SCI FI Channel Photo: Carole Segal
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, sneak off in a decommissioned sewage ship and watch Battlestar Galactica.
It worked in Robocop and it worked again here: bringing robots armed with built-in automatic weapons into a conference room gets people’s attention. I now know how I plan to attend all Time magazine editorial meetings from here on in.
With the Sixes having liberted the consciousnesses of the Centurions, the better to serve as, ahem, tiebreakers on the matter of whether to reprogram the Raiders after they turned back the attack on the fleet, we now have a solid split in the Cylon leadership. (Should we assume there are Centurions waiting on whatever resurrection ship the dear-departed Ones, Fours and Fives will download to?)
And with Adama having sent off Starbuck on a secret mission with Helo to look for Earth, we have the start of a significant split in the human leadership. After all, sending Starbuck away is only a minor transgression if she never comes back. If she does come back–as we have to guess she will–and says she has the path to Earth, what then? Adama would seem to be too invested to go against her now. And Roslin is too invested in her own destiny as Earth-finder to believe Starbuck at any cost. (“You’re afraid that you may not be the dying leader you thought you were,” Adama tells her. “Or that your death may be as meaningless as everyone else’s.”) What happens then? Who goes with whom?
A crazy theory, and apologies if someone else has already suggested it: suppose this final season of BSG is not building toward a decisive battle between humans and Cylons? What if the show has set up schisms or civil wars within both the human and Cylon camps, which will force one set of humans to ally with another set of Cylons to start over again on Earth?
Also, what are the percentage odds that the Democratic nomination will be decided by Centurion? Because when you’re packing like that, you best believe your delegation gets seated.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
* Baltar’s analogy of music to Tori—a cacophony resolving into a single note: a hint that he’s the remaining Cylon (capable of hearing the music the Four did) or a red herring?
* Doesn’t the resolution of having Starbuck lead a small recon mission to Earth seem obvious in retrospect? I’m sure there are many reasons Roslin might have opposed it, but is it reasonable that no one would even have floated the idea? (I understand that much or most of the fleet believes that Starbuck is a Cylon, but I can’t believe nobody besides Adama would have at least some nagging doubt that she’s telling the truth.)
* That said, I continue to be impressed with the way BSG has made Roslin an enigmatic figure: she’s capable of being both heroic and dictatorial, principled and ruthless, wise and stubborn. As a result, it’s hard to know whether to believe she’ll be vindicated once again or is making her biggest mistake ever—the development of her character over the past three seasons is paying off even as she (appparently) comes closer to dying of her cancer.
* So the known Cylon model numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8. If it’s forbidden for them to think about the Final Five, wouldn’t that have been easier had they not skipped a number?