4.15 No Exit

Whoa. Now this was the kind of episode where you really needed to be paying attention, where the show just dumps a heck of a lot of answers all in your lap, all at once, and expects you to swallow them up. So, let me see if I got it straight. . .

The Final Five were on Earth 3,000 years ago when the place started to go nuke crazy. However, these five had been involved in making resurrection technology. (A technology that had existed previously, but whilst on Kobol the Cylons had turned their backs on it before they parted ways with the humans for their respective colonies.)

So Tyrol, shacked up with Tory, along with Ellen and Tigh, and Anders seemingly along for the ride, all got nuked but then resurrected in their ship orbiting Earth. The sole survivors of their planet, they then set off to the colonies, for the other 12 tribes they parted from on Kobol, to try and inform the humans they needed to look after the Cylons they were destined to re-create. Unfortunately they didn’t have FTL drives so they travelled in such a way that meant they didn’t age, but 3,000 years passed. Good old relativity. They got to the colonies in time for the first Cylon war, which they intervened on and made the Cylons withdraw.

40 years passed, where the Final Five taught the Cylons (who had already been experimenting with human incarnations with their Hybrid) how to produce human models of Cylon. Ellen was apparently the chief designer, and imbued her creations with human emotions. She apparently made 8 models in all. ‘John’ Cavill was one of these, but rejected the body he had been given and turned on his creators.

Cavill killed the Final Five, and boxed up one of the models known as Daniel as he believed this was Ellen’s favourite. Then he orchestrated the attack on the colonies after resurrecting the Final Five, as human counterparts that had no memory of what they were, and inserting them into the human world. Apparently Cavill put the Final Five in positions where they would not be wiped out, or ensured their survival, and so continued the hunt of the human race after the attack as some twisted means of making the Final Five pay for what they did.

It’s a hell of a story.

Cavill knowing the Final Five all along was a shocking revelation, but one that works in hindsight. Peculiarly he has been present in most of their lives – whether it be counselling Tyrol, rescuing Anders from Earth, frakking Ellen. . . He was also the one that took Tigh’s eye! The only one he seems to have missed out is Tory. Still, this new information about Cavill sits just fine with previous episodes, enlightening his character and motivations regarding human and Cylon alike that we have seen since Season 2. Especially nice is the Boomer model that he involved in his ploy – we saw them together in earlier seasons and this episode emphasised the bond they had created between them.

It was also a nice payoff that this Boomer, ever the traitorous, impulsive model, was the one that whisked Ellen away at the end of the episode. I also really liked Ellen’s moment of awakening – from the shrieking human, to the calm serenity of the Final Five creator.

Daniel is an interesting one. I have to conclude that Starbuck is/was Daniel. Cavill apparently messed with the Daniel model – that liked to paint, like Starbuck – and perhaps that means he changed the sex of the model. Starbuck has always had masculine qualities (she originally WAS a man in the first Battlestar series so that works on a whole other level!). Quite what became of the Daniel boxed line, and if it is Starbuck how she was inserted onto Earth, or how she died and came back despite her ship and body being on Earth I don’t know. But this is the strongest plotline I think we’ve ever had to base conclusions on about her ever since she died and came back. (She’s still the harbinger of death, though, right!?)

Anders delivered much of the information due to the bullet in his brain he received in the last episode. I had the feeling he was not going to be around for much longer than this episode purely for the fact that he knew too much. (Liked how Tory was kicking herself for never asking him about “that song”!) By the end of the episode he was apparently brain dead – and with the resurrection ship destroyed it would at first seem he was doomed. But then Cavill did mention that Ellen had facilities somewhere, where she perhaps re-designed the resurrection technology during the 40 year armistice, so there’s a shot that Anders may resurrect in that facility.

If all that wasn’t enough, Apollo was officially appointed president and Adama conceded to allowing Tyrol the use of Cylon technology to save his knackered Galactica. Thematically I interpreted this as the integration of humans and Cylons being essential if they were going to survive – and I think Galactica’s got at least one last battle left to face in the shape of Cavill, whenever he catches up with them, so the old girl is going to need all the repairs she can get. . .

Unbelievably, we're now down to the Final Five episodes!