Who's the final Cylon? (SPOILERS THROUGH SEASON 3)

Y'all are smart people... who's #5? (Or #12, if you think about it that way?)

I was re-watching S2 last night (in preparation for the arrival of the S3 DVDs and the start of S4), and I've got a new pick.

Theoretically, it could be almost anyone, but there are some people who it's almost certainly not (i.e. Helo, Lee), some people who it's really unlikely to be (Adama, Roslin - I just don't see the point of having Tigh/Tory be a Cylon if Adama/Roslin is as well), and some people's picks that just seem unlikely to me (Starbuck - I don't get the point of all the to-do with Leoben to realize her special destiny if she was a Cylon all along).

I think it's also probably a major-ish character, based on grounds of awesomeness - they're not going to introduce someone new or be all "um... it's Hot Dog!" after all this build-up. (Although part of me is still holding out for Jammer or Billy.)

So, after ruminating on it for the better part of the past year, I think.... it's Zarek.

Yes? No?

Wouldn't it be cool if it were Bill Adama? I'd believe that more than Tigh. I'm still processing that one.

I think it's either Lee or Roslyn, but I wish it were Jammer or Billy, too. Or Ellen. Or Bulldog. Zarek is a good choice, tho.

Other thoughts: I'm sure they're all going to think Starbuck is a cylon, but she won't be. I have heard a rumour that SPOILER Baltar is going to lead a cult. I can't wait for that. He's my favourite reason to watch the show.

That and the towel scenes, of course.

I think they're bringing 3 back this year too. I love Lucy Lawless.

OMG, I can't wait!

btw, #5--that would be Cavil.

See, I don't think it's Adama - if we believe, like they keep telling us, that the Cylons have a plan, then I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to have both Adama and Tigh be Cylons... or both Roslin and Tory.

I think Billy was supposed to be a Cylon from the start, but when Paul Campbell didn't want to sign the extended contract, they kind of went "oh crap", killed him off, and replaced him with Tory. In my brain, every scene that involves Tory, she's been replaced by Billy. :)

I like my Zarek theory because it fits with the second-in-command thing... Tigh for Adama, Tory for Roslin, Zarek for Baltar. (Plus Zarek was the one who suggested settlement on New Caprica in the first place... and authorized the Circle which involved three of the other four.) Also, he wasn't on Galactica when they entered the nebula, and so didn't wind up in the gym with the other four.

In my brain, every scene that involves Tory, she's been replaced by Billy.

Yes.

I can't even think about it because I still don't believe that the Chief is a Cylon. I don't believe it!!!! I never will!

I think it would be awesome if it was Ellen, I just re-watched the one where she dies.

I thought Chief was a cylon since S2. And Anders, I always pegged him. Ditto what you all say about Billy.

If you're picking Zarek because of Baltar, then actually Gaeta makes more sense.

One thing that bugs me is there's too many male cylons (Leoben, Cavil, Simon, Doral, Chief, Anders, Tigh). I think the last one has to be female.

Is it April 4 yet?

OMG! or what.

And I just realized I'm going to miss the recap show tomorrow night. I have baseball tickets.

Or duh! 6 is for Baltar. What's wrong with us? Well, 6 also did Kane so I guess she's just anyone's slut.

Stll, it's female, I'm sure of it.

Battlestar Finale Rewritten, Depressing

Possible spoilers within

flee, if you go to the BSG website, you can see the press conference where Eddie Olmos said that stuff. It was totally tongue-in-cheek.

Did we actually think it would be otherwise?

I would be disappointed if it were Zarek, Cain, or Baltar. I think the point of making generally decent people like the Chief, Tigh, Tory, and Anders Cylons is to increase the complexity of the "Cylons bad, Humans good" thing. If all the "bad" or negative people in the show turned out to be Cylons, that would really sort of contradict the show's message - we've already seen how people don't need to be Cylons in order to be really, really destructive.

