-
I think some form of Cylon technology will save Roslin’s life.
-
I think the Pegasus’ Number 6 will kill Cain.
-
Hi, Opal! Seriously, Opal, did you see Sebastian Spence had lines this week? And I could have sworn that the black dude who came in with guns pointed at Pegasus’ Number 6 was Roger Cross. Could first wave be coming back on Battlestar?
ElvisL1ves, has there been news that Mary McDonnell may leave due to contract issues? I certainly think that’s the only way she would completely disappear from the show. I can’t imagine them firing her after they wrote the frakking story with her as their dream choice for Roslin.
Yeah, it would be really ballsy and dramatic to have her die, but I’m just enough of a cream puff to want her to come back as a Cylon or get cured by their technology or something. She is just too great an actress to lose!
On a more general note: Holy Crap, this show is good. Thank goodness for TiVo - I looked at my husband, said, “Did she just say, ‘We have to kill her’?!” and hit rewind real quick.
Actually, I think they may have gone a bit over the top with Cain. I actually said, “*Just in case * you didn’t hate her already . . .” But I guess some people take the position that she and her crew honestly viewed Six as a mere machine, therefore the torture and rape weren’t as evil as they would be with a bona fide human. I don’t agree, but I guess I can see that argument.
I liked the ambiguity of Starbuck following Cain, but I liked it even better when she turned around and said, “Shoot her in the head? Sure thing Old Man.” I doubt she will actually do it, but I hope she is preempted by another assassin, rather than choking at the last minute.
I really think Cain has to die. As I said, torture and rape of robot enemies? Maybe redeemable. Five minute unilateral “court martial” and execution order? Heartless, but understandable under the circumstances. Messing with the crew assignments? Bitchy and misguided, but her prerogative. Shooting the children of reluctant draftees? This chick is toast!
I dunno, should we or shouldn’t we give the dying guy some “morpha?”
I nicknamed the two Kobol redshirts Caparzzo and Wade. Ron Moore could’ve done it, but that probably would’ve meant losing a subsequent lawsuit.
While it was decent television, it wasn’t up to the first season in my opinion, and clearly was no indicator of how the second half is going to proceed. Last night was “Deadwood” quality.
MEBuckner: Season One soundtrack has arrived, good call on that.
I read recently that the show had been picked up for a third season, and that all the major cast members had signed on. That would certainly seem to indicate some sort of “recovery” for the President. I just hope it’s not too gimicky. OTOH, if it means keeping Mary McDonnell around, I frankly don’t care if they have Dee puch a big red button marked “RESET.” Whatever it takes.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more plausible it seems. In my head, anyway. Think about it. The Cylons clearly have a more subtle plan than just “wipe out the humans”. They’re manipulating the humans for some purpose of their own. And the president has been extremely influential in directing their actions. Think of it as a carrot and stick approach. The stick would be the overt Cylons - the fleet chasing them with the raiders and whatnot, etc, etc. But what if the carrot is the president, holding out hope and direction?
The biggest problem with this that I can think of is the cancer. Could Cylons get cancer? Could she have gotten it as part of some deliberate plan? Hmm.
My speculation? The Pegasus XO and crew has only been following Cain thus far becuase there has been no other choice for survival. Now there is another battlestar and they realize they don’t need Cain anymore. The XO doesn’t kill Adama, maybe he tries but can’t go through with it, and he comes back to the Pegasus. You see someone walk into Cain’s room, but you don’t see who it is from the camera angle so you think it’s Starbuck. Cain talks to her about a mission being completed until “Starbuck” pulls the gun and shoots her. Then the camera pulls back and gasp it was the XO that killed her not Starbuck! Starbuck was going to kill Cain but didn’t have the chance, that way she was still loyal to Adama, but isn’t going to be court-martialed by the Peg crew.
Also, Roslin gets a shiny new Cylon body, or gets cured by Cylon technology or something. But not just yet, she’s gotta die for a few more episodes.
Ok, upon further discussion with Bird Man, I remembered that there is a clip of Starbuck pulling a gun on Cain when Cain is in her uniform, and then later on there is a clip of “someone” pulling a gun on her when she is in her underthings. New plan:
Starbuck pulls a gun on Cain but the XO, fresh from the Galactica and not killing Adama, tackles her and has her taken away. Cain thanks him and they walk off together. They have the discussion about Starbuck trying to kill Cain and the XO “succeeding” in killing Adama while she changes out of her uniform or something. Then he pulls the gun on her. Cut to Starbuck, not in the brig, but on a ship back to Galactica.
Yes?
No speculation from me - I think several of the above scenarios are plausible. I would least like an attempt to roughly follow the original “Living Legend” episode, even though it would simplify things to eliminate the Pegasus. Too deterministic and too old hat.
As shocking of a reveal as it would be, I can’t buy Roslin as a Cylon.
But mostly I just wanted to say I stayed up until 2 a.m. to watch this damn thing. And it was worth it :).
- Tamerlane
I am assuming now that the chief’s “hmm” moment when he first walked onto the Admiral’s shuttle/raptor was because it was perhaps not in fact a military ship but a civvie or had something just not right about it.
My previous guess had been that maybe the Pegasus had not been hardened against the Cyclon disable virus and that virus would be the trick up Adama’s sleeves.
Were I laying odds, I’d say the chances of Roslin being a cylon are no worse than 40%.
One thing I liked was the number of survivors countdown. In the last ep of season “2A” it’s 49,405. Now, it’s 49,404. Lt. Rapehappy was a slime and I’m glad he’s dead, but he’s still a tick on the board that the fleet can’t afford to lose.
