Not to mention the President and whoever helped her give Leoben a vacuum bath.
How do we know she feels emotions? Maybe she’s just programmed to mimic human emotional responses without feeling them, any more than a literal toaster feels them. This could explain why the Cylons can do so many things we humans consider outrageous – they mimic human feelings, but do not feel them, and if circumstances dictate that they do something no feeling human would do, or endure something no human could endure with anything like comfort, it’s not a problem, just a new subroutine kicking in.
I’ve written before about how it annoys me that people assume that robots with human exteriors also have human interiors. It. Does. Not. Follow.
That’s not murder; it was an act of war, performed by the President acting in her capacity as Head of State (and others acting as agents of the State), not by a private citizen. If there are valid treaties in place granting Cylons basic human rights and guaranteeing them humane treatment when captured in war, then the Cylons could petition any available agents of international law to have her tried for war crimes once hostilities cease, but this seems rather unlikely to me.
That’s not to say what she did was right, but it is very unlikely that she could be prosecuted for it.
Cally should have to be tried for murder and not just “unlawful discharge of a firearm.” The toasters are machines but Boomer has been shown to be a living organism, treated as a sentient being, and under military protection.
I don’t want Cally locked up, she’s great. And it’s a show. I like a little more eye-for-an-eye justice myself. I mean, Boomer tried to frakin kill Adama! But in real life would you just let off someone who took matters into their own hands? Could you trust their judgement and ability to obey after that?
Should Jack Ruby be charged for killing Oswald or let go because he believed Oswald killed JFK and was just avenging a wrong?
Killing Leoben was murder, but it could be considered execution of a spy. Or murder of someone you were pissed at. There are probably rules about martial law (not yet in effect) and Presidential discretionary powers, and such that would get you off, but you would need to go through channels and have a trial or inquiry.
But that’s the whole issue, isn’t it? How do I know that you feel emotions? You could instinctively mimic real emotions, but there’s no way to demonstrate that you feel them as I think do. (And some philosophers argue that even our own feelings are an illusion.) After all, don’t those [women, blacks, Indians, non-Greeks, heathens, non-Chinese, children, homosexuals, Jews, Democrats, Republicans, gaijin, retarded people, etc.] do things no rational, feeling person would do?
The history of liberalism (in the broadest possible sense of the word) has been one of extending rights to those considered not to have them or not to be (fully) human. But we still don’t have a test by which to determine where the line should be drawn. (As the debate over abortion vivdly demonstrates.) It seems patently ridiculous to nearly all of us to suggest that rocks or even trees have feelings or deserve rights. But animals (at least mammals) show every sighn of having emotions and feelings. Do they deserve rights? What is the criteria by which we decide? And what do we do when we don’t know (or can’t agree) whether an entity is a person deserving of rights or not?
[Muppet Show]
Piiiigs iiiin Spaaaaaaace!
[/Muppet Show]
Won’t happen. I don’t know if anyone’s made a legal case of it, but the general opinion in BG seems to be “laws and rights apply to human beings”. They didn’t even bother court-martialing Sharon despite the fact that she was a commissioned officer.
Re: The way Boomer is treated by Galactica vs. Pegasus, I can’t help but remember when one of our Asian employees was racially slurred by a patron. One of my friends made a joke, explaining that is was in itself racist, “Think of Archie Bunker saying, ‘We can’t let anyone treat our C___ks like that!’”
GAH!!!
Now I saw Ro/Cain on an episode of The Outer Limits!!!
She won’t go away!!!
It seems strange that the Pegasus crew is this far out of the colonies.
Sure they explained that they were following a group of Cylons, but
How did they follow the Cylons. They don’t have spies or tracking devices on the cylon fleet.
Why didn’t they scout the colonies for survivors?
Didn’t that know that a rag-tag fugitive fleet was fleeing the Cylon tyranny?
Another thing that may just be a time constraint for the show is why didn’t anyone ask about relatives that may be alive in the fleet?
I’m curious how they track people. In at least one episode, wasn’t there an intimation that if part of the fleet jumped, they would never be able to find them again?
Yes, it’s canon in the show that a vessel cannot be tracked through a jump. They’re untraceably gone.
Maybe Cain parked Pegasus on the side of the base star’s conning tower. 
Maybe they measured how brightly Six’s spine glowed when they raped her in various locations and triangulated from that.
