I have to agree with all the criticisms above - the ending was contrived and implausible for the situation, and to many characters were acting out of character. I’ll add Starbuck’s newfound infatuation with the Cain style of command, including her false statement at the funeral (just before they shot the photon torpedo housing holding Cain’s body off to the Genesis planet, even without a bagpiper) that “She found her ship all alone” and her outlandish slam at Adama that they were less safe without her. Maybe that will get cleared up next week in the Cylon Stem Cell Research Miracle Cure For Roslin episode. But I doubt it.
I love the show as much as ever, but still, what the frak, people?
There would have been a patch kit in the suit. Given the long history of spaceflight with these people, someone in fleet would have encountered the idea. “Holed suits” would have been encuntered long ago.
For the record, the blackbird collided with a Cyclon raider, which couldn’t see it, 'cause it’s so stealthy. Kind of contrived, since any good pilot familiar with the BB would know that things can’t see it, and hence one might be more careful about avoid things.
The helmet lights are there to look cool, to evoke the original series, and mainly to allow the cameras to see the actors’ faces. If you’re going to have helmet lighting, then insert it conformally so that it shines out of the exterior of the helmet, in such a way that the pilot’s eyes aren’t flooded with glare or source light. That, or strap on miner’s lights.
Pragmatically, the storyline could not have allowd the fragging to occur. Once you let fragging into the fleet, discipline is completely lost.
I noted that Lee was called “Lieutenant” by his dad. That was odd. Rank is usually permanent, so Lee’s Captaincy should not have been contingent on his status as CAG. Then again, these people are playing loosy-goosy with alot of the military stuff.
The visuals were pretty. I wonder where they’re gonna get reloads. They used a shitload of munitions on those basestars, which, by the way, seem much less imposing than they did in the pilot and in earlier episodes. Perhaps the closeness of the Resurrection Ship kept them a bit subdued. Maybe the original basestars were souped up to do big kills? Maybe Pegasus is that much stronger than Galactica?
As for the Resurrection Ship, WTF!? What kind of stupid, idiotic, vulnerable, loopy, stupid again design was that? At least give it an exo-skin. With that design, you’re going to lose stock by micro-meteor and debris impact. Good ship design mandates that the parts of the ship with occupants have enclosed interiors.
So now ADM Adama will now presumably bring the other Colonel up to CDR Pegasus, the rank should reflect the job. Maybe Tigh goes to CDR as well? Where in Hell did Roslin get those Admiral pips? Are those Cain’s pips? Or is there a BSG Post Exchange somewhere? And promotions usually go with the officer being re-sworn.
In USN tradition group commanders command their group, and the flagship has a separate commander. It makes sense to move Lee back up past Lieutentant, maybe as a CAG. While Thrace is a wacky pilot, she is too crazy to be a CAG. Maybe not.
Thing is, in USN tradition, CAG usually warrants the rank immediately below Captain, CDR. In BSG-75 ranks, CAG should be at least a Major, maybe Colonel.
I found Kara’s comments at the funeral to be jarring, but keep in mind that she knows all about Adama’s mistakes and misjudgments but not about Cain’s.
She knows Adama lied about Earth. She knows he imprisoned the president and then reinstated her. She knows he came within a hair of assassinating a superior officer. In other words, she knows Adama is a flawed man.
But she presumably doesn’t know what Cain did to the civilian ships or that Cain was also willing to assassinate another officer. All she knows is that Cain was a hard-ass who respected her skills and wanted to kick Cylon butt. So Kara has the luxury of thinking of Cain as a hero. (The same was true when Lee Adama was lecturing his father – he didn’t know just how far Cain had gone.)
Dramatically, I was unhappy that Adama and Cain both dropped their assassination plans. I was looking forward to some kind of showdown. But it was in keeping with Adama’s character to step back, and I even think it made sense for Cain to drop the idea amid all the good feelings of their victory.
I don’t have any idea where Lee’s sudden depression comes from.
While I can logically accept all these pieces _ the non-assassinations, Kara’s comments, Lee’s mopiness _ the combined effect made for a BIG letdown after two amazing tension-filled episodes.
