I just watched the 2003 miniseries on DVD. An outstanding show, much better than the original (with some cool homages).
My favorite were the Cylon missles; better than lasers in Star Wars. In Star Wars, it appeared large ships could take unlimited hits (especially the Falcon in ROTJ), but I shuddered everytime the slow missles would hit the Galactica. The planet-nuking scenes were excellent as well.
One thing that did bother me is the “cylons in human form”. It reminded me of the 70s and 80s Sci-Fi shows like War of the Worlds where they could trim the costume budget by having the aliens inhabit humans.
Some questions after the pilot miniseries. I haven’t watched the later series, and I may not, so spoil me.
Do the robot Cylons (who look great!) ever appear as more than escorts? I got the impression that the “toasters” had their uses, but were outmoded by the “human” ones? Do the good guys get in firefights with them? Or is it humans vs human-cylons? Do any of the original cast like Dirk Benedict make cameos?
Is there an “Imperious Leader”? What about the advisor with the 2 roving eyes from the TV show? Does he appear in upgraded form?
I think the series is even better than the miniseries, so I’m going to engage only in semi-spoilers in the hope that you do go on to watch the shows.
Not sure what you mean by this. There are a number of scenes where platoons of the chrome toasters appear to be operating more or less autonomously, without meat-toaster supervision.
We haven’t gotten a clear answer as to the history of the meat-toasters, so it’s impossible to say how or why they arose.
Yes, several times. In the second season, for example, there are episodes about a team of humans who have crash-landed on a planet and who have to play run-and-gun with chrome-toaster squads to survive, and there’s one great episode where a robot boarding party roams Galactica’s corridors and racks up a substantial body count.
The meat-toasters don’t seem to engage in much direct combat; their primary weapon appears to be confusion and manipulation.
Richard Hatch, aka the original Apollo, has a recurring role in the series. He shows up in episode three of season one, and has popped up regularly thereafter. It’s not a stunt, either; he’s playing an important character, and pulls it off nicely.
Not that we’ve seen, but Cylon command-and-control has remained fairly ambiguous.
Nothing like that character has appeared so far.
Not only does Boxey not get a mechanical Daggit, Boxey himself vanishes entirely from the series after a couple of brief (and remarkably pointless) appearances.
You really should if you liked the miniseries. It’s consistently pretty good to excellent.
No. They’re the grunts.
Probably yes, maybe not entirely. It isn’t entirely sorted out yet ( as far as I’m concerned, anyway ).
The robot grunts? Yes, pretty much anytime an infantry firefight comes up.
Richard Hatch, the original Apollo, has a pretty meaty recurring role as a revolutionary type.
Not to date. I’d guess a flat no.
Not to date. I’d guess a flat no.
No, thank God. And since you’re blase about spoilers, I’ll say that he was largely cut as a character early on for creative reasons. He has a couple of brief scenes, but soon disappears.
Well…no. One of the series’ great flaws IMHO. But it does edge up to a nekkider Boomer a couple of times :).
The new series takes the whole thing much further. There is a religious component to the Cylons that drives them to interact with humans in very, um, intimate ways. It reminded me more of the miniseries V than War of the Worlds.
The toasters are shock troops. They do all the heavy lifting. Number Six says, “They have their uses.” I get the impression that they are not really all that intelligent.
It might be worth pointing out that there are very few firefights in the series. The war takes place largely in more subtle ways. Impressive CGI space combats are fairly standard, but if you’re looking for a lot of hand-to-chrome-appendage combat, well, don’t look for it. It happens now and again, but it’s hardly a staple.
I meant “toasters” since the Dr said Cylons look like toasters not hot chicks. Her reply is your quote.
So I was wondering if the roving eye cylons made appearances in the series, since they were very sparse in the mini-series. So I’ll put the season 1 on my Netflix queue.
Thanks all! Spoil me no more, especially about Boomer (of whom I found some nice Google Images).
The bullet-heads apparently aren’t sentient. They’re just very sophisticated robots. In the latest episode, we discovered they’re very useful for replanting the shrubbery.
An interesting aspect of the show is humans created Cylons as more or less slave labor. They evolved, rebelled, and won their independence. So what do they do? Immediately begin using their older model Cylons as slaves. Doesn’t portend well for their future, does it?
That’s something I’m really interested in seeing. If the metal toasters aren’t sentient, then what Cylon to rebelled against human rule in the first place? I think we got a good idea of their intelligence level with this last episode, when that Cylon in the garage ran across the cigarette fuse. It didn’t know right away what it was, and took a few seconds to figure out that it wasn’t supposed to be there and take action. A human civilian might take equally as long, but a trained soldier would know right away that there was a problem.
So the bucketheads can’t be very bright, and couldn’t be the first Cylons to revolt, could they? And the human models are too new.
It would be cool if the first rebel Cylon was still alive…maybe a crude mannikin-style droid, old and all creepy looking with an obviously cheap plastic face, or something.
Now that’s not necessarily true. Keep in mind that they, independently, went after the crew on Kobol, even going so far as to build weapons to take down aircraft.
True. They must have learning, adaptive & problem solving abilities. That must have been what gave rise to the first sentient Cylons in the first place. These bullet-heads just haven’t gotten to that point yet. When they do, the meat-bag Cylons are going to really understand what “this has all happened before” means.
And, if you’ll look back at the “Downloaded” thread, you’ll see that I speculated as much. Pretty much as soon as I saw Bulletheads doing the grunt work while the Meatbags just hung out at Starbucks(haw!) and watched the Bulletheads work.
I should point out too that the Cylon fighters aren’t piloted. It’s specifically stated that they are essentially like domesticated animals. I imagine that the metal are similar.
What is not clear is who or what actually revolted against the humans in the earlier war. The metal cylons never really display any sentience beyond following orders and simple tasks (for a sentient robot) and the humanoid Cylons were unknown to the colonies.
Of course the metal toasters could just be really quiet.
In the miniseries while Galactica is becoming a floating museum, there’s a brief shot of one of the original toasters from the 70’s show in a display case. I guess we could assume those were the toasters that attained sentience, then evolved in two branches - non-sentient utility bulletheads and sentient meatbags.
"It was such a good little Toaster, performed it’s duties efficiently and precisely, how were we to know it’d transform it’s hand into a machine gun and go berserk through an appliance store?..
little #4242447 was such a good little toaster, we don’t know where it went wrong…"
