The Sci-Fi Cast

To quote John “Hannibal” Smith, “I love it when a plan comes together.” Whether it’s a novel, a movie, a TV show or a play, it’s tremendously satisfying to see a tangled plot unravel in a surprising and logical way. Last weekend, I sat down to watch the Battlestar Galactica miniseries that introduced the series on the Sci Fi network a few years ago and was struck with that very sense of satisfaction.

Warning: If you aren’t caught up to episode 13 of season four, stop reading NOW! This means you. The rest of this post contains spoilers. You have been warned. However, we don’t want you to feel left out, so here’s the short, spoiler-free version of this post: Ron Moore is a genius.

As you may recall, the miniseries begins with a representative of the colonies sitting at a desk inside an orbiting space station. As he shuffles papers, the titles tell of a bloody war between cylons and humans that raged some 40 years prior. After a treaty was finally reached, the cylons left to find their own world, and this neutral space station was constructed as a meeting place to further diplomatic relationships between the two parties.

For forty years, no cylon had ever visited the station. The colonial representative sat at his desk, reviewing his notes. Among them was a sketch of an old-school style centurion. The kind that was discovered in the mass grave on Earth in episode 13 of season 4. See below for a comparison:

First, the sketch

Next, the helmet

In episode 13, season 4 we learn that the fabled 13th colony was all cylon, and based on Earth. During the opening scene of the miniseries, we learn that the cylons traveled through space to find a planet of their own after a long and bloody battle. Could the current series have picked up where the original BSG series — that one being the original battle between cylon and human kind — left off?

This has all happened before, and this will all happen again.