Before I share my thoughts about the telemovie, I have to say this: If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to be spoiled, click away NOW. Consider yourself warned.

So the idea behind “The Plan,” ostensibly, was to tell the untold story of the Cylons. The plan they had when they attacked the Colonies in the miniseries.

Problem is, The Plan itself boiled down to, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the humans.” (With apologies to Shakespeare.)

We knew that already. What this telemovie did – and did quite well – was to explain what happened with many little plot points, such as:
• Who did Caprica Six turn and speak to, turning over a metal case, when Baltar left her on that fateful day on Caprica in the miniseries (Cavil).
• How did Boomer’s programming work? How was she “activated”? (A statue of an elephant. Yes, really. An elephant. Why? Beats the hell outta me.)
• What really happened with the water supply being blown out. What really happened with Boomer shooting Adama (she obviously overcame her programming out of love for Adama, or else she would have just shot him in the head, killing him instantly).
• What really happened with that copy of Caprica Six (meaning, her hair was as platinum blonde as CS) with the glasses in Season 1 who accused Baltar of almost exactly what he had done down on the planet, but with poorly photoshopped images (one of her doppelgangers, a prostitute, walked a lot faster than she did and managed to elude the Marines after her, then took off her wig and the actual Six was ordered to airlock herself by Cavil).
• What was Simon’s deal? (One of his copies was married to a human and airlocked himself out of resurrection range in order to not blow up his ship, and his family. Another version was with Anders on the planet.

Other things I liked about the movie were that it showed how at least one of most models, even Cavil, ended up caring deeply for the humans. Leoben couldn’t get Starbuck and her special destiny out of his head. Boomer didn’t kill Adama when she had the chance because she truly loved him as a father (plus, she and Caprica Six were truly devastated when the humans they were leading to safety were slaughtered by Centurions). Simon killed himself rather than his wife and stepdaughter. Even the Brother Cavil with Anders grew to care about the motley crew of survivors he led. We still got very little sense of Doral and unfortunately we saw none of D’Anna.

And I liked that Simon was such a large part of the telemovie, because we hardly saw any of him for the entire run of the series and he always seemed so interesting to me.

I also liked the little moments where there was contact between the Final Five and the Significant Seven, which ranged from extremely significant (Cavil with Ellen on Picon in the strip joint) to minor (when the Five came to the airlocking of the two Cavils.

The things we didn’t find out, that I very much would have liked to have seen, were still vast:
• How, exactly, did Caprica Six’s body manage to shield Baltar from the nuclear explosion when she herself was destroyed?
• Who were each of the Significant Seven modeled after? We know Cavil was a copy of Ellen Tigh’s dad. What about all the others? I’m sure they all were based on someone from the Final Five’s lives.
• What about Daniel, the boxed No. 7 that was but a footnote in the original series, yet drove all the fans bat-guano crazy?
• Why did Leoben FREAK OUT when he saw Kara was dead on Earth? I mean, c’mon, the man FLIPPED THE HELL OUT. He couldn’t have run away any faster if Cylon-eating Dobermans had been on his tail.
• More about the Centurions. They came first, they had self-awareness first, they created the Significant Seven with the Final Five’s help. And how, exactly, did Cavil manage to erase the memories of the Final Five AND the memories of all the other models? It seems that would be connected to his control over the Centurions and Raiders.
• The backstories of the Final Five, how they were planted on the Colonies. They couldn’t age (or could they?), so how did their hanging around for 40 years work out?

I knew the whole issue of how the Final Five ended up leaving Earth and coming to the Colonies wouldn’t be addressed here, but that’s a miniseries/telemovie I’d LOVE to see.

In all, I felt the movie was a wonderful character study, especially of Cavil. When he knifed that boy after giving him a piece of apple, it became obvious we had never misjudged his character. The Cavil on the Galactica was obviously the Cavil who ended up in charge of things back at the Colony. He was irredeemable and it didn’t much matter what happened, he hated the humans and being modeled after them. That’s a story, I admit, that I’d like to see, as well.

Perhaps some of these issues will be addressed by Caprica (not the whole Earth/Kobol connection, though). Either way, that series looks to be very promising. I just have to watch it one more time before I write up my thoughts on that.

I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts on The Plan, so please let me know what was good, bad or indifferent about it.

Oh, and here’s a couple of cool BSG-related posts:
• From i09: 5 Things You Didn’t Know About BSG Season 4
• From the Hairballs blog on HoustonPress.com: Why Battlestar Galactica Kicks Star Wars‘ Ass