BSG Watch: Pleased to Meet Me

Yes, we see what you meant, busy episode.

As to Starbuck, I don't think she's been there 2000 years. As the opening reminded us, "there's something different about that Viper (?)", Starbuck's aircraft from when she disappeared, returned, then went on her solo search for earth. I took it to mean Starbuck had found earth but crashed. A rebuilt Starbuck and Viper were who and what returned to Galactica. I don't know how or anything, but that's how it looked to me, based in part on the skeleton and hair, much more appropriately decomposed in this timeline.

Funny about Ellen, I thought at one time she could be the fifth, but I gave it up long ago when they got so far away from her. Shows how much I know.

I couldn't help but think of the prequel series 'Caprica' while watching this episode. That show is supposed to be about the origins of the Cylons that took place over 50 years before the attacks on the 12 colonies. But this episode showed that Cylons have been around a lot longer than 50 years (although they are Earth Cylons). I get this feeling that BSG will be playing around with time and space much in the same way that Lost is doing from this point on.

Or maybe the destruction of Earth has more to do with the saying "All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen agaiin." Two thousand years ago Earth created artificial intelligent beings that eventually destroyed their world. Two millenium later it happened to the colonies.

As for Ellen. I liked the reveal. Mainly because I believe that Ron Moore put hints early on in the show. Remember Ellen was found on some cargo ship weeks after the attack, claiming that she didn't remember anything (I think that's what happened). Maybe a part of her unconscious (or Earth personality) took over prior to the attack in order to save her life. Plus, the fact that Tigh, a Cylon, killed Ellen, a Cylon, because she assisted the Cylons on New Caprica makes for an even greater irony.

Whoa. I just watched it this morning, that was a pretty awesome episode. I don't have scifi channel so I spent last night rewatching the most recent episodes, and as soon as I woke up I went straight to download it.
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@James - I didn't think that she went into the past either. I just too "harbringer of death" to mean that she brought them to the end of everything they knew - led them to a a dead planet, showed them the death of a whole people, the death of their hopes, dreams, and religion, etc.
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Yeah, I'm gonna have to think on this one for awhile.

You're right, the episode was chocked-full of new and exciting and sad things. The Tribune had a wonderful array of interviews with the two episode writers (same guys from Scar and Maelstrom, which are both amazingly good) and the director and Ron Moore. They all felt this episode had to be at 110% and with the superb cast and crew they delivered. I'm not quite sold on the final Cylon, but I trust them to play it out well.

As to the 13th tribe and Starbuck and time travel; I think it's possible that she went back in time, but after 2000 years in the open, how was anything left (at least unburied)? And if she's just the "harbinger of death" in that she led them to the destruction of their last hope, it will be too obvious. I feel both lack the qualities that the show has and I hope to god they don't start messing with time travel; time loops I can handle, paradoxes I cannot.

@chriskw:

"Or maybe the destruction of Earth has more to do with the saying "All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen agaiin." Two thousand years ago Earth created artificial intelligent beings that eventually destroyed their world. Two millenium later it happened to the colonies."

That's the impression I got, aided by the discovery of Cylon artifacts that were similar to but different from "our" Cylons' stuff (as one of them comments). I don't foresee BSG delving into time travel, or at least I hope not; I know it's a sci-fi show, but it's always been anchored and elevated by an essential "realism" (of sorts), and I think adding on crazy, mindbending science-fictiony stuff (beyond the original premise) would lessen the show somehow. Of course, I have no explanation for Starbuck 2.0, so what the frak do I know?

At first I was a little let down by the Ellen reveal, but on further review, I'm not sure what else they could have done. To carry full emotional resonance, it almost had to be Roslin or Adama, but Roslin has cancer, and an Adama-reveal would have felt rather like a Tigh-reveal redux. Besides, feeling like it "had" to be one of those two made it so that it would have been weirdly disappointing (predictable) if it WAS one of those two. Starbuck and Baltar would have been too predictable in a different way, and it would have made their characters actually less interesting (explaining away all their weird experiences and behavior with "Oh, he/she is a cylon.") I thought maybe Helo, to reveal that two cylons can in fact organically produce a child, but then I remembered that the Tigh/6 baby already revealed that (when is someone on the show gonna comment on THAT nugget, by the way?). So that leaves either some relatively minor character (Gaeta, Dee, Zarek, etc.), someone TOTALLY from left field, or . . . someone like Ellen. I'm still vaguely disappointed, but I see the wisdom in the choice, and I'm interested to see where they go with it.

All in all, as far as I'm concerned, this was Dee's episode. Un-freaking-believable. So heartbreaking. Even Mary McDonnell couldn't steal the emotional impact away from Dee in this one.

PS -- Did Adama (well, EJO) always have that crazy underbite? Such a powerful scene with Tigh, but I gotta admit, I was distracted.

I was a bit disappointed that the notorious Fifth Cylon was Ellen, but I think there would've been some level of letdown no matter who it had been. After 900 million arguments on various message boards about who it would be, what scenario hadn't already been analyzed to death? And I'm thrilled that they ended that mystery in the first episode so we can now go back to overthinking the minutiae in classic BSG-fan fashion. The rest of this season is going to be a ride...

