I’m also leaning towards a time travel explanation or a paradox or something along those lines.
Please no, that would be such a cop-out…
I like the idea that somehow her remains and the ship was brought from Maelstrom to Erf, being Erf some kind of mega-ressurection-hub.
We don’t really need magic to explain what happened. But maybe we do need magic to explain the ‘why’. I hope not.
We don’t? “The Third Man” theory is very cool - but I’m pretty sure that the Viper and (not that old of a) corpse found on CE are the original Starbuck’s. Unless somebody or something “moved” them from the location of the maelstrom (which I’m not buying), I cannot reason through how it happened.
We do? Something/somebody (that is not an uber being/god/spirit/astronomical anomaly - but seems to have some pretty good technology) has to be behind the unexplained events and “coincidences” that now abound in the saga. That “whatever” wanted/needed/at some point in time - when I know not) the RTF to find CE. (How come? A warning?) This was accomplished by the Starbuck/Viper replacement maneuver. Or am I missing something?
I know, let’s just call it fate. (Right)
So…what about this thought. There was a brand new ship that we have now seen in pieces on erf. Kara died and apparently was recreated as of sorts. The cylons or other beings in the galaxy may have some crazy technology to recreate anything…people, ships etc… What if there is a way that the 13th tribe (cylons long past i guess), what’s left of the civilization, can recreate anything they come across?
[QUOTE=rodbv;126708]Please no, that would be such a cop-out…
I am afraid a cop-out is coming since it appears that the writers made up the questions as they went instead of having an ending and working backwards from it. It seems there is no other way to reconcile the “facts.”
My guess:
Kara=harbinger of death (good guess!)
She died on the gas giant and ended up on earth. This earth is sheol/death/hell. She somehow returned from heaven/Eden or the EARTH that was remembered. She will eventually convince everyone else that the way to get there is to face death as she did. Roslin will die before reaching EARTH. So must everyone else. Dualla, Cally, and everyone killed on Caprica are already there. The rag-tag, fugitive fleet becomes a sort of purgatory.
The cop-out:
Death is the end of a computer program. After death, people are sent back to the beginning to start a new cycle. The program was started after the cylons actually destroyed humanity during the first war on Caprica. Reality exists in a cylon computer.
ps- cut me some slack, its my first post!
ok, i just wanna say… I told you so, j/k.
I think RDM was going for Kara = Christ deal. She literally died, resurrected, and then ascended to heaven. Not to mention the only daughter of god.
The ending of RDM reading reminded me of what the writers wanted to do for DS9, which is to have the camera pull out and show a older version Bennie from Far Beyond the Stars looking at the set of DS9 as a producer or director.
The fact that she disappeared in the end as Lee was talking to her says to me that she was a corporeal “head person”. I believe that she was an angel of god. As all others with “head people” were tools of the final objective says to me that she was encouraged by head leobon to let go and die. I would guess that god brought her ship to erff to teach her a lesson in that what she is, is a tool. I suppose when the hybrid told her she was the harbinger of doom it meant that she was the harbinger of doom to her and the pure cylon race.
Or maybe Horus, Attis or Mithra…it was not a novel idea 2000 ago 
It would be cool if in hindsight we had noticed that after Maelstrom she had never really phisically interacted with anything, like the other head characters, eh?
Wait, that idea was used on “Sixth Sense” already…
Unless Shelly Godfree was head Head-six, which I don’t think so, I think Head people isn’t as corporeal as Kara, and if she is different from other head-people, saying she is a “corporeal head person” is kind of pointless.
If she isn’t purely in the head, then “corporeal head person” ultimately that is only saying she is not a head person, but some how influenced directly by the entity affecting everything, instead of through head people. Kara after returning from death could be seen by anyone, she could bleed, get locked up, she could even die again, which I don’t think happens to head people.
I am in the camp that “Harbinger of Doom” was already resolved when the resurrection hub was destroyed. She bring real death to the 12 Cylon models.
those are are not exactly the same kind of resurrection.
In Horus and Attis’s case, they are injured and their part of the body was somehow cured. Horus is the symbol of renewal because he lost an eyes and it was healed by Hathor. His two eyes are the sun and the moon as he traverse the heavens.
Another kind of resurrection is sort of like reincarnation. Which also isn’t an novel idea 2000 years ago, as Indian cultures have the concept of reincarnation for a long time.
I guess Kara and Christ’s story differs because Christ rose from death with the same body. Where as Kara has a duplicated body. But Kara and Christ’s death shared a theme of supposedly their death atones for others sins and opens up opportunity of doing things the right way without past burdens.
I thought of Kara as Christ once she vanished again, her work complete.
Did anyone else catch Anders line “Find the perfect world for the end of Kara Thrace.”
They found it I guess.
Methinks this debate is going to run and run a bit like the “Is Deckard a Replicant?” one after Blade Runner.
My opinion is that she is an angel - and may have been one all along. If you look at the roots of Galactica, Glen A. Larson was a practicing Mormon whose faith inspired him to create this story. One of the roots of that religion was that Joseph Smith was led by the vision of an angel to find the clues that would lead him to God (I’m not an expert on religion but I seem to remember this much from my ‘Dummies Guide to Religious Beliefs’ 
).
Now, by that rationale, Kara fulfils a number of the functions of an angel whether in 1.0 or 2.0 incarnations - she finds the arrow of Apollo, which SHOULD have led them to Earth. She dies before they do that and then returns (with an angelic Viper(!!)) to fulfil the same function that eventually (via the higher power that is Bob Dylan) leads them to the Earth that we know and love.
She is different to the other entities that are more formally defined as “angels” - head Baltar and head Six - since everyone seems to be able to see and interact with her.
She vanished because (a) she had fulfilled her destiny and (b) she had fulfilled her personal need to be remembered.
I’m wary of calling anything in BSG = to anything. Certainly we’re supposed to recall the idea of a Christ figure, but I don’t think it can be limited to that.
Agreed. It bears keeping in mind that “angel” does not mean only one thing.