"I went to a place to eat. It said 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance". --Steven Wright ... If you are a devotee of time travel, check out this song...

Friday, January 16, 2009

Battlestar Galactica, Final 1: Dee, Ellen, and Starbuck

Well, the first of the final Battlestar Galactica episodes, like the Final Five, was wrapped in enigma and jolting surprise...

Dee finds a child's jacks toy on "Earth" - revealed last year as a radioactive ruin of a planet, and revealed in this episode as populated entirely, at least insofar as the bones that were found, by Cylons. Their destruction occurred some 2000 years ago... Dee is less unhappy than just about everyone else about this. Back on the Galactica, she's looking good, Lee kisses her ... and she blows her brains out. Why?

Tyrol discovers that he has memories of Earth, and the holocaust - which makes sense, given that he's a Cylon, and there may have been some means of resurrection nearby. Did Dee kill herself because she realized she was Cylon, because of some memory of the jacks?

Perhaps.

And then there's Ellen. Tigh, back on ruined Earth, remembers at the end of the episode that he and Ellen died there, 2000 years ago, and Ellen told him not to worry, they would resurrect and be together again. So, Ellen is/was the final Cylon?

Perhaps.

But what an exquisite additional maybe final twist to the Tigh and Ellen story. He loves her but kills her because he think she's a human who helped the Cylons (on his behalf). Then he finds out that he's a Cylon, himself. And now he find that Ellen's a Cylon, too. (Did she resurrect on the ship? If so, where is she now?) Some eons, you just can't win...

Meanwhile, Kara is in some ways the most interesting of all. She finds her ship and corpse on Earth - not from 2000 years ago, but from when she went to Earth, some two years ago, in television series time. So ... she was somehow replicated, resurrected, or whatever it took to get her living and back in a craft again and reunited with the BSG crew? And why did she tell everyone it would all be ok, when she first got back?

One thing's for sure: the riddle of Battlestar Galactica is a lot more complex than it seemed, which was complex indeed.

But we may have an answer for the Dylan song. Anders remembers playing it some 2000 years ago. So ... the Cylons originally arrived "here" some time after right now (in our real time), and Dylan was in the air (as he is now), and the Cylons picked up his music?

Perhaps...

See also Battlestar Galactica, Final 2: Baby and Mutiny ... Final 3: Galactica Alamo! ... Final 4: Shout-Outs to Lampkin, Lee, Tyrol ... Final 5: (Almost) All Explained ... Final 6. The Necessity of Hyrbrid ... Final 7. 'Since I Died in Your Arms' ... Final 8. Father of a Million ... Final 9. 'Every Man and Woman Over the Age of 15' ... Finale: Not Goodbye But See You Around

also Battlestar Galactica 4:10 Earth and links to reviews other BSG episodes there...






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10 comments:

Scott said...

Organic Cylons were the original species. They created Humans, who in turn rebelled and nuked the Cylon homeworld (strangely similar to destruction of Caprica, hm?). The Cylon machines did not make organic Cylons. The organic Cylons who resurrected from the destruction of Earth went somewhere (Cylon homeworld?), while there were a few Cylon plants in the human population. These Cylon plants had an instrumental role in creating the machine Cylons, who rendezvoused with the organic Cylons once they left Earth. Or so my theory goes. You know they're going to have some convoluted explanation for why the supposedly 'machine-created' cylons are identical to the ancient cylons.

But this is for certain:

Starbuck IS a Cylon. This is the ONLY explanation for her having memories UP UNTIL the storm that destroyed/transported her viper.

Either Starbuck IS Ellen IS Six and Dee is Five, or Dee was just depressed and Starbuck IS Ellen is Five or Ellen IS Six.

Anonymous said...

How about this:

Nobody was a cylon until they were resurrected. Cylons are copies of 14 people who were originally killed and resurrected in synthetic bodies 2000 years ago.

Paul Levinson said...

Definite possibilities, Scott and anon.

Here's another factor: how do the hybrids fit into this?

Michele Cameron Drew said...

Hi Paul,


BSG being my favorite show, I was just about to write up a similar post, but then I caught yours on digg. Great theories!

I would think that Starbuck would be the last of the final five, because Ellen is dead... oh wait... maybe not. heh. She did die before the hub was destroyed, but were they out of range for her to have been resurrected at the time?

