion/Season 4 Finale



## Truth Seeker (Jan 16, 2009)

*Sometimes a Great Notion*



Writers:Bradley Thompson, David Weddle

Director:Michael Nankin

Stars:Katee Sackhoff (Kara "Starbuck" Thrace)
Mary McDonnell (Laura Roslin)
Edward James Olmos (William Adama)
James Callis (Gaius Baltar)
Jamie Bamber (Lee Adama)
Grace Park (Sharon Agathon/Number Eight)
Tricia Helfer (Number Six/Caprica Six)

Recurring Role:Alessandro Juliani (Felix Gaeta)
Rekha Sharma (Tory Foster)
Jennifer Halley (Diana "Hardball" Seelix)
Alexandra Thomas (Hera Agathon)
Brad Dryborough (Lt. Hoshi)
Don Thompson (Anthony Figurski)
Michael Hogan (Saul Tigh)
Callum Keith Rennie (Leoben Conoy)
Tahmoh Penikett (Karl "Helo" Agathon)
Kandyse McClure (Anastasia "Dee" Dualla)
Aaron Douglas (Galen Tyrol)
Kate Vernon (Ellen Tigh)
Lucy Lawless (D'Anna Biers/Number Three)
Michael Trucco (Samuel Anders)

Guest Star:Sonja Bennett (Specialist 2nd Class Marcie Brasko)

Both the humans of the Colonial fleet and their Cylon allies fight against the emotion of overwhelming despair as they try to understand what happened to the 13th Tribe.

Dee reconciles with her husband Lee Adama despite being devastated about the discovery of Earth. Kara finds a puzzling and disturbing clue regarding her identity.​


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## Mallus (Jan 16, 2009)

I can't wait (almost took today off to watch the marathon on SciFi HD --which I _finally_ get in Philadelphia).


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## Grymar (Jan 16, 2009)

Bah, I can't watch it tonight, but hopefully I will Saturday night.

DVR ALERT! I read a rumor that tonight's episode is going to run over 2-3 minutes.  Add that bump on to your recording time!!


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## Wolf72 (Jan 16, 2009)

thanks for the heads up ... I'll be sure to set my vcr for longer


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## Steel_Wind (Jan 17, 2009)

Well, Ron Moore never passes by a moment to spit in somebody's eye, does he?

Fifth Cylon? What if there's more than that? And what if there's something *else*, too?

Is Starbuck just a mirror image, a true copy spliced out of time and back in - or something more? I guess that's the mystery the show is leaving us with now.

Because I'm not really certain where the show is headed anymore - other than, well, oblivion.

I guess that was a point Ron Moore was making as well.

Great to have it back, but bittersweet at the same time.


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## Wycen (Jan 17, 2009)

So, the Colonies can build cylons, master galactic travel, but can't make a good prosthetic replacement leg?


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## wingsandsword (Jan 17, 2009)

Wycen said:


> So, the Colonies can build cylons, master galactic travel, but can't make a good prosthetic replacement leg?




Well, they don't exactly have the full range of technology they had back on the Twelve Colonies with them.  They have what was aboard Galactica and it's fleet, and they salvaged from Pegasus before it was sacrificed.  Galactica was being decommissioned and was technologically backwards to begin with, so I doubt it would have just happened to have state-of-the-art prosthetic limb facilities.

For all we know in pre-holocaust Caprica they could have given him a mechanical prosthetic that was almost indistinguishable from his original limb.

Onto the issue of the episode itself, looks like the Cylons really are a lot older than we give them credit for.

My theory, convoluted but fully fitting the facts is that:

[sblock]
Human life originated on Earth, many, many millennia ago.  IIRC Bill Adama's personell file in the episode "Hero" showed the year as being around 21311, so it's clearly the very distant future (the 214th century).

Somewhere in our future, quite probably many thousands of years from now, humanity left Earth to settle on Kobol for reasons unknown, such as some cataclysm that made Earth uninhabitable.  

The Cylons were originally created on Kobol, thousands of years ago, after thousands of years of civilization on Kobol to the point where Earth was at best a distant memory, legend or trivia question as the origin of Humanity.  Then the Cylons developed to the point of being cyborgs, and eventually biological.  The human civilization dealt with the societal strains of having a race that was created as mechanical servitors, but now were fully sentient organic life that could only be distinguished from humans by detailed medical examination.  Eventually this lead to a civil war on Kobol.  By the end, Kobol was uninhabitable and twelve nations of Kobol left for new worlds to settle on, each lead by charismatic figures that would be later known as "Lords of Kobol".   As the humans were going in one direction, the Cylons went in another.   With Earth already being probably over 10000 years ago in human history, it wasn't hard for them to think of Kobol as their home and Earth as only the place where the "13th tribe" went to.

