Battlestar Galactica Finale: Theories and Speculation

Tonight, Galactica comes to a conclusion. Before we see it, what ideas do we want to propose? Will a singular experience send the crew back in time to become Lords of Kobol? Will an autistic kid be staring at the ship in a snow-globe? Will Baltar and his Cult settle on a new world and, as he tries to enlighten the primitive inhabitants, see “forty-two” spelled out on the makeshift Scrabble board?

Who wants to make a suggestion before this thread becomes obsolete?

22 replies on “Battlestar Galactica Finale: Theories and Speculation”

  1. the ship itself
    Well, all I can say is that if you ask me: the conculsion of a series named after a ship really aught to end with the destructuon of that ship. – Be that in combat, ( like the USS Yorktown,) or at the hand of the shipyard workers turning it to scrap ( like the USS Enterprise – the WW II carrier)

    And all things considered… I’m guessing the Yorktown will be a closer analogy…

    As for humanity; I really have no idea where Ron Moore is going with that… He could pull a Joss Wheaton ( from the series Angle) style end, or a JMS ( B5 ) style ending. – personally I’m hoping for the JMS type. BUT I wouldn’t put any money on it…

  2. the ship itself
    Well, all I can say is that if you ask me: the conculsion of a series named after a ship really aught to end with the destructuon of that ship. – Be that in combat, ( like the USS Yorktown,) or at the hand of the shipyard workers turning it to scrap ( like the USS Enterprise – the WW II carrier)

    And all things considered… I’m guessing the Yorktown will be a closer analogy…

    As for humanity; I really have no idea where Ron Moore is going with that… He could pull a Joss Wheaton ( from the series Angle) style end, or a JMS ( B5 ) style ending. – personally I’m hoping for the JMS type. BUT I wouldn’t put any money on it…

  3. Dunno.
    I agree with the Fozzie models below that Galactica has to go boom. This is her show.

    Theories — I can’t see time travel being brought in this late. The resolution will be relatively elegant and based on what we already know. Laura and Bill will die. Kara will have somehow "led" them to their demise, and Baltar will lead whatever is left (Hera, the ships of the fleet that stayed behind, and the surviving skin jobs) into the future.

    Sam is the Galactica’s hybrid, he’ll croak with the Galactica. Torrey will be spaced. Chief will die trying to redeem himself. Ellen will kill John herself, and Saul may bring Hera back in a Cylon ship after he personally croaks Boomer.

    The music and everything else? May or may not be the humans who nuked Cylon Earth. We haven’t met them, though, so I’ll assume another explanation, again based on what we already have seen.

    I’m obviously as clueless as everyone else. :)

    -Joe

  4. All I know…
    All I know is that if there’s a Ship of Light involved, there will be no end to suffering at my hands. I swear it.

  5. My theory.
    BSG will assault the Cylon colony. BSG will smash into the colony, a-la the Daedalus Maneuver, allowing for a direct assault. Not only will they find and remove Hera, killing Cavil, thanks to an uprising by Centurions who don’t like the way Cavil is treating them, they’ll also find the keys to a captured Battlestar.

    For good measure, they’ll plunder the Cylon computers for the locations of human-friendly planets.

    They will take that Battlestar, and return to the fleet. One of the last shots will be of an EVA work crew removing the ship’s name from the hull, and welding on the letters for ‘Galactica’.

    • Re: My theory.
      I must say, I’d applaud if that story happened. It’s unlikely though, there are still a lot of story points not covered.

      • Re: My theory.

        I must say, I’d applaud if that story happened. It’s unlikely though, there are still a lot of story points not covered.

        I don’t know how much they can wrap up in 90 minutes worth of show, is the problem.

        And after the credits, two of the workers welding on the final ‘A’ will be chatting.

        "Hey, isn’t it bad luck to change the name of a ship after it’s been launched?"

        "Ah, that’s just superstitious crap."

        *jump flash*

        "What was that?"

        *thousands of jump flashes as thousands of Base Ships jump in*

        "Ah, frack…."

  6. How it goes down.
    Baltar stays with the fleet, but gets martyred when he tries to stop his followers from taking over.

