If plotting a jump was labor intensive, wouldn’t the Galactica need to help plot the civilian ship’s jumps? Even if it were only mildly laborious, would civilian ships likely carry enough crew to run twenty four hours a day?
Re: Distance between OC and the fleet/ between the jumped Cylons and the fleet
Anther possible explanation is that after jumping, the ships floor it in some predetermined direction. As long as the Base Star’s STL speed doesn’t dwarf the Galactica’s, thirty-three minutes could give the fleet enough space to maneuver, and enough space such that the OC would have to catch up if it showed up a bit late.
Re: the note
I listened to some of the audio commentary on the miniseries DVD. The producers/ directors initially thought it was Baltar who left the note. But when the cast/ crew asked the same question (who left it?) they realized they had another plot opportunity – so consider it an open question.
I soooo much wanted to hate this show before the miniseries came out, but was left in a state of continual awe. It is wonderful is it to have a show – a new show – airing each week that doesn’t have multiple cringe-points.
Thank you SciFi! … So say we all![sup]*[/sup]
[sup]*[/sup] Another bit from the DVD commentary - that whole speech was basically ad libbed. When the directors came to get Olmos for the scene, he was discussing military/ religious relationships throughout history and didn’t think the scene as they had written would work.
Thanks Cervaise! I had forgotten about the Ragnor scene.
I agree that it’s can’t miss television for me at this point. There’s so much I like. Like you, I like the fundamental problems that they deal with. I also like that they have to make tough decisions and then carry them out. They can’t just reverse the polarity on the phase inverter neutron shield harmonics and avoid the tough choice. (Not to diss Star Trek or anything because I like that too–but this is neat to see for a change.)
Wouldn’t you need some pretty specialized equipment to extract liquid water from a comet in zero gravity? It doesn’t seem too likely that anyone in the convoy happened to have the right tools on hand for that, so the problem becomes not just finding water, but finding it in a form the Galactica can use.
The first season only has 13 episodes, and after watching the first dozen that have aired on Sky One I’d say it has definitely maintained it’s high quality. Episode 12 is particularly juicy with a great cliffhanger I have to wait till Monday to see resolved in the season finale. A whole week!
Bastards.
[sub](The good kind.)[/sub]
That seems to be some good news from mediaweek.com, and since it’s not on Fox, the “We cut short, you decry” policy they have for shows I enjoy won’t apply. It’s like they have my TV bugged or something.
Who is doing the space effects for this show? I’d be terribly surprised if it isn’t the same house that did them for Firefly – the cinema verite in space (with snap zoom action!) is exactly the same as the space shots in that show. (Except the sound, more’s the pity.)
–Cliffy
You are correct, sir. Good eye. I checked the credits and it’s a company called Zoic. Seems they are also responsible for Buffy and Angel, and will be doing the Serenity movie as well. Should be interesting to see what they can do on the big screen.
Despite their tendency to spell Galactica with two L’s half the time, I am impressed.
I may still have it saved, but I did a back of the envelope calculation during the show, and the amounts seemed OK to me. IIRC, it was around 100 tons each of meat, fruit, vegetables, 200 tons of grain, per week. Given 50,000 people, that’s about 2 kg of meat, 2kg of fruit, 2kg of veggies, and 4kg of grain. Maybe a little high, but certainly accurate to an order of magnitude.
The real question is why is their scientific genius doing the kind of work any military supply officer can do in his sleep?
Maybe there weren’t any supply officers on board? The crew was pretty ragtag even before the attack. The ship was being opened as a museum. How much need did they have of, well, a lot of billets at that point? The civilian ships were not normally out long enough to need onboard supply officers, either.
A couple of months ago I invited a bunch of friends over to re-watch the whole series (or in a couple cases watch for the first time), starting last week as a lead-in to the film release in April. The movie got moved; I decided to play the series anyway (hey, any excuse to put something up on my big front-projection screen for friends). We saw the pilot ep last Sunday and will be watching “Train Job” this Sunday. So: Forget nuthin’.
Battlestar Galactica isn’t that good yet, but it’s far and away the best SF on television right now. (I’m considering Lost fantasy at the moment, unless that glimpse of the space colony in the comic book turns out to be significant.)
Ya know, the Galactica crew is probably subsisting on leftover cold cuts from the decommissioning ceremony, perhaps with some greasy burgers from the museum coffee shop, and the civilians even on Colonial One are surviving on little bags of pretzels from the drinks cart.
I agree that BG has the potential to at least rival Firefly, as far as stories and plots go; they have a long way to go to rival their dialogue. Character are still up in the air; too new to tell yet.
But as BG has been the best to come along in a while (I kind of liked The 4400, too) I’m being way open minded and giving it several chances.
But as Kennedy fans should remember chappaquiddick, we must remember the glowing spine. FTW is that all about? Now that ought to show up on a physical exam.
Yep, this screening job doesn’t take tankloads of whatever chemical Baltar said. All they have to do is have sex with every surviving purported human, and shoot the ones who glow in the dark.
If that’s already the plot of a porn flick, I don’t want to know.
I’m not sure how it is in the Navy, which I assume is close to what a space military would be, but in the US Army, any soldier in the rank of E-5 or above should be able to calculate food & water requirements for x number of people, over x amount of time (or at least they’ve received training on it). So Baltar probably didn’t need to be briefing that particular bit of info.
Interesting though. Where are they going to get their food? Are they going to find it out there somewhere, or are they going to have to sneak back to the colonies for it?
I doubt very much that Baltar gathered those numbers… more likely, he was designated to receive reports from all the ships on numbers of people and food needs, he simply compiled them, and recited them at the high-level briefing.
As for the Midway numbers… I worked it out to 7.2 pounds of “provisions” per day. That’s about 50 lbs of “provisions” per week.
The other figures given in this thread for Baltar, in kilograms, work out to about 10 kg per week of “provisions”, or… about 22 lbs a week.
In other words, the Galactica figures are about half those for the USS Midway. Even allowing for less physical exertion and not everyone being at military fitness and caloric requirements, and a real strong incentive to let nothing go to waste, that’s quite a difference
Nor does that take into account water needs.
Unless I’ve really screwed up the math, which is always a possibility. Or the figures for the Midway or the Galactica are really off.
Also, thinking about the “provisioning needs” of my family, I’d say food consumption is closer to 2-3 lbs a day, not 7.
On US Navy ships, personnal water use was figured to be 10 gal per person per day. But that took into account cooking and cleaning uses in addition to showers and drinking (not just drinking water - coffee, tea part of that.)
Just some info to go along with the food numbers from above.
