Battlestar Galactica: Is Lieutenant Gaeta the final Cylon?
One of the biggest questions on the lips of sci fi fans, well, at least Battlestar Galactica fans (and there’s a lot of them), is the now long-running and burning question: who is the final Cylon? Cinemablend have just posted a very long and exceptionally good interview with Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, and one of the questions asked relates to how the final five Cylons were selected, to which Ron Moore states:
“The final four came up literally in a moment in a writer’s room where we were struggling with the end of season three. And trying to figure out certain things. I just said because it was all about the trial of Baltar. And we had always set that up to be the end of the season. It was, the structure was working fine. But it just didn’t seem to satisfy. It didn’t quite seem as big an idea to me. I said, I just wish that there was, we had some bigger revelation here. I just said, you know, I just got this image of like four of our people walking from different areas of the ship and all ending up in one room together.
They all close the doors and they look at each other. And they say, okay we’re Cylon. And then we just reveal like four of them, you know, in one fell swoop. Everyone was kind of taken a back in the moment. And then we, the more we talked about it, it just became well let’s, well why not. Why don’t we really do that? Then we just talked about who they – who those final four would be with an idea of holding out the last one for the last season.
Then settling on the last one. We kind of had a good idea going into the last season who the final Cylon was. And, but we were willing to sort of, you know, look at other candidates and see who it could be and which one makes the most sense in the mythology. Ultimately we stuck with the original choice because it just made the most sense in terms of the history of the show and what it means for the characters.”
The interview doesn’t give away any hints at who the number five Cylon is, and the series itself has certainly hinted towards a variety of different characters. But Moore and Eick are explicit in stating that until recently even they hadn’t made a final choice – even if they had an idea as to who it would be.
If there was a betting agency taking bets, I’d have a wager – and for my money I would say Lieutenant Felix Gaeta is our man – or should I say, our machine.
Gaeta has been arguably the character that’s been ignored more than any other (especially in promotions!), and yet been so crucial to the survival of Galactica. He’s also the character that’s been put through the most mental and physical pain, something very hard to argue once you’ve finished watching all ten ‘Face of the Enemy’ webisodes. If you have watched them, you’ll realize that they lead into the beginning of season 4.5. Face of the Enemy is basically an entire episode split into parts – and an excellent episode at that.
I’ve thought Gaeta was the final cylon since about half way through season 3, and after watching Face of the Enemy, my thoughts on this were strengthened (I won’t say why, for that would spoil the webisodes if you haven’t seen them). I did question this idea somewhat with Starbuck having seemingly Cylon related visions and the fact that her Viper was a copy and not the original Viper that was aboard the Galactica, but you know, these pointers just seem too obvious. Or perhaps Moore and Eick are going with ’surprise them by making it too obvious then making the obvious true’ trick. Either way, could Gaeta be the fifth Cylon? I’m going with an answer of ‘yes’.
According to Moore and Eick, we won’t have to wait long to find out, for the final cylon is apparently identified very early on once the last eleven hours of Battlestar premiere on Friday, January 16, 2009 at 10:00 PM ET on Sci Fi.
If you haven’t seen Face of the Enemy, start with part one here in the Sci Fi Scoop video section.
