‘Battlestar Galactica’ open thread for “No Exit”

Wow, this episode went quickly. I could have sworn that was only twenty minutes.

It's probably just the mood I was already in, but the new intro made my eyes mist over a bit. I think it's starting to hit home that there are only five episodes (plus movie!) left.

It's disconcerting how well the pieces are slotting together. I'm eager to rewatch the show, knowing what we know now -- all the business with Ellen and Cavil/John/One. It feels like it couldn't have been any other way.

While it didn't strike me so at the time, in retrospect the whole Sam/brain damage situation seems a bit of a contrived way to dump the back story info.

That said, who the frak is Daniel?

That said, who the frak is Daniel?

Lots of hints. Who sees a figure warning them since the Apocalypse? Who is predisposed to the one true god? Who has a talent for cybernetics...

My guess is that after #1 killed Daniel's production line he took the prototype and wiped his memory and did the same thing that he did to he did to the parents. What bigger joke to play on the artist than to reprogram him as a science genius and then stick him on a backwater colony where no one would take him seriously and he would have no future.

Poor bastard, really. He has had all his hopes smashed so many times turning out to actually be a cylon in the end is kind of tragic.

Oh, this didn't post, earlier.

The dismissal strictly on the basis of gender feels like a red herring. Clearly there's something really weird going on with Starbuck. Daniel's DNA was corrupted; he was an artist, like Kara. Starbuck (perhaps just incidentally) was a man in the original series. There are dots here...

Speaking of which -- what with the increasing use of the "original" Cylons, and all this business about how this drama has unfolded before, and will again, and the idea that there was another generation of Cylons thousands of years ago, I'm wondering if there's a sort of indirect attempt to suggest that yes, there is a narrative connection with the original series.

Incidentally, I had completely forgotten that when Ellen was killed, the resurrection hub was still working. It's probably an obvious detail, but it's things like this (and all that she was up to with Cavil/John on New Caprica) that help the impression that this is all developing elegantly and organically.

hey, i still can't get over the fact that anders was repaired by a peecee.

hey, i still can't get over the fact that anders was repaired by a peecee.

Except it appears, from the end, that Anders had his hard drive wiped.

There are a lot of possiblities including someone that we haven't seen before. That said, could Daniel be the recently executed mutineer?
Was into art etc as a kid, (viewed in a certain way) his leg was showing signs of abnormal healing.
If so, it puts them in the intetresting spot of having killed the one they need.

Ken | February 14, 2009 12:59 PM:

That said, who the frak is Daniel?

As Ryan H said, Daniel is cylon model #7 -- boxed by Cavil at some point before the attack on the 12 Colonies. I am certain we'll learn all about him very soon, via judicious use of flashbacks! But I disagree that he's hidden in the fleet, and there's no way he's Baltar; we've already been down that road at least once.

From what Ron Moore says in the podcast, they used the fact that Sharon was #8 to add the 13 skinjob models twist, because the "final five" weren't really "final" if one was #7 and the rest were 9, 10, 11, and 12. Kind of fun, and I didn't see it coming.

I like that it didn't turn into another "who is the final cylon" thing, which would've been a bit disappointing -- these BSG writers really know how to tie up loose ends and answer questions nobody thought would be important at the start, to make a cohesive whole out of something decidedly episodic. These final episodes are going to ruin science fiction forever... how can anything live up to this standard?

Actually, I just noticed that the Final Five really aren't final. They were the First Five, according to Ellen they had met with the already-rebelling metal Centurions and had offered to fix their hybrid projects as a condition of ending the war 40-plus years ago. They then built John (Cavil), who got mad about it and decided it was a bad move. John's not really Number 1, Six is not Six, Eight is not Eight, and we are not Devo. Wait...

You know, I really thought they weren't going to make all the loose plot threads come together, and yet, somehow, they have. I'm impressed.

This was probably the most exciting infodump episode I've ever seen.

Also, count me in on thinking part of Daniel might be in Starbuck Mk. II, or else he's a new character. If Baltar was a cylon, we'd know already.