Series Conclusion: Who was the 13th Colony?

[Spencerian]

As I was chewing through storyline ideas for Caprica and how we should see the first Cylons treated, I came upon a realization:

I believe that the Cylons are the Thirteenth Tribe.

The series information (from their takeover of the original Colonies), their continual haunting of humanity, their new humanoid forms, the existence of the Final Five, the strange mystical connections between Cylons and humans, particularly in Kara Thrace's destiny, the Eye of Jupiter and the Temple of Five (used and activated by a Cylon but built by humans long before the Cylons were supposed to exist)--all of this just came together in my head. And the fact that while Cylons can't interbreed but can with humanity through love...that's too much of a series of storypoints.

And it seems exactly like something that RDM would do to us. The Cylons are not humanity's children...they are more of their brothers.

Earth could be the Cylon homeworld itself, for all I know.

[Serenity]

That means the skinjobs aren't really descendants of the mechanical Cylons, who are still created by humanity after all.

Makes sense and would be a nice twist, but one heck of a lie. After all they still enslaved the chrome jobs and want to take revenge on mankind. That they are humanity's children is correct, but their beef with the Colonials is very specific.
It's not impossible, but there needs to be an explanation for their motivations then.

[Joe Beaudoin Jr.]

Well, we have to wonder, or find out, why the Final Five separated themselves from the Significant Seven... What do the Final Five know that the Seven don't?

[Sgt_Smiles]

Earth is the home of a Cylon/Human socitey that lives in peace.

[JDS]

Maybe Earth is where ALL the other copies of the Final Five live, other than those in the Fleet.

I'm still leaning towards the traditional "We're the 13th tribe" idea.

[buerger23]

The 13th colony is Spartans read the thread "Military".

[joelang1699]

Could it be that the 13th tribe refer to themselves as Cylons even though they are human?

[pagad]

I believe the 13th tribe destroyed themselves in a nuclear war, the results of which we saw in Revelations.

However, I do not believe that the 13th tribe is us as we are now or in the near future. I've revised my opinion - humanity (i.e. our descendents) went to Kobol, twelve of the thirteen tribes founded the 12 Colonies while the 13th retraced the route of the original journey back to Earth. The 13th (unlucky?) tribe, rather than create a peaceful society, fractured and destroyed itself.

Whether or not that's just a pile of crap remains to be seen.

[Starstruck]

I believe the 13th tribe destroyed themselves in a nuclear war, the results of which we saw in Revelations.

However, I do not believe that the 13th tribe is us as we are now or in the near future. I've revised my opinion - humanity (i.e. our descendents) went to Kobol, twelve of the thirteen tribes founded the 12 Colonies while the 13th retraced the route of the original journey back to Earth. The 13th (unlucky?) tribe, rather than create a peaceful society, fractured and destroyed itself.

Whether or not that's just a pile of crap remains to be seen.

This is what I think happened too. In this theory all the colonials and the 13th colony are our descendents, doing things in the fairly far-off future after we have destroyed our own civilization somehow. I think they left because of whatever we did (a nuclear war, perhaps?), found the algea planet, then Kobol, settled there, and then some time later the 13th went back to Earth, perhaps to scout it out to see if it was liveable again yet. Some time after, the colonials left Kobol for the colonies because something went awry on Kobol. Some time later, most likely fairly recently in BSG time, the 13th colony destroyed their civilization on Earth again. Perhaps this is when the the five came to the colonies, but given Tigh's age, I would guess that at least he came back much earlier.

The colonists retained certain elements of the story in their writings, but lost the fact that they all originated on Earth and that Earth had been at least partially destroyed. Perhaps thousands of years passed between the founding of Kobol and the return of the 13th tribe to Earth, and that's why that knowledge got lost.

The fact that the temple of the lords of Kobol showed D'anna the final five (or at least the final four) makes it obvious to me that the final five are somehow related to the lords of Kobol. I don't think they were/are gods, but perhaps they had special abilities that made the humans treat them as gods. I think they were the first cylons, predating the humanoid ones we know of.

To me this version of what happened is so obvious I can't really entertain any other version. ;) The only part I can't figure out is how the five are among the BSG fleet now. Do they reincarnate? Some have suggested that the final five are programs or "souls" that can attach themselves to pretty much any body. If that's the case, how did D'anna see their faces?

[pagad]

The relevance of the Final Five is starting to fade for me (hell, it wasn't that big to begin with). I'm sick to death of the mystical theories surrounding the five and the whole thing's probably just a huge red herring to embarrass and distract overanalyzers. I don't buy the whole "the FF have been to Earth" line - er, no they haven't, as far as we know there's only one copy of each model, and they're all on Galactica or the rebel baseship.

"Those five Cylons just gave us earth"? Anders just told Starbuck to look at her Viper, ffs.

[Starstruck]

The relevance of the Final Five is starting to fade for me (hell, it wasn't that big to begin with). I'm sick to death of the mystical theories surrounding the five and the whole thing's probably just a huge red herring to embarrass and distract overanalyzers. I don't buy the whole "the FF have been to Earth" line - er, no they haven't, as far as we know there's only one copy of each model, and they're all on Galactica or the rebel baseship.

"Those five Cylons just gave us earth"? Anders just told Starbuck to look at her Viper, ffs.


The only reason we're overanalyzing the five is because we are discussing the show, and the writers, producers, and actors both during the show and in publicity outside the show have made this one of the central mysteries of the show. The larger themes of what it is to be human or humane are being brought up in many ways, but primarily in this way.

I'm not sure if it's genius or a big mistake to make us wait so long to learn the identity of the fifth, and to therefore painstakingly go through every possibility for the final cylon (it's happening in all kinds of fora and blogs of BSG fans, not just here). I'll withhold judgement on that until the series of over, but it seems that they would not hold off so long if the final's identity is not wrapped up in the show's larger themes and mysteries.

[turkey]

They've said it a bunch of times-- the final five came from the home of the 13th.

Then they get there and it's nuked and everyone is dead.

The fifth Cylon is really guilty about something.

It seems pretty obvious that the "final five" are responsible for what happened. The only question to me is how.

[Pnutmaster]

The five lights of the apocalypse rising, struggling towards the light... sins revealed only to those who enter the temple... only to the chosen one... the chosen one... the chosen one...The guilt may weigh heaviest on the Fifth, but this Hybrid seems to speak of sins (Earth's destruction?) that they all share.

[genji2000]

The guilt may weigh heaviest on the Fifth, but this Hybrid seems to speak of sins (Earth's destruction?) that they all share.

So the sins were revealed to D'Anna in the Temple of Five? If the sins are related to the destruction of Earth, why did D'Anna looked so shocked?

Or, at the end of Revelations, are they all stood in the Temple of Aurora (or on its ruins), witness to the sins of the Final Five?

[Starstruck]

So, I'm in a weird mood, I probably won't think this tomorrow...

add to my theory above that maybe Earth was the home world the Cylons found when they left the colonies (they knew of its existence because they were the children of the humans and had their scrolls.) On Earth the centurion Cylons created the 12 models, with five of them being different in some way from the other seven. The Cylons fractured, perhaps between humanoid and centurion or between the five and the seven. They warred and destroyed their planet, which forced them to take to the heavens in war vessels they had been building for some time to return and conquer the colonies. For some reason, someone didn't want the seven to know about the five and didn't want the five to know about the seven. They also programmed the seven not to remember they were from Earth. This is why the more spiritual of the Cylons have a memory of Earth, they were there at some point and just had that bit erased, but being beings larger than their own programming, they somehow retained some memories in symbolic form.

I still don't know why the five hid themselves among the humans.