Battlestar Galactica 2004 Rewatch - Spoilers don't need to be blurred

Cafe Society
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I rewatched the mini series and the first episode and want to talk about it. I haven’t watched it since it first aired. I have the DVDs but it’s all streaming of course. That’s another topic.

Frak has long been a part of my vocabulary, having watched the 70s series as well as Galactica '81. I have no problem with the cast. Most of the time, if I don’t like something, it’s the writing I blame.

I’m a nit picker so just because I point out something that doesn’t make sense to me doesn’t mean I don’t like it. If I like something, I am willing to explain the thing that doesn’t make sense.

The wiki seems to explain things and it will be interesting to see if the show does. An old thread says that BSG is not SciFi and is Fantasy, with a few exceptions here and there.

I’m saying that spoilers won’t be blurred for several reasons. First, it’s a twenty year old show. Second, I know the broad strokes, so the big things can’t be ruined. I don’t mind if small details are “spoilered.” Third, I have looked at the wiki to learn several plot points. For example, given the ending, there is speculation that the red six that Baltar sees is an angel. That’s the sort of thing I want to talk about. We could do it via spoiler tags but I would prefer not.

Mini - Series thoughts

It’s tough, in a way, to know what will be treated as real or not. I was hoping that the Viper fired some sort of plasma mumble mumble mumble that can be created from their engine so that we don’t have to worry about typical ammo. Not according to the wiki, though. That type of ammo is used up fast. (An F-14 Tomcat only has enough ammo for its Vulcan canon to fire for five seconds.) Same for the covering fire and anti missile fire the Galactica shoots. I appreciate that they were able to load up on ammo at Ragnar Anchorage but seemed to use a lot of it on defense to get away. Fuel is another issue like this. I’m happy they give it lip service but at some point aren’t they going to have to manufacture it themselves?

Would I have preferred it to be quiet in space? Sure. I don’t need it, though.

I liked the characters except for Baltar. I don’t think he’s narcissistic enough. The doubts we see play out in his mind wouldn’t be there. Baltar’s self doubt and loathing gets old fast and again shouldn’t be there. Doesn’t bode well when I’m sick of it already and I know there is a ton more to come. I like the rest of the characters and the relationships we see as well as those that form.

I don’t know if they didn’t want to get into it or didn’t care but I didn’t understand how the humanoid cylon on Ragnar station survived as long as he did. How did he get there? Why? He knew what he was, so he should have had a mission for being there. How did Adama recognize his symptoms since these humanoid cylons are new? How can Adama say he has silicon pathways when they look at the body later and the blood is a match?

Loved the Firefly class ship on Caprica!

I like the line of succession down to someone who at least knows the President and didn’t want to be higher. That, to me, hinted she could have been higher, so can handle the Presidency. I’m not sure about the cancer. That’s one of those little details that I don’t remember how it plays out.

I love vipers! Have since I was a kid! Love seeing them in action.

I like that the cylons planned this for years. I assume every colony had someone like Baltar, who didn’t survive, that gave up their planetary defenses. I don’t know that I understand their logic in attacking, though. It would seem the colonies do very little colonization. Heh. They are in a system? Seems to be a big system that they terraformed or a few systems. They don’t have to be close with FTL drives. My point is that they have contained themselves so why not leave listening outposts to know if the humans leave and leave?

I remember it being an interesting shock that Boomer was a cylon, maybe one that doesn’t know, a sleeper agent.

A good start, IMO. Enough to get me to watch more.

Episode 1 - 33

Again, nit picking and I’m not sure what I want different. 237 jumps every 33 minutes. How many ships did they lose before they figured this out? How fast can they jump? I mean, right here, isn’t this a lot of fuel? Or is FTL “cheap” compared to sub light? How far can they jump? How good are their astrogation charts? How do they pick where to jump next? 237 jumps! I mean, did they go in circles? They could easily jump back to the same system at a different point and not be spotted, I would think. I don’t know dradis range. Not to mention crew effectiveness! I would be no good with no sleep for that long.

