This is getting to be like Voyager where Chakotay asks, “Was anybody working for me?!?”
Re all the spoiler-boxing: We may want to solicit comments and opinions from our UK contingent about what they’d like to see in these threads. On the one hand, we need to respect their desire to stay as unspoiled as possible about the upcoming story (I would have been pissed if I’d known in advance what Boomer was going to do to Adama at the end of season one), but on the other hand, it’ll be kind of silly if these threads are conducted entirely in spoiler boxes, because UKers won’t be able to read them anyway. I like that people are splitting up and labeling the boxes so it’s clear what’s being discussed in each one, which was the main thing I wanted to “stick” when I tried to establish a spoiler policy last season, but I wonder if there isn’t a better way to handle the threads overall now that it’s us who’re seeing the shows first. If there are any UK dopers still reading, I’d be interested in your thoughts and opinions.
Re the networked-computers issue:[spoiler]I agree that it’s vague how the simple act of networking computers together could make them so vulnerable to Cylon infiltration, and I suspect this is a bit of narrative hand-waving as described above, a convenient way to build tension.
On the other hand, it makes complete sense to me that networked computers would be able to compute jump coordinates in minutes whereas standalone computers would require hours. The way I see it, the biggest bottleneck in a standalone system will be transferring data from one station to another, which is dependent on humans. Computer A works for a few seconds, and generates a list of a thousand data points. Humans then have to enter the data into Computer B for further processing. Computer B chews on it for a few seconds, and produces a new data set. This is then transferred manually to Computer C. And so on, back and forth, from C back to A back to C back to B and then on to D, or whatever; the data transfers are the bottleneck. You could speed things up by having each computer capable of producing and reading punch cards or something similar, instead of hand-typing a list of numbers, but even so the transfer of data between machines is still far and away the slowest part of the procedure. By contrast, when the computers are networked, this transfer of data becomes the fastest part of the overall system.
Upshot is, I thought this was clever and fairly well-handled, even if it was basically done to introduce a somewhat nebulous threat.[/spoiler]
Regarding the Kobol plot:I definitely wondered why our small band of survivors — our few, our grumpy few — wasn’t pursued by whoever or whatever was shooting at them. This brings to mind other plot holes from last season, such as the bit in the diner on Caprica where Helo exchanges gunfire with a couple of patrol toasters, but his position is not thereafter swarmed by Cylon assault troops. If you consider the idea that networked Colonial computers are particularly vulnerable, then it follows that networking should be a Cylon strength, and that the machines are especially good at staying in contact and sharing information with one another. Just as the Cylon overmind, or whatever it is, should have been immediately alerted to the fact that one of its detachments was taking fire from human survivors in the Caprican deli, so should every Cylon on and around Kobol have become at least tangentially aware that this particular planetside patrol was similarly throwing and catching bullets with somebody. But see next spoiler box.
More general musing, following on the above spoilers, regarding what exactly the Cylons are up to:[spoiler]It’s been speculated that the human survivors are being channeled and driven, like cattle, by the Cylons for some overarching purpose. If that’s the case, if the Cylons don’t want to actually kill the humans but just harass them, then the putative plot holes mentioned above, and many others, basically disappear. For example, the presence of Cylon infiltrators, particularly well-placed individuals like Boomer, suggests that the Cylons could drop in and wipe out the fleet pretty much whenever they want. (Consider that Boomer is — or was — a Raptor pilot. As that’s their primary FTL scout ship, she should have advance access to planned jumps, and at any time she should be able to relay information to the machines about where the fleet is going and when they’re going to get there. Likewise they’ve been able to manipulate Baltar more or less at will.) Based on this, it seems clear to me that the Cylons are deliberately holding back from finishing the job of erasing humanity once and for all, and that they’re putting just enough pressure on our heroes to keep them highly motivated.
Of course, that raises the obvious question: motivated to do what, exactly? The immediate thought is that they’re using the humans to find Earth, but that doesn’t really feel like a sufficient reason to me. The Cylons seem to have found Kobol (if Kobol it is) easily enough; I’d have to go back to the season-one finale to check, but weren’t the Cylons actually there already? Maybe they were staking out any and all M-class planets (to borrow from Trek mythology) they came across, or maybe they knew the humans would end up there. Plus, the Arrow of Apollo, whatever it’s for, was just sitting there in the museum, waiting to be found. If the Cylons were really trying to steer humanity into the mouth of a metaphorical roach motel, they would have gotten rid of the Arrow and closed that avenue.
