COWBOY PETE HANDICAPS “BSG”

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

In this, the final season of “Battlestar,” we will learn the identity of the remaining unrevealed Cylon. Below the ol’ Cowboy handicaps the most likely candidates…


TOM ZAREK—Odds: 1-1—FOR: It doesn’t get more metatextual than having the original Apollo, Richard Hatch, turn out to be the Number One Cylon. Prominent enough for everyone to go “Him?!?” And he’s missing from the big “Last Supper” picture, in which a chalice sitting next to an empty chair may symbolize that the missing Cylon isn’t represented in the portrait. AGAINST: Might be a shade too metatextual for the show’s creators.
LAURA ROSLIN—Odds: 2-1—FOR: Who better to have as a Cylon than someone who was in charge of education? And that was Roslin’s job before the Cylon attack wiped out the three dozen people ahead of her in the line of succession. Also, Cylon blood cured her of breast cancer. AGAINST: If a Cylon were in such a position of power, it’s amazing humanity is alive at all.
BALTAR—Odds: 5-1—FOR: We laugh now when we think about kids in the 1950s being told to duck under their desks in the case of a nuclear attack. What an absurd notion. So how equally absurd that Baltar survived the initial Cylon nuclear strike simply by crouching behind Number Six? Also, Lucy Lawless’s Cylon, upon “seeing” the number one Cylon, said, “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.” Considering some of what they put Baltar through, the apology makes sense. AGAINST: It would undercut the drama of his being humanity’s greatest tortured traitor if he’s not human.
LEE ADAMA—Odds: 10-1—FOR: The conversations he had with his father over how the old man would feel about Lee’s long-dead brother being a Cylon could be a foreshadowing. Plus he fought hard to get Baltar off the hook, and Baltar has been a valuable Cylon ally. AGAINST: He’s just gone through the interesting transition from fighter pilot to civilian. Giving him yet another shift in his status quo so quickly would undercut that.
DUALLA or GAETA—Odds: 20-1—FOR: Three of the newly revealed four are active in the military fleet. Dualla or Gaeta would be consistent with that. AGAINST: Kind of an anticlimactic reveal.
STARBUCK—Odds: 30-1—FOR: She disappeared under mysterious circumstances, returned under mysterious circumstances, and practically has a big “Suspect me as a Cylon” sign stuck on her back. AGAINST: Too obvious.
CALLY TYROL—Odds: 50-1—FOR: Tidily resolves the fact that, with the reveal of Tyrol being a Cylon, there are now two Cylon/Human hybrids running around. AGAINST: I thought Cylons couldn’t reproduce. Unless it’s a fake-out and the chief isn’t actually a Cylon. Great, now my head’s starting to hurt.
ADMIRAL BILL ADAMA—Odds: 100-1—FOR: Roslin once said to him, in requesting that he take Baltar’s test, “If you’re a Cylon, I’d like to know,” to which he replied, “If I’m a Cylon, you’re really screwed.” That line would take on a whole new meaning, plus his initial opposition to Roslin and his new determination to lead them away from what Starbuck contends is the true path to earth makes sense. AGAINST: Nothing else would make sense. Nothing from Sharon’s putting bullets into him to the fact that the humans are still alive holds water.
AGATHON—Odds—150-1—FOR: Not much. AGAINST: Everything. Hera is no longer a hybrid, plus we’re back to two Cylons reproducing.
HELEN TIGH—Odds—200-1—FOR: She’s dead. But since that means nothing to Cylons, how much of a psych-out would it be if she turns up as their leader. Plus all her manipulation of her husband is consistent with a Cylon trying to exert her influence. AGAINST: With Tigh already revealed as a Cylon, would be repetitive.
ADMIRAL CANE—Odds—200-1—FOR: Likewise dead. Would give further support as to why the Pegasus managed to survive the Cylon attack. Would also explain her brutal command style and her selection of a support staff so abysmal that the Pegasus went through CO’s the way Spinal Tap went through drummers. AGAINST: Why would Six murder her?
BILLY—Odds—250-1—FOR: Just as dead as the previous two. Since the current assistant to the president is a Cylon, why not the previous one? AGAINST: Because it would be repetitive, that’s why.
BOXEY—Odds—300-1—FOR: For a series so obsessed with religious symbolism, how can they pass up Isa. 11-6, “And a little child shall lead them?” AGAINST: Hasn’t been seen since the very earliest episodes.
PATRICK MCGOOHAN–Odds–1000-1–FOR: The last time we had a character named Number Six and a big reveal of a Number One, it was in “The Prisoner” and it turned out to be McGoohan himself. AGAINST: Makes no frakking sense. Then again, neither did “The Prisoner,” so…

