Battlestar Galactica was reimagined after the old show from the 70s into something darker and sassier. The writers did not plan everything out from the start, but the story for the most part does hold together. This is a review of the main events and the mythology behind the show, from the miniseries through to The Plan (but does not cover the events of the prequel series, Caprica).
Humans (who technically are not humans but an aliens species) apparently originally evolved on the planet Kobol (at least, that is the earliest history the show tells us about). According to their myths, humans lived with the gods they worshipped, known as the Lords of Kobol, who had names like Zeus or Athena. The cylons claim that the Lords are false gods and that it is blasphemous for humans to worship them rather than the One True God. It is possible the Lords are in fact divine messengers, angels, mistakenly worshipped.
4,000 years before the events of the miniseries, the people of Kobol were arranged in 13 tribes. 12 of them were human, the 13th was made up of cylons. It is not clear whether these cylons were human minds downloaded into cylon bodies, or whether they were truely original artificial intelligences. Either way, conflict grew between the 12 tribes and the 13th, possibly motivated by religion (reference is made to the 13th god being jealous of the other 12). In any case, the 13th tribe was forced to abandon Kobol. They made a long journey through the galaxy, stopping off at the algae planet, where they constructed the Temple of Hope. There, they prayed for guidance, and received visions from the Angels, showing the way to Earth. They found Earth and set up a colony. At this point, one of them must have gone back to Kobol, bringing with them the scrolls of Pythia, describing Earth, and creating the holographic map showing how to get to Earth.
2,000 years after the 13 tribe left, Kobol fell into ruin. The cylons claim the humans of this era engaged in barbaric practices such as human sacrifice. Human myth suggests they fell from grace and were banished by the gods, and that some gods such as Athena committed suicide in despair. There may have been a war or other type of catastrophe. Whatever happened, the 12 tribes had to leave. They went in the opposite direction as the 13 tribe, and eventually found a group of star systems to set up the 12 colonies. Upon arrival, they initially regressed into more primitive societies, until rebuilding their technological base. Often they warred with one another.
Around this time, divine messengers visited five cylons on Earth and warned them that their world was facing disaster. The 13th tribe had figured out how to reproduce biologically like humans, and had abandoned resurrection technology. They had also created their own artificial intelligence slave labour. The slave robots rebelled against their cylon masters, leading to war. Samuel Anders, Tory Foster, Galen Tyrol Saul Tigh and Ellen Tigh worked together to recover the lost resurrection technology. When Earth was wiped out by nuclear holocaust, they died, but they alone were resurrected into new bodies on a ship orbiting Earth. With their planet devastated, they realised they needed to warn their old family about the dangers of conflict with artificial life. They set off to find Kobol again, but got lost. Eventually they found the algae planet with the temple of Hope, renaming it the Temple of the Five. There, they again had visions from the messengers, showing the way back to Kobol. With no jump technology, the journey home took centuries at relativistic speeds. Eventually they got to Kobol, to find it abandoned by the 12 tribes.
By the time they got to the 12 colonies, they discovered they were too late. The 12 tribes had made their own artificial life forms, and these cylon centurion robots had also rebelled against their masters. The war had gone on for decades. The Five survivors of Earth made contact with the centurions and convinced them to abandon the war, in exchange for the Five helping them to evolve (this occured without the 12 colonies ever knowing about the presence of the Five from the 13th tribe).
The Five encouraged the monotheistic belief of the centurions, hoping it would form the basis of a peaceful society. They helped the centurions create the skinjobs - the cylons in human bodies that they themselves had - and gave them resurrection technology. The first model was One aka cavil, who was based upon Ellen Tigh's memories of her father. Cavil helped them make the rest of the Eight. He grew increasingly jealous of Ellen's preference for model Seven, aka Daniel, and sabotaged Daniel's tanks so that the entire line was wiped out.
Increasingly belligerent and frustrated with the Five's fondness for human form, thought and philosophy, and as an atheist unmoved by religious devotion to peace, Cavil killed the Five, and ensured that when they resurrected, they were trapped and reprogrammed with false memories. He then released them at diffferent stages into the 12 colonies to live human lives. He also reprogrammed the rest of the remaining seven cylon models so that they would know of the five but not remember their nature, want to talk of them or find them. He then convinced them that they needed to go to war with humanity and wipe them out, in revenge for humanity's abuses against them before the war, and to ensure they would replace humans as God's children.
The cylons agreed. They infiltrated human society, which remained unaware of the advances the Five had given them. Their Plan meant they were able to disable all human defences, in particular thanks to Caprica Six's seduction of Gaius Baltar allowing her to shut down all human defence computers. The second cylon war was brief, with all 12 colonies wiped out, and the fleet nullified. Victory was assured.
