f13.net

I know there are other BSG fans on here -- why no dedicated thread?




So, after watching the most recent episode, I have observed something.

1) There are five "missing" Cylon models.  At least one of whom is someone Deanna recognized.
2) There are five "humans" we have seen that have had mysterious "supernatural" visions or intuitions:
 - Baltar
 - Roslin
 - Starbuck
 - Chief Tyrol
 - The fortune teller on New Caprica

Coincidence?

I really wanted Admiral Adama to be a cylon, but it seems less likely as time goes on.
My new fav pick for cylon is Gata. He's distant from the others, acts in the uptight manor, and he had to outsmart Baltar and the Cylons to give intel to the resistance.  D'anna had known Gata.

And I want the next one to actually know that they are a Cylon.  None of that sleeper shit. ok? thx.

Yah, I'm a fan. :)

I'm not sure what the 5 'final' Cylons is really about, I assume there will be more on that soon. I was thinking that maybe that there was only suppose to be 5 of the 9 'humanized' Cylons left after some.. thing. Some kinda prophecy thingy again I bet.

??

There's alot of talk that Cally is one of them.  A closeup from one of the stills of the five looks somewhat like her.  It also makes Tyrol beating the crap out of her more profound.

I think it would be rather silly if any more of the major characters turned out to be a Cylon. I mean there are 12 models total, logically aren't the chances 99.99% that they are all random jobbers of no importance?

Not if they all have subconscious drives to get themselves into key positions in the government/military and superhuman abilities and/or subtle Cylon influences to help them do it.

My thinking is that all of the "prophecy" and "destiny" stuff is interwoven with some sort of Cylon master plan that even the Cylons don't really know about at a conscious level (just like, say, Boomer didn't know that she was going to shoot Adama).  And that the final five are going to be the catalyst that sets it in motion.

It would be even cooler if a Cylon discovered they were human, and then discovered they were a ghost. 

What is interesting about the missing models is that the existing Cylons seem to know next to nothing about them.  They also made reference to "the one who programmed us", who I'd assume they equate to the Cylon God, although they didn't make that clear.  It makes me wonder though, what sort of relationship they have with their creator?  Enough of one to know there are 12 models (to coincide with the 12 colonies somehow, I'm sure), but not enough to have met them.  More confusing is the age involved here.  The 'human' Cylons are only a few years old. 

Supposedly, the toaster Cylons were kicked out of the colonies at the conclusion of the war and sent to wander.  They came upon some planet with some sort of incredible intelligence that in turn created human models for the refugee toasters, who in turn became the leadership.  What did the previous Cylon leadership look like?  Was it overthrown?  The nonhuman Cylons appear to have little to nothing in the way of intelligence.  The best that has been said about them are the ships which are treated like pets, but that doesn't give much indication of intelligence or leadership.  So how much in common with the toasters do the human-Cylons have?

Not very much, in light of this temple.  Supposedly built by the 13th colony - the one that was headed for Earth many, MANY years ago.  Yet, this temple hosted technology that could reveal the faces of the other 5 Cylons.  Wait a minute, Cylons didn't even *exist* this far back.  Not in any form, toaster or not.  So how would the 13th colony know anything about human Cylons, or for that matter, that anyone would be standing in the temple 4000 years later?

There's no real reason to expect that the 13th colony would be much different from the other 12.  They were all leaving their homeworld, and we think were all part of the same society.  So why did this one group have insight the others seemingly did not?  There's a much bigger plot moving around besides Humans vs Cylons that includes both.  My guess?  The Lords of Kobol had something to do with it, and one of the Lords went with the 13th colony.  And that Lord is now known as God by the Cylons.

As for trying to peg who is one of the five, that becomes near impossible.  The trick used to be, try to figure out what someone's history was with the colonies.  So long as they went back far enough or had children, you could rule them out.  The first guideline doesn't work at all anymore, although the second might.  If hybrid children are this big a deal, then it probably hasn't occurred with the five either, which would rule out Adama.  Same would apply to Chief.  None of the other that Samwise mentioned had kids that I know of, so maybe they can be considered. 

Good point on the Chief having a kid.  I'd forgotten about that entirely somehow, and that does put a bit of a wrench in the theory of him being a Cylon.  It's not ruled out entirely, though.  The rule that they seem to have is that Cylons can only conceive children with humans if they're in love, which is why whatsisface kept trying to win Starbuck over, and why Athena and Helo could have a kid.  So the Chief and Cally could have conceived a child under the same rule.

We also don't know if the final five are all that similar to the known models; one gets the distinct impression that they're somehow superior to the others.  That could mean that they don't have the same biological restrictions.

I don't think there's any way in hell that either Adama is a Cylon.  Too much history to manufacture. 

Part of me feels the model Deanna recognized was Saul.  She apologised to it, and I couldn't think of anyone else she had a reason to apologize to other than Saul for taking his eye.

However, I only started watching in the last season and a half, so I have no idea if there's something in the past that rules this out.

(http://www.cylon.org/images/bg/bsgweb017.jpg)

Actually, they may have. There has been reference in the series to "this has all happened before and will happen again." I believe a cylon said it to Starbuck or Roslin, though I can't remember for sure. At the time I took this to be a way of saying that the original series actually existed and happened. The question at this point is how many times it has all happened before and was there only one 13th tribe? Is it only the other 12 locked in this cycle for some reason?

My guess, having not much to go on, is that they disagreed with the direction the cylon race was taking.  Whether separately or deciding as a whole I cannot say.

Since the seven were interested in the complete eradication of the humans, I would think the hidden five either supported peace, integration, or leaving the humans alone.  Given the latter doesn't make for much of an interesting story, I imagine some decided to live amongst and become part of the humans.

A different idea is that they left seeking the 13th colony, knowing they would harbor no direct grudges against them.  The seven could be interested in earth because they see the five as paving the way for a new beginning.  A few of the five could have remained behind to help the humans of the twelve colonies either find their way or to aid in some way against their eradication.

I think the other 5 are on the 13th colony, and that when the series finally reaches earth a whole new story arc will begin. I hope the series pick up more on baltars little mind game some more soon, I love it. The episode where baltar tries to find out if he has something in his head or if he's just going crazy is golden  :-D

I loved when Caprica woke up and she had her own Baltar.

I thought todays ep was the best I've seen since season 1. 

I'm glad they finally put a nail in the is-Baltar-a-Cylon question.  I don't think anyone really believed they'd really go in that direction.

I thought it was a good ep but also very disturbing. I actually felt sympathy for Baltar and even Roslin looked uncomfortable at times.

Just wanted to add - it can't be Ty. He was in the first war with Adama and they didn't have human models then.

Starbuck makes some sense.

Gaita or Dee would be my guess.  Although...Someone from Pegasus would be a great twist.

If you're guessing who might be the final 5 I don't think it is anyone we've seen yet, with maybe one exception. I think they are mostly behind the scenes and will be new characters revealed in the future. I'm not 100% convinced that Deanna actually recognized one of them, I think her "I had no idea, I'm sorry." dialogue referred to something else, like her having the gall to try to see them when she wasn't the one intended to do so.

No, it was pretty obviously shock of recognition. Most fan sites are speculating it's Anders, because (a) there was the extended sequence between Three and Anders in "Downloaded" and (b) most posters on those sites are female and hot for Anders.

It's not going to be Starbuck. Spoilers for the next couple of episodes have conclusively ruled that out. Spoiler: In "Maelstrom", the actress is leaving the series... the hints are that she won't die, but "something" else happens to her. My guess is brain damage. They won't end the Final Five speculation that soon, though.

Personally, I pick Doc Cottell. Three had a scene where she tried to screw with his head on New Caprica. And he's different enough from everyone else that it fits.

Does anyone have a good reason as to why Leoben is special enough to have his own name?

The only Cylon that has a name is Caprica Six, the Six that manipulated Baltar into introducing the virus into Colonial defense mainframes that won the war. This is a key plot point and the writers went to great lengths that she was the ONLY Cylon with a name - that Caprica Six was a Hero of the Cylon and thus had influence as an individual, which is usually heresy with the Cylons, and convinced them to occupy New Caprica instead of nuking it to bits. It's also a shout out to internet discussion groups that all referred to her as "Caprica Six" as opposed to "Baltar Head Six" or whatever.

"Leoben Conoy" is the name used by that model (his number's never been revealed I don't think) that he went by when he was undercover with the human fleet. Especially since he never got an official number from the writers, the Cylons just refer to him as Leoben, usually (but annoyingly not always) with the caveat "the one you humans refer to as Leoben" or such like.

http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Leoben_Conoy

In reply to Lum's Spoiler: my guess is that something similiar to what happened to the original Starbuck will happen. The only problem being all the recent destiny stuff that has come up.

As for the rest of it, I still don't think any character we've yet seen will be revealed as one of the final five. The only one I suspected at all was Baltar.

I also find myself increasingly fascinated by the cylons as the show goes on especially the ones that are becoming more humanized: Sharon Agathon and Caprica Six among them. I am very curious as to what will happen to Caprica now that she's on Galatica. I see three alternatives:

1) She's airlocked by Roslin or Tigh at some point.
2) She defects much in the manner of Sharon and probably helps bring down Baltar in the process. (scorned woman and all that.)
3) She helps Baltar escape in some manner, probably by appealing to Sharon's empathy.

Yeah, I know all that :)

I was just wondering why the Cylon's continued to refer to him by that name.  I was wondering if there was something to it, or if its just for the viewers sake.

Lazy writing/for the viewer's sake, mostly. It's difficult to communicate how hive minds "talk" in a dramatic context. Maybe they'd wiggle RNA strands meaningfully or something.

The Cylon storyline is interesting, especially now that the heavy handed New Caprica OMG IT IS JUST LIKE IRAQ allegories are over and they can get back to going all wacky religious on us. I suspect Caprica Six will try to worm her way into Rosslyn's confidences, perhaps cheered on by a Head-Baltar. Or if they really want to go into a dark place, Galactica may start torturing her. Hey look, Gina's back.

Maybe Head-Baltar and Head-Six can hook up sometime, they're made for each other.

I think I have a pretty good sense of where the rest of the season is going (climactic "Eichmann Trial" of Baltar, with Lee Adama for the defense) but have been surprised before, which is one reason I like the show. And I haven't a clue where they're going with the Final Five stuff.

Ron Moore said he'd like the show to have a five year run, so in 2 years I'd expect Galactica to make it to Earth and something twisted and wrong happened. Maybe a nuclear holocaust, or caveman running around an ice age, or Cylons waving Howdy from Assimilated New York.

As for the spoiler response: the new series doesn't always follow the old. Look how long Pegasus hung around.

But it suffered much the same fate, even if prolonged.

As far as I can see, the whole thing follows the original, er, 'flow' a lot more than most people think.  I'm still waiting for Count Iblis to turn up. 

I don't think the last option has any chance of happening thankfully.

I agree for the most part. My latest theory on the final five, given that they aren't talked about is that they are cylon exiles, perhaps they were against the war and exiled? If so, that ups the chances of some of them being on Galactica and being key players.


Agreed, however, given that we've seen homages before I just think it's possible this might be yet another.

We've yet to see the Daneel or Data Cylon models.  You know they're out there.

Another thought I just had: Lum's wiki link (thanks for that BTW, wasted like 3 hours surfing it last night!) mentions that Ron Moore has said each Cylon model is a core human stereotype


So far we have:

Six: Seductress
Leoben: religious fanatic - very much an antichrist figure with his half-lies
Sharon: saboteur/Military - Love to Six's lust
Deanna: manipulator
Cavil (It's evil Al man!): Cynical atheist (he's the f13 poster of the Cylon models)
Five (the PR guy from the miniseries): propaganda artists, fanatic about Cylon dogma
Simon (the black doctor): intellectual

So maybe if we can figure out what archetypes are left we can make an educated guess about the other 5 cylon models.