105 comments on “COWBOY PETE HANDICAPS “BSG””

  1. Keith M. wrote: It’s highly unlikely that Anders fought on Caprica for so long without a Centurion getting at least as good of a glimpse of him as they got when he was in the cockpit. So someone had to flip to switch and turn on the music and make things change.
    That’s why they were lobotomizing the raiders. The raiders developed “higher brain functions” and recognized Anders as one of the final 5, thus calling off the attack against the will of the human cylons. Six thinks that was great, Dean Stockwell — not so much. But it was the Raiders’ growth, that “jump” in cognition, that (a) first recognized Anders in the season opener and (b) generated the plot for last night’s episode.
    AD

  2. I can’t believe you missed this one.
    Dr. Cottle—Odds: 10-1
    For: Cylons can connect to a network by sticking a fiber optic wire up their arms and their spines light up when having hot sex. Yet they expect us to believe that the ships senior medical officer can’t detect any medical difference between a Human and a Cylon? Cottle being a Cylon would fill a few plot holes. He is also in a position to get lots of intel. Not to mention access and supervision of any Cylon Human Hybrids that pop out. He has also taken his oath to do no harm to include Cylon patients as well as Humans.
    AGAINST: Not as sexy a reveal as one of the main cast.

  3. What about that new girl introduced in Razor? You mean they go to all that effort to introduce someone new and then never mention her again?

  4. “Designing a racial model that can’t reproduce/manufacture new ones?”
    Ah, but they’re effectively immortal. If their bodies start wearing out, they can just suicide and download into new bodies. It’s almost like asexual reproduction. The advantage of sexual reproduction is that it introduces variety and diversity into the process…but it also introduces an element of volatility that the creators of the Cylons may have wanted to limit.
    As for who’s the final Cylon…I think the one thing we CAN be sure of is that the Cylons can’t sexually reproduce with one another. Otherwise the basestars would have some all-Cylon babies on them by now, given how obsessed the Cylons seem to be with baby Hera et al. So that lets out Helo and Cally pretty thoroughly, methinks.

  5. It seems to me ther are 2 big reveals coming
    the final cylon
    and the cylon”god”
    I dont think they are one and the same.

  7. I like the Cottle theory too.
    I’m still convinced Deanna’s apology was meant for Tigh, and I thought so as soon as I saw that scene.
    I’m betting Baltar is the Cylon. How ironic would it be that this hedonistic, selfish coward’s been avoiding death all this time, only to find that death doesn’t mean much more to him than a bad dream?

  9. I can’t imagine Dirk Benedict having anything to do with the show. He’s said some extremely negative things about the show and especially about the new Starbuck.

  10. It has to be ZAREK.
    It’s the only way the Leoben statement “Adama is a cylon” could make sense. :p Apollo (the first one, Richard Hatch) was an Adama.

  11. I disagree on several of these:
    Zarek: doesn’t work dramatically. Zarek’s already a relatively one-dimensional villain, at least by the standards of this show. So I think he fails the “too obvious” test by almost as much as Starbuck.
    Starbuck: that said, there is *so* much evidence for it being her that I’m tempted to believe it really is. It’s almost a double-think at this point — it’s so obvious that she *can’t* be, because it’s so obvious that she is, that she probably is.
    Lee: they keep saying that each Cylon has “always” been a Cylon. The implication to me is that they aren’t replacing real people, but were added into human society, and the records faked to document their existence. If that’s true, it *can’t* be Lee and not Bill, since Bill has known him since birth.
    Bill: actually, I don’t think it’s so preposterous. What we’re seeing from the newly-revealed Cylons is that they don’t remember being Cylons, and they’re honestly terrified about the possibility that they might suddenly be compelled to support the Cylons. Since we don’t really know what the Cylon endgame is (indeed, there is lots of evidence that most of the Cylons don’t know what their “plan” is), I don’t think we can rule out the possibility that he simply doesn’t know, and that he’s actually following that mysterious plan.

