[QUOTE=Agnostic Pagan]
Also, exactly why did the sick basestar blow up, and the weird glances between Athena and Apollo when it did?
[/QUOTE]
I suggest that one of the surviving Cylons managed to self destruct it.
As to the weird glances, I imagine Apollo always glances at Athena when something Cylony and unexpected occurs. 
[QUOTE=lawoot]
Did D’anna call 6 “Caprica”
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the cue.
Twelve colonies, twelve models of skinjobs… coincidence?
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Oh, and another thing. The Centurions were infected too? I thought they weren’t meat-puppets.
[/QUOTE]
The organical whatever it is that controls them went berserk and bad? About all that makes sense - unless they have tiny meatbrains, I guess. They are an upgrade from the old Centurions.
-Joe
[QUOTE=Mr. Excellent]
There’s a problem with that plan, though. They needed a resurrection ship to jump into range, and resurrection ships only jump in when they’re escorting battlestars. You don’t need a battlestar to take out a raptor - you jump in a few raiders to deal with it.
[/QUOTE]
Why were the Cylons jumping in with the resurrection ship anyway? I got the impression that it works over great distances; we never saw or heard of it until the Pegasus episode. Why risk bringing it into a combat zone?
[QUOTE=Agnostic Pagan]
I gotta go with the majority with this one. It totally sucked Baltar’s balls.
[/QUOTE]
In other words, then… you rated it a 6? 
[QUOTE=Mr. Excellent]
There’s a problem with that plan, though. They needed a resurrection ship to jump into range, and resurrection ships only jump in when they’re escorting battlestars. You don’t need a battlestar to take out a raptor - you jump in a few raiders to deal with it.
[/QUOTE]
So ya bring the mountain to Mohamed. They’ve found resurrection ships before, they can find one again. Once they locate it, jump in and do the deed, and jump out. If the crew survives the trip, they all get medals.
[QUOTE=stochastic]
What’s really bugging me is the fact that they had a chance to sufficiently explain how such a biological virus (and for that matter, any meatbag life-data) could be downloaded to the resurrection ship, but completely muddled it up.
[/QUOTE]
Two theories that probably won’t stand up to scrutiny.
It’s possible that the virus would cause the body’s immune system to go berserk - and since the Cylons run on software their reaction to the virus would somehow corrupt their software.
The plan wouldn’t have worked. The virus would not have carried over onto a Resurrection Ship download. The Cylons, who don’t get sick and are essentially immortal didn’t want to take the chance. If a bunch of beings have never gotten sick before, are they necessarily going to react rationally? There’s a miniscule chance of the virus coming in via the download…but it if happens EVERYONE DIES.
-Joe
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
So jump a raptor to Caprica and do it there. There’s an entire Cylon society there, and thus (one assumes) constant rez-ship presence.
[/QUOTE]
End of last season we were informed (by Cavill?) that the Cylons had picked up and left Caprica.
-Joe
He told a lot of lies.
[QUOTE=tanstaafl]
Sick baseship. I think they used to call the big Cylon ships basestars but lately they’ve been calling them baseships.
[/QUOTE]
Ah. It appears that’s what I get for trying to pick out the dialogue from Closed Captioning.
Still the writing was pretty sloppy. This Baseship thing has me confused. The Galactica jumps in, gets spotted by a couple Raiders, the Raiders jump away to alert the Cylon “fleet.” Moments later three Basestars and the R-ship jump in. Adama says it’s time to execute the prisoners, and Vipers begin engaging the Raiders from three fraking Basestars. Apollo discovers the prisoners are already dead “before the R-ship was in range.” Then Starbuck says over the comm, “Galactica, a Baseship just jumped in,” and Adama says “call our birds in, let’s get out of here.”
First, I call bullshit that a R-ship has to be in visual range before Cylons can resurrect. Previously in the series a R-ship could be many light years away. That’s the impression I got when Leoben managed to resurrect way back in season one, as well as Boomer resurrecting way the frak back on Caprica.
[QUOTE=Subway Prophet]
Why were the Cylons jumping in with the resurrection ship anyway? I got the impression that it works over great distances; we never saw or heard of it until the Pegasus episode. Why risk bringing it into a combat zone?
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. They’ve never risked bringing a R-ship so close to the Colonials and they’ve never had reason to.
Second, it seems holding off three Basestars is okay, but uh-oh, a Baseship just jumped in. Let’s get out of here!
[QUOTE=HelloKitty]
Aw, man, Felix cut his hair!! I want the dreamy sideburned and curly locked Gaeta back!
