Or, if not quite that, that the Cylons engineered all the human-race, rather than the other way round.

I think the Galactica Watercooler podcast had a lengthy discussion of the possible outcomes after the Razor special. The everyone's a Cylon theory also helps explain the All Along The Watchtower incident, for reasons I can't quite recall.

The great attraction of the idea is the possibilities it opens up for when they find Earth. Maybe the Cylons and the Colonists will find out their true nature, gang up and kill all the humans. Maybe the humans were waiting, 2001 style, until their creations reached a certain stage of development (ie able to replicate their own creation) before calling them back to earth to join them in paradise. Maybe the humans are tyrranical bastards and will enslave them all.

Did Baltar not concoct a genuine human/Cylon test? Mind you, he could have been programmed to believe that he had.

There are quite a few gaping plot holes surrounding the Colonist/Cylon test. The whole premise of the test subplot was that colonists are biologically indistinguishable from Cylons, except through the test. And yet they glow when having sex, they can interface with machines by jabbing a lead into their arms, Colonist/Cylon offspring have magic cancer curing blood, they have superhuman strength, and so on. You'd think those properties would have fairly obvious markers.

That said, Moore has said that the Final Five are different from normal Cylons, so it's perfectly possible that the Colonists could be different as well - after all, there's no necessary reason why the humans should have designed the Colonists in the same way as the Colonists built the Cylons.

Still, it's all fun speculation at this stage.

Who are you calling "colonists?" The humans are all colonists.

You'd think those properties would have fairly obvious markers.

Presumably, the Cylons are able to beat the test if they want to. Besides, didn't Balthar rig the test to give the answer that he wanted?

The glowing spine thing was just a gimmick they haven't used since the first season.

"Colonists" helps distinguish the "humans" from the 13 tribe.

As for the test, not really. He eventually got an apparently working test, but he destroyed it before many people were subjected to it.

I see.

Indeed, we are the 13th tribe. All of us here. Fantastic.

Speak for yourself. I'm pretty sure I'm Cylon.

And on that note...what are the odds that they bring in Bob Dylan to play the 12th Cylon? And have any of those podcasts suggested an even halfway plausible suggestion why that song might be a Cylon homing signal?

Yes. I had planned to describe it in my post above, but I couldn't recall the details. It's to do with being recognisably earthian (to us), but not tied to a specific time and person (being a non-famous cover). I'm 90% certain it was Galactica Watercooler, but it might have been BSG Cast. Again it all ties in to the "everyone's a Cylon" theory - if the song was left by earth humans, then that means they know about the Final Five.

Check out the podcasts between the final episode of season 3 and Razor. They're worth listening to/watching regardless, especially if you're into Firefly. GWC did a Firefly rewatch during the downtime.

If the song was left by earth humans 5000 years earlier, it implies absolutely no linguistic drift in the intervening period, which whould be pretty impressive.

It also implies that humans left the rest of the colonists after the Dylan Era. Which suggests that all that stuff about Athena, Apollo and the zodiac stuff is humans having a lark with more primitive peoples.

And that when they get to earth, it will be roughly the seventy-first or seventy-second century.

"If the song was left by earth humans 5000 years earlier, it implies absolutely no linguistic drift in the intervening period, which whould be pretty impressive."

Yeah, but I don't think BSG's attention to detail includes historico-linguistic authenticity. All the colonists speak the same dialect of English, after all. And the 3,600 year old sacred scrolls are in English.

Besides, the cover was an instrumental, wasn't it (although the Four did subconsciously verbalise some of the lyrics)? I'm not sure what you mean in the second paragaph. The Thirteenth Tribe did leave the colonists after the flight from Kobol, according to the mythology. And anyway, the argument is that the Colonists were created by the "Thirteenth Tribe". The Greek stuff could have been planted in their heads.

That's not right, is it? As I understand it, the 13th tribe left from Kobol for Earth before the exodus of the other 12 tribes to the new colonies.

See here. http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Tribe_%28RDM%29


As I understand it, the 13th tribe left Kobol for Earth about 4,000 years pre-Cylon-nuking-the-fuck-out-of-the-colonies. The other 12 left Kobol about 2,000 years ago due to some calamity (I can't recall why the fleet just didn't settle on Kobol when they were there. What was wrong with it?)

Apparently, there was interaction between the Earth folk and the Kobol folk in that 2,000 year period between the exoduses, which is why all of the Lords of Kobol have Greek names.


As for "All Along the Watchtower," I figured the implication was that Bob Dylan didn't write it. He was just the first to write it down. It's in the very fabric of the universe, but only certain superior beings - Dylan, Hendrix, the final five Cylons - have the ability to hear it clearly.

Huh. I think the Battlestar Wiki needs better coordination. I was relying on the History of the Twelve Colonies entry, which states:

QUOTE:
In despair, Athena threw herself from the Gates of Hera, to her death. The leaders of the tribes were interred with her, and the populace of the tribes were taken in a "Galleon" (a spacecraft) to their places of refuge. Twelve tribes find and occupy a solar system with at least 12 habitable worlds, while a thirteenth tribe locates a world they named Earth. Zeus warned the survivors that any return to Kobol "would exact a price in blood."

But the section you cite has "textual" support, so let's go with that. It still doesn't make much difference if the Colonials are pseudo-Cylons with fabricated histories.

QUOTE:
As for "All Along the Watchtower," I figured the implication was that Bob Dylan didn't write it. He was just the first to write it down. It's in the very fabric of the universe, but only certain superior beings - Dylan, Hendrix, the final five Cylons - have the ability to hear it clearly.

Yeah, that's definitely a strong possibility. I'm pretty sure Ronald D Moore has said that it's definitely not supposed to be the Bob Dylan song per se. And it fits with the "All this has happened before and will happen again" stuff.

Yes, that entry is unclear. In all the other parts of the wiki, it says the 13th tribe left first.

Zeus warning that a return to Kobol would "exact a price of blood" may relate to why they can't just settle on Kobol. Perhaps they don't want to go there because the Cylons know where it is. But why then do they think they'll have better luck on earth, especially after what happened on New Caprica?


Another possibility I've read is that perhaps this is the distant, distant future and the original settlers of Kobol (some 5,000-6,000 years ago, perhaps) were from Earth. So this could easily be the 100th century CE. In which case, when they reach earth, they may find that it's a nuked over wasteland. Or perhaps its a nuked-over wasteland that has recovered and is now a paradise - like in that book about what would happen to Earth if people disappeared.





Here's another interesting note in the wiki piece on the episode titled "Home: Part II" (where they were on Kobol and the business with the Arrow and all of that).

"If each of the Twelve Tribes had an associated symbol that the Thirteenth Tribe identified in their constellations, did the Thirteenth Tribe have one of their own? There is a thirteenth constellation in the Zodiac, Ophiuchus the snake-bearer, which is not included in astrology. Ophiuchus may, however, be included in Greek mythology, as it is speculated that the snake-bearer represents Asclepius, the healer. The story of Asclepius is that he learned the secrets of life and death while watching one snake cure another snake he had wounded. Zeus struck Asclepius down out of fear that, under his care, the human race could become immortal."

QUOTE:
Another possibility I've read is that perhaps this is the distant, distant future and the original settlers of Kobol (some 5,000-6,000 years ago, perhaps) were from Earth.

That's always been my assumption. I didn't realise it wasn't standard (that or this is the distant past).