I won’t hazard most of your questions, but as to the above Roslin mentioned something about having to find a jeweler - i.e. she had them made especially for the occasion.
Ron Moore mentions in his podcast that this is exactly what inspired those scenes. (He also says that Adama kissing Roslin was totally unplanned, and that if you watch closely, you can see that Mary McDonnell is just as surprised as anyone by Olmos’s totally instinctive choice.)
I can see why some people would feel that the plot developments of the last half of the show are weak and/or obvious, but I’m going to have to be the odd man out and disagree. Just about everything in this episode worked for me.
I liked that both Adama and Cain backed down. Adama’s rationale makes sense: he can’t deal with a competitor just by killing her; he’s a human, not a Klingon. (If I can mix shows. Heh.) And Cain was obviously playing chicken, a bit: she knew exactly what Starbuck was doing there, and wanted to see whether or not Adama had the balls to go through with it. And when Adama backs down, Cain knows she’s already won; the old man surrendered. That’s the way I look at it, anyway.
I also liked that Gina was the one to kill Cain. I think they’ve got big plans for the Baltar-Six relationship, and it needed to start with something significant.
And I really liked what looks like the beginning of a rift between Starbuck and Adama. Starbuck’s a pretty simple character, when you get down to it. She’s action-oriented, an adrenaline junkie; put a problem in front of her and she’ll bang away at it, give her free time and she turns into a big dopey kid, but hand her a moral dilemma and she freaks out. At this point, she’s pretty much had enough (Boomer’s a Cylon, pregnant with Helo’s kid, yada yada), and she’s close to the breaking point.
And finally, I agree with HelloKitty that Apollo’s character has been finally coming into focus. The way I see it, he’s not an absolutist; in some ways he doesn’t even really know who he is. At the time of the miniseries, he’s just marking time, making his way, completing his commission because that’s where he is at the moment. He’s not career military; he’ll hang it up and do something else when he’s done. But when the crisis arrives, he’s forced to step up, and he’s been trying to figure out where he stands ever since. As I said, he’s not an absolutist (like, say, Tigh, whose code of conduct will never change); he takes each conflict on its own terms and tries to make the best choice at the moment, based on the specific circumstances. Sometimes he sides with Roslin; sometimes he sides with Adama; sometimes he throws up his hands and backs off. This initially seemed wishy-washy, like uneven writing, but it’s been so consistent that it’s actually becoming clear that this is what’s going on for him, that he feels legitimately lost in the moral quagmire of the situation. And, similar to Starbuck, he’s close to burned out. He’s done the best he can, but he knows it hasn’t been good enough, and he doesn’t want to do it any more.
Basically, the way this episode hit me was like this: They wrapped up the plot threads in a somewhat perfunctory way, but they’ve planted some very big seeds for character development in the coming weeks. As I’ve said before, I’m much, much more interested in the interpersonal relationships of the show than the details of the Cylon plot or the mechanics of the battles or anything like that, so on that level this episode was entirely successful for me. Now, that being said, I’m going to reserve final judgment until I see how this stuff plays out; if things develop the way I suspect they will, this episode is going to turn out to be pivotal, and will probably look a lot better in retrospect. If, on the other hand, they drop all the balls they’ve put in play, then this installment will indeed be weak. It’ll depend on the next few episodes, I think.
Seems obvious to me why Adama backed down. It’s a common theme with Adama. He decides on a course of action and seemingly can’t be dissuaded, then a female character will change his mind. Rosyln does it. Dualla’s done it. Now Boomer’s statement about humans never asking why they should survive “maybe you shouldn’t” swayed his decision. Humans wouldn’t be worthy of surviving, if they continue to kill each other.
We know the fleet has been mining asteroids and planets they find on their way, and we know at least one of the ships in the fleet has its own machine shop (or did they just happen to have a Resurrection ship model lying around in case the Cylons ever built anything that looked like it?), so I would assume that at some point they started making their own ammo.