[/quote]
I like him with short hair, but I understand why some people like longer, thick curly hair to run their fingers through. I guess the veteran in me just doesn’t like seeing guys in military uniforms with shaggy hair.
If Rozzie had brought out the “they killed 20 billion people” card, I could understand her getting all snippy. But if her reasoning for committing genocide is based on four months of occupation then I’m still with Helo on this one. Her reasoning that Helo never set foot on that “hellish snake-pit” doesn’t fly with me. Not as a justification for genocide.
[QUOTE=Agnostic Pagan]
Also, exactly why did the sick basestar blow up, and the weird glances between Athena and Apollo when it did? The whole opening I was thinking that the Colonials had just found a shitload of spare parts, and then… WTF? Self-destruct my ass…
[/quote]
I can handle that there was some sort of self-destruct mechanism. What bugged me was when Apollo was on the radio with Helo, there was this little “boom” and Helo said “what was that?” It was as if Helo heard the explosion over the radio before he saw something on Draedis. Well, maybe not.
I don’t mind that Adama is “closing the book on this.” First, Adama seemed to side with Helo regarding the use of a biological weapon to effect genocide. Helo is no more a traitor than most of the rest of the crew has been at one time or another and Roz is the last person to cast the first stone regarding that anyway.
The Cylons only feared the virus had a “bio-electric feedback component” which would propagate via resurrection. It probably wouldn’t have anyway and I’m going to assume Adama figures as much. He humored Roslyn and Apollo on this one, but let’s just let it go.
Question though. If 3000-year-old diseases are such a threat to the poor widdle Cylon immune systems, then finding Earth is looking better and better. The Cylons will never be able to get near it with all the old Earth diseases laying around humans have developed immunities to.
Am I behind the times or did they introduce a new humanoid cylon face? the one that was “most gone” according to Cottle doesn’t look like any of the known models to me.
[QUOTE=Bobalude]
Am I behind the times or did they introduce a new humanoid cylon face? the one that was “most gone” according to Cottle doesn’t look like any of the known models to me.
[/QUOTE]
That was a Leoben, wasn’t it?
Yep, looked like a Leoben to me, too. Last week the Xenabot made it clear that the 5 we haven’t seen yet are of a different group they don’t talk about. There wouldn’t be a new one just slipped into the background, not when there’s a future plot point to be made.
lev, I too hope Moore doesn’t go all “War of the Worlds” on us with this disease stuff.
Looked like a Leoben to me.
There is a Leoben among the prisoners too, but they take someone else besides him. Unless there’s 2 copies of Leoben among the group?!?!
Aaron Doral was the one they took who was “the furthest gone.” You probably didn’t recognize him without the orange corduroy.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Aaron Doral was the one they took who was “the furthest gone.” You probably didn’t recognize him without the orange corduroy.
[/QUOTE]
He’ll always be the used car salescylon to me.
[QUOTE=Subway Prophet]
He’ll always be the used car salescylon to me.
[/QUOTE]
He’ll always be the spunky Cutter from Andromeda to me.
[QUOTE=Subway Prophet]
…Yeah, we were scratching our heads over that one, too. The virus was documented so well that, 3000 years later, a military doctor is able to refer to it almost casually, on a war-weary and fleeing battlestar. Instantly accessed via magical index that knows the shape and effects of the virus. No complications with language. No degradation of information. No rotting CDs or paper to re-archive every 20 years. Are we to understand that the Colonials had all this high tech, continuously, for over 3000 years?..[/COLOR]
[/QUOTE]
Something about this timeline feels strange. Pythia wrote the scriptures 3600 yrs ago, the 13th tribe left Kobol 3000 yrs ago, and Kobol was abandoned 2000 yrs ago. Meaning the 13th tribe left a 1000 yrs before the War of the Gods 
. And I find it hard to believe the Colonials have had advanced technology for 3000 yrs. They must have had some kind of Dark Age. Is it possible that the virus was found in some ancient mummy from when the Colonies where first settled? The knowledge could have been in some kind of medical history book Cottle had acess to. BTW paper lasts much longer than computer disks. We have papyrus scrolls from ancient Egypt that can still be read.
OK, maybe it’s because I just started watching this season (though I have caught up with all the prior eps via DVD), and thus have a fresh(er) perspective, or just that my disbelief is more willingly or easily suspended, but I only had one real problem with this episode (which I’ll get to later).