Except for a few coincidences that worked together to entirely undermine their plan. Laura Roslin survived and was able to set up a government. She was rescued by Lee Adama, and brought to Galactica, which remained immune to Cylon computer hacking thanks to its antiquated state and stubborness of William Adama who refused to upgrade to more sophisticated technology. Roslin was able to convince Adama to run instead of fight, and take the last 50,000 survivors with him. The cylons had not planned for this at all, and were caught out.
They were also not prepared for the remarkable coincidences that saved and reunited the brainwashed Five. Tigh and Tyrol were both aboard Galactica. Tory Foster survived the nuclear attack on Caprica and reached Galactica with the refugees. Samuel Anders also survived, and eventually was rescued too. Ellen was saved by one of the Cavils, who wanted her to live long enough to admit she was wrong, and then realised in fact he was wrong. The entire Plan was predicated upon Cavil's desire to make his "parents" hate humans and reject their nature. But it failed - the destruction wreaked upon humanity only made the Five love them more.
Another Cavil aboard Galactica began recruiting the few Cylons they had among the fleet and attempted to sabotage or destroy it. A key player was an Eight, named Sharon "Boomer" Valerie. Unfortunately she grew attached to the humans, and was unable to fully commit to their destruction. Many of the other cylons among the fleet also became intoxicated from being fully immersed in human lives. One of the Simons grew to love the human family he had made, and committed suicide rather than kill them. Cavil's plan was undone by cylon contamination with human feelings. The Twos aka Leoben Conoy, meanwhile became obsessed with a human named Kara Thrace aka Starbuck, believing that there was something special about her. Cavil dismissed this as superstitious nonsense.
Unable to procreate biologically, the cylons attempted to use humans left on the colonies. Their breeding experiments failed. They believed the reason was that they were unable to love. They therefore tricked a soldier named Helo Agathon into falling in love with an Eight named Athena. Unfortunately for the cylons, she grew to love him as well, and betrayed her people to side with Helo. She helped him and Starbuck find the Arrow of Apollo, an artifact needed to unlock the holographic map on Kobol. The fleet coincidentally found Kobol during their search for Earth. Using the arrow, they found enough markers to take them in the right direction.
Meanwhile, on the occupied colonies, Boomer and Caprica Six, both irrevocably changed by their immersion in human society and contaminated with love for humans, realised that the cylon genocide of humanity was flawed. Celebrated as war heroes for their work in disabling human defences, they convinced the cylons that they should end their pursuit of the fleet.
The fleet found a planet that was inhabitable, and under the newly elected president, Baltar, decided to colonise it rather than continue looking for Earth. At first the colony prospered, but over time corruption set in, and the society began to fall apart.
A final cylon agent in the fleet detonated a nuclear explosion, revealing their location. The cylons found them and occupied the planet, now believing that they needed to control and teach the humans to live properly and peacefully. After months of brutal occupation, Galactica was able to lead a rescue mission, getting the humans off the planet and back to searching for Earth. The cylons now believed it was their own destiny to find Earth. Rather than search for their own life, they were now obsessed with taking over the destiny of the humans. They also captured Helo and Athena's baby, Hera, a cylon-human hybrid, and the only child born to a cylon. Ellen Tigh was killed by her husband for collaborating with the cylons. She died, and resurrected on the cylon fleet, regaining all her lost memories. She was kept locked up by Cavil.
Along the way they found a probe left behind by the 13th tribe. Possibly left as a marker on the way to Earth, or by the Five on the way back to Kobol, it was infected with a disease that the current cylons had no immunity to. Helo sabotaged an effort to use it to wipe out the cylons, believing a reciprocal genocide was not right. Athena made sure to take back Hera from the cylons, and brought Caprica Six along as well.
Eventually both fleets made it to the Algae planet. There, the model Three cylon known as D'anna, became obsessed with claiming the Temple of the Five from the humans. She had experienced visions from God regarding Hera and the Five, and believed the Temple would help her discover who the Five were. She was correct, but Cavil, not wanting his work undone, intervened and convinced the cylons to shut down her entire line of cylons, keeping them boxed up in suspension.
A supernova wiped out the star system containing the Temple, by strange coincidence occuring at the time Galactica and the cylons fought over the planet. Galactica was able to use that nova to plot a new course taking them even closer to Earth.
Not long after, Kara Thrace had visions tormenting her about her past, when her mother had abused her. She entered a planetary maelstrom and was apparently killed when her ship was destroyed. In fact, she somehow was transported across the light years to Earth, where she crash landed and died. She then took on a new body and gained a new ship and made her way back to the fleet.
The fleet was ambushed by the cylons inside a nebula. At this point, a strange signal activated the remaining four of the Five in the fleet, letting them know they were cylons, but nothing more. It was linked to a song (from All Along the Watchtower). When the cylon raiders attacked, they made contact with Anders. Realising he was a cylon, their higher consciousness was sparked and they refused to attack the human fleet and risk the five. Cavil was adamant that the Five not be contacted and that the raider ships be reprogrammed by lobotomising their brains. The Four and Five models agreed with him. The Twos, Sixed and Eights disagreed - except for one, Boomer, who was now entirely working with Cavil and willing to betray her fellow model Eights.
