Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A Key to the Last Supper Image?

We've all become obsessed with the Battlestar Galactica Last Supper image. Here at the Galactica Sitrep we've even made it our header banner.

N. E. Lilly of Space Westerns, the e-zine of the space western sub-genre, recently contacted us with news that he had discovered something interesting about the Last Supper photo.

Intrigued, I agreed to look at his find.

I was even more intrigued at that point, because if what he found is accurate, it's quite stunning, and visually arresting, and may provide a key to understanding clues in the image.

Lilly then asked me to collaborate with him on an article for his site on the possible meaning of this photographic decoding.

So, that's what we've done, and you can read all about it on the Space Westerns site.

But, since I believe the image may foreshadow future events in the series, and in Lilly's view, provide clear clues as to who could be the final Cylon, I think you should consider the article as containing SPOILERS.

However, as I say in the article, there could be many interpretations of meaning in the photograph.

So, visit Space Westerns to check it out. And I want to thank N.E. Lilly for asking us to participate and collaborate on this project.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I do think there's something to the "chalice" - it's too symbolic to be unintentional. (And in fact, I can't stop staring at this Six of One Screen Grab and wondering if the prominently placed glass is supposed to be yet another representation.

However, a lot of the image manipulation reminds me of the mirror imaging that was done by someone on battlestar_blog (and wound up involving Aaron Douglas) so I'm not entirely sure that there's anything more there than a few coincidentally placed (and carefully selected) props.

Anonymous said...

It's JUST a picture for goodness sake! People are wasting their time pouring such effort into their over-analysis of it.

I'll bet there isn't even any true symbolism and RDM is laughing at how much attention a simple promotional pic is getting. It reminds me of the Matrix films, how one guy wrote a full-blown THESIS on the meaning of the film, even though it was only meant to be light fluff.

Anonymous said...

I just find it interesting that it might not necessarily be how to manipulate it but to find meaning in the patterns of the picture.
There are groups of three across the board from left to right, and it is interesting that right now, we see 2 cylons in the first grouping, 1 cylon in the next, 2 cylons in the 3rd, and 1 cylon in the fourth.
There appears to be coupling going on. Lets start on the outside - of course the unattainable love between an admiral and a president (adama and Roslin), then moving in from the right, we have athena and helo. As sadly in the last episdoe we know chief no longer is coupled - could the knife possibly be to kill who caused that separation?, Kara and Anders, Baltar and six, arriving at the last three characters in the picture to be unaccounted for/un paired. In the scenes from the next episode show, there is a slight mental hallucination with Tigh where he sees a 6 as his deceased wife (let's pair them up for now - as they both are cylons) That leaves Lee out in the cold - but who brought him in from the cold and was there for him when Kara wasn't? That's right - Dee. There is also a lot of buzz about Dee on other websites and links to her name Anastasia as well as Dualla (duel, duo, double). It also makes sense that each of the final five cylons are associated with people of power and importance in the humans.
Adama - Tigh
Roslin - Tory
Kara - Anders
Lee - Dee
Callie + Baby - Tyrol

These importance links lead me to believe that Tyrol's baby is of more importance than Athena and Helo's - however, it is interesting to think about the differences in conception. One was born of human mother and cylon father, one was born of cylon mother and human father. One is a girl, Hera. One is a boy, Nicholas (patron saint of Greece - Greek gods - as well as the protector of sailors - they are on a space"ship"). It would also be interesting to see if these two cylon half's could have a child together - thus a 1/2 cylon + 1/2 cylon = 1 cylon?
side notes - while the 6s and 3s are now, tear tear, most likely gone for good - it is important to remember there is still caprica 6 on galactica as well as Athena 8 and the one that crossed over with the #1s. They still exist, thus their model lives on for a few more episodes at least.

Anonymous said...

^
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Your honor, may I present Exibit A - over-analysis. :)

ProgGrrl said...

My reasons for not looking at Nathan & Logan's conjecture has more to do with spirginity than anything else.

While I am wary of over-analysis, and pretty sure RDM is chuckling if he ever gets a look at the fanwank, I also saw RDM clearly state in a recent interview the photo contains some kind of meaning. Is he just toying with us?

We will probably not know until 2009 anyhow. Sigh.

Regardless, I take great pleasure out of the fact that a sci fi show is being promoted using a photographic recreation of one of the most famous religious paintings ever made. It's one of my favorite historical references they've used (right up there with Tyrol's union speech and Roslin's spaceship inauguration). Nice.

radii said...

Ahem ...
While the BSG Last Supper image analysis was very interesting and some serious thought (and image manipulation) went into it, there was a glaring and critical omission:

Six is at the center of image!

The Cylons are always saying that time repeats. Hence, the end must be the beginning!

The first Cylon we met was Six.

Anonymous said...

I think I know what the "unthinkable" but "inevitable" part was on about. It's about the end of the human race. The key is the word "end". I don't think the hybrid meant total annihilation. I think it meant that the cylons would have to cross-breed with the humans in order to survive. It's damn unthinkable. But with the way things are going, it's pretty inevitable, no?

Anonymous said...

personally i think the hybrids prohecy/speech may hold more clues than the last supper picture as to what we can expect.
I took it straight away that the way forward would be together as a new single race. something that popped into my head was that we were told that the five were fundamentally different, this could mean that they are not download into new bodies but born in the form of a child of one of the other four cylons. now why is not tyrol's then? well he didn't know that he was a cylon at that point and it may be a required part for the cylon to know they are one before the reincarnation can occur. my suggestion would be kara/anders child especially with the reference to wings of an angel, in my mind i just thought straight away of her. I suspect though that as the episodes air we will see more of the clues that were present in the picture, but not before we've seen the relevant episodes.