My Battlestar Galactica Theory
With the end of the series nearing --- and my growing interest thanks not just to the excellent recent episodes but also the surprisingly good board game --- it's time to post my theory about "what the frak" is going on. Pardon to those who want to avoid geekiness. :)
Warning: oh, the spoilers.
Sometime in our future, at least 3600 years in the past from the timeline in the series, humanity develops the ability to "upgrade" itself and make improved humans, if you will --- the skinjobs of the show, a combination of genetic and mechanical engineering. We also construct Centurions to help with manual labor. This use of technology --- including sentient but repressed machines (the Centurions) and modified humans --- causes a great deal of public debate, perhaps even civil war, leading to an exodus of the pure humans who lose this conflict to their stronger brethren, the Cylons. They leave and find Kobol, where they settle.
Two thousand years ago, humanity, now on Kobol, causes some kind of disaster and/or is exiled by the gods (whatever that means), and they split up into thirteen tribes. Twelve of these tribes go off to found new worlds, the Twelve Colonies. The last decides to go back to Earth and retake their home. They return to a peaceful Earth with no serious space-based weapons, and they obliterate it. What they don't know is that these modified humans have somehow succeeded in finding a way to transfer their consciousness out, or at least some of them have. This is the second exodus: Cylons, "running" from their destruction at the hands of their human brothers by resurrecting elsewhere. Perhaps this technology was new, and only five Cylons --- the "Final Five" --- are able to resurrect elsewhere. With Earth destroyed, the thirteenth tribe goes off to find another planet at which to settle, leaving their original homeworld in ruins.
The Cylons come back at their Resurrection Ship or equivalent, but there are only five of them, and they head out to find the Twelve Colonies. Eventually they do and they reintroduce the appropriate Cylon technology, allowing for their "race" to be reborn. The newly-created Cylons rise up against the Colonies, and history as we know it happens.
I like this explanation because it has a clear thread (*we* create the Cylons by modifying ourselves, and this is all fallout from that), and there is ambiguity about what "humanity" is --- after all, the Cylons are just us, modifying ourselves. The Pythian prophecy makes sense (I had to look this up online): it prophecies the events of 2000 years ago (leaving Kobol), says "all of this has happened before [the exodus from Earth] and all of this will happen again [the exodus from the Twelve Colonies]," and makes no claim that the final settling point of humanity will be Earth. The timeline matches up: Earth was nuked 2000 years ago, which is when the exodus happened. It makes sense that Anders would be playing Bob Dylan's music in the future, because such revered music could very well survive. It makes sense that Colonial technology would be much like our own. There was indeed a Thirteenth Tribe that left for Earth --- they just weren't trying to colonize it.
The "promised land" is not Earth. Roslin has to die before we reach it --- much more likely now that she's avoiding treatment --- and it will be where the Thirteenth Tribe settled *after* they destroyed Earth. The emotional center of the show is about reconciliation between the humans and the Cylons, two warring groups who diverged and must now find it within themselves to create peace between them and break the cycle of war. When the humans come across the remnants of the Thirteenth Tribe, that tribe will be angry and distrustful of Cylons, furious to find out that some survived their bombardment, and it will probably coincide with the arrival of Cavil's fleet. Defusing that chaos and the destruction that would otherwise follow will presumably be how this plays out.
What this doesn't explain is the metaphysical aspects of the show. I still don't understand how Baltar's visions could come true, and I don't understand a lot of the elements that seem to be guiding the Final Five. One possibility is that the Final Five were secretly manipulating things so that Head Six's prophecies came true, but I don't know; perhaps they created a central consciousness to guide things while they strove to do what they most wanted to do, live out normal, human lives, where they feared death and were made whole by that fear.
I see a very satisfying ending on the horizon if I'm anywhere near true: the ultimate quest for forgiveness and joining back together, humans and Cylons, when they find the bitter Thirteenth Tribe (if they are still alive), a coming together that has been impossible for millenia as the two races warred. An offspring of both human and Cylon would be a major accomplishment: the races would be coming together (able to breed again, no longer different species) and it would be a symbol of their unity. This is the essential conflict that is driving the show, from the initial bombardment of the Colonies, to the Cylons' attempts to create a true hybrid that would recover the best of both species, to their misguided attempt to "rule" New Caprica and bring the species back together, to their newfound mortality that puts them on the same footing as humans.