I’m starting to think the Cylons do in fact want to drive the Colonial humans toward Earth, but that there’s a more complicated reason for doing so. The Cylons, I suspect, could find Earth just fine on their own, but for some reason they need the Colonial humans to be there as well. Consider how often we hear Number Six talking about God: what God wants, doing God’s will, becoming closer to God, and so on. In the commentary on the DVD miniseries, the creators give hints about what’s motivating the Cylons, saying they know exactly what the plan is and no they aren’t going to tell us yet. 
But they do say fairly specifically that they looked quite closely at fundamentalist religious groups and doomsday cults and the like as they were formulating the Cylons’ backstory, and that it would be helpful to consider the Cylons through that kind of lens.
Okay, so — what if there’s no actual conflict between the two apparently irreconcilable needs motivating the Cylons’ actions? Yes, they want to wipe out humanity; and yes, they want to find Earth; but they need to do both, together. They want to become closer to God by eliminating humanity, but for some religious purpose they need to have the remaining Colonial humans at the birthplace of the species to exterminate the whole race at the same time, in the same deeply significant place.
That’s my working theory at the moment. It seems to cover all the bases, and provides a framework in which the actions up to this point make sense. And, it also offers a hint of context for whatever this baby-of-Six-and-Baltar is supposed to represent: It might even be possible that the Cylons’ faith instructs them to kill both original humanity and themselves as part of a larger plan to fuse the two imperfect halves into a new more perfect race of beings.
Thoughts?[/spoiler]
Oh, and regarding something that came up in the exchange between MaddyStrut and TommyTutone—[spoiler]Specifically the thing about “the best and the brightest.”
The creators of the show have been pretty clear that they deliberately did not set out to tell a story about “the best and the brightest.” Adama is not the Colonial fleet’s best Commander. Tigh is definitely not the best XO. Starbuck may be the best pilot, but she’s also a total screwup. Lee Adama is pretty messed up himself. Roslin is not the best politician. Tyrol’s gang is not the best deck crew. Gaeta’s not the best Ops man. And so on. They’re just a bunch of people, flaws and all, who happened to be the ones who slipped through the Cylon net and survived, and now they have to do the best they can with what they have.[/spoiler]
General, non-spoiler comments: Holy frack, I love this show. Every commercial break, I checked the TiVo gauge: Okay, only twenty minutes in; argh, halfway through; only twenty minutes left; crap, that’s the last break, it’ll be over soon; frack it’s over I gotta wait till next week! The first five minutes caused my jaw to drop, and the last ten minutes had me bouncing and twitching. I’m halfway tempted to not watch the show each and every week, and use the TiVo to stack them up so I can watch them in bigger blocks. Of course, that assumes I’ll be disciplined enough to not watch the shows… Argh, curse this weak will…
Not everything has to be boxed, people, certainly not speculation.
Certainly, as **Cervaise ** and many others suggest, the Cylons could have exterminated the survivors at any time, but then we wouldn’t have a series, right? My own take on the Cylon plan used to be that they were deliberately tormenting the surviving humans for nothing more than revenge, or even sport.
But the reverence with which Six showed Baltar the crossbreed baby, on the stage of the Kobol Opera House no less, combined with C-Boomer’s plan to get pregnant, suggest that the creation of a hybrid species is at least part of the plan. It might be that they aren’t satisfied with the quality of the surviving human gene pool (they’re all mediocrities, right?), and want to find the original stuff on the original home world to fulfill God’s plan, glowing spines and all.
I thought we were finally rid of the “Meanwhile, back on Caprica” shit after last season, but No-o-o-O-o-o. Now we have to put up with Starbuck and Helo trying to hijack another Raider and go find the fleet, while fending off more Cylons intent on a double gang-bang. Or something. But we’re not done with that weird lighting effect, not nearly.
Hey, I’m still pissed about that stamp thing.
Let’s have a duly marked “Not UK Safe” thread for episodes.
