Today in TV History: ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Blew Minds with Cylon Reveals and Hendrix Licks

Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone. 

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: March 25, 2007

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Battlestar Galactica, “Crossroads, Part 2” (Season 3, Episode 20). [Watch on Hulu.]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Rationally, there’s no way that Battlestar Galactica could have ended with the third season finale “Crossroads, Part 2.” Too many questions still lingered, too many character arcs were still unresolved, too many fans would have felt abandoned and left hanging. But imagine how great it would have been to go out on the show’s most holy-shit moment? I’m not even one of those people who hated the BSG finale as it was. But imagine the series revealing the secret identities of four of the final five Cylons, Starbuck returning from the dead to announce she knows the way to Earth, the dropping the mic after laying down a sweet Jimi Hendrix cover. Galactica: out!

“Crossroads, Part 2” was the culmination of the entire series to this point, yes, but in particular this notion throughout the third season that the revelation of the mythical “final 5” would be a huge key to unlocking the great mysteries of the show. Since the first episode of the series (the first episode after the miniseries, that is), we knew that there were 12 Cylon models, and by the end of season 2, seven of those models had made themselves known. And once the series began engaging with the Cylons’ internal politics, it became clear that the Cylons didn’t know who those five other models were either. A genuine mystery! And while nothing was made explicit about it in the episodes, there was a definite sense that season 3 was leading towards an unmasking of those final five. They could only show that opera house dream so many times before they had to pay it off. And so they did … mostly.

After a finale’s worth of seeing characters reacting strangely to the ship’s entry into the Ionian Nebula, four characters followed strange sounds they only they could hear — “IT’S IN THE FRACKIN’ SHIP!” — to an empty room in the ship’s bowels. There, Col. Saul Tigh, Master Chief Galen Tyron, presidential aide Tory Foster, and all-around hunky guy Sam Anders came to the realization at last: they were all Cylons. And they had been from the start.

It should be noted that A+ BSG composer Bear McCreary managed to trick up a sound cue that would be a clarion call for the Cylons and still evoke the elusive Earth that they’re all trying to get to. As the sound became clearer and clearer, and as the four secret Cylons were more drawn to it, the fact that the song was a tricked-up cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” just made the whole scene more bizarre and momentous.

[You can watch Battlestar’s Galactica‘s episode “Crossroads, Part 2” on Hulu.]