[xi_hyperon]

Yeah, the call sign of a particular Enterprise was worked into this episode. When I saw it, I knew immediately it was something familiar, then it struck me.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by xi_hyperon 

Yeah, the call sign of a particular Enterprise was worked into this episode. When I saw it, I knew immediately it was something familiar, then it struck me.

I remember them doing the same thing in the Miniseries as one of the first ships the Colonial 1 finds after the attack also had the same registry number as the Enterprise which the captain read out loud.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by reader50 

• Kara's viper was replaced because the old one was damaged too much during the pickup operation. So rather than try to fix it and maybe have some clues slip through, they gave her a factory-new one. It's obvious the viper was changed, but no further data slips through.

Actually tonights episode gave me a huge revilation as to what is going on with Starbuck. Have a close look at her new painting in her bunk as it gives another clue.

I'm positive I've figured the general idea of what happened when she disappeared and came back from the dead.. I'm just not sure exactly what it means or how exactly why it happened.

[besson3c]

analogue: please share with us your theory

[abe]

An Aside: I am not a fan of the show and have only today even visited this thread, IIRC. But FYI there is a website which features back episodes of Battlestar Galactica.

Watch full length videos of Battlestar Galactica online at Fancast

Hope this makes someone smile.

[Chuckit]

When abe says "back episodes," he's not kidding around about the "back."

[reader50]

I'm going to toss an odd idea into the ring.

Tori Foster's spacing of Cally. It's pretty definitive that the 4 living lives in the fleet are evil after all. Rather early in S4 to reach that conclusion.

So what if it wasn't the Tori Foster who is the president's aide? What if it was a different Tori model? The only real clue we got was that Tori noticed the missing access panel in the corridor.

She didn't see who (if anyone) had gone through, and would have had to deduce that it might have been Cally, based on the Chief not getting the note. Which Cally replaced in the door immediately on getting back to her quarters.

Then, the Tori who spaced Cally knew how to use her superior Cylon strength. We haven't seen any clue that the 4 have been exploring that aspect of their new lives. Quite the opposite, they've been exploring the ambrosia bar and sharing their angst with each other in regular meetings. And the Tori we know has been spending free time trying to cozy secrets out of Baltar, not working out in the gym.

Until the show shows us differently, I'm going to guess our Tori had nothing to do with it. The other Fives acted to protect a hybrid child, and to protect the 4 in the fleet from early exposure.

[Mithras]

Made me sad, this episode. I adored that Cally.

[mrtew]

Originally Posted by Mithras 

Made me sad, this episode. I adored that Cally.

Yeah those Cylons are bad news. In fact this season seems to have introduced three new types of Cylons so far and probably one more is coming. The final 4 are one type, , the newly conscious Centurions, plus the lobotomized Raiders. Nobody has mentioned Boomer either. What the frak happened to her? She used to be so sweet and wonderful and good and now she's voting against her sisters to hurt the raiders and kissing on that creep?

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by reader50 

I'm going to toss an odd idea into the ring.

Tori Foster's spacing of Cally. It's pretty definitive that the 4 living lives in the fleet are evil after all. Rather early in S4 to reach that conclusion.

So what if it wasn't the Tori Foster who is the president's aide? What if it was a different Tori model? The only real clue we got was that Tori noticed the missing access panel in the corridor.

I don't know, my reading so far is that the four living in the fleet aren't all "evil," but they are individually having very different reactions to learning and living with the fact that they are Cylons. Tori so far seems to be becoming more nefarious, but the Chief still seemed shell-shocked, Tigh is in denial, and not much seems to have changed in Anders.

I don't think that there are any other copies of Tori or the other 4 around in the fleet. With someone as high profile as Tori or Colonel Tigh, I have to assume that someone would have noticed another copy by now.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by mrtew 

Nobody has mentioned Boomer either. What the frak happened to her? She used to be so sweet and wonderful and good and now she's voting against her sisters to hurt the raiders and kissing on that creep?

When the supposed benign-occupation of New Caprica failed, she lost a lot of influence among the Cylons, having tried to convince them (with Caprica-Six) that the humans weren't a threat. She kind of had a backlash against the humans at that point, for example telling Athena that the child Hera was still alive, and more closely siding with Cavil.

The long break between seasons has definitely made it harder for me to keep the Boomer and Six copies straight, but the Battlestar Wiki is great for refreshing my memory:
Sharon Valerii - Battlestar Wiki

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Mithras 

Made me sad, this episode. I adored that Cally.

