Galactica has very basic computers. Automation is almost completely out of the question, therefore one must assume that every human is necessary for vital duties. It also means that they are jumping by hand calculations across huge and only roughly explored distances. Given that and the amount of double-checking I’d want done, 33 minutes is an insanely short time.
It wasn’t just Galactica jumping but a huge convoy of other defenseless ships. I would imagine the Vipers were launched to act as a mobile screen for the civilians as they jumped out. Further, Galactica is forced to stay for every civilian hiccup and breakdown because losing even one other ship is eating into what is suddenly a non-replenishable resource: people. You can’t just cut and run at the first sign of trouble.
With all this rushing around, there’s going to be very little time to get everyone together and start an in-depth investigation into how the Cylons are tracking them. There were some plans mentioned to experiment and divide the fleet up to get a better idea of how they were being followed.
Not to mention the fact that Balter was talking about the resources and people needed to actually detect cylons. Add to this the fact that they’re trying to keep the “Cylons look like Humans” thing under wraps as much as possible, which limits how many people they can have doing the screening. Not to mention the fact that everyone invovled in doing the test must definatly be human, because the last thing you want or need is some Cylon agent getting ahold of test results and “altering” them to implicate the wrong people.
It was said in the miniseries that they don’t have computers communicating with each other; that’s so the Cylons couldn’t use them. They have computers to do calculations, but they aren’t networked. Perhaps one has to copy the results of the calculation to a disk and carry it to another computer. A sneaker net.
It seemed that 33 minutes was pushing the minimum limit of time to make a jump. The president’s ship was having trouble with their systems during the first jump and nearly didn’t get out in time. So I can see why they wouldn’t be able to jump earlier and why they’d want the fighters out there (to squeeze out a bit more time for the ships having trouble).
As to the sleep in shifts thing, I got the impression (though I could be wrong) that the ships and crew weren’t used to making such frequent jumps, so stuff was breaking down from overuse, and they needed everyone on hand working on keeping it all running. They were probably pretty strapped for human resources with planning jumps in the minimum time and fixing everything. As for the passengers and non essential personnel looking haggard, I’d have a damn hard time sleeping if I knew the cylons could nuke me in a half hour! The stress alone would keep me awake till I fell over.
Also, it seemed to me that the humans were acting out of panic, desparation, and tiredness. They weren’t thinking at their best and probably weren’t making the best tactical decisions. So they were just jumping along, trying to stay one step ahead of the cylons but not really knowing what to do. I’d kind of like it if the Galactica group turns out to be more human and fallible in their tactical decision making than a lot of the Sci Fi shows with super genius crews.
The part I don’t understand is the Olympic Carrier thing. If it was being tracked by the cylons all along, why did they give it away by holding that ship back? If it wasn’t being tracked till after it got left behind, why couldn’t the cylons continue to find the Galactica after the OC got shot down? The only thing I can think of is that it was being tracked all along though no one on board knew it. Then (lucky for the humans) the OC did have mechanical problems as they said. So the cylons had the bad luck of seeing their only tracker ship break down, and they left it alone hoping it could get repaired. However, even if that were the case, I don’t know why the cylons jumped in right away after another 33 minutes went by. They should have waited a day or so to let the humans think that it wasn’t the Olympic Carrier that was being tracked. Then they could have jumped in and taken everyone by surprise.
Olympic Carrier had someone aboard who had figured out there was a Cylon spy tracking them, and desperately wanted to tell the President in person. Maybe he’d convinced their captain to do something different as a check, without communicating that to Galactica to protect the rest of the fleet, or perhaps to deliberately delay the jump to see if the Cylons would attack it or let it alone - that goes along with the Cylons being out to simply torment the humans for awhile, not exterminate them.
It looks like after the OC came back, it was now completely under cylon control(or had cylon pilot and nothing else besides the nukes). The OC breaking down and not making the jump was bad luck, and no doubt they realized that the jig was up if the returned undamaged after several hours, so they stuffed it with nukes and tried to make a kamikaze run for the galactica(Probably after boarding and wiping out the crew and passangers).
It obviously wasn’t left alone, considering it
1.) Was now carrying nukes(wereas it apparently wasn’t before).
2.) Apparently had nobody on board(at least not at the windows)
3.) The fact that it repeatdly failed to stop after mutiple warnings to do so(if I had shots being fired across my bow, I’d sure as hell heave to if I didn’t want to be blow out to the sky).
