My First BSG Post
I’ve been content to monitor the beautiful unfolding of Sci-Fi’s Battlestar Galactica series from the comfort of the couch of my own thoughts. After all, RDM and crew (read writers) have done a wonderful job of keeping the series less than predictable and always a step ahead of ridiculous.
But, as the series rockets into the final few hours and episodes, the desire to pontificate has circumscribed my desire for a cozy couch of thoughts as I have started to drink my own punch. The final straw was the mentioning of Daniel, which had the wonderful effect of culling a group-think response to who Daniel must now be.
I read all these reports after I had done my own analysis along with the diligent help of my co-workers, whom I am solely responsible for exposing to and consequently getting them hooked on BSG, I can’t help but think my super-nerd idea has probability (note my distinct meander away from possibility).
Daniel is possibly everything. He is the 6 in Baltar’s head, the visions in Kara’s chase down the spiral to her death and the ghost in the machine that awakens the final five. He is also in position to be the significant force that defeats John (1).
John is clearly a master of plans. I wonder if the ‘Cylon plan’ referred to in the opening lyrics “and they have a plan” doesn’t really refer to John as he is clearly the one capable of causing all of this now. He is the only person who knows about ‘The Colony’, the location of all the original resurrection equipment and research, which indicates the final five have private regeneration booths that were not part of the Hub.
I still am not sure if Ellen resurrected before or after the Hub was destroyed, but when I noticed that Ellen was always in her own room as a prisoner with the tub seemingly just covered by a mattress, that just seemed too different from the hive-like rooms full of glowing goo tubs and naked 8’s walking around in a super dim organic cave fit to be juxtapose an equivalent of a Cylon poop-hole.
When John was reporting to her the Hub had been blown up, it seemed obvious their basestar was far from the battle, but in position to get recon (and we all know the cylon FTL’s can jump farther than the colonial fleet’s). This does assume that Ellen didn’t just forget to ask John about all the explosions happening in the small cut-scene flashback style we were presented with, but that would seem a dirty trick and glaring lie to the viewership as that would definitely change how Ellen felt being stuck on that ship. She’s not scheming to get away when 8 gets her, she’s well aware John has sequestered here safely away for her coming torture.
A few posts mention that RDM said there was no final missing cylon coming in relation to Daniel, which can be taken a few ways. I take it to mean that no character we’ve presently seen will suddenly become Daniel as that creates too much backstory to fill in. The other way to take it is that Daniel will not be heard of again from hence-forth, but that’s a waste of a great character. I mean, Ellen describes Daniel as the total abomination of everything John believes in – he sounds like the most liberal hippy human of any cyclone (hyperbole noted).
He’s into art and beauty and creativity and I bet he stops ice-cream trucks for bomb-pops in the summer because he likes the way it turns his tongue purple. Hell, if there is a cylon who’s smoked a doobie, I bet it’s Daniel ( super hyperbole noted). He probably woke up each day and just loved to feel his skin on his body and couldn’t imagine being a toaster. He’s John’s evil brother, his doppelganger.
John doesn’t kill what he can control. Ellen argues this to him from a different perspective when she asks him why he hasn’t already killed them (the final five). Why is he waiting for them to say he’s right? It’s sickening that he has this attachment, but I’m sure we’ll see it’s not really an attachment at all. You see, he’s a planner. I think he knew Boomer would return to her human roots. I think he manipulated her into betraying him so he could track Ellen back to the Galactica.
You see, we only have a few shows left and these people are really smart. It’s going to be huge! Imagine the civil war between cylons and humans all at the same time, a real fighting struggle to the absolute zero finish! John set the bait and he’s smart. He outsmarted his parents and schemed them away, and bare in mind this means he also got the other models to forget their parents! Except one… Daniel.
John didn’t have to kill any of the models he could control the memories of. I’m sure we’ll find that John has pretty much killed all the cylon models and programmed their memory to have loyalty to him. But they are more than memories, they are genetics as well. Their personality is capable of questioning how things came to be this way and they can tell something is wrong.
Or are they being told something is wrong? By whom? Maybe Daniel?
Now, I think that is a stretch myself. But Daniel has to be somewhere for that to work. I think the amniotic fluid killed the genetic material, but I think the parents kept his software around and possibly activated it. After all, if John could kill his sibling, it shouldn’t seem far-fetched he might try for his parents. They might have stuck Daniel in a hybrid, for example.
