How I Would Have Written BSG

Spoilers, obviously, follow.  Last episode was a little depressing.  The writing staff didn't know what it was doing the whole way, and didn't resolve it in the best way.  Here's how I would have written it:

The basic plot premise doesn't quite make sense.  Pythia recounts the visit of the 13th tribe to Earth, but how would we know about that unless there was a return journey?  We're also led to believe that the Lords of Kobol were real, but that's not really followed up on.

Easy fix: Make humans the real 'Cylons,' who were created on Kobol but rose up against the humans, only to colonize elsewhere and leave behind resurrection.  The real humans return home to Earth, and their story is conveyed back by continued visits between Kobol-Earth-Colonies.  You can even toss in a few more cycles in here to leave everyone confused about which came first.  I thought this is how they were going to go when I first saw the series.  

Kara and Baltar are both half-Cylons; their father was Daniel, the number 7.  They see 'angels' because they have the capacity for projection, but these are essentially inner drives.  Kara's resurrection now becomes reasonable enough to imagine--and presents hope for humanity.  

The Cylons do have a "Plan"; remember how the keep finding the Colonials, only to give them just enough space to get away?  They want to keep them alive, because they're looking for Earth as well.  

Going down the dark road and killing off virtually everbody would be nice, but it's a little too easy.  But you can have them find Earth--our Earth, in the future--have the Cylons show up too, as they've been following, and you can destroy Earth.  All the religious folk are completely discredited.  

Not sure where to go from here, but resorting to deus ex machina in such a literal fashion is a little disappointing.

The Colony

If you've seen the latest BSG episode, there are some strange things I've picked up:

The humans figured that after the war, the Cylons retreated to a homeworld.  Now, it looks like the Cylons were purely space oriented from the beginning, and went to the space-borne 'Colony' in order to get the humanoid Cylon models. 

Cavil moved the Colony some time ago.  If they aren't messing with me with the screen shots, it looks like it was moved to near Jupiter--by Earth.  Cavil knows where Earth is, and the 'mandala' comes up again.

All this is also, however, building up to some sort of 'higher power' who seems to be manipulating events--acting through angels on Kara, Caprica-6, Baltar, etc.  Hera is mixed up into all of this.  Presumably this power created Kara's resurrection.

Strange things are going on with Kara Thrace.  She's the 'harbinger of death' but also can somehow resurrect, which is connected with a new future for the Cylon/Humans.  

Looks like they're going to kill off the battlestar by ramming it into the colony, rescuing Hera, and finding some closure.  I hope to be more pleasantly surprised than that.  

Go Gaeta

This is a little late, but I'd like to echo the call that the Human-Cylon alliance is unwarranted.  Consider the standpoint of an ordinary human citizen.  They just witnessed the genocide of virtually the entire human race, followed by intense pursuit, dictatoral coercion, and further attempts to finish the extinction of humanity.  The very Cylons responsible for all of these decisions then viciously turned on their fellow robots and now cynically demand protection from the fleet.  Just a few weeks ago, the rebels airlocked some humans and threatened to nuke the fleet.  The mere presence of these rebel Cylons (and, certainly, of the final five) attracts the Cavil faction, who might otherwise be persuaded to back off.  

And now Adama forces the Cylon issue through marine imposition of Cylon crews over the objection of the President and the Quorum?  Suddenly these "fleet security" issues emerge which can only be solved through immediate cooperation with the Cylons?  They really can't figure out any sort of agreement over technology transfer other than permanent allliance?  Besides, how can we forget that the only reason humanity still exists at all is that Adama kept potentially dangerous networking technology off the fleet, and Gaeta killed off remaining Cylon viruses.  What sort of potentially destructive Trojan horses will this (completely not understood) Cylon technology bring?

To top it all off, this same military leadership failed to realize the existence of sleeper agents, and are bizarrely letting them remain in the fleet.  In their reign of terror, pursuit of dictator power and love of secrecy, the Adama-Roslin regime has entirely discredited itself and needs to go.  Without the false promise of Earth, and the end of open human-Cylon hostility after we jump away, it's time to move beyond military dictatorship--and Caprican overlordship--to a more permanent state of existence.  

It's convenient from the point of view of the show's ideology to suggest that cooperation is the future.  From any half-way reasonable International Relations view, this is nonsense.  All the evidence suggests that the Cylons are simply a bloodthirsty race who can't seem to be at peace for more than a few days, either with the humans or even with each other.  

You can argue about the necessity of a coup at that moment.  Arguably, they could have waited until the superior jump drives were installed, or even until the Battlestar was fixed up.  Then Gaeta could have launched his coup at leisure.  Had they made a serious plan to grab the President, and shot the CO and XO on sight, it would have stood a far greater chance of success.  Everything we know about military and civilian morale suggests overwhelming hatred of the Cylon.  This is entirely expected; the humans are, after all, at war with them.  Only the direct personal appeals of Adama/Roslin kept the anti-coup movement going; their deaths would have ended the struggle.

I'm ignoring, of course, the fact that the entire show should never have gone beyond the point where they discovered a virus which could destroy all the Cylons.  If you find that; you use it and get out, and if someone stops you, you airlock them.