I'm making this up out of nowhere, but it has a ring of potential truth to it. Then again, I would never, ever presume to be able to predict something that happens in Battlestar Galactica, so much remains to be seen.
Warning: oh, the spoilers.
Sometime in our future, at least 3600 years in the past from the timeline in the series, humanity develops the ability to "upgrade" itself and make improved humans, if you will --- the skinjobs of the show, a combination of genetic and mechanical engineering. We also construct Centurions to help with manual labor. This use of technology --- including sentient but repressed machines (the Centurions) and modified humans --- causes a great deal of public debate, perhaps even civil war, leading to an exodus of the pure humans who lose this conflict to their stronger brethren, the Cylons. They leave and find Kobol, where they settle.
Two thousand years ago, humanity, now on Kobol, causes some kind of disaster and/or is exiled by the gods (whatever that means), and they split up into thirteen tribes. Twelve of these tribes go off to found new worlds, the Twelve Colonies. The last decides to go back to Earth and retake their home. They return to a peaceful Earth with no serious space-based weapons, and they obliterate it. What they don't know is that these modified humans have somehow succeeded in finding a way to transfer their consciousness out, or at least some of them have. This is the second exodus: Cylons, "running" from their destruction at the hands of their human brothers by resurrecting elsewhere. Perhaps this technology was new, and only five Cylons --- the "Final Five" --- are able to resurrect elsewhere. With Earth destroyed, the thirteenth tribe goes off to find another planet at which to settle, leaving their original homeworld in ruins.
The Cylons come back at their Resurrection Ship or equivalent, but there are only five of them, and they head out to find the Twelve Colonies. Eventually they do and they reintroduce the appropriate Cylon technology, allowing for their "race" to be reborn. The newly-created Cylons rise up against the Colonies, and history as we know it happens.
I like this explanation because it has a clear thread (*we* create the Cylons by modifying ourselves, and this is all fallout from that), and there is ambiguity about what "humanity" is --- after all, the Cylons are just us, modifying ourselves. The Pythian prophecy makes sense (I had to look this up online): it prophecies the events of 2000 years ago (leaving Kobol), says "all of this has happened before [the exodus from Earth] and all of this will happen again [the exodus from the Twelve Colonies]," and makes no claim that the final settling point of humanity will be Earth. The timeline matches up: Earth was nuked 2000 years ago, which is when the exodus happened. It makes sense that Anders would be playing Bob Dylan's music in the future, because such revered music could very well survive. It makes sense that Colonial technology would be much like our own. There was indeed a Thirteenth Tribe that left for Earth --- they just weren't trying to colonize it.
The "promised land" is not Earth. Roslin has to die before we reach it --- much more likely now that she's avoiding treatment --- and it will be where the Thirteenth Tribe settled *after* they destroyed Earth. The emotional center of the show is about reconciliation between the humans and the Cylons, two warring groups who diverged and must now find it within themselves to create peace between them and break the cycle of war. When the humans come across the remnants of the Thirteenth Tribe, that tribe will be angry and distrustful of Cylons, furious to find out that some survived their bombardment, and it will probably coincide with the arrival of Cavil's fleet. Defusing that chaos and the destruction that would otherwise follow will presumably be how this plays out.
What this doesn't explain is the metaphysical aspects of the show. I still don't understand how Baltar's visions could come true, and I don't understand a lot of the elements that seem to be guiding the Final Five. One possibility is that the Final Five were secretly manipulating things so that Head Six's prophecies came true, but I don't know; perhaps they created a central consciousness to guide things while they strove to do what they most wanted to do, live out normal, human lives, where they feared death and were made whole by that fear.
I see a very satisfying ending on the horizon if I'm anywhere near true: the ultimate quest for forgiveness and joining back together, humans and Cylons, when they find the bitter Thirteenth Tribe (if they are still alive), a coming together that has been impossible for millenia as the two races warred. An offspring of both human and Cylon would be a major accomplishment: the races would be coming together (able to breed again, no longer different species) and it would be a symbol of their unity. This is the essential conflict that is driving the show, from the initial bombardment of the Colonies, to the Cylons' attempts to create a true hybrid that would recover the best of both species, to their misguided attempt to "rule" New Caprica and bring the species back together, to their newfound mortality that puts them on the same footing as humans.
I'm making this up out of nowhere, but it has a ring of potential truth to it. Then again, I would never, ever presume to be able to predict something that happens in Battlestar Galactica, so much remains to be seen.