The Music

As the Fleet approaches the Ionian nebula, four people, Saul Tigh, Samuel Anders, Tory Foster and Galen Tyrol, begin hearing fragments of strange music that only they can hear. The music becomes more distinct and distracting as the Fleet gets closer to the nebula.

Once the Fleet arrives at the Ionian nebula, the music reaches a piercing shrill. The Colonials affected not only hear the music complete, but begin to add lyrics as well. As the Fleet plunges into darkness, losing electrical power for reasons unknown, the music compels the four to meet in an isolated room.

The four are able to assemble the lyric fragments with the intact music to form a strange song. The musical experience is associated with a "switch going off" in the minds of the four, who suddenly become aware that they are Cylons. The source or cause of the music is not known, but Final Five Cylon Samuel Anders recalls that in a past life on Earth, he wrote the song and used to play it for the woman he loved and his friends (Crossroads, Part II, Sometimes a Great Notion).

At the end of the episode the song starts playing as background music for the viewers to hear. These are the complete lyrics that are sung:

There must be some way out of here

Said the joker to the thief

There's too much confusion

I can't get no relief

Businessmen they drink my wine

Plowmen dig my earth

None of them along the line

Know what any of it is worth

No reason to get excited

The thief he kindly spoke

There are many here among us

Who feel that life is but a joke

But you and I, we've been through that

And this is not our fate

So let us not talk falsely now

The hour is getting late

All along the watchtower

All along the watchtower

Several of the lines appear in dialogue throughout the episode:

Anders: That song you're hummin'. What is that?

Tyrol: Oh, uh. Ah you know I don't even know, it's just something I can't get outta my head. Some way outta here.

Racetrack: Yo, Anders! Do you need a frakking invitation? Move it!

Anders: Alright. No reason to get excited.

Saul Tigh: You'll look into it? You'll look into it? I am here telling you there is Cylon sabotage aboard our ship.

William Adama: Sabotage? With music?

Saul Tigh: I know, I know. I can't quite understand it myself. There's too much confusion.

Saul Tigh (to self, after Adama exits): There must be some kinda way out of here.

Tory Foster (while washing her hands): I can't get no relief.

Since their awakening was precipitated by hearing this music, Anders, Foster, Tigh, and Tyrol become sensitive to mentions of music by others, believing they may be clues to the identity of the then-unknown member of the Final Five. These include Gaius Baltar using music as a metaphor for spiritual awareness (Six of One), an idea Virtual Six told Baltar of in his first vision of the Opera House (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II), Number Two's description of a subtle music underscoring reality that only a few individuals, including Kara Thrace could hear (Faith) and Felix Gaeta singing to distract himself from the pain of his amputated leg (Guess What's Coming To Dinner?).

The music is heard again during a standoff between Galactica and the rebel basestar. It draws Tigh, Tyrol and Anders to Kara Thrace's Viper, which causes the three to believe there's something special about it. Thrace investigates their claim, and discovers a clue that ultimately leads the Fleet to Earth: a Colonial emergency locator beacon signal. Upon the Fleet's arrival at Earth, they land and survey a radiated wasteland of crumbled skyscrapers and a collapsed bridge (Revelations).

Notes

• The music is, indeed, a version of Bob Dylan's song, "All Along the Watchtower," specially arranged by series composer Bear McCreary, the lyrics sung by his brother, Brendan McCreary (known professionally as Bt4) . The song is available on the Season 3 soundtrack.
• The song is not intended to indicate that the Colonials have picked up an Earth communication. Series executive producer Ron D. Moore considers the song to be an invention created by a Colonial citizen in a curious parallel to what had or will develop on Earth. The series creators have intentionally avoided citing whether Battlestar Galactica occurs in the the series' Earth's past, present, or future. Moore offers that "things that happened on Galactica were tied into our reality here on Earth in some way, in the past or the future, or some other connection".
• Over 25 notable bands have performed cover versions of "All Along The Watchtower"; the definitive cover was performed by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Many people are unaware that his version was not the original .
• Bob Dylan has indicated that the events in the song's lyrics are "in a rather reverse order", beginning logically in time with the "All Along The Watchtower" verse and ending with the now-famous opening lines, "'There must be some way out of here,' said the Joker to the Thief."
• The version used in the series omits the final stanza, though the full song (including this stanza) is included in the season soundtrack:

  All along the watchtower, princes kept the view

  While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

  Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,

  Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

• The rhythm of the Colonial emergency locator beacon's signal matches the rhythm of the Music.

External links

• Season 3 OST at Amazon, including "All Along the Watchtower"
• An analysis of "All Along the Watchtower" at Reason to Rock
• "All Along the Watchtower", sung by Bob Dylan, at iTunes
• "All Along the Watchtower", sung by Jimi Hendrix, at iTunes

• All Along the Watchtower at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

Analysis and commentary in “Of Duduks and Dylan: Negotiating Music and the Aural Space,” by Eftychia Papanikolaou. In [Cylons in America: Critical Studies of Battlestar Galactica]. Edited by Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall, 224-236. New York and London: Continuum, 2007.

Re-imagined Series definition: all-purpose vulgarism; Colonial version of "fuck" (see: frak)