Musings On Galactica

Ended up in a quite interesting (well, assuming that you're as nerdish as I am, at any rate) discussion about Battlestar Galactica on Friday (for those who've yet to see the entirety of Season 3 and Razor, now would be a good time to make yourself some tea). The topic of said conversation is one that I've covered several times, as presumably has pretty much every fan out there: what the Hell is up with the Final Five? One of the biggest questions, namely how can Tigh be a Cylon, is potentially the least problematic development. We know thanks to Razor that the Cylons were creating human replicas much earlier than we realised. Back when we can first confirm Tigh existed as a person was during the first war, so apparently his status as a Cylon isn't totally beyond the realms of possibility. And at the time, of course, he was a healthy young man, placed inside the military, a fairly logical choice for a sleeper agent. So I guess I can just about buy it there.

What gets harder to believe is that he would end up on the same Battlestar as two more Final Five models, and in the same fleet as another. Given our losses were around the 99.99% mark, that's pretty tough to swallow. Now, to some extent we might just have to accept that this is the nature of television series, sooner or later the coincidences have to mount up otherwise not much can really happen. But there is another alternative: we know the Final Five are "different" from the other Cylons. Whose to say they are limited to just one body? Perhaps they slotted themselves in at a later date. Certainly whilst on New Caprica there was time to replace Tori and Tyrol. The same is true of Anders, although an equally viable idea there is that he was replaced on Caprica between Starbuck's visits. Given RayCylon's (can't remember his actual name) obesssion with Starbuck, maybe they thought getting someone close to her would be a good idea. And of courss, Tyrol is critical to the Galactica and Tori is right beside the president almost constantly (a problem with this line of thought is that it would have been just as easy to replace the president herself), so that again is of obvious value to the Cylons. Hell, at this point you can wonder whether Tigh has been a Cylon forever, or if he was replaced too, whilst banged up in the NC Detention Facility. This would have the double advantage of making coincidences disappear and not totally shitting on the established backstory.

I am pretty convinced, of course, that the "real" story will be signifantly less sensible, although probably pretty cool.