The humans found a star system and made it their own.  Using their highly advanced technology (remember, we saw them with practically holodeck-like technology in the ruins of Kobol in Athena's Tomb), they terraformed 12 worlds and created 12 nation-state worlds, each as a separate sovereign entity.

The Cylons returned to Earth and decided to resettle the world that had become habitable again after millennia.  They created a life very much like human civilization (from the few flashbacks we saw last night).  We don't know why or how, but something lead to nuclear detonations throughout Earth.  Massive, and very dirty detonations that killed virtually all life on the planet and even 2000 years later left detectable levels of radiation in the environment that made long-term habitation impractical.

To ensure their survival, the Cylons had enacted a master plan that would take over 2000 years to come to fruition.  For unknown reasons they left the marker beacon we saw earlier, and built the Temple of the Five as another marker to Earth.  Then, they arrived at the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, and somehow planted the seeds of their own technology so that humanity would recreate the Cylons.  Once activated, complex sets of hidden directives and memories were loaded into them by the Original Cylons so that they would recreate their former civilization.  Unfortunately, the only way the Cylons could develop that kind of biotechnology to recreate their old forms would be to do things humans would probably object to.  So, the Cylon Wars broke out so that Cylons would be able to capture humans for experimentation and work on their own development unimpeded by humans, so they could create bodies for the personalities of the old bio-cylons of Earth to download into.  

We saw in Razor that as soon as the Cylons had a functioning Hybrid and were well underway with the development of their biological models they called off the Cylon war and fled known space.

Once this had been executed, the Cylons were on their own.  They didn't have full knowledge of who they were, or where they came from.  They didn't really know why they had five of twelve models that were sealed off from their collective, they just knew that some other, outside entity had been guiding them and they treated that as divinity.
[/sblock]

As for Starbuck?  Who knows.  Maybe the Cylons cloned her somehow, and she's not a cylon but was recreated with her technology.  Must be pretty fraking harsh to find your own charred corpse (with your dog tags) sitting in the wreckage of the vehicle you remember disappearing in (with matching serial number).  The gamer in me is wondering how much Sanity Loss that would be in Call of Cthuhlu.


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## Mercury (Jan 17, 2009)

Jsut a thought, but couldn't Starbuck be a younger version of Ellen?  As Kara (cylon) grows older, she looks more and more like Ellen.

Just a thought.


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 17, 2009)

I actually bought into Lee and Dualla getting back together, so the suicide made me crap my pants.  In retrospect, I should have seen it coming better - Dualla's sudden calm after breaking down on Earth was a dead giveaway.  Contrast that with Adama, Roslin, D'Anna, or the fleet as a whole, who continue to be distraught.

Starbuck is weird, but not inconceivable. If she really did travel to Earth, say by a wormhole, she may have been temporally dislocated as well.  That leaves any number of possibilities: being rebuilt as a Cylon, alternate realities, and so forth.


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## Kobold Avenger (Jan 17, 2009)

I certainly suspected something with Ellen, but I thought she was merely just a number Six that was aged more than 20 years.

But now it's obvious Ellen be back, as the actress will be appearing in most of the remaining episodes.  Somehow I feel she'll be around (and not as a flashback or hallucination of anything like that) when Cavil shows up again.

As for Starbuck's secret, I wonder who that particular copy of Leoban bothered to tell?  Do all of his brother's know, or did he just keep it to himself.


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## Steel_Wind (Jan 17, 2009)

I guess the one thing we've glossed over so far is this:

3,600 years ago, a race of artificial humans, call them Proto Clyons, left Kobol as the "13th tribe". They settled on Earth.

2,000 years ago, the civilizatrion of those same proto-Cylons, the 13th tribe,  was nuked into oblivion and the Earth rendered uninhabitable.

Now, a handful of  the 13th Tribe are alive and among the current Colonial fleet.

So, the obvious question:  what or WHO caused the destruction of the 13th tribe, 2,000 years ago?.

If it's a who, was it an external WHO? Is there SOMEBODY ELSE out there? And if so, who is it?

Is that somebody else the power that restored Kara Thrace to life /split her in a timestream and sent her back to the Colonial fleet? And if so, why?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 17, 2009)

At this point, I'm thinking humans on Earth made Cylons, Cylons rose up & destroyed humans, taking over the planet.  Then, for reasons as yet unknown*, the Terran Cylons wiped each other out in a nuclear holocaust...but not before a bunch of Cylons got away, carting with them some human dna.  The "exodus" of the 13th tribe is, in effect, wrong; it occurred in the opposite direction.