The cook! They should get Steven Segal to play this one.

Well, we haven't seen a fat past his prime wannabe Cylon yet. So that works.

Baltar is the chosen of humanity and Caprica Six is the chosen of the Cylon race.  Baltar is chosen because he is the lowest of the low, a human who would betray his entire race for a romp in the sack.  Six for breaking up the collective with her individuality and empathy, weakening the machine race.

Both have 'whisperers' in their heads, urging them on.  Notice how Head Six almost always wears red.  Notice how the 'whisperers' constantly urge chaos.  I think god is real and he's the  :evil:

Oh and Hera is the anti-christ, so to speak.

My take is that I think it's no coincidence to have 12 colonies, 12 Cylon models, and 12 Olympian gods (the basis for the Lords of Kobol).  Oh, and a 13th tribe.  If the writers are following mythology, I would say that the Cylon god is Hades/Pluto.  Being able to resurrect would be a power you might assossiate with a god of the dead anyway, and could make a play into why Cylons are sterile. 

The original series did have a devil (Count Iblis (http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Iblis)), but Ron Moore's been quoted as saying he wasn't too fond of that storyline and we won't be seeing it in this version. However, your analogy actually gets more interesting when you realize that Head Baltar is actually a force of order (he appealed to Six's conscience about the Caprica genocide, encouraged her to love, and in general looked far more clean cut than the real Baltar ever does).

My take on it was that while the colonists follow the 12 Olympian gods, the Cylons always referred to a singular God which I took as a Judeo-Christian-type god.  Which would make the 12 Cylon models analogous to the 12 apostles.

Given the references to a singular God, the nomadic nature of the fleet and the persecution from people trying to keep them out of their homeland, BSG always aligned closest to Judaism to me.  12 tribes with a lost 13th, and all.

-ed:  Now I'm forgetting how many tribes Israelis had and if the 13th was a fictional reference or what. Wikipedia is telling me only 10 tribes, so wtf man, I forget where I'd heard 13 before.

How many people do you see at the table? And where is the chalice?

disciples of Christ would be my guess

My understanding is it actually has more in common with the mormons. http://www.michaellorenzen.com/galactica.html (http://www.michaellorenzen.com/galactica.html)

Ya, I was posting that Glen Larsen stole it all from the Mormons but I got the "RED WARNING OF LIKELY POST IRRELEVANCE"

There are those who believe that life here, began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. They may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens...

I think the fact that there are 12 colonies and the 13th is the mysterious missing one and 12 Cylon models has everything to do with each other. There's a lot of significant numbers thrown about in the show, and I think they all mean something.

I'm going to guess that the original 12 Cylon models were all caretakers on deep freeze colony ships from the original 13th. Or that the lost 5 were Cylon android caretakers, while the other 7 were humans who have been reincarnated (like Kara).

I'll echo the sentiment that the final five won't be people we know.  Or at least I hope they won't.  We've seen that twist enough times.

All I know is that the outcome, the big secret, of this series will either be really cool and deep, or ridiculous.  With all this buildup, it pretty much has to be.

On another note, there were rumors going around a few weeks ago that the network was not sure whether they were going to renew the series after this season. Has anyone heard anything else about that?  Looking around the net, it looks like it was really just some exec being unclear, but I hadn't heard for sure that they renewed it.

I think Cally is one.  :-D

I have suspicions about one more but am less sure.  The other three I think are unknown or more minor characters.

We know at least one of the 5.  Xena/#3 recognized and apologized to her.

Thanks Lum for that extra insight, that reinforces my theory on the whole thing.

You have two 'whisperers' Head Baltar and Head Six both steering humanity and cylons to Earth.  Who convinced the cylons not to wipe out the humans on New Caprica?  Caprica Six.  She and Boomer changed the Cylons from genocide to 'getting to Earth first'.  Why the change?  Because Head Baltar convinced her!

Of course we have Head Six telling Baltar to get to Earth also.  So god is indeed guiding the cylons to being more humane and  Count Iblis(?) is guiding those pagan humans to go spoil paradise with their fighting and confusion and conflict. 

So when both get to Earth, about the same time, THAT will be the convergence and both races will merge and live in peace.

Eventually they will form 12 tribes and go back into the universe.

'This has all happened before.'

Or maybe I'm just drunk...

You're drunk.


And Cally is not a cylon.

Wanna cookie bet?

Is it a Kitten Love Cookie?

Sure.  Because, you know, she had a kid.  And that totally, totally, totally fucks the uniqueness and importance of Hera.

Cally is not a cylon.

Or it reinforces the integration of species and the need for love to have a child.  Tyrol is one of the few people who could look at toaster and love them anyways.  By not focusing on that aspect right now Hera remains a plot point of importance.

She did shot Sharon however. Which set her free again....

She was mad Tyrol was fraternizing with a different model.

You know who would be great to be a cylon...Starbuck's husband. The irony would be DELICIOUS.

Sam "the Percolator" Anders.

update:  officially renewed!

http://community.tvguide.com/thread.jspa?threadID=800008633 (http://community.tvguide.com/thread.jspa?threadID=800008633)

Only for 13 shows?  That's not good.

That depends. If season four is going to be split into two parts like season 2 was they may be speaking only of 4.0.

Carl Agathon would be even more ironic.  HERA ISN'T SPECIAL AFTER ALL!

I bet Boxey is a Cylon.

He's the Cylon God.

Good news on the renewal.  Reminds me of praying for another season of B5.  :-D

This latest episode was pretty crappy.  Only decent part was the Six/Invsi-Baltar freakout session.

Now, this wasn't as bad as last year's noir EP.  But I'm just hoping we haven't hit the "gimmicky sci-fi shit" section of the season.  This one was "racism is bad!"; perhaps the next one will be "proper dental hygiene or humanity is doomed!". 

Gyah. As they say in the Monty Python's Holy Grail dvd: GET ON WITH IT.

We have spotted a pattern where "good" or "main plot" episodes are broken up by "soap opera" episodes and the occasional sci-fi social commentary.  Objectively speaking, these are usually not bad episodes when considering All TV Ever Aired, but they get in the way of me seeing some very fine and main-plot-related episodes, and their status as filler is noted.

Every time some sort of relationship episode comes around, particularly Lee-Dee-Kara-Sam shit, I sit there and wonder "What's this got to do with the Cylon threat?" but of course I keep watching because you never know when one of those fuckers will show up with an explosive or a basestar will jump in.  OK, most of the time I know it will be in a "real" episode but I watch anyway, hoping.

http://www.babylon5scripts.com/TLT-JMS-Photos.html

Given the quality of the previous movies, however, I have little hope.

I guess this is a matter of opinion, because I in fact like the soap-opera episodes.  It grates on me when the heroes save the world (metaphorically) every episode, because it leaves no time for character development.

I liked the last episode, but I didn't see "racism is TEH BAD" as the main point of the show.  I thought it was more about Helo and how his convictions are the most important thing to him, even when it seems, simply from luck of the draw, to always land him on the "wrong" or less popular side.  And him questioning whether it is just luck of the draw or whether he intentionally sets himself up for it.

I do wish they'd do something more interesting with Kara/Lee/et al.  That storyline seems to have found itself with nowhere interesting left to go.

Throwing them out the air-lock is the only interesting thing they can do with them.

I liked the episode as well.  Really served to flesh out Helo's character and motivation.  He's in big danger of slipping off into token Sharon's husband/Hera's father territory.


Dresden before it really isn't too bad, either.  The first episode was meh,  but the last two have been stronger.  It interferes with Rome,  but Rome is repeated at least a dozen times during the week since it is HBO.

I agree, that shit needs to be broken up.  Just don't put Jaime Bamber in a fat suit again.

I liked the Helo ep. just ok.  I did like how they were fleshing out the character, and the position he was in.  It was also nice to see some more dynamics between the colonial groups, since the present government is still young and there is a lot of background strife between the colonies they haven't jumped much into. 

However, the pacing felt too slow.  Shooting up some Cylons may be cheap and unintelligent, but it does help to move the show along.  Or show more stuff with Caprica Six and Head-Baltar.  We've only seen that pair face off a couple times now, and I'd like to see how that's going.  I'd really like to see real Baltar and Caprica Six talk about their head pals to each other.  Just anything really - that show could have used at least one other plot line running through it, because the evil racist doctor bit was good but not enough to carry a whole show.

Evil Doctor bit was too spontaneous. If they had built up the key element in earlier episode it would felt better. As it is, it felt like the entire situation pulled out of the air.  Why are there refuges anyway? The entire damn fleet is refugees.

That's BSG's biggest problem with the stand-alone eps; they're too stand-alone.  The Adama-Hooker episode from way back could actually have been a decent, if they would have put some foreshadowing to the callgirl/black market in some earlier show(s).

I agree with that.  Also, I said almost from the beginning that the doc had probably done it.  Pretty transparent plot there, could have been from pretty much any sci-fi show ever made.  Shocking in 1930 but not so much today.

I was under the impression it was people coming to watch Baltar's trial, but I don't recall if that was expicitly said or not.

They're from the ships that were left behind and/or broken down on New Caprica.

http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Camp_Oil_Slick

Don't forget the one or two that were lost when traveling through the star cluster.

There weren't any civilians to recover from those, though.  The hasty exodus didn't give much time to sort out the logistics of who goes where, either.

They evacuated all those ships before they went through the cluster and left them with a bare minimum crew. So all those people had to stay on other ships and were never able to return to their (now lost) ships.

I did notice that Roslin and her aide were commenting on Crazy Caprica 6 and her talking to no one.  Maybe they'll notice the same thing w/ Baltar and think something is up.

If they didn't ask themselves these questions back in Season One when he was fucking his lab table, they probably aren't going to call him on it now.

Loved the last episode.  Loved Chief's come to Jesus moment, the portrayal of class problems in the fleet, and Balthar's past and exploitation of such to garner sympathy and foment dissent.  I'm a union guy, so I guess that is pretty unsurprising, but I think I would have liked it anyway.

Chief for president.

I am of the opinion that Baltar was making it all up.  Evil genius and whatnot.  Not much chance of his story being verified at this point, though, so I'm not sure it matters in the end.  In either case, what is his motivation for stirring up trouble other than simple spite?  Yet another play for a position of power, I must assume, or perhaps attempting to gain public sympathy in preparation for his trial.  I thought it was a fine episode, if somewhat predictable plotwise.

He wants to the whole affair as troublesome as possible in order to cut a deal.  But Baltar doesn't know about Capraca Six being on board.  Just when it looks like Baltar is going to get his way, she's going to sing to cut the same deal as Athena and pwn Baltar because she's still pissed about the break up.

I think Baltar is probably telling the truth about his past, but I agree that he is just using it to stir up shit to save his ass/bring us to salvation (which are basically the same thing in his mind).  He probably actually sees himself as the saviour of the underclass at this point, but I remember from one of the New Caprica flashbacks that he was shitting on the union when he was President, so he obviously doesn't really care.

My memory is fuzzy but didn't Baltar used an "appeal to the common man" as his campaign hook back when he was running against Roslyn so this really isn't anything new (assuming I'm not misremembering)? So in that case you have someone who either: 1) believes it or 2) (and more likely) is just exploitative and uses populist messages to get what he wants. Being in jail allows him to play the martyr and stir up shit.

Doesn't the underdog always appeal to the common man?  Seems like a typical political play to me.  He's not going to be able to sway the aristocracy, such as they are, so what are his options?  Need more Zarek.