I won’t bother repeating stuff everyone’s already said, but I was curious about the Blatar/Six thing. Specifically, that key moment when he repeated that pyramid story to Gina. The Six in his head was acting like it was her death sentence, to the point that she actually gave a “NOOO!” as he gave the final line, then disappeared. So apparently, Baltar, by telling Gina this story, was choosing Gina over the version in his head, and that drove her away. I guess. But…huh? Wha? How? Why? Zuh? Meh? Gluh?
If Pegasus stays in the story line for a while, I’d expect the cross-transfers to continue, to help make sure the servicepeople see each other as colleagues and to help diffuse tensions. That can also be a cover to introduce new cast members, and shuffle off original ones who aren’t working out well. Maybe Fisk will keep his command, maybe not, or maybe the enmity of the Pegasus people toward Helo and Agathon for killing Young will cause more incidents …
Bill (he’s back - remember Billy? {resident Adar called him “Presidential material” [“Don’t let it get to your head. Adar was a moron” - Adama] said he’d had a lot of trouble findinga jeweler. They’re handmade for the occasion.
Not in the Battle Fleet of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, apparently.
Because it looks cool onscreen, just like the situation boards in Battle of Britain movies. It’s hardly the only homage to WW2 fighter-plane movies you see in space operas, either. The recoiling barrels of the 5-inch anti-aircraft guns on a battlehip show up on battlestars, too, and so do ball turrets with human gunners inside. At least BSG doesn’t make the fighters bank their turns in space.
I admit I’m a bit disappointed in how that went. I can see what you say about Adama, but Cain wasn’t playing chicken. She understood that she was losing control of the fleet and had to do something. My personal fanboy rationalization for how things went down is that maybe she realized her plan would not have worked. Not well, anyway. Maybe she did catch some sort of vibe from Starbuck and figured the time wasn’t right, that she should wait until things cooled down.
I do like how Starbuck’s character was handled, how she really didn’t buy into being an assassin. So no “best assassin in the fleet” kudos for her.
I really like Apollo’s development here. Indeed, he’s not an absolutist; what he is is moral. He’s not a “black-n-white” moralist, he understands there’s shades of gray, and he wants to do the best he can in a difficult situation. So when he was faced with Starbuck’s order to do in Cain, he knew it had to be done, but he also knew it was wrong. So hell, yes, he was depressed and anxious and confused. So when he floating out there and faced with a hole in his suit, rather than pull out his patch kit, he succombed to depression and just let things go … Mind you, I think a big part of that was also hypoxia driving his state of mind as well.
I liked this episode, it had it’s flaws, but overall it was still a great hour of TV. I was kind of worried when I heard that the original plans were to have this one and the one the previous week shown in one episode. I thought this week would be a rather weak continuation and full of filler. It wasn’t. It stood on it’s own quite well.
I bought both Adama’s and Cain’s backing off on the assassinations. I never really liked the thought of Starbuck killing Cain to begin with. If I recall correctly, Starbuck was the one who refused to fire on the Olympic Carrier (didn’t Lee eventually shoot it?), so it didn’t seem in character for her to assassinate Cain.
However, I was hoping Cain’s shooter would be someone like Fisk (or an agent of Roslyn’s). Having Gina do it did seem like a bit of a cop out. There aren’t as many repercussions of having a cylon do the dirty deed. (Of course, it could play out in future episodes.) I didn’t like the “you’re not my type” line. I’m not sure why one trivial line bugs me so much, but it does. It seemed entirely too flip for that scene. Michelle Forbes’ facial expression (and eyes nearly tearing up, but not quite) while staring down the gun was incredibly well done, and the scene was very powerful–and then some silly juvenile line was thrown in. It just didn’t work for me.
I thought Starbuck’s eulogy was perfectly in character for her. As mentioned, she doesn’t do well with moral questions. Plus, she’s always been one to get her own way and rationalize that she is right in doing so, regardless of the consequences. She wanted Zack to be a flyer so she fudged his basic flight results. She wanted to go back to Caprica to get the arrow (and she was pissed that Adama lied to her–forgetting that she’d lied about many things herself, including Zack’s flight abilities), so she went. Cain let her believe she felt the same about going back to Caprica. I can see Starbuck rationalizing that Cain wanted what Starbuck wants, so Cain must be okay.
