Battlestar Galactica 2.10 — "Pegasus" (no spoilers in OP: see scheduling note)

Cafe Society
141

We knew that before, because we saw a whole frakking Basestar full of Boomerbots last season. Not to mention the whole Boomer reveal at the end of the pilot. :smiley:

But I agree…I think the UFO is a baby factory/clone works. Cloneworks more than likely, because I’ve never seen or heard mention of a baby Cylon. They seem to come into existance as fully-formed adults.

Never in any BSG, in any incarnation have we ever seen a Cylon Homeworld. Who knows if they even have one. Maybe they are completely space-faring. Maybe that is why they want to find Earth…so they can have a planet.

142

My guess: God’s flagship.

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Living organism - check.
Sentient being - check.
Under military protection - for now, at least.
But I’m not convinced that MamaBoomer is playing straight with Galactica. She told Helo that now that she is pregnant, Cyclon Command considers her expendable. But in the movie theater on Caprica, the Human Cylons came to the consensus that, now that MamaBoomer has a bun in the Toaster Oven, she needs to be protected at all costs. That seems to be a pretty big discrepancy to me.

As for Helo and Tyrol’s trial, theirs’ aren’t charges raised in a peacetime environment where discipline can slide a little bit. Admiral Cain is perfectly within her rights to have a quick hearing with the summary judgement of execution issued immediately. In her view, she needs to quickly act to maintain discipline and good order (as she has done in the past, shooting her XO when he disobeyed an order.) She is the senior officer of the Fleet, and regardless of anything Adama and Roslin have said to each other in private (the war is over - we lost), the Colonials are in fact at war. She explained this to Adama, when she reminded him how Adama himself suspended the tribunal system in a previous incident onboard Galatica. Cain is merely using Adama’s own rules in this matter.

My guess is that this two-parter is a retelling of the BSGOS Pegasus story, and that this Pegasus will infact take out the Cylon Mystery Machine, and we’ll never see it again.

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My guess? God.

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Absolutely: none.

Dogs don’t have rights. Neither do toasters. Both are property, under the law.

I’m not saying I think the humans SHOULD rape and torture the cylons. I just say equating the damage done to a machine with the damage done to the humans - and to the human race - cheapens the suffering the Cylons have caused.

Boomer-bot already demonstarted that there’s a way for a human-like toaster to jack into a computer network directly. Have Baltar figure that out, plug 'em, do a core dump and then space 'em.

Quibbling about the morality of harming inanimate objects is ridiculous.

thwartme

146

Remember, too, that the very next ep after the movie theater reveal was the one with the virus and the elenty-million raiders in formation.

When I saw that, it seemed to me a perfect ruse to get the humans to trust the Cylon in their midst. The cylons, I’m sure, don’t give a damn at the loss of ships, they’ll make more and not shed a single tear for the lost brains-in-a-Raider.

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Cally has already been charged and completed her sentence. There will be no double jeopardy. She just needs to control, but not suppress, her moral outrages.

The problem with Cain’s summary judgement of Tyrol is that Tyrol is preventing a rape that should not be allowed in the first place. Under our laws, an officer is required to refrain from performing an unlawful act. In addition, while Cain said she heard testimony, she didn’t say she had a coroner’s report explaining the cause of death. A report would show that Tyrol could not have killed the guy deliberately.

I wondered at first the ease with which Tyrol rushed in and grabbed the guy. I thought the guards should have been more attentive and have stopped him. Then I remembered that P-Six was said to have killed seven guys. So the guards were fully focussed on Boomer.

I suspect Apollo will beat up his guy and zoom to Pegasus to rescue Tyrol and Helo with some arriving marines (in red shirts). I would like it if Apollo tried to get there for the rescue but didn’t make it in time and regular marines rescued Tyrol and Helo. I hate it when every important plot point has to be carried out by the main cast. E.g. I hated “Pearl Harbor” when Ben fought in every theater of the war.

In addition, someone needs to remind the rescuers that Baltar is on the Pegasus. During his rescue he’ll demand that P-Six be rescued too and we’ll end the episode with Boomer and P-Six in adjacent cells with a short conversation:

  1. Boomer: “Mom?”
  2. Boomer: “You?” P-Six: “Hello, Clarice.”
  3. P-Six: “Ready?” Boomer: “Yes.”
    Since P-Six is injured, Doc Cottle would demand she be kept in sickbay, so we’ll see if that happens instead.

The Mystery Basestar can’t be God - [Kirk] What does God need, with a Starship? [/Kirk]. However it may be the original “orbiting space station” (or something) that gained awareness. It expanded and is now part machine, part organic (like Boomer’s Basestar). I wouldn’t be surprised if it could land on a moon like a spider and move about … well, yes, I would be surprised.

It seems like the Basestars have the facilities to create their own Raiders, so the MegaBasestar may be something that can grow Basestars.

I recall Six’s comment that “this has all happened before” and Roslyn noting that the map room constellations old names (our current names) were being used. I wonder if the humans left earth to found the colonies and were trying to create A.I., androids, or even evolved clones and the Cylons are just continuing on this path.

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That’s what I ment by God. It’s the queen bee telling all the Cylons what to do.

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Cute touch: Roslin exclaiming “My Gods!”