I would also be disappointed if it were Zarek because it would kind of seem out of left field at this point. I think maybe he was meant to play a bigger role initially but then they just sort of dropped him and I can't remember the last time he showed up in an episode. Also, my whole "not all bad/ambiguous people are Cylons" thing.

Cain is dead, so what's the point of making her a Cylon? Unless she's not dead... I still haven't seen "Razor" but I ordered it today from Amazon.com! Yay!

Baltar's character loses all meaning if he's really a Cylon sleeper agent. Baltar is the most tragically flawed human on the show - he brings about the destruction of humanity due to his lust and vanity. He collaborates with the Cylons again and again, generally in order to save his own skin. More than any character, Baltar epitomizes the show's theme that humans are imperfect and commit evil, senseless acts - not all bad people are Cylons.

So who would be the final Cylon? I confess, I am kind of at a loss as to who would be a satisfying reveal. I think Adama, Roslin, Kara, and Helo are also all out, because of various things that they've been involved in that become meaningless if they are Cylons. Lee, maybe....but I just don't see it. I also don't know how someone's son can be a Cylon, unless Lee is like the original hybrid baby. All of the other minor characters seem like a disappointment or a cop-out. I mean, sure, they could make Dee a Cylon, pleasing all the Lee-Dee haters and paving the way for Starbuck to jump into Apollo's arms, happily ever after....but that seems unlikely. Cally, no. If its someone random, like Racetrack, I'll be annoyed. I guess at this point my best guess is long-time Cylon suspect, Felix Gaeta. But since its going to be the "Final Cylon" I feel like it should be someone more important. I'm at a loss.

fanny, I agree about Zarek. I think he was given his few episodes as a nod to the original show and fans. However, his status as a background character would fit the 'in the shadows' bit.

SPOILER - Cain is dead but they could easily have her resurrect in a goo bath somewhere . . .

It would be cool to be able to watch the whole show again and find all sorts of clues but I'm not very confident that Ron Moore & whats his name thought the whole thing out from the beginning. I get more of an impression that they made it up as they went along.

Isn't Boomer model #8? So that means that the first '7' cylons are not models 1-7 and the final five are not 8-12. Perhaps the first seven are 2-7 and model #1 will be the final Cylon. It would suggest that there wasn't a chronological order to the cylons as we have been thinking...Or perhaps they didn't think ahead about this and it still will be a question at the end of the show. I fear we will still have lots of questions unanswered at the end of the show.

>14 avaland:, Yeah I remember that I used to believe that they had everything planned out because the first two seasons were so tight, for the most part. Then at some point - maybe around the infamous "Black Market" episode, I started to wonder. I also started to realize, once I started reading the podcast transcripts, how much editing and re-thinking goes on during and after the filming process. Sometimes I have to remember that its just a TV show, albeit a very good one. Ron Moore claims that there are clues littered about from the very beginning, but I don't know how much I believe that. On the other hand, when I rewatched the first two seasons in prep for the third, I was amazed at how much I had not picked up on the first time I watched.

President Roslyn is the cylon.

She is leading humanity to the wrong location for Planet Earth. Starbuck, a human, knows the right way, but the on-again-off-again cancerous Roslyn is the one.

The Cylon 'blood' helped her defeat cancer at first because it had super-cylon-antibodies that work in her cylon body. But, when those super-cylon-antibodies wore down, since she was designed to have none of her own (to make her more believable), her cancer started coming back.

Yup. Roslyn is a cylon. That's my belief, and I am sticking to it.

Unless the show turns to make this impossible. If it does, then I will come back and admit that my post here was intentionally leading people down the wrong path because I wanted to gloat over your getting caught in my trap.

0:)

If you believe the rumours, then it's no one in the Last Supper picture. Apparently, RDM "leaked" this info in an interview.

Unless he's lying.

Actually, I've changed my mind.

It's finally come time for me to admit it: I am the final cylon.

Strange brainworms, fyre?

>18 fyrefly98: are you hearing Bob Dylan songs (perhaps in the Jimi Hendrix version?)

