Adama’s fatigue was what got me more than anyone else’s reaction. I’ve seen him distraught, angry, etc. But this was the first time I remember seeing him just going through the motions. It really hurt to see because this was a guy who didn’t believe in earth at the start of the series. He just brought it up as a way to boost morale.
It was especially apparent to me with Zarek going on the offensive early on. I don’t believe for a second that Zarek is out for anything but his own power. Still, he made a passionate argument for his cause (true, he appealed to anger, fear, hatred, etc) while Lee was kind of wimpy in the discussion, and Adama didn’t even show up in person to make his case. (Not to mention Roslyn being totally apathetic.)
Well, as people keep mentioning, the Cylon citizenship would be a very tough sell for the fleet…but that’s kind of irrelevant since nobody is actually TRYING to do so.
Adama: We need to do this or we’re probably going to die.
Quorum: Eh.
Not exactly the debate you want when it’s a life or death situation.
Rosylin - Wake up…yeah, you made certain choices, and in those choices (to run and to look for a new home) some of the survivors have died - some due to Cylon aggression, etc. Had you not opted to run and ‘stood the ground’ as Adama originally wanted, many more would have died - indeed, if not all.
Quoram - C’mon - last time you listened to anyone but Adama and Roslyn, you ended up in a concentration camp ran by the enemy… seems to me the same basic fight was presented to you then - “We’re a democracy, We rule the military, not the other way around” - had you listened then to Roslyn and Adama, you’d be up another Battlestar, you’d have ATLEAST another 1-2000 survivors, and Tigh would have both eyes and his wife.
People of the Fleet - Figure it out - United We Stand, Divided We Fall. - Pretty Frackin’ simple.
Gaeta - take the long walk already.
Zarek - you really are a tool, arent you? Bluffed by the old man… Hold Gaeta’s hand on the way out the airlock.
Zarek is, like Roslin, a politician. We get to see more of Laura Roslin than Tom Zarek so she’s better fleshed out, but her character is instructive; while until recently she was always legitimately interested in the welfare of her people, and she is legitimately kind, sympathetic, and charitable, she was also autocratic, dictatorial, and corrupt. While she wanted the best for her people she was convinced only she knew what was best, and was willing to use people and cheat in elections to get it.
BSG is well beyond painting its major characters as good or evil; Roslin is good AND evil. Zarek is, I suspect, much the same. He’s slimier, less in control of his emotions, and not as nice, but I believe he - like Roslin, and like, I believe, most politicians - is both self-interested AND convinced that he is doing what is right for his constituency.
Dave Barry once joked that people who say “Power to the people” really mean “Power to me and a few of my friends who know what’s good for the people.” That’s Tom Zarek. But understand, he really, honestly believes the second part; that he is the avatar of the people. He just happens to be in the end-justifies-the-means camp and he’s not as slick about as as Roslin.
It’s tough to take the self-righteous act from Zarek, considering that he’s basically a criminal clothed in a thin sheath of legitimate authority. Say what you want about Laura Roslin (yes, she has fascist tendencies, but I think that’s inevitable in the situation they’re in, and in some ways more logical than the bullshit Quorum), but a gangster she is not.
I think there is a pretty simple and elegant solution to this - Adama should announce that Galactica’s FTL drive will be updated, and in the event that an emergency jump is required, they will use it to its full capacity.
Honestly, I never understood why martial law could not be declared and enforced here. I know Adama is duty-bound to protect the fleet, but I find it a bit unrealistic, given that he’s demonstrated effective leadership and the ongoing ability to save everyone’s skin, that the quorum would actively resist him on a military issue. The fleet is a sitting duck without the Galactica.
But, this is an assumption…what if the upgraded FTLs have a 'back-door" in which the Cylon’s can disable them completely once Cavill shows up (whom they can presumably call).
The Cylon civil war seemed real enough, but if they assume they are outnumbered by Cavill and friends (a safe assumption, I think), what options to they have? As someone already pointed out, if the fleet settles on a habitable planet, they still can’t defend it against overwhelming numbers. Would this be enough incentive for the rebel Cylons to try to make amends with Cavill, with humanity as the make-up gift? I’m not sure they can be trusted.
i can’t remember… why did the cylons rebel? while i agree it’s a big deal to surrender immortality, a resurrection ship that you do not control isn’t exactly useful if you’re just going to be boxed upon waking up.