    Only Hera and Helo come back, but with a location that is good to settle on… only to find it nuked.

  7. It … Ends … Tonight …. !!!!
    I don’t care how they wrap it up at this point … JUST WRAP IT UP!!!!

    There have been so many false starts, dropped plot lines, loose ends, weird changes to characters, etc, etc, etc, I don’t want to watch any more! I just want to know how it ends.

    I loved the miniseries and the 1st season was great, but once the filler eps. started in the second season, though, it was all down hill. I just kept hoping it was temporary … it wasn’t. I finally read where the writers didn’t know where they were headed somewhere around the 3rd season – something I suspected all along.

    Why can’t they just at least outline the main plot? I really think this seasons 2-4 could have been condensed to 1-1.5 really well-written, tight seasons.

    I’m not really all that upset. There was just so much more potential to this show. Hopefully it’ll really be over tonight and I can focus my complaints on inconsistencies in the Terminator series :)

    • Re: It … Ends … Tonight …. !!!!
      * blink *

      Well, I suppose some people think soaps are worth watching…

    • Re: It … Ends … Tonight …. !!!!

      I loved the miniseries and the 1st season was great, but once the filler eps. started in the second season, though, it was all down hill. I just kept hoping it was temporary … it wasn’t. I finally read where the writers didn’t know where they were headed somewhere around the 3rd season – something I suspected all along.

      Its only filler if you don’t like them. One fan’s filler is another’s character development. Of course plenty of SF doesn’t care if characters have an inner life or growth or change, so its understandable that many fans don’t care about it or recognize the value of it.

      If you are a "if it ain’t a sapce battle, it ain’t good" sort of person, that is fine. But that doesn’t make the non-blowin’ up stuff episodes "filler".

      • Re: It … Ends … Tonight …. !!!!

        Its only filler if you don’t like them. One fan’s filler is another’s character development.

        That’s the thing. I really didn’t see much of it as character development. There were so many out-of-character moments. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the series. I think I would have enjoyed it better if I thought the writers knew where things were going. It felt like they were throwing spaghetti at the walls and seeing what stuck.

        Having just finished the finale, I’m a little underwhelmed – they wrote themselves into a corner and had little explanation for what they wrote. Not a horrible ending – more hopeful than I was expecting. I thought it was out of character for The Admiral to just leave everyone after fighting tooth and nail too keep everything together for so long. I was also hoping for some clever explanations regarding Starbuck and the imaginary Six and Baltar that never happened.

        I guess it really isn’t over what with the ads for this fall’s "From the Cylon POV" – For all my griping, I’ll still probably watch and enjoy it.

        • Re: It … Ends … Tonight …. !!!!

          Its only filler if you don’t like them. One fan’s filler is another’s character development.

          That’s the thing. I really didn’t see much of it as character development. There were so many out-of-character moments. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the series. I think I would have enjoyed it better if I thought the writers knew where things were going. It felt like they were throwing spaghetti at the walls and seeing what stuck.

          To some extent, I have to blame Straczynski. Rightly or wrongly, he convinced lots of people that every step in the B5 five year arc was planned. That clearly was not true in detail, but he obviously did have a broad outline for the show. So now everyone expects open ended episodic television to have a defined beginning, middle, and end. Maybe it should, but it was never typical before or after. Shows do story arcs and multi-parters all the time, but knowing what season four would be like based on season one is unheard of. Mostly because One, you don’t know if you’ll ever get there, and Two, if you are a hit, you might get a season five, six, and seven. Which I suspect is what happened to BSG. I got the feeling they thought/hoped they would get a fifth season, up until the writer’s strike just killed ratings.

          Having just finished the finale, I’m a little underwhelmed – they wrote themselves into a corner and had little explanation for what they wrote. Not a horrible ending – more hopeful than I was expecting. I thought it was out of character for The Admiral to just leave everyone after fighting tooth and nail too keep everything together for so long. I was also hoping for some clever explanations regarding Starbuck and the imaginary Six and Baltar that never happened.

          I guess it really isn’t over what with the ads for this fall’s "From the Cylon POV" – For all my griping, I’ll still probably watch and enjoy it.