Ok, I feel dirty for even thinking of that.
My first, second, and third reaction to Cain was to scream “She’s a Cylon!!!” when she and Adama were on screen together. About the half-hour commercial break, I changed my mind and decided she was just a psychopath.
Also, I think that Cain’s apparent authorization of the repeated gang-rape of P-Six serves a very important function. Since she shot her own XO and probably her own crew may have other reasons beside that to think she’s probably not the best person to have in command, she needs to give them an external enemy to focus their anger and disaffection on, to divert it away from herself or her (presumably loyal) senior staff.
A few more random thoughts…
I think that the Cylons are having some difficulty controlling the humanoid Cylons. I’m starting to get the impression that Six is maybe an older model, with the ability to mimic emotion, but not actually feel empathy for others (think psychopath). Boomer, OTOH, is a newer, “improved” model and has developed the capacity for genuine human emotion, including love. Remember in the first season, Galactica Boomer didn’t know early on that she was a Cylon, then started to suspect, and seemed not to be in conscious control of many of her actions. When she began to become aware, she also struggled to resist the in-programmed urge to do things like, oh, not tell Galactica that she had located a source of water. When she shot Adama, I got the distinct impression that she wasn’t acting of her own free will, but was carrying out an unconsciously programmed action. She appeared horrified at what she had done. Probably, if she wasn’t reeling from the shock of learning that not only was she a Cylon, but was only one copy among many, she might have been able to resist the impulse. Probably the Cylons were glad to have what I’m assuming was the entire Boomer line (minus Galactica and Caprica Boomer) nuked into oblivion. Sure, they lost a lot of potential breeding stock, but that particular model seemed to be bonding with the humans it interacted with beyond what was deemed necessary for procreation, and was becoming a hazard to the Cylons.
Also, does anyone besides me think Ellen Tigh is a Cylon? I mean, really, after being missing for how long, she just suddenly appeared, just came out of a coma, moved onto Galactica and got Sol, who when clean and sober may be an ass, but is also a highly competent officer, drinking again, then started working on his psyche…
Ellen is an old 6, they look so much alike its scary and they act alike as well.
could be wrong though.
I think he said he was on another ship they picked up, but I could be wrong about that.
Well that’s the interesting thing, isn’t it: the P-Deck Chief said he was aboard some ship and was drafted by Peg. “Things happen.”
Where is that ship?
I think Pegasus has been stripping any ship they came across of anything they found useful and then abandoning them to the fates. Yet another reason they should not be considered saviors, but vultures instead.
Yeah, but unlike women, blacks, Indians, etc., androids are manufactured. They are made things. It is reasonable to enquire whether or not they are constructed like us, or in such a way as to imitate us without being like us at all.
As for the notion that if you don’t buy into civil rights for androids you must be a racist bigot … interesting planet you live on. Come visit Earth sometime.
Re jump tracking: Cain told Adama that she’d been following a Cylon fleet’s movements and had eventually figured out their jump pattern (from one world rich in natural resources to another). That fleet had actually been following Galactica, of course, so when she jumped ahead of the Cylons’ next move to ambush them, she found Galactica already there. The jump to the next op, photographing the SuperBaseStar, is going to find it, too. It still isn’t quite clear how the Cylons are tracking the Colonial fleet, but there’s plenty of plausible ways.
Cain & co. can’t be Cylons, or at least they can’t be in on the Magic Hybrid Child thing if they are, or they wouldn’t be willing to subject Boomer 2.0 to beatings and rape. Cain is battledrunk and the crew she hasn’t shot yet are intimidated, but they’re all human.
Great Six scene, illustrating how callous thinking beings can be to others’ suffering, and even willing to cause it casually, but get outraged when they’re the targets.
More evidence that the ToasterNet has limited range, and that more than one copy of a MeatBot can be active at once - ChipSix had no clue about PSix until she saw her.
Roslin’s disengagement from fleet command is puzzling, and so is Adama’s impulsive order to attack Pegasus.
The Cylon super ship? Adama guessed it’s a Raider factory, but I like the baby factory idea. Unless it’s the mother ship that will colonize Earth as soon as the stupid humans find it for them, equipped with all the stuff they’ll need to rebuild it the way they’re rebuilding Caprica.
But humans made the toasters, not the new models. Somehow the toasters made the new models without human help. Would you grant them the rights of say a dog