Came here via i09 and was hella impressed by your theory. Great work.

I expounded on it a bit on my blog: http://boztopia.com/?p=505. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

When I think of Virtuality, all I can think of is the Star Trek holodeck. DS9 used that concept to interesting effect, so I’m not surprised to see Moore revisit it. I really hope we don’t find out the whole show has been some virt environment, because that would be akin to “it’s all a dream.” I do, however, like your idea about a blended group living in the colony and making extensive use of projection.

Before I started pondering the alternate reality idea, I figured humans and Cylons would settle on the Colony and continue the search for Earth. I’d actually like that scenario better than the alternate reality one. I think not finding Earth satisfies the dark ending we’ve been told we’ll get and it also makes the series more about the journey than the destination, something that has been at the heart of the storytelling all along. I could see a sequence similar to what we saw at the end of “Crossroads” with a Lee voiceover saying “Life here began out there.” A lot of it comes down to how they interpret Starbuck leading everyone to their “death.”

I would say that is the majority viewpoint, but I have trouble reconciling it with RDM’s mission statement:

http://www.battlestargalactica.com/outside_docs/bg_outdoc0022.htm#mission

On the other hand, RDM has listed 2001: A Space Odyssey as one of his primary influences, and I’m expecting a surreal ending. But surrealism can still be hard science if it’s a form of virtual reality.

RDM’s planned series Virtuality is based on virtual reality.
RDM’s upcoming series Caprica is based on virtual reality.
Battlestar Galactica… ???

For me, the perfect ending of Battlestar Galactica would be if the survivors agree to enter a virtual reality (perhaps because of being stranded in the Colony.) There, they would find the promised land. This would then leave ambiguous whether anything was in the real world before that or whether they just entered into a virtual reality within a virtual reality. It’s not a prediction – just how I would write it.

In my memory I mix up “The Black Hole” with “Space 1999.” All I remember is time and space stretching and as a kid I thought that was all kinds of cool.

Interesting set of things to mix up. As I gather it, though, Space 1999 also used the contrivance of some manner of singularity as well, although I believe this was kind of an “after the fact” point introduced in response to Asimov’s criticisms of the show’s brutal scientific inaccuracy.

I’m not sure that I *like* this through-the-singularity-alternate-universe-idea, but the evidence does seem to support it.

It does, at that. Not sure how I feel about it either, and I kind of hope they DON’T go there. But especially given the portrayal of black holes as inter-universal gateways so common to sci-fi, there does seem to be more than a bit of indication that this is the resolution they have in store.

That would be a really neat ending shot, wouldn’t it?

Heck yes.

Like you I’d thought of this possibility earlier, but gave up on it only to have it resurface.

One small note, though: Starbuck didn’t disappear in the atmosphere of the algae planet. I think you may be getting your episodes mixed up. The algae planet was featured in “The Eye of Jupiter” and “Rapture.” But Starbuck’s “journey” (wherever she went) began on a completely different planet, in the episode “Maelstrom,” when her Viper exploded above the “maelstrom” storm.

The key to, then, to how Starbuck was able to travel lies with the “maelstrom.” Some people speculated it might have been a wormhole. But I had a somewhat crazier idea that it might have been a ship — perhaps the re-imagining BSG’s equivalent of the Ship of Lights.

Sincerely,
John-Mark

I’m not sure that I *like* this through-the-singularity-alternate-universe-idea, but the evidence does seem to support it.

That would be a really neat ending shot, wouldn’t it?

Naked singularities are theoretically capable of emitting light — would we thus see the Fleet plunge into Kara’s mandala as the closing shot?