  12. Fair enough, though apparantly he has mellowed about it. How about Dualla? She married Lee, and using the “Leoban said” logic, she would be an Adama.

  13. As I watched the series, I’ve allowed myself alot of speculation on where BSG is going. I’ve had to change my views as the storyline progressed. So here’s my current theory.
    I honestly don’t know who the 12th is, but I remain certain that the 12 represent the 12 Lords of Kobol, who in turn are an almalgam of Greco-Roman myth. Perhaps the 12 are clones of the Lords, the Lords being superhuman.
    This brings up something else, if there are 12 colonies reprentive of the 12 Lords, and Earth is the 13th colony, should also have a Lord?
    My idea is to find the 13th Lord (or cylon clone) hiding out on a world than includes Ovoids (thereby an episode titled “Lord of Flies”; but I digress). They will out the 4 and reveal the last model.
    As to the Cylon god- Baltar. It makes sense that the smug, selfish, scientist would love to create his own species. The’angels’ are his future self grooming him for the job. Also his future self could shape events in the past to be seen as prophesies.
    Finally, I don’t think Earth is a hidden colony; this was a myth created to found Kobol (read Plato’s Republic, it’s all there). I mean with everything we know about evolution and relationships between species, it would make BSG a fairy tail.
    Is Moore a Republican??? 🙂

  15. The whole “Leoban said” argument is hogwash. In the same episode where he claimed the Adama was a cylon, he also claimed that there was a nuclear warhead hidden in the fleet about to go off. He even openly admitted that he lied about it in that very episode. Claiming the something sensational must be true because Lioben said it (especially that he said it then) is asking to be disappointed. I don’t where this idea that cylons don’t lie came from. We’ve seen them lie to each other and most of them wouldn’t bat an eyelash at lying to a human.

  16. True, the Cylons lie. However, since they appear at least to be religious zealots, and it has been my experience that religious zealots will lie about many things, they will NEVER lie about their religion or it’s particulars, it is quite possible that Leoban was truthful in this matter of Cylon theology.

  17. One interesting thing I noticed. The “regular” cylons are numbered 1-6 and then 8. “Seven” is part of the final five (insert Jeri Ryan joke here). I wonder in the fact that there is a “missing” number prior to the Sharons/Eights are connected to the various “problems” with that model (Boomer voting against another 8, Athena joining the humans, etc).
    David

  18. “True, the Cylons lie. However, since they appear at least to be religious zealots, and it has been my experience that religious zealots will lie about many things, they will NEVER lie about their religion or it’s particulars, it is quite possible that Leoban was truthful in this matter of Cylon theology.”
    I’ve seen zealots lie. Sometimes they’ll do it just to mess with the heads of people they think of as ignorant.
    What’s been shown in recent episodes is that the seven do not know the identities of the final five. The episode that aired a couple of days ago had three Cylon models convinced that the final five were within the fleet while another flatly denied it. None of them were acting like they had prior knowledge of who any of the five might be. They just acted like it was a matter of opinion. They wouldn’t have acted that way if they knew for a fact that at least one of the final five was in the fleet.
    Thus, Leoban’s pants were very much on fire.

  19. We can debate whether religgion is faith, opinion, or faith based opinion. Leobon may be lying, or, his obsession with Starbuck could point the finger at her. However, I think she’s to obvious. Someone like Gaeta or Dualla would work, but I still think the fifth is some as yet unseen character.

  20. I thought about it being a character we haven’t seen yet. It’s possible, but I don’t think it is very likely.
    With only one season left, there’s very little time for the last Cylon to have a lot of impact. So if he isn’t someone we’ve already seen, he’ll need to do something huge. That isn’t impossible, the original series had Satan show up (they called him Count Ibis).
    But no matter what they do with a new character, it won’t have the built in impact of saying that one of the main characters was a Cylon. That’s the kind of thing that makes viewers rethink everything they’ve seen. So I’d say that the odds of a new character being the Cylon are low.