Yeah. I was about to get mad at the show when she walked into the airlock. I was thinking, "What? The show forgets about Cally for half of last season and then it brings her back just to turn her into a suicidal stoner?" But then Tori walked in and I was like, "Ohhh, I'm sorry I doubted you, BSG."

I'm kind of wondering now if Cally will turn out to be the Final One, though. It would be a shocking twist seeing as it seems like she's dead, and it would make all the biggest Cylon-haters (Tigh, Tyrol and Anders were the leaders of the anti-Cylon terrorist group, and Cally's the one who murdered Boomer) turn out to be skinjobs.

Originally Posted by mrtew 

Yeah those Cylons are bad news. In fact this season seems to have introduced three new types of Cylons so far and probably one more is coming. The final 4 are one type, , the newly conscious Centurions, plus the lobotomized Raiders. Nobody has mentioned Boomer either. What the frak happened to her? She used to be so sweet and wonderful and good and now she's voting against her sisters to hurt the raiders and kissing on that creep?

It's hard to tell because Grace Park's screen time is divided among like 11,000 different characters, but I think Boomer's actually had the most implicit character development on the show. When the show started out, she was sweet and girly and immature. Then she found out she was a Cylon and her life pretty much went to pot. After she went back to Galactica last season and all her old friends (and even Athena, IIRC) wanted to kill her again, it seems like Boomer has realized that she needs to look out for herself and she's taken Cavil's side in wanting the Cylons to become insular and conservative.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

analogue: please share with us your theory

Ok since you ask nicely

Firstly, I seriously doubt they will make her a Cylon. It would be too easy and it is too much of a cop out.

Anywho, when Starbuck first came back she said she remembered "earth, a moon, a planet with rings (saturn I guess) and a comet". The comet comet never sat well with me as in our whole solar system I can't believe when flying about she would notice and remember any old comet. I was thinking Halley's comet but that is too corny and hardly a good navigational marker.

In last nights episode they show a quick flash of what the comet vision was and it didn't look like much of a comet to me.

Then if you take a close look at starbucks new painting of the comet she saw you see this:


That's no comet. IN fact it looks a whole lot like this:


What is that exactly? Well it is something from the old series that never aired called "The ship of lights".

Ship of Lights - Battlestar Wiki
Note "The Ship of Lights is the spacecraft used by the Beings of Light.
The Ship of Lights is an immensely large and fast spacecraft of unknown but highly advanced technology. Viper pilots hear a strange piercing sound as it approaches. The craft has the ability to render people unconscious, as well as make them disappear (War of the Gods, Part I). The "vanished" pilots and spacecraft are transported to a different dimension. When returned to their own dimension the warriors' memories have been erased regarding their abduction experience. (War of the Gods, Part II)."

That pretty sums up what happened to starbuck no?

Another description:
"The Ship of Lights is significantly faster than any known spacecraft, and appears to have the ability to simply show up wherever needed instantly. Its drive system emits an extremely loud sound which somehow travels through the void of space and can be heard by people in nearby spaceships. The sound of this drive system is sufficient to render any human nearby unconscious."
Ship of Lights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Could this have been the cause of the fleet losing power just as starbuck arrived? Not to mention the sudden headache that the President got?

Also when Starbuck first entered the Malstrom she was rendered unconscious also where she had the lovely conversation with head Leoben.

"The ship is crewed by an apparently humanoid race who are never expressly referred to by name in the series, but who are called "Seraphs" in the scripts for the episodes in which they appear. The Seraphs appear to be noncorporeal sentients, and claim rather ambiguously to have once been more traditionally mortal, but evolved to their present state.
In the episode "War of the Gods", the crew of the ship indicate they are the natural enemies of Count Iblis. Because it is strongly implied that Count Iblis may be the original basis for stories of Satan, this could imply the Ship Of Lights is meant to represent angels. However, this is not stated directly. On the other hand, the episode indicates very strongly that the Ship Of Lights is meant to be "good" and Iblis is meant to be "evil".

So in other words for some reason this "ship of lights" purposely lured starbuck in kept her for a couple of months to show her earth and then dropped her back with the fleet with no memories of meeting them.

This would explain how starbuck traveled such huge distances in a viper and why she can't remember anything about it.

To further back this up I remember an interview with RDM ages ago where he mentioned that they were thinking of ways to bring in the ship of lights so that is a definite conformation.

As to who these beings are I have a wild guess.
They MAY be the 12 beings who the humans worship as gods. This could be purley by accedent and they don't want this role.

4000 years ago humans and these beings could have lived on Kobol together and since these beings are so advanced humans would naturally have thought of them as gods. Some sort of conflict could have taken place that caused the exodus from Kobol and humans to flee to the 12 colonies.

