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I thought I read they were all Cylons. *shrug* I know I read something about them being stuck in a loop, repeating things that'd been done before.

 

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IIRC, that was more metaphorical than literal. It's not like Groundhog Day. More like humanity keeps making the same mistakes over and over. I'll leave it at that though. Hopefully that wasn't already too much >_>

I really need to actually watch this series now.

 

"This has all happened before, and it will all happen again."

 

Bottom line is, it was a roller-coaster: The good was fucking awesome, the bad was fucking painful. A large chunk of the third season was episodic and dull, though it was dictated by the network to be that way, the first four eps of the second season could have been skipped entirely except for the Boomer/Adama bit, and the last ten eps of the series could have been six.

Boomer's 'issues' get explained as a bit of built-in mind control: What she can and cannot do or say was pre-programmed.

My favourite characters were Adama, Lee (when he wasn't depressed) Cally (until she got knocked up) Caine, and Billy, oddly enough.

 

Frankly, overrated show is overrated.

Don't get me wrong, it has some redeeming qualities, specifically some of the best space battle sequences of any sci-fi show in history. Unfortunately it was plagued with overblown story arcs written by people so high on their own bullshit that they couldn't see how they were screwing up a series with amazing potential.

Seriously? Half of the show was spent wondering "Who's a Cylon?" and by the time it was finally revealed I honestly didn't care anymore.

Every likeable character (besides a select few) became

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A. A Cylon.
B. A Traitor.
C. A Total douche.

Ok, so Cylons revealed, cue inevitable "Oh I'm a Cylon, but I feel Human. Damn the Cylon in me, I won't betray my friends!" Which went on for way to long.

I know I'm probably in the minority, but I just don't think this show deserves the amount of credit it gets.

EDIT: And everything Taure says about the ending below vvv

 

A prescient reference to the fact that they're doing a reboot?

Anyway, the only real beef I have with the show, now that I've had time to mellow my frustration with some of the final episodes, is the ending. I dislike it for three reasons:

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1. They get rid of all their tech? That's just stupid. You don't make sure the past will never repeat by forgetting about it and regressing.

2. God. Seriously. I get that religion was a big theme in the series, but to actually come out and say that God (or at least some kind of higher being) exists and planned the whole thing ruins it. Suddenly the struggles and decisions and stories of all the characters lose all value, as they never had any choice.

3. So much stuff left unanswered. What the hell was Starbuck?

 

Taure, that's pretty much exactly how I felt. I also got tired with all the religious overtones and bs. Seriously, why'd they have to go down that road? Completely ruined the show....

 

I came to hate Gaeta because he showed me just how much of a douchebag people on the ship could be. If the person leading a mutiny against the main characters is more likeable than the main characters you're doing it wrong.

I don't mind the religious shit, I just wish it had stayed at Season 1 levels, when it seemed ambiguous, it could either be fate, the ramblings of a desperate dying woman or a scientist's broken mind fucking with him (or a Cylon chip fucking with him instead). Then it went fucking overboard, which is sad because it didn't need to be. Starkbuck (this is the fourth time I've fucked up her name and I've decided some of them must see the light of day) came out of nowhere- for no fucking reason, they could have just gone on without pulling that shit.

Neither did they have to pull the Season 4.0 finale without having any idea where the fuck they were going and

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refusing to settle an unhappy ending like the Colonials roaming through space, which would have fit the show perfectly, if there wasn't a perfect storm of a Deus Ex Machina brewing

Idunno, I would love to come out and claim this a revolution in science fiction and a totally underrated but I think the award shows had the right of this. The show was too inconsistent for it's own good.

 

I dunno about that part. I liked them at first, then I realized nearly every time they got hit by a fleet of Cylons they used the exact same footage in many parts.

Starbuck isn't a Cylon but some sort of weird unexplained thing? Er... okay.

As for consistent, why are there always raiders popping up, if the Cylons on the fleet can't communicate with the home fleet? How do they keep finding the Colonial fleet? Why aren't the Cylons on the ships actually causing chaos? Seems that everything is nice and peaceful, except on Galactica, with the water being bombed, and the asian one shooting Adama... which would of made WAY more sense if she'd done it right off the bat, and not waited months after they were in space.

So far I'm just seeing a ton of stuff that doesn't make sense.

 

Watching season 4 now, a few episodes in. I skipped most of season 3, or watched it in fastforward, it was just boring, uninteresting filler. The exodus off New Caprica, the fight to get the ships off the ground, now THAT was some epic shit, with Adama light jumping the ship feet from the ground.

I don't understand fat Lee. I don't get how marriage in the series is something so easily thrown around. Everyone gets crazy ass anger at everyone... and then two episodes later it's like it never happened. The Adamas/Laura is constantly an example of this.

Baltar and the cult just made me hate the show more. And WHY THE FUCK, everytime someone says his name, they tend to Doctor Gaius Baltar, Gaius Baltar!, very rarely do they just use his first name.

Starbuck going to Earth... HUH? Now this bitch along with a bunch of cylons are hallucinating? Now Gaius is hallucinating himself? Wtf

 

I just finished season 4 but I didn't see the reveal of the fifth cylong.

