Comments on: Battlestar Galactica fourth season speculation thread

by: Deslock

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:39:13 +0100

Why does everyone conclude that the 4 are actually cylons? They themselves came to this conclusion based on little evidence and a lot of conjecture. Not only that, the only ’sleeper’ cylon on the show, Sharon, was in total denial even in the face of far more evidence. I think the other cyclons will be something different and less tangible.

As for the final cylon, why not the hybrid child? This is a common plot point in many sceince fiction shows, books, and movies (E.g V, 2001, Matrix, Underworld. . .) to have the hybrid be the pivotal plot point and bringer of the new order.

by: woodrowfan

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:59:53 +0100

Any chance the last Cylon is Lorne Greene???

by: Trystero

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:57:45 +0100

Just for kicks, google “galactca mormon” (without quotes). The producer of the original series, Glen Larson, is apprently Mormon, and aspects of the religion permeate the show. 13 tribes, one of them “lost”? You bet!

Free will is an important aspect of Mormon theology.

by: Mr. Grumpy

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:39:31 +0100

Sorry tog, but you’re confusing probabilistic with randomness.
Also, with your “computer” analogy, what makes you think that you can ever recreate the “exact same initial state?”

by: Juan Stoppable

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:48:50 +0100

I decided to start by looking up the song that was playing from Earth

Apparently, they don’t have Romeo and Juliet in the colonies, even though they do have the Merchant of Venice (as Roseline quotes the pound of flesh line sometime during season Two if I’m not mistaken)

I think Moore said in an interview that some Earth works were made in parallel by people in the colonies, so it was a Caprican All Along the Watchtower, not necessarily an Earth Version.

And I would suppose the same for Shakespeare.

by: Keith

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:51:57 +0100

Also, Sharon is a pretty good argument that free will exists in this space. Unless she was programmed to be a traitor to the cylons. If that’s so, why aren’t all the other Sharons traitors?

I think you’re referring to Boomer, in which case the answer is that she is part of the overarching program that the Cylons are following: the reconciliation of Humanity. In order for the Cylons to become more like humans they need to experience the illusion of free will in the form of rebellion. You can’t have a whole model series turn rebel but you can send one unit out there as a sleeper, to live with humanity and pick up some of their traits and bring that data back to the collective.

Same with Caprica Six, only I think she was an accident. She was supposed to program Baltar for use by the Cylons as their backdoor into the Colonial Defense system. She wasn’t supposed to fall in love with Baltar but she did. This created an Unexpected variable, in that she learned to Love in a different kind of way than the Cylons thought possible. They’re so fixated on love as a unifying force that they don’t understand or foresee that love can also be a form of rebellion.

Apparently, they don’t have Romeo and Juliet in the colonies, even though they do have the Merchant of Venice (as Roseline quotes the pound of flesh line sometime during season Two if I’m not mistaken).

by: dingbat

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:57:16 +0100

I just assumed near the end of last season that Starbuck was the first human-Cylon hybrid–not Hera. Which leaves someone else to be the unnamed Cylon, and explains Starbuck’s whole “hey guys, I’m totally not dead, but here to guide you through to Earth, as though that were my destiny and everything!” appearance at the end.
I read most of the thread, sorry if this is redundant.

by: Roxanne

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 04:12:37 +0100

Also, Sharon is a pretty good argument that free will exists in this space. Unless she was programmed to be a traitor to the cylons. If that’s so, why aren’t all the other Sharons traitors?

by: Roxanne

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 03:55:49 +0100

I decided to start by looking up the song that was playing from Earth

A big theme of the show is “everything here has happened before and it will happen again.”

In the very first episode, Gaius says, “There must be some way out of here.” And the revealed four of the final five express some familiarity with the song and say they remember it from childhood.

by: Phoenician in a time of Romans

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:54:02 +0100

The whole free will thing is a canard. Either the human mind is a purely causal computer (not necessarily ration, but causal - same inputs into the exact same initial state will always give the same output) or it’s probabilistic. If the former, then free will is an illusion. If the latter, then free will is just a cover for underlying randomness, dressed up in self aggrandizing language.

Or it could be that the brain is a neural net and the whole idea of “the exact same initial state” is codswallop. Essentially brain processes would be stochastic as modified by feedback loops. One possible perspective on these feedback loops might be to label them “minds”…