guesses, guesses

What we know (or think we know) as of tonight's BSG episode:

1. The Galactica is on its way out. Even the Cylon goop isn't helping. No deus ex machina solution here.

2. Boomer is bad news, but she seems to love Tyrol. Or maybe she was just using him. Remember how Boomer seemed to be the Cylon most in command at the very end of the 2003 miniseries? There's a case to be made that she's more evil than Cavil, quite unlike her good sibling Athena, the Abel in this feminine Abel/Cain pairing.

3. Boomer may or may not have gotten away with Hera when she attempted the jump in her damaged Raptor. Whether Hera was actually in the small cargo container is debatable, but Roslin's fainting spell, just as the Raptor jumps away, leads us once again to believe there's a connection between Roslin and Hera (through Hera's Cylon blood?), and that that connection might have been weakened or severed by the jump (which I assume was toward Cavil's fleet).

4. Hera drew a star pattern that turned out to be a series of musical notes that clued Kara in to a piano tune she remembered from childhood, supposedly taught by her father, Dreilide Thrace (Helo gives Kara a copy of her father's album, "Live at the [Helice?] Opera House"-- aha, the Opera House!).

5. That tune seems to be the same one that activated four of the Final Five back in the nebula. It's unclear whether Ellen Tigh recognized the tune.

6. Kirk and Spock might not have been able to engage in a mind meld when separated by a thin layer of glass, but Tyrol was able to receive Boomer's Cylon projection, which seems to be a form of inter-Cylon radiotelepathy.

7. At one point, the nameless pianist plays a tune that comes from the old BSG series. I laughed because I recognized it at once. The ways in which the new series sometimes refers to the old one are often amusing.

Theories:

1. Boomer made it safely in her jump (I need to watch the episode again to see if this is possible, or if the Raptor was destroyed during the jump), which puts Hera in Cavil's hands. Cavil is likely to use Hera to figure out the problem of reliable Cylon reproduction.

2. Kara says her dad taught her the tune she picks out on the piano. Might this mean that her father is the lost, artsy-fartsy Daniel, making Kara a second-generation Cylon?

3. Saul and Ellen Tigh talk over whether a higher power is manipulating events, which once again puts the theism question to the fore. The BSG writers have, in my opinion, done a great job of postponing the answer to the question of whether the BSG universe is theistic. It occurs to me, though, that there's a third way, one suggested by Intelligent Design Theory: the power or powers manipulating events (if they exist) might have godlike attributes, but not be gods (just as Intelligent Design Theory* doesn't imply the existence of a Judeo-Christian God).

4. We seem to have resolved a nagging question: has the fleet jumped away from Earth? Last I had heard, Adama had ordered people to look for viable planets, but many episodes after he had given that order, we viewers were left with no sense of whether the fleet was still in Earth's solar system. (This being a universe with an alternate Earth, why not have a terraformed Mars nearby?)

5. It'd be nice if the Galactica went out in a blaze of glory, fighting Cavil's (presumably massive) fleet, but there's no guarantee of this. The Galactica's fate could be more whimper than bang. The poor ship's been through a lot, after all, so a simple implosion is as likely a death as any other alternative.

6. One site offers the theory that Dreilide Thrace is a projection, like Head Six. I find this plausible. How do others react to the man's presence, if at all?

UPDATE: Upon second viewing, I'd say the mysterious pianist is almost certainly a projection. He vanishes the moment Tigh grabs Kara's shoulder to ask her where/how she learned to play that piece (the funkified version of "All Along the Watchtower" that ended Season 3).

7. I remember that old BSG tune well (the one Kara says was actually composed by some dude named Nomian-- Third Sonata, Second Movement), but can't remember what character(s) it announced. Count Iblis, the satanic figure from the old BSG, comes to mind. This might be in keeping with Thrace being the "harbinger of death," who will "lead the human race to its end." Sinister stuff.

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*I don't subscribe to Intelligent Design Theory.


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