Let me take a stab at a few of these, it is fun.
Glowing spine: two things here, as we explore the genome of humans and animals we learn that all the creatures on this rock (and presumably BSG rocks) are really really similar, that would include lightning bugs. I don’t know how many genes would have to be changed to make it so humans could glow but I bet it’s not a lot, we’ve already done experiments to give other things (a couple of plants and some fish) lightning bug glow. On the other hand who says they actually glow at all, that could entirely be a “for the audience” thing so we’d know who some of the Cylons are, luckily they decided to show us that with the females, I don’t want to see Dean Stockwell’s naked back.
The download/ interface thing is definitely odd, but who knows. As we get closer and closer to “jack-in” computing it is important to remember that most of our impulses cruise around our body in a way that’s similar to electricity and we already know can be mimicked by electricity. Maybe human hands can go in the Cylon goo and interface, Baltar chickened out so we have no data in either direction on that.
Tigh: who knows. I think that’s part of the big reveal. My guess (100% totally unsupported by ANYTHING in the show so far, though not contradicted either): some human was screwing around with “merging” Cylons and humans before the first war and this is where the originals like Tigh came from. This would also explain why the Cylons put so much work into skin jobs, because they knew it could be done.
The reveal of 4: remember it wasn’t just the music and the location. Both Tigh and Tori have said a switch went off in their heads and they knew. Which is consistent with how head Six described the awakening of deep sleeper Cylons, they wouldn’t know and then they would.
The plan: they did have a plan. They were going to replace the humans, that got hosed up by Caprica Six and Boomer Eight at the end of season 2. But they did have a plan.
The Final Five: what else should they call them. Both humans and Cylons knew (through various means) there were 12 models and knew they only could identify 7 of the 12. There’s going to be some label for them, The Other Five, The Mystery Five, The Five We Don’t Know About, might as well be The Final Five, has a good ring to it.
There are certainly things that don’t mesh well, and things that are odd. But that’s part of story telling, especially when the story is incomplete. I remember when B5 was going on at one point a lot of the fans were complaining to JMS about how much the story was a generic “good vs evil”, “dark vs light”, it was all so obvious the Shadows were the bad guys and the Vorlons were the good guys and he’d promised something more than that. JMS only ever had one answer, and he said it over and over for a season and a half: wait for it. If you’re familiar with Babylon 5 then you know he was right and the complainers were wrong, but at the time before the story was complete it looked different. There’s still close to a dozen episodes of BSG to go, I’m not going to declare anything contradictory until the WHOLE story is told.
One shouldn't have to resort to a genetic analysis to determine whether someone has "stuff that can glow" in their spinal column or not. We know that humans don't, therefore anyone who does, is macroscopically different from humans.
On the other hand who says they actually glow at all, that could entirely be a “for the audience” thing so we’d know who some of the Cylons are,
Well if that's what it is, it remains on my list of complaints about the show, it just becomes a different kind of complaint ("something that's dumb and treats the audience like morons" rather than "something that's inconsistent and not well thought out").
As we get closer and closer to “jack-in” computing it is important to remember that most of our impulses cruise around our body in a way that’s similar to electricity and we already know can be mimicked by electricity. Maybe human hands can go in the Cylon goo and interface, Baltar chickened out so we have no data in either direction on that.
I guess I see this as a question of signal strength. Whatever electrical impulses fly around the human nervous system, it seems implausible that such a signal could be picked up by a 'resurrection ship' however-many thousands of miles away. Or that the signal sent to/from one's hand can carry the amount of information Boomer seems to get out of the goo.
Tigh: who knows. I think that’s part of the big reveal.
My point exactly: who knows?
My guess (100% totally unsupported by ANYTHING in the show so far, though not contradicted either): some human was screwing around with “merging” Cylons and humans before the first war and this is where the originals like Tigh came from. This would also explain why the Cylons put so much work into skin jobs, because they knew it could be done.
That's a pretty decent theory and you could very well be right (in the sense that, it seems pretty likely to me that that's the way the writers will go). If this is the explanation, I'm still wondering why everyone calls these guys "the final five", since under this scenario they were the original five.
One point I haven't mentioned is how utterly implausible it is that these random four, if they were so important and unique, all somehow managed to survive not only the Cylon attack but all the dangers that have come after, and ended up in the Galactica fleet. Think about how haphazard Anders's path was to get to the fleet. Or how essentially random and unimportant a person Tory is to be one of the "final five".
Both Tigh and Tori have said a switch went off in their heads and they knew.
Yes but how? Why? Maybe they are just insane.
The Final Five: what else should they call them.
Anything else, frankly. Anything that doesn't pull us out of the narrative and remind us that we're watching a TV drama. Again: there's nothing "final" about these 5 other than the fact that they are the last 5 revealed on the TV show.
There’s going to be some label for them, The Other Five, The Mystery Five, The Five We Don’t Know About, might as well be The Final Five, has a good ring to it.
Right; it had a good ring to it, on the TV show. It doesn't make sense in context however. Again, why would the people within the show think of them as "final"? It's as if The Sopranos had been written such that all the characters called Tony "The Protagonist". BSG seems to have some writers who don't realize how jarring and clunky it is to write like that.
There are certainly things that don’t mesh well, and things that are odd. But that’s part of story telling, especially when the story is incomplete.
It may be part of storytelling and it may be part of incomplete stories but it's also true that all other things being equal, it's better when stories mesh well than when they don't. Basically you're conceding my point here but trying to sweep it aside with "all stories do it". That doesn't really fly; on such grounds one can't ever judge stories on this basis at all. Which is silly, of course.
I remember when B5 was going on at one point a lot of the fans were complaining to JMS about how much the story was a generic “good vs evil”, “dark vs light”, it was all so obvious the Shadows were the bad guys and the Vorlons were the good guys and he’d promised something more than that. JMS only ever had one answer, and he said it over and over for a season and a half: wait for it. If you’re familiar with Babylon 5 then you know he was right and the complainers were wrong, but at the time before the story was complete it looked different. There’s still close to a dozen episodes of BSG to go, I’m not going to declare anything contradictory until the WHOLE story is told.
This is a perfect counterexample to illustrate my point: JMS had plotted out the story arc beforehand and knew where he was going. Ronald Moore did not. And I'm not just making that up, Moore has given interviews to this effect. He did NOT know that Tigh etc. would turn out to be Cylons when the show began. This is something he/the writers came up with later. Which is precisely my point.
JMS wrote Babylon 5 completely different and that's part and parcel of why it was better storytelling from a story-arc basis, and BSG has the problems it has. If you're telling me to "wait for it" that's a little disingenuous because you know as well as I do that BSG wasn't written the way JMS wrote Babylon 5. The best one can hope for is that the writers will come up with something on the fly that will turn out to have been worth waiting for and somehow tie up loose ends. But that's precisely my criticism, because when BSG began, it seemed to be so much better and more well-thought-out than that.