Did I miss an episode or is there more after season 4 when you find out this stuff?

 

When you say you've seen the whole of season 4, do you mean the whole of season 4, or the half season that was cut off by the writer's strike?

End of the first half:

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They find Earth, which is a radioactive wasteland.

If that's where you left off, then yes there is more. In the UK it's called season 5 or "The Final Season", in the US I believe it's called either season 4 or season 4.5.

If that's where you left off, don't read the next spoiler. However, if you've watched the entire show...

End of the full season 4:

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They find an Earth-like planet and settle it, abandoning technology and interbreeding with the natives. This turns out to be our Earth.

If that's where you've got to then you've watched the whole show. In which case, the fifth cylon is:

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Ellen, Saul Tigh's wife.

 

You're right, I only watched it up to what I guess is the 'half' of season 4.

Thanks for the use of spoiler tags, I'll try and find season 4.5 now.

Despite so many questions being left unanswered I did like where the half season ends.

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It was a nice kick in the teeth after all the metaphysical religiosity of the whole 'quest.' The 'gods' trolled hard.

 

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I don't understand. Some of the 12 tribes created the robots, the clunker/toaster model Cylons, which turned into the Centurians, which evolved into the human models. So how the fuck does the Colonel, and the others, come from a planet of Cylons, Earth, the 13th tribe, thousands of years before the Cylons were even created? If they were a different sort of human/robot hybrid fine, but they DNA test the bones in season 4.5 episode 1, and say the whole planet is recognizable as Cylons that got killed by a weird model of Centurions.

 

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Supposedly the 13 tribe evolved first and they represented the evolution of a similar colony that had begun to enslave mech cylons.

Then that had resulted in war and annihalation.

Those reincarnated human Cylons then knew that this would happen again to the other colonies so they set out (QUEST) to warn the other colonies to respect and love their cylon creations that were inevitiable to be created.

They came too late as Caprica(TV) had already happened so they made a deal with the robot cylons that were recreated on the new colonies.

They taught them how to make human cylons which they had not figured out and hence agreed to a stalemate with the colonies.

Then starts Battlestar some decades later.

This is my vague understanding and I don't care to watch the series to correct it.

I'm happy the way I understand it now.

As much as I like the show... it was prone to WTF moments.

Hybrid cylon human blood that cures cancer once but is never used again for instance.

 

Here's my perception of the chronology:

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Kobol: Humans evolve and advance, possibly under the guidance of an advanced race (The Lords of Kobol). They create the Cylons in human form. There is a war.

The Cylons leave Kobol to find another planet to live on to end the war. They do so before FTL technology is developed. The Cylons (the 13th tribe) leave markers along their journey to their new planet (Earth) which later will be found by Battlestar Galactica.

Back on Kobol, the 12 tribes of humanity develop - or are gifted - FTL technology and leave Kobol for the 12 colonies.

On the journey they lose much of their knowledge. Once they arrive at the 12 colonies they have to build up again from scratch. Much is forgotten about Kobol and becomes myth.

They develop. The colonies are not united, and fight wars.

Back on Earth, the 13th tribe creates mechanical Cylons of their own. They rebel, nuclear holocaust ensues. 5 of the 13th tribe escape - scientists who had been working on resurrection technology. They escape Earth and travel to the 12 colonies at relativistic but not FTL speed to warn the colonies not to create Cylons again. (No idea how they know that the 12 colonies exist).

They arrive too late. Cylons have been created on Caprica, have rebelled, and the Cylon war is in full swing.

The remnants of the 13th tribe meet with the Caprica-Cylons. They reach an agreement: they will teach the Caprica-Cylons human form and resurrection technology, in exchange for a cease-fire.

The war ends.

The new human Cylons are created. They limit the free will of the mechanical Cylons and assume command. The first creation - Cavil - desires Ellen but she doesn't return his feelings. So he wipes the memories of the 13th Tribe Cylons - the final five - and distributes them among the colonies. He also bans all knowledge of them and boxes number 7.

The Cylons plan revenge on the 12 Colonies, led by Cavil.

The events of BSG happen.

A new Earth is founded by the remnants of humanity. By a massive miracle, there are other humans on this planet, who eventually interbreed with the advanced humans. Eventually all humanity has a single common ancestor - Hera, who is a human/Cylon hybrid.

Thousands of years later the new Earth has advanced and is on the verge of creating new Cylons. The cycle, which started with a unified humanity on Kobol, is about to repeat, and may have repeated many times before.

It all looks to be the plan/experiment of a powerful cosmic being, with angelic helpers.

 

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Okay then, so Starbuck would be an angelic helper? She blows up, turns up out of nowhere, leads them to Earth 1, where she discovers herself dead in the cockpit, and then evidentally vanishes from what I've read of the spoilers.

 

Somewhere Tricia Helfer is in a red dress shaking her head at us.

 

That's something else that I got sick of fast. The constant implied nudity of her and all the other cylons. It's like the huge nerd fanboys that watched the show didn't have anything better to do?