  22. Sorry for the gap, my son hit enter. Patrick MacNee. Perfect. He played Satan/Count Iblis, as well as voicing Imperious Leader in the original.
    Him or Diana Rigg.

  23. I also like Cottle as the last Cylon. In a scene on New Caprica, Lucy Lawless asks him if the blood on him is human or cylon. Cottle’s response was something to the effect of ‘does it really matter?’. I think at some point, the final five wanted nothing to do with the other cylon’s ‘plan’ to destroy humanity but to join them instead.
    My other suspect was Dualla. There was a montage scene in the pilot miniseries where they paralleled Boomer returning to Galactica and embracing Tyrol and Dualla walking up to Billy in a hallway and suddenly kissing him. Later, knowing the Cylon plan to reproduce, I began to think that one of them (Dualla or Billy) is also a Cylon. While the known four have managed to get themselves into important positions, she was able to get together with the president’s most trusted advisor and later the CAG and future commander of Pegasus.
    I’m not sure if this is related to the topic, but near the end of the pilot miniseries Bill Adama is holding a letter that says there are 12 cylon models. Anybody remember where he got that from? One of the final 5 perhaps?
    Finally, thanks for bringing Cowboy Pete back!

  24. It was never actually established where that note in the miniseries came from, but I believe the production team has said it was left by Baltar.

  25. Incredibly stupid (or quite clever) hint that Tom Zarek is the final Cylon:
    The mystery of the final five plotline was first presented in an episode titled “Torn”. The title refered to Tigh and Starbuck starting trouble against those who were not stuck on New Caprica, but also could mean the torn status of the 12 Cylons or Baltar’s own internal conflict. The title also might be a hint that Tom Zarek is one of the Final Five.
    Where is the Zarek connection? On my lousy non-HD television, the title “TORN” looked like “TOM” (Torn/Tom) and for a few weeks I thought Tom was the name of that episode. I thought this was a really dumb name, since Zarek doesn’t appear in the episode at all (please tell me somebody else made this mistake too). It’s probably just my fanboy habit of reading too much into things, but what if that reading was intentional? What if it was a hint like the anagrams on Lost?

  26. My completely out-there theory is that the final Cylon isn’t a person at all. It’s the Six in Baltar’s brain – in reality, a sophisticated Cylon AI that can transfer itself, virus-like, into humans.
    Odds are probably at least as good as Patrick McGoohan!

  27. I said it on March 28, 2007 in Cowboy Pete’s “2008 Motherfracker Edition” and I still believe it, the final one is Doc Cottle. As for the crap about Dirk showing up in this season, I think that is highly unlikely, but I still think back to that podcast of the season one cliff hanger where they talked about God being revealed as Dirk.

  28. Okay, here’s my out-there theory:
    The four new Cylons all presumably remember their lives, all the way back to childhood. At least, none of them has gone “I was wondering why I have no memories before the age of 20…”. So, that may mean they have fabricated or implanted memories of their human lives. But another alternative I was thinking about is, what if they were born to human parents? Perhaps these 5, being so much more human in design, ressurect after a death the old fashioned way – they are born and grow up? They could be transferred or planted in a way simmilar, in theory, to whatever means put Six in Baltar’s head.
    Running with that, with the expectation that the final Cylon is someone we’ve seen before, but will come as a surprise, and taking the “this has happened before, and will happen again” theme a metaphysically literal place: I propose Hera as the final Cylon.

  29. This is kind of off-topic.
    “It has all happen before and it will all happen again”.
    There is time travel involved. Somebody will be stuck in the past and write all the “prophecies” from his/her/their expirences.
    Maybe Starbucks.
    Maybe one of the Hybrids or one of the Cylons is send to the past and he is an ancestor of Starbucks and that is why she has visions since she was a little girl. She may be 1/64 cylon or something.
    Maybe a Cylon in the fleet or the human/cylon babys and in a paradox they became the first “human beings” in history and populate the colonies. Humans evolving from Cylons or from Hybrids.
    What is missing in all this theories is the religious aspect.

