Performing borderline thread-necromancy since we, you know, SAW Earth in the finale.

RDM has said that the end of the show is reaching Earth, and that we are now entering the final act of BSG. In light of Starbuck actually having been to Earth, how do you think our little blue and green globe is going to fit into the rest of BSG?

(As an aside, I always thought the final goal of Farscape was John's return to Earth. But then they did get to Earth, and that was just a bridge for them to keep going onto other things. Any thoughts on the possibilty of that happening in BSG?)

I hope not. I hope this would be THE one show that actually gets a conclusion. Like Babylon 5 did, and was'nt it great? An ENDING is the only thing that makes something complete and this show deserves to become complete and not struggle forever, without decent plot ideas (cough, Lost, cough), trying to just "keep on going", poitless and boring (cough, X-Files, cough). So far it was IMHO the best show on TV and I would hate them to ruin it. They should get to Earth and that should be the end of it...

01) I think that they probably will wrap-the-show-up by the end of this Season which may be the reason they upped the Episode Order up by 4 episodes (2 Episodes for the Pegasus Movie / 2 episodes for an Extended Finale?).

02) I think that they will make it to Earth and that there will be some serious shockers waiting for them when they get there and I do envision that it will go something like this:

2A: They will find a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
2B: They will find a beautiful/abandoned planet a la Kobol.
2C: They will find a futuristic Earth.
2D: They will find a contemporary Earth.
2E: They will find a pre-historic Earth.
2F: They will find an Earth infested with 1st Generation Cylons.
2G: They will discover that another Battlestar Named Galactica led another rag-tag fugitive fleet to Earth a looong time ago and then led an expeditionary force back to the Colonies thousands of years later.

03) As long as Lee and Kara PERMANENTLY hook-up and Dee and Callie are spaced through an airlock before the credits roll, I will be satisfied with whatever RDM & Co. come up with. With the exception of a few episodic misfires (and I do stress that it's only been a few) they've uniformly delivered a high-quality series.

Finding a 2007 earth would be really, really dumb, since the Cylons would have almost no choice but to nuke us immediately. Think about it, they couldn't pull off a military occupation of a planet who's population consisted of 40,000 refugees living in tents with Gaius Baltar as their leader.

Imagine trying to occupy a planet with a population in the billions, many of whom are extremely belligerent and armed to the teeth, led by people like Putin, Bush and bin Laden. Once we know that a threat like the Cylons exist, we'd stop wasting our time and energy on building Xbox's and watching America's Next Top Model and start a crash fleet-building project. Within a very short period of time it would be the Cylon rag tag fleet running like hell from us. There wouldn't be any wishy washy Versailles treaty crap either, unconditional surrender is probably the best they could get from us vicious crazy Earthicans.

So to prevent that, they'd have to nuke the crap out of us almost immediately. Even somebody as logic impaired as Caprica 6 couldn't fail to see that. And yes, I'd say that being impossibly hung up on somebody like Gaius Baltar is a sign she badly needs a CTRL-ALT-DELETE.

Lord Elrond, yay! on the Lee and Kara PERMANENTLY hook-up idea.

I also like the future Earth idea. Say, in the far distant future, humanity faces global destruction, or sun going supernova, or <make some stuff up>. Their last remnant sends out spacefaring vessels into far flung deep space, carrying genome of not only human but the entire ecological system. Since human life cannot survive the long journey, artificial intelligence is sent along as guardian/care-taker. Eventually civilization starts anew. They build something which in turn annihilates their world. All of this has happened before, all of this is happening again ...

Several advantages to this construct:

(1) Explains why colonial technology is far advance in the arena of space travel, somewhat on par with modern Earth in everything else, and slightly "primitive" in religion.

(2) Explains the planetarium on Kobol, as humanity's rememberance of their origin

(3) Explains why the further the fleet journey from the colonies, the further back they go in time: the exodus from Kobol 2,000 years ago, the virus-infested beacon left 3,000 years ago, and the temple of Five built over 4,000 years ago.

There are plenty of questions about how on Earth (heh) Starbuck could have been to Earth, but for the sake of the thread, I will have to take what she said at face value. In that case, there could be more clues as to which Earth she found. After all, why would she bring the fleet to a wasteland? If there were present-day humans on the planet, why wouldn't she bring someone back with her? Of course, the (miraculously restored, cough, cough) Viper can only accomodate one person, but maybe there is some other evidence that she has? I don't like the present-day theory on a visceral level, but it could work.