I like that he might have been put in a hybrid. It makes for an acceptable return of the White Ship. Full cylon intelligence in a basestar. It would probably be capable of sending transmissions then… like music that is very familiar to the old memories of the final Five, the song Anders used to play on his guitar.
He also seems to die before the other models are placed on Caprica just before the Cylon Holocaust. I keep trying to figure out Head Six and I am starting to want to use Daniel for her as well, but I can’t figure out how Baltar has this in his mind. However, one of the clues that Daniel might explain head Six is Baltar’s survival from the nuclear blast. I’m not sure this wouldn’t be best explained by the cylon projection. And by saving Baltar in such a visually compelling way, rather than just moving him away from harm by warning him Six saves him by wrapping her arms around him as his house is completely devastated, I think his loyalty to the head Six is much greater than normal.
Also, head Six disappears for a short time and Baltar sees himself for a short period. I think this demonstrates the creative power of Daniel in manipulating Baltar to do just the things he needs him to do. In trade, he can protect Baltar because he knows just enough about John and the rest of the models to cater to their egos and keep him safe. Also, the head Six is just nothing like any of the other Sixes.
Let us step back for a minute. After all, this is all pretty out there for a character that may just be a filling point to help explain the goof with Eight … right?
I can’t help but be annoyed by the story this leaves open if untold. If they weren’t going to use Daniel, it would have been better to complete his story all in one episode. I know I know.. they killed him and that should mean the story is over, but it doesn’t fit. Kara is just too excited when she hears the name Daniel and John is too pissed when Ellen refers to him. Ellen also seems to not feel a single bit of remorse upon thinking of him and I take that to mean she doesn’t think he’s really gone.
But without Daniel, I think we have a harder time explaining how the final five woke back up. John didn’t gain enough advantage from the five waking up for it to be his doing. It just happened and it happened at a time the cylons might have destroyed the rest of the humans. That sounds more like Daniel.
When head Six knows where the transponder is on the Galactica, I thought that was a sign that she was attached to the real Six is some way, aware of the cylon plans. I think it stands to reason that Daniel might have this information if he were part of a basestar ship. It certainly would be just one more defeat in the eye of John and that sounds like the actions of someone who wants to see some justice.
I do think Daniel has meaning to Kara, but I think it is because that name has been in her head since the new body. We know the cylons have one of her ovaries, which is more than enough genetic material to make a Kara body from. If Daniel was aware of the technology to copy memories over to biological matter, then he might be the explanation for Kara coming back as well.
Depending on how, or if, they decide to deal with Kara’s new ship with photos of earth in orbit, it seems possible to me that the new Kara never really had been to earth. Daniel’s ‘White Ship’ was just a few jumps out of the way and sent her back from a much shorter distance with all the memories he needed her to have. I think the old Kara really died almost instantly as she was ejected from a worm hole towards earth. I mean…. when have we seen Starbuck not be able to land a half injured bird before?
I think Daniel got in Kara’s head the same way he got into Baltars head. When she’s going into the worm hole, she sees her mother and Leoben. The words she hears and the conversation she has are the perfect manipulations to make someone comfortable with their inevitable fate. She had atoned and was ready to die a clean spirit. Daniel is a guide to say the least.
So good is this Daniel at manipulation that he is able to prey upon her single fear of being the cause of all this destruction, a fear her mother started. That’s why all the hybrids keep calling her the harbinger of death. It keeps her psychology fragile enough to be swayed by Daniel. That would explain the ‘intuitive’ craziness Kara goes into on Galactica and eventually on the Demetrius as she tries to return to earth. That was Daniel messing with her, trying to get as clear an image to her as possible, which is when we see the white ship painted on her wall in her captain’s quarters on the Demetrius.
I don’t think it’s necessary to ever see a picture of Daniel in this series. But he’ll be tied into the new series Caprica because of his knowledge of biological data structures. He’s smarter than John and John knows it. Of course, for now, John also is convinced he is dead and that seems to be very important for Daniel to accomplish what he has.
I would bet against myself on these notions before I believed them. But the more I thought about Daniel, the more this just started to make sense to me.