Adama has no interest in politics. he seemed relieved when someone he could respect, Roslin, took that responsibility. he had also clearly stated that the civilian government is free to fun things so long as it did not interfere with military decisions. i do not remember what happened the last time there was a mutiny, but i believe the difference this time is that a good number of his own people on board the Galactica is with Mr Denial Stumpylegs.
hope is dashed. once they deal with this internal turmoil, they’ll be ready to face the Cavilcade and settle down on a new planet to sing kumbaya as immortals with the Harbinger of Death as their Queen.
they sure left earth is a hurry didn’t they? i guess with 8 episodes remaining…
I’m not sure what the big deal is with the FTL upgrades. It’s not like Star Trek where upgrading from warp factor 5 to warp factor 9 would be useful. FTL in BSG is instantaneous. The smaller ships have to make multiple jumps to keep up with Galactica, but criminy. Cavil doesn’t have FTL sensors, does he? How far do you have to jump to make it really hard to find you? OTOH, if Cavil has thousands of Raiders that can jump all over the galaxy there really isn’t anywhere to hide, unless you use the mysterious nebula gimmick again.
The upgrade the fleet needs isn’t so much the ability to jump farther, but the ability to spool up faster and jump more times. But I still don’t see where they could go and not be eventually discovered.
The FTL upgrades will ultimately prove to be pointless. There will have to be a different resolution to the Cavil problem.
Someone mentioned upthread that it increases the distance you can jump. I watched again and I think they said three times. The volume of a sphere is based on the cube of it’s raidus, so the volume of space you can jump into, the space where the Calvicade has to search for you increases by a factor of nine.
Yes, the Final Five can ressurect somehow. We’ve now seen Ellen Tigh die onscreen twice. We saw Chief find the very spot he got nuked. There is reason to infer that Saul Tigh, Anders, and Tory also died on Earth in the nukage deal. So how do they ressurect, and how is it different from the “regular way”? I’m thinking maybe they get reborn as infants…and that Caprica Six is gonna give birth to Ellen Tigh.
So Chief goes to beat up Callie’s baby-daddy. From the fight scene we’re shown, it looks like Chief just mauls the guy. Then all of a sudden we see them sorta tensely buddy-buddy in the sickbay, looking like it was a reasonably even fight. Wonder what he’s gonna do to Tory when he finds out she killed Callie?
Chief is not in jail. Again. Even though he assualted a military member at a church service in front of dozens of witnesses. This also apparrently does not serve as a flashpoint in cylon-human relations, despite all the anti-cylon sentiment in the air.
Gaeta is not in jail or a rubber room. Really not getting this. OK, so maybe we let him slide for the mutiny on the garbage scow. However, when he shows up
(Webisodes spoiled all to hell in the following box)
Covered in blood with a raptor full of dead bodies you’d think he’d at least get held for observation/evaluation/something rather than going right back to work as a frakkin bridge officer.
Baltar hasn’t frakked anybody onscreen in at least two episodes now. Guy must be getting desperate.
This episode gets a “meh” from me. Kinda shippy. No 'splosions or nudity. Yeah, Rosilyn and Adama got it on, but we’ve known they did that for a couple seasons now. Chief is not the biological father of Callie’s child…long suspected/rumored on various websites. Last thing in the world the fleet really needs right now is disruption, so what do Zarek and Gaeta do? Plot a mutiny. Maybe we’ll get to watch them stuff Gaeta out an airlock soon. Starbuck is starting to give off pyscho-babe vibes. Woulda been nice to see some advancement of her “oh shit, that’s my corpse, let me burn it quickly so no one knows I’m dead–well, I’M not dead…but that thing with my dogtags is dead” storyline. Also woulda been nice to see some of the rebel cylons reacting to the nuked out earth…and the Cavilcade doing…whatever they are doing.