Obvious touch: Starbuck checking out all the cute pilots from Pegasus - “Yeah! Somebody new to fuck!”

150

I think it’s perfectly possible that the Cylons are both truly self-aware beings–“people” if you will, even if (in some confusingly and inconsistently portrayed way) not human–and also that they are genocidal bastards who have themselves perpetrated rape and torture on an industrial scale (i.e., the “baby factories” back on Caprica). Real-life human history shows all too depressingly well that the two characteristics go together quite easily.

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I know :). I just had to make some excuse to get in a gratuitous Star Trek reference.

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Dogs do have some rights. I’m am not allowed to be cruel to an animal. Even if it is my property.
So, how long till it is shown that the Cylons are divided into factions with some of them being pro-human and some anti-human and guessing which side a Cylon is on will be more difficult than you would think?

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But we don’t know whether Baltar’s personal Number Six is anything than a hallucination.

Posted by thwartme:

“Inanimate objects”? Surely you’re joking.

154

Chip6 didn’t know about P-6? Oh yeah, Chip6 never tries to emotionally manipulate Boltar.

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Re: humanity of Cylons

Anybody here familiar with the story of Eliza? People sure can be fooled easily by this sort of thing …

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Her shock at the sight seemed genuine, and her willingness to shut herself off (and not witness Baltar’s befriending P6) simply at Baltar’s request was unquestioning.

Not out of necessity, not really, although she yanks his chain just for fun sometimes. She has complete control of Little Baltar, and Big Baltar automatically follows.

157

I should add that I don’t think she’s a hallucination, primarily because of “Shelley Godfrey’s” appearance to *everyone * on BSG in an earlier ep. Chip6 did not appear while Shelley was around, IIRC. Other than that, though, everything we’ve seen is consistent with Baltar going whacko, certainly.

No explanation for the lack of a chip in the X-rays Baltar had the doctor perform, except that it might be made of organic material that wouldn’t show up. The Cylons do have the ability to manipulate meat, and could prepare a wetware version of one of themselves.

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a bit late with a reply but dude, these robots have been shown to be able to Reproduce with humans…how much more human can you get? we cant even breed with other spiecies that we are related to through evolution (dear lord dont let anyone post about their cute little half chimp please)

I think in context of the show its a safe bet the meat models are capable of human emotion at a level thats so close to the real thing arguing about it is pointless.

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That’s what disappointed me about this episode. It was cheap how they tried so hard to make sure we knew how disgustingly evil the crew of the Pegasus is.

Right from the get-go, we’re shown a shot of evil interrogator dude walking down the causeway and you can see the guy’s genitals pushed up against his trousers! I had to stop the recording and rewind just to show my roommate that scene. “Look at that! You can see his balls!” Sorry, that was just kinda crude. What the heck was that for? Whacking us upside the head with the “this guy’s going to be a disgusting pig later” stick? Why was this guy chubby? Are chubby people just easier to imagine as disgusting pigs?

If the Pegasus crew really doesn’t think of Cylons as human, then why bother raping them? What’s the point of raping a machine?

The most you’d expect to get is a flashing C:/ prompt.

“Oh yeah, take that bitch!”


C:/ Invalid command

“Oh yeah, take it all you Cylon bitch!”


C:/ Invalid command

“This is for all those humans you killed!”


C:/ Invalid command

“Take it all, you evil Cylon bitch! Tell me the Cylon plans!”


C:/ No results found. Try using additional/fewer words to refine results

I mean, if your toaster starts burning your bread, do you rape it until it does what you want? Do you rape your PC because it won’t tell you where it hid the spyware? Someone up-thread pointed out that dogs are property and don’t have rights, yet when Muffy buries your slippers in the backyard, do you rape her until she coughs up some good intel? What about Cylon Centurions? Would you rape its access port until it gave up its code?

All of that would be silly and meaningless. So why rape a cute, female-looking Cylon in hopes of gaining any useful intelligence? It’s a cheap trick, yanking our emotional chain.

You know what would have been really effective in showing how the crew of the Pegasus had de-humanized the Cylons? When Baltar entered Six’s cell, the camera could have shown how, for instance, half her head had been shaved, revealing crude stitches indicating how they had been cutting into her brain. And even more horrifying, she’s had her arms and legs amputated! Now that would be shocking, but also in keeping with the theme that the Pegasus crew had degenerated into unfeeling bastards themselves. You don’t rape a machine. You dismantle it to figure out how it works.

Boomer’s reaction to the attempted rape seemed kinda cheap as well. Here’s a Cylon woman who can hold her breath for long periods, withstand water pressures that would kill a human, never gets tired, can run all day, even uphill, and if she’s anything like Leoben, could probably snap the neck of every man present even if she is pregnant. Yet she just starts crying and cowers under a blanket? Would Leoben have reacted that way? Would we even care if Leoben was the one about to get raped? Yet poor, cute, innocent and helpless seeming Boomer is supposed to get our blood boiling.

Moore was going for a cheap & easy emotional punch, and I guess it worked. Now I’m wondering why this show isn’t on the LIfetime Network instead.

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It is possible that either there is no baby or that Helo did not impregnate her and her baby is just growing without the real need for his sperm. The Cylons want us to think she is pregnant with his baby.