[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
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.]
But they are constructed like us, so much so as to be indestinguishable (though you’d think the coax socket in the wrist would be a tip off).
You missed the point. “How do we know she has emotions?” is a very poor starting point from which to debate rights, because it can be used to deny rights to any possible persons under discussion.
My second point was that we don’t have any universally agreeable criterion by which to evaluate personhood or the possession of rights.
And I can’t bring myself to be cruel to my toaster. After all, if it burns my toast, it’s only because my mother turned it all the way up because she likes her pop-tarts extra crispy and I forgot to check the temperature setting before I put the bread in.
I wonder how many “sleeper” Cylons there are in the fleet who, like GalacticaBoomer, are unaware that they are Cylons, but who are carrying out nasty little commands that have been implanted in their subconscious and not remembering it afterwards.
Also, I think that the reason the Boomer Formerly Known as CapricaBoomer is considered expendable (or at least thinks she is, I doubt that her Cylon handlers would tell such an unreliable model all of their plans) is because she’s turned coat.
I think she really loves Helo, probably has some residual warm fuzzies for Tyrol, and feels really, really bad about her copy shooting Adama.
In the old series, the cylons were just killing machines, more or less from the dawn of time. Born evil.
The new cylons - it’s a hell of a lot less clear about when/why/how they developed sentience and free will. And I don’t think we can trust either side to be particularly honest or less than self-serving about the history there.
I think it’s clear that the human cylons effectively have emotions and feelings, and most other human mental foibles. There seems to be little doubt that the humans de facto acknowledge that the human cylons experience pain and mental anguish, even if they refuse to acknowledge it intellectually.
The dichotomy is not between feeling, thinking human and calculating, emulating machine, although the humans like to reassure themselves that it is. Abusing cylons is okay for the same reason that slaughtering untermensch or keeping slaves or helots or apartheid or Jim Crow is okay. Some people aren’t really people because of (whatever reason), no matter how much they may look like it or act like it.
I think that the rape(s) are intended to show how far the Pegasus crew has slipped, and how close to the line even the Galactica crew can get. I tend to doubt that the sexual abuse would have been nearly as popular had the cylon been male, although sexual humiliation is certainly a fairly standard tack in such interrogations.
I think it’s really important to reiterate this fact about Cain: we don’t know that she actually shot anyone. In fact, I’m fairly certain she didn’t. Remember, the two XO’s were swapping stories (and booze), and the Pegasus XO gets all serious and tells the tale of Cain shooting the CO when he refused an order, and Tigh reacts with horror, then the Pegasus XO laughs and says something to the effect of, “Man! I really had you going! Ha!” While we don’t know what happened to the CO, we also don’t know that he was killed by Cain. We just know that it seems there’s no CO. It could be possible that Cain as Admiral also gets her own ship, meaning that she’s the CO.
But then later, Tigh told Adama he was sure the Pegasus XO hadn’t been lying. I believe him, too. The looks Cain was getting from her bridge crew were scary. They are a hair away from mutiny. I think the only reason they went along with PsychoCaptain is that they didn’t have any alternetives before. Now they do.
I think Boomer has a baby from the conversations of the other Cylons on Caprica. Boomer had a difficult point in her pregnancy in the cell. I wonder if that will happen again and P-Six will place her hand on Boomer’s belly and the problem will go away. The Cylons don’t know that Boomer had a problem, but what if a spy reported it and the Cylons needed to upload Placenta 2.0?
When Cain’s shuttle arrived I liked the eerie feeling I got as the guards and officers exited the shuttle. That military precision and those stern looks made me think of Cylons marching.
I did think that Adama should have put up some snipers in the landing bay. He shouldn’t trust completely that Cylons wouldn’t exit the shuttle.
When I was posting, I noticed the Sponsored Links at the bottom.
No Regrets, a new book Discover the joy of letting go of regrets & finding forgiveness. Isn’t that an appropriate book for our characters?
Mood Enhancer Will Enhance Your Life. Absolutely No Known Side Effects! Maybe that’s what the Cylons need. Or maybe the crew of Pegasus. Or maybe they took it and there are some side effects - they just weren’t known.
I disagree. Why even bring up the point if it never happened? It does nothing to move the story along (provide background on Cain) if it isn’t true, and her XO is such a minor character it says nothing about him (because we won’t be seeing him develop into anything besides an exposition tool.) No, she shot the XO.
