I’ve got no idea where you got that. I’m pretty confident Ellen talked Saul to coming down - a visit or a retirement we have no idea.
-Joe
But bear in mind that their jump technology has a far greater effective range than the Colonials’. Their supply chain can get mighty long without involving all that many jumps.
It was in the scene where Tigh and Tyrel, and I forgot who else, were discussing the codes needed to get through the Cylon jamming frequency (or whatever it was that was preventing the insurgents from communicating with the vipers). Tigh had mentioned a contigency plan that stated that he would lead an insurgency.
So, the rest of my post was fanwankery, but at least it was logical. Why else was Tigh on the ground? They didn’t know the Cylons were coming. By all intents and purposes, he should’ve stayed on the Galactica and remained XO, or even as Commander of the Pegasus. If he went to New Caprica to retire, why would he need to keep up with a contigency plan to lead an insurgency if the Cylons were to return?
But this question is adequately answered in the canon. No fanwankery required.
With a cup holder and a bumper sticker, “I brake for nobody!”
I also find this “Gaeta couldn’t convince anyone” story preposterous. Remember, it wasn’t just him who had an incentive to find the source. All the top insurgents knew that a source existed, and knew that they only survived because of the source. Wouldn’t they want to figure out who it was? If someone claimed “I’m the source”, they would at least know who to ask (Chief Tyrol) for some method of verification. And it seems preposterous that Gaeta would just hang out for 3 days doing nothing being depressed. He more than anyone else would get torn apart by an angry mob immediately unless he established his bona fides, but it shouldn’t be hard for him to do.
After the rescue, there’s no reason it wouldn’t be fairly public knowledge who the leaders of the resistance were, and however angry Tighe and so forth were there’s no reason to think that if someone came up to them and said “hey, Tighe, I was the source and I can prove it” they wouldn’t at least listen. Remember, Tighe KNEW THAT THERE WAS A SOURCE.
In fact, I would suspect that one of the first things they would do would be to send out a general announcement saying “Someone in the government of NC was a source and hero for the resistance. If you claim to be that person, contact Chief Tyrol with a description of the dead drop method.”
Again, this gets back to my biggest problem with Galactica, which is that I think the writers first come up with the scene/conflict they want (Gaeta on trial, almost gets spaced, Starbuck and Tighe and Tyrol have to deal with being vigilantes, etc.) and then just do it without really worrying about its plausibility.
OK, how’s this for a rationalization for Gaeta’s behavior:
When he got aboard he did talk to someone. He went straight to the man and talked to Adama. Adama believes him, but tells him it’ll be a hard story for many people to swallow, so he’d better just lay low and not say anything for a while.
OK, so for the rest of the next couple of days, neither one talks to anyone about it. When Tigh goes ballistic over seeing Gaeta, Adama starts to take him aside to tell him about it, but when it’s clear Tigh isn’t going to listen to any sort of reason, Adama changes his mind and tells him to just get some rest and talk to him later. Meanwhile Gaeta doesn’t say a thing about it to anyone either until the little scene with Starbuck.
Yea, and to top it all off, Gaeta probably has been suffering from depression and low self esteem for quite some time. It’s just in his nature to be quiet and not boast about his accomplishments.
How’s that for explaining events?
Without going back and rewatching, all I remember from that scene was the contingency plan that if the Cylons found them and the fleet jumped away, the fleet would send a Raptor once per day to attempt radio contact.
It makes sense everyone who was ex-military would be expected to more or less be called back on duty from the “reserves.” In the US, anyone who’s served in the military can be called back to duty if things get desperate enough.
I can understand Gaeta & Tyrol were the only ones who knew the drop specifics, and if I stick my fingers in my ears and squint, I can kinda imagine they managed to not know who each other were. But I can’t understand why Tyrol wasn’t asking everyone “what was the secret drop signal?”
They were on an emotional killing-spree. Tigh’s little speeches about fair trials don’t mean much. They’d killed 13 people already and planned on killing 57 more over the next three days. No way 57 people get anything resembling a fair trial - jury or no jury - in three days.