With the current situation these beings on the ship may be acting as that 3rd party that many of us suspected was there all along. It could be that Head Baltar, Head Six and Head Leoben are actually these beings trying to guide everyone on the right course. Six has always said that she is "an angel of god sent to help" Baltar.

In fact Starbuck herself might be one of these beings as they have hinted she is playing out the roll of one of the gods and head Leoben encouraged her to "join the others" when she went into the Maelstrom.

The Cylon "god" or aka first hybrid also warned that starbuck will lead to the end of humanity could have been a lie as he may be a god but more like a satan role where humanity winning means cylons losing. These 12 gods/beings on the ship of light could be in conflict with the "one true God" which could be a malevolent entity trying to play god.

So again it seems there is a whole other story of Gods fighting for supremacy.

It rememinds me of the first episode of Star Trek Voyager where the "caretaker" accedently caused damage to a planets atmospher and from that point on send the planet energy to make up for the mistake. The people on that planet worshiped him as a god.

It could be that these 12 beings on the ship of light are somehow feeling responsible for the original conflict 2000 years ago and are now playing the side lines to make sure humanity is put on the right path without getting directly involved.

Anyway, that's the rough idea I think. Thoughts?

[design219]

Wow analogue SPRINKLES, nice work!

Any idea what the "this has all happened before, and will happen again" bit means?

[mrtew]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey 

I don't know, my reading so far is that the four living in the fleet aren't all "evil," ....

Yeah that's what I think is so refreshing about modern sci-fi like BSG and the X-men etc is that you can leave behind childish concepts of good and evil (still widely seen in crap like Harry Potter and religious world politics) and see that both 'sides' have valid interests and are controlled by individuals with various needs and desires and fears and dreams rather that by abstract positive and negative forces. There is nobody in BSG that I'd call evil. Some people are weaker and others are stronger and I sure like some more than others a lot of times but and some definitely think more of the greater good than of their own selfish interests, but each side thinking of the other as 'evil' is as silly as how humans still relate to eachother on Earth in 2008. I wouldn't say Tori has revealed herself to be evil, I'd say she was defending the half human/cylon child of the man she is falling in love with from its suicidal mother and eliminating the near certain threat of exposure of the final four if Cally isn't allowed to follow thru with her plans for her own death.

When the Basestars were destroying the other Basestars, Cavil said that the sixes etc could trust their god to watch over their immortal souls, and then said that he and Boomer etc were machines and that they didn't have souls. Is he actually saying that there is some fundamental difference between the cylons that voted for the raider lobotomy because they are 'tools' and the ones that voted against it because they are 'beings'.

[besson3c]

Wow Analogue, that's an extremely well thought out theory that explains a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if you were absolutely correct, a whole other race would make for an amazing plot twist.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by design219 

Wow analogue SPRINKLES, nice work!

Any idea what the "this has all happened before, and will happen again" bit means?

It could mean some sort of time loop so things get repeated over and over but that doesn't sit well with me for a couple of reasons. 1, it is a bit too sci-fi for the audience and it would be hard to explain where and when the big reset happens all over again.

2, leoben suggested that each time the rolls are played by different people (last time leoben was at the other end of the torture starbuck put him through) so if it were a time loop it would be the same exact story over and over.

I think it is a more general term meaning that when we reach a certain point in our evolution we will eventually create artificial life such as the Cylons. These creatures will eventually become intelligent enough and evolve past their creators in many ways and rebel. At that point the only solution is to end both species and take the best of each and create a new race. "earth" could just be implanted into our religion/programming/bibles as a survival tool for when this eventually happens. Earth doesn't also have to mean our planet as it doesn't have a big name tag on it, the last time it could have been Kobol they were looking for as it was the original resting place of the colonies.

The thing that interests me about the Ship of lights is that it does look a bit like an advanced Cylon BaseStar. Perhaps these creatures are the result of the last time this happened thousands of years ago and these are actually 12 cylon models evolved.

I'm pretty sure the 12 gods must be on this ship as 12 cylon models and 12 gods is a big coincidence. Also, these 12 aren't trying to represent themselves as gods as it could have happened by accident as any superior race is usually thought of as gods.

RDM also said he wouldn't have Aliens on the show which would mean these beings are either Cylon or human or something in between.

Still I do hope that these beings on this ship are responsible for the Head Six, Baltar and Leoben as it shows they have been secretly involved from day 1 to make sure humanity survives and finds its way for a new beginning. It also shows that perhaps the 12 gods on