8 unanswered ‘Battlestar Galactica’ questions

***Warning: There are lot of spoilers here that you should not read if you do not want to know what does/doesn’t happen in the final episode of Battlestar Galactica***

This may have been the best unfulfilling ending to a great television series I’ve ever seen. The first hour and a half up through the climactic ending at the Cylon colony was extraordinary. There were surprises. The way they weaved in the opera house visions with the blocking and plot setup was masterful. The last half hour or so of “Daybreak: Part 2,” however, wasted more time continuing flashbacks that didn’t reveal anything important than it spent explaining all the big mysteries the show spent building up and even concentrating on in Season 4.

1) How does Hera save everyone? I loved that they had this episode prepped to be a big climactic straight-into-the-Death-Star style ending — roll the hard six and all that. And that part of the episode, the centurians, the ticking clock, it was all great. I was pumping my fists, yelling at the TV, etc. But all they’ve done since the opera house visions right up to Kara’s plea to Adama to go the colony has been to build up what a huge role Hera would play in saving mankind and Cylonkind. Well, what did she do? Nothing. The only explanation here is basically that she was a plot device for them to believe in. So the story they had invented around her in the prophetic visions was an end to itself to get them to the point where Kara would intiate the emergency jump sequence. Not impressed.

2) Where did the second Kara Thrace come from? This is the big one. The entire final season has beaten us over the head with the mystery of how there were two Karas, that she had a brand new version of her own viper that was unscratched, and she couldn’t remember how it all occurred. Absolutely no closure or even a vague attempt to address that issue in this episode. This is a case where I don’t necessarily mind that it wasn’t settled. But why did they make such a big deal about it if there wasn’t going to be an answer?

3) Who left the original note for Adama? Originally, someone left a note for Adama telling him that there were 12 Cylon models. With all of the models revealed, there still haven’t been any consciously human-friendly characters revealed who were simultaneously aware of the number of Cylon models.

4) Where do the projected visions come from? According to this episode, not only can Cylons and humans both see visions, apparently the visions are conscious and they can project them through time, as demonstrated through the Baltar/Six moment at the end.

5) How are there two Earths with the same continents? They already found one Earth halfway through this season. Now, they have found another one. Both planets were show from space and have the same continent shapes as the real-world non-BSG Earth. The answer to this one is obviously pure coincidence.

6) Why did Brother Cavil shoot himself? In the most bizarre moment of the finale, Cavil just shoved a gun into his face and gave his character an easy out from a situation where he was heavily invested.

7) How is Kara Thrace the Harbinger of Death? She was supposed to bring about the end of humanity. Well, that never happened.

8) Where was the music coming from? This is probably part of the same lingering mystery as the visions. Once again, it was a major plot point and dangling mystery carrot throughout the last season.

I welcome anyone to chime in on any of these who has theories or explanations. The ultimate answer to most of these questions just has to eventually come down to, well, the more open-ended it’s all left, the more fun there is to be had in imagining solutions and and ways these events occurred. Still, why on Earth would these question not only be raised, but called out repeatedly in the opening flashback sequences?

15 thoughts on “8 unanswered ‘Battlestar Galactica’ questions

  1. The whole God’s-mind context has been growing on me. I think I like the final 5 minutes better now than I did on Friday. But I hope one of these spin-offs they’re doing addresses the frayed plot-lines with Starbuck and such.

  2. Some or all of the unanswered questions will come out in tele-movies and teh Caprica series.
    Don’t be surprised if after Caprica is finished there is a second spinoff or a movie length finale that addresses any unanswered questions. Im betting it will be set in our world today and will have some characters from both progenitor series in it made in much the same way as Kara was.
    Im betting our Earth will be on the brink of building cylons and at the same time the descendants of both the freed centurians and Cavills centurians show up.

  3. 1. The whole final battle to rescue here ended the war and led them to the 2nd earth. I guess they was trying to portray a divine influence for the sequence of events.

    2. The fact she disappears in the end leaves big question marks. I guess they again was trying to portray a divine influence of some kind, but your right, I thought that was a cop out.

    3. Either Gaius Baltar, Brother Cavil left the note. I think it was Baltar because I’m sure he found out that info himself around that time.

    4. Maybe it’s just the ability to use imagination. Maybe, this brain function was a new concept to these humans and we now take it for granted in our lives.