Baltar is still annoying and not in a good way. Not sure if Red Six that he sees is an angel because if so, must be a fallen one. Or wanting to tempt or punish him based on his faith. Really, I could do without the melodrama and think Helfer deserves better. (Loved her in Lucifer.) I like Starbuck and Apollo. I like Gaeta and Dualla. If Baltar wasn’t there, it would be better for me.

I like them being chased. I nit pick above but I can see the cylons chasing them as long as they could track them, if they do indeed want to wipe them out. We don’t get any other reason the chase stops other than Olympic Carrier not being there. Not sure what the connection is between Olympic Carrier showing up and 33 minutes later the cylons show up. Tough choice to fire on it but I like Apollo and Starbuck did it.

I think the number of total humans hits harder for me twenty years later. The fact that they can accurately track how many are in the fleet and it’s that low is scary. I want more “world building.” what are the other civilian transports doing? Again, not remembering little details, maybe this comes up later. Are they all about supporting Galactica because Galactica protects them? Do they have food growing? The domed one that they had to leave behind in the mini series is funny because they made it a greenhouse with big windows when that isn’t needed and is a waste. I didn’t see anything like that in the ships they have left.

I still like it and am going to keep watching.

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Going to nit pick myself.

According to this wiki Viper Mark II The Viper carries two 800 round 30mm MECs that fire at 20 / second. Forty seconds of shooting so maybe not too bad.

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Availability of resources, including parts, and general supplies will come up multiple times in the the series. Of course, to me, it feels like it always comes up when they want to raise tension, or have a “reason” to do something else dramatic, but it’s not totally ignored.

There’s always the question throughout the series (major possible spoilers) if/when individual cylons KNOW they’re cylons. My read is that most serving with humans DON’T know until activated, although they may have some uncertainties deep down. Some seem to need to be activated, and some may be acting on reasons/impulses that they aren’t aware of. But the whole how does Adama know is valid, rather it seems he had doubts (I mean, the guy was skeevy, and almost certainly a scavenger/looter at BEST) and events bore him out later. I mean, if I saw someone on a concealed weapons base looking like he was slowly dying, I’d be wondering if he got into the nukes, but at that point, the remaining humans would have probably seen cylons in ANYTHING.

You would be correct, colonization has nothing to do with their motivations. Which, IMHO was one of the weakest parts of the series, and ties back to the Fantasy vs. Scifi analysis.

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I mentioned stumbling into this series in another thread a few months ago. I am on season 3 now, and my three biggest complaints (so far) are:

(1) The fracking frack. Fuck it’s annoying.
(2) The cinematography. The way they tint scenes yellow or blue or whatever. It’s just weird an unnecessary.
(3) The not so thinly veiled religious (LDS) propaganda. The less said the better.

ETA: Oh, also the neoliberalism. Beltalowda!

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Glen Larson was a Mormon and explicitly drew on Mormonism when creating the original series. It’s not LDS propaganda here, it’s just maintaining plot elements from the original.

Get rid of Kobol and the twelve tribes and the government by president and quorum and mortals becoming angels and it wouldn’t be BSG anymore. The decision by the showrunners to make the Colonial religion into classical Greek paganism was a nice touch IMO.

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I seem to recall Adama mentioning that the Ragnar Anchorage was put where it was because something in that storm/atmosphere surrounding it was known to interact poorly with Cylon technology. When he saw the guy getting sick for no other apparent reason, he started to suspect that it was because of this effect, although it took some time to really convince him, because of the humanoid appearance.

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Yep, like I said it’s not wrong - and they had every reason to be suddenly paranoid about cylons, but radiation poisoning seems as much easier assumption in a base with nukes than assuming cylon infiltrators. :slight_smile:

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Unlike the ammo and water situation, I don’t think they really ever showed where the food was coming from. But I haven’t watch the show in years and my memory might be wrong about that. Later, there’s an episode where the food making devices or whatever get contaminated or something so they have to go out and find a new source of food. That turns out to be the algae planet. So from then on, I think they all subsisted on the algae.