They are obviously basing him on Hitler's imprisonment and writing of Mein Kampf which also appealed to the Volk and blamed much on the aristrocracy/intelligensia (i.e. Jews) for prior defeats.

Baltar is dangerous because he was telling the truth.

I found the episode a little uneven.  At first Roslin dismissed Tyrol outright and didn't give a damn about slave or child labor, then she's completely concilitory and all "Unions are Great!  Power to the People!  Rah!".

It was still good.  A lot better than the last few.  I'm hoping we'll get back on the main plot next week though.  Was Adama's line about getting back to the search for Earth foreshadowing?

Baltar is just doing what Baltar has always done: ensure the survival of Baltar.  Through any means necessary. Everything is just a means to an end even if it is in the best interest of the fleet.

I agree with the feeling that Roslin's behavior was a little uneven. There were just a few things off with the EP.  Most of the people "working" at the refinery ship seemed to just be standing around staring.  I guess they needed a bunch of people in reserve in the case that someone needed to reach their arms in between the gears. 

I liked Adama's stance on the issue.  You don't get to strike in the military. That's not how that works.  Cally needs to get airlocked.  And to a point I can agree with Roslin, when you're fighting for the survival of a race, some people are going to need to put aside "growth opportunities" for a while.  You know.. until we're not 1 hour from complete destruction.

This was finally, flaws aside, a decent standalone episode. Now, "get on with it".

The union episode actually bothered me, because most of the politics lacked subtlety, just like the racist doctor episode. Both were just blatant, in your face, almost polemic in nature, which only work if the characters involved act in complete opposition to their history. Adama and Roslin both didn't act right, especially the part about shooting Cally or dissing Helo's ideas. They just seemed way too dismissive of Helo and Tyrol and they should have known better.

Most of the non-arc episodes like these feel like chess games, where characters are being deliberately placed into position for something that will happen at the end of the season. Most of the time, I don't mind that, but these two felt a bit forced. The show still kicks ass, though.

And don't forget, telling the truth is one of the best ways to lie.

Didn't Roslin offer a full pardon for every human after she regained the Presidency?

I wonder if Baltar's lawyer is going to play that as a trump card after the fleet is on the brink of civil war at his trial.

While I agree they didn't act right for the most part Adama threatening to shoot Cally was totally in character. He's made sacrifices before for lesser things. Like that one black scout he shot down before the events of th miniseries. The way Adama viewed it a line had been crossed and his fleet and by extension the entire human race was in danger.

I don't think he was bluffing at all either. He would have had her shot. Chief too.

A bit uneven but a fine episode.  Nice to have a 'Tyrol episode' and tremendous to see one of the millions of problems the fleet must continually suffer thru.  Reminds us that most humans are having a pretty frackin' rough time of it.  I don't know, I love hearing about fuel shortages, food shortages, etc.  Also ate up the backstory of which planets were rich and which were 3rd world countries like Canada.  :-P

Anyone else have the feeling that when the Cylons reappear they are gonna go apeshit on the fleet?  I hope the season ends with a kick ass battle.  Yeah I like space battles, I'm a shallow no-taste American so shoot me. 

OH and I read in USA Today that they are gonna make a straight to DVD BG movie!  Also hinted that if it tested well it will get a theatrical release!  Supposed to come out just before Season 4.0 in Jan 2008.

I must go, my fanboi gland is swelling. :hello_kitty:

I'm just annoyed that they've been going crazy overboard with a complete lack of common sense technology.  I realize that in many cases it was left out to allow for the story to progress, but in a lot of cases that was just sloppy writing.

They don't have laser communications ala the 'Oh noes, the Cylons are jamming us from our ships in orbit right over our heads!'
They don't have spacesuits in their airlocks.
They don't have any sort of EVA hull repair to patch holes in their ships.
They don't issue weapons to their troops capable of reliably killing the robotic cylons, despite those cylons representing the standard foot soldier of their enemy.
They have the weapons on their ships mounted with fixed fields of fire, in space, with virtually undefended undersides.

On top of that, they apparently don't care about diseases killing off hundreds of humans, despite the steady decline in the fleet's population.
They also don't care about untrained workers holding together the fleet's one and only and very explosive fuel-production ship together by a shoestring.
(And yet Pegasus didn't seem to have any fuel issues at all despite floating around without any support ships.)
They haven't put every surviving man, woman, and child through at least a basic military training, content to have helpless civilians cowering in ships rather than, y'know, being useful.


Of course it's nitpicking, and I enjoy the show despite it, but c'mon.  These people are supposed to come from an accomplished spacefaring society, but our space ships have better common sense layout than theirs.  We keep our space suits in the airlocks because they're, y'know, THE DOOR TO OUTER SPACE.  And we can go outside of our ships to fix them.

And as long as I'm in the mood, what the fuck is up with Star Trek and their love of uniforms without any pockets?  Anyone living on a space ship should be carrying at least some basic tools and survival gear on them at all times, and with the level of technology they had, they could have fit all of that in a good pair of cargo pants.  That way, when Moriarty takes over the holodeck again and steers the ship into an asteroid and all the air is leaving and the door is stuck, you can do something more productive than die.  Instead, it's apparently a grand idea to teleport down to an unexplored world without any tools or gear aside from a phaser and a communicator.

Just don't ask the computer to create an opponent capable of defeating Data, and you'll be ok.

Hey, I can defend those nitpicks a bit.  Spacesuit shortage since Galactica was basically a museum at the time of the alpha strike, and those were taken to functional airlocks.  Other ships don't have lots of them because they are not military ships, kinda like how commercial airliners don't carry any parachutes.

Could also be that they are out of hull-repair materials since, you know, Galactica has been shot to hell, even nuked at least once.  Plus it was basically in-harbor at the time of attack, would be more cost effective to not bother with on-board repair units.

Maybe they haven't invented lasers.  Before you say that is ridiculous, think about how we don't know how to make or do all of the things that the ancient Greeks and Egyptians knew how to make and do.  I'd use the same defense on the weaponry being pitiful against Centurions.  Seems like the Cylons have advanced a great deal in the previous forty years, and there are plenty of hints that they had gained help from some third party during that time.  The humans probably slowed weapons research a great deal after the war ended.

I do agree with you in general that there are some ridiculous things in the show, but this is a sight better than most of the other sci-fi I have been exposed to.

Most of their equipment was issued for a time when the Cylon threat was thought to be history, and the military's role was policing human vs human disputes. Their generation had not fought Cylons.

So, uh, what did you guys think about this last episode? For me it left alot of questions unanswered.

They left open a lot of routes.  The person in question was fingering the eject button right before the scene in question, leaving open the possibility the person hit it and the (real) cylon raider picked them up.  More likely and more stupidly, they'll just wake up in a cylon tank whenever the producers want to shock us next. 

The Cylon tank theory is the one I was expecting until I realized that the resurrection ship is unlikely to have duplicates of the 5 unknown Cylon models, since even the Cylon's themselves don't know who/what those models are.  There'd have to be some sooper sekrit other resurrection ship that the no one knows about for that theory to hold.

I think either she is one of the five and will wake up in a tank, or get scooped up by the raider.  My money is on that raider being either piloted by Leoban, or one of the five, while she remains human (we've seen her childhood, which while it could be faked, would be a streatch). 

Spoiler:  She has a five year contract so it's unlikely she's been fired or has quit.  However, the producers have said that she will not appear for the last three episodes for this season.

My theory:

If you grok to the fact that the Cylons are essentially Buddhists and know a bit about that philosophy, last night's ep makes a lot more sense.

I have the gloomy suspicion that this is the first referance in the new series to the "ship of light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seraphs_%28Battlestar_Galactica%29)."

Watch the scene in question in slow motion. There is something that looks like an eject and you can see the raider appear in the clouds at least once during that part of the scene.

So, care to share the relevant parts of Buddhist philosophy?

The catch isn't that you see the Raider, it's that you see it from Apollo's cockpit.  When he said "I have a visual" my first thought was that he was reporting that he'd seen the Cylon, not Kara.  That means it's not just in her head; there almost certainly was a Raider flying about in the clouds.

I still think that she'll wake up in a tank.  I don't think it's ever been said that the res ship has to have a blueprint of the model in question in order to res one.

Think about it: 
Leoben said "now you get to find out what lies between life and death" or something to that effect.
This was a gas giant or something, and her helmet was cracked.  She could survive being ejected and caught by a raider?  That would be a stretch.
D'anna saw someone and said "I had no idea, I'm so sorry"... I'm thinking we know who this was now.


Speaking of D'anna, I think some rogue model (possibly Caprica Six) will unbox at least one copy of her.  Discuss.

Another thing to bring up, D'anna was killing herself over and over in an attempt to see the Five before she rezzed. Possibly this is Kara starting on the same kind of journey?

Buddhists believe that everyone is reincarnated after they die each time, inheriting the "sins" of the prior life. The state of living is suffering (i.e. Dharma). The highest state of existence is reaching a state in which this doesn't happen, i.e. Nirvana or nothingness.  My theory is that Cylons actually hate the whole resurrection business and want to be able to "accept death". This is what is leading to the quest for normal birth (which would, ipso facto, lead to normal death). Almost all of the statements made by Cylon dude last night were highly related to the quest for Nirvana. Also, the concentric circle thing was basically a Budhist mandala.

All that may be, but I don't quite buy it.   It's interesting that it can be taken that way.

But that would essentially mean that the whole series has a Buddhist axe to grind, since it's relied heavily on the ability of the Cylons to return to life from the beginning.  If so, it's the subtlest axe I ever had applied to me.

Also, I heard on the podcast that the mandala - which was first seen in Kara's apartment on New Caprica - was actually drawn by the actress herself for some reason (she asked to have it hung on the wall).  Later, they had the idea of the supernova and the eye of Jupiter, and it all fit.  You can see the mandala in one of the early episodes, where she goes back for the Arrow of Apollo.

I dont' see it as an axe to grind at all. This show borrows theology from all over the place. Just seems to fit the discussion in last night's ep and other things mentioned throughout the rest of the series.

Did anyone else find the foreshadowing of her death extremely heavy-handed?

Seriously, I hope that she stays dead and is NOT one of the fab five.

Otherwise, for me, this was pretty much a shark jump.  I shudder to think of the episode where they bring her back and explain all the loose ends.  Sounds painful to watch.

They haven't been foreshadowing her death; they've been foreshadowing her as doing something "special".  If anything they've gone to great lengths, short of simply stating it, that she is not dead.  Her special thing was one of the big metaplots for the season, so I'd be very surprised if they decided to just toss it out with her death.

Eh I see it as a 'you have to die to be reborn' motif.  She ejects from the Viper before it explodes and falls into the gas giant where she goes all 2001 and meets all the "HeadSixes, HeadBaltars, etc."  She will come back in Season 4 and guide them to Earf.

I'm glad she's gone.  Like the actress, but the character just got on my nerves and seemed to disrupt the show. 

Hmm just had an idea.  What if the Headfolks are the Fab Five cylons?  Maybe they are pushing Cylons and Humanity together to forge a new race at Earth?  Like they are?  "This has happened before."

Maybe the Headfolks are the 13th Tribe who have come to lead the others to Earf? 

Plot-wise, it pushed the limits of my credulity. Acting-wise, it was one of the best I can recall. The scene of Lee and Kara sitting together after she doesn't get in the cockpit communicated more through facial expression that Kiefer Sutherland has in his entire career.

Here's a link to a radio interview with Katee Sackhoff aka Starbuck

http://www.cortandfatboy.com/index.php?id=489 (http://www.cortandfatboy.com/index.php?id=489)

In it she says Starbuck is dead to her knowledge and that she's doing a pilot for NBC so might not be available even if they want to bring her back.

