It’s always the ones you least expect. Except when it’s not. / SCI FI Channel Photo: Carole Segal
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this edition of BSG Watch, visit your shrine to the One True God—otherwise known as your TV—and watch Friday’s Battlestar Galactica.
So the season-end revelation of four of the Final Five Cylons was quite a setup for a couple of reasons. First, because it left Tigh et al. to deal, in this season, with their secret, their guilt and their suspicions about their own nature. (Was it them who led the Cylons to find the fleet, for instance?) But maybe just as important is that it was four, not five—leaving one toaster shoe yet to drop this season, and it could literally be just about anyone.
Starbuck? Since suspicions are directed her way now, it would seem unlikely that she would be—too obvious a choice. And yet there are enough unexplained questions: just how did she survive the apparent explosion of her ship, or did she survive it at all, for instance? If the Five are present on Galactica now—as Six claims to sense—it would make sense that the four picked up on the signal of Earth (in the form of All Along the Watchtower) and the fifth, Kara, fulfilled her purpose by finding Earth. And whether Starbuck is the fifth or not, her having found Earth could plausibly be the reason that the Cylons—after scanning Anders in his cockpit—turned aside their attack. Is it in the nature of the Final Five to lead the Cylons to Earth, and could Kara’s return be why the Cylons retreated (so as to follow the fleet to Earth)? It can’t just be that they detected Anders, right, since this can’t be the first time he (or any of the Five) has ever encountered a Cylon?
Of course, as long as we’re throwing out potential Fifths here, what about Roslin? At the very least, she’s set up for conflict with Starbuck. Roslin already believes that she is the one prophesied to lead humanity to Earth: as deeply as she believes that, she must believe that Starbuck is an impostor, and possibly a Cylon at that. But isn’t that precisely what Cylon Roslin would believe?
I could spin out the possibilities endlessly—the Old Man, Baltar (who I hope gets folded back into the main storyline soon)—but I’ll let you take a crack at that. Oh, and also: why the time discrepancy with Starbuck’s ship (which reads as having been away six hours while the fleet believes she’s been gone for two months)? Do we need Daniel Faraday to analyze this?