Any ideas about why Kara would bring to the fleet to Earth, besides the fact that it was their destination all along?

Well, I think I heard somewhere that she has a "destiny". I'm guessing her destiny was nothing less than to lead the fleet to Earth. ...Which would suggest that it's the fleet's destiny to go there. And even if Earth is nothing but a burned out wasteland that has been empty of humans for thousands of years, it could still provide at least one important thing to the Colonials which would justify Kara bringing them there: answers. If nothing else, it might be the place where the Colonials finally learn "THE TRUTH" about their own origins & history, who (or what) they really are, where they really come from, what the "Lords of Kobol" really were, and how the Cylons really fit into the whole story. I'm sure they'd probably rather find a heavily armed fortress planet with a fleet of Battlestars ready & willing to shred some toasters, but learning the truth about their own origins would probably prove far more important in the long run (if there is a long run, what with the killer robots on their tails threatening to wipe them out and all).

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned anywhere is an intriguing little tidbit that was dropped by Moore in one of his special podcasts, I think it's the bit three part one with the writer's roundtable when we sat in on a writing session mostly for the season two episode "Scar". In it, he acts cagey whenever the writers try to sound him out on certain things regarding the future direction of the story, as if he had some ideas on where he wanted the plot to go, but wasn't ready to make a definite commitment just yet, didn't want to close off any possibilities, and wasn't quite ready to show his hand. But at one point he did actually say that he had always envisioned that when they get to Earth it would be the distant past and the fleet would wind up helping to lay the groundwork for our own ancient civilizations.

But before anyone gets too excited, the very way he said that, and the very fact that coming out & saying it at all seemed really uncharacteristic compared to how close to the vest he was playing things the rest of the time, makes me suspect it was really a piece of deliberate disinformation. I could just picture him pointing to the tape recorder as he was saying it and making some other gestures to indicate "Don't believe what I'm telling you right now, I'm just throwing red herrings out on the podcast". It actually kind of sounded like that's what he was doing. Of course, it might have even been a bit of double-reverse disinformation: saying the actual truth in such a hinky, suspicious way that everyone assumes it must be a lie. And in any event, this was far enough back that it's entirely possible that when he finally worked what's really going on in this show and where he wanted it all to end up (which was apparently sometime during the breaking of the third season) he might have changed his mind from whatever he was thinking back during "Scar". But anyway, that's what he said back at that point, take it for what it's worth.

Agrunt, you just described the plot to a series of novels by Harry Turtledove, in which an alien culture arrives on Earth during WWII.

On topic, my vote is for the not too distant future, but I would not be surprised to find the RTFF showing up in present day either.

I would just love to see Roslin and Adama addressing the UN.

Just listened to the Crossroads, Pt 2 podcast. In it, RDM is talking about the use of All Along the Watchtower and explaining that the Colonials' world has some sort of mystical ties with our contemporary reality (a plotline I find similar to Beatles tunes showing up in Stephen King's The Dark Tower universe). Mrs. Ron starts humming in the background at this point and says through her teeth, "You've gone too far..." I really think they're going to show up at Earth pretty close to present time. Hovercycles, ahoy!

Oh dear God no. Although watching Roslynn and George Bush interact would be priceless. Still, the Cylons would nuke us almost immediately.

After talking with him for five minutes (if that) she'd do a little head nod, a little "Hmm, okay." She'd then invite him up for a tour of one of the spaceships. Then she'd airlock him.

I dunno about you but I'd pay to see that.

I took that same comment to mean that any Earth we come across will be far in the future, as above, and that the Watchtower riff is a reflection, and echo from thousands and thousands of years ago. A little less mystical, and a little more just amazing that things can last that long. I'll cling to that dream, because hovercycles scare me.

Judging by the *timely action* shown by our present day intrepid UN in places like Darfur, the reception to the appearance of a fleet of armed Base Stars on the heels of the RTF seeking refuge and succor would most likely evoke a kind of “Shoo! Go on! Get out of here!” reaction along with a declaration along the lines of: *Earth doesn’t have a dog in this fight so we’ll just be neutral, thank you very much.*

It is also entirely possible that she'd "been to Earth" Contact style, or the way they all "stood on Earth" in Athena's Tomb. Neither of these scenarios would tell us much about which Earth she would take the fleet to.