Battlestar Galactica: Where’s It Going?

Warning! This entry has major spoilers about the mid season finale of Battlestar Galactica, “Revelations.” If you’ve not seen it yet, well…

Alright, are all of the folks who’ve not yet seen it off the ship? Good. Moving along.

“Revelations” blew me away quite a few times. I never expected the four Cylons to be discovered half way through the final season - I figured it’d happen in the last 3 or 4 episodes. Even more shocking, though, was the arrival of the Colonial Fleet at Earth halfway through the season. I expected that event to take place in, say, the next to last episode of the show. As finding Earth has been the primary end point of the entire show, now that they’ve arrived at Earth and found it to be a smoldering nuclear waste, the question is: where to now?

It’s possible that Earth isn’t totally destroyed, but I can only think of one explanation for that, and it doesn’t hold up very well. It’s possible that the landing crew from the Galactica landed in an area that recently suffered a nuclear war, and that the rest of the planet is still teeming with life. This is a real stretch, though - you’d think that if they can plot courses through space and pick up ships on Dradis, they’d be able to do some sort of planetary scan. That, and I gotta’ say - it’d be pretty lame if the second part of the season started out with Adama going, “Oh, oops - we landed 300 miles too far this way, over here everyone, hooray!”

So, let’s assume that Earth is toast - then what? Honestly, I’ve no idea. The Colonial Fleet just heads off into space again, hoping to come across a habitable planet? That doesn’t seem right, and I’m not sure if half a season is enough to start up another story arc anyway. And where are the other Cylons?

I had expected the Colonial Fleet to arrive at Earth, followed by the arrival of the Cylons, leading to a final gigantic space battle. The inhabitants of Earth might even jump in and help take down the Cylons, and everyone lives happily after. Now, though, I’m lost as to where the show’s going. What do you all think?

(One other note: does anyone else think that Tory’s name is a nod towards the Loyalists of the American Revolution? Out of the four revealed Cylons, she’s the only one who really went back to “her people.”)