Lee said that he didn't see a chute.  I think she's dead.  Whether she stays that way is another question.

I say it's a magical gas giant that doesn't have extreme pressures towards the core, but rather a somewhat desolate class M planet. Kara crashes on it along with the raider she was chasing. After she rebuilds the Cylon, they become good friends and spend long days pretending to play Parcheesi, wondering if they will ever be rescued. Then another raider shows up, but the rebuilt Cylon, now named Cy, goes against his programming and saves Kara from the other Cylons, but gets shot and has a dramatic death scene in Kara's arms...

Yea, that's what's gonna happen.

I loved that episode as a kid.

They need more old-west, gunslinger Cylons.

On horseback, no less.

(http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:SP_D2JdPpmy5BM:http://www.dataventure.net/xenamoey_on_horse.jpg)

Well done.

Damn, I'm stupid.  I just got that...

Did I just read an Enemy Mine reference?

Almost, but not quite. I think that was an actual episode of the original series which was as horribly bad and unwatchable as Buck Rogers. 80's TV sci-fi FTL.

As of last night, I feel confident in declaring season 3 of Galactica the official:

(http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/4194/sharkdo5.gif)

The whole "I smell a change in the wind" thing at the end was, oh, fucking Heavy-Handed, sure.  I don't quite see how the episode was a shark-jumper though.   

Next week, however, has the potential to be just based on the teaser.  Of course, teasers are a horrible way to judge anything.

It was an actual episode, that aired after the series as a special. It was a rather similar plott to Enemy Mine.

No shitting on Buck Rogers.

Aside from about 2 episodes, the entire 3rd season has been shit.  Last night's episode was pretty good, but the whole time I watched it I couldn't help but feel like "I've seen this episode before".

Lee's quit the military and is on his father's shit list.  Again.
Tigh is off the wagon.  Again.
Helo is XO.  Again.
Roslin is dying.  Again.
Duwalla's on the out's with Lee.  Again.

And what the fuck is up with them admitting to the public that there's a half-human/half-cylon baby, and NO ONE giving a shit?  All the humanism they try to paint with those filler eps, all those crazy-assed radicals doing stupid shit like considering Baltar a messiah and giving sanctuary to Six... and an abomination like a hybrid child isn't cause for a good ol' fashioned insurrection?  Wack.

QFT.

I wrote the whole season off after watching the boxing episode. Christ that was terrible.

Off hand the only good thing I can remember about this season was the episode where everyone escapes from New Caprica.

The first two series used human angst and cylon religio-babble to add depth and motivation, this one has primarily been about the angst and religio-babble, and without any obvious attempt to even attach the angst to the plot.


This one consistently annoys me.

Last time I looked, Helo was a raptor pilot with no significant command experience.

15 minutes after arriving on Galactica he's the XO.

What happened to fat-assertive-guy who was acting-XO when Adama had been shot and Tigh was fucking up as acting-commander?


Also, btw, the increasingly inevitable ending, to wit, 'everyone makes peace and lives forever in happy clappy land', sucks monkey balls. Not least because it's being built up with random Cylon religio-babble which has no impact on the plot, and which isn't being driven by the plot, it's just masturbatory sci-fi bullshit. When it drives genuine conflict (like for about 5 minutes on new caprica, or the episode with the disease) then fair enough. But honestly, how many of those shitty scenes with the woman in the bathtub going all minorty report at Baltar did we really need? (espeicially when Head-Six and Head-Baltar were much better plot devices)

The D'Anna/Caprica/Baltar triangle, seriously, who gave a fuck?

And for fucks sake, on the human side pointless angst has gone beyond a joke. Some of the lead characters need to be just a little bit sympathetic once in a while.


That said, I don't think this is broken beyond repair. I missed a bunch of episodes from series 2 first time around, and I've just been catching them on DVD, watching series 2 again is bizzare, it reminds you that this can be a really good show.

I think it is the same shit they have always been doing. It just the spell doesn't hold us anymore.

The only one of those things that bugs me is the first; those two need to fucking get their heads screwed on straight.  He loves Lee when Lee does what he wants, hates him when he doesn't.  Resolve it already.

Tigh fits; he's always off the wagon.  He just sometimes needs shoved in a corner for a bit.  Helo as XO has more to do with using regular actors for the role.  Lee is the only other option, and he screwed that up.  Roslin.. well, this answers a previous question; we thought a dying leader was supposed to lead them, per prophecy.  Now she's dying again.  It was either that, or get a new leader.  Lee's love life is a minor thing too.  I mostly ignore it, because they haven't done anything *at all* with that thread yet.

What bothered me about this is that it took the plot nowhere.  I'm interested in seeing what they do with Baltar, but not over three episodes.  I would've been more interested in seeing how an interrogation of Six went.  Or head six/head baltar.  The other thing is that because they're spending so much time on Human-Human drama, it gives the sense that the last few thousand members of humanity really can't stop killing themselves and focus on the real threat.  Yes, I get it that this is a large metaplot, but enough.  Sometimes, in crisis, people really DO pull themselves up by the bootstrapts and quit bitching long enough to be productive.


Yeah, I guess that means someone leaked it a while back?  Even if Boomer had the kid, I still would've figured that this would've been classified info.  "Helo, where'd you get the kid?"  "Parents died, we adopted".  So now the fleet knows that baby-juice can ward off disease?  And with medicinal shortages all over?  

I don't think Roslin is *the* dying leader. I still suspect that it's actually baltar. Not least because the person leading both races to Earth has mostly been Baltar.

Six will probably be estranged from the cylons, then we'll end up with Baltar/Six achieving redemption by finally making peace between cylon and human, and finding earth, and dying in the process.  :sad_panda:


I disagree. I was watching the Cylons-boarding-party-on-Galactica episode from the beginning of series 2 last night. Desperate running about shooting stuff, properly menacing Cylons, and managable levels of angst and political conflict adding tension rather than sucking the life out of the show.

Also, no stupid epsiode long boxing tournaments.

It should have been a major plot point is what pisses me off.  I could buy it being leaked, but then you MUST show some repercussions from it in the show.  They should have devoted an episode to it, instead of it being a throw-away comment during The Trial of the Century.  Maybe they could have fit it in between the episode about Lee's love life, and the episode about Lee's love life.  Shit, they had a whole episode about Sagittaron racism, but we get nada about a half-cylon baby?  RAGE.

The characters are just way way too goddamn retarded.  The manic-depressive Adama family, people somehow getting the impression that major fuckup Baltar has divine powers, a courtroom defense with no more strategy to it than trying to attack the credibility of the witnesses, casually mentioning that humans and cyclons can crossbreed, any situation in which a sane person would go one way, the people on the show picked the exact opposite direction.

btw, the way they should resolve the final 5 thing, is to have Al Quantum-Leap turn around in the middle of some facile boxing tournament, or long discussion about Lee's love life and say...

"You guys are fucking idiots. Look, Centurion - one, Raider - two, Heavy Raider - three, Base Ship Hybrid - four, Resurrection Ship Hybrid - five. There. Five. Sheesh, you'd think walking toasters would learn to count for fuck's sake."

But until that day, they should stop calling them the 'final 5'. If it were 2 left then fine, you can have a 'final 2'. But you don't call 5 out of 12 the final anything. There's only 7 of you so far, 5 more is almost as many again, it's the 'other' 5 at best.

That's precisely why I prefer to refer to them as the "Fab 5".  I think it has the appropriate amount of mockery in it.

Yeah, season 3 has kinda..bit..overall.  Escape from New Caprica was awesome, but only bits and pieces since then have been worth watching.

But at least Starbuck is dead.  That made me happy :D

Starbuck is entirely not dead.  Mark my words, that nebula she got blowed up in is going to wind up being the home of the godlike beings of the Galactica mythos, who zapped her off to safety.  Shit will hit the fans, big battle, and it'll be broken up by the arrival of these Vorlon-esque guys with Starbuck in tow.

Alternately, she's a Cylon and wakes up in the slime bathtub.

She was rescued by Count Iblis and the Eastern Alliance imo.

I think the shark-jumping on BSG was actually the Starbuck "death" episode. It was a good episode, but seemed a needless death. This season has certainly had some water-treading moments, pretty much all downhill after that fantastic Rescue from New Caprica episode, but that was the pinnacle. After that, where do you go? It feels like all the major characters are being shuffled around and moved out of their normal positions of prominence either so we can 1) see how the characters react in unfamiliar situations or 2) to open up places for BSG the Next Generation. Only the Next Gen isn't as compelling. Helo is easily led, which based on Tigh being led by his dick before Ellen's death, he's perfect for the role. But who is going to be CAG? Hot Dog? Racetrack? There are no more interesting pilots and fucking Lee has been shitting the bed since he lost the weight. The whole love triangle thing went nowwhere.

I'm still watching, because I hope the season finale will give us some good pewpew ahhhhh fuck my leg moments. I also really dig Baltar's lawyer character, mainly because that actor is good with shitty angsty cryptic lines. But fuck, get on with it. Get back to the Cylons and the 5, get back to the war.

People dog on Lost for not revealing some of the mystery, but BSG is starting to really string some mysteries out way too long. Why has no one dissected any of the clone Cylons to see just how they are created and what makes them tick? I mean someone who isn't a racist or a bag of raging bearded hormones. Why aren't the humans tapping little hybrid baby for anitbodies like it's a fucking meatkeg?

Yeah, the lawyer guy is awesome.  He's about the only thing that's made the trial process bearable at all, and I'd just assume he become a regular on the show.  He just needs to find something to do besides trials.  No more trials please.

> The door code to Romo Lampkin's temporary quarters on Galactica is 1234.
Security is tight on the Galactica.

1234?  That's the kind of code a moron would have on their luggage!

He is a lawyer, so what else, apart from maybe drawing up wills could he be useful for in the BSG world?  Maybe running for President eventually?

First, we put him in a fat suit...

You might be onto something. The fat suit was the first incident I can think of where the gimmick overtook the story. "Lets put Lee in a Fat suit, we could make a story out of it". "Lets try that quadrangle of love, we could milk a story out of it". "Lets kill Starbuck, that would really shock the people". I call the Fat suit the shark moment, the story just still had enough momentum to carry on for a few episodes. The momentum is gone now and the characters are not naturally evolved anymore. They feel like what they are. Vessels to carry the story they want to be told. Whereas in the beginning you bought that the characters act like they do because of what they were shown to be like.

I'm still enjoying the show.  I don't know what you guys are on about.

Also: http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=11755 (http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=11755)

edit:clarity

A fourth season, with a full 22-episode order and a 2-hour movie. I smell cashing in.

Let's just hope season 4 goes better places than season 3 has since the escape from New Caprica.

I still enjoy it; I've just seen a drop in quality over the last half of season 3.

It was revealed a while back that Starbuck was leaving the series to do a pilot for something else. I just get the impression they had a plan on where to go with her character, but ran out of time and just did the death episdoe the way they did as a bail out. I mean really, it did absolutely nothing to satisfy all the crypticism about her having a destiny, yet it was enough of a "mysterious death" to make it seem like they can revist it.

My guess is that they hope we all forget about the dangling plotline and they can just shove it aside to be forgotten when the series ends. The law of good tv says the show has to end very soon, as do all other shows I enjoy.

My question is...Cylon Sharon is married, as is Callie.  What hot woman will be having random sex?  (NOTE: Callie isn't that hot, just listed her because she's like the only other young female crewperson who gets any airtime). 

I could go for some hot Seelix/Racetrack action...

There are many copies.

Not gonna argue, the show has slipped.  But I've liked most of the eps regardless, just wish they would get a move on with the trial and the main plotlines.  Just doesn't seem as packed in as 1st and 2nd seasons were.

