after tonight's episode i've been trying to piece together the history of Kobol, the Colonies and Earth and here are my thoughts:
**WARNING some SPOILERS for the prequel show Caprica**
i use the abbreviation YBG for "Years Before Galactica" ie. Years before the reimagined series began/second cylon war
X YBG - Humans from Earth (us) create cylons, cylons have an uprising and kick humans off Earth then go out into space to hunt them. Refugee humans flee in a ragtag fleet and eventually settle on Kobol, they cylons catch up to them but instead of wiping them out decide to rule over them as the 12 Lords of Kobol using their newly developed humanoid forms
4000 YBG - one of the 12 Lords of Kobol fancies themselves above the rest leading to a conflict. this is the "one jealous god" and "He whose name must not be spoken." He in effect becomes the Cylon God. One possibility for why he's a heretic among the Lords of Kobol is that he thinks he really IS a god and decides to start creating individual, distinct cylon models/lines ie. The 13th Tribe. There is a conflict and the 13th Tribe leaves for Earth while the other 11 Lords of Kobol shepherd the primitive humans to the 12 Colonies. The Cylon God appoints his Five Priests who build a Temple along the way to Earth in case the Lords of Kobol wish to follow them - after dropping off the humans to form the 12 Colonies they do so.
2000 YBG - Under the insane rule of the "One True God" the 13th Tribe have all forgotten that they are Cylons, all but the Five Priests. They build their own mechanical slaves who rise against them and in the following war everyone is destroyed except for the Five who upload their consciousnesses to the Temple of Five. Relying on the prophecy ("This has happened before and will happen again, and again, and again...") they await a time when they cane download into new bodies created by the Colonials.
60? YBG - "Caprica" the Holoband network is created by Daniel Greystone who attempts to use it to resurrect his daughter. Little does he know that the Five have transferred themselves to his network and set into motion events that will lead us to the present. Because of the lack of Cylon bodies, the Five download themselves into humans who have plugged into Greystone's holoband network. At some point a young Ellen, Saul and 3 other hapless people plug in and the Five download themselves.
40 YBG - First Cylon War: the prophecy is set into motion as the Colonial Cylons rise against their masters. Colonial Cylon experimentation with human forms begin, but only result in the "dead end" hybrids.
~30-20 YBG - The bodies that 3 of the Five occupy die of old age, these 3 download into new bodies: Tory, Anders and Tyrol. At this point the Five wish to stop stealing human bodies and make contact with the Colonial Cylon fleet in order to help them along in their human form research. They become The Makers, thus leading to the Significant Seven models we are familiar with.
- Ellen Tigh is different from the other Four because she has all of her memories intact, the others have lost memory due to almost 2000 years of data storage at the Temple of Five.
- The Opera House is a holoband virtual reality where an individual consciousness can be uploaded to and stored
- The full nature of death and the afterlife will be the primary driving factor for the rest of the show as it becomes apparent that humans can now resurrect into new bodies and access the holoband (Kara Thrace and Laura Roslin).
- Baltar is, or is being prepped to be the vessel for the Cylon God who is still floating around in cyberspace somewhere
- Kara Thrace really IS the Harbinger of Death, but this may not necessarily be a bad thing - the show may end with the Colonial Fleet all "dying" and uploading into a virtual reality thus ending the cycle. After all, in the world the colonials are faced with Living is hard - Dualla realized this and decided to allow herself to be washed out to sea.
Questions are: Who will try and be the fox that crosses the river (continue on living, perhaps perpetuate the cycle)? Who will try and be the fox that turns to fight (defeat Cavil and his "Imperial Cylons")? And who else will choose to ride the current and be swept out to sea (certainly looks like Roslin will)?
Just a few of my thoughts...I'm probably WAAAY off here as I thought either Baltar or Roslin were the Fifth.