Those escaping Cylons used genetic engineering to bring back humanity as a counterbalancing ethical force/lab rats/pets to see where they went wrong on Earth and avoid repeating the armageddon.

The series we've been watching the past few years, thus, started when the "experiment" was deemed to be over.  Either it was deemed a failure or irrelevant- and the "destroyers" had risen to power again, intent upon destroying humanity.  IOW, they have forgotten the lessons of the past.

* In the light of my speculations, it was because the human-form cylons were living _as humans,_ rather than as Cylons...a disruption within the Cylon unity.  Think of it like mechanical racism.


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## Mark (Jan 18, 2009)

So, they emphasized again that the Admiral knew the Drunk for 30 years.  Are we set with the idea that skin jobs age?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 18, 2009)

Either that or Adama's eyesight was really, really bad.


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## Shroomy (Jan 18, 2009)

Mark said:


> So, they emphasized again that the Admiral knew the Drunk for 30 years.  Are we set with the idea that skin jobs age?




In Season 2, they had an episode set at least a decade in the past when Adama recruited Tigh to be his XO.  He definitely aged.

I watched 7 hours of BSG yesterday, as I had to catch up on the five previous episodes.  What a glorious time.


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## Darkwolf71 (Jan 18, 2009)

wingsandsword said:


> IIRC Bill Adama's personell file in the episode "Hero" showed the year as being around 21311, so it's clearly the very distant future (the 214th century).




This does assume that the colonies for some reason used a Gregorian calendar. I'm not saying that's impossible, just unlikely. 

Of course, that only affects the dates of your theory. The details sound plausible enough.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 18, 2009)

Well, an interesting start for the second half.

1)
What's up with Starbuck. She crashes on a gas planet, and months later returns with the memory of seeing Earth to Galactica. But she also lies dead in the wreck of her Viper on Earth? How did she get there? Who is the surviving Starbuck?

2) 
So, at least Tigh and Tyrol have distinct memories of dying on Earth. Apparantly, the people dying on Earth were Cylons, not humans. How did the dead get over to the 12 Colonies? 
Is it possible that the Earth-Cylons also had a part of the resurrection technology and send their "souls" in direction of the 12 Colonies, where they were recreated (maybe their signal just travelled 2,000 years to reach a resurrection pond prototype? Or is reincarnation a general "fact" in the BSG 
universe? 


Well, suffice to see I can't wait for the next episode(s).


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## Krug (Jan 19, 2009)

Urgh all the angst. It was crawling in the middle. Just utterly depressing and downbeat.
I'm glad there's just a few more eps left.


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## Mallus (Jan 19, 2009)

I think the confrontation between Adama and Tigh would have played better without guns involved. After Dualla... a gun adds nothing to the scene. All we needed was Adama drunker than Tigh and the XO being the voice of reason. 

Other than that I enjoyed the hell out of all the non-enjoyment on display. I liked the reveals, the portrayals of the various breakdowns, Starbuck's quasi-auto-Viking funeral. 

As to where they're headed? Into a bittersweet future. Someplace they find a reason to go on. Nothing more. Or less.


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## Arnwyn (Jan 19, 2009)

Not a bad episode - I was suitably impressed after suffering through the near-unwatchable drek that was Season 3, and the only marginally better (but still poor) S4. If I could follow along, and things make at least semi-sense, I give it a thumbs-up.

I liked what I saw, and I think that *wingsandsword*'s theory is definitely plausible (and the most reasonable I've seen so far).

I also think without a doubt the 5 "original"/from-Earth cylons age. Those ones are essentially human (unlike the "I can plug into computers" nonsensical cylons - boy, that was a dumb idea). I think those 5 age, die, and get "reborn" (as per Ellen) - that's how their particular society worked. (The resurrection ship is a newer version of that same technology.)

My guess is that the 13th tribe cylons on Earth blew themselves all to hell - like what humans are wont to due in certain sub-genres of science fiction. My further theory is that there may be some survivors who stayed/are underground and cloned Starbuck (yes, that really is her corpse) and sent her back. Maybe. (Heh... crazy working theory, subject to change, etc etc)

I'm glad I suffered through the drek - hoping for the big payoff (looks good so far).

[Agreed with Mallus with the Adama/Tigh scene. The guns just made it silly and cliche.]


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## Ahnehnois (Jan 19, 2009)

Way back when she was introduced, Ellen was tested by Baltar, and the result was left kind of ambiguous. I always figured the writers just forgot that or ignored it.

Definitely, this ep felt a lot more meaningful than most of season 4.0; hard to watch though.


