Intervention.
When and where the decision was made to intervene on behalf of humanity might not be as intuitive as you think. There was always concern, but the past had played out so many different ways proving that no matter how small their numbers, they always made a come back entirely on their own. It was not until the extinction of humanity was an established fact that a consensus was created for the cause of intervention. The risk of inadvertently destroying our own existence in the effort to save humans was a concern of many but the ultimate extinction of humans convinced many of the remaining holdouts. Many of our attempts to change the past created unforeseen consequences to our present and future. Our initial strategy in response to this was to try and catalog every event that could possibly change our present, which of course was insane, we see that now. But we do that in which we place our faith. This story will be interpreted by some of you as being about our faith journey, how our understanding of God changed over the millennia and led to our present interest in humanity. Others will see it more as a record of the tools we created in response to our struggle to stay alive. We’ve finally figured out a way to be free from our constant changing past.
The Harbinger of Death.
(This is the variant of Kara Thrace that arrived on dying earth with cylons in tow, who joined and better armed the rebelling cylons to destroy the13th colony. She stayed and fought them and died in the battle. Having doomed the 13th colony, and the Galactica she never returned to, the human race went extinct.
Independently of this, the final five were warned of the coming apocalypse with enough time to reinvent resurrection technology, and begin their odyssey back in time to change history, arriving just before the end of the first cylon war.
Starbuck begins working with the 13th colony to help protect them from the coming cylon attack (and the coordinated insurrection). She is introduced to the group later known as the final five — she recognizes them of course — and immediately knows (though in the wrong context) that they are cylons, and accuses them of being spies.
The outcomes of several loops: synopsis is that she has to change her own future (of the little girl) to escape the loop, changing anything else continues the loop and the harbinger of death.
Title: Little Girl Tara. First loop, She is born on the 13th colony but travels to future Caprica with her mother to study to be a pilot. Mother is trying to escape the dying world of the 13th colony.
2nd loop same but meets older version of self (dog tags) who has traveled back in time, neither recognize one another. 3rd loop same.
Title: Dog Tags. First and only loop, She fights and dies with the 13th colony. Meets but doesn’t recognize younger self.
Title: Before the Book of Pythia. 2nd loop is her only loop, she meets but doesn’t recognize her younger self. Sees dead dog tags? She goes back in time further to be Pythia, to write the history that will be followed as prophesy by a future Galactica (but is assassinated before book is written, and is mostly too crazy to write the book anyway due to the time travel sickness).
Title: The Book of Pythia. She goes back in time to be second coming of Pythia, gives her book to Magnus, and lives out her days with Tye senior, eventually giving birth to Tye Junior. Which means Tye Junior does not exist until loops after this. And that she had no knowledge of Tye Junior from previous loops. The series as we know it is the final loop.
Title: Future Tara (the disappearing Tara we know and love). She escapes the loop by going back forward in time, instead of back. She goes back to the Galactica, not realizing she has time traveled to the past and back.