Random thoughts...
James Callis as Baltar is tremendous and the writing for him is great.
Lee is still a weak character to me, he needs to save the fleet again ala "Hand of God" to get back macho points.
Starbuck will be back, bet my last cubit on it.
Adama is totally tapping Presidental ass.
Love how the minor characters (Seelix) gradually get their own stories.   
I like Sam, saw him in uniform, is he gonna be a Viper pilot or join the military? 
Dualla leaving Lee after all they've been through?  Complete crap storyline there, she has the hots for Adama man-load.

She should have ended up with Billy anyway. I never quite understood the romance between her and Adama.

Seemed like the whole co-worker, being stuck together out in space on a mostly abandoned ship relationship got the best of them.  Starbuck was well out of sight/mind for Lee, and Dualla just seems to get the hots for whomever she's spending any time with.

It feels fake since we went from Billy dying towards the end of the second season to being married at the start of the third.  We had no development to understand why they're together and from day one it's been shown they have major troubles.  Why should we care about their relationship?

I'm actually in such complete agreement with Haemish's entire post on 3/21 that there's almost no reason for this post.

Did they change writers? Or did they really not think the show was going to survive for a third season? They're in this death-spiral of soap-angst, typical fodder while the show transitions from the point it had now that the Producers realized they couldn't make that last forever.

The whole drawn-out trial thing is just stupid. People like Baltar. So have the guy escape, start a movement, whatever. Just stop this "our system works because otherwise we're Cylons" crap. It's been done to death since day one. His lawyer is awesome though, a shame he's wasted on the wrong side against a colorless suit. Adama is wasted. Starbucks' death was stupid, like when they killed Yar in ST:TNG. If she's planning on leaving the show, you know longer than it takes to film one fucking episode, so at least make it lead up to it.

Still has its moments, but these days I wait for the reviews from my co-workers before spinning up the DVR.

Finale:

What. The. Fuck.

Fuck me

Yeah, pretty much what I was yelling at the screen.

And my loony theory proved true? WTF, that never happens.

Sad. What happened to my show?

Wow that was messed UP!

I was right about some stuff (not gonna spoil), wrong about others.  It's funny I had a crazy idea that turned out to be true.
I didn't even believe it myself.

I've got some much to say but maybe I'll wait a couple of days so everyone can watch it.

Now that was some good TV.

Same here.  Some of my theories proved correct, but the show still came out of left field and surprised the shit out of me.  After the third act (final commercial break) I was literally pounding the floor shouting "what are they about to do to us???"

I feel so left out. We've only got to the point of the cylons arriving on New Caprica here in Aussieland.

Someone able to link to somewhere on what happened?

You don't really want to know, do you?  It was a hell of a surprise.  Better to not know.

Yeah. If only I'd stopped watching then.

So Bob Dylan's a Cylon. Who knew?

I agree with Roac - you're in for some good episodes yourself.

I thought the finale was tits. I loved Lee's soliloquy and the latter-half developments.

Yeah I thought Lee redeemed himself to me.  In a way I was upset at some of the characters fates, but man it had my head spinning!

I think folks are either gonna love this or hate it.

BSG has been officially approved for a full 22 episode 4th season by the way.

 

edited for spoiler possibility.

Apollo totally redeemed himself. The Old Man knew it too.

But seriously... Two Thousand Fucking Eight?

Liked Baltar.  Loved Tigh.  Hated the ending.

But the Dylan lyrics... total cheese.  The second they started doing it, I spaced out and imagined William Shattner doing a spoken-verse version of the song.

Were there clues as to the identity of the fifth?  I wasn't paying attention to who else in the episode would mysteriously stop and look around.  

EDIT: @ Evilelvis:  William Shatner as a Cylon would be total gold. 

Edit: Blah, I can't remember how to make tiny text.  Quote me to see who.

[size=0pt]Miss IveBeenToEarthAndIBroughtAMap, aka starbuck[/size]

I remember how pissed people were with the "jump forward" at the end of the last season, which ultimately set up one of the coolest episodes of sci-fi T.V. ever (the rescue) so I will put my faith in Moore.

What Lum said.  Also Lee finally did something cool in his own whiny way.  But in the end, and I know I've said this before, but this time I really mean it: I don't get it.

My wife says that they aren't, they just think they are.  I think I agree.  As for the song, we are both confused.

At least they have NINE MONTHS to write themselves out of this.

My take on the song is similar to the way the original series ended, with them getting a transmission of the Apollo 11 landing and no one there to see it. I have a feeling they're starting to hit Earth's radio wake.

Spoliage possibly below

Of course, where that puts Earth timeframewise is anyone's guess. All Along the Watchtower was released originally in '67. This version is obviously not that one, but something newer. That said, who knows how long it's been floating out there and exactly how far away they are from Earth. From the looks of the zoom-out, zoom-in, they're a spiral arm over. Of course I could be wrong.

Just pulling a year out of my hat... 1980?

(http://www.reconnections.net/Contact%20Dad.jpg)
In the 4th season, they run into this guy.

Flying motorcycles!

Surlyboi, not everyone uses the black background, fyi :P 

Well, they should  :-P

Well, the obvious guess, and what I assumed, was that the person who had the last line in the episode = five.

Lum - you are brilliantly witty as always.

Personally, I loved it. Third act completely caught me off guard, everything seemed to be leading to a rather lack luster ending, but damn did they pull some fucked up shit out.

I decided to watch Battlestar's finale first and then Rome second. I picked the wrong order I think. Mind you, my PVR cust Rome off at the one hour mark, and it seems there was a bit more to go, so I'll need to get filled in on the closing details.

Wait just a goddamn second, that doesn't make sense.  The alleged fifth of the final five had a childhood.  And not a fake one, but one that other people had witnessed.  Cylons don't grow up, they get popped out as adults.  As for the other four, on top of it making no sense that Bob Dylan songs were involved, age becomes a weird factor for one.  The Cylons haven't shown any inclination towards aging; they seem to be fairly fixed at the 'age' of their design, but there would've been no way to get around arousing suspicion in that case.

I don't buy who y'all are speaking of for the 5th.  There was another hint in the episode, much earlier.  That's who I was betting on.

As for "Watchtower,"  I always think of Hendrix, not Dylan.  Most folks do, I'd wager... even Dylan.  Besides, that'd make the Cylons much more PC... the token black Cylon!  :-D

I was flipping through the web Q&A on the scifi website, and two of the ones with Grace (Boomer) stuck out.  One, she flat out denied the idea that Cylons had only been infiltrating the colonies for "a few years" (this was in response to a Q about who couldn't be a Cylon because of that rule).  It seems that what we think the rules are, aren't the rules.  The other one was where she let slip that Kara was possibly a Cylon.  She said it so quick, covered it up, and was vague enough that I don't think I'd have picked up on it if I'd seen the interview before Maelstorm, but I think that's where she was going with her answer. 

There's already a black Cylon - the doctor guy from "The Farm".  Speaking of the farm, they (the Cylons) were certainly barking up the wrong tree in that one.

Well, maybe.  I mean, we don't know for sure. 

So far, any scenario I have come up with in which those four are not Cylons is just batshit insane.  However, one is that the Final Five are not actually Cylons.  I will fill in the rest after I find some drugs.  The notion that the known fleshies don't have any idea who those guys are means that they really could be anything.  I had assumed prototypical models, but now I'm remembering the Data/Lore nuttiness in ST:TNG and thinking those five could be something else entirely.

As for the end of the end, I'm not convinced.  Yeah, there's the dradis blip... I don't know.  It's fucked up.  Lucy has some splainin to do.

You guys are overlooking the fact that there is an obvious schism in the cylons as the "seven" don't even know who the "five" are. Thus trying to apply the same "rules" doesn't do any good.  My guess is that the 5 are evolved as far away from the 7 as the 7 are evolved away from the mech units. Picking up on my earlier theme, I would bet they don't resurect into copies, but instead resurect into individual people through spiritual awakening and thus the "five" are more metaphysical than corporeal and can thus be far more than just five people. 


Or, I'm talking out of my ass.

maybe Earth is the Cylon homeworld?  heard it here f1rst!

If the show still gave a crap about internal consistency and logical mysteries, then I'd say a character who had a visceral reaction just before the Mysterious Power Outage would be a strong clue. But hell, man, Bob Dylan. Why bother.

Hey, it could have been worse!  Just imagine if the Cylon radio tuners were picking up Britney Spears instead of Dylan.  Just imagine Tigh humming along to 'Oops, I did it again'.

That's why I mentioned what I did about not knowing for sure.  I wonder if this character isn't the last Cylon.  I doubt it, because it seems out of place for the background but.... *shrug*.  I figure this one or the other (obvious) cannidate.

Oh, for those interested - MAJOR SPOILERS - read this link (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07085/770732-352.stm).  Ron Moore answers some questions about this episode.  

For once I watched this when it aired rather than the week after so I'm not dodging spoilers. Count me as having loved the episode. Though the courtroom annoyed me. (I believe there's an unsettled motion for mistrial?)

I've joined the 7 and 5 are two different cylon civilizations club and I'm with Soln, just substitute "a" for "the"

keke

This would seem to rule out errr..the suspect from the final scene. Do we know for certain this character had a childhood? Did any major character know this person before they were in the fleet?

We saw her hallucinate her childhood self in the cockpit of her viper in her "final" episode.  But that could have been implanted memories.  But I have another theory, which I'll expound upon shortly.

Yes, and it annoyed me as well.

Lee refused to tesify about what Admiral Adama said so there were no grounds supporting the motion. They could have said "motion denied" but after his testimony there wasn't really any need for it.

WHAT SYSTEM!? YA'LL'S GOTS TA BE FLEXIBLE, MANG!

I took that as a limp attempt at deux ex machina to end the trial.  A courtroom version of jumping into New Caprica's atmosphere, if you will.  Can't say I'm sorry to see the trial plot go, I kept imagining Colin Baker on the stand, episode after episode.

In regards to Jayce:

That is why I asked if anyone currently on the show knew this person as a child. We've seen fake memories before.

Well, based on the history presented already about some of the characters that were revealed as Cylons, we know that at least one of them has been around for at least 20 years in the presence of other humans, and has visibly aged in that time frame. I can't think of any references to anyone knowing any of the revealed characters as children though.

I don't think they have ever actually said if the 7 Cylons visibly age or not, but I had assumed they don't noticlibly, since the clones all appear the same age. I will have to assume that the original five do age however. Which is plausible given that they are fundimentally different from the 7.

Well, in case you were still trying to rack your brain over whether or not Bob Dylan was a Cylon, you can stop. From the soundtrack composer's website (http://www.bearmccreary.com/html/blog/blogmain.htm):


Ooookay then. So, obviously Ron Moore believes we can suspend somewhat more belief than is credible. Suspend disbelief that the denizens of the Colonies have similar clothing, oddly familiar laptop computers, the same written language... these things we are trained to suspend disbelief in with shows set in alien cultures, because otherwise it's a lot of work to try to figure out totally alien variants (and get in the way of storytelling). But expecting us to just take a song that's a key part of the plot, and that's something most of the audience is familiar with already, and just expect us to buy that it's a part of that other universe... oooookay then, Wachowskis, you go!

Well, obviously they age until they remort as a newer model

Slightly off topic, but have they ever explained why books/paper in BSG have no corners?

Wow.  I think I'll just give up watching where I am.

Sigh.

No, not even Bob fucking Dylan. Not even Jimi Hendrix, the only fucking version of that song that should ever be played, anywhere, ever. No, we get some shittastic technoindustriafag version of one of the greatest guitar songs ever. I knew what the lyrics were when the "Joker said to the thief" line came on, and groaned audibly.