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## Arnwyn (Jan 19, 2009)

Ahnehnois said:


> Way back when she was introduced, Ellen was tested by Baltar, and the result was left kind of ambiguous. I always figured the writers just forgot that or ignored it.



Unfortunately, this was very typical of mid-to-late BSG stuff. Such a thing wasn't an isolated incident, and there were enough (clear, to me at least) moments of the writers pretty much "making  up as they went along".

Now that it's ending, there should be more focus and consistency.


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## Simplicity (Jan 19, 2009)

I don't think the 13th colony Cylons blew themselves up.  I think their creation, the humans, came back and destroyed their former masters.  A few remaining cylons survived in a beaten down starship that crossed the galaxy to find a new home, all the while being attacked by the ruthless humans.  Finally, the Cylons arrive at a new home, Caprica, only to find that it has been horribly destroyed by Cylons just before their arrival.


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## Ahnehnois (Jan 19, 2009)

Arnwyn said:


> Unfortunately, this was very typical of mid-to-late BSG stuff. Such a thing wasn't an isolated incident, and there were enough (clear, to me at least) moments of the writers pretty much "making  up as they went along".
> 
> Now that it's ending, there should be more focus and consistency.




I don't think it's any mystery the writers made a great deal of things up as they were going. Through podcasts and such, the writers have been pretty clear about the sometimes haphazard creative process. This is one of the show's strengths, as well as a weakness. Since I run my D&D games similarly, I tend to see it as a strength.

I wonder how many other long forgotten details from early on in the show will return...


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## satori01 (Jan 20, 2009)

Ultimately, I feel disappointed by the episode.  The show is best when it focuses on plot and does not fool itself into thinking it is a character based drama.

After making so much hoopla over whom is the 5th Cylon....to reveal it like that.....and to have it be a character that really only has value in terms of defining, or almost being an appendage to Colonel Tigh.....was a let down.

Also the suicide was predictable.  The show certainly has a problem in common w/ George RR Martin, as soon as a character appears happy you know something terrible is going to happen or they are going to die.


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## Mark Hope (Jan 20, 2009)

satori01 said:


> Ultimately, I feel disappointed by the episode.  The show is best when it focuses on plot and does not fool itself into thinking it is a character based drama.
> 
> After making so much hoopla over whom is the 5th Cylon....to reveal it like that.....and to have it be a character that really only has value in terms of defining, or almost being an appendage to Colonel Tigh.....was a let down.
> 
> Also the suicide was predictable.  The show certainly has a problem in common w/ George RR Martin, as soon as a character appears happy you know something terrible is going to happen or they are going to die.




Wow.  I totally didn't see it coming and it shocked the hell out of me.  It worked well, though, especially when taken along with Dualla's earlier behaviour.  (During her babysitting scene I was like "Shut up!  What are you saying?  You don't talk to a kid like that!")

I also liked the revelation of the Fifth Cylon, mainly because it held true to the promise that they won't keep us dangling - just get it out of the way and get on with the story (something _Lost_ could have learned from, back when I cared about that show, lol).  Plus again, it took me completely by surprise.  Of all the characters to be a Cylon, she was the one I least expected (well, except maybe for Boxey, but we haven't seen him since the miniseries...)  So different strokes and all that 

I did enjoy the episode.  There were plenty of nice revelations, new questions posed, cool dilemmas to chew over and some good character scenes (without descending into the soap-opera silliness that was the latter half of season three).  I wouldn't put it in my top five or anything, but it was a good strong start to the end-run.  Glad to have it back!


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## wingsandsword (Jan 20, 2009)

Mark Hope said:


> (well, except maybe for Boxey, but we haven't seen him since the miniseries...)  So different strokes and all that



For the record, Boxey did appear in the first season after the miniseries, barely.  He appeared briefly in "Bastille Day".  He had three scenes shot for "Water", but they were cut and ended up as deleted scenes in the DVD, and one scene from "Kobol's Last Gleaming Part I" that was cut but was also on the DVD.


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## Mark Hope (Jan 20, 2009)

wingsandsword said:


> For the record, Boxey did appear in the first season after the miniseries, barely.  He appeared briefly in "Bastille Day".  He had three scenes shot for "Water", but they were cut and ended up as deleted scenes in the DVD, and one scene from "Kobol's Last Gleaming Part I" that was cut but was also on the DVD.




Ha!  See?  It wasn't such a mad idea after all!


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## Mallus (Jan 20, 2009)

satori01 said:


> The show is best when it focuses on plot and does not fool itself into thinking it is a character based drama.



This is exactly how I feel, except in reverse. 



> Also the suicide was predictable.



