One note, one question.
First of all, no podcast for this episode. Moore had some technical difficulties that kept him from doing it ‘in time for broadcast’. Seeing as how it’s now Tuesday and it’s still not up, I’m giving up hope.
And now the question…the watch? Was there some importance to it that I missed somehow?
-Joe
The BSG structure is a hodge-podge of Navy and Marine ranks. There are no Marine officers on board. If there were, they wouldn’t be serving as line officers on a ship. They’d be commanding the marine units.
The only possible place for a marine as a line-officer in a Navy organization would involve a marine pilot serving in a carrier aviation wing, and even there, the ship and avaiation groups have separate command lines, with the XO commanding the ship peope, the CAG commanding the aviation people, and both reporting the ship’s CO.
In this regard, the show departs once again from traditional rank strucuture in that the CAG and XO should be roughly equal in rank: a full aviation wing should have a Colonel as CAG, or at least a Major.
Perhaps Lee’s promotion to Commander is an ‘honorary’ or ‘pro forma’ rank, in that a ship cannot be commanded by a person of less than commander status. So Lee could still be a Major (or be ‘really’ promoted to Colonel), but called Commander since he is in charge of the Pegasus. I seem to have a hazy recollection from the Patrick O’Brien naval books that a lower-ranking naval officer (eg Lt.) could be called Commander, but only when he was actually in command of a ship; on land he would revert to the lower rank. Does this make sense?
I don’t think so. They are just running out of guys to promote. 
In a Season 1 episode, Apollo flew a mission that Starbuck normally would have )except she was still rehabbing her knee after that crash landing). Papa Adama gave him the watch, explaining that his papa, apparently also a fighter pilot, had given it to him as a good-luck charm in the last war, and it had always worked for him. Apollo naturally succeeded, and held up the watch to show his father when he returned.
I was just about to say that the rank structure of the Fleet of the 12 Colonies of Kobol is not necessarily the same as the US Navy’s anyway, except that the redshirts have been explicitly called “Marines”. But sorting it out is hardly a priority, of course, given the situation and given the shallowness of the talent pool.
Actually, Adama gave his son a lighter engraved with the family name in “Hand of God,” not a watch.
Damn. I’m getting forgetful in my old age.
So yeah, what was with the watch?
Not “Hands of the gods” or “Hand of a particular god”?
Well, that episode was more about Baltar/Six… Six told Baltar that he was “God’s servant” or something to that affect… .and that ‘God’ would show him… Baltar was able to point out where to attack the refinery, even though he had no prior knowledge… torward the end of the episode he accepted his position as “God’s Hand”.
It was a lighter in that episode.
The watch in this episode was the Comanders… He gave it to Lee when he gave Lee command and ran off to turn the valve things that no one else in the ship could turn. It held signifigance to him, and I suppose it now does to Lee.
The Cylons are monotheists, but the colonists are polytheists.
I wondered what the significance was too. What I decided is the watch symbolized the exacting, clockwork precision of the engineering section, vs. the wild, rock 'em sock 'em fighter pilot attitude. That turned out to be the important difference in their leadership styles. Plus the watch was broken, which probably symbolized some silly thing or other.
Yeah, and?
The title was “Hand of God”… in it, Baltar becomes convinced that he is the “hand of God”… In whatever twisted way, he was serving the Cylon God. (Or atleast that is what he is led to believe via six-chip…)
The lighter had nothing to do with it, other than a father telling the son to return… It’s a good lighter.
Another point is this is the episode where six is doing the most work to prove to Baltar that the Cylon God exists…
My mistake.
Well they are in a war, and in war, promotions are different. The concept of Brevet Rank is an old one, where one’s working rank depends on the job, and one’s permanent rank is a different matter.
Even so, brevet rank is not honorary, it is real until reversion to permanent rank.
Sure, but do they typically bother making/providing maple leafs and the like?
-Joe
Which happens, when, they discover fifteen other battlestars, return to the colonies and kick Cylon butt?
Reversion of rank typically occurs when forces downsize. As a real example, many US officers breveted up multiple ranks during war time in WWI and WWII, then reverted after the war as the wartime forces scaled back.
As for titles, insignia, pay and such, brevet rank is real, as real as the permanent kind, while you have it. Operationally, a brevet colonel is the same as a permanent colonel.
Though I must say that the BSG insignia is even harder to visually decipher than the old Bablyon 5 ranks. Just a bunch of damned diamond thingies.
I doubt even fifteen would do it. In the miniseries they mention thirty battlestars lost early in the fighting and indicate that’s “over a quarter of the fleet.” Meaning at full strength they had maybe 100-120. Even with all their advantages in penetrating the security network, I doubt the Cylons would have risked attacking with less than at least, say, half of that to account for failures in their plan. Probably significantly more.
So Earth better have 50 good battlestars ready to loan them if any kind of counterattack is going to be contemplated :).
Sounds like they’d better find Captain Kirk and rip his shirt.