Since I'm still waiting for Season 4 to grace my screens (admittedly at this point waiting for around 30 hours or so), I thought I'd get one more theory in about Galactica (once again aided and abetted by Senor Spielbergo). This time we got into the reasons for the split in Cylon culture. S. Spielbergo reminded me that we know from Razor that the Cylons were pissing aroung with skin-job tech much earlier than we thought. It seems more than plausible that the war was halted as the first proper skin-jobs rolled off the assembly lines.
What's more interesting is the idea that there was some kind of vote called as to what to do next. One scenario is make peace vs feign peace whilst preparing for sneaky genocide. Perhaps that vote had gone 7 to 5 for the former (the Eights may have wavered here, possibly the Cavil's too, although given how self-contradictory he is, it's hard to know), or even 7-4-1 if the final model is as different to the four as it is to the seven (and at this point I'd bet quite a lot of money that it is). Once the decision has been made, the losers might well have quit in disgust, or for more subtle reasons, and integrated themselves into human society, before the mass cloning began; presumably asking all records of them be destroyed and they not be followed (it's been noticed by others the significance of Cavil being the one to "box" the Threes for violating these conditions). This idea opens up a really interesting question and an even more interesting possibility, namely:
1) Why is Tigh older than Tyrol, Tori, and Anders? Were the original 12 mainly children? Were Tigh and Cavil the only adults, and by extension were they deliberately conceived as "mentors" for the other 10 (admittedly an addictive personality and and a contradictory atheist are not necessarily the best choice of mentors for commie religious nuts, but what new system doesn't have its kinks)? One thing the show has never discussed is whether the skin-jobs age as we do. If they don't, it's hard to explain Tigh. Tyrol, Tori and Anders could just keep changing lives from time to time (in theory, although see below), but since Adama has known Tigh for decades, it certainly seems they age. Presumably the fact that the copies of the other seven models are all the same age is a deliberate choice by the rest; certainly it would suck mightily if every time a skin-job died it had to be downloaded into a baby. They could potentially re-boot the entire line every so often, of course.
2) It's entirely possible the five/four were so appalled by the majority plan that they wanted to stop it. They couldn't do it themselves, of course, because they'd lost the vote fair and square. But if they deliberately altered their memories and placed themselves in human society and ended up in positions to stop it, then that would be fair game. Looked at it that way, the fact that Tyrol and Tigh both ended up on the only Battlestar able to withstand the coming attack stops being massive coincidence and instead becomes a deliberate plan. Tori too was clearly an up and coming political figure who, had she risen just a little higher, might have been in a position to be more useful (maybe even in Laura's shoes; had Colonial Heavy 798 not happened to make it through the attack) in fighting the Cylons. Even Anders managed to get himself into Pyramid, which might seem fairly pointless, but did give him a group of physically fit men and women loyal to him and used to working as a team, but weren't in the military that was deliberately targetted for destruction during the initial waves of the attack.
What's even more funky about this idea is that leads to the corollary that Tori and Tigh might have been intended to be in control of the military and civilians at some point during the attack, had it not been for Adama delaying his retirement and Roslin being there to witness it. If that had happened, perhaps the partial awakening we saw at the end of Season 3 might have kicked in immediately, albeit probably in a different way. This idea of helping to fight the attack rather than prevent it again can just be seen as the concept of playing fair with the other models. Tyrol and Anders might have had a similar "kick-in" goal, although those are harder to quantify (if we consider the twelth model and whatever he/she has in mind for Starbuck a wild card (see below), its possible Anders would have kicked in after so long fighting on Caprica had he not met her).
Of course, if you want a further level of head-games, you can instead see the other four models as being cure attack-wise, and Baltar as prevention. He alone could have stopped the attack, and there's a level of irony in the fact that he was seduced by another Cylon into betraying his own adopted race, but also the plans he had for his true one. Of course you then lose the wild-card idea of the final model pulling the strings. Or do we? We still don't know who pushed that note under Adama's door in the mini-series, but if Baltar is the last model he may well be subconsciously working towards more than we or he suspect. Maybe the four thought he was on their side during the vote, but he had other ideas, which is another layer of confusing awesomeness that will have the idiots I mentioned yesterday crying into their Talking Dalek mugs, especially since the Sixes at least think he's on their side. Baltar's constant left-turns (pretending the Cylon detector doesn't work even after he's become VP and wouldn't have to do the tests himself anymore, handing his nuke over to a bunch of nuts) immediately become parts of a larger plan.
All of this is deliberately ignoring (almost) the Starbuck destiny angle that they're pushing fairly hard. Whether or not she herself proves to be the final model or not, the strands of destiny idea is probably going to involve said model pretty heavily. The idea that the twelth model is seperate from all the others and pulling strings independently of the other eleven could potentially paper over several apparent holes, and tie in interestingly to Cylon monotheism (again, particularly if it is Baltar, which of course would hardly be surprising, but if the S3 finale proved anything its that surprise is not a sufficient condition for quality). That's something S4 is obviously going to deal with, I just wanted to come up with a plausible and (if I may flatter myself so much) interesting idea as to how we've got to where we are, and at least one way to tie the former to the latter.
Update: It's been put back a week! Curse you Sky, you inveterate douches. Now my American cousins will be two weeks ahead of me instead of one!
Updated Update: They're showing a double bill, so it all works out. Phew!
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