I have a theory about Dee. In this episode everything about her leading up to the time that she shot herself was was related to children. Was it something in her memories of her childhood or was it something relative to the future and having children, with no home to raise them? Could she have been pregnant?

Anyway... my reason for writing was after coming onto your blog to read your post, I noticed your book which looks very interesting. I also noticed the image in the upper right hand column that you have labeled on photobucket as "my books". What can you tell me about this image? I have a framed copy of this image that looks like an original sketch. It was found walled in behind the furnace in an old house many years ago. Please email or contact me through my blog as I am very curious to know more about this piece.

Thanks,
-M

Hube said...

You have to remember the "this has all happened before" mantra.

I'd doubt the theory that organic Cylons would create humans. Why would they? Last night's episode showed different style Centurions among the ruins; thus, keeping with the mantra above, it stands to reason that the supposed Earth- Cylons created the Centurions as their slaves, who in turn rebelled. Keep in mind the skin job Cylons (at least one of them -- name escapes me) have begun to "lobotomize" some of the robotic Cylons (the Raiders) indicating their own slave-like treatment of said robotic versions.

But back to Scott's point: I'm actually wondering how HUMANITY falls into the whole equation. IS there an actual "humanity?" Or all we all Cylons, at least in part? After all, if Earth was settled by Cylons departing from Kobol as the "13th Tribe" (the other twelve -- being human, supposedly -- settling the Twelve Colonies), how in the frak did the humans of that era even possess the technology to create humanoid Cylons? Especially since BSG-era humans only created robotic Cylons less than a century ago (BSG time)? The diaspora from Kobol took place what -- over 3000 years ago?

Heh. Y'know what?? Maybe Scott is right after all! Since my points above don't make logical sense, it stands to reason that, given technological ability-level questions, Cylons made up the original inhabitants of Kobol, and like humans that might create machines, these machines created organic life -- HUMANS.

Man, my head is spinnin'...

Anonymous said...

At first I thought maybe Dee killed herself because this was as happy as she'd ever be. But then I thought about those jacks....and the ones in her bags at the end, and I realized those were HER jacks. She remembered being blown up as a child. And if that child never grew up, what did that make Dee?

I've always thought Ellen was a cylon. Always. And I kind of thought she and six were actually the same cylon.

I think perhaps there's some kind of mass hallucination happening. I fully expect for Adama to "find out" or "remember" that he died before, too. And I think the cylon skeletons are a clue that the cylons and mankind are more closely related than we thought, and that the "Final Five" are probably really also the "first five."

Paul Levinson said...

Welcome to Infinite Regress, Michele - and Hube an anon, too!

Michele, I'll be emailing you directly about that wonderful image on the upper right column of this blog. But in case anyone else is interested: It's "Der Bucherworm" (The Bookworm) by Carl Spitweg, from 1850. There are old and new prints all over the place - I have one from the 1890s, judging by its framing, hanging on the wall of my library.

I have no idea where the original is - but, if you have it, it would probably be worth a fortune! :)

Michele Cameron Drew said...

It may be a print, Paul. I'm not positive that it's a sketch. It's very very old and framed and I am very leery of opening up the frame. I highly doubt that it's the original considering it's location, but you never know.

Thanks for the info!

-M

Anonymous said...

My theory is the Ellen is Six, just an older version.

tvindy said...

The Ellen revelation is very interesting. Since she's a Cylon, Tigh knows that he may one day see her again. Or maybe he's thinking that she wasn't resurrected (because he killed her too far away from a resurrection ship), in which case, after waiting thousands of years to be together again, they both made bad choices that resulted in them being separated forever.

It also explains why no fifth Cylon was drawn to the music, as well as why Tigh was attracted to a woman who clearly seemed to be nothing but trouble for him. What isn't clear is what caused her to become so messed up. She certainly didn't seem that way in her original past version.

I can't figure out what's going on with Starbuck, but I doubt that she's another version of Ellen or that she was replaced by some sort of amnesiac Cylon impostor. It seemed clear that she had some sort of destiny to fulfill, and that can't have been just to die and be replaced. Starbuck is definitely still Starbuck, whatever/whoever that is.

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