Battlestar Galactica 4.8 - "Faith" (here there be spoilers)

Cafe Society
101

I’m not really looking forward to next week’s episode, as it seems to be a Pop-Tart focused episode, sorry, TPTB, I just DON’T CARE about Hera or anything associated with her, child focused episodes are an anathema to me, and brings the show one step closer to Shark-Jumping-Time

I just hope that this episode stays well away from Nicky “The Shrieker” Tyrol, Hera at least is ignorable and seems relatively quiet and well behaved most of the time, but Nicky, frak, if I had to deal with that little Pop-Tart on a regular basis, I’d be buying stock in a foam hearing protector company, and buying them by the Raptorload, he’s got a powerful set of lungs, that one, I’m surprised nobody’s contemplated airlocking him…

TPTB, Please, for the love of Science, keep the Pop-Tart episodes to the bare minimum, actually, no Pop-Tart episodes at all would be preferable

This upcoming episode might be the first one I deliberately don’t watch at broadcast, but wait and watch it on Hulu, so I can fast-forward through the Pop-Tart scenes, at the very least, the Mute button on my remote will be getting a workout…

102

Note to self- do not ask MacTech to babysit.

103

This is a wee bit pansy-assed of me, a bit more wishy-washy than I originally intended it. But it kind of circles around what I wanted to say.

Maybe I’m a naive optimist, but I really do think that our friends the writers will not detour into religious hokum and tired spiritual escapades. I think that Head-Six, Head-Baltar, Starbuck’s resurrection, earth, and all of the rest will have perfectly plausible answers (in the context of soft sci-fi) which don’t require belief in the gods or the Cylon god.

At the same time, I think the characters on the show will still have enough questions of their own that they will continue to believe in the gods or the Cylon god, because that’s what people do. They believe, and that’s that. In other words, I think that at the end I will be able to say to myself in a smug, self-satisfied matter that all the religious people on the show are deluding themselves, while a more religious viewer might see the same episodes and conclude that the show is spiritual in natural.

And I’m okay with that.

Though if I’m wrong and the show piles up on bullshit, I want y’all to feel free to heap piles of scorn and derision upon me. I will have earned it.

104

From the miniseries, in addition to FTL there was artificial gravity. Both of should be considered magical science. Not to mention the “hard science” of Leoben’s deterioration at Ragnar Anchorage, or Six’s glowing spine of sex.

105

The glowing spine was not a good move. As Mrs. RickJay so eloquently put it, “What, he never did her from behind?”

106

Okay, fine. Other than the FTL, the artificial gravity, the mysterious Head Six, and the Glowing Spine of Passion, what have the Romans ever done for us?

107

What RickJay said. Even in the mini-series we were made aware of the mystical elements (search for Earth as revealed in the Holy Scriptures?), they simply became more important.

I would argue that most sci-fi has elements of deus ex machina and/or mysticism. Those that don’t are “hard” sci-fi. Those that have few, if any technological elements or are explicitly set in non-existent worlds are “hard” fantasy. Everything in between falls somewhere on the continium. We’re really just disagreeing about the labels and will probably have to agree to disagree (as PC as it sounds, I really do prefer to call it all speculative fiction).

I have no issue with the concerns of those worried about the more recent strong emphasis on the mystical elements of the show. I like it myself, but if you don’t, no skin off my nose.

108

Regarding which, Adama himself says, “I made it up.” I thought it was an original and gutsy (and beautifully cynical) narrative gamble: acknowledge and in fact underline the myth, and let Adama motivate his people with a total fiction. They might randomly stumble across clues to Earth later, but until then they could create tension from Adama’s deception. There was no indication in the miniseries that the scriptural prophecies would rather quickly turn out to be legit; just the opposite, in fact.

109

Within the context of the miniseries itself, no. But it was quite obvious to the viewers that the scriptural prophecies would turn out to be legit.

That being the entire premise of the series, after all.

110

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but:

The “children of the one reborn” are very clearly Nicky and Hera.

The “One Reborn” clearly being the reunited cylon and human race.

Hence, Nicky and Hera and their descenants will find “their own country” – A.K.A. “Earth” – and become the progenitors of a new human race, which will eventually seek out and colonize Kobol and the Twelve Colonies, invent the Cylons, and start the whole thing over again. “All this has happened before…” and so on.

At least, this seems to me to be the most likely setup they were working with before the writers’ strike. Moore has explicitly said that the strike gave them time to think about and rewrite the second half of the season, which may end up differing from what I’ve mentioned above (I sure hope so, anyway.)

111

They could also simply be a smattering of what’s left of Colonials and Cylons. They’re all “children” of the two races.

I’ve always held, and still hold, that the logical end of the series is for the Colonial and Cylon civilizations to be destroyed - or to go chasing each other across the galaxy away from Earth in an endless, pointless war - while a few survivors land on Earth circa what we know as 2000 BC. In, say, Greece and, oh, I dunno, modern-day Israel. Why, maybe there’ll be a few Colonials in Greece, and a few Cylons in Israel. There won’t be enough of them, and they won’t have enough gadgetry with them, to build spaceships and stuff. In fact, they’ll have to adapt to the technology of their Bronze Age hosts.

112

This could make sense, though it also means that Bob Dylan is a Cylon.