WHAT... THE... FUCK???

The 5th Cylon is either Starbuck or Rosslyn.

But the other 4... is super splenderifically retarded. Tigh has been serving for 40 FUCKING YEARS. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the first Cylon War only 20-30 years ago? Meaning there were skin jobs walking around who didn't reveal themselves before? WHY? For fuck's sake, WHY? Chief has fathered a child, yet none of the Cylons have shown the slightest interest in the child, and it seems like the Cylons know the hybrids when they see them. Also, if skin jobs can FATHER children, why aren't they just out abducting all the wimmenz and fathering little hybrids like mad.

The show stopped making sense just before Starbuck's death. It's REALLY not making sense now.

You know, I'd almost have believed that Tigh had been programmed on New Caprica to think he was a Cylon but he really isn't. But the other 3 weren't in captivity like he was. They weren't held for questioning as far as we know. So again, either it's a huge and illogical red herring, or it's a hugely illogical plot device meant to shock.

I'll continue watching into the fourth season, but my finger will be on the delete button. Season 2's year ahead jump was ballsy, and it worked, but it didn't insult the intelligence of those watching. It didn't try to pull feints and parries, and it kept the character's acting consistently. This one made me feel cockslapped with the flaccid wang of a set of desperately blocked writers.

So he says.  He hasn't been under Adama's command for that long, either. 


So his wife says.


Because they didn't know they were skinjobs, same as Boomer didn't know for a good while.  For that matter, the other 7 Cylons didn't know who they were either, so you know that someone else is pulling the strings of all the Cylons.

I was trying to think what all these people had in common:

1) Connected to people of importance: Admiral Adama, the President, and Starbuck. Though I'm not sure how Chief fits in
2) All on New Caprica
3) At least 3 of them were in the resistance. I don't know if what's her name was involved or not.

I don't know. It seems really weird to me and I hope they explain it. Also, I'm starting to think Roslyn is either insane or a cylon herself. Probably both. The dream sharing thing is...different.

He's been serving long enough that they are best friends. I ain't buying it without some serious serious explanation that doesn't sound as half-assed as a crappy Dylan song.


I don't mind this grand mastermind thing. Despite all the talk of religion and God, I think confirming the actual existence of divine/spiritual/higher beings in this universe would actually drain the story of a lot of its heart. It's all been about competing world views and belief systems clashing, with neither side being in the right completely. Now if suddenly there is a higher power pulling strings, wouldn't that higher power have to be "right?" Or very very prickish?

Connected to Galactica, which may be part mecha Cylon itself.


Tori, and yes she was in the resistance.


Presumably the dream sharing thing is because of the Kamala extract, or because Roslin is a Cylon or both.

I read an interview with Moore where he states that they in fact ARE Cylons - no tricks.  Whether that lines up with the history, I don't really know; I guess I haven't paid enough attention.  From memory, humans had no contact with Cylons for 50 years before the series started.  They could have dreamed up skinjobs shortly before that time, and Tigh is about 60 yrs old? I would have thought 50, but if he's been serving for 40 years, 60 makes more sense.

None of the skinjobs seemed to know who the other five were besides Cavil.  Six said "we don't talk about them" to Gaius.

It's been established that the missing ingredient for Cylons and humans to reproduce is love, which is why Sharon got pregnant.  That makes sense with Callie and Tyrol.  It does throw another light onto Tyrol and Sharon's old relationship though, eh?

edit: math

What makes you think Cavil knows?

The 5 wanted to live peacefully with the humans. The 7 forgot them purposely so they would treat them 5 the same as all humans.

Conservation.  They take all the little corners they cut off and recycle them into new sheets of cornerless paper.

No, there hasn't been an actual explanation other than the implied 'They're not from Earth!' so mine is as good a reason as any.

I'm 3/4 of the way through season 2, and that interview and what I've read here really makes me want to quit watching right now.  

Tigh being a Cylon?  To quote "That's just fucking clownshoes stupid".  Seriously.  The same for Chief.  

As for my current point in the series, the whole Baltar talking to 'imaginary' #6 is really getting old.  It at first was humorous, a gimmick.  Now, it's just fucking stupid.  Wouldn't someone of power have noticed him talking to himself, and at the very least had his sanity questioned?  I'm hoping all the delusions lead somewhere, but I have feeling it won't.  I liked Baltar at first, now I cringe everytime I see him on the screen.

Moore also stated Starbuck is dead and won't be back for Season 4. Now she seems to be alive and is confirmed for being part of the cast in Season 4.

Which means this could be more B.S. I kind of hope so because the more I think about it, the less I like at least two of these characters as Cylons. (tigh and the chief). I don't care enough about Anders or Tori for it to matter.

On the paper thing, I read somewhere that it is an inside joke with the prop people who are on such a tight budget that they decided they literally had to "cut corners".

Or because she had a Cylon transfusion. It would be a handwave, but less so than Bob Dylan.

I could buy the transfusion thing.

I guessed a while back that Roslyn, Baltar, Starbuck, and the Chief were all Cylons due to them all having inexplicable prophetic/significant visions.  I guess I got half of those right, assuming that either Roslyn or Starbuck is the fifth. 

Tigh, Sam, and Tori are just right the fuck outta left field though.   :-P  And if my other guesses aren't really Cylons, I'm want to know where their visions come from.

Sam I can kind of see some groundwork for - he was drawn to Kara, he survived on New Caprica under insane odds, things like that. It probably wasn't meant to be groundwork for the fact that he's a Cylon when it was written, but it works.

I am a little worried that this is all heading towards a Data's Dad type scenario though. I'd actually much prefer that it end up being a giant brain in a vat or something. Just please, not God.

Because he stated as such in one episode (I forget which).  He also boxed D'anna for finding out.


In one of the first podcasts, Moore read a fanmail that asked that.  He said "It is something very deep and intriguing, not just a design conceit someone came up with when we were doing initial prop design... no, not at all".

Moore said the "Starbuck we know is dead".  That all but says that she isn't dead-dead, but something radical occured.  The actress also didn't say that she was dead in her interviews, only that she was surprised about it all, and in the dark about what they're going to do (...because season 4 wasn't written).  They were purposely trying to mislead but didn't outright lie.

You heard it here first:  This goes all Sixth Sense and EVERYBODY is a Cylon!  None of the real humans survived, Galactica and its crew were purposefully segregated (and all knowledge on both sides was erased) to give the Cyclons tactical practice and an "enemy" to draw them together. 

I've been watching BSG on www.utvpc.com, but unfortunately, it doesn't have all of season 3 on it.  Is there anywhere else online to catch it?

PM me if you don't feel comfortable posting it here.

Heh.. I was in the middle of bitching at my wife about how Chief had a kid, and this makes Hera absolutly un-fucking-special and what kind of bullshit is it that they just toss this out there to fuck up THAT whole storyline too, when she chirped up with, "What makes you so certain he's the father?"

I stared at her a moment, blinked, and in the back of my head said "I need to take a REAL close look at my kids..."    Yay cuckholding!

Well I was right about Starbuck leading them to Earth.  Has anyone else considered that SHE is the 'arrow of Apollo'?  She will lead Apollo and thus the fleet to Earth.

I thought Tigh was a cylon when he lost his eye.  One eye=cylon.  Then I said 'thats silly, Tigh is too much of a bastard to be anything but human.' 

I'm sorta disappointed he and Tirol are cylons, it seems to me Moore loves to do the SHOCKING REVEAL and figure out how it works later.

I also think the Final Five may be Cylons, but they are also the Guardians of Humanity.  Think about where they all fit in, on the right hand side of humans in charge, even Rosilyn to the Prez.  Anders collected the remainder of humans on Caprica, etc.  Plus they all were very active in the Resistance. 

So the five are more independent of the seven cylon models.  The seven are 'upgrades' and thus have a sorta hive mind where the  five are free thinkers and thus heretics of GODS PLAN. 

So after watching the rerun tonight, the zoom-in/zoom-out puts them extremely close to earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_nebula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_nebula)
And the closest nebula is 650ly to Earth and looks like our target.  Once they get out this mess, they are a stones throw from Earth.  Doesn't look like they are going to drag this out like Stargate.

About "All along the Watchtower":

It's not that uncommon a technique.  You want to show your characters as confused, on the verge of breakdown, disconnected; and get the audience to feel the same thing?  Throw in a completely off the wall non-sequitar, something that doesn't make any sense with the story or setting so far.  Get the audience confused and going "WTF? how does this connect?" and it helps sell both the actors performance and the change in the story.  

Off the top of my head,  the only example that comes directly to mind is the Coen's "The Man Who Wasn't There".  It's a 50's period piece,  about a guy with no connection to what's going on in his life who unwittingly gets involved in blackmail schemes and murder.  A standard Coen type movie.  

Towards the end,  they have the main character witness a UFO come down and zoom over him while he shows no reaction at all.  Completely out of left field.  Is it all of a sudden a scifi movie?  Is this going anywhere?  What just happened?

It breaks your connection to the plot,  leaves you disassociated from what's happening,  and puts you in the same state of mind the character is experiencing.  It also breaks through the preconceptions you have about the characters.

"The Way of the Gun" sort of does this with the beginning scene outside the club,  where the protagonists get the shit beaten out of them.  Also,  the bit with the sperm donation dialogue.  It's trying to break us out of normal preconceptions about what action movie/heist movie protagonists should be.

"All Along the Watchtower" is meant to confuse you,  throw you off the story and plot,  and make you feel what the characters are feeling.  It also helps sell the scene where the characters come to the realization they're Cylons.  Especially when you're asking four actors to pull it off,  and it's already been done with setup earlier in the series.

When I realized what song it was,  I had a laughing fit.  It really is a brillant mindfuck.

Finally watched the finale. I wasn't impressed, and I went in with low expectations per this thread. Lee's speech was arduous and inappropriate in that setting. Though it was a good message, it's been said before when everyone was pardoned. I did like though that both he and the lawyer ditched Baltar after the trial though. I was hoping for a Lee Harvey Oswald moment when Baltar was carrying his stuff in the hallway during the power outage.

Question: if you're leading the last of known humanity into unchartered space, why do you jump the entire freaking fleet into a nebula without sending a scout out first? I'd think one Raptor losing power out there would be a bit safer than everyone doing so.

The whole Tigh/everyone being Cylons thing just felt gimmicky. It substantiates something  I've been thinking for awhile. Somewhere during this season they found out they had 22 more episodes to do. So they had to stretch out everything in order to leverage that opportunity. So they have all this feel-good crap character development, no Cylons for weeks, minor love affair stuff. And being BSG, they've programmed the audience to expect surprise cliffhangars, though after the Rescue it's pretty hard to top.

Hence, Tigh/everyone is not some huge plot development, but a gimmick to prompt the next season. And even while supposedly that is the last season, if the show makes enough cash for sci-fi, who knows?

I hate when business messes with groundbreaking creativity. BSG just got MMO'd.

They certainly succeeded in surprising the fuck out of me. Still not sure if this is a great thing or not.

I'm not too upset by the Cylon reveal, even if it ends up being tricky explaining it exactly I thought it was quite fitting to discover that Tigh was a Cylon. He's a hard assed bastard that's entirely invested with his position, the only thing that really made Tigh seem like a human rather than a military officer was Ellen and he blew her brains out for giving aid to the enemy. Tigh seems more hellbent at doing his job than most of the Cylons do.