–Cliffy
You know, I think you might be right.
I’ve heard the Cylon body thing before, and I don’t think it’s going to happen. If the Colonials can’t cure cancer, they certainly aren’t able to transplant a brain – ir the data it contains – into another body. Besides, it would be the end of Mary McDonnell as a cast member. Maybe there’s some healing power in Cylon blood, or they stumble on a planet that has a plant that can be a source of Kamala extract, but otherwise …
Perhaps I should note, when I speak of McDonnell continuing on the show as a Cylon, I don’t mean that Roslin was one all along. I imagine something like the Cylons creating a new model based on her, the better to frak with the heads of the humans.
But I bet it winds up being some kind of healing, since not only is the actress great, the character is too.
Something I liked and forgot to comment on: Crusty Doctor giving a piece of his mind on the beating/attemted rape of Valerie, and Adama apologizing to her.
If you haven’t listened to Ron Moore’s podcast already, I highly recommend it, especially for this episode. There’s a wealth of information about how the story was conceived, structured, reworked, restructured, and eventually finalized. Short version is that they found themselves twenty minutes long, which is basically half an episode, so instead of gutting the show they filmed another half episode and made it a two-parter. Two scenes that were added: Adama sitting by Roslin’s bedside, and shellshocked Boomer’s medical exam followed by Adama’s apology. They also punched up Roslin’s role in prompting the decision to kill Cain.
And Moore talks about why they decided to push Cain over the top a bit. They like playing with moral ambiguity, obviously, giving us plot points without telling us necessarily how we’re supposed to feel about them. (Do we feel bad for the genocidal babedroid or don’t we?) Through the previous episode, “Pegasus,” Cain actually makes a lot of sense from what she considers an objective point of view. Lee has been insubordinate, and it’s probably not a good idea for him to be reporting to his father; Tyrol and Agathon have been fraternizing with the enemy; Tigh is a drunk with inconsistent judgment; and so on. If this were all we had to go on, Adama’s decision to assassinate his rival would put us in the position of choosing between two strong leaders, one we know and like even if we don’t always agree with him, and one we don’t know and don’t like though we must admit she seems to be representing a reasonable if hardass point of view. Very, very shades-of-gray stuff. That was the original intent, but the network balked, and on reconsideration, Moore agreed: Cain needs to be unambiguously dangerous, not just for the audience’s sake, but because otherwise he doesn’t believe Adama would consider it. Note how Adama brushes off Roslin’s initial recommendation without a lot of discussion.
(Moore also says he somewhat regrets going back to the device of Tigh getting Fisk drunk to pump him for intel, but that in the end it works okay, especially considering that this time Tigh has a specific plan for extracting particular details whereas last time the dark stuff just sort of spilled out unexpectedly. I can see the narrative dilemma, and his point. Plus, he says they thought about it and couldn’t come up with anything better.)
Re Mary McDonnell: I’m pretty sure she’s going to be around for a while. I don’t have a specific spoiler to post, but it’s something I gather from various interviews and other commentary about where the rest of the season is going.
We were actually commenting on that as well, one of my roommates said he thought it would be awesome if they did this and my other roommate said, “Uhhh I think they do because the original count was over 50,000.”
Karl Agathon’s been working out. He’s got some guns, and they seemed to make a point of showing 'em off.
Honestly don’t know what to think about Roslyn. She’s got to stick around, but I just don’t see her getting reanimated in a Cylon body. I don’t see her accepting Cylon tech to cure her cancer. Can’t wait to find out how they do it though.
And yeah, I totally got wood when Adama was starting to blather on and she just cut right to, “we have to kill her,” and Adama was all, “wha…?”
I’m certain that Roslyn is just a little too old to be a Cylon; they couldn’t have had biological Cylons for more than forty years. How’s this for a plot kicker though: her life is somehow saved by some application of Cylon technology, but afterwards no one can be absolutely certain that she hasn’t had a Cylon mind implanted in her?
BTW: Starbuck has always been butch but in this episode her face looks downright mannish. Am I imagining it or has she really changed in appearance that much?
I just got the season 1 DVDs, so I’ve been watching those while at the same time watching this episode, and I didn’t notice any big difference in appearance.
I was wondering about the Pegasus Number 6. Baltar brought her a military uniform and Admiral Cain castigated her about sitting at the mess table, listening to their stories and insinuating herself into their midst. What was her job aboard the Pegasus? How was she found out? Was it a lucky coincidence or was there a sure way of detecting Cylons?
As far as the vast majority of crew on Pegasus, what if they just didn’t know the full extent of Admiral Cain’s actions? Sure, there’s rumor and scuttlebutt, but maybe the crew was told one version and the whole truth was known only by those who were involved in the carnage. Remember, to the Pegasus crew, Admiral Cain got them out of immediate annihilation and kept them alive for these past six months. A lot of hardass behavior could certainly be excused.
Oooh, thanks for all the info. I definitely will check that out - I had forgotten the podcasts since my husband isn’t interested in them and we usually watch TV together.
And yeah, I agree that they needed to get a bit more extreme with Cain to justify Adama trying to kill her. When you are in charge of the (as far as you know) last tiny remnant of the human race, and you’re actively defending them from an enemy trying to wipe them out, a lot of tactics can be rationalized, so it took a lot to ensure the audience finds her evil. It’s just that I already found her thoroughly evil, so for me personally it was a bit unnecessary.
Thanks also for the intelligence on Mary McDonnell - that’s very good to hear!