Battlestar Galactica: The Final Five 1

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Battlestar Galactica: The Final Five 1 An issue of the Dynamite series.
Issue No.	1
Writer(s)	Seamus Kevin Fahey David Reed
Illustrator(s)	{{{illustrator}}}
Penciller(s)
Inker(s)	Nigel Raynor
Colorist(s)	Ivan Nunes
Letterer(s)	Simon Bowland
Editor(s)
Collection Design	{{{designer}}}
Cover Artist(s)	Mel Rubi (Cover A) Nigel Raynor (Cover B)
Adaptation of
Published	April 15th, 2009
Collects
Collected in
Reprints
Reprinted as
Pages	{{{pages}}}
ISBN	[[Special:Booksources/|]]
Population	0 Survivors
Special	{{{special}}}
Chronology
Previous		Next
None	Battlestar Galactica: The Final Five 1	Battlestar Galactica: The Final Five 2
Purchase
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Summary

• The comic opens with the apparent death of Kara Thrace before Lee Adama's eyes in "Maelstrom," then flashes back to Kobol four thousand years prior.
• People are trying to burn down the Library of Hephaestus, while others try to stop them.
• Delegate Michael Tigh, representative of the Thirteenth Tribe on the Quorum of Thirteen, visits Pythia in the Maniae Asylum. He tells her that he cannot save her from the Quorum's judgment. Pythia sees Head Six reflected in the puddles on the floor of her cell. Tigh is clearly in love with Pythia, though he does not believe in the divine messengers she claims to see.
• Pythia speaks before the Quorum before judgement is passed on her. She says the people should be united as one tribe, that it is wrong for them to be divided into twelve, let alone thirteen. She calls for the people to abolish the Quorum and destroy the capitol and the idols. She is sentenced to death by immolation at dawn for heresy, and refusal to pay tithes to the temples of Artemis and Aphrodite. As she is dragged away by the guards, she tells the Quorum that the gods will not forgive them.
• On the steps outside the Quorum building, Delegate Tigh is approached by a hooded man, who then knifes him. Tigh awakens in the main resurrection facility on Kobol. Other members of the Thirteenth Tribe are now rioting in the streets because there will be no investigation into his "death," and are being met by equal violence from human rioters. The city is a madhouse.
• Tigh has a confrontation with another member of the Quorum, who decides that the Thirteenth Tribe's seat should be abolished. She is revealed to be working with the same man, Magnus, that killed Tigh.
• The Thirteenth Tribe decide to leave for their backup site, believing that an attack on their Resurrection facility can't be too far off. They are correct. An old man with a briefcase walks up to the facility and detonates a bomb, saying that he's sorry, but, "They're taking care of my family."
• A man called John Cavil risks his life trying to help people out of the burning wreckage. Soldiers approach and open fire on nearby rioters. Tigh, who is not severely injured, slips away with a gun in the confusion. He holds an orderly at the Maniae Asylum at gunpoint, and has him throw his keys on the ground, and then get out of his way. Tigh finds Pythia in her cell, writing and seized by more visions. Tigh escapes the asylum with Pythia in his arms, but she is shot by the hooded man. The man and Tigh fight, and Tigh shoots him.
• Soldiers are firing on rioters outside the secondary Resurrection facility, where Tigh has brought Pythia's body. She is already dead, so the Thirteenth Tribe can do nothing for her. The facility, which is also a ship, lifts off from Kobol. No one notices a wounded, hooded stowaway. John Cavil, who was gravely wounded while trying to help the survivors from the explosion of the first facility, is downloaded into a new body as a reward.
• A fleet of Thirteenth Tribe ships have now departed Kobol. Tigh is by a window, viewing outer space. Head Six appears behind him, and says that she has so much to tell him.

Notes

• The Thirteenth Tribe are revealed to have been humans, atheists unlike most humans on Kobol, who downloaded themselves into humanoid Cylon bodies (though not called "Cylon" at this point in time) so that they could live forever via Resurrection. They were members of the other twelve tribes before this. Pythia opposed this further fragmentation of Kobol's people.
• The government on Kobol was highly theocratic, as well as authoritarian. Expanding the Quorum of Twelve into a Quorum of Thirteen was an unpopular move. The Thirteenth Tribe was barely tolerated before full-scale violence broke out.
• The Thirteenth Tribe were able to make John Cavil one of them because he was still alive, though mortally injured. They could not do likewise for Pythia, because she was already dead.
• The precursors to Resurrection Ships are seen.
• Head Six appears in her recognizable form, millennia before the creation of Number Six-model Cylons.
• Pythia's spoken predictions include: "They all burn. All of them, embers from a flame, dots disappearing into the Sun. And I'm there, a ship... in a storm, I'm lost. I see the destination. The end point, it's so clear to me. It ends in fire. On Aurora's wings, at a place called Earth."
• A line of Pythia's writings is visible: "They will journey to a distant and unknown star, under the watchful eye of the One." In the Miniseries, Elosha tells that the Thirteenth Tribe traveled far, and made their home on a planet around a distant and unknown star.
• Guards and soldiers on Kobol wore armor that made them look reminiscent of Cylon Centurions. No actual Centurions are seen to have existed on Kobol.
• The hooded man's full name is given as Magnus Baltar in the next issue.
• Michael Tigh recounts the real-world myth of Aurora and her human lover, who was granted eternal life, but not eternal youth, by Zeus, and eventually shut away to spend eternity as a babbling old man.
• The Thirteenth Tribe being downloaded humans would seem to conflict with John Cavil's statement in "No Exit" that the tribe "didn't crawl up out of the swamp".
• Not counting ads, this issue is 22 pages in length.

Analysis

• Michael Tigh and John Cavil are almost certainly ancestors of Saul Tigh and Ellen Tigh, respectively. This suggests that the latter's maiden name was Ellen Cavil.
• Ancestors of Samuel Anders, Galen Tyrol, and Tory Foster must be among the Thirteenth Tribe during these events, but are not identified.
• Just before dying, Pythia tells Tigh that she will see him on the other side, echoing Kara Thrace's last words to Lee Adama in "Maelstrom" and Samuel Anders' last words to Thrace in "Daybreak, Part II."
• Pythia's predictions are suggestive of the Fleet being sent into Earth's Sun in "Daybreak, Part II." The line about Pythia being there in a ship lost in a storm, like Kara Thrace's situation in "Maelstrom," may mean that Thrace is a future incarnation of her.
• "...the One" is likely a reference to the one true God/The One Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken.
• Pythia, Michael Tigh, the Final Five, Gaius Baltar, and Caprica-Six have all seen the messengers. In the epilogue of "Daybreak, Part II," the messengers mention having witnessed the events on Kobol, Earth, and Caprica firsthand. The appearance of Head Six in her familar form on Kobol could mean that it is actually her true form, and the Sixes were made by the Final Five in her image.