The thing that still bugs me is, why isn’t Gaeta a hero of the fleet now? Why is Tyrol the only person willing to sit at the same table with him? The only thing I can figure is Roslyn doesn’t want the activities of The Circle to become public knowledge and she swore everyone to secrecy.
I’m still trying to work out the details of that theory though. If no one outside of Adama, Roslyn, Zarek and The Circle knows Gaeta is a hero, then he’s still going to get beat up in the shower on a regular basis.
Back in the good old podcast, Moore mentions that Gaeta is a nerd and everyone else a military person.
He also mentioned concerning the rescue, “we wanted to figure out what they were practicing last episode with the drones.” (!)
Does seem kind of unplanned. “This would look neat, how do we do it at the last minute” sort of thing.
I totally believe that no one believes Gaeta. Remember, there could be Cylon sympathizers still on board (goodlifers, if you will), and they might want to exact revenge on those who helped overthrow their Cylon overlords who they previously welcomed.
I totally buy the fact that Gaeta was a marked man, and I, too, believed that everyone thought, that at the very least, he was as complicit as Baltar with cooperating with the Cylons.
And, after liberation of NC, who, but a glory-hound, would proclaim that they helped the insurgency and be demanded to be carried on the backs of his fellow man? Definitely not Gaeta. Definitely not most people.
When he told Starbuck about his role in the liberation, she laughed and mocked him. So, from his view of things, that line isn’t believe/isn’t open to him. When Starbuck asks again for confirmation, when he’s down on his knees, he will only see it as begging. Who wants to beg? At that point, he’s thinking he looks ridiculous and like he’s lying.
I thought he would scratch her eyes out.
You know, were I a civilian aboard one of those ships, I’d really be against Roslin right about now. Not only is she pardoning those who have (as far as “I” would be aware) deliberately turned against their own people, she comes up with some namby-pamby commission on “understanding” charged with, no doubt, painting a “sensitive” and “caring” picture for posterity. I want some toasterlover’s head to roll, frack it! (And yes, I think that frack is more aesthetically pleasing, besides more closely following English phonetic conventions)
From a detached veiwpoint I can see that it might be best for the fleet overall, but I would expect significant resistance to Roslin’s ideas. Kinda doubt it will happen though - Moore seems to tend to side with Roslin whenever she’s on the idealist’s side.
Me, too. There isn’t a large enough gene pool to kill anyone, but some kind of intentured servitude as I mentioned before is in order.
There could be some airlock accidents.
I wonder if Tom would run on a “Punish the Evildoers” platform, although his plan was to get it over with as quickly as possible.
I find it preposterous to assume that “all of the top insurgents knew” – we know they’d been deliberately isolating information, so that when one of them got hauled in by the Cylons to have an eye popped out, the other Resistance cells wouldn’t be exposed.
Tigh, Tyrol, Anders, (and Ellen, maybe) knew they had a mole. They thought the mole was high up in Baltar’s administration. No one else in the Resistance probably even knew who the “top insurgents” were, beyond general guesses. That’s why you adopt a cell structure for your insurgency.
And, even had Gaeta told his story to one of the Resistance, there’s no reason for anyone to believe a collaborator’s story – of course he said he was helping the Resistance. Who wouldn’t? But none of them knew that there was someone helping the Resistance, so why mention it to one of the three people who did know that?
And it doesn’t matter – those three weren’t interested in finding someone who didn’t collaborate. They wanted to hang 'em high, and had only three more days to do so. Wasn’t a priority.
I think that’s the major explanation. I don’t buy that he’d’ve talked to Adama. Galactica had just bellyflopped onto a planet – Adama had much greater worries than catching up with someone who’d left his ship over a year prior. What Adama wanted was things fixed – and since Gaeta had the skills, he’d sent Helo to get Gaeta working.
Adama’s never been the details guy; that’s why he’d had Tigh – and in Tigh’s absence, Helo. One of them would have dealt with the details about Gaeta, and turns out it was Helo.