Fisk’s eulogy was more disturbing. He made it pretty clear he assumed he would be in command and he planned to follow Cain’s example. I can see some major trouble there. I’m eager to see what they do with Fisk and whether he’ll be another Cain or not. On the one hand, he did stop the beating of Helo and Tyrol. On the other, he didn’t do anything to punish the perpetrators other than give them a verbal lashing.
Lee’s depression was a bit surprising, but they’ve got to do something with that character. He’s not nearly as well defined as the others, so I’m interested to see what they do with him.
She initially argued against firing, but joined in after Lee opened fire.
I don’t think Fisk will be a problem. They’ve spent too much time showing what a good guy he is. He may have participated in Cain’s evil schemes, but he did so with much hand-wringing and moaning.
I figured Adama was going to cancel the assassination after his talk with Boomer. At the time, I thought Cain would give the order and her XO would disobey it. Then, when Cain also stood down, I thought she felt she had the upper hand for good and could control Adama instead of killing him, which would be a waste of an effective commander.
But, I knew from the previews that Cain ended up with a gun in her facing, saying “Frack you!” And given her personality, it seemed like she had to go one way or another. When Gina escaped with a pistol, I thought, “Well, if you’re going to have a deus ex machina, maybe a machine who believes in God is a good choice.”
It seemed that Gina could sense when the resurrection ship was destroyed; yet, even after that, she still wanted to die. I thought I heard her say “Send me to God.” So do the Cylons believe in an afterlife in the religious sense, not just the resurrections they achieve technologically?
(And if somebody comes up with a way that our minds can be transferred into fresh new bodies when we croak, I’ll sign up.)
So, is Apollo going to get all mystical after his near-death experience? If I recall, on the original, cheesy-fun show, Apollo had encounters with mysterious angelic beings and things got all mystical in a late-70s tv way.
Three things I’ve learned from recent episodes:
President Roslin may be the toughest character on the show.
Two Number Sixes in the same scene should be a feature of every primetime show.
If the assignment is to extract information from an XO by becoming his drinking buddy, Tighe is your man.
I thought so too. Then in his eulogy, he talked of carrying on the same values as Cain had showed. That makes me think there’s going to be trouble with Fisk in the future.
She definitely seemd to sense the ship was destroyed. Earlier, she let Baltar know the purpose of the ship because she didn’t want to be resurrected in another body with her same memories. So either they do believe in an afterlife, or she wanted oblivion.
The cylons have an odd moral code. Gina can’t kill herself because suicide is a sin. Yet she can contribute to the deaths of tens of thousands of other cylons (according to Six).
This whole thing is bugging me. After the mini-series, Caprica Boomer shows up & saves Helo, and has all of Galactica Boomer’s memories, yet Galactica Boomer didn’t have to die and be resurrected for this memory & experience transfer to take place.
Later, Boomer says something to the effect of, and I don’t remember if it was the original Boomer or Caprica Boomer, “it doesn’t work that way. We’re not jacked-in.”
Yet it would seem they definitely are jacked-in.
Someone upthread questioned what happens when a Basestar gets nuked. Do the memories of the humanoid Cylons still get uploaded? How could that be? If the body is vaporized, there’s no component left to transmit anything.
So, I think they are jacked-in on a constant basis. Their memories are being constantly uploaded as they happen. Otherwise vaporizing Cylons would be an effective way of preventing the upload. I can’t believe a Cylon, who’s just been vaporized with a nuke, could send all its memories away in one huge data-burst. It’s got to be a constant streaming of data.
When the Cylons attacked the colonies, were there resurrection ships nearby we weren’t shown? Or were they close enough to the Cylon homeworld for the normal process to take place, as Baltar describes? If so, it’s got to work at FTL speeds.
Yet it still has a range limitation. It’s all too weird sometimes.
Reason 1: There are three targets, so those three points define a plane - thus a two dimensional surface. Should the rag-tag fleet ever face four major targets then their plotting boards will be useless - useless
Reason 2: The two fleets are sufficiently far apart that any major differences in “Z” axis are trivial
Reason 3: A 2-d plotting board is traditional and easy and a lot cheaper (and clearer) than a holographic display would be