I’m not sure that the Cylons even have thirty BaseStars. But the impression I got was that the Cylons are involved in other projects, elsewhere. Their dilithium (trillium? unobtanium? whatever) mine was pretty far off the beaten path as far as we know. And the Cylons just happened to be in the neighborhood of Funky Nebula when Pegasus Six set off her suicide nuke. I think they’re scattered throughout their section of the galaxy, busy at whatever The Plan needs. Their resources may be stretched pretty thin – which was, to me, the implication given by the occupation committee. Now that Baltar’s gone off to Cylonland, I think we’ll probably come back to this in some Cylon-centric episodes this season.
But I think that the rag-tag fugitive fleet is going to be even more stretched thin after abandoning just about everything on New Caprica. I doubt the Resistance would have been able to pre-load much on the ships without the Cylons noticing, so they had to leave all those metal frames, equipment, food, oracle tents, and the like behind.
Yeah, Cavill and 5/Doral sure didn’t act all that enthused. Cavill seemed to think the whole idea was stupid to the core, and Doral looked like he wanted to blow Baltar’s brains out so badly he could taste it. The idea of nuking New Caprica City from orbit seemed to brought a little glimmer to his eye. 3 rolled hers into the back of her head almost any time Galactica 8 or Caprica 6 opened their mouths. If any of them besides 6 and 8 were supportive to begin with, it didn’t take them long to change their minds once the resistance began, so it’s pretty reasonable to wonder if their hearts were ever in it in the first place.
Of all the Cylons who get less screen time than the 6’s and the 8’s, I liked Simon’s personality the best. 5’s a smug control freak with a really short fuse; 3’s kind of a snarky bitch all the time, and sort of easy to get tired of; Cavill’s got a wry sense of humor, but he can be a cruel, calculating monster when he wants to be; and Leoben’s a just twitchy nutcase with more than a smattering of megalomania. Simon’s cool, collected, and doesn’t shoot his mouth off. At least if he’s being eeeevil he’s kinda classy about it.
Thank you all for enriching the already great storylines with additional commentary, nitpicks, and depth.
Baltar has such a drive to stay alive at all costs. He’s seen multiple Meatbags walking around and resurrecting when killed. Do you think he’s imagining “If I had a Cylon body I’d never die?” And do you think he’ll be offered that chance?
It still bugs me in the opening credits to see the blast rip through his windows and consume him and Six in the shockwave and to have him alive afterward. Who votes for this as a continuity error on the same scale as the Glowing Spine, and who thinks it needs to be explained?
While not exactly an enlisted man, Chief Tyrol is a warrant officer, and not a commissioned officer. So, I’m ok with all the shacking up as long as it still follows protocol.
This has been discussed a fair amount, and I’m with the folks who don’t really see a problem. Now, it’s true, a 50 megaton blast is a frakking huge nuclear explosion (as big as the biggest bomb ever detonated on Earth), but our old buddy the inverse-square law will tell you if you’re many miles from ground zero (which Baltar apparently was, given the time between the flash and the arrival of the shock wave), the force of the blast and the intensity of the heat and radiation will be suprisingly reduced. The terrain around Baltar’s place was mountainous, to boot, and that might have attenuated the affects of the explosion as well. You do see a lot of stuff flying around, but it’s mostly dust being kicked up and shattered glass, I think. It doesn’t look like Baltar’s place was flattened or anything like that, so I think it’s easily possible having 6’s body shielding most of him could have saved him. I think it would have been a nice touch to show his hands and forearms cut up pretty badly, as his arms were around her, I think, but that’s all. As for 6, well, shards of glass, wood, maybe shall, narrow pieces of metal from the window frames and treatments, probably riddled her entire back side, and even if none of them alone or in small numbers could have been lethal, tens or perhaps even hundreds of wounds from the flying debris could have easily killed her without the overpressure itself being fatal.
What kind of shape is Galactica in now? Unless it’s made of that miraculous self-regenerating hull material that Voyager was, it’s outer armor should be almost gone. It’s had a nuke sear the (starboard?) side, a took a heavy pounding on it’s port side, and it’s ventral side is now as blackened as an old frying pan. At this rate the Galacitca is one more major battle away from being crippled and two from being destroyed.
It does look remarkably clean on the outside, but it’s a mighty big ship, and we don’t often see it up close. I should imagine, though, that the entire bottom surface ought show discoloration from the heat of entry as well, and that ought to be easy enough to spot from far away. Even easier, perhaps.
At the beginning of season one the crew of Galactica was undisciplined. No one cared because Galactica was being decommissioned. After the attack it was Tigh’s job to crack down on people and whip everything back into military ship-shape.
A lot happened between the beginning of season one and the end of season two. Roslyn set a precedent by banning birth control, for one thing.
Tyrol/Cally doesn’t bother me protocol-wise. They’re both enlisted and I doubt Cally will return to active duty very soon. What bugs me about their marriage is that Cally was such an obsessed stalker-chick and the way she won him over was getting the crap beat of her by him during a sleepwalking psychotic break, and then forgiving him. The whole relationship just says “bad idea.”
Apollo & Dualla bother me more. Dualla was an NCO when she started fooling around with Apollo. Then she gets promoted to Lt. and becomes his XO and wife? That reeks of all kinds of inappropriateness. It’s also creepy she married him because he reminds her of his father. If I had to guess there’s an established character who will turn out to be Cylon, it’s Dualla.
I don’t think any more established characters are Cylon though.
Speaking of Tyrol and Cally, what’s their military status? Did they leave the colonial fleet prior to going to NC and hooking up? Come to think of it, what is the status of Gaeta, Starbuck, Tigh, and any other fleet members on NC? Did they all resign their commissions?
They’re going to have a tough time integrating everyone back into the fleet (if they want to get back in, and I can’t imagine they’d want to find some other job now that they’re running again). I don’t see Starbuck willingly following Cat as CAG. Nor do I see Cat or any of the other active fleet members who spent the past 16 months on active duty being happy about suddenly taking orders from those who resigned and had to be rescued.
This made me laugh. I read your paragraph on limited resource–including food–and then read the dog line. My first thought was that you hoped they brought the dog along as food! Hey, I guess they are going to be getting hungry!
I have a question that I don’t think has been addressed here so far.
What exactly does Gaeta know about the relationship between Baltar and Caprica Six? We know that Gaeta’s seen them together and they’ve not made any fuss about their relationship. Has any human ever heard Caprica Six called Caprica Six? Has any human ever asked why she’s called that and how she and the president know each other?
Other than that, great episode and great discussion. Can’t wait for friday!
He thought she could survive falling 90,000 feet and jumping near the surface having survived a nuke with minor consequences during the miniseries. “We aren’t going to lose any damage we took in this episode”. He planned to take out Pegasus from the start; as was posted above, “It is named Battlestar Galactica” although first plans had the ships attacking together and the basestars going after a wounded Pegasus, unable to jump.
He teased about whether Ellen knew Saul was killing her, mentioned how sad everyone was to lose the actress. The special effects guys, I believe, had a “Save the Pegasus” banner hung in front of his office.
He was drinking scotch.
