[Setekh]

another thing, is Caprica close enought to the 'Cylon home world' for the resurection equipment to pick up the dead from that bomb or was Caprica also relying upon the resurection ship and they were unaware of it's destruction?

After Six and Sharon have killed Three, Six says that it'll take at least 36 hours for her to be downloaded again. So I presume that means they're close enough.

I don't think they'd have a or any God; for one thing, it'd raise a ****load of questions about 'the Lords of Kobol', because of the references - it seems - to the Cylon god being a 'fallen' lord (mainly IIRC both Sharon and Six react to this as somewhat offended, plus it seems a natural connection), and either you'd really confuse the monotheistic theology, or introduce the concept of beings effectively equal to God.  Plus it would sort of spoil a lot of the hard sci-fi aspects by removing the effects of free-will; a lot of the themes to me seem to be the evil (or otherwise) that people choose to do.

The Cylons are not atheist. They believe that the Colonial pantheon is wrong, though.

http://www.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Cylon_Religion

[aldo_14]

I don't think they'd have a or any God; for one thing, it'd raise a ****load of questions about 'the Lords of Kobol', because of the references - it seems - to the Cylon god being a 'fallen' lord (mainly IIRC both Sharon and Six react to this as somewhat offended, plus it seems a natural connection), and either you'd really confuse the monotheistic theology, or introduce the concept of beings effectively equal to God.  Plus it would sort of spoil a lot of the hard sci-fi aspects by removing the effects of free-will; a lot of the themes to me seem to be the evil (or otherwise) that people choose to do.

The Cylons are not atheist. They believe that the Colonial pantheon is wrong, though.

http://www.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Cylon_Religion

Never said they were.  But Six (in particular) reacts to a description of 'One lord desiring power over the rest' (paraphrase) in such a way that hints strongly the Cyclons believe that LoK is their God, and the stories of a power struggle are attempts to cast said Cylon God as a devil type figure.  (she says 'lies' or something in a way that is not so much directed towards the religion but that particular story).  Can't remember if this was in the outtakes or actual ep, though; I think Kobols' Last Gleaming Pt1.  This is partly because I think neither religion will prove to be literally true in BSG; it seems to me to be against the general tone of the show to have literal Gods/a God.

Anyways, to me the strongest hint so far has been that the Cylon God was or is related to the 13th Lord of Kobol, in which sense it would imply some sort of other 12 equal-ish beings able to have a war with it.

Oh, and AFAIK the Cylon homeworld is relatively close to Colonial space, whereas Home pt.2 indicates Earth is far, far further away than that.

[Bobboau]

After Six and Sharon have killed Three, Six says that it'll take at least 36 hours for her to be downloaded again. So I presume that means they're close enough.

yeah, I remember that, what if they just didn't know the ship had been destroied yet?

[Col. Fishguts]

Whoa ... that was a rather badass episode

The Baltar/Six thing is getting weirder and weirder, I guess something happened on Caprica that connects them. The interesting part is that the Baltar in Six's head doesn't know what's going on in the fleet, while the Six in Baltar's head told him a lot of information about the Cylons and events that were about to happen, which he couldn't possibly know anything about. So, if she isn't the Cylon he knew on Caprica (which this episode confirms), what the hell is she and from where does she get her info ?

And now we know what the hybrid baby's fate is supposed to be, but since the Cylons now think it's dead, all hell will break loose towards the season finale.

About the whole Earth/Kobol thing that was brought up in the last BSG discussion we had here. I just rewatched "Kobol's last gleaming", and it is in fact supposed to be the home of mankind. Six refers to it as the "birthplace of us all" (when speaking to Baltar), meaning both humans and Cylons (well the Clons were created by the humans anyay).
The religious black lady speaks of Kobol as the home of the 13 tribes, where humans lived together with the gods, before they founded the colonies.
So Earth is actually the 13th colony and not mankinds origin (at least in the BSG universe), so it would be highly interesting in which time period Earth is, when the finally find it.

[aldo_14]

Whoa ... that was a rather badass episode

The Baltar/Six thing is getting weirder and weirder, I guess something happened on Caprica that connects them. The interesting part is that the Baltar in Six's head doesn't know what's going on in the fleet, while the Six in Baltar's head told him a lot of information about the Cylons and events that were about to happen, which he couldn't possibly know anyhting about.

And now we know what the hybrid baby's fate is supposed to be, but since the Cylons now think it's dead, all hell will break loose towards the season finale.

About the whole Earth/Kobol thing that was brought up in the last BSG discussion we had here. I just rewatched "Kobol's last gleaming" again, and it is in fact supposed to be the home of mankind. Six refers to it as the "birthplace of us all" (when speaking to Baltar), meaning both humans and Cylons (well the Clons were created by the humans anyay).
The religious black lady speaks of Kobol as the home of the 13 tribes, where humans lived together with the gods, before they founded the colonies.
So Earth is actually the 13th colony and not mankinds origin (at least in the BSG universe), so it would be highly interesting in which time period Earth is, when the finally find it.