As for having her own ship, she was the senior officer onboard when the Pegasus jumped out of spacedock. Therefore, in the absence of the real CO of the ship (he was on the planet, he was at lunch on another battlestar that was in overhaul, he was at a meeting with the shipyard CO, he was on leave, whatever the reason that CO was absent) she would take command of the ship. Yes, in usual circumstances, she would possibly have been a group CO, and have been a guest of the CO onboard the Pegasus, but this was not a normal day.
She’s also pregnant. She’s had an almost miscarriage already, so she probably doesn’t need people raping her and throwing her around. She also doesn’t want to over exert herself and potentially hurt the baby that way. She probably wasn’t told about the new ship, so for all she knew these were Galactica people. (Maybe her Galactica ship log program wasn’t all-inclusive)
So here she is, minding her own business, just trying to win the trust of her crewmates back, helping out as best she can by cutting her own hand and sticking a tube up her arm and what not, hoping sooner or later they will let her out to raise her baby with Helo. And here come these guys with guns who yell at her and throw her down to rape her? I’d be a little bewildered and confused, and I’m not even hopped up on pregnancy hormones.
I’m still undecided about Cylons. Most of the time I want to believe they must be human. They’ve got the same blood, tissues, organs and they can reproduce with humans. But then there’s this thing they do. “The look.” The replicants in Bladerunner had the same look. Whenever no one’s looking at them, their face suddenly goes completely blank and expressionless, and you start thinking, “hmm, maybe this really is nothing more than a sophisticated machine.” For all I know, Boomer was “thinking:”
C:/ Subjects identified. Human males. Subject designations, Helo and Tyrol.
C:/ Subject weaknesses: protective response towards helpless female
C:/ Initiating response subroutine: "Acting hurt and helpless."
Or something along those lines. Six could be doing the same thing. The Six chip was acting positively giddy at the prospect of finding out which Cylon model had been captured and was being interrogated, and only acted upset when it turned out to be a model that would emotionally resonate with Baltar.
Anyway, I agree about Col Tigh. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s being The Most Experienced Drunk in the Fleet. Getting the Pegasus XO drunk was his preferred, and tried and tested, method of intelligence gathering. The other XO hadn’t had a drink in months, and I’m certain Tigh can handle his liquor, and can tell when a drunk person is lying or fessing up the truth. Cain most certainly did shoot her former XO.
There’s some seriously scary stuff going on onboard the Pegasus. That Chief Deck Officer guy, he didn’t volunteer for duty aboard the Pegasus, and he was too scared to say exactly how he was conscripted. I’m betting there has been a lot of throwing people out of airlocks.
I still don’t buy that she shot anyone. As for why mention it, I think it’s just another step in establishing that a) something’s wrong on the Pegasus and b) these people can’t be trusted. Something’s definitely off, but I don’t think they’re that off. You wouldn’t be able to keep a crew together for too long if there’s as much shooting and throwing out of airlocks and looting other ships as people think there has been aboard the Pegasus.
I don’t know - I think they are just playing the convenient and familiar, “There’s a madman in charge (possibly with a grudge against the enemy that’s making him take excessive risks), and he’s driving the crew over the edge!” card. Every sci-fi show from Star Trek on seems to have some variant of this, where the “good captain” gets to show that military discipline is necessary, but damn it, you can drive them too hard too!
At least they didn’t name her Captain Decker - perhaps she will learn that a Viper is not enough to take out the big nasty Cylon ship, but the Pegasus is big enough!
That being said, while I wouldn’t mind being proved wrong with something creative and good, I liked the episode and am happily playing along so far.
Yes, but they’re both space ships and, when landing on a Battlestar, are in microgravity. Just put some retro rockets in the nose of the Viper (which IIRC are already there) and come in for a slow and smooth landing.
I think the vipers are traveling faster and have a lot of kinetic energy to get rid of. It saves fuel and time to do an aircraft carrier landing. Besides, it looks cool.
More seriously, I think carniverousplant’s got it. Vipers are combat ships and need to land quickly. How many times has Galactica waited for the Vipers to dock before jumping at the last second during a Cylon attack? Slowing the Vipers down to land would take time and make them more vulnerable.
The miniseries shows that the newer-model Vipers are capable of slowing and landing vertically, same as the Raptors. It’s in the scene where Apollo first arrives on Galactica. He gripes about having to do a “hands-on approach” instead of a computer-guided landing; we see him bring in the fighter, hover, and settle onto the pad.
It’s just that in the show we usually see the Vipers during combat, so the pilots need to know how to do a crisis touchdown.
