Maybe, maybe not – but clearly you don’t. I realize I’m chiming in late, but here’s the thing with Mitochondrial Eve – she is not the only female from her generation who passed on any offspring. She is simply the one whose mitochondrial DNA was passed on to all of us. Other females may have passed on progeny – in fact they almost certainly did. Mitochondrial Eve is simply the woman whose mitochondrial DNA have managed to crowd out everyone else’s.

Simple example – most of us (all of us, one would hope) have 4 grandparents. Whose mitochondrial DNA did we inherit? That of our maternal grandmother. Does that mean our other 3 grandparents didn’t pass on any genes, or don’t have any surviving descendants? Of course not! They simply did not pass on their mitochondrial DNA to you. It’s quite possible, in fact, that you have received less than 25% of your 30,000 or so genes from your maternal grandmother, so she may actually have passed on fewer of her genes to you than any of your 3 other grandparents – but you did get her motcihondrial DNA.

The same logic holds true for BSG’s Hera. She might not have passed on any genes *but* her mitcohondrial DNA.

No, that isn’t what bothers me, scientifically, about the finale of BSG, whose writing really went downhill after the first season. What bothers me is that they puroport these people to have arrived 150,000 years ago. What didn’t humans have 150,000 years ago? Complex language, writing, *agriculture.* Modern humans had not yet even left Africa if most theories are to be believed. Did the 12 colony survivors choose not to pass on language, writing or agriculture to their progeny? We see in the finale one character discussing teaching Hera how to plant crops. But agriculture was invented only 10,000 years ago, and writing only about 5,000 years ago. So the timeline is off by about 145,000 years, at least.

The end of the show has Baltar and Six strolling through New York. To me, this points more to a hint that those two belong to a group that existed before all of this… that is still around from a previous “cycle”.

“This has all happened before and it will all happen again”

Does that mean that everyone died when it happened before? No. Could someone still be alive from a previous cycle? Yes, with the resurrection technology they are effectively immortal. Gaius and Six could have been planted into the BSG cycle we witnessed to guide events, having their memories of their previous lives removed, but being influenced by other copies of themselves.

As to why nobody else could see their copies, who knows what kind of technology can be created when a race has millennia to study and invent? Mind control? Perception transmissions? Teleportation? Doesn’t seem to far fetched given enough time. The cylons from this cycle already have intimate knowledge of the brain and they’ve not had all that long to work it out.

As to who “God” is for the purposes of the storyline, God could simply be an ancient cylon or program designed to seed humanity throughout the stars. Which would explain why the natives on earth were genetically compatible with the BSG crew and colonists, the chance of which is near impossible to explain mathmatically. They’re genetically compatible because “God” seeded them there.

As for Starbuck, she’d have to be one of these precursor people also, with “God” having enough knowledge about her brain and mental processes to know what clues would ensure she could to get them to earth.

As for HoustonReal’s problem with the Mitochondrial Eve being Hera… Perhaps there were a lot of 8’s dropped here and there on the new earth… and she’d be closely related to Hera, being her mother. Mitochondrial Eve would have been an 8 though, not Hera. And why the 6’s didn’t factor into this the same way, I dunno. A little bit of writer’s error in such a grand tale is acceptable. It wasn’t enough to ruin it for me. They did seem to point to Hera being Eve, but it was never actually stated… the 8’s make more sense.

In Caprica, Eric Stoltz plays Daniel Graystone — the man who created the Cylons.

So if Daniel is the creator of the Cylons, and Hera is mother to our modern civilization in which everyone has some cylon in them, then wouldn’t it make sense that the absolute highest “God”-like being would be Daniel Graystone?

It’s too easy for Ronald D Moore and David Eick to just say it’s all God and religion. No, no. Those two would create their own religion and religious beings.

There’s a whole lot more story to this than we know about yet.

This is my shot in the freakin’ dark guess to it all.

I was a bit disappointed in several points:

- The whole Kara is an angel thing. I admit that there was no other way to end it after finding her dead body on earth. But why the hell lead humanity to the destoyed earth an only later to the real one??!! God is mysterious in his ways.. puh

- What happend to the other “evil” cylon-models. I mean, they did not get their resurrection ability, so they should have a strong motive to find the 4 (resp. 3) of the final five to try to get the information from them. So it was a bit disappointing that the earth was still standin 150000 years later ;)

- Balter/Caprica 6: What the f**k are they?? Angels?? Strange…

But again, I liked the ending of the show…

Read the Bible – Daniel’s name was changed to Belshazzar, or Balthazar – or Baltar.