113

Also makes it interesting considering Baltar was quoting Shakespeare in this ep too…Proof he really didn’t write his plays! :slight_smile:

114

Then you have to say the Hybrid was off-target by saying “the five* who have come from * the home of the thirteenth”. Couldn’t have happened if there weren’t any people on Earth yet. And Hera’s name would be Eve.

Which makes one wonder what their true nature is - are they actually Earth-version humans, who just thought they were Cylons because they knew they weren’t Colonial-version humans? And how the hell did they get out there in the first place? And get the protection they needed to survive this far? Or is this just a sleazy “all of this will happen again” loop that can contain any continuity issues it needs to, internal or external?
FTR, I do recall Baltar’s detector monitor going red when he used it on Boomer.

115

I remember that, but I did not remember exactly how Tyrol was checked out for Cylonhood. Was it the same Cylon detector that Baltar used on Boomer? If so, why didn’t it work? If not, what did they use and why did they think it would work? Also, why would it be so hard to figure out who is and who isn’t a Cylon? Considering that Athena stuck a wire in her arm, there must be some major physiological differences in there somewhere.

116

Boomer sticking a cable in her arm was a gross violation of something. I’m not a writer. Someone tell me what gross story-telling violation it was.

The Cylon detector was first used on Boomer, ISTR, and it showed a positive. Baltar freaked out and reset the detector to show negative. Assuming that first test was a false positive lucky guess, it was probably set to “negative result” thereafter. May never have worked. Didn’t Baltar give his nuke away, and didn’t the detector need it for some silly reason? It’s not like Adama was going to give Baltar another nuke and he was busy being President at that point anyway, right?

117

Well, all this has left me confused. What ever happened to the plan the Cylons had? What exactly was that? Now everything seems to revolve around finding earth and who the last unknown Cylons are. Remember when Six was talkint to Baltar about the child? What the frack is going on? Lost is crystal clear by comparison.

118

Okay, I’ll try to give my input here, because I’m very interested as well.

The original cylon detector. It appears that it did indeed work. I can’t really remember what Gaius thought about it though. I do remember him quickly flipping it over to read negative. However, I kind of always felt that they didn’t really need a cylon detector once they knew there was a limited number that they knew and who they looked like.

Secondly, you’re going to get the argument that the final four are different anyway. That’s gotta be the deal. Hell, we know for a fact that Tigh had known Adama since the FIRST cylon war. Unless Adama is the final Cylon. So the 4 are different somehow. Plus I think it’s safe to say that there were no humanoid cylons in the first cylon war, correct? I realize that original BSG isn’t cannon, but i think we can infer it from the fact that they were surprised to find it out in the first place. And before that we have, “Man created machine.” So somewhere we have the final four living on earth before the invention of cylons. Unless you want to say that the cylons invented the humanoid versions, placed them on caprica, started the first war without them, then started the second war with their other versions.

It also seems pretty obvious that the 4 never had copies of themselves running around. Say what you will about the other three, but Anders was famous. That’d cause problems right there if there were more than one of him.

Does anyone know the answer to this question? Is it ever made clear as to the whereabouts of the final four? I think it’s pretty interesting, right. The cylons apparently don’t know where they are because they entertained the possibility that they are on Galactica. If they were tucked away on a basestar somewhere, you think someone would know it. So I guess it’s safe to assume that they aren’t on the cylon ships. Which makes me wonder… where else do the cylons think they could be? They just nuked the 12 colonies. There are other places that are known (Kobol and Earth) but after that, that’s it, right? Seems to me there is Earth, Kobol, the Colonies, and New Caprica. But they found New Caprica. So maybe that’s why the Cylons want to get to earth. Maybe they think the final five are locatd there.

Also, is it just me, are you guys getting cabin fever? I was checking some of the earlier episodes, and it was kind of nice to see some land-based action. We first had Helo and Boomer on Caprica, then Starbuck went back, then we had New Caprica. We also had that algae planet, etc. I’m guessing there won’t be any now until we get to Earth… :frowning:

I had a thorough reading of the BSG wiki the other day (Not the wikipedia one, but another one) and it’s very informative. I’d suggest reading about the 12 Colonies, because it essentially gives a good idea of what has happened in the mythology.

What is strange now though is there is a lot of heavy focus on the “one true god” Does that mean that all of the scriptures are worthless? I kind of doubt it since they have been right up to this point. This obviously involves the pop-tarts in some way because I remember them having such a huge focus on cylon-human hybrids earlier on.

Personally I don’t know what to say about this religious bent to it. Head Six has been talking about this religion stuff forever. Baltar went from openly laughing about it, to kind of believing it because he’s having such good luck, to actually believing in it.

119

Or embracing it because he gets sex from all those babes hanging out in the temple to Ganesh…er, Baltar.

120

Ok, some things strike me here…

  • Why are there members of the “The Five” on the Battlestar? They must be plants with an ulterior motive. “The Five” have been manipulating proceedings all along, with the ghosts and sleeper bots.

  • By their name, we’ve assumed “The Five” are just 5 bots. Could it be possible that there are all 12 models in that group of bots, rather than just 5 models alone? Which means there could be sleeper versions of “Five allied bots” (1-6 + 8) inside “The sevens” fleets (or the 3/1/3 fleet).

  • There is no resurrection ship close by. This is a big assumption to me. Theres no “The Seven” rez ship nearby. Who is to say there isn’t a “The Five” rez ship.

BTW, all this is complete speculation…