The Syfy channel’s reimagined reboot of the classic science fiction series Battlestar Galactica is easily one of the best TV shows of all time. The show managed to incorporate a lot of incredibly insightful perspectives on things like politics, religion, philosophy, and societal issues while serving up a tight and endlessly thrilling story. It’s unlikely the world will ever see a series quite like this one again, but it thankfully raised the bar on what a TV show can really accomplish and set the standard for many shows that followed it.
However, even great shows are not without their flaws. And when writers and creators aim as high as the Battlestar Galactica team did it’s pretty much guaranteed that some aspects of the series will wind up falling short. The tension of BSG was built on the many mysteries established within the show, but after the show came to a close there were still some lingering questions that fans are still desperate for the answers to.
What Is Starbuck?
Understandably Starbuck was at the center of a lot of the major mysteries of BSG, but the writers seem pretty content to leave her most mysterious story line a mystery. Towards the end of the series, Starbuck is on a flight mission and her Viper apparently explodes. Then months later Starbuck shows up in her Viper, apparently fine, and explains that she has been to earth and is going to lead the fleet there. Except she has no idea how she got there and she feels like she has only been gone for a few hours. Kara leads the fleet to an Earth destroyed by nuclear war, where she finds her own Viper with her own dead body still in it. Then Kara helps the fleet get to another Earth, and once they arrive she just vanishes into thin air. So… WHAT?!
Why Were There Only 7 Cylon Models?
So the writers were pretty clear on the story development behind the final five Cylons and how they essentially saved and rebuilt their own race after Earth was destroyed by nuclear war, but one thing that the show is never quite clear on is why they decided on a set number of new Cylon models and just made thousands upon thousands of Cylons with the same basic build. It may have been convenient for them, but considering what the Cylon race appeared to be when they were still a part of it (which was basically a population as diverse as regular people) it’s kind of odd that they limited themselves that much.
If Hera Is “Eve” Then Who Was “Adam”?
After a long and painful journey through space, the Colonials arrive on our Earth and decide to set up shop for good here. And the story explains that Hera, the half human-half Cylon daughter of Karl Agathon and Sharon Valerii, is actually the mother of what will become the human race that exists on this planet today. But if she’s our mommy, then who’s dad? Did she mate with another Colonial? Did she mate with some primitive man who didn’t even understand language let alone have the intellect of the standard Colonial?
And did the primitive humans living on earth already just assimilate with the Colonials, or did the Colonials overtake them and did they just die out?
How Did The Life On Earth And The Colonies Match Up So Well?
Although Battlestar Galactica is one of the most thoughtful and well thought out TV shows of all time, they were unfortunately too fond of using god as an excuse for any of their logic jumps that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. One of the most obvious instances of that was when the Colonials arrived on the final Earth and found something that frankly looked a whole hell of a lot like the Colonies and Earth I. Some took the presence of humans on Earth as a sign that god has planned for this, but the story never confronts the fact that this planet features other nearly identical Earth-and-Colony species like cats, dogs, deer, grass, and trees too.
How Did The Colonizers On Earth Live Without Technology?
Obviously it’s possible for humans to live without technology, they’ve done it for the majority of their existence. But if all of us woke up tomorrow and just had to live out in the wild it wouldn’t be very easy.
Once you’ve become accustomed to technology it’s difficult to let go of, and the remaining humans that have survived the end of the Colonies are people who are accustomed to using technology that is thousands of years more advanced than even the technology that exists today. It’s hard enough to believe that they’d willingly give that up, and it’s even harder to believe that they’d have such an easy time living without it.
How Did All Evidence Of That Technology Disappear?
Yes, the Colonials fly their fleet into the sun when they decide to stay on this planet for good, but that doesn’t magically erase every single piece of technology that they possessed. You would think that some evidence of that might have remained, even after all of those years. But what’s even more curious is that even though the Colonials decided to leave their technology behind they didn’t leave their knowledge of that technology behind. So how is it possible that it took the humans, Colonials, and human-Cylon hybrids on earth 150,000 years to evolve into the technological state that exists now, that is still so drastically behind what the 12 Colonies managed to achieve?
How Did Their Religion Catch On In Ancient Greece And Rome?
Okay so let’s try to follow the logic here. The gods of Kobol appear to be the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. Gods like Jupiter, Zeus, Athena, etc. are called upon many times throughout the series. Then the remaining Colonial fleet arrives on our earth and decides to stay. So their religion survives for the 148,000 odd years in between their arrival and the rise of ancient Greece and Rome, their religion becomes the religion of Greece and Rome but never catches on anywhere else, and then it dies out a few hundred years after it’s burst popularity. Or the other option, their religion is completely forgotten and has no historical record, and somehow the Greeks and Romans just come up with identical gods all on their own.
What Made Love The Key In Cylon-Human Relations?
We see the Cylons speculate that a loving relationship between a human and a Cylon is the key to human-Cylon procreation, and we actually see a significant amount of evidence to back that up. Hera is the miracle baby of the human Karl Agathon and the Cylon Sharon, but the human farming experiments that the Cylons are doing in their efforts to procreate are total failures.
However, the show never explains what exactly makes that the key or why. Is there an actual, physiological explanation for why that seems to be the case, or is this just another plot point that should be chalked up to god’s will?
Why Would The Colonials Abandon All Of Their Defenses?
Abandoning their technology because they felt it led them down a dark path is one thing, but in what world would it make any sense for the remaining Colonials to abandon all of their defense abilities when there is still a contingent of Cylons out there who would probably really love some revenge, or to fulfill their goal of wiping out all of humanity? Ditching technology is a decent symbolic move after everything that the Battlestar Galactica fleet has been through, but logically it’s really not a great move. The darker end of this story could have been the Colonials settle with humans on earth, Cylons find them and destroy them all, including primitive humans who didn’t do jack and just had the bad luck of being invaded by some selfish idiots.
What Was The Cylon Plan?
The driving force behind the entirety of Battlestar Galactica is the Cylons declaring war against the humans because of their grand plans for the future, but it’s never really made clear what those plans are, or who’s even creating them. First the Cylons want to kill all humans. Then they want to have babies with the remaining humans. Then they want to reconcile with the humans. And sometimes some Cylons want to fight other Cylons. And this all has something to do with what god wants, which apparently changes pretty often. So I guess Cylon behavior is a pretty on point parallel with most real life religious extremist crusaders, but it would have helped the story if the Cylon plan was an actual plan.