The (oldest) cults/religions gave sacrifices (animals or people) to their God(s). Clarke’s Childhood’s End has a truly advanced race unable to take the next step, where flawed humanity can. I can see the Cylons bringing Humanity before Judgement with only the worthy to survive.
Adama spoke of Earth but didn’t have faith in it. Roslyn does. So the Cylons must take him out to be sure that humanity proceeds on the correct track. I too think the Cylons need humanity to get closer to God. The Cylons have tried, unsuccessfully so far, to create a Cylon/Human hybrid that is worthy. It may be that Six’s talk of a baby is her personal attempt to attain this perfection, but it is not the Cylon’s Master Plan. The Master Plan seems to be guiding Humanity and Six’s seems to be the same plus her own agenda.
Since Six is manipulating her pregnancy and C-Boomer got pregnant through “love”, then C-Boomer’s baby is the God-Child and will have to duke it out with Six’s Anti-Christ.
Expect to see a Six/C-Boomer fight while both are pregnant and swollen with child. Then they fall to the ground, exhausted, and the children pop out and start fighting ala Yoda/Dooku.
Something that bothered me. They don’t keep the last set of Emergency Jump cooridinates in memory or something just in case something like this happened? And shouldn’t they?
I mean, I know that jumping isn’t like Dusting Crops and it takes a while to plot the jumps, but hypotheically, once the jump is computed, would it really be that hard to store the information until everyone is accounted for?
I realize that the starting location has a lot to do with it, but if you knew Point A(Where both fleets started out) and point B(Where you are but the rest of the fleet isn’t), and point C(Where the rest of the fleet is now), would figuring out the route between B and C using information from point A be possible?
The only reason I’m spoiler boxing things in this thread is because it doesn’t have the usual spoiler warning in the thread title.
In the future, I’d suggest we simply follow the same convention we usually do with TV shows. Title the thread with the season and episode number, include an [open spoilers] warning, and we’re good to go. Whoever starts a particular week’s episode thread should just be careful not to blurt out something important in the first paragraph of the first post, so people don’t get accidently spoiled by a mouseover.
I don’t see why someone from the UK would want to read a thread about an episode they haven’t seen unless they want to have it spoiled.
What happened on the Scifi.com boards was there were a few UK brats who thought it was funny to title threads,
OMG, BOOMER SHOT ADAMA!!! [spoilers!]
We probably won’t have that problem here.
Regarding the Gaeta theory, there’s one more piece of evidence I just remembered. In the mini series, Adama asks Gaeta if he can plot a jump “beyond the red-line.”
“I’ve never done it before.”
“No one has. Can you do it?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to plot the jump. By yourself.”
So Gaeta is an FTL jump calculatin’ wunderkind. So are Cylons, apparently. Gaeta only has difficulty with FTL calculations when it’s convenient for the Cylons.
Which brings me to another point. Ron Moore is showing his Star Trek roots, even though at every opportunity he tells us all about how BSG isn’t like Star Trek. Right. One week an FTL jump calculation takes a few minutes. Another week it takes 33 minutes. Another week it takes hours. Another week Starbuck can calculate a jump from Galactica all the way back to Caprica, in just a few minutes. “Damn, I’m good.”
So what is Mr. Moore? Well, he doesn’t care, and we’re going to be seeing “moore” of this as the show progresses. All he wants to do is “tell a good story” each week. Who cares if he tosses all the previous technical details out the window with each week’s “good story.”
I thought 33 minutes was how long it took the Cylons to find them after they jumped, not how long it took to plot the jump.
I can just imagine …
Kobol-Six and the Toasters are watching the Balthar, Tyrol, Callie, etc. at a discrete distance. Balthar gets separated after an argument with Balthar-Six and stumbles through the woods. He rounds a tree and there’s Six again. He walks up all apologetic and tries to kiss her. She decks him. “What the frak are you doing?” Then she knocks him cold. It’s K-Six. K-Six is just about to kill Balthar when B-Six spins her around and slugs her. They talk while fighting. B-Six kills K-Six. K-Six wakes in another body not knowing what happened. B-Six carries unconscious Balthar away from the converging Toasters to a place where Tyrol and Callie can find him. Tyrol/Callie even glimpse something white and go to it and find Balthar. Balthar wakes and B-Six is unseen there between Tyrol and Callie and scolds him for - something.