Our season three arrived today. BSG and Jane Austen in the same weekend. Too much good stuff.

Heh, I actually did spend all of last Thursday and Friday humming All Along the Watchtower, after rewatching Crossroads last Wednesday night. :)

maybe you are ARE the final cylon. . . you are, after all, in the shadows. Do you feel like you are clawing to get out into the light?

I have the bad habit of biting my nails while I read, so I don't know about the claws...

But, the Hybrid does tend to speak in metaphors, and I could break out a doozy regarding the grad school process and clawing my way through my dissertation to get out into the light of a Ph.D. :)

OK this is slightly to the side of "who is the last cylon" but, do you think there's a reason that the Seven even know about the Five at all (except for exposition, of course)? Why program them to be aware of them, but never think of or discuss them? Why not just erase memory of them completely?

(*Time for a flashback.*)

It's the dagget. I always suspected that that mechanical thing was actually a dog cylon spy. I mean, geez, it's obviously a toaster-doggie.

Really, I think, maybe, it's Laura Roslin. The khamalla extract (or laetrile or herbal viagra or whatever) might have blocked the auditory hallucinations that the rest of them heard ("All Along the Watchtower.") Roslin was in the dream/shared hallucination about Hera with Caprica-Six and Sharon-Athena.

I just don't see who else it could be. Bill Adama is Lee's father, so either Lee is the real first hybrid baby or Bill isn't really Lee's father, or they're both human.

Starbuck seems too red-herring-ish.

Balthar shouldn't be, as he is really all out for himself and too ambivalent a character, and instead of sending 6 to seduce him on Caprica, they could have just activated him. (Still, neither D'Anna nor Caprica got preggers while he was on the Base Star, suggesting a sterile union, and he has that computer virus of Six in his head....)

Tom Zarek and Romo Lampkin are possible, and wouldn't it be funny if "Apollo" (from BSG 1970's) turned out to be a toaster?

Lampkin is obviously the Lucifer figure (Count Iblis) from the original BSG, (remember him?) "Lamp-kin," a lamp is a *light,* and Lucifer means "Light-bringer." Get it? In the old BSG, Count Iblis was on the side of the Cylons against the "Ships of Light" (big, singing six-pointed star thingees) that were battling for humanity's souls, the one that Starbuck obviously ran into on the gas giant, that refurbished her viper and laundered her uniform with bleach. Maybe Lampkin is the last Cylon, and a very bad dude, too. Indeed, it was about the time that Lampkin showed up on the Galactica, and from rather mysterious origins, that the other Final 4 started hearing "All Along the Watchtower."

Hmmm, I may have just changed my mind. It would be a bit cheesy to introduce him so late in the series, though. But Iblis only showed up in the final couple episodes of BSG 1970's.

(Good grief, is all that stuff about Iblis and daggets stored on my hard drive? Couldn't I remember some calculus instead of BSG 1970's drivel?)

TK Kenyon

I think RDM is on record that there are no lizard cylons and no Count Iblis in this version. But if he doesn't downright lie, he dissembles so I don't believe anything he says.

I really hope the religion remains ambiguous. I would hate to find out that there really is a cylon god (unless it's Gaeta and he programmed them all).

>26 littlegeek:, I'm with you on that one littlegeek - I hope the religion remains ambiguous as well. Its much more fun not knowing who is right or what the deal with the religions really is. I think they did that really well in seasons 1 and 2 and then sort of dropped it for a while.

Man, I would love it if Lampkin came back to be the final cylon. He creeped me out - something about the sunglasses.

After my BSG marathon over the past couple of weeks, something Leoban said in the first season has been sticking in my mind and making me think that Lee might be the one after all. Although then there is that whole pesky his father is the admiral thing.

Are you talking about the lawyer? If so, I thought he was a GREAT character (and actor). Wouldn't it be cool indeed if he was in this season.

I think Lampkin *is* going to be in this season, because his voice is definitely in the S4 "trailer" they were running before the premiere, and it's saying a line that wasn't in any of the S3 episodes.