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IIRC, they explicitly said that Galactica, as a warship designed for long deployments, had devices for turning any organic matter into food, and a few of the other ships (like Cloud Nine, the luxury resort ship) had greenspaces that could be used for farming, but that most of the fleet was dependent on Galactica for their food. Even with the machines on Galactica, though, they still needed some sort of feedstock, which is why they stopped off at the algae planet.

They also pay at least some heed to ammunition and other sorts of supplies. It was a big deal when the Chief constructed a new Viper by hand, because they basically couldn’t replace Vipers. When they eventually add the Pegasus to their fleet, part of the reason that it was a big deal was that Pegasus, being a much newer warship, had fabbers on board that could make things like Vipers.

And it was a very big deal whenever they used nukes, and it could only be done with direct authorization from the President. Which meant that they didn’t even come close to depleting their stocks of nukes.

More generally, though: Even though the opening of every episode assures us that the cylons have A Plan, there’s never really any indication of what that Plan was, or even that the writers ever had any idea of what it was. Not even in the prequel series, titled “The Plan”.

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Oh, and I don’t think that they ever said anything about how their propulsion works, but what’s most important is the FTL system, and that can’t use all that much energy, given that even the Raptors are capable of it. The limitation on FTL jumps seems to be computing power, not energy, which meant that they were able to jump much further with scavenged Cylon tech, and also means that the entire fleet is capable of jumping in unison, as far as the furthest-jumping ship in the fleet (which is almost certain to be one of the Battlestars, though I don’t think that’s explicitly stated).

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I believe FTL is not explained in the modern Battlestar. Late in the show, we get to see the engines or mechanism that does it, but it provides no clarity.

They just have it…

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Regarding Baltar, I started watching the series on a streaming platform that was about to de-list it, so I found myself skipping the Baltar and Number Six scenes and I don’t feel like I missed anything.

Some things like the shaky cam could have been minimized a bit and I don’t always feel like the writers knew where they were going, but overall it’s a great series with a lot of memorable moments.

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On IMDB, BSG has an 8.7. That’s impressive!

This is me going too deep into thinking mode and overthinking the scene. I missed that they said where Ragnar Anchorage messed up cylon technology. That alone has issues. If they are tech, ships have to have some level of technology. Maybe this is like 30s SciFi, Tom Swift, where tech is just big but not needing high levels of accuracy? Today we might pull out an abacus to show no tech so do they pull out a scientific calculator that isn’t networked?

When they arrive, Leoben looks bad but is functional. He admits he was there to steal and wants to bargain for his life and passage. As he and Adama are walking, he says things that a criminal would say, for all that I know what a criminal would say. He seems to get worse when they get to the big room. At that point, the logical explanation is that he did get into the nukes and got himself dosed. What else would act that fast and not hurt anyone else?

They take Leoben’s body and the results of the autopsy seem to indicate they aren’t that different from humans. No offense to Callum Keith Rennie but Leoben does not look like he can lift someone like Adama, with one hand extended, off the ground! I think this is the usual trap of SciFi, though. The alien or cyborg shrugs off bullets or does a feat of strength to show how tough they are. Yet no trace of that with a full scan of his body?

I can’t say I remember what the original did and interesting about Glen Larson. That part doesn’t bother me but I can see why it’s bothersome. I will be more interested to see if they are consistent with it.

Many have pointed out they do lip service to things needed. For the most part, that works for me. It breaks down if I think too much about it because it would have to be sophisticated/complex to make other things. I suppose I should clarify. The whole look and aesthetic of the Galactica seems low tech. I don’t think that the President’s ship is much better, really. They don’t have data pads but do print outs. Is that a limit of 2004 thinking, when we didn’t have smart phones? I think they should have advanced tech but it should be annoying. They have the 3D printer to make things but since it can’t be networked to another computer, they have to bring plans to it with flash drives. There is no reason they can’t have an iPad/reMarkable/tablet that doesn’t connect to anything else. Could be 2004 limit though.

I mean, Lost ends up worse, because BSG tried to fit a plan in there at the end, even if it failed. Lost threw out years of buildup because they had no plan and didn’t try. I will see how I like it this time around.

