BSG 4.11 Sometimes a great notion

[hazelk]

I miss the crowd scenes. One of the startling things about the first series was how it felt as much like the story of a people as of an ensemble with a bunch of extras. Now we know the ensemble too well not to see everything primarily through their eyes, how it affects them. And we know by now that we’re never going to get the story of the fleet because they’ve tried and it only really worked with New Caprica and more often degenerated into a Black Market or The Woman King. If one of the minor players gets brought into the limelight, it’s so we can watch them die. Kat, Callie and now Dee but I still wasn’t expecting it. While the Admirals and Presidents were rending themselves in their despair she kept hers to herself and passed all the hope she had left on to another. I liked Lee this week and I don’t think it was just the hair although that was awesome. As was NotKara building her own funeral pyre and watching herself burn.

So Ellen was the Final Fifth. I like that it came so soon and I like it because in a way it did turn out to be about what she was, not who. The “One” who will be revealed has been the tagline for a season but this brings things back to the original mystery of the Cylon plan. Which always sounded like “Plan” capitalized, something to change the world, bring on a whole new order (or New Order, if Bob Dylan can be a universal truth shouldn't others get more than the standard 15 minutes). But Tigh’s Ellen revelation flips the old preconceptions over into lower case. From Cosmic Order Plan nurtured over generations to Oh shit! emergency rescue plan hatched in a moment of desperation by five who only wanted to live. I like that and am very curious about the 13th tribe and their holocaust and who caused it and whether the more recent Cylon offensive literally was tit for tat 2000 years later. And whether Tyroll’s vision had no children in it (although I think I heard voices).

Comments

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

I agree about Lee. I like him and his hair!

From Cosmic Order Plan nurtured over generations to Oh shit! emergency rescue plan hatched in a moment of desperation by five who only wanted to live.

Not sure that the all five planned an emergency rescue plan. From the flashbacks we've got so far Ellen seemed to be the only one being aware of something.

The timeline is confusing and I'm really curious about the 13th tribe that left Kobols and the Final Five stuff now that we know the Five lived on Earth 2000 years before and that all the people on Earth were Cylons. Were the ones from 13th tribe Cylon from the beginning or did they "become" Cylon once they'd settled on Earth?

I'm pretty sure that the Final Five are undetectable (Baltar tested
Ellen but obviously didn't know she was a Cylon and I bet that even the detection protocol he used on the people's remains from Earth wouldn't work with Tigh, Anders, Tyrol or Tory otherwise D'Anna would have used it to know who the Five were)which mean they were really different from the rest of inhabitants of Earth. When did the Five arrive on Earth?

The big final revelation might be that Cylons created human beings, not the other way round!

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

I kind of assumed, based on Random!Six saying "Testing the remains using OUR protocols" that Cylon methods of genetic testing are more sophisticated and accurate than even Baltar's Cylon detector.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

You're right. Ellen did seem to know something Saul didn't and Tyroll seemed completly taken by surprise in his memories of the bombs. But I'm fascinated by the echoes of the Caprica prequel and it's rumoured pre-occupation with using AI to conquer death. Also by what makes the Cylons any different from us. If it's detectable in skeletons we're talking what? Mitochondrial DNA sequences, anatomy (but then Baltar's test would be an X-ray). bone structue or something less tangible. The 'bioelectric' difference that means the Seven can commune with mainframe computers by sticking a fibre optic cable in their veins or, more simply, a higher resistance to radiation (maybe Baltar really did need a bomb for his Cylonicity detector).