Dec 27th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
By Request: The Fifth Cylon
Partisan wants to know: “Any idea who the fifth cylon is?”
The sad truth is that I’m still several episodes away from being fully caught up with my Battlestar watching. So let me throw this open to the crowd — speculate away on the last cyclon’s identity.
47 Responses to “By Request: The Fifth Cylon”
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December 27th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
The Doctor.
December 27th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
The sad truth is … I no longer give a crap.
Like to know what happened to Earth, tho, so I’m still watching the dumb show.
December 27th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
President Roslin.
When they woke up the Lucy Lawless cylon on the base star, the one who has seen all the hidden cylons in her vision, Roslin asked her who the fifth cylon was and she answered, “You are.” She went on to say she was just kidding, but I don’t think she was. Also she later said the fifth cylon was not with the fleet… while Roslin was on the base star with her.
December 27th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Lee. In the very beginning of the series Leoben said “Adama is a Cylon.” I bet it’s Lee.
December 27th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Dick Cheney. He’s been in an undisclosed location for the 1st 4 seasons.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I threw the mighty weight of my prediction behind Cally a while ago. The “Adama’s a Cylon” thing from the first season is a dangler, sure, but it’d be mighty unsatisfying.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Lee Adama. See link under my name.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
My guess is Zarek. And furthermore, I’m going to predict that this only gets revealed after he successfully ousts President Roslin.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
No spoilers.
I’m guessing it was Starbuck’s mother or father. She’s the first cylon-human hybrid, not Hera or the chief/Cally’s kid. That’s why she could find Earth, and why her mother was so crazy abusive. The other cylons just don’t know about it.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I don’t see how it can be Lee Adama since he is the Admiral’s son and there were no cylon children until recently. It has to be someone that no other living character knew until they were an adult. I’m thinking it will be a more obscure character. My guess: Romo Lampkin, Baltar’s lawyer from the end of season 3.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
i’m thinking it’s gaeta.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
It’s you: the viewer
December 27th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Lorne Greene
Everyone knows that.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I love BSG and continue to watch. But the correct answer is: who gives a crap?
December 27th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I actually wish the producers hadn’t hyped up the final five mythology as much as they have (and I bet they wish they hadn’t, either). The finale is bound to disappoint viewers who expect to have their minds blown. After The X-Files I swore: never again.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Who gives a crap?
I can’t believe how badly Moore blew it after the first two seasons. An unbelievable waste of early promise. Overall, BSG’s writers have achieved Jeph Loeb like levels of bungling and senselessness.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
The one cardinal rule of BSG is to follow the pathos. The writers care only for torturing their characters as much as possible, so it has to be the person who would most devastate the three main characters: Admiral Adama, Apollo, and Starbuck. None of the easy options would emotionally destroy all three characters, so I’m angling for a surprise like Zach Adama, who had strong ties to all three main protagonists and whose “death” in early episodes profoundly affected all three of them.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
What Ty said.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
I’ll second President Roslin. Then again, Romo Lampkin is a seriously intriguing idea.
December 27th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
The as-yet unborn child of Tigh & Six. And it’s still a great show, bitches.
December 27th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
John Hodgman
December 27th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Here’s how I would end BSG, and how I would have fixed the whole mess of a series:
The Cylons destroy the entire fleet, killing all military and civilian Colonials… then clone them, implant memories and let these “new” Colonials continue their flight towards earth.
…..
What was the impetus for the Cylon invasion and pursuit of the surviving Colonials? Caprica researchers were resuming AI research and development. (Baltar mentions this in the 2003 BSG miniseries)
Following the First War, the Cylons were evolving at a “Moore’s Law”-like pace, while the Colonials were struggling to survive on a bankrupt and war-ravaged planet. Humans were not considered to be a threat.
However, any new AI would pose a threat to the Cylons’ military superiority, interstellar dominance, and survival. Colonial military and political elites, recognizing this, had been quietly probing and attacking Cylon fleets with a variety of bio and computer based viruses and advanced weaponry since the Armistice, covertly performed with plausible deniability. It is believed by Adama that these actions provoked the attack; they did not. It was any future AI.
The Cylon “PLAN” (remember when the Cylons were said to have a PLAN?) was to permanently deny the development of a competitive AI entity by eliminating the Colonials. Of course, the irony (this part is optional) is that the Cylon “God” is, in fact, just such a competitive AI system, manipulating the Cylons via religion to do its bidding. (As an aside, another change I would make to BSG is that the humanized Cylons are now puppets of the machine Cylon systems – not the leaders. They have little or no free will; think “Dollhouse”. And the models are limitless in number.)
The Cylons eventually wipe out the fleet (including Galactica) in a final battle and replace the ships and humans with copies which are allowed to resume their voyage unawares. (this is shown in such a way that the viewer isn’t certain that the fleet was actually destroyed, and if the new humans survived unchanged. Think Blade Runner levels of uncertainty and ambiguity. The clones are identical to their originals except for two key modifications: they are now monotheists (actually worshiping a disguised “human” version of the advanced AI “Cylon God” and therefore controllable by it), and they have lost all desire to research and develop AI systems. In this way, humanity loses its free will and self-determination to the Cylons, which have themselves lost their free will and self-determination to their AI God, which had been, at some earlier stage, developed by humanity.