I think Baltar and his plots are going to be the tough parts for me as well. I’m pretty sure Tigh and his wife will push my limits as well.

Again, overthinking.

They could jump into the vast empty of space. No reason they need to be near a star. It goes back to how good their star charts are. I don’t think we get any idea of how it’s done just that it requires some calculations. Stars average about five light years between in our galaxy, a quick google search tells me, so assuming that as a minimum, they jumped almost 1200 light years in 237 jumps! Not linear not only due to thickness of their galaxy but they didn’t have to go straight away from their planets. That’s a lot. That’s galaxy spanning, easily. It’s still a lot of space.

Thanks for the replies and discussion! I appreciate it. Game night tonight so it will be tomorrow before I can watch more.

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Recall that the Cylons can infiltrate just about any computer network. That means smartphones, datapads, anything that relies on wireless data is a no-go. Galactica survived the initial attack because it’s an antique and its systems aren’t networked.

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I apologize that I wasn’t clear. I was trying to say that they could have datapads, 3D printers, and personal computers that are wireless. No connections even possible on these devices. No more paper print outs. It creates it’s own annoyances in that you have to plug and unplug the devices used to transfer data but that’s the price paid. The contrast could be that the other ships have that stuff but have to have it turned off now.

That was my thinking. Sorry I wasn’t clear.

Thanks for the response!

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This was explained during the episode. The Cylon’s could not track them while they were in a jump nor could they know the destination, unless someone told them. The Olympic Carrier had cylon agents on board that would send a signal to the chasing cylons where the fleet was. Presumably the amount of time it took the cylons to receive the signal and act upon it was 33 minutes.

There is a whole discussion about this episode and the desire the writers had to have people be visible through the windows when they do the fly by before destroying the ship. That was changed so that the tone of the episode was no too dark: 33

It is unfortunate that they changed it, though it is something that remains with Apollo and affects him going forward in the series, which I felt was great. Unlike other “huge” consequences of actions done by characters at the beginning of the series, this one is one that could have easily been left behind, but they chose to continue it anyway.

//i\\

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But even in the universe shown, where every Battlestar was set up to avoid networked computers, we’re shown that Galactica is in particular even more primitive, because of the attitudes of Adama, its commander. In the miniseries, when Apollo lands on Galactica, he’s annoyed that he had to land manually, and asks if their auto-landing system is malfunctioning. He’s told that Galactica never uses an auto-land system.

So it’s in character that Adama would also ban other technologies, preferring to be extra-special primitive, just because.

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I just finished watching the entire series this last weekend (as I posted here elsewhere), after missing the first time it ran. Lots of roll-eyes, but I enjoyed the world building, the action, most of the characters (Baltar - ugh!), but I loved the music, especially the opening theme. I let the rest slide by (“it’s just a show, I should really just relax”).

I’m tempted to watch the 1978 version with Lorne Greene, just for yucks.

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Even when watching the show the first time around the steadicam and “snap zoom” shots got old pretty quickly. I suppose it’s meant to give the impression of some jerk floating around in a space suit being like “oh shit look at that!”.

FWIW, I liked Baltar. I felt like he was a complex and flawed character that ultimately went through a complex and ultimately satisfying redemption arc.

Gaeta I couldn’t stand though. He was a pretentious turd from day one.

@Horatius - Also don’t forget that the Galactica was being converted to a museum ship too.

Although it does beg the question of whether you can actually realistically conduct any sort of interstellar combat operations on a space battleship/aircraft carrier without the benefit of networks of advanced computers. Especially when your enemy is a race of AI that presumably has no limits on technology.

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I have, semi-recently. It is a nice change from the perhaps excessive grimdark of the modern series, but… while there are individual good/great episodes, you’ll find your mind has edited out memories of some of the real stinkers (and many individual wince-worthy bits/tropes). So, be prepared to be re-watching, your mind suddenly go “Oh My God, it’s THIS episode” and either grit your teeth and get through it, or hit the next episode button. :slight_smile: