Battlestar Galactica 2.20 — "Lay Down Your Burdens, Pt 2" (the spoilers have a plan)

Cafe Society
101

A Daggit ate my poptart!

I haven’t decided how I feel about the whole one year jump. It seems like the show has really departed from the original series and as such is on it’s own now. So it’s 50/50 on good or bad.

Starbuck is definately better looking with the longer hair. It seems like everybody went crazy with longer hair.

I can’t wait to see the population count at the start of the next season. I wonder how many died in the nuke and how many babies have been born.

Not that it matters now, but if I was Roslyn I would have left 5,000 volunteer colonizers behind on the planet after restocking on natural resources and then kept the fleet going. It would have eased the strain on the fleet and created a possible seed of new humanity.

The official sign of any Scifi show jumping the shark is when they encounter a planet where either the Nazis or the Romans are in control.

102

I assumed they were going to do something like that, I was surprised when they didn’t.

103

Because Baltar is President now and whether as a poetic device or due to his stupidity screwed things up with his usual skill.

104

One thing I don’t get though. When Roslyn was doing something Adama thought was really stupid, Adama revoked her presidency. Balter he trusts even less, yet he goes along with an even stupider plan than Roslyn ever had.

I understand his not going along with rigging the election because Roslyn (and he) would lose her (democratic) soul.

But c’mon. Colonizing a planet you found only a few light years from your last Cylon encounter? “Oh, it’s got clouds around it. The Cylons will never find us!”

Why didn’t Adama just revoke Baltar’s presidency?

How about this? There are 39,000 humans on New Craptica, leaving about 10,000 humans left in the fleet. Evidently, these are the smart ones. Let Darwin’s theory play out. Let the dumb ones die on New Craptica and let the more intelligent space faring 10K go on to survive somewhere a hell of a lot better. Some place they find after having encountered zero Cylons for say, a couple years.

I know, I know. A “dramatic” show, this does not make.

105

Less the number who died when Gina 6’s nuke went off. The explosion seemed to take out multiple ships, so the death toll could have easily been in the thousands. Heck, some of the regular characters could have been on Cloud Nine for R+R at the time. Zerek and the rest of the Council of Twelve could have bought it in that blast.

106

Did anyone else get the impression that Baltar Six left him for a year after the election? She doesn’t show up after he hears about the explosion on Cloud 9, as you would expect her to.

107

I’ve thought about that. I think there were two big things against Adama attempting a coup. One is that he tried it before and a large part of the fleet rebelled. The other is that the Pegasus crew was probably still not completely loyal to him, leading to the possibility of a civil war with Galactica on one side and Pegasus on the other, which would have been an utter disaster. On the other hand, I think that might have been more interesting and plausible than this whole “let’s settle on this marginally habitable world and hope we’re safe” thing. And planets don’t have nebulas around them, gods dammit.

108

Put me down in the “cautiously optimistic” column. As has been said, it will all depend on where the show goes from here. If they shitcan everything’s that’s happened up until now and start over, I’ll be pissed. But if they weave it all together with enough skill, this could be a very interesting development.

One thing that annoyed me a bit with this episode - and this is just a pet peeve of mine - was the references to our current political situation. It always irritates me when shows like this make blatant references to our own time. It kind of ruins the mood for me, and takes me out of the flow. The creators have never been shy with the comparisons between Roslin and Bush, but it was a bit over the top this time around with the contested election and all. There was even one shot where Roslin’s votes were written in red and Baltar’s in blue, for crying out loud. But, as I say, that’s a pet peeve.

109

The other major thing that bugs me is that Roslin and Adama were so complacent and resigned to their fates. Roslin just becomes a teacher and nothing else? Adama merely putters around Galactica while it loses crew and falls into disrepair? Hell no! Clearly there was dissatisfaction with Baltar’s “leadership”, Roslin should have been heavily involved with that. Adama shouldn’t have let the military decay to such a state without a whole lot of noise and probably some violence. And yet, here they both are, two strong leaders sitting on their hands and not even looking particularly distressed about the situation. I don’t buy it.

110

Maybe not though.
The Cylons went to some trouble to make the humans think that they’d given up. Most likely, they wanted them on that planet so as to be easiest to round up. In the meanwhile, the humans, silly forgetful things that they are, thought that the Cylons really had left them alone and that the war was over. And why do you need to support two Battlestars when the war is over and you’re trying to start a new civilization?

Yeah, hindsight is pretty good… but if the President has the support of the people, and they say no military spending, then the Battlestars get the short end of the stick.

111

I don’t buy it either. Adama was in the first Cylon war and even after 40 years, he refused to let his Battlestar get networked because the Cylons could return anytime, and he didn’t trust networks. After a year he agrees the Cylons probably aren’t coming back? No frakin’ way.

Roslyn must be up to more than just school teaching, and they should have shown us that instead of spending so much time on Starbuck being the hillbilly tentwife.

Apparently I’m the only one who feels this way, but Starbuck’s hair sucks. Cut it!

Same goes for Tyrol’s beard, and Adama’s moustache. Cut it all off! Thank the gods Tigh didn’t grow anything. I’d have to barf.

112

Has anyone else considered the possibility that New Caprica is Earth? After all, we don’t know that the series is taking place in 2006 (or 1980 :rolleyes: ). It could be thousands of years ago, or thousands of years from now. Kobol, the home of the Twelve Colonies, was lost and nearly forgotten in just a few thousand years – and by a civilization that was, at least at the time of the exodus to the Colonies, starfaring. (Do we even know why Kobol was abandoned?)

So far, we have seen only a tiny part of New Caprica, the litle sliver that is readily habitable. If the Colonials or the Cylons start exploring the planet, who knows that they won’t find the remnants of a long-destroyed technological civilization?

I’m not buying this theory. Just tossing it out there.

113

There is a third reason: Baltar was just elected as president in an election in which all of the surviving Colonials voted.

When then-Commander Adama deposed President Roslin, late in Season One, her legitimacy was tenuous at best. She was an accidental president – the way-down-the-list, never-before-heard-of successor of a regime that the Cylon attack had effectively swept away. The Colonial government had been nullified. Adama and the Galactica conceived of themselves as a remnant of the Colonial Navy, who had granted their gracious protection to a few civilian ships that had fled with them. President Roslin was serving because Adama let her – and what Adama had given, Adama could take away.

But the Ragtag Fleet, including Adama and the Galactica, has undergone a change of worldview since the end of Season One. The Galactica is no longer a remnant of the Navy protecting a few random civilian stragglers; it (together with, now, the Pegasus) is the Navy of the Twelve Colonies. The Ragtag Fleet is no longer a tag-along appendix to one battlestar: it is the civilization of the Twelve Colonies. The Cylon attack may have swept away the Colonial government, but the Ragtag Fleet is preserving the Colonial civilization, which includes restoring a constitutional and democratically elected government under the Articles of Colonization.

The handshake between Adama and Roslin at the end of the miniseries bound only them, not Gaius Baltar. Adama could rescind Roslin’s presidency because he had granted it to her. Baltar’s presidency comes from a different source, a free election, that even Adama recognizes as beyond his authority.

114

:smack: So it was. Thanks.

115

Very good point. A fourth reason could be that Tigh and Roslyn were guilty of election fraud. Adama covered it up with his explanation of “counting irregularities,” but there’s no guarantee the media or the population totally buy that. Baltar was certainly suspicious. Roslyn may have lost a lot of her credibility. Even if she didn’t, Baltar could have threatened to probe more fully into the matter and idict Tigh and Roslyn for election fraud and Adama for the cover up should any of them make trouble.

However, at the end when Adama was sending Tigh down to the planet, it seemed like he (Adama) had gotten pretty complacent. That does seem out of character for him. Perhaps he wasn’t really complacent and was just trying to put the best spin on a bad situation for Tigh’s benefit. That’s a stretch though. Adama has usually been brutally honest.

116

They’d all grown complacent, though. It seemed like the vigilance of “Okay, need to keep on top of things in case the toasters come back” was completely gone - I think it’s pretty normal to grow a little lax with time, even in Adama’s case. They’ve had a calm year, no Cylon attacks, no reason to think they might return. Maybe they’ve all assumed that a little R&R isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

(I’ve finally found the miniseries and the first season in stock at Best Buy…I’m debating picking it up today. Before I shell out the cash, will it be worth my while to get them?)

E.

117

Well, he was brutally honest enough when he told Tigh to find a younger babe if Ellen gave him too much trouble. :wink:

I was pretty astonished to see the “one year later” caption and not too pleased initially, but the more I think on it, the more I think it was not such a bad thing to do. Indeed, how much longer could we have stayed interested in a seemingly never-ending chase through space? And the desire to settle in one spot after being on the run surely does reflect human nature. I have a feeling that for most people, shipboard life was just one step above pure misery anyway, so taking their chances on New Caprica wouldn’t seem much worse.

I see the tent city as a bad move, though, and just another reflection of Baltar’s inability to govern effectively. No way should everyone have been set up in the same location - apart from having all people neatly in one basket for a Cylon attack, logistically it was just a bad thing for the people. The colonists aren’t much better off than early English settlers in the New World, for pete’s sake. It looked to me a bit like they were going through their first winter inadequately prepared. Sanitation issues alone must be a bear, ugh. There is also the matter of feeding everyone, which probably still required a fair amount of foraging because I highly doubt they had an adequate farming system in place to help feed 30,000+ people within the first year. And brilliant Dr. Baltar didn’t apparently grok the need not to put one’s entire population on a floodplain. :smack: Ah well, I’m just in a nitpicky mood this morning.

I was wondering whether that wasn’t in fact Caprica Six, seeing Baltar again for the first time since the Cylon invasion. To me, that look of pain and longing seemed to be partly “what’s become of you?” and partly “I wish I could do something for you now.” Maybe the Caprica Six/Galactica Boomer peace movement on back on Caprica was not so successful after all.

I’m still trying to figure out Dean Stockwell’s character. Since both models had the same take on the situation, the fleet priest was either a recent implant, or the scheme to trick humans into complacency was prepared just in the event that the humans came across a habitable world. That would definitely preclude Caprica Six/Galactica Boomer’s peace movement having any bearing at all on the temporary Cylon withdrawal.

Lee could’ve used a trim too, I noticed. I didn’t notice any weight gain for him though, I just thought it was the Pegasus uniform. (Anyone know why the uniform is different between ships, by the way?)

118

Umm…if you haven’t watched it - absolutely.

Although I’m sure that’s not the case - it offends my delicate sensibilities to even imagine someone just jumping into a show in the middle of its run. That’s just not done! ( kidding - I’m just neurotic that way myself :slight_smile: ).

  • Tamerlane
119

I’m fine with the long hair and beards. In the struggle to create a new civilization (there *are * farms and shops on the planet now, aren’t there? Even off-camera?), hair styling just isn’t a high priority. The colonists’ ragged appearance fit in just fine. Are they all living on board the grounded ships, btw?

Not fitting in as well were all the black children in the school, probably half the enrollment. IIRC, the *only * black adult human we’ve ever seen on the show is Dee. Where are all the black parents?

There’s no way Adama pere et fils have just been letting the fleet rot away while they’ve twiddled their thumbs for a year. I feel pretty confident that the fleet can now fight effectively even with skeleton crews. They still have the rest of the civilian fleet, too, all of which jumped with them - I’d expect them to have military uses of some sort by now, too.

If it took a year for the Cylons to find a planet only a light-year away, that strongly implies that jumps have some minimum distance requirement and can’t be used over short ranges (and that there’s no other FTL method, a bit of often-neglected hard SF). But then why not jump to some distant intermediate point and then almost back?

Callie was not actually said to be Mrs. Tyrol, people - sure, it was implied and is probably true, but there’s a possible plot opening there. In the meanwhile, it keeps her out of the Cylon baby farm. Starbuck, er, the soon-to-be Widow Anders, too, for that matter.

If the colonists really believed the Cylons were leaving them alone, why wouldn’t they have wanted to settle on Kobol instead?

This new “Dr. Who” remake had better be damn good, or October’s gonna be a heckuva long way away.

120

My take on it was that the vast majority were living in tents, like Starbuck and Anders were. Baltar gets to live on a grounded ship because of his exalted status.

Except that Lee did mention that they needed to jump away NOW, because it had taken too long to get to action stations, and the Pegasus was not prepared to fight. I think effective fighting will have to wait.

IMHO, it took a year for the signs of a nuclear blast to travel to some point where the Cylon fleet could detect it - not that it took the Cylon fleet to find the planet and travel to it. If there were some FTL limitation, then Kobol would have been remarkably close to the colonies (begging the question of why it had lain undiscovered for so long) and making Starbuck’s first return to Caprica in a Cylon ship less of an achievement.

IIRC, Kobol had originally been abandoned because of some environmental disaster (the sun flaring up, I think?). In any case, I think they found Kobol too soon after the attack to want to settle… plus Roslin had the whole dying-prophet-will-lead-us-to-Earth thing still going on.

How much did Roslin’s continued existence, and the “failure” of the prophecy, contribute to people’s wanting to settle on New Caprica instead of traveling further?