Questions arise: How can B-Six do anything since she’s not physical? She can’t fight and she can’t carry Balthar. And how could Tyrol/Callie see her once but not now? How weird!
Explanation: Balthar stumbles on K-Six. B-Six jumps into K-Six’s head and they fight mentally in a simulation of this same spot in the Kobol jungle. B-Six can’t upload this new situation because of K-Six’s interference. B-Six kills K-Six and takes over her body. Now she carts Balthar away and is spotted. In the end, she ditches the body and jumps back into Balthar’s head.
Why the scene? To further confuse the reality of B-Six. Also to have B-Six and K-Six talk during the fight and drop hints about the Cylon Master Plan and who is pushing their own agenda(s).
I concur.
Might be easier to calculate a jump if you’ve been there before, like Capricia. But here I go with the Trek Apologist again. ^ :dubious: ^
I thought the whole “jumped to the wrong place in FTL drive” plot was silly and contrived. “Ooh, we need an excuse for the Galactica to take on a Cylon base ship – let’s throw in some mumbo-jumbo about jump coordinates. And let’s add tension by showing Cylons taking down a firewall”(something that’s just silly if you know what a firewall is and does).
I was disappointed in this epsiode. Basically, nothing happened.
By the way, is it me or is the Cylon Base ship almost comically overpowered compared to the Galactica? It looked like it launched several hundred fighters. By now, the Galactica has to be down to a few dozen at most. They lose a few in every skirmish and they’re not getting any new ones. Realistically, the Cylons should have just walked right over them.
In some ways, I liked the old series better, because it was easier to understand how a bunch of god-like (but cocky) heros could go up against slow, stupid robots and consistently win than it is to understand how a bunch of dysfunctional military rejects could go up against nearly flawless automatons with numerical superiority and not lose.
They’re probably still hot about that 1812 stuff.
Ha! That was just an overture. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
The 33 minute rule.
Means whatever you want it to mean, because Ron Moore admitted in his blog that it doesn’t mean anything.
I’m confused.
The 1812 Overture was written about Napoleon’s retreat from Russia in 1812. How does it apply here?
I want to add that I like the “bumpers” they came up with for this season. The first one, with Six looking contemptuosly at Boomer’s back, told a story of its own.
American’s like to pretend that the United States was the only country Great Britain was fighting in 1812-1814, and that it’s important the USA won their part of it.
Man, it seems silly to have a thread that’s 98% spoiler’d.
Anyways…
Has it occurred to nobody that Starbuck is a Cylon? She’s under 40 and just too damned good at too many things. She’s also Following The Plan, or so it seems, since I can’t be the only person suspecting that the Cylons want the Galactica to lead them to Earth.
-Joe
[spoiler]
Very good thinking there. Maybe an escape pod from the base star. Or maybe just an expeditionary force?
Just think about poor Tyrol…being assaulted by dozens of naked ex-girlfriends. If “assaulted” involves a gun it’s just not as much fun.
Regarding the survivors - don’t forget there’s a woman/medic with them, too. She wasn’t on your list.
Maybe RedShirt was unimportant. If they were really Boomers shooting at them, well, we know she has affection for Tyrol. Maybe she does for Cally, too. I know I do.
About the President and the guard - I think that’s kind of the point. She’s making the transition from Accidental President to Beloved Prophet.
Cylon networking - maybe the toasters don’t network themselves because there are factions. Six and BoomerBot don’t seem to get along terribly well…who controls the toasters? Are they evenly divided between the models? Overmind? Obviously an overmind that doesn’t have complete control, even, as evidenced by Caprica-Boomer.
HPL & the jump coordinates. Sure they know the most recent coordinates. But I imagine they’re more From Position X directly toward Star Y. With all the drift involved I’m guessing that X and Y have both moved, so you’ll not end up at the same place. At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Starbuck calculating a jump back to Galactica - she didn’t have to rush. All the time in the world. Besides, since Caprica is pretty much the center of the universe as far as BSG is concerned, it seems to me that there’s nothing easier than calculating a jump to coordinates 0,0,0.
-Joe