          They did have an explanation for the imaginary Six and Baltar. The real Baltar SAID IT to John/Cavil in the CIC just before the truce. He had only just realized a few moments earlier, when he and Caprica Six bothe saw both apparitions at the same time. This is further evidenced by their appearance in the closing scene (did you see (how could you miss) Ron Moore?).

          My only explanation for Starbuck is "sequel material". I was hoping someone here would have an alternate (better) explanation. At first I thought that maybe she had been killed earlier, that perhaps she was just an apparition in Lee’s mind. But Adama and Roslin had both hugged and kissed her, so unless she was just NEVER real, I don’t get the *poof* disappearance.

  8. The amusing part …
    Having now seen the finale. Going back to our discussion regarding snow globes …


    It was Ron Moore holding open the National Geographic displaying the skeleton photo with the mitochondrial Eve story.

    I take it Six and Baltar were his muses.

    So:

    Yes, it was all a dream.

    Yes, we’re all Cylons.

    They took two of the hokiest possible endings and combined them. :)

    Doesn’t matter, I still enjoyed it, although the thirty minute ending was giving me flashbacks to "Return of the King."

    The high point for me was Starbuck’s end. The emotional low for me was Laura’s death, which I knew would be painful.

    -Joe

    • Re: The amusing part …

      Having now seen the finale.
      -Joe

      Nah, Joe… I’ think you’ve got it all wrong.

      Only the truly geeky (like us) recognized Ron. That was just an easter egg. This whole series was definitely NOT just a dream.

      And I personally think that the whole balter/six thing at the end was just an excuse to NOT end the show with tears in everyone’s eyes after panning out over Laura’s grave.

      Overall I am very pleased with almost everything about the final ep. – Only one glaring loose-end, and even THAT is just an easter egg, of sorts, since all of us geeks KNOW that it’s the ship of light that brought back Kara, and the rest of the population is just left to wonder if there will be a movie-of-the-week tie-up for that.

      This, taken with the John-FINALLY-grows-a-pair speach on Sarah Connor cronicals… and heck; it was a pretty fine night of television all around.

      It’s just a shame that it’s the last time I’ll ever watch the channel formerly know as sci fi… but that’s another story.

      .

      • Re: The amusing part …

        This, taken with the John-FINALLY-grows-a-pair speach on Sarah Connor cronicals… and heck; it was a pretty fine night of television all around.

        No kidding, even Dollhouse brought it’s A game for once.

      • Re: The amusing part …

        Nah, Joe… I’ think you’ve got it all wrong.

        It was an extraordinary evening of sci fi. :) And I loved the finale of BSG. One other high point, using the original theme for the ride into the sunset.

        Also agreeing about Sarah Connor Chronicles. Great episode there too. Thank God for DVR. :)

        -Jo3

        • Re: The amusing part …

          Nah, Joe… I’ think you’ve got it all wrong.

          It was an extraordinary evening of sci fi. :) And I loved the finale of BSG. One other high point, using the original theme for the ride into the sunset.

          Also agreeing about Sarah Connor Chronicles. Great episode there too. Thank God for DVR. :)

          -Jo3

          Totally agree. Bear McCreary using the original theme for the flight of Icarus was awesome and I was so glad to see Jon Connor stand up for himself for once. A great Friday, all in all.

    • Re: The amusing part …

      Having now seen the finale. …
      They took two of the hokiest possible endings and combined them. :)

      This show was one of the scifi shows ever…until the finale, and particularly pretty much everything after the galactica comes out of its final jump (which was incredibly well done, as was most of the episode leading up to that point). Between pushing the religious aspect over the top, choosing a strategy designed for extinction and slapping the core audience right in the face over technology (which *isn’t* the problem), it defines "jumping the shark" in my book.

  9. yorktown
    oh, and one last note…

    – not technically a spoiler since it’s a well known historical fact… but I’ll tag it anyway…

    the USS yorktown was scuttled on the orders of her captain after getting her crew through one last desperate battle, but not having enough left in her to travel any further.

    I nailed THAT one… I guess even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then… :)

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