GRRR! Five frakkin’ days my IP was down before I could get to this thread! :mad:
Anyway, I can just picture it: Reborn Galactica Sharon goes to Tyrol’s tent to look him up and finds him there with a very pregnant Cally. “Her?? You- married- HER?!?!”
Since they’re going to have to escape from the occupation, I wonder if there’s going to be a line about “Fleeing the Cylon tyranny”? 
For those who missed the last minute and a half, you can legally download the entire episode in pretty good quality for $1.99 from iTunes. I didn’t even have iTunes until I watched the season finale on TiVo yesterday, and I immediately ran home and downloaded iTunes and downloaded the episode so I could see the end. Pretty cool! If I can figure out how to listen to the podcasts while I watch the downloaded eps, I might buy them all that way instead of the DVDs.
What?
I don’t think this was the case. I believe the first election was held because Roslin was legally only finishing out President Adar’s last term in office. It’s just like if our President got shot in his eighth year of office. His VP would finish out the last few months and then either stand as the incumbent in the next election or finish out the term and leave. I’m not sure its ever been established how long the term of office in BSG is, but it ain’t that short.
Because the Six and Boomer who made that pact to convince the Cylons to be kinder and gentler at the end of “Downloaded” have clearly had some kind of significant impact on the Plan. Think about it:
The humans could have had no clue about Baltar’s Six and Tyrol’s Boomer joining up, yet Dean Stockwell-bot #2 told the humans about the two influential Six and Eight models leading a rethinking of the agenda, using that as the excuse for apparently abandoning Caprica and letting the humans escape. If B-6 and T-B had failed, why come up with an excuse that would make no sense whatsoever to the humans?
It seems pretty clear that B-6 and T-B are the Six and Boomer who show up at the head of the Cylon forces on New Caprica. If so, that’s pretty clear evidence that they’ve succeeded in doing something significant as a result of their agreement. And as far as we can tell from “Downloaded,” that had something to do with moving away from the extermination agenda.
In light of that, it’s no surprise that they’re not simply slaughtering everyone in sight, as they could easily do. My guess is that they think they’re embarking on some sort of heavy-handed “for your own good” governance, with escalating reprisals as the human resistance fights back.
Stockwell: “You knew one of them as Sharon”
Perhaps they failed but those tricky Cylons thought the humans might believe it.
I’d agree with that interpretation.
Makes sense. It would jive with the Cylon “peace movement” (well the 2 of them anyway), who were horrified that they were turning into humans. Maybe they now believe that they have left behind that destructive path humanity had led and are trying to bring it back to humanity. Maybe they believe they are simply helping out humanity by preventing what they see as self-destructive behavior. Certainly would be interesting.
Could be. The Cylons clearly believe they are superior to the humans, but they’re also afraid that the humans have enslaved and/or kicked their electroplated asses in the past, and might still do so in the future out of hatred or revenge if they are not eliminated or controlled. So I suspect we’re going to see a mixture of heavy-handed “enlightenment” and old-fashioned repression come October.
I agree that this is the most promising (and most likely) plot direction, and I wonder whether first-hand experience with Cylon oppression will take the wind out of the sails of the human peace movement. 
Isn’t there also a real minimum size breeding stock you’ll need if you want to keep a population around indefinitely? If not, you might have a bunch of flipper babies by the time you get to the second or third generation.
-Joe
Humanity will definitely be suffering from a population bottleneck. However, this is not an irredeemable situation, since humanity survived a much worse one 70,000 years ago when the population was reduced to only about 10,000 breeding individuals. It does mean that the composition of the human race would change and the strongest traits of the survivors would be intensified. Lots of military types, so maybe better reflexes and a left-brain mind would predominate?
Well, we’re looking at a Cylon breeding program that’s got 37,000ish people, IIRC. If, as some people suggest the Cylons were to wipe out the vast majority of them (say, 90%) we’d have a breeding stock of 3700.
Seems low to me. I just figure you’ll hit a point where it causes genetic difficulties at some point.
-Joe
Late to the party, as usual. I finally had time to watch the last episode last night. I was pretty impressed, but I can’t help wondering if they’ve written themselves into a corner. Baltar’s character will never be the same again. I predict exile for him when this is all over. Maybe even joining the Cylons a la the original series.
As to the strategy for getting the everyone off of New Caprica, here’s how I would do it: Pegasus leads a feint to draw off the Cylon fleet. Galactica jumps in to New Caprica, cleans up the Cylon rearguard, and evacuates as many as possible. Pegasus is destroyed, and many lives are lost planetside. Fleet becomes even more ragtag.
Reduced by what, high cholesterol, hyenas?
A supervolcano in Indonesia, apparently. It caused planet-wide climactic changes and a big die-off, apparently. Wonder what our species would have become if this hadn’t happened?
In any case, humanity is going to change due to the small breeding population. Will the Cylons will try to preserve as many nubile humans as possible, or do they have certain traits they will be selecting for? Is that why they want Starbuck? Punctuated equilibrium can produce pretty drastic and noticeable results in a short time. I wonder if they’ll address that.
I doubt it would work. There are two battlestars and it looked like at between 10 and 20 basestars out there(from what I remember). The cylons could divide their fleet in half and still make easy work of both battlestars.
[speculation]Ah, but don’t forget, to get her pop tart back, Sharon will stick some coax up her arm and seriously mess with the Cylon basestars.[/speculation]
At this point, I think the only thing saving humanity is Sharon and C6’s determination not to wipe it out.
I wonder if any Cylons know about the Poptart. If they do, it should be pretty easy to locate.
Me scuze - a complete joke on my part - I was just thinking what if a new election were occurring and all the tent-colonists were voting his ass out. But just before the new election, Baltar surrenders to the Cylons.
Sorry I wasn’t clearer. My schtick is to make jokes when I persent these what-if or “corner case” scenarios.
You think Ron Moore is going to address something called punctuated equilibrium? :dubious:
Anyway, years ago I remember discussing with my brother (who is a geneticist) the idea of space colonies as insurance against human extinction. He mentioned you’d need as a minimum, something like 200 healthy breeding individuals willing to carefully stick to a breeding program to safely restock humanity.
In the case of BSG, with humans being under strict control of the Cylons and having access to their advanced medical technology, Cylons could probably reduce humanity by quite a bit. Just choose a thousand of the healthiest yet most docile & cooperative citizens and start over with them.
Which begs the question, why would they want Starbuck for breeding? Physically, she’s a great specimen, but behaviorally, she’s a right pain in the ass.