It’s not important whether or not they make it to Earth; I would prefer that the series ends in a fade to black while they are escaping from yet another (this time, “phony”) attack on the fleet. I can also envision a ship escaping or crashing on a habitable planet (”Earth”?) before the fleet-wide annihilation and surviving, uncloned, to eventually recreate a free humanity (could be a mixed Cylon/Human team of survivors, who knows). The Colonials could also manage to wipe out most Cylons with a computer virus or bioweapon before being themselves destroyed and swapped out.
Somewhere during the series, viewers realize that the colonials are, in fact, humans who have undergone this process before in the past, broke with their monotheism and anti-AI conditioning, developed their polytheistic belief systems and created new AI systems in the form of Cylons, restarting the historical cycle (”All this has happened before.”).
This all fits the constraints arising from season one and two (mostly). And the whole Final Five thing, and Starbuck’s ressurection, is dropped.
December 27th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
I’m still hoping the final Cylon is Starbuck, as played by Dirk Benedict.
December 27th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
God is the final Cylon, and he will be played in the series finale by Dirk Benedict.
December 27th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
skeptic …
You must know that that was Moore’s intention at the end of Kobol’s Last Gleaming: part 2, a meeting of Baltar and God, musically backed by All Along the Watchtower (he was talked out the the Benedict as God part, but the Watchtower idea resurfaced later, notoriously. Some bad ideas never die. Especially if you are Ron Moore).
December 27th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
It’s hard to think of a main character for whom the drama of them being a Cylon would be enough to overcome the anticlimax of it. I mean, suppose Starbuck, for example, is the Cylon… so what? Her husband is, she’s been under suspicion of being one, she’s had an ongoing obsession/dysfunctional relation with Leoben, she’s always had mystical and quasi-religious shit going on. All that would be freaky and heart-rending for a human, but just more of the same for a Cylon.
The reverse goes for Roslyn or the elder Adama. If either of the champions and leaders of humanity is a Cylon, then that’s way too big a deal. What was all the fighting for all along? Suddenly the series wouldn’t have been about refugees seeking a promised land, it would merely be one group of Cylons pursuing another without knowing it. The Cylon god would indeed be omnipotent and omniscient, and quite a dick too.
So if we rule out all the characters whose being a Cylon wouldn’t be pointless, and all the characters who wouldn’t make the series pointless by being a Cylon, we’re left with Lee Adama, Duella, Zarek, Cally, the lawyer… anyone else?
December 28th, 2008 at 12:48 am
I don’t necessarily wish we were back in the “Cylons evil/humans good” terrain, but I completely second the dissatisfaction with the new Final Five mythology. It’s too much like the X-Files, not enough like the really neat show about the whole of human civilization traveling through space and trying to maintain its society while frakking Cylons are chasing them around. That was seasons 1 and 2, and it was the best sci-fi show ever.
Nevertheless, I am really interested in what happened to Earth. My guess is Earth is the actual origin of humanity and the current humans are actually descendants of humanoid Cylons who rebelled thousands of years ago. The people we know as humans are different from the current Cylons, of course, in that they were the products of reproduction.
Honestly, I think that sounds too typical. “Oh! They’re all Cylons!” Snore.
December 28th, 2008 at 3:52 am
I’m betting on Zach Adama. Fits the with Leoben’s Adama is a cylon comment, and as another commenter pointed out it would devastate three main characters. Also, I think it was foreshadowed when Starbuck reappeared. Lee asked the Admiral what he wold do if it had been Zach who came back.
So, I’m thinking Zach shows up in the thrilling two-hour series finale, gives a long winded exposition-heavy explanation of the whole Cylon God thing and what the whole series has been about. This will be decidedly lame, yet will not change the fact that BSG is one of my favorite shows EVER.
December 28th, 2008 at 6:30 am
I’ll bet the final Cylon is Anakin Skywalker.
December 28th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Ralph Nader will appear as the 5th during a final battle scene, accompanied by a fleet of “Nader’s raiders.”
December 28th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
There is no final Cylon. Sometimes prophecies are wrong, make your own fate, etc.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:30 am
Who cares who the last Cylon is, I am just waiting until Lost is back on!
Actually, I do care a little, BSG is still in my DVR but I do think the quality has fallen off a GREAT deal, and it is no longer a MUST-WATCH show. I think the final Cylon is President Roslin exactly for the reasons cited by Last call>/i> in Comment #17 above.
December 29th, 2008 at 7:30 am
“The one cardinal rule of BSG is to follow the pathos. The writers care only for torturing their characters as much as possible”
That seems to be the way Terminator is being written, too. Is this some sort of UCLA hack writers concept of good screenwriting?
We have Sarah Connor so obsessed over three dots she saw in a dream and on the “Blood Wall” in her basement that she’s chasing after UFOs now (and may have found one!), we have John Connor’s girl friend bleeding out in his bathroom after a suicide attempt because she’s caught between John, Jesse and Cameron, we have Derek under Jesse’s pussy control, we have Ellison working for a Terminator and consulting his pastor about his wife’s aborted child, apparently thinking he can be Skynet’s father, and we never know when Cameron is going to go “glitchy” again or worse, worrying about when she’s going to “go bad” again.
If these people are the saviors of the world, it’s time to bring in the first string.
December 29th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Muffit.
December 29th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Dick Cheney.
December 29th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
The obvious frontrunners are Starbuck and Roslin, though Lee Adama is an interesting dark horse.
But if you combine two of the theories in this thread — making the fifth Cylon Starbuck’s father, played by Dirk Benedict — that would be almost awesome enough to excuse how bad the last season and a half has been.
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