As basketball fans rev up for the Final Four next week, a hard-core contingent of "Battlestar Galactica" freaks -- yours truly included -- are more concerned with the Final Five.

The final five cylons, that is. For "Battlestar" novices out there, I'll explain, and urge you to start your journey with the "Battlestar Galactica: Season One" DVD.

In this brilliant and highly addictive reimagining of the lame late '70s series, low-rasping, rock-faced Edward James Olmos stars as Adm. Bill Adama, whose Galactica crew protects and guides what's left of the human race as they search for the fabled Earth after their planets were nuked by their cybernetic enemies, the cylons.

The political and moral questions about war tactics and civil liberties raised by the Sci Fi Channel show are fascinating, and never easy. Early this season, resettled Galactica crew members planted suicide bombers among the cylons and human traitors at a police ceremony on New Caprica -- a troubling image if your brain naturally defaults to viewing the humans as the "Americans" in this fight. Uh-uh. This show doesn't work that way.

Dee Wren, an N.C. State grad student from Durham, says it drives her crazy when friends say that morally troubling situations on the show are "about Iraq." She loves "Battlestar" because it paints a bigger picture about what even good people can do when survival is at stake.

"These guys writing this show are military history wonks," she says. "To them, this stuff going on in Iraq and other places currently -- Darfur, Eritrea, so on and so forth...."

"Of course [Iraq] is in there, but it's in there with other stuff."

In the third-season finale, which airs Sunday night at 10, two things are set be revealed. For one, we'll learn the fate of weak-kneed Gaius Baltar, the former president of the human fleet. We'll hear the verdict in his trial for collaborating with the cylons against his own resettled human race when the tyrannical, merciless cylons invaded and took over on New Caprica.

But is it really his own human race? Baltar, whose genocidal actions were either coerced by a group of seven cylons, or seduced out of him by beautiful cylon Six, is the only one who can see Six when she's whispering in his ear and making him do bad things. Why is that?

Which brings us to the big question. So far, we've seen seven "skinjob" cylons, as Battlestar soldiers derisively call the human-looking ones and there are 12 in all. Sunday, we'll find out who at least one of them is, according to previews.

Despite his very human narcissism, Baltar's telepathic relationship with Six makes him a good candidate in my book.

As for other possibilities, here are my predictions:

* Baltar's attorney Romo Lampkin. Come on, he's just too good at what he does.

* President Laura Roslin's assistant Tori. She's been acting crazy lately. Plus she's hot, and cylon women tend to be hot. Grace Park as Sharon, Tricia Helfer as Six and Lucy Lawless as D'anna -- need I say more?

* Dee, the long-suffering wife of former Galactica officer Adama. (He now works with the Baltar defense team.) She's hot too.

* Top fighter pilot Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. The recent suicidal demise of the hard-drinking warrior woman had "Battlestar" fans in tears for days, if Web postings are to be believed. Well, I think she'll be back.

If any Galacta-geeks out there have predictions to share with me, please do. First one that gets close enough to being right wins public glory, plus a Rufus the Naked Mole Rat doll from Disney Channel's "Kim Possible."

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