Chris just sent me this article on Dark Horizons. I knew Season Four of Battlestar Galactica would possibly be the final season, but nothing strongly said that, though Ron Moore has mentioned in his podcast that he’d rather end the show on a strong note, and that producers are always thinking about what they were going to do next. There has been talk about if a Caprica series would ever get off the ground, but as far as I know, Sci-Fi/NBC has made no definite decisions. For someone who’s been a life-long Star Trek Fan, I see BSG has as a weekly dose of crack. Where will I get my fix now? I suspect I’ll be a Johnny come lately to Heroes. I don’t think I’ll ever get into the Dresden Files or Eureka (though Colin Ferguson is hot). I was lost on Lost a long time ago, and I hate asking my friends to fill me in on the details.
Here are some thoughts and questions I have, now that we have to wait ¾ of a year for Season 4:
With the miraculous return of Starbuck in Season 3’s finale, the trek to Earth has become much shorter. The question now is how did she and her Viper return intact and is she a Cylon? There are a few other candidates: Roslin, Baltar, Ellen Tigh, and Commander Adama. Roslin has a shared vision with Sharon and Caprica Six, Baltar projects (which may be good old fashioned daydreaming), Ellen Tigh’s Cylon test results were never truly definitive, and Leoben once said to Roslin that Adama is a Cylon. The Final Fifth should be revealed in Season 4.
Now that the Final Four are revealed, will we learn their origins in this coming season? How and why were these Cylon models made? I also have to wonder about the humanity’s original relationship with the Lords of Kobol. Were humans their Cylons, their golems? As the Cylons were exiled from the Colonies, humans were exiled from Kobol. On some level, the Cylons attack on the colonies strikes me as a form of deicide. They killed off their creators to make way for themselves and their faith in a “God.” I wonder if the Lords of Kobol were more a race of people rather than a pantheon, and if they are extinct as a result of their human creations. In processing the memories of the “Lords of Kobol,” they chose to venerate emblems or representatives of the Kobolites.
What kind of Earth awaits the remnants of the Colonies? Will Earth be at 1000 BC or 2007 AD? Will Ron Moore ever get an opportunity to re-imagine flying motorcycles and androgynous child prodigies? Then there is the issue of would Terrans welcome their long lost cousins from space. Would they embrace their long lost brethren or would Earth’s humanity feel more an affinity for the Cylons?
I wonder if we’ll get to see Lucy Lawless one last time Season 4. There could be some rogue Three models out there, but it depends more on Lawless’ availability. I liked that she was never Xena at all in any of her Number Three incarnations.
Now that Caprica Six is aboard Battlestar Galactica, what will happen? She was supposed to be a key witness in Baltar’s trial, but that never happened. She’s still locked up, and she’s essentially a war criminal. Being a Cylon may be reason enough for most of them (and she was part of Cylon advisory board of the New Caprica occupation). She was the one who helped sabotage Baltar’s version of Vista for Fleet computers (thus leaving Caprica vulnerable to attack). It’s not clear how much Roslin and Adama know about her role in the attack, but Roslin’s only real evidence so far is her visions. Maybe Sharon will help Caprica defect to the Fleet. And then comes the baby snatching that freaks out both Roslin and Sharon in the vision.
Caprica’s appearance will become glamour fiction if she continues to look great in the jail cell. She needs a change of clothes! Sharon never quite followed through on that.
Baltar’s got quite a nice future with groupies. He may actually achieve real power now.
Last, not least: Will we get to see a gay character? Will it be Gaeta or someone else?
RDM says that he’s left plenty of clues as to who Cylon #5 is. But I don’t have the patience to watch all three seasons again just to look for clues.
We know next to nothing about Roslin’s background — My suspicion, though, is that her wooziness after the last jump into the nebula was actually some side effect of the gene therapy she underwent to cure her cancer. It’s a red herring to throw us off.
It seems a bit of a stretch that it should be Adama, since he has (had) two grown children and Lee hasn’t quite demonstrated the miraculous ability to heal.
Ellen would be a cop-out. She’s dead. And she wasn’t terribly important when she was alive. It would be like finding out the captain of the Astral Queen is a cylon – big deal!
Gaeta’s still a possibility, but would they really need 2 Cylon agents in the CIC? I’d rather have him turn out as the ‘mo (partly because I find him oddly attractive).
Oddly, the one person I don’t even consider is Starbuck. Too easy. It’s going to turn out she’s one of the Lords of Kobol like the goddess Aurora — she gave a figurine of Aurora to Adama for his model ship in the episode where she ‘died.’ Seems to be foreshadowing to me.
It could still be Baltar …
As for the Earth/Kobol timeline thing: my guess is that they’ll arrive on earth right around the same time as Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, and will eventually make a go of it after endless debates over what color the wheel should be and whether people really, truly do want fire that can be fitted nasally.
Leoben is fond of the mindfrak, and that’s what is was when he told Roslin that Adama is a Cylon. At least we’d like to think that.
Little is known about Madame Secretary of Education/President Roslin. Didn’t she have an affair with President Richard Adar before the destruction of the Colonies? That sounds very Number 6 of her.
With Baltar, we don’t know yet. Before D’Anna tells him he was right, but about what? Somehow, the Jesus hair will pay off in one way or another and he will grok, I mean have group sex with his groupies. I wonder what his Inner Six would have to say about that?