No. Not even Narcho; I was specifically looking for him or my favorite, Capt. Kelley. Still, I’m actually surprised we got so much on the minor characters, as it was.
It seems clear that John Cavil’s goal was to inflict pain on his parents (the Final Five), and everything they held dear (the humans, basically). Given his manipulative nature, he no doubt convinced the other models to follow the Plan for their own reasons.
The 2s, 3s, and 6s surely would have gone along with it for religious reasons. One of the commandments of the Cylon god was “be fruitful and multiply”, hence the entire reproduction thing.
The 4s seem rather callous and dispassionate; they could have gone along with it simply for scientific interest. And the 5s seemed to actively hate humans; no trouble convincing them to go along.
However, having differing goals within the Cylons explains some of the other oddities of what we see of their actions. Nuke the humans out of hate and to get some subjects for research. Research reproduction because God told them to. Hunt down the fleeing humans out of hate and because it’s God’s will.
I’m hoping that “The Plan” shows us how Cavil dealt with the reversal when Caprica and Boomer convinced the other Cylons to find another way to deal with humans, leading to New Caprica… but I suspect it’ll stop at the fall of the Colonies.
That is frakking brilliant. Some day I want to print it out and read it along while viewing the episode(s). With total pause/rewind capability, of course.
You got Ron Moore to answer a question directly? Frakkin’ awesome. That’s a great thread, though I wished he answered a “what happens when 95% of the colonials die off after the first hard winter/draught/hard hail on the crops/other natural disaster there’s no way to handle without some technology” question.
Oooo, sorry, didn’t mean to mislead. No, I don’t post over at the SciFi board. I’m just geeking out over the fact that my semi-off-hand comment hit the nail on the head for what the writers were thinking with that bit.
(I did, however, get to ask Brad Dourif directly my question, originally posted here on the SDMB, about Piter De Vries’ hand gestures in Dune. Got a good answer, too. Posted it here, can’t be bothered to search right now.)
The one repeated objection I see to keeping the tech around was that it was in decay and that they would run out of fuel. Both of those can be easily solved with only a touch of implausibility, certainly much less than the ‘throw it all away’ development.
The solution, simple: fetch it from Caprica and the other colonies. The show has already established that most structures on Caprica remained intact after the attack. Now that the Cavil faction has been destroyed and the 2368s are allies, simply jump a few flightworthy ships with maybe the friendly Basestar as escort to Caprica and (here’s the slightly implausible part…) come back with a few intact ships and plenty of fuel/medicine/food-packets/stuff. They couldn’t do this earlier since they were on the run and the Colonies might still have been occupied by the enemy.
I think that possibility can be easily ignored or fanwanked away. Since after 4-5 years, why would cylons still hang around?
Besides, there was a cylon civil war in between. It stands to reason that the cylons on the colonies would also have split & fought each other, leaving themselves in a weak state. At the time of the finale, the mastermind is dead. The “mother” ship is gone. There’s no resurrection. So, if any cylons are left, they are all mortal and either already friendly or pliable (like Cavil was).
Did the resignation letter actually appear, or did Lampkin actually resign, in the show? I have watched twice and don’t remember Lampkin resigning. In fact, since (a) Lampkin asked Lee “What do you propose” when Lee suggested abandoning technology, as if Lee were the adviser and not the decision-maker; and (b) Lee was headed off “exploring” while Lampkin was shepherding the Colonial settlers off into the African veldt, I inferred that Lampkin was still running the government.
Is there a canonical answer to who was “the last president of the Colonies”? RDM’s comments (and Bear McCreary’s blog) support the Lampkin hypothesis, but the resignation letter suggests that Lampkin handed power back over (or dissolved the Colonial Government, although the letter itself doesn’t say so).
(With or without reference to canonical sources) How long did the Colonial Government, as a vestige of Colonial civilization, continue after the RTF settled on new (our) Earth? Admiral Hoshi returns his insignia to Adama and says that being a lieutenant suits him fine, as if rank still matters on the new Earth. And somebody was calling the shots for the tech-free diaspora. But at what point did ranks and titles just disappear? Did the Government dissolve or just fade away? I wonder if the transition occurred at an identifiable moment or if it just happened gradually over a generation or longer.
Wondering about stuff like this (and using Hoshi, especially) is just plain silly. There probably isn’t a more blatantly symbolic act in the whole of Western literature than Hoshi giving the rank insignia back to Adama.
Here’s a hint - it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the word “Lieutenant”.
Nonetheless, dwelling upon who is in governmental or military office, as about how the decision to abandon the ships and split up into different settlements, is severely missing the point of the finale. All those scenes at the end of Daybreak were a visual way to say “And they all lived happily ever after.”
It’s sort of like worrying about Hansel’s and Gretl’s future dental hygiene in the aftermath of escaping from the witch, because of all the candy they ate off her house. Really not the point of the story.
With all due respect, Merijeek and Lightray, “the point of the story” is in the eye of the beholder, so please forgive me for indulging in a tangent that isn’t important to your enjoyment of the finale. I get your viewpoint, and I did appreciate the series and the finale on the basic “happily ever after” level that you are dwelling on. But BSG has all along raised questions about the legitimacy of authority and about state succession that are perhaps unique in post-apocalyptic literature. I was hoping that I am not the only one who also appreciated that aspect of the finale – in addition to its other, more obvious aspects – and might be willing to engage in a little thought experiment along those lines. Or even just comment on the issue of canonicity. If you’re not interested, that fine. But the point isn’t any more “just plain silly” than upthread comments about the fossil record, which I enjoyed reading even though they don’t really affect my appreciation of the show.
Since when have the topics discussed in these threads adhered strictly to “the point of the story”? Sure, it’s a tangent and a nitpick, but no more than any of the other minutiae we’ve hashed into oblivion here.
They’re giving up their technology and almost all other aspects of their society and institutions. They are scattering themselves across the planet and soon will be completely isolated from each other. There will be no communication. There are no cultivatable crops. They are going to be living as hunter-gatherers and trying to integrate with the Cro-Magnons. There is no ongoing question regarding legitimacy of authority and state succession. To the extent that any significant number of them survive the next winter or monsoon or drought or malaria epidemic, their authoritative institutions will not survive even one generation. Even if they make a concerted effort to preserve institutions like “president of the colonies” or “admiral of the fleet,” it’s questionable whether they will even survive beyond a few years. Colonial civilization is essentially done as far as their major civil institutions are concerned. They’re starting from scratch.
We’ve just seen the canon. Whatever questions remain are, by definition, not going to be answered by the canon.
As a piece of trivia, it would be interesting to know who was the official last president of the Colonies. Was it Roslin, or Lampkin? I guess it’s not clear and won’t ever be clear, but I can imagine why someone would wonder about it. I also wonder why Lee Adama is the one making the major life decisions for everyone, since he was who exactly? A guy with a dubiously good idea that everyone mysteriously went along with. Hmm.
When it comes to legitimacy of authority I’d expect things to quickly go Lord of the Flies with the Sons of Ares & assorted other criminal gangs quickly taking over.
But that’s depressing, so we’ll go with “happily ever after, into the mists of time.”
Maybe that’s a point for scattering themselves across the planet. Put all the thugs on a distant continent and it will be millennia before they come back to commit genocide on the rest of 'em.