All of which is to say: I think it's fate, not a plan.

Or Helo is the last unrevealed Cylon and is the only one programmed with the real plan!

(Okay, I don't really think that. But man, he does seem to have inadvertantly caused a bunch of important stuff to happen, didn't he?)

One of the main things I'd like explored before the series finale is why the cylons at once seem to want to kill every last human, then they seem to want to control them and/or protect them.

Daddy issues.

hahaha. can you imagine?

Please let this be cool and not a large floating red ball and a zombie virus and a polar bear. The Cylons have a plan. Please tell me that you do also.

I'm pretty sure there's no plan. Or, if there is, it's not the same plan the creators imagined it would be at the beginning of the show.

very disappointing.

Which is not to say that I wouldn't want everything to be tied to Helo. If everything could include me, that is.

I'm pretty sure there's no plan. Or, if there is, it's not the same plan the creators imagined it would be at the beginning of the show.

I don't know. I mean, I don't really have any idea whether, on a meta level, there was a master plan. But I don't see the show having gone in directions that it can't be hauled back from, either.

Watching some of the marathon last week, particularly the Caprica/New Caprica bits, I grasped more than I had before about the role of Boomer and Caprica Six in what later happened on N.C. - I hadn't really picked up on that before, and it helped. I wish they'd put a little more focus there, actually, because I think it's critical what's happening with/to the Cylons.

Reall, a lot of the craxy of the Cylons and what seems like a lack of direction has to do with individuality among the Cylons, with one (or more) among each model developing a real individual identity, and how completely that upends their society and their path. Boomer, Athena, Caprica, the main D'Anna. (Also possibly one or more of the Leobens? Though so far that impact has been confined to Kara.) They're dragging the collective Cylon society off in weird directions with their own, highly individual, motivations. And that's something that shouldn't be possible based on what the Cylons understand and believe about themselves. And now with the Five, who we don't know nearly enough about but who certainly seem to be one-offs, with an identity (and history, and destiny?) distinct from that of the others.

My thought on the Final Five is that they are capable of growing/aging, and maybe all the 12 models are, but the other 7 chose not to upload after death into their new baby bodies (sorta like reincarnation) because they were impatient and didn't want to bother with the wisdom that comes with a lifetime of growing up, so they built adult models and then there was a fundamental rift.

Or maybe the Final Five are capable of uploading into human babies after death.

One thing that confuses me about the Centurion and Humlons is that my brain keeps wanting the Humlons to have come first and built the Centurions and raiders as their dumb soldiers and guard dogs. But I think it was the other way around, but, I can't see these Centurions having any emotion or desire to rebel against their creators, and I certainly can't see them as having the intelligence to create the humlons. And then there's Six and Doral? talking about how humans are their parents and parents must die to make way for the children, but this is a surprise to the humans that there are humlons. How can they be surprised if they made them (I know, it was a big big secret nobody knew about). And my other gripe that I've been holding onto ever since the mini-series was how the hell did Adama know Leoben (or whomever that incarnation was) was a Cylon if humlons were a big sooper seekrit surprise to humanity at large. CKR was sweaty gross? That's kinda right up there with thinking that because four of you heard the same song, you must be Cylons.

So I'm pointing my finger at Adama for having more involvement in the Cylons and the Cylon war than we originally were led to believe. And would explain why Boomer was triggered to shoot him at the end of season 1. He's involved somehow. And maybe Kara and Lee are the original hybrids like Hera. Maybe Adama's one of the original hybrids and Lee's a second generation hybrid.

Coffee. Now.

Well canonically, the Cylons in the First Cylon War were Galactica TOS Cylons - metal robots with intelligence and self-awareness.

Then they decided it would be cheaper if the Cylons looked like people cool to be organic, and so they evolved themselves into the current humanoid models. Those models then built the modern-day centurians/raiders/etc, which don't have self-awareness because the humanoids don't want a rebellion on their hands.

The Final Five don't fit neatly into this story, and most likely evolved earlier along another path entirely.

But the human type cylons reprogrammed the Centaurions so that they couldn't think independently. (This came up in Exodus Part 1, I believe.)

So originally the Centaurions were a more independently thinking form of AI and rebelled and developed the human style Cylons who must have rebelled and reprogrammed the Centaurions to be their slaves.

Oh and in the webisodes/flashbacks associated with Razor - we see that the young Adama saw an early version of a Hybrid so he knew that the Cylons were experimenting with human/cylon Frankencreatures. (I'm sure that is official retcon on the part of the show but there it is.)

Okay, that's how rusty I am, I had forgotten/hadn't realized that the centurions now were different from the ones of the first Cylon War.

And, hey, at least the show realized that it needed to retcon.

Still have to catch Razor sometime.

So I'm pointing my finger at Adama for having more involvement in the Cylons and the Cylon war than we originally were led to believe.

This I believe. And the episode with the lost fighter pilot certainly lends credence to that.

My thought on the Final Five is that they are capable of growing/aging, and maybe all the 12 models are, but the other 7 chose not to upload after death into their new baby bodies (sorta like reincarnation) because they were impatient and didn't want to bother with the wisdom that comes with a lifetime of growing up, so they built adult models and then there was a fundamental rift.

I don't know that you even have to take it back to the baby issue - I'm not sure we know for a fact that even regular Cylons don't age. We haven't seen variation among the 7, true, but we're seeing a relatively brief chunk of time where aging might not be that apparent. Most planet based Cylons would have died in the attacks and been reborn, and who knows what the ship based ones were up to in the time preceding the attack. I'm not saying they do age, at this point, but I don't think we know they don't. So Tigh, who clearly has aged considerably during the time when he has been known continuously by non-Cylon characters may not necessarily require all that much explanation. If someone who's childhood is known by other characters is a Cylon though - Lee, that is - I'd need a lot more to go on.

But, on the baby note - I haven't seen it brought up by one of the four yet, but there is now another known hybrid besides Hera.

Still have to catch Razor sometime.

Damn Tivo. Recorded it, but they must have run a marathon soon after and it got lost in the "keep at most X episodes" crap.