Unless it's a cyclical process of exodus (From Earth/Kobol), colonisation (of Kobol/Earth), and then exodus, etc.  Or the Lords of Kobol (i.e. aliens) took Roman-era humans to Kobol for some purpose (which'd have it's own questions about the exodus back to Earth) - although I think that'd be a bit too simple an explanation for them to use it.  It'd seem they knew enough to pinpoint Earths location before the exodus, though, given that there's a map.

[WMCoolmon]

Makes you wonder what's so special about earth, though, that they'd make a big ol' map room to point people to it.

[Col. Fishguts]

Unless it's a cyclical process of exodus (From Earth/Kobol), colonisation (of Kobol/Earth), and then exodus, etc.  Or the Lords of Kobol (i.e. aliens) took Roman-era humans to Kobol for some purpose (which'd have it's own questions about the exodus back to Earth) - although I think that'd be a bit too simple an explanation for them to use it.  It'd seem they knew enough to pinpoint Earths location before the exodus, though, given that there's a map.

Hmm, that would kinda work (if you replace 'Roman' by 'Greek'), at least the Lords of Kobol were on Earth while Kobol was still inhabitated and made the map room.

What if humanity didn't get to the colonies by itself ?

[wild guess]
Kobol is mankind's homeworld, they live there together with the gods/Lords of Kobol. At some point the Lords start to bring people to other worlds, which will become the colonies. They set up the map room onl, aniticipating the downfall of Kobol and the cycling story of destruction thing.
Earth is colonised around the time that we call the classical antique. That would explain the explicit similarity between the coloniol religion and the 'our' Greek mythilogy with the olympian gods
[/wild guess]

Do we know anything about why Kobol was destroyed/deserted ?

[aldo_14]

Unless it's a cyclical process of exodus (From Earth/Kobol), colonisation (of Kobol/Earth), and then exodus, etc.  Or the Lords of Kobol (i.e. aliens) took Roman-era humans to Kobol for some purpose (which'd have it's own questions about the exodus back to Earth) - although I think that'd be a bit too simple an explanation for them to use it.  It'd seem they knew enough to pinpoint Earths location before the exodus, though, given that there's a map.

Hmm, that would kinda work (if you replace 'Roman' by 'Greek'), at least the Lords of Kobol were on Earth while Kobol was still inhabitated and made the map room.

What if humanity didn't get to the colonies by itself ?

[wild guess]
Kobol is mankind's homeworld, they live there together with the gods/Lords of Kobol. At some point the Lords start to bring people to other worlds, which will become the colonies. They set up the map room onl, aniticipating the downfall of Kobol and the cycling story of destruction thing.
Earth is colonised around the time that we call the classical antique. That would explain the explicit similarity between the coloniol religion and the 'our' Greek mythilogy with the olympian gods
[/wild guess]

Do we know anything about why Kobol was destroyed/deserted ?

Some form of war between the 'gods'.  Specifically a 12th god/lord (unnamed AFAIK) seeking to rise above the other Lords of Kobol, which causes the exodus of the 12 tribes in a 'galleon' (FTL or STL vessel presumably).  I think the 13th (Earth) tribe left before that, though.

NB: my guess would be humanity removed from Greece (keep on using Roman for no reason than being too lazy to write 'classical Greece' ) rather than to there.  The main reason being that it also solves the issue of having Kobol as origin of humanity, which screws up if we use any sort of 'real' connection to Earth.  Also there's an issue of how a group of colonists from an FTL vessel would integrate with Greco-era humanity (the best thing that occurs to me is adopting the myth of Atlantis, but that'd be a bit cliched IMO).

[Ford Prefect]

You guys are delving into the absolutely absurd now.

This has been a public service announcement.

[Col. Fishguts]

Yeah well, if there were no humans on Earth before the ones from Kobol arrived, it would screw any 'real' connection to our Earth (with evolution and all). But I have the feeling RDM wants to go in the direction of "life here began out there" of the original series.

After all, it's sci-fi. He could come up with something to explain prehistoric human fossils away

About the war between the gods. That's were count Iblis and the beings of light come in , right ? I hated those episodes of the original series. I hope RDM either never explains that part, or comes up with something better.

[ZylonBane]

yeah, I remember that, what if they just didn't know the ship had been destroied yet?

Pay attention, would you? The resurrection ship was a mobile platform deployed for the sole purpose of resurrecting any Cylons that got killed while they were following the rag-tag fleet. Several episodes have made it clear that there's a maximum range over which slain Cylons can upload themselves.

As for Kobol, et al, it seems fairly obvious that Kobol was colonized from Earth (hence a big ol' map room pointing back home),  and the 12 Colonies branched off from Kobol. Earth has to be the master origin point, because a great deal of physical evidence says we evolved here.

[aldo_14]

About the war between the gods. That's were count Iblis and the beings of light come in , right ? I hated those episodes of the original series. I hope RDM either never explains that part, or comes up with something better.

AFAIK he's said he doesn't want to use that part of the original story.