4.) It appeared to be making a full speed run for the Galactica.
Yeah, I like that they aren’t star-trek level geniuses either. I also like that none of the decisions made so far have been easy or clean.
I also think it was just dumb luck that the OC was the one to break down. I don’t think there was a mole onboard or the Cylons would have had an opportunity to get the next jump coordinates, so the ship must have simply been tracked. My guesses as to why they didn’t wait:
a) They figured the Humans would examine the OC’s FTL drive to make sure it didn’t break down again after rejoining the fleet and discover the tracker.
b) After the humans onboard the OC didn’t make the jump and the Cylons stayed with them but didn’t shoot, they figured out they were the ones being tracked. Therefore, to stop those humans reporting it when they rejoined the fleet, they had to be exterminated. Of course, after extermination and rejoining the fleet, the Humans would shortly discover that the OC was empty.
The whole thing could have been a preprogrammed ruse- just a delaying tactic to get close enough to set off the nukes. They would have known the humans would be suspicious- acknowledge that and try and play on it.
The humans will never know for sure what happened on Olympic Carrier, and therefore neither will we viewers. But that’s part of the attraction of the show - not every loose end is wrapped up neatly in the last few minutes, followed by a group hug. We viewers have to slog along just like the survivors.
I was under the impression that it was just dumb luck that the OC got left behind. I’ve also assumed the the Cylons were making an honest effort to eliminate the humans, it’s God’s will after all…
The way I saw it, the Cylons had some sort of bug on the OC, and when it didn’t jump they realized its use would be at an end. So they slaughtered the crew, maybe set it up with a human-lookin’-Cylon as pilot, and strapped a nuke to it. My guess is that their hope was the fleet would let the OC close, and then, blam!
Actually I felt it was rather open and shut case that the OC needed to be destoryed.
The fact it managed to remain in Cylon Occupied space for that long without being destroyed, and suddenly reappearing just smells of a trojan horse. The nukes and the refusal to heave to cliched it.
The only question is wether there were any civies on board the OC at all, but in any case, there’s very little doubt in my mind that destroying it was the right call.
I’d have to agree… I didn’t grok why the President carried around the index card with the OC on it to remind her of a mistake. What mistake? The Cylons captured the OC, loaded a nuke on it, and tried to ram the Galactica. Pretty clear cut case of self defense in my mind.
The nukes prove it was a trap. Why the President and Apollo feel any remorse or regret for this is puzzling. There wasn’t anybody on board alive, as far as they know, and it was something that had to be done. Blowing it away wasn’t a mistake, so get over it, you two!
Just a slight nitpick, but I think that it wasn’t a question of not having evidence that anybody was alive… I figured that not being able to see a single person in the windows was proof that there weren’t any people on the ship anymore. In this case it’s not a question of ‘absence of evidence is not…’
If the crew was still on the ship they would’ve been visible. Since they weren’t, they weren’t there.
Extremely doubtful. There’s only two reasons to leave any alive - to have them visible to try to keep the Galactica crew and Viper pilots from realising something’s up - which they clearly didn’t do, is not possible unless they managed to quietly replace all key members of the crew and even if they had leaves too many people to figure out something’s up and tell the Galactica, or try to stop them - or because it was too much trouble to wipe them all out - which has the same problems.
I think all of you are taking the objective perspective on this. Yes logically we can say that no one would be alive after the Cylons took the ship… but what if? They’re emotionally involved in the faces and names that they might have killed, though they didn’t let that stop them from making the tough decision.
It is still reasonable for them to feel regret and question their actions, even if they were correct. Doubt about the action will always be present. Did I do the right thing? Could I have done something else instead?
I’m guessing the Boomerbot with Helo was put in place to hunt down resistance groups. Should be interesting. Nice touch adding that storyline. Let’s you know what happened on the colony worlds after the war. The survivors of the attack died of radiation and the few remaining were hunted down. The original series never made mention of their fate.
As for the 33 minutes, the XO makes the comment, “24 jumps? Our people are busting their humps calculating 1 jump every 33 minutes”. So it looked to me like the reason was simply the time it took to calculate a new jump. The cylons would have to get the signal from their tracing device and then calculate the correct jump coords to intercept.