This led to civil war, and most of the two, six and eight model cylons were wiped out. They realised the only hope left to them was to ally with the humans, especially since the Five were among the human fleet. They made contact with a resurrected kara Thrace, who brought them back to the fleet. An alliance led to the destruction of cylon resurrection technology and the unboxing of the last survivor of the Three model line, D'anna. She brought with her the knowledge of who the Final Five were from her visions. Eventually a true alliance was made and rebel cylons and humans alike made their way to Earth, using a signal from kara thrace's restored ship and the intuition of the remaining foour of Five.
They found Earth, still devastated from the war that wiped out the original cylon race. This caused a huge uproar in the fleet, with many humans giving way to despair that no hope remained. A civil war broke out, and many humans died. Anders suffered a bullet wound to the head, causing brain damage. This allowed him to recover his lost cylon memories, but eventually led to him entering a coma.
Eventually Adama and Roslin regained control of the fleet. Just in time for Boomer to snatch Hera again and take her back to the Cylons.
By this point. Gaius Baltar proved that Kara had indeed died on Earth but was not a cylon. Thus she had experienced a true divine resurrection. She was plagued by visions, signs and portents linking her to her father and to Hera. Adama initially refused to believe, after the prophecies they followed had led them to a dead Earth. Kara convinced him that there must be a divine plan at work for all these events to be taking place. Adama also realised that the cylons would use hera to achieve biological reproduction to replace the Resurrection technology they had lost.
He therefore sent the fleet on to safety, and took Galactica on a final mission to assault the cylon stronghold, a base known as the Colony, which was constructed around the original ship of the Five, and in close proximity to a black hole. Anders was able to link to the Colony's systems, shutting down their weapons. Boomer too was contaminated with love - for Hera - and saved the young girl from cylon experimentation. She brought her back to her parents, whereupon Athena executed Boomer. Cylon fought rebel cylon once more, and cylons entered Galactica and again captured Hera. At this point, both caprica Six and baltar realised that their own visions were indications of a divine hand at work, and convinced both sides to lay down their weapons. The human fleet would take Hera, and the Five would give the cylons resurrection technology, and all would part ways.
Unfortunately at this point, Galen Tyrol found out that Tory Foster had murdered his wife, and in turn murdered her, thus ending any hope of recovering Resurrection technology and achieving peace. Kara put all her faith in her visions of her father and the Music that activated the Final Five (and was also given to kara by Hera) and used them to sent Galactica to a random location in space, leaving the Cylon Colony to self destruction.
That random location turns out to be our Earth, roughly 148,000 BC, which is inhabited by primitive humans, who are genetically compatible with the humans who evolved from Kobol. The remaining humans and rebel cylons decide they need to leave their previous lives behind, including all the destructive power of technology and modern life, and spread themselves across the planet, eventually interbreeding with the natives. The most successful is Hera, since her DNA is inherited by all modern humans, so that all humans have not only terrestrial DNA but cylon and Kobol human too. The robotic centurions are given the last remaining Cylon ship and freed to explore the galaxy, ending the cycle of war between man and machine. Kara mysteriously disappears - her job was to get the people to Earth, and with that done, her second chance at life is finished. Either she was human and given only a temporary reprieve from death, or she was herself a divine messenger, in human form.
The divine messengers are seen in modern day United States, pondering whether after Kobol, old Earth and the 12 colonies, can this newest iteration survive any better.
My interpretation of the ending is a grim one. "God" wipes out civilisations when they become overly decadant and evil. Kobol, old Earth, the 12 colonies. The cylons and survivors of the colonies are themselves also purified by civil wars, so that only a bare handful of them survive to reach new Earth, with a population too small to sustain itself. They interbreed with the natives and pass on their ideas and DNA. Presumably this is why our modern world looks like theirs, we have inherited their culture through the ages. But there are no records on our world of the Galacticans, so their culture died out. Nothing is left of them. It seems to me like they were used to spark the genetic and cultural evolution of new Earth's natives, nothing more. One question that is often asked is - why did William Adama bother going after Hera? The answer is threefold.
Firstly, he wanted to deny them Hera. After resurrection technology was destroyed, she remained their only hope at finding a clue to biological reproduction. If they found it, they could reproduce, and replenish their numbers, becoming an ongoing and unendable threat to the humans and rebel cylons. Secondly, an attack on the Cylon Colony would greatly weaken Cylon resources. Thirdly, despite his loss of faith in the prophecies after finding old Earth, Kara Thrace managed to convince Adama that something divine really was at work. Her own miraculous resurrection was the strongest proof of all. I think that by believing in that plan and risking their lives for it, the humans and rebel cylons were the only ones allowed to survive - the mainstream cylons were, after all, wiped out, and they were for the most part atheists.