  30. I don’t think much of the religious stuff will ever get answered. I think they’re in a position where any answer that satisfies some of the fans will be a huge disappointment to the vast majority. God and prophecy are all fine in a vague sense, but once they start getting into stuff like time travel to explain the mechanics of it, they strip all the grandness out of the story.
    So I don’t think they’ll ever really explain the prophecies, the characters running around in Baltaar’s and Six’s heads, or reveal who the original programmers and the Cylon god were.

  31. Let’s just say I’m glad they dropped the “They have a plan” from the opening since it’s been increasingly clear that the Cylons have as much of a plan as a Robin Williams improv performance.
    We put it here as, “And they have a Plan. But that Plan didn’t work out, so they tried another plan. That one wasn’t so hot either. Now they’re just winging it.”
    Ron Moore has stated that the Cylons are all originals – nobody was abducted and replaced, or anything like that. Of course, Ron also stated that Starbuck was dead, so we know he’ll lie for the sake of his show…
    I still think Dualla and Gaeta are possibles – the others are all close to/trusted advisors for the human leadership (okay, Tyrol’s a bit of a stretch on that, but let’s just ride with this, all right?). Dee was responsible for persuading Bill to get the band back togeth- ah, I mean rejoin the rest of the Fleet at Kobol; she also helped persuade Lee to take the Pegasus back to assist in the exodus from New Caprica, in defiance of Bill’s order that they should go on ahead and search for Earth.
    I think the Five are actually in opposition to the Seven, and are trying to save the remnant of humanity, not destroy them. (If the Five wanted all the humans dead, after all, their prime moment to strike would have been after Boomer shot the Commander, with Tigh in charge of the Fleet and Tyrol in charge of the Vipers…)

  32. “Of course, Ron also stated that Starbuck was dead, so we know he’ll lie for the sake of his show…”
    How do we know she didn’t die?

  33. I seem to recall reading that the “Spines light up during sex” has been retconned to a “special effect only visible to the audience, not actually happening”, probably because it finally occurred to someone this provided a pretty easy test for Cylons.
    Yeah, the “stick a random fiber optic cable in your arm and transmit through it” is another silly thing about “undetectable” Cylons…

  34. Glad to see others propose time travel as a device to explain some plot points. It can work on BSG because unlike Star Trek, it hasn’t been beaten to death (I don’t want to get started on Abrams’ movie).
    Also as to the obvious sign of a Cylon, what if they are composed of nanobots that can mimic on the molecular level? Their technological aspects become apparent when the situation calls for it. During sex?…Harvesting semen to create a hybrid?
    BTW, can somebody help me understand the Basestar’s hybrid? It’s not one of the 12, and explainations are whispered during the show and even on repeat plays I still don’t get it.

  36. It can’t be Cane or Starbuck or Bill Adama because they’re already too machinelike. The metatext is that the more we fight, the more like our enemy we become. The Final Four were the most human, the most unexpected, and the most integral of the crew. Sure, the big people make the decisions, but these four are each in positions of tremendous power: crew chief, pilot, assistant, and second-in-command. My bet is Gaeta to win, Roslin to place, and Cottle to show.

  37. Odds 10-1. My money is on the doc. Have you seen how much he smokes. Seriously he has to be a Cylon. Every time you see him he is lighting another square. As old as is looks is lungs would have been reduced to a pulsing mass of tar if he was not a Cylon. Plus I think I heard him say F*CK once when he was giving Baltar a brain scan to search for a cylon chip in his brain.

  38. Oh right. I totally forgot that Doc Cottle was the one who told Baltaar that there was no chip in his head. That does up the odds.
    But part of me says the last reveal has to be a major player. Adama, Lee, Roslin, Baltaar, or Starbuck. I’d rule some of those out for various reasons, but just based on prestige, those are the ones that will get the biggest reaction from viewers.

  39. Exactly, Tom G., there was some major visual hyperbole going on in the early episodes.
    Never mind the fiber optic line; how else do you explain a woman in a bright red dress walking away with no consequences when she’d just snapped a baby’s neck in the middle of a crowd?

  40. Was it ever established there actually IS a chip in Baltar’s head? I thought that was Six frakking with Baltar’s head.

