Don’t discount the fact that she was also a prisoner being held by the guy who killed 'em all the first time around. Given that, I would characterize her behavior on the base ship more as submissive-due-to-circumstances.
In other words, she was kissing a lot of ass.
Albert Einstein was one of the smartest men of the twentieth century. His expansions of scientific understanding literally changed the world. He was also unapologetically unfaithful to his wife and had a sometimes shockingly nasty cruel streak.
I guess I’m overthinking it. I just figured Galactica wouldn’t have an open port policy where just anyone could enter the ship without ID, and by now someone in the fleet would have compiled some sort of criminal record database, and these guys wouldn’t be able to come on board and start doing their gang thing. But, there probably are enough corrupt military personnel it could happen. Holding people up at gun point is a direct slap in the face to Adama, on his own ship, and it seems he wouldn’t let that go.
Personally, if they had enough episodes left to do it, I’d like to see some Centurions come on board and supplement the Marines, if they can’t do their jobs. Never happen, but it could be fun.
Ellen was still a boozer after she resurrected in “No Exit”. And she was still just as uncouth – hence her asking Boomer about whether John had taught her the swirl. And she was definitely just as manipulative as always.
It may not seem as though she was as destructive in “No Exit” as in “Deadlock” – but the entirety of her scenes with John and Boomer was her working to tear down their worldview in favor of her own. It is just that she had a much more sympathetic goal in “No Exit” (escaping Simon’s headectomy), than her goal in “Deadlock” (wrecking Saul’s relationship with Caprica).
Also, Ellen had no jealousy issues to deal with in “No Exit”. She certainly did in “Deadlock”, and that has always been one of her hot buttons.
Some of the complaints about inconsistent characterization on Ellen Tigh and Galen Tyrol may be coming because people have been projecting their own ideas of what is going on in the characters’ minds to explain what we’ve seen. We don’t know that Galen had an epiphany about remaining with the fleet, for him to throw over in deciding to bugger off with the other Cylons. And Ellen herself told Bill and Laura that she’s still the same Ellen. They’re both much more nuanced characters than people are willing to accept.
(cripes. how many people were working on posts at the same time? sheesh.)
You can’t be a genius and an alcoholic? Discovering that the husband you’ve been away from for eighteen months (?) and just made love to has been screwing and indeed knocked up one of your creations you regarded as a child wouldn’t piss one off? 
My expectation is that they saved money in order to save money. That may also be the reason behind the high casualty rate this season - it saves on payroll expenses.
Another reason I don’t expect a glorious Galacticadammerung CGI-wankfest scene is that that’s what one would expect in a traditional space opera. The one thing I’ve learned to expect from BSG is not to trust any expectations.
The fact that they cut out a couple of absolutely vital scenes, but left us with padding is what clinches the case against the editor for me.
From what I can tell, he did all that by working at it diligently for a long time. If you’d been able to observe his daily life, you might or might not approve of his lifestyle, but I think you’d be able to say, “Now there’s a guy who’s working hard to make scientific advances.” With Ellen Tigh, I can’t recall seeing her do anything that suggested she had any ambition beyond getting drunk, screwing around, and pissing people off.
Sure you can, but being a genius doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to accomplish anything, and if you’re drunk half the time, you’re probably the kind of genius who doesn’t.
A character can plausbly have a “double life” including both scientific achievement and debauchery – Baltar is an example of that. But that was never set up with Ellen. To me, it’s a bit jarring to say, hey, this drunken layabout who up until now has shown no interest in science or, more generally, in doing anything constructive, is actually the mastermind behind resurrection technology and a new cylon race. As I said above, I think the “Caprica Ellen was not the normal Ellen” concept could have resolved that, but this most recent episode calls into question whether that’s actually true.
She did already; she built another version of Cylons.
Ellen could have been the same way and Cavil just surpressed the scientific achievement part. We didn’t actually see her to anything sciencey in this episode (nor was she challenged to do so).
I’m not sure where people got the idea, but Ellen isn’t the ‘mastermind behind resurrection’.
She has stated in clear terms that she couldn’t even repeat the feat without the other four. All five worked tirelessly for years on recreating res-tech. The only significant achievement ascribed to Ellen is that she came up with the final breakthrough that made all their hard work pay off. For all we know that’s her only contribution.
Are you referring to specific scenes that someone in the show mentioned having been cut, or is that just a general statement of dislike for a lack of the episode addressing certain things?
This interview with writer Jane Espenson mentions several bits that were left out due to time constraints.
Thanks for that. For other’s benefit here’s the relevant portion:
!
I don’t think the last two scenes were necessary, although addressing Tigh’s poisoning of Ellen would have made a nice character moment if done well. But yeah, the whole Baltar storyline would have made much more sense with the scenes about the centurions. One commenter saw this longer version and said:
She addressed some of the other questions people had with this episode - the reason for the baby dying is supposed to be ambiguous, and the chief “took his job back because Adama asked him to. But he is increasingly distanced from his old life.” It didn’t occur to me earlier, but now I’m thinking it had something to do with the return of Ellen (completing the final five) and especially of Boomer (harking back to his suicidal angst over loving a cylon and thinking he might be one).
Which makes an earlier episode more interesting - Cavil is the one that talked sense into the suicidal chief. He even said, ironically, he knew he wasn’t a cylon because he was one and hadn’t seen the chief at any of his ‘cylon meetings’. So I’m wondering, was this one of the run of the mill Cavils in the dark about the five, or was this John, who knew about the five all along?
The directors’ cut DVD’s would be nice to have someday.
Although it seems as though all the Cavils share their memories to such an extent that they are all the same guy… that particular Cavil was the one who was surprised by another version of himself being brought back from Caprica.
Even though, for example, the John Cavil who was holding Ellen captive could not have been the Cavil on the basestar with Caprica, D’Anna, and Baltar (Ellen is captive while Baltar is on the basestar). Yet Ellen’s John Cavil speaks of events witnessed by the basestar Cavil with some familiarity.
I didn’t interpret him as “surprised” as much as realizing the gig was up.
Two issues:
(1) The “majority rules” vote for the final 5 was just nonsensical. Also, there was a bit of Lost disease there in which no one shows sufficient curiosity… the final 5 (and, for that matter, everyone else) suddenly have access to someone with 2000 years of very precise memories about the origins of everything, and no one bothers to ask?
(2) Since when do the humans know that Caprica-Six’s name is “Caprica”? And do they know why? And how do they know that without knowing about Baltar’s role in the destruction of humanity?
I always thought that they wouldn’t be able to exchange memories unless they were together on a Cylon basestar. Each individual Cavil might have been aware of the deployment of other Cavils, but wouldn’t have simultaneous awareness of what all the others were doing or whether they had been caught.
They might be told that she was important to the attack on the colonies without knowing exactly what she did.