Well it should be clarified apparently, by my understanding, that she wasn’t “THE” secretary of education , at least as we would know it in the US (meaning the one that is actually a cabinet member reporting to the president personally) but rather what we would refer to as an “undersecretary” reporting to a higher official rather than to the president directly herself. Still a relatively high ranking official, she could still hold the title secretary, as she was “a” secretary of education. Even if this is not exactly the correct description either, she was non-the-less of much lower rank and importance than what we think of as the secretary of deducation in the US. This is the only way that you can explain her relatively low order of 42th in presidential succession. For example in the US the secretary of education is 16th in line for presidental succession.
My point with this is that makes her much easier to place by cylons. The show makes a point of her suddenly ascending to president from a relatively lowly position, and may well have not personally reported to the president either.
lol, watch out next we will discover they have cylons actually planted as toasters in the mess hall.
I support my theory simply because I think that it would make a good plot twist, and she does seem to wear “cylon red” a lot. I started this thread for fun and now I am actually starting to believe it myself.
BTW I assume people have noticed that cylons seem to like to wear red for some reason (just poetic license?)
I think she was definitely The Secretary of Education. She was 40th in line of succession, and has made multiple references to a long-term close personal relationship with the president. “I wanted out of politics, but he talked me into staying. The president & I discussed Earth and if he had known it’s location he’d have told me,” ect. She talks all the time about things the former president told her in personal conversations. I get the impression she & the former president knew each other, and were friends way, way back when even the former president was a relative nobody.
Of course she could be making all that up, but somehow I doubt it. I’d sooner suspect her little aid Billy. What’s his history other than he was assigned to her just prior to the invasion?
The President could be a cylon, certainly. Anybody could be a cylon. So far we no absolutely nothing about how the cylons are made/born/whatever, where or when it happened or whether they’re making any more. Anything would seem to be possible. I’d be very disappointed if she was, though.
Within the series so far we have several major conflicts: Humans v. Cylons, military v. civilian government, political status quo v. radical social reform. If Roslin is revealed to be a cylon, these all collapse into part of the cylon plan. For me, that would certainly reduce my interest in the show.
Not at all, you are making the assumption that Apollo was somehow necessary to save the ship. You have no idea what would have happened if he had not done what he did. You are also forgetting that against all logic, she wanted to stay behind and not leave. I actually believe this scene is an example showing her to be cylon. As a cylon, even if her ship and everyone she was with was destroyed, she would be uploaded and could still easily show up with an escape pod. As president this would be reasonable.
I think you and Smapti both have valid points. True, the Cylons apparently have been trying to kill Roslin, and yet they never do. But the same could be said for the whole fleet. The Cylons “apparently” tried to destroy the fleet something like 240 times during “33.” Yet, are they really trying to destroy the fleet, or is it some sort of game?
They’ve “tried” to kill Baltar. They’ve “tried” to kill Adama. They’ve “tried” to kill Helo. You really have to wonder when they’re genuinely trying, and when they’re up to something.
In his Blog for February 24, Ron Moore admits to this as a mistake in the script that he thought he could get away with. Obviously he couldn’t, but full marks to him for owning up to it instead of coming up with some bullshit rationalisation.
There’s no real way of knowing without being on the writing team, but I get the impression that the main plan of the religion angle has been mapped out in advance, even if some specific areas are left to be filled in. I think the same applies to the “Who’s a cylon?” question: among the major characters, the writers have known from the beginning what’s what – minor characters can be revealed as cylons, killed off, whatever, as the developing storylines dictate.
Actually I have read the blog and that is not exactly what it says, what he say is that a viewer may interpret this as a writer mistake as they did not go into more details behind the logic and the aftermath of the decision. He stated that the writing itself was NOT a mistake, just that he could be called out on it due to the fact that they didn’t follow through that angle. The fact is, I got the further implication from the blog that he was deliberately trying to withhold certain details that he doesn’t want use to know about yet by writing it the way he did. He is just being cagey
That a very good point however Ron has implied that both of these details (especially the overall religion aspect) was already mapped in the story arc before they started writing individual episodes. This is not to say, they won’t change their minds if it looks like something may work better, which we see all the time in tv.
Actually I definately think that they are up to something and that they aren’t really trying to kill the humans…yet. They are just nudging the colonials towards cylon goals. It is all part of a manipulation.
I will be honest and say that I am not sure that Roslin is really a cylon. There is just a lot of evidence that suggests the possibility, and I do believe it is deliberate on the part of the writers, whether she really is or not, so I decided to take up the cause for the sdmb. There is just too much suggestive data not to at least debate it.
Predicition:
I think that if she is not a cylon, they are going to make her out to be some sort of prophet/psychic that will have visions as a result of that “uncommon” cancer treatment that she is using. (I don’t like that plot, and would just rather her be cylon )
I like the Q+A in his blog, however, this guy needs to watch more TV, or I need to get a life:
While, not strictly a space ship, Babylon 5 had at least one bathroom scene, and then there was this little show called Firefly which showed a space toilet in its pilot. Both shows airing before the BSG miniseries.
Hey, I’m a science fiction nut with a head for trivia…
Uh - not necessarily. If your argument is simply that it’s implausible the Colonies would have 42+ cabinet ministers - well, there are real states that have large cabinets. Nigeria, for example, has 30+ top-level ministers (not counting “ministers of state” who’re listed as top cabinet-level officials and have a variety of portfolios). Nigeria’s a bit unusual - the size of their cabinet is partly dictated by a sort of institutional need to represent as many different ethnic groups as possible at that level (they call it “respecting the federal character”, USAians would call it “affirmative action”). But considering that the individual colonies seem to have a great deal of autonomy - as another poster said in a different thread, the “Quorum of twelve” seems almost like a UN body - it makes sense that the Articles of Colonization would call for a certain proportion of cabinet-level representation for each planet. That, in turn, could cause cabinet bloat.
Alternatively, maybe interplanetary government simply requires more cabinet-level officials than Earth states. Maybe there was a Secretary of Interplanetary Trade, for example, whose portfolio would have consisted of facilitating free trade between planetary states that probably would have had far more divergent trade and finance laws than states in the USA. This could easily be a full-time job- so you’d still have a Treasure Secretary to handle other colonies-wide economic initiatives.
Finally, maybe they just have Cabinet-level posts the US doesn’t bother with. We don’t have an Industrial and Mining Ministry, for example - but maybe the Colonies have (had) a more socialized economic system, and they did.
In short, Secretary Roslin was always referred to as “The Secretary of Education”, and there’s no reason based on real-world government to suggest that she wasn’t a top-level cabinet official.
Perhaps more significantly, I don’t believe that undersecretaries are customarily in the line of succession to the chief executive slot. Rumsfeld is in the line of succession - Wolfowitz, so far as I know, is not.
(God, I hope he’s not.)
This was disturbingly fun - we should really have a “politics of Battlestar Galactica” thread.
Well, Roslin revealed her cylon nature once again in this episode (tigh me up, tigh me down)when she didn’t want to be tested, and diverted attention from herself by placing the focus on someone else and crying cylon.