It shocked the hell out of me. Now Adama's attempted suicide-by-liquor-and-Tigh was predictable.


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## Ahnehnois (Jan 20, 2009)

I was shocked cold by the suicide; Adama's meltdown I found less compelling. I was rolling my eyes at yet another turn in the back-and-forth love quadrangle. I was also surprised and pleased that the suicide was as graphic as it was; this was not something to sugarcoat as TV censorship so often mandates.


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## el-remmen (Jan 20, 2009)

What if they're just _all_ Cylons?


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## Krug (Jan 20, 2009)

el-remmen said:


> What if they're just _all_ Cylons?




I think a lot of the posters here have been saying just that.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 21, 2009)

el-remmen said:


> What if they're just _all_ Cylons?




What if they are all humans? 

Baltar and the Cylons are capable of distinguishing Cylons and Humans. So they are apparently not the same.


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## Arnwyn (Jan 21, 2009)

el-remmen said:


> What if they're just _all_ Cylons?



Then I look forward to seeing Adama, Roslyn, and others plugging themselves into computers.

No matter what sci-fi cliches this show is trying to ape, cylons (well, at least 7 of the "models") are not the same as humans.


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## Darkwolf71 (Jan 21, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> What if they are all humans?
> 
> Baltar and the Cylons are capable of distinguishing Cylons and Humans. So they are apparently not the same.




Remember the Cylons were as much in the dark as the humans when it came to the identities of the 5. Only Baltar has been able to 'out' an unknown Cylon before.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 22, 2009)

What if its all in the imagination of an autistic child that Bob Newheart is dreaming about?


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## Brown Jenkin (Jan 22, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> What if its all in the imagination of an autistic child that Bob Newheart is dreaming about?




Is the autistic child imagining by staring into a snowglobe?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 22, 2009)

Brown Jenkin said:


> Is the autistic child imagining by staring into a snowglobe?




He might be, Brown Jenkin...he might be...


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 22, 2009)

Darkwolf71 said:


> Remember the Cylons were as much in the dark as the humans when it came to the identities of the 5. Only Baltar has been able to 'out' an unknown Cylon before.



But they didn't make any tests on any of the 5 Cylons either. In the last episode, they said they were able to identify the dead as Cylons, and the Final Five presumably come from Earth. So I think yes, there are differences they can check for, they just never did it for the right ones.


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## Krug (Jan 22, 2009)

Well someone really should find out what 



Spoiler



shampoo Starbuck uses. Her 'corpse' was charred but the hair.. wow. Not even singed.


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## Fast Learner (Jan 22, 2009)

Krug said:


> Well someone really should find out what
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Great for stunt men, but not that high on my list of product priorities.


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## el-remmen (Jan 22, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> What if they are all humans?
> 
> Baltar and the Cylons are capable of distinguishing Cylons and Humans. So they are apparently not the same.




But apparently, there are different _kinds_ of cylons, even skin jobs. . . So all the "humans" could really be some kind of cylon creation, and all the 8 and 5 stuff is more mythic BS.

The show has shown a total willingness to undermine what has been ostensibly established.  I think that is what I like about it.


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## Kaodi (Jan 22, 2009)

I still think it more likely that Kara is related to the Cylons rather there being some kind of weird time travel or other form of cloning... I think that there is a distinct possibility that there is another twist waiting, like how it was revealed that the 13th Colony was a colony of Cylons. 12 Models... 13 Colonies? Just does not add up,  . 

Other possibilities, or related ones... Maybe Kara is descended from humans and Cylons, or maybe in some weird fashion maybe she is the " daughter " of Ellen and Saul. That would certainly be an interesting way to explain why they hated each other so much...

[Edit: Or maybe she is just the Cylon God...]


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## Mark Hope (Jan 23, 2009)

There is also the possibility that she is related to the "Beings of Light" from the old series.  We haven't seen them yet, but there was something damn strange about that cylon raider she chased into the maelstrom.  Not sure what it might mean or how it might be developed, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Also, did we ever learn more about that cylon fleet that was hiding in the nebula during the "All Along the Watchtower" sequence when Kara reappeared?  I can't remember.


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## Joker (Jan 23, 2009)

Mark Hope said:


> Also, did we ever learn more about that cylon fleet that was hiding in the nebula during the "All Along the Watchtower" sequence when Kara reappeared?  I can't remember.




Didn't they fight it in the opening of Season 4?


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## Mark Hope (Jan 23, 2009)

Joker said:


> Didn't they fight it in the opening of Season 4?




Oh yeah, so they did.  There was that whole thing with Anders' eyes going all glowy and suddenly the cylons went away.

A pox on the SciFi Channel for making us wait this long!


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