But Gaeta was clearly depressed – and had been for all of this season. Hell, probably all the way back to “Final Cut”, or before. He’d reached his limit, and finally didn’t even have the energy to save himself – all he wanted was to end it with some dignity.
Who would have told the fleet “Oh, we had a Star Chamber going, tossing undesirables out the airlock, but we found out we were wrong and almost killed an innocent guy”?
Look at the expressions of everyone in The Circle ('cept Starbuck, of course) – they were horrified at what happened. Tyrol was probably the only one to overcome his shame enough to face Gaeta. None of them are going to be talking about it.
And to everyone else, he’s the collaborator with some story about how he was really a hero. Yeah, right.
Maybe if Roslyn or Adama made some recognition of him, it might get better. But Roslyn wants no reminders of the issue, and Adama made a Cylon an officer so we know his judgment’s going to be suspect. Gaeta is frakked.
Good; that practice scene confused the heck out of me.
The Spacing of Jammer: I regret the waste of air when spacing Jammer out the launch tube. I don’t wory about setting off alarms. Tyrol is chief and there are any number of plausible explanations he can make up.
What I do wonder about is this body floating off into space that Galactica and no other ship detect…
CIC: We have a blip on the dradis. It’s a 12 stone, 4 cubit mass…
XO: Heading?
CIC: I was just about to tell you that. I do know my job. It’s heading off into deep space.
XO: Then don’t bother me unless its Gina or heading for us or another ship.
And then there’s the frazzled survivor, just rescued from explosions and death, recovering from the horror and staring out the window, when he sees a dead man floating by, and reacts something like John Lithgow in The Twilight Zone Movie. However he does notice a pretty trail of ice crystals floating with the body and pointing straight back toward Galactica.
He’s probably not used to no depth perception and he tripped.
Another little monkeywrench of a detail to throw in:
How will anyone – in the general public, anyway – know who was in the resistance? As with post-WWII France, I think we’ll have a far higher incidence of people who claim to have been in the resistance than those who were.
Of course they will.
Hell of a lot more Red Sox fans nowadays than there used to be, eh?
-Joe
I was in the Resistance. I knew about the dog bowl.
You know, that could make an interesting plot twist down the road. Some resistance poseur decides he’s gonna take down Gaeta and forms a posse. And he just happens to come across Gaeta and Tyrol together. Tyrol protests that he was in the resistance, and the faker is all “yea right sure you were …”
Do you think that the average guy in 1946 France had a good idea of who the actual resistance leaders had been? Particularly now that there’s no longer any reason for them to keep it secret? In particular, it seems logical to me (although I can’t give any stronger argument than my gut feeling about human nature) that people’s natural desire for stories and narratives is going to quickly lead everyone to know who the leaders of the resistance were, at least locally.
Also, Gaeta is an officer, and presumably has the ear of someone like Adama. If he goes up to Adama and says “I want to talk to the leader of the former resistance, to prove my innocence”, what’s Adama going to do? Laugh at him? It’s not like he’s some schnook off the street…
I’m not saying that there’s no possible set of circumstances under which Gaeta could have tried and failed to communicate what he had done. I’m saying that the “default” thing I would assume would happen is that he’d IMMEDIATELY have to reveal who he was, lest he be torn apart by angry vengeance-seekers. And when he tried to reveal who he was, he would succeed relatively easily. Ironically, BSG manages to seem implausible in both directions… first, he’s more or less unmolested for 3 days (albeit shunned). THEN the very people who should be most willing to suspect and accept who he is (after all, it’s three days later, and the source hasn’t revealed himself yet… aren’t they getting curious?) refuse to even verify his story. Remember, at least half of the original circle is people who knew of the existence of, and importance of, the heroic “source”. Shouldn’t they, when grilling people from the Baltar administration, particularly people who they had previously thought of as family, at least seem aware of the possibility that that guy was the source? I mean, how many different possibilities were there?