    5. The two continents thing could be interesting. Remember, they jumped to the Earth the second time from the edge of a black-hole and there was a big deal made about the FTL code that Kara entered. I’m not saying this is what happened but MAYBE, it’s supposed to be exactly the same Earth as the 1st time and they literally jumped through time itself. Maybe this black-hole time jump seals the loop of all this has happened before and all this will happen again.

    6. I was puzzled about that too. I like to think that maybe there was another Cavil still alive on the ship that only these two cavils knew about and he jumped away before the basestar exploded. Who knows, maybe he will track down the freed centurions again and go to work looking for the humans. This is one way they could keep BSG going if they wanted to. Also, the free centurions on their own is another angle to bring us more BSG because after a while, they will realize they have no purpose in life and they will come back to earth to fight because they are warriors. I live and hope this will happen.

    7. To follow on from my other answer about the Black-Hole, maybe Kara Thrace is the Harbinger of Death because she kept humanity in the cycle of violence by taking them back to Earth in a new timeline. The end of the show we see current earth and our robot technology so all this has happened before…

    8. From your speakers normally. Ohhhh, you mean… ‘It’s in the fracking ship’ music? This was explained in the show if I remember correctly. I can’t actually remember how they explained it but I’m sure they did. I think it was something to do with their cylon activation when they reached that nebular.

    Anyway, that’s what I think for what it’s worth.

  4. heres my…ideas about what happened:

    1) They insinuate that Hera is the ‘first man’, in as much as all humans now are part cylon, part human. Perhaps her DNA was required to bond with the native DNA and led to our enlightenment AKA the missing link.

    2) This one, I have no idea. At the end I assumed that the projected visions were part of God (at the end vision-Balthar mentions “he doesn’t like that name” when vision-Six refers to”God” – and I understood this to mean that God has many names in many religions, and doesn’t like to choose just one), but could be explained away by being apparitions. Starbuck…no idea. People touched her, everyone saw her, and she had a vital role in the fourth season. The fact that she experienced visions herself (of her father on the piano) is even more puzzling. The whole “angel of death” thing was silly too, since she actually saved them.

    3) Balthar knew there were 12 models (Six told him before she saved him n the holocaust), but I find it unlikely that he would be so selfless.

    4) Like I mentioned before, I think they were supposed to be visions from God, orchestrating the actions and reactions that take place during the show.

    5) I don’t remember actually seeing the continents on the original earth. I remember the surface of the planet being really cloudy, so you couldn’t make out the continental shapes…

    6) Yeah, no idea. It isn’t like he expected to be captured and tortured. Maybe he realised the futility of the situation?

    7) Yeah, dunno

    8) The music was a signal to activate the final five. Judging by the jump-distance between the nebula and the cylon colony, I expect that it came from the colony, with Cavill setting it up in order to activate them when the time was right

  5. Baltar was told about the 12 models by Six on Caprica when she was first confessing she was a Cylon. He asks “there are more of you?” and she tells him. Baltar’s guilt is a major theme of the season and I always thought this was a solid certainty that the note came from Baltar in this vein, and was brilliant of the writers to introduce this subtle way that Baltar is trying to make things right (albeit while not risking his identity lest they press him for HOW he knows this)

  6. In regards to Kara, the Hybrid(s) states that she will “lead them all to their end” — not necessarily that she’ll be the cause of humanity’s destruction. Leading them to their end could easily be interpreted as leading them to the end of their journey, I.e., to Earth.

    As Helo told Kara, “harbinger” is akin to an omen.

    I was annoyed at the lack of definitive resolution to Starbuck’s whole resurrection thing. I suppose we’ll just have to believe that she was an angel — “blazing with the light of God”, as Leoben said.

    As for Cavil shooting himself, I think I read that was actually Dean Stockwell’s suggestions suggestion? I think the script said he was to be killed by Tigh or Adama before he suggested that Cavil would be more likely to end his own life than let his enemies take it.

  7. Another mystery left unanswered was the 8th “known” cylon [not the original 7 or the final 5]. Sam, before being lobotomized, spoke of another cylon called “Daniel”. This extra cylon was described as an artist, so I felt so sure that he was the piano guy who helped Kara. Yet this character is never brought into play in the story— merely an expositional plot device to emphasize the murderous tendencies of Cavil.

  8. 1) Hera is the future of both races. She allows them to live on. Otherwise they’d have eventually died out. Humans and Cylons could mate and she was the first generation of New Humans, which is what we are. A blending of the two. The visions were so Roslin, Athena, and Six would know what to do when the time came.