  41. No, it was established that there *wasn’t* a chip in his head. By Dr. Cottle.
    If Dr. Cottle was lying about that, there are a lot of interesting implications. It would seem to imply that he’s working with the visions in Baltaar’s head. Which would also implay that he’s working with the ghost Baltaar that is in Caprica Six’s head. They never met since the show started, but her visions are quite similar to Baltaar’s.
    So that would mean he’s not a sleeper agent like the other members of the final five, but he’s also not out to destroy the fleet like the seven was.

  42. Thompson and Weedle have admitted to ongoing retcons throughout the series — taking what has been seen on screen and using that, along side whatever ideas they’ve had in their heads, to make the show fairly consistent.
    I think whatever plan Ron Moore had during the miniseries has been altered along the way. Not significantly, but enough to work with what he had. I’m guessing that early on in the show the FF would be guest and established characters for plot developments as needed — space to be filled. It wasn’t until Moore decided to end the show that he decided to tweak the FF and make them -all- existing actors and then go from there.
    He might still be holding open the Final Cylon as a guest star, but I doubt it.

  43. I favor BrianOsserman’s theory about Dr. Cottle as the final Cylon. I think it makes perfect sense.
    But, I also agree with David that the 12 humanoid Cylons represents the 12 Lords of Kobol… And Tom Zarek did refer to Adama as Zeus on more than one occasion… dramatic irony, anyone?
    And are the visions of Baltar and Caprica Six sent from Count Iblis, the OG BSG’s version of Satan?
    *Spoiler Alert!!!*
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    I also remembered that in Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea’s The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Hagbard Celine, the captain of the golden submarine and the leader of the Discordian Movement, turned out to be the 5th Hidden Illuminatus Primus, playing both sides against the middle. Would Ron Moore be doing a riff on the book and that means that Adama IS the final 5th Hidden Cylon? Or am I reaching too far?

  44. My money is on Cally. In the 4/18/08 episode she kept mentioning that she had been taking the anti-depressants/sleeping pills since the Galactica got to the nebula where the other 4 learned their identities. I think it’s also interesting that the preview commercial drops the hint that Saul Tye’s dead wife may have been a Six.

  45. So does that make the baby a pure cylon? One line Cally said was that Galen never touched after he hit her. So is does the baby have a different father?
    Didn’t Tori look happy when she killed Calley? Maybe the reason the five were seperated was they have a tendency to go nuts.
    Not that the seven are any better. Killing, seducing each other. Makes you wonder why the original Cylons saw this as an upgrade. Or did they?
    I think the 12th is on Earth, and we’ll know who when are travellers hit terra firma.
    But what Earth? They shot Eastern North America in daylight. Kara made no reference to settlements or any satellites.
    I’ll be disappointed if the survivors are our ancestors. It doesn’t jive from a common sense point of view.
    Everything they mention has Greco-Roman roots, except the Battlestar Valkyrie. But was that there for a reason?
    So many questions….

  46. “One line Cally said was that Galen never touched after he hit her. So is does the baby have a different father?”
    No. They were talking about violence, she just meant that he hadn’t hit her again. Cally didn’t even get pregnant until several months after he hurt her, so it would have been mentioned by now if he wasn’t the father.

  47. My suspects, in descending order:
    Doc Cottle–I’m new to this one, but the guy is well-placed, has no history, and there are blanks that could be filled by him being the Last Toaster.
    Dualla–Then Leoben wouldn’t ‘technically’ be lying, since she married into the Adama family….’he mixes lies with truth,’ Bill told Starbuck.
    Romo Lampkin–He’s coming back, and I honestly think he’s a good candidate.
    Tom Zarek–Would be a little hokey. I mean, honestly. Then Leoben’s lie would be true in the absolute LAMEST way possible.
    Also, has anyone thought that maybe the final one might not be a sleeper, but aware the whole time? Might explain how the other four got ‘switched on’?

  48. No spoiler….
    Anyone notice the secret meeting location?
    Weapons locker 1701D.
    I almost see our distinguished host’s hand there…
    J.

  50. I’ll say it again: Apollo and Zarek. Same Cylon model, different ages. Simply pulling back the curtain on the last model would be anti-climactic now. A bigger twist is ideal.
    And the final model must be someone with a greater shock value than the previously revealed. That removes most characters from the equation.
    The idea that the last Cylon is a previously never before seen character is bizarre.

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