Maybe it’s just some kind of being, maybe it’s Daniel (who is the creator of Cylons, keep in brain), maybe it’s something else. We don’t need to go right to it being religious. There could be so much more to the things everyone seems to dislike about the episode then we realize at the moment.

This could all still be storyline that we’re unaware of. Maybe Caprica will tell, maybe we’ll never know.

Lots of maybe goin’ down here.

at first i was kinda bummed we didn’t get a clear answer as to what exactly Starbuck was, but it’s nice that it was left open to interpretation i now think.

the only plot flaw i can think of that really bugs me is the same one that i didn’t like about the season 2 ending, and that was that they were just too quick to settle down. back at the end of season 2 they were right in the middle of all this fighting and dying and as soon as they find a new planet they just jump ship and settle and suddenly it’s a mere 1 year later and so many people have left the ships once the cylons make their return the skeleton crews have no choice but to run away because they left themselves too vulnerable. there was no logic in that as they knew damn well all the cylons were still out there actively looking for them. now in this ending sure they think they have peace with the cylons but remember in the beginning the only way they knew where to jump in front of the big cylon base was because they said as they were scouting it they got lucky and 2 cylon base ships jumped in & out while they were photographing it. so they know for a fact that there is at the very least 2 full base ships (most likely alot more) out there still loyal to Cavil’s way of thinking that didn’t show up during the fight so might not know what happened. now soon as they find Earth it’s “let’s go settle with sticks & stones and trash all our ships in the sun and cross our fingers they don’t bother to look for us again”? i can accept them wanting to trust the Centurions, but what about all the other cylons out flying around the galaxy? it’s a common sense flaw that bugs me, but oh well.

as for who was Daniel, that didn’t bother me as when he was first mentioned it made sense to me that when the five were first helping the cylons make skin jobs there would be trial & error. i think back the Star Trek TNG and Data finding out about Lore. Data discovers that even Lore wasn’t the 1st android created but they never showed any of the other failed attempts. there wasn’t a need to, as it’s the ones that survived that are in the storyline.

overall Battlestar Galactica was one of the best shows i’ve ever seen, and this was a pretty damn great ending, with the exception of the final minute as i mentioned above. 20 years from now when i decide to watch the entire series again on DVD i know i’ll be hitting the stop button just a few moments before the credits roll.

My favorite parts included:

- the reckoning for Tory (well done and well deserved!)
- Bill and Laura at the end
- the old style centurions (not sure why they didn’t become obsolete and replaced by the newer centurions)
- the scene with Caprica and Baltar realizing that they can each see their Head
- the dispersal of the combined Colonial/Skinjob remnants on the new Earth
- our last sight of the Colonial fleet was beautiful and heartbreaking.

The biggest “holy frak!” moment for me was Kara’s fate (honestly did not see that coming).

Disappointments/unanswered questions:

- We never saw any real interaction with the centurions themselves during the series outside of combat. First they were humanity’s slaves; then they were humanity’s enemies; then, somehow, I feel that they and the raiders became the slaves of Cavil and the skinjobs. All that was left of them was whichever ones survived to take the Cylon baseship to parts unknown. Was that their final emancipation? Too little, too late.

- Slightly disappointed that we never saw any interaction with other alien life besides algae, but I can deal with that.

- How on Earth would the Colonials ever have had any concept of angels, since they had a polytheistic religion that was based on (or the precursor of) Greek mythology?

- Cavil taking himself out was a bit lacking, in the sense that I feel that if all of the skinjob models figured out what he did to deceive them all about the nature of the Final Five, they probably would have boxed his model, which might have been a bit more satisfying

- Leoben turned out to be a bit of a letdown and more or less irrelevant by the end of the series

- Still not sure about the true nature of the hybrids and some of the abilities they had to see into the future (?)

- The fact that there were these celestial beings and a higher power that were “looking out” for humanity must be a bit of a bitter pill to swallow for those who died:

-> on the Colonies during both the Cylon War and the Cylon Ambush
-> New Caprica
-> the mutiny
-> when Boomer went FTL and punctured the Galactica’s hull
-> etc.

OK, that came off a bit negative. Still a beautiful ending, even if I didn’t like parts of it.

And the whole “Angels” thing, hmm… didn’t really go for that.

They always said Hera was the savior of humanity, but if it turns out she was the Mitochondrial Eve, that means that the human race 150,000 later was human no more, but rather a human/cylon mix, just like Hera.

And Ronald Moore’s cameo stuck out like a sore thumb. A little more subtly next time.

http://blog.nicholascloud.com/?p=255