    2) Kara was another type of angel, she always had been. She died in the storm, was taken to Earth by God, the remains of her ship crashed there. She was resurrected, given memories and even pictures of Earth, then sent back to them in the Ionian Nebula. Her feelings of Earth’s location were all she could be given. It’s very in keeping with all real-world religious texts and myths. “God” can never intervene too directly, humanity has to find its own way, he can only point them in the right direction.

    3) probably Baltar

    4) the visions of Six and Baltar were angels. They always had been. They existed independently of who they appeared to, showed by Gaius seeing himself and by their appearance in NYC in our time. They’re angels.

    5) they’re not the same! We never saw the first Earth clearly, it was from a low angle and mostly in shadow. That was INTENTIONAL so they wouldn’t reveal that it wasn’t our Earth. Go back and look, that’s what happened. It was never our Earth. It was another totally unrelated planet, they named it Earth, and Adama named our planet Earth in honor of “the dream”. It’s all very obvious.

    6) likely to avoid capture and torture since he was in the CIC, he wasn’t getting out

    7) she brought death to many humans, but she brought humanity to its end by ending their genetic line. Humans breeding with the natives of our Earth (Neanderthals?) and with Cylons created a hybrid race of all 3 combined. Technically “pure humanity” ended with the colonists, and by leading them to Earth herself, Kara was reaponsible. The hybrids never said “you’ll get them all killed”, they said “humanity’s end”. Wording is everything.

    8) god, a trigger left by the 13th tribe Cylons, maybe the Cavill’s left it / triggered it, who knows, but it was one of those, doesn’t matter which

    Part of the reason this show is amazing is because they don’t spell everything out for you. Use your brain and figure it out yourself. Think outside the box and don’t complain when they don’t do all the work for you. There’s no fun in that, and it never makes for exciting or compelling storytelling.

  9. Daniel was written in because Sharon was noted as 8 before they decided on then final five being anything other than average skin jobs. The mythical nature of them being “parents” to the others came about while writing season 3 (according to an interview with Ronald D Moore), but Sharon was 8, and they could only have 7 “child” models. So they resolved that by saying Daniel/7 was essentially exterminated. Not a loose end, it was tying another one up. You just didn’t see it.

    And the piano player was Kara’s dad, shown to her to help her take the final step on her journey and uncover her destiny. Whtether he was real or just in her mind is irrelevant. He was basically an angel too, like the Six and Gaius visions, like Kara herself.

  10. 1) How does Hera save everyone? She saved the human species from extinction by combining the Cylon and human species and was considered the “Mitochondrial Eve” by modern scientists.

    2) Where did the second Kara Thrace come from? The same place she came from originally. She was divinely created as agent for “God” in the series. An angel in human form (believe it or not).

    3) Who left the original note for Adama? In “The Plan” it was insinuated that it was Boomer warning Adama about her and the other cylons

    4) Where do the projected visions come from? To successfully “guide” the main characters or agents, “God” linked the cylons to certain humans and certain humans to cylons so they would be “properly” influenced to play out their parts in the “bigger plan”.

    5) How are there two Earths with the same continents? Both the inhabitants of Earth and Caprica/Colonies originated there (1st Earth). It looks like “God” put the survivors or started a new group of humans on the 2nd Earth, both planets were probably created or located by “God”.

    6) Why did Brother Cavil shoot himself? He didn’t like where the “Cylon Evolution” was leading. He didn’t want Cylons to have any kind of organic link at all.

    7) How is Kara Thrace the Harbinger of Death? She was, she helped to end the “status quo” and brought the enlightened Cylons and the humans together to overcome Cavil and the violent cylons, and helped to destroy that huge cylon colony ship. She helped lead them to the 2nd Earth, that was away from danger so that the humans and cylons could breed and grow together.

    8) Where was the music coming from? It was a trigger that was projected mentally to the “Sleeper” cylons. That’s why they could here the music, but not by the humans. “God” was probably behind it.

  11. Regarding Starbuck leading humanity to it’s end; I think of it like Anakin Skywalker being the chosen one in bringing balance to the force.

  12. Covid marathon on syfy and i saw the ep where adama found a note on transmission paper of there only being 12 models…… given ty’s unusual loyalty to adama, I’m guessing it was a subconscious warning by ty.

  13. Kara is the herald of death because it puts end to humanity as it was known. Finding the Earth allowed the colonials to reproduce with the native and the Cylons, thus creating a new type of humanity.

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