I don’t have a problem with:[ul][li]Non-skinjob Cylons getting infected. Hell, we know the Raiders have a biological component; why is it such a leap to imagine the Centurions were upgraded at some point to include the same? And the baseships are controlled by the Hybrids, who obviously have a biological brain.[]Not taking the beacon/probe/whatever with them when they left the infected baseship. At this point, they have no idea what the infection is or what the beacon/probe/whatever is. If the infection affects them, they run the risk of infecting the fleet. If the beacon/probe/whatever is a bomb or a Cylon trick, they run the risk of destorying Galactica.[]Exposing Galactica to lure the Cylons. As mentioned, the presence of a Raptor or two isn’t going to bring the Cylon fleet. No good bait, no trap.[]Athena being healed by the presence of Hera’s blood cells. OK, maybe it would have made for more dramatic tension in upcoming episodes to have her constantly need injections to keep the virus at bay, but this isn’t as wildly speculative as you might believe (cf. Loopydude’s prior post.)[]The sequence of the battle and proposed execution. In chronological order:[ol][]Galactica jumps to a specific co-ordinate.[]Vipers and Raptors launch.[]Helo sabotages the air controls.[]Cylon raiders are spotted on DRADIS and report back.[]Three baseships and a resurrection ship jump in.[]Adama gives the order to execute the prisoners.[]Vipers engage Cylon raiders.[]Apollo discovers the already-dead prisoners and Adama gets the news.[]Starbuck notices another baseship has jumped in (baseship/basestar, same thing) - whether she’s just seen one of the others already there, or a fourth has jumped is unclear and irrelevant.[]Adama calls the fighters back because the plan has failed and they need to bug the frak out (which they would have done anyway even if the prisoners had been executed as planned).[/ul][]Helo and Adama’s opposition to the proposed “genocide.” Helo’s opposition may be obvious, but have we forgotten Adama has just recently bonded with Sharon/Athena himself? Both of these characters (Helo and Adama) have come to believe the Cylons have truly evolved to a level where they are significantly more than mere machines (more on this later). Adama reluctantly goes along with the plan as ordered by Roslin, but I thought it was quite clear he found the whole thing distasteful, and wouldn’t have done it if not ordered to do so. He may have even been relieved it didn’t work (Olmos did a brilliant job in this episode.)[]The function of the virus itself and the possibility of infection via download. Yeah, this one is the hardest to swallow, but let’s look again at what Simon said regarding the “bio-electric feedback component”: “It corrupts how our brains manage our immune systems.” Now, if we’re already willing to accept the download process takes the whole of an organic brain’s experience and transfers it to another body, is it much of a stretch to imagine things like motor function and other brain-to-body instructions would be transmitted as templates as well? Cylons who wake up in that bath don’t have to re-learn how to ride a bicycle, right? So if their brain has learned a new and malignant way to (mis)manage their immune system, wouldn’t that information be transmitted as well? I dunno; I know it seems like a stretch, but as I said, we’re already going along with the whole “download” thing in the first place.Cottle’s ability to match the virus strain against three-thousand-year-old records. As mentioned, we have Egyptian scrolls that go back that far now. Even if there was some technological Dark Age in the colonies, it’s plausible a record of the virus on Kobol could be found to match the current pathogen. This was partly a throwaway line, anyway, though, intended only to indicate the beacon did indeed come from Kobol, and does indeed point the way to Earth.[/ol][/li]This episode set up an interesting theme involving how the humans regard the Cylons as a race. It’s quite clear Apollo and Roslin do not see the Cylons as anything other than machines (humanity’s mistake), and this is obviously the majority opinion. But we are seeing a growing sense of (perhaps begruding) repsect from others - Helo obviously, and I believe Adama, have concluded the Cylons are capable of “humanity.” Just as we saw brief glimpses of “Cylon sympathizers” in the past, we may start to see others who don’t just see them as machines in need of destruction.
Now. All that said, my question remains: How the hell does the destruction of a resurrection ship result in the genocide of Cylons? We’ve alrerady seen a resurrection ship destroyed. At worst, it would have resulted in the destruction of the Cylon fleet (which is what Simon actually says), as the infected fleet simply warns all other Cylons to stay away. I’m not following how infecting this one fleet’s resurrection ship manages to infect the entire Cylon race; they’d simply isolate and/or destroy the fleet like they isolated and destroyed the infected baseship and the matter would be over. Many more Cylons would die, yes, but are we supposed to believe the Cylons have only one fleet now, like the Colonials? When the frak did that happen?