[QUOTE=Merkwurdigliebe]
The good news is that their arrival on earth won’t mess up the show. How lame would it be if they landed in the present day?
[/QUOTE]
You don’t need to imagine how lame that would be.
I’m voting for Tom Zarek. Or some Slartibartfast living in a subway tunnel.
[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun]
Why did it take landing to know Earth was frakked (sp?)? They took pictures of Kobol from orbit.
[/QUOTE]
Good drama I guess. Why did Starbuck have to run across the whole ship instead of just picking up a phone and saying “don’t space Tigh!”
[QUOTE=Skara_Brae]
Or it could have been someone whose died since then…Cally or Barolay?
[/QUOTE]
That’s what I was thinking. Billy, maybe.
I had thought that the ruins at the end were supposed to be the (destroyed) Temple of Aurora that Apollo and Starbuck were examining in the book earlier.
Also, I wonder if the Final Fifth will turn out to be a survivor living on Earth.
[QUOTE=featherlou]
They can make hyperjumps across space, but they can’t give a dude a fake foot? (Or eyeball?)
[/QUOTE]
Probably because the ships were already outfitted with FTL drives but not prosthetic limb stores.
I pretty much assumed that the nuclear war that had screwed up the Earth had taken place millenia ago and may have partially prompted mankinds migration to Kobol, then the Twelve Colonies.
[QUOTE=featherlou]
They can make hyperjumps across space, but they can’t give a dude a fake foot? (Or eyeball?)
[/QUOTE]
Maybe glass eyes are considered pathetic, like a guy with a bad toupee. Or else fabricating one that’s the right size and color isn’t a priority on a fleet that desperately needs more of everything.
As for Gaeta, maybe the Cylons could build him a bionic leg? 
[QUOTE=Merkwurdigliebe]
I didn’t recognize the skyline as New York, to be honest.
[/QUOTE]
Mrs. Plant, another New Yorker suggests the wreckage is the 59th Street Bridge.
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
Mrs. Plant, another New Yorker suggests the wreckage is the 59th Street Bridge.
[/QUOTE]
Using Google Earth with the buildings turned off, I think it could be New York (or New New York or whatever the city that is located where New York is now is called in whatever year it was destroyed in BSG) probably viewed from the Brooklyn Heights (New Brooklyn Heights?)
My takes on some of the issues brought up here:[ul][]I didn’t get the idea that the fleet made a mega-jump to Earth. Rather, Adama decided that instead of probing carefully ahead of each jump (as was S.O.P.), they would just keep jumping straight on. The scene where he asks Roslin to give the order, was simply the last jump in the sequence.[]I think that the “Fleet” is clearly the whole human parade, not just the military vessel. I believe the fifth of the Five was not on one of the human ships when D’anna made her assertion.I don’t think that the ruins at the end were meant to represent anywhere in particular. The Crucifixes were there to show that it was Earth, so no other recognizable landmark needed to be used. It would have been too cliche for it to be New York or Washington DC.[/ul]
[QUOTE=Cerowyn]
The Crucifixes were there to show that it was Earth]
[/QUOTE]
Where do we see them?
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
Where do we see them?
[/QUOTE]
They are on the collapsed walls during the slow pan, before it turns across the water and towards the shattered skyline.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Good drama I guess. Why did Starbuck have to run across the whole ship instead of just picking up a phone and saying “don’t space Tigh!”
[/QUOTE]
That bugged me. I said to my ex-husband (I’m at his house for the weekend and we were watching together) “what, don’t they have intercoms?!” Neither of us had any explanation.
[QUOTE=msmith537]
I pretty much assumed that the nuclear war that had screwed up the Earth had taken place millenia ago and may have partially prompted mankinds migration to Kobol, then the Twelve Colonies.
[/QUOTE]
However, the story they tell is that humans originated on Kobol, and the 13th tribe left Kobol before any of the other Colonies were formed. Thus, you could say that Earth is one of the 13 Colonies, the “lost” one. It doesn’t jibe with our idea that Earth was first and should be the home world-- to them, the human home world is Kobol.
Do we know for sure that the final cylon is a skinjob?
My crazy theory – the final cylon is Kara’s Viper. When we saw it at the end of Season 3, it was on its way to being destroyed. Then it shows up at the beginning of Season 4, without a scratch on it, as if it had just rolled off the assembly line. As if it had been…resurrected.
Also, it would explain why the Final Four were drawn to the Viper in last night’s episodes. And how the Viper conveniently knew the way to Earth.
Obvious problems – first, in the vision at the opera house, the final five appeared to be humanlike figures. But that was just a vision after all. Also, when Deanna talked about the “four in your fleet” – it’s hard to argue that the Viper was not in the fleet.
Just a thought – something is definitely up with the Viper, and that hasn’t been explained.
[QUOTE=msmith537]
Probably because the ships were already outfitted with FTL drives but not prosthetic limb stores.<snip>
[/QUOTE]
Still, you can’t whittle the guy a peg leg? (To go with Saul’s eyepatch. All they’d need then is a parrot.) 
[QUOTE=OpalCat]
“what, don’t they have intercoms?!”
[/QUOTE]
They needed a scene where she called him, and he was to occupied with defenestration to respond; turned the intercom off, or something.
[QUOTE=Agnostic Pagan]
Holy frak!
Was that Manhattan in the distance? So they have traveled countless light-years to end up in Brooklyn? I’d be pretty bummed to.
[/quote]
Exactly what I thought too!
[QUOTE=Lumpy]
Maybe glass eyes are considered pathetic, like a guy with a bad toupee. Or else fabricating one that’s the right size and color isn’t a priority on a fleet that desperately needs more of everything.
As for Gaeta, maybe the Cylons could build him a bionic leg?
[/QUOTE]
Tight isn’t vain enought to bother with a fake eye he can’t even see through.
[QUOTE=alphaboi867]
Tight isn’t vain enought to bother with a fake eye he can’t even see through.
[/QUOTE]
He so lacking in vanity that his eyepatch is made out of a big bandaid and a rubber band. Surely he could have gotten a nice leather one when he got back from New Caprica, but he stuck with the crappy homemade one. A fake eye? Never!