Had Roslin succeeded in her conspiracy to manipulate the election and steal the Presidency from Baltar, then she would be just as much of an up-against-the-wall-with-a-blindfold criminal as Zarek. It’s debatable whether the failed attempt so qualifies her.
The raiders were engaged in a massive attack on the colonial fleet, but they suddenly aborted the operation, on their own, and returned to Cylon headquarters with news: “We saw one of the Final Five.” The Sixes, Leobens, and Sharons said: what? this changes things! And the Cavils, with the support of the Simons and the Dorals, said: no, it doesn’t, shut the frak up. When the raiders became fractious, Cavil began lobotomizing them in order to ensure their compliance, and to cut off talk of the Final Five. That led to the final angry dispute and the ultimate outbreak of hostilities.
I guess I don’t get the point. They make it sound like a race, with Cavil hot on their tail. It seems to me they could lose Cavil just as easily in three, four-light-year jumps as one 12-light-year jump, or whatever their range is going to be.
Their goal is to find a habitable planet, not run forever.
I’ve got to take issue with your continued characterization of anti-Cylon feelings as racism. To extend a metaphor used above - if you’re a Jew who hates all Germans because of WWII, that’s racism. If you’re a Jew who hates a particular person because he was a guard at Auschwitz, and most of your family was killed there, that’s not racism. The Cylons who want to join the fleet aren’t the descendants of the Cylons who destroyed the colonies, they’re the exact same people. And if that wasn’t bad enough, New Caprica showed even more that even if the Cylons say they have your best interests at heart, they don’t really mean it. Yes, it may not be in the fleet’s best interest to reject the Cylon offer (though it still may), and survival may trump all, but calling those feelings racism is ridiculous.
The word on the final five is that they are fundamentally different from the other skin jobs. And you know what just occurred to me we haven’t had yet? Reincarnation. Not skin-job-style resurrection, where you come back but you basically just pick up where you left off. Die-and-be-born-over-again-and-grow-up-and-all-that reincarnation.
I recall hearing the line “increase the liklihood of finding a habitable planet” - so presumably this could be huge for them, if it in fact increases the effective range of the fleet…I presumed it increased their overall jump capacity - not just how far in any one jump, but how much range they could get out of their fuel/tillium or whatever, which as the episode showed is a finite resource.
My current theory on the Final Five is that the cylons of Earth figured out the die & get reborn naturally form of resurrection; unfortunately, since there was nobody left living on Earth, the resurrect order went to the 12 colonies, and it took 2,000 years to get there because that’s how far away they were.
My pet theory #2 is that the 13th colony arrived at Earth 2,000 years ago, found it filled with Cylons (not realizing they they, themeselves, were also Cylons), nuked it from orbit and moved on.
My big question from last week’s episode is that the only test we’ve seen for Cylonhood is (aside from glowy sex back) takes four days, can only be performed on one person at a time, and it always says the test subject is human. How did they test 250 people in a reasonable amount of time and find out that they’re Cylons? Are we just assuming the Cylons have their own test?
Upgrading the FTL buys them the ability to travel further with the resources they have. This means they have a better chance of finding a habitable planet. Also makes it a lot harder for the Cavilcade to find them. With present technology, the fleet encounters cylons, and the fleet jumps. The cylons then start searching for them again, knowing that there is a limited amount of space they could have reached…let’s call it a “football field” sized part of space. With the upgrade, instead of searching just from endzone to endzone, the cylons now have to search the field, the stadium, the surrounding parking lots, and possibly several blocks in every direction from the field.
Granted, if these really are the only two sentient races in the galaxy, I’d think it would be possible to jump multiple times in a random direction, and lose the cylons forever. Prior to now, both sides were trying to find earth, so they were both heading in the same general direction, which sorta narrows the search options. Now, with Earth being radioactive, the fleet can go anywhere, and the Cavilcade has no way to guess where the fleet is heading. I’d upgrade the ftl fleetwide asap, pick a direction, and get to jumping way the hell away from Earth. Once I had some distance between the Fleet and Earth, I’d start doing the “raptor scout” technique, saving fuel, looking for a suitable planet.