I kinda agree with the argument that they extended this season with filler episodes though. It just felt like a lot of episodes really lacked any urgency, hell any relevance to the main plot. They could have happened in any of the three seasons with a few alterations except for Baltar's trial and even that felt dragged out and ultimately pointless. Basically there's been a lot of stuff going on which has had zero impact on the plot and just end up with a return to status quo, the whole Kara/Lee affair ended up with everyone deciding that they prefer the relationships they're in? A bit of that kind of stuff is great for developing the characters but I felt there was simply too much of it. Hopefully they'll decide to finish it next season and give us a nice steady plot advancement rather than dilly dally and hit us with a big reveal at the end.

I don't get the dislike for this episode.  IMO, it was one of the best (top ten at least).  I disliked the one before it, and if it missed my bottom ten that's only because so many others in 3.5 were in contest for slots.  

The fleet had damn good reasons to hate Baltar, as did the President.  Adama never liked the son of a bitch, and to paraphras him, Baltar is far from innocent.  Even by screwed-up-90210-Galactica standards.  If they had not done anything about Baltar, the lingering question would have been, why not?  My critique would be that they did a poor job of dealing with it (the trial).  The whole motiong to get Lee on the stand was goofy, but his speach was spot on.  He was a spotlight on all the screwed up mindgames people were playing on themselves and each other.  He was the character speaking what everyone in the audiance was thinking.  

As for Starbuck, they've been leading up to this (or something close to it) all season.  Something big and drastic was going to happen to her that was going to move the plot forward, it was just a question of what.  Same thing with the President's cancer; you knew it, or something to replace it, was going to return.   I also like Johny's take on the music bit, and I liked the use of it as a plot device.  Who cares about the remake of the song; I'm not going to play it on an mp3 player, and it's good enough to listen to and still convey "this is alien music".  It did what it was supposed to do.

The big thing was the reveal of four of the final five, and I loved the picks.  I started to suspect something was up in the first part, was fairly sold at the start of the second part, but it was still hard to believe and hit me in the gut when it was finalized at the end.  I think it's great that Tigh is one of them; his is going to be the best to watch the fallout of, I think.  He's also one of my favorite actors on the show, and I'm looking forward to his character being even more screwed up in the head than he's been already.

The whole backstretch was working up to this trial and it was really disappointing.  They could have skipped to the radio thing a month ago and spent a month covering the new Cylons and some of the social issues before the nebula jump. I can except that not every episode can be action packed plot advancers, but half a season gone with very little to show for it, just pisses me off.

Yes, this season was the crappiest one. But I liked this episode, and I look forward to all the Tigh backstory. Michael Hogan will really hit that one out of the ballpark. I can totally buy him as a toasterhating badass who still functions despite the knowledge of being a Cylon. Because that man hated himself for some time now for other reasons. I'm looking forward to all the ways that man will be broken again and again and still come out at the other side still somewhat functioning.

My feeling is those four Cylons are obviously the "good" ones, regarding their usefullness to the Colonists. Right hand of the Admiral and the President, leader of the Union (and chief mechanic of the only defense vessel they have), de facto leader of resistance on Caprica and one of the New Caprica leaders (in fact three of these four are very prominent and high profile resistance leaders, and the fourth was in the resistance too). Hell, if they ever want the colonists wiped out I give those four two episodes to achieve that - if they are lazy and pace themself. They seem more like the protectors of humanity, defending the colonists from the other Cylon rabble.

Add another vote for this one being one of the best episodes, if it wasn't already painfully obvious that I loved this one.

Interesting take by Johnny Cee on the song.  IMO that was the weakest part of the show, but it didn't stretch my suspension of disbeleif too far.  They could have just as easily made a new song that sounded more alien, but whatever.

At the beginning of the season I remember thinking "I hope they don't save the world in every episode, because that will get reptitive".  Well, they didn't, and if they erred on the side of too many character development plotlines, I can live with that.  I don't need pew pew every episode.

While I will admit I was getting a little annoyed after three episodes in a row that felt "fillery", the fact was I still ran home to my PVR to watch them every Sunday, and still enjoyed them for what they were- even if I did want the story to advance more.

In otherwords, I still enjoyed the season. Sue me.

One little thing that stood out for me in the last episode. In retrospect, I loved how they had Tigh start on the line "there must be some way out of here". It just fit in with his mindset and situation so well, that the signifgance went right over me. It was done in almost a foreshadowing kind of way, and had a interesting impact when you looked back on it later.

The song was good.  It conveys themes of class struggle and war weariness that fit with the 3rd season.  My problem was that it overlapped with the final scene with Apollo.  Two conflicting sets of audio not cool.

Too much filler in Season 3.

I smell Lucas-revisionism.

Actually, I noticed when watching last night that it went earlier than that.  When he was talking to Adama about the music in the bulkheads, he made the offhand comment "There's just too much confusion".  It didn't at all seem out of place for a guy who might or might not be going slowly batshit.

When he said, "Said the Joker to the thief" I threw up a little in my mouth.

They really needed a couple more space battles this season. Or another raid on a fuel dump. Or the fuel manufacturing ship needs to blow up. They need more bad stuff happening to them. Season 1 & 2 were all about a bad situation getting worse.

Also. How come their uniforms and pants and shirts are not full of holes by now?

Why does anyone still have razor blades?

We'll see what's what next year.  If the Vorlons pop up in the story, Starbuck isn't the fifth, she got saved by them, and I gathered from people more into the show than I that the creator said he did mean to have that super-powerful third species involved in the show, just not the stupid 'Satan shows up to fuck with humans' plotline.  If no Vorlons, then she's the fifth.

And if she is the fifth, that whole secret is going to be blown real fast the instant they go back to Galactica, because you know the first words from everyones' mouths are gonna be, 'So, uh, Starbuck.  Great to see you back and all, but hey, didn't you explode a few thousand light-years from here?  Maybe you'd like to explain that?  In a manner that covers how we found you in a place full of Cylons?'

Yeah. 9 Months. Fuck this show, I won't care by then.

Starbuck was gripping the eject lever in some of the scenes.  Since she was chasing a raider, even if she was the only one to see it, she can claim it scooped her up after ejecting.

If she is the fifth though, encountering all her sisters in the surrounding fleet will be the giveaway.  (Same with the others.)

The Pegasus was able to manufacture new Vipers, so crafting razors and uniforms is probably somewhere within Galactica's capability.

Also, the BSG Freespace mod demo is out. It looks pretty sweet.

http://www.game-warden.com/forum/showpost.php?p=61591&postcount=1

But where did she get the new viper?

It was actually an old-style viper if my memory serves. I believe it has been stated a few times that the Cyclons captured a lot of equipment when they wiped out humanity.

Eh, I'm going w/ Head-Starbuck.

She always flew an old-style viper.  She didn't get upgraded to a shiny new one like daddy's boy did.

Head-Starbuck is intriguing.

The Cylons also have Raptors, as they established a while back (when they brought back Hera IIRC).

The Raptor they brought Hera back on is the same raptor Athena/Boomer took out when she ran over to the base star in the first place.

I didn't pay attention at the time.  Was there a call-sign printed on the side of her viper?

There could be several explainations depending upon how they decide to write it.  If my guess about which cylons were in those ships is correct, it was either a captured ship from the original war or one they fabricated/grew more recently for her.

I am going to rewatch the end to verify, but I seem to remember it was unusually clean.

Athena had Helo shoot her to make that trip.

(http://k53.pbase.com/o4/23/477723/1/53306480.crap.jpg)

D'OH. You're right about that. I must have made up the part where Athena steals a ship, because as of the season finale, it's apparently so easy to steal a goddamn ship, that a disgraced pariah son of the Admiral that everyone knows not only quit his commission but defended humanity's most hated man could waltz into the flight deck and take a ship in the middle of a huge fight.

It's a goddamn wonder humanity made it to the 3rd season.

They made it because the cylons wanted them to.

Um.

Tyrol made a ship from spit and baling wire.  A high tech stealth ship.  Is it such a stretch to think the cyclons can't put a raptor together ?


(also has anyone else noticed that the lead singer from the killers is just a young, thin version of the Chief ?  Strange.  He must be a cylon.)

Lee: I need a ship.
Guy: You're not an officer anymore.  Ya'know, regulations and all...
Lee: There's tons of Cylons out there looking to wipe everyone out, and I'm the best pilot here.  Your life, or your regulations?
Guy: *tosses the keys*

They should have played that scene. It wouldn't have made much sense, but better sense than what we got.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that "bonus scene" they showed at the end of episodes was a retarded thing to do? I mean, it isn't like having the bonus scene shown took the show over the 1 hour time frame, it fit right in. So why the fuck not just put it in the show where it's supposed to go? Oh right, to keep the punters watching the commercials after the show is over.

Fucking advertising.

Yes for the advertising motive, but it's also not really long enough to stand on its own.  At least, they haven't been so far.  Doesn't matter to me much though, since I'm staying on to watch Dresden (having likely mised the first run) anyway.

Why the hell would you want to watch Dresden?  That show is absolute shit compared to the books, and the books aren't reaching new heights in fiction to start with.  Although, in its defense, trying to condense a novel into an hour of TV is pretty much a lost cause from the get-go.

Because it comes on after Galactica.  That's really the only reason.  I admit to watching it, but I'm not going to defend it; it aspires to mediocrity.  Dresden is the best character on the show, and he is terribly flat, and the plot is very disjointed.  Reading the background on wiki helped put together what all is going on, but the background has been introduced in the show poorly.  The new Dr. Who is better than this.  Heroes is better than this.  But neither is showing on Sci-Fi Sunday evenings.  With Atlantis starting soon and Galactica on break for a year, I'll probably drop off watching it before long.

It makes me sad that a show with good, solid writing and well rounded characters like Blade wasn't renewed while a show like the Dresden Files gets to exist*.  The premise behind Dresden is interesting enough but the characters are one-dimensional and boring, the dialog is horrendous and the writing in general is just plain bad.

*Yes I know, different networks.  But still.

I don't think Dresden is that bad, but it really, REALLY could use someone better to put the script pieces together. I can tell there's a lot of character history and interaction we aren't getting, and lots of the continuity seems to be inconsistent from week to week. It definitely feels like it aspires to be a typical, cable, monster-of-the-week show, but I feel like it could be more than that.

Good foundation, needs more Raymond Chandler and less Peter Parker.

Maybe they ought to do what Dexter did on showtime. It took a book and turned it into a (short) season. The book was padded with some sideplots and side characters were more developed but it actually worked really well.

There is a ton of background.  If you watch the show, you really need to read the wiki stuff on it (or the books, although I haven't read them so can't comment on their quality).  There's a ton of stuff they could do with the show, and the background of the IP is done well enough that they could've headed in any number of directions.  But yeah, they decided to just do monster of the week.  Magic use isn't thought out well at all either, to the point that you can just fill in the blank with "deus ex" for pages of any script.  Neither do the same solutions work from week to week. 

But, it's still good enough to entertain me for an hour while I mess on the PC.  For now anyway.

The books aren't literary masterpieces of our generation by any means, but they are enjoyable reads.  And they do have characters who behave consistently (if not rationally) and a very clearly-defined scope of exactly what ol' Harry can do with magic, what the relationships between him and the other supernatural groups are, etc.  While in the show, he can just do whatever the hell he wants with magic, the other characters relationships with him change in every show, and many other things that show signs of very bad writing.

I think the object in Dresden is to keep it bland while you throw backstory at viewers,  and before you know it you want to watch it.  I had the same reaction to this as to SG1.  Bland away team stuff for a while,  and they snuck a storyline up on you.  Before you know it,  you're watching the reruns to see the marginal increases in story,  even though you expect standard away team type stuff.

It's interesting enough on a night of TV where nothing else is even remotely worth watching at the time.  HBO doesn't count,  since only a tiny minority of people subscribe to it,  and they subscribe to it for the purpose of watching their Rome or Deadwood or Sopranos or etc.