>28 NeedMoreShelves:, I would actually be sad if the final Cylon was Romo Lampkin. He was cool, but I feel like he was a one-off character, you know? Maybe I'm too involved and I'll inevitably be disappointed, but I feel like the final Cylon is supposed to be someone REALLY significant - the reveal has got to change stuff in a big way. Romo being the final Cylon really doesn't do that, at least not for me. I keep leaning towards Roslin as the final Cylon, even though it doesn't make a lot of sense.

I just want them to TELL US WHO IT IS!

The opening credits have that line: "ONE WILL BE REVEALED"

And once again this week, NOT REVEALED!

False advertising! Fraud! Slander! Something else very bad!

Just for my $.02 on the religion angle that this thread has segued into: I also hope that the writers don't start deus ex machina-ing everything in sight, though the literal translation of that phrase makes it ironically funny.

I am not comfortable with the kid's sudden--dare I say it--*miraculous* recovery just as Balthar got self-sacrificial. Viral enchepalitis does run that course. The large majority of people recover completely with only supportive care.

Yet, I hope that RM and the writers continue to treat religion as sociology and not supernatural, but that's my take on it, too, so I'm biased.

TK Kenyon

I agree re the religion. I like the sociology angle and the ambiguity.

I've read all the posts here and I'd like to point out something that has been bugging me for a while. The number 12 figures predominantly throughout the series as a motif: The 12 Colonies, 12 Battlestars, 12 Gods, and of course the 12 cylons, obviously designed to parallel, compliment and contradict one another.
The arch of this season (season 4) seems to be centered around the final five and more specifically, the final unknown cylon ,("One will be revealed"). There are many speculations about who the final cylon is but I'd like to point out that although the number 12 serves as a literary motif , we learn that at the end of the pilot/miniseries that there is a '13th' colony. (Can you see where I'm going here?)
It seems that there is an underlying theme throughout the series of a hidden thirteenth. When D'anna endeavors to seek out the faces of the final five she also says, "... maybe even the face of the one that can't be named." This brings the total count to 13 not 12. Arguably one can say that this hidden/secret 13th is 'God' but the point I'm trying to make is that it's not just 12.
I wouldn't be surprised once the 'one' is revealed that there will also be an unknown or secret 13th. Since parallels are continually made, why wouldn't there be a 13th Cylon to parallel the 13th Colony?

There are also 6 "places" for the final five in the Kobol Opera house. Look again at the pic of D'Anna's vision.

There will be a 13th, and it's probably Kara.

yes, we (dukedom_enough and I) have toyed with that idea also and, I too, noticed the six places or light beams or something.

Kara. What a bore that would be. Yawn.

I know, I mean, how much more amplitude in the overacting scale can Katee ramp up? Once you've degenerated to two-year-old tantrum on the floor, it's time to scale it back.

People who the Cylon should not be, or it is dumb :-

Baltar
Adama
Starbuck

If you were going to keep the major characters from the old series all human then Apollo shouldn't be, either.

ah, now that's an interesting point. . .

I agree. I think they're overdoing the "who is the final cylon" thing. I really don't care anymore. It's become a distraction.

Well, we can start barracking for the toasters to put 'em all down. :)

or

Hokey religions and ancient prophecies are no match for a pair of big, strapping, well armed Centurions at your side, kid.

I love you, blue. (and my hair style is cinnamon buns)

yeah, the final cylon is perhaps just to tweak us and really has no real bearing on the story? There's been no suggestion that the final cylon is special in some way. . .

>44 avaland:, Gosh avaland, maybe you're right about that. Maybe it is going to be someone like Dualla. What a disappointment.

The final cylon is Andromus!

Romo Lampkin was a compelling character, but I'm leaning towards him being a mass apparition like the forms of Six, Baltar and Leoben that have been appearing in Caprica Six's, Baltar's, and Starbuck's heads.

I don't think that Kara is a cylon....she does have a special sort of destiny though. I think that the final cylon might have been her father and that she is the first cybrid.

