Minor spoiler for the Battlestar Galactica season ender…

So you know how the Cylons are always talking about the one God they worship, in opposition to the humans and their whole pantheon? Turns out it’s Bob Dylan! The blogosphere is bugging out about the weird Dylan techno-sitar cover version at the end of the episode. Luckily, it turns out there’s a simple explanation, according to music composer Bear McCreary:

I learned that the idea was not that Bob Dylan necessarily exists in the characters’ universe, but that an artist on one of the colonies may have recorded a song with the exact same melody and lyrics. Perhaps this unknown performer and Dylan pulled inspiration from a common, ethereal source. Therefore, I was told to make no musical references to any “Earthly” versions, Hendrix, Dylan or any others. The arrangement needed to sound like a pop song that belonged in the Galactica universe, not our own.

Ohh kay then… so that “classic rock” is actually even more classic than we’d suspected. Or something. Meanwhile, more proof that Ron Moore is doing a certain amount of pulling things out of his butt in this interview.

I do hope the fourth season is the last, and it forces Moore, Eick and the others to focus on some tighter storytelling. A lot of the third season felt like padding or just drift. It reminded me, in particular, of what used to bug me about Deep Space Nine: long, long stretches where nothing much happens, followed by one or two episodes where “everything changes” — and then back to inertia again.