[Ace]

Looking at the hints of 'cycles' there is another explanation:

The 'gods' create life on Earth, it rebels, the surviving gods are chased to Kobol. There we see a 'merger' (ala the Cylon-Human hybrid) which leads to living in peace. One of the gods rebels, humans are scattered across the various colonies and some return to Earth.

Man makes Cylons, Cylons rebel. Cylons find the 13th 'god' and see much in common. Cylons attack, surviving humans are chased... etc.

The wilcard becomes Earth and what happened to the other 12 gods.

[aldo_14]

Looking at the hints of 'cycles' there is another explanation:

The 'gods' create life on Earth, it rebels, the surviving gods are chased to Kobol. There we see a 'merger' (ala the Cylon-Human hybrid) which leads to living in peace. One of the gods rebels, humans are scattered across the various colonies and some return to Earth.

Man makes Cylons, Cylons rebel. Cylons find the 13th 'god' and see much in common. Cylons attack, surviving humans are chased... etc.

The wilcard becomes Earth and what happened to the other 12 gods.

Surely 11?  I thought Athena was dead.

[Sandwich]

That episode is messed up. The main problem I see is this: Supposedly, the Six-image and the Baltar-image (we can't really call them hallucinations) are appearing to Baltar and Six for the same reasons. I.e., it's not like Baltar has a Cylon chip in his brain, since Six obviously doesn't have a "human" chip in hers - no, both images appear for the same reason, whatever that may be.

Now, based on that premise, the Six-image is conclusively not a Cylon transmission, since the Baltar-image exists. Nor are the images mere hallucinations formed completely inside the mind of each person seeing the hallucination, since the Six-image has proven to have knowledge that Baltar could not have known.

So, they're not mental images, and they can't be pinned on the Cylons. Which leaves us with what? A powerful third-party influencing both human and Cylon for whatever reason? The God(s), perhaps? I think that's beyond what RDM would allow. Some other alien race? Also, not a direction BSG would ever go. Which forces us to revisit our original premise.

Ok, so let's look at what Baltar and Six have in common. They were both in close proximity to each other what hit by the blast wave. They both started seeing images of the other basically from the moment they were no longer in their presence (which coincides with the nuclear blast, unfortunately). However, the scope of knowledge differs from Six to Baltar - but then again, Six is a Cylon, while Baltar is human.

The only conclusion I can see is that at the moment Six died in such close proximity to Baltar, her transmission was partially intercepted by Baltar's mind. Somehow, her resurrection transmission took with it some of Baltar's personality, which manifests itself as typical and standard schitzophrenia. However, while passing through Baltar's personality, some of herself was left behind as well... a part that somehow has knowledge beyond Baltar's knowledge, perhaps subconciously connected in real-time to the resurrected Six on Caprica.

[Mefustae]

AFAIK he's said he doesn't want to use that part of the original story.

Indeed, I recall mentioning of the 'War of the Blades' or something along those lines out of the book of Pythia, and though it's not stated by any of the characters [AFAIK], you can see mentions of it when the camera gives the close-ups of Pythia in Home Pt. 1 & 2 etc. It'd be interesting to see what this war actually constituted.

[NGTM-1R]

Actually, what struck me about the episode was that the Cylons deal so calmly with dying. The human ones don't actually mimic human conciousness all that well, do they? It's like a human having a near-death experience and going "Oh, that was stupid." It just doesn't happen.

Unintentional (probably) symbolism: Cylons are born from the light into the darkness.

[Ace]

Actually I was a bit shocked at how poorly they handled 'dying.'

They seemed to have a bit of shock when being resurrected which you would assume wouldn't quite be there.

Boomber going through shock, yes, but I expected Six to be a bit more "I completed my mission" and nothing more save then the shock of finding a Baltar in her head. (which slowly eats at her)

For that matter, why are they even resurrecting Galactica Boomer? Sleeper agents like that are tailored for a specific purpose, they're more like the Centurions. You wouldn't want a Cylon like that in the general populace.

Six getting corrupted, sure, but Boomer should have instantly been "boxed." It might have been more plausible if Three was observing her because she was going to be instantly boxed, but was resurrected "by popular demand" because "God's will overwhelms any human corruption" or such nonsense.

[Bobboau]

because the cylons respect life.

[WMCoolmon]

...

There seems to be some kind of temporary memory loss associated with the transferrence, also, Six was sort of hit by a tidal wave. Being ripped apart by such would be a very painful last memory, I think.

As near as I can tell, the reason they resurrected Boomer is because, A) she may have had additional information and B) she's not really a threat. Perhaps they wanted to study her, to compare her to the behavior of Caprica Boomer. When "death becomes a learning experience", you can afford to keep double agents around in apartment rooms, I guess.

The biggest problem I see with the 'merge' theory is that both Baltar and Six have versions of the other in their head, not necessarily the real one. It seems to be more of an idealized version, with the aspects of the other that the one found most attractive. Both visions, however, bear a strong resemblance to each other (personality wise).