The final 5 also broke away from the others for a reason....or where kept away. Hopefully we'll find out those answers at some point this season.

Wait! Do we know anything about her father (thinking...thinking....), there was alot about abusive, alcoholic mother, but her father....

That's a cool theory, Gail! Very cool indeed.

she's never talked about her father that I can recall. she was raised by her mother who was also in the military. her mother raised her alone and was an abusive alcoholic. she's very tight lipped about the past.

it might explain how leoban can get to her...and how he knows so much? but probably doesn't know all . . .

The only thing we know about her father is that he was a musician. When she's on Caprica and she & Helo go to her apartment, she puts on music and Helo asks her who it is, and she says, "my dad."

I know some spoilers about the dad thing, but I'm not gonna say anything.

oh you tease...

ok, heres another tease....it has to do with a casting call. Now if you want to know, go check out some BSG websites yourself...you'll find it.

Cut that out! I refuse to be lured to the website and the boards over there;-) it's just a TV show, it's just a TV show, it's just a TV show...

In the original series, Starbuck's dad was played by Fred Astaire.

(I am sooooo old.)

TK

Good God. TK's right.

Fred Astaire? Really. Good Grief.

OK, I don't get the hotlinking thing (I'm sooooo old).

Hilariously cute - cats, hedgehogs, and Cylons....

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2031/2457684661_a966c8b624.jpg

that was cute. fanny, I am missing your commentary on the episode threads. Perhaps I am suffering withdrawals. Or perhaps I worry you are going without your weekly dose of vitamin BSG. . .

>59 avaland:, well now that I know the final cylon is a (SPOILERS) - hedgehog, what's the point in watching? They will kill us with cuteness!

It's seemed obvious to me for some time now. Everyone is a Cylon - humanity was totally wiped out and the 12 colonies were an experiment to see how skin jobs would evolve if they did not know they were really Cylons. There are no humans left - just Cylons who think they are human.

I love basilisksam's theory. I must confess that I think it would be awesome it were Adama or Rosslyn (sp. ?). Obvious, but way cool. And avaland: I love your mantra -- I must start to use it!

>61 basilisksam: that's good.

I'm hoping they find R. Daneel Olivaw on the moon manipulating the universe as in Asimov's Foundation and Earth. They too searched for a mythical Earth and found it devastated (radioactive), but found the robot R. Daneel on the moon (he was the prototype for both Spock and Data). God would be a robot and then he would tell everyone else, as basilisksam notes, that they are robots also!

Or it could be a hedgehog.

#61 I hope they don't go for the obvious. RDM has a pattern of throwing out endless red herrings, then it's something completely crazy that no one thought of. I'm rooting for that.

In Season 1 & 2, i was convinced that it was Papadama, but now, I'm thinking Roslin. If it's not someone big, then why bother? I mean who cares if it's Zak Adama or Zarek?

Hope no one's already said this and I inexplicably missed it, but didn't Deanna say SPOILER that only four of the final five were in the fleet? I took that to mean that the other must have already been on the rebel basestar in preparation for the attack on the Hub. But it can't be one of the pilots or the raiders would have backed off from attacking the fleet earlier on (that was Sam's first battle as a pilot). Therefore not Kara or Lee, for sure - but I'm sure I'm missing something - I'm never very good at making predictions and reading between the lines!

I took it to mean only 4 of the 5 were on battlestar itself, she mentioned that all five were in the fleet in previous episodes, but a look at the transcript might be useful. And to think about it Anders was already on the basestar at the begining of the episode when she said that.

Oh, now I'm going to have to go back and watch that episode again, Musereader. I can't remember where everyone was when Deanna said that, although I do remember that when she arrived on Galatica, Anders and Tyrol were watching her arrive from the back of the hangar bay. Interesting!

Just because we all need something to do until January:

41 pages of LOLCATZ and BSG silliness: http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?showtopic=2308599

Just a sample to whet your appetite for da LOLCATZ roast pig:

I like the bomber thread, too, but I'm that kind of person.