You could tell that the last scene with the final cylon reveal must have been like ripping off a band aid for the writers. Get it over as quickly as possible and move on.

Thanks for your extremely well written review. I watched the show and taped it. I had to watch it three more times to make sure I did not miss that boatload of revelations. I love that BSG does not play it safe and did a reboot. They totally ignored the usual tv happy ever after ending and went for the gut.

I freaked when Kara found herself and Leoben backed away. That mind frak did me in more so than revealing Ellen being the fifth. If Ellen was a bad girl before, imagine the havoc and devastation to come from a Cylon killed by her own husband.

And poor sweet Dee. She brought me straight back to the reality of our military men and women returning from the Middle East who saw too much, and can't life with it a moment longer.

Bring on the last nine BSG episodes and more great reviews. So say we all.

@ James, I think Leoben's shock is that he spent so much time trying to get Starbuck to love him because she's human, then he finds out that she, seemingly, is not*. Much like the humans losing their purpose, he does too.

*which is curious, if Ellen is the last Cylon, what is Starbuck? A new Cylon? Something else? Or was the corpse a fake - it's not as if she got it dna tested.

My theory: Starbuck traveled through a wormhole and crashed on Earth. The wormhole connects space, so that's why Lee saw her ship crash into earth in space. For the purposes of television the ship didn't disintegrate upon crashing.
The wormhole was created by the earthling/cylons when a certain triggered message was sent because the fleet was on the "right" path, and Starbuck, for destiny reasons or whatever, was drawn to the wormhole.
After the crash, the earthling/cylon survivors come out of the ground like Morlocks, take DNA from the dead starbuck, and clone her like the at the end of AI. They insert her old memories, but also a new objective, and recreate her ship, with a special beacon, and create another wormhole and send her back out.

@mcmagnus -- but that doesn't explain why her body was still out there: wouldn't they have taken her out of her cockpit, and taken her body below?
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I think we're heading towards the big reveal that Cylons created man, man destroyed Cylons (or Cylons destroyed themselves over man), man went along...and eventually created Cylons, which destroyed man, etc. etc. ad infinitum. I mean, doesn't Earth look a lot like Caprica or any of the currently irradiated colonial planets, albeit 2000 years later?
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And wouldn't this all connect to the "there is only one true God" idea, in that "it has happened before, and will happen again," and each civilization has risen and fallen and risen and fallen?
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Which brings up another point -- are things DIFFERENT this time? The Cylons were UNSUCCESSFUL in elminating humanity entirely, and now Cylons and Humans are working together, united, and even reproducing together. Has something profoundly changed, and if so, what is it, and who changed it?

I thought the 13th colony was monotheistic, and that the Final Five were from the last cycle, whether they knew it or not!....
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Okay, I was almost completely wrong. But I was right that the history of the cylons as relayed on the show has to be hogwash, and frankly, 2,000 year old skinjobs makes more sense than what has been established on the show.
It now seems likely that "cylons" (or artificial lifeforms) have been around for at least a cycle or two back; when the current cycle cylons "disappeared" for all those decades, they ran into the remnants of the last cycle cylons, who took them over, installing themselves as leaders with the seven mass produced models as their unknowing patsies. (I still think there are other previous cycle entities floating around; The Lords of Kobol and/or Starbuck's manipulators are almost a given.)
(By the way, I think that is what spooked Leoben so much. It was little to do with Starbuck's death; it was that her second life could only be provided by organizations with vast powers existing, unknown to him, and pulling how many strings.)
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So where does that leave us now?
I still think it's a mistake to assume the Final Five are working for the cylons. I look at the history and see that they ended up in the political, military, and civilian wings of humanity and think that their intended purpose was what actually happened - to prevent the cylons from mass slaughtering all humans. There is no evidence that any of their actions have hindered the fleet in any way while they were "undercover"; that the seven mass produced models don't even know who they are makes me think that the only reason the cylons know about them are due to the weird diagnostic prophecies of the ship hybrids.
However, who knows who they will side with now. Sure, Tigh may have been willing to sacrifice himself and two other "cylons" for the humans, but that was before his wife was alive again: Ellen died before the resurrection hub system went down (Cavil could have her stashed with his forces), or Starbuck's resurrector could have brought her back for another go. Don't count out seeing her again. Of course, it would be a great irony if the Final Five, who (in my theory, anyway) were brought back to hinder the cylons, sided with them, not knowing that crucial bit, as Tory has already done. Since it would be so ironic, I'm taking it as a given.
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Oh and as far as the cycle goes: I think it is everything we've seen on the show: Humans (& in later cycles, cylon) live together in peace, until civil war, at which point they slag each other until the few survivors are forced to band together on a new planet to start the cycle over again. One could argue if the (leadership) cylons are even the bad guy: they see the cycle starting up again, and figure the side with the longer memory should keep control (remember, eradication of the humans was never the goal, just powerless numbers)- the usual irony being that their side succumbs to civil war before the other side does (insert comment about war being started for ulterior motives here).
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And can someone with a better history of the show fill me in - what part of the Pythian Prophecies isn't true? They were clear the 13th tribe was different, and that they settled on a planet far from everyone else. So is the only "incorrect" part of the prophecy that modern humans don't consider the cylons "humanity" as their ancestors did?