For Battlestar fans, this episode answers a lot of questions. I’ve already watched it twice and I’m still not sure I caught everything. Some spoilerish musings after the break, below the episode.
COMMENTS AND SPOILERISH SPECULATION BELOW:
Did I hear Sam Anders say that there were eight Cylon skin-jobs? That could make the missing # 7 model “Daniel,” a Cylon that Ellen designed and who she described as her favorite. Daniel was hated by Cavil, and it may be that Ellen did a gender switch on Daniel to save him. Indeed, the message boards are buzzing that “Daniel” may be Starbuck. (Notably, before passing out, Sam saw the other Cylons, as well as Starbuck, glowing. Do Cylons glow? Who knows — the producers are well-known for dropping red herrings.)
It would be an interesting irony if a Cylon Starbuck was gender-switched, considering that the character itself underwent a gender switch from the original: the reboot uses the wonderful Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck. In the original, Starbuck was played by Dirk Benedict.
A thought about the end of the series: I could be wrong, but I’ve long thought that there are no humans, only Cylons. Humanity died out eons ago, replaced by tribes of human-looking Cylons such as Ellen, Tigh, Sam, Galen, Tory, etc. What a sad and poignant thought.
UPDATE: I was wrong about almost everything! Daniel was a red herring. Starbuck wasn’t gender-switched. I was wrong that all the characters on the show were Cylons, but was kind of close — after the jump-forward 150,000 years, it turned out that we’re all human/cylon hybrids, descending from Helo and Athena’s daughter Hera. Thank you Ron Moore for an excellent series. So say we all.