I am – Hercules!!

Like many a great episode of a great series, “Sometimes A Great Notion” (named, it turns out, for one of my favorite novels) answers big questions and poses big new questions.

Many spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen Friday’s episode.

At the end of “Battlestar Galactica’s” third season a newly resurrected Starbuck told Apollo she found Earth. Then we zoomed way out to the edge of the galaxy and then back in on Earth. We could make out its familiar continents.

On the radioactive “Earth” the fleet just discovered we never see those continents beneath the cloud cover. Plus it was apparently populated exclusively by dirty Cylons. Plus Roslin was still alive when they found it. So are we still supposed to believe this is really Earth?

There’s a prequel series coming to SciFi called “Caprica,” which supposedly tells the tale of how Eric Stoltz “invented” the Cylons just 50 years before the holocaust depicted in the 2003 miniseries. So – excluding the possibility of time travel, doesn’t news of a 2,000-year-old Cylon Holocaust diminish somewhat Stoltz’ role in Cylon Genesis?

And what exactly went on between the two Cylon wars? The Stoltz-forged centurions only made seven models? Did the centurions tell the seven models about the final five? Who told the centurions?

Why is there no model seven?

If Kara Thrace isn’t a Cylon, what is she precisely? (Note that, before the cancellation of "Galactica 1980," plans were afoot to resurrect the Dirk Benedict Starbuck as a kind of celestrial superbeing.)

How is it the 13th tribe was comprised of a bunch of robots?

Why wasn’t a race capable of interstellar travel more careful about writing all this down somewhere? (With all due respect, the prophecies of Pithia sound like they were written by a rum-swilling hybrid.)

Chicago Tribune TV columnist Maureen Ryan has a terrific interview with “Galactica” mastermind Ronald D. Moore focusing on last night’s installment. He doesn’t answer the questions I pose above, but he does have answers. Of particular interest:

* On Tigh and Baltar’s theory that Cylons comprised the 13th tribe? “I think you can read that as fact,” Moore tells Ryan.

* When Ryan asks if this is the only Earth we’ll see, Moore doesn’t answer “yes” or “no.”

* He discloses when it was decided that Ellen Tigh would be revealed to be a Cylon. (Remember how everybody thought she was a Cylon when she was miraculously discovered among the fleet? It turns out even the writers didn’t know the real truth at the time.)

* Moore explains the concept of the “final five” emerged out of the decision to have Baltar living among the Cylons for a long stretch of episodes. (Remember that scene on New Caprica with the seven known models voting on how to deal with their captive humans? Weren’t we all wondering why the other five Cylon models weren’t getting a say? In fact, aren’t we still wondering?)

* Moore also confirms that the disappointing condition in which Earth is found precipitates Dualla’s suicide.

Find all of Ryan’s interview with Moore, plus illuminating essays on the episode by its writers, here.

"I love love love DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG as much or more than just about anything I’ve seen this year." -- Harry Knowles

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