The problem with Firefly is they threw story at you in big bold letters,  and then dragged their feet on actually dealing with any storyline.  I watched the DVDs (aggressive pricing for the win),  and I was getting pissed at how little story was told when they made a big deal about STORY ARC being important.  What,  two episodes tops had any significant story progression?

It's the same thing dragging down BSG.  At this point,  most regular viewers are pissed when they don't get their dose of story/battle set piece and get yet another character based episode.


In my opinion,  Whedon's major problem isn't network execs it's his own pretensions and ego.  Firefly's schedule got fucked with after he started playing hardball on his other properties (the Buffy bidding war he started round the same time.)  And then he makes snarky comments in interviews.

That and the fact he likes to write waaaaay too many characters in the same smarmy, witticism laden manner.  He's really a high and low guy.  His high points are damn nice,  and his low points are guh.  (I'm looking at you "Heart of Gold",  or the fact that everyone on the ship pulls off one-liners,  or Mal going to wounded idealist well too often)

He's basically playing to his devotees at this point,  and not making any effort to branch out or bridge the distance with other viewers.

Blade had some real uneven character work.  Blade was not great.  The female protagonist was up and down.  And they jumped into freaky vampire politics way too soon.  If they had eased into it,  I think it would have gone alot better for them.

Having just watched through all three seasons over the past few weeks, I have to admit there are some things I'm confused by.  At the start of each show, where it talks about man creating cylons and there are many copies and all that, the last thing it says is "and they have a plan".  I can't for the life of me figure out what that plan is, and it doesn't seem like the cylons can either.  They act more like a kid who doesn't have any interest in a particular toy until they see some other kid playing with it.  They wipe out most of humanity and take over the 12 colonies.  The remaining humans say, "fuck this we're going to Earth".  So the cylons say "hey guys, we're leaving the colonies, and looking for another place to settle down, so we're heading to Earth".  What the fuck?

Then for a while Caprica Six and Boomer help convince the Cylons to try co-existing with the humans rather than wiping them out.  To that end they... follow them to New Caprica and oppress the fuck out of them and then wonder why the humans are fighting back?  Everything after the initial attack on the colonies has made the Cylons look like complete fucking bunglers with no idea of what the really want or how to get it.  If they wanted to go to Earth all along, they could have done it without ever needing to wipe out humanity.  Likewise if they wanted to find ways to crossbreed with humans  So what exactly is this plan that the beginning of every single episode ominously wants to remind me they have?

Well, there's a reason that 'Don't worry guys, I have a plan... just like the Cylons' has become a laugh-producing line.  The reason is that anyone who laughs is a giant nerd.  But aside from that reason, the Cylons don't have a plan; they're fucking around like a bunch of teenagers.  I mean, literally.  If you gave a fleet of warships and battle robots to teenagers, this is probably the same level of planning you'd get out of them.

I think they are refering to God's plan. I might be wrong. Also, the idea that the final 5 have the plan would make sense.


The purpose of that was....

1) Hamfisted Iraq allegory.
2) demonstrating that Cylons are like humans.

The Cylon political truism underlying most of the practical decisions on the (inital 7) Cylon body politic is that they believe, if left to their own devices, the human race will come back and wipe out the Cylons. The more practical Cylons want to find Earth for that reason, the spiritual like Cap 6 seem to believe that merging into the human race and hybrids is the way forward.

Cap 6 and Boomer wanted to coexist, the media guy and Al-from-quantum-leap wanted to keep a closer eye on the humans, Cylons have politics too.



btw, Galactica's producer came out and said it wasn't a head-starbuck at the end.

Given that vipers don't have ftl. Starbuck can only really have arrived with the Cylon fleet.

One possibility is that this is a final 5 faction fleet, who don't feel inclined to murder everyone.

But before they can reveal that, I rather hope that they plan to explore these guys knowing they are cylon WITHOUT murdering anyone or being forced to do anything crazy. Starbuck may just return to Galactica, and then rightly or wrongly be accused of being Cylon, while the Cylon fleet buggers off. That sets up potentially interesting Starbuck-Sam and Starbuck-Tigh stuff while everyone figures out what's what. All of this being watchable depends on Starbuck becoming a less irritating character ofc.

The only other solution I see is Starbuck having escaped from the Cylon fleet with some secret to disable or neutralise it - but that sounds too much like a series 1 solution. No doubt metaphysical nonsense will have to be involved these days.

I'm pretty sure the cylon fleet was that of the final five and Starbuck is with them because it was their raider which rescued her.

I too hope they explore the Final (5-1) a bit before showing us all the copies.  Or they will all be Final 5-Earth human hybrids so they can use random actors.

I really need to download the last few podcasts.

Are you sure vipers don't have FTL?  I'd swear I recall seeing them jump before.

I think the Raptors do but not the Vipers.  Hence why the Vipers always land back on Galactica before a jump is made.

The stealth viper had a FTL drive, but it was the only one.

Next season is final season.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2007/05/say_it_aint_fra.html

I'm thinking that's a good thing. There's some spinoff potential from the show, but it all depends on how much closure there is.

For me, ideal end would be they find Earth and find out there's no difference between Cylons and Humans, like they're just two different races of the same humanity or something.

My inner geek demands though that Galactica finds Earth, the Cylons are right behind, but Earth has way more advanced tech than both of them put together and pulverizes the Basestars. Truce ensues or something.

They should kill the ragtag fleet and then discover earth, which is us, and decide we are not technologically advanced enough to bother with,

Good. After this last season, they either have a lot of 'splainin' to do, or they need to put a bullet in it.

Fine by me.  I love the show.  But after all the thumb-twittling episodes this season, I'd rather them go straight to good stuff than try to fill 2 seasons.

Today's prediction: they find Earth, it is us, and we are covered up with that organism that kills Cylons.  Sam Beckett leaps out, the TARDIS dematerializes and then giant yellow spaceships move the planet aside to make room for a highway.

Plus, it turns out WE WERE THE GHOSTS THE WHOLE TIME. 

As long as Adama grows a beard and there are invisible flying motorcycles, I'll be satisfied.

(http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/4374/gaffyx1.gif)?

The series is definitely teetering on the edge of shark-jumpage but..still looking forward to the last season.  I'm in the "less woo-woo magicy more pew pew fights" camp but..the show was SO good in the first two season, gotta stick it out and see what happens.

I, also, fear flying motorcycles.


Oh and the throwback to earlier in the thread, love Firefly and hated to see how FOX treated it.  I don't mind them developing the main story line really slowly, as long as the lil side-mission shows were good (they were for the most part, though "Heart of Gold" was WEAK).

I think they could have burned out the storyline if they stuck solely to it..ie the last like, 4 seasons or whatever of X-Files.  Yeah ok, they're chasing aliens, "the truth" blah blah blah...when they started doing it EVERY episode I wanted nothing more than to see Mulder investigate some flying-chupcabra-hosebeast that was killing neighborhood cats in Nebraska or something.  ANYthing but more "the truth" soap opera-ism.

NOTE: for fans of Firefly, you can read some scripts for "Virtual Firefly", a fan-fic series where they finish up 2 seasons of the show, at http://www.stillflying.net/?page=discs&season=1 . It's better than most fan-fic crap you see, and they base it off interviews and such with Wheedon regarding the direction and plans for the series.  It's not all gold but a decent read for an afternoon.

Season three just ended on UniHD. Holy frack. I can't believe I didn't like this show at first...though the HD version does kick it up some, such amazing visuals.

Thought this would be best served in here:

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2158/2177726792_7b0e59cfbd_b_d.jpg)

The folks on the right side will save humanity, those on the left will endanger it.  Notice the open book by Adama and the closed one by Roslin.  Open book means they are following the scripture and have open minds/hearts and the opposite for the left side.  So Roslin and Adama will be at odds here at the end.  She has flame, an old sign of destruction.  Who is Athena and her man fearfully looking at?  I guess the accusatory woman?  Is that 6 again? Not sure.

No one is directly looking at 6/Christ except Baltar/Doubting Thomas/Judas.  But Baltar will fail.  Notice the stance of 6; she is staring up with palms slightly out, very Christ-like.

You can put these theories in the BANK mother-frakker.  :ye_gods:

Oh crap, I pretty much just got over accidentaly slipping Frak in to my vocabulary.

Almost time!

BSG Top Ten List on the Late Show (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YatjlSJNRHM&fmt=8)

I didn't know Lee Adoma was a Brit Brit.

I have already seen Number 6 naked, but still....

Share.

Tonight is the night.

Bah, I don't see any listings on UniHD for the new season (through June). Goddamned Time-Warner. They'll probably pick up SciFiHD just as the season ends.

I sooo need my fix of batshit crazy Tigh and gravelly Adama gravitas.

They need to bring Michelle Ryan over from the dead "Bionic Woman" and make her a Viper pilot...or just have her stand around naked.

Playboy. It's not full nude but you do get boobs. It was hmmm...last year sometime I believe. On a related note I've discovered my memory for dates and times is shitty. I can remember every line of a movie or tv show I like but if you ask me for a date that something happened in my life I can narrow it down to about a 2-3 year window. It's really odd.

What did you guys think of last week's episode? I've been thinking about how this will end and I just don't see it ending well for the fleet. I can see them being one jump away from Earth and Adama turning them away in a random direction so they don't lead the Cylons to the last planet with humanity on it.

I really hate that Starbuck is back.  But everything else pretty good.  Although I wish Andres would stop being such a wuss.  But without the Cylon-side of story, it feels incomplete.  This friday things should make more sense.

Wishful thinking.  I don't like the Starbuck thing because it doesn't make any fucking sense.  None of it makes any fucking sense.  I don't like where I imagine it is going with the metaphysical/religious part of the story.  I still can't stop watching it.  I'm just glad I didn't end up watching a side story about someone's love interest.

I'm just not sold on this season of BSG. The first episode was better than the season finale, but not much. The Starbuck return just bugs the shit out of me because it makes no sense yet, and it's hard to imagine how it will make sense without 1) her being a Cylon, or 2) a really bad God's hand deus ex machina.

But the Baltar cult thing REALLY bugged me. It feels like they setting him up as the Joseph Smith/Mormon/One True God Follower and Martyr who resists the establishment's authority to bring the true religion. Learning more about Mormonism before watching that episode really makes me dislike the storyline.

I expect them to milk the Starbuck WTF-factor for a few more episodes, at least.  The part that had me scratching my head was Baltar's coterie of nubile young worshippers and the sick kid.  Are they really going metaphysical there, or is one of the girls the last cylon?  Dunno.

If it wasn't so obvious my money would be on Baltar being the last Cylon.

D'Anna(Model 3) saw all the Cylons in the Temple of Jupiter.  Baltar isn't one of them.

Baltar is the Cylon messiah.

Google Tricia Helfer

My current theory is that Starbuck is a Cylon, but not one of the orginal 12.  She's a brand new Cylon.  Recreated from scratch like her ship.

But if memory serves we, the audience, don't know what she saw so it could still be Baltar.

Dammit you are right!  I thought D'anna confirmed he wasn't a Cylon just before she died.  But it'd be a punk move to make Baltar a cylon. Season 4 could get real ugly if they start pulling out hack moves like this.

I don't think he will be one simply because it is too obvious. I am also ruling out any of the Adamas. Other than that it's a wide open field. I would relish the irony if President "Kick them out of the Airlock" Roslin was one though.

Que. Eff. Tee.

No, see the Cylons are adjacent to the leaders, not one of them.  Tigh to Adama, Indian Girl to Roslin, Anders to Starbuck.  I attribute bad math to the chief.  So Adama can't be one.

I hadn't thought about that. So who would that leave as the final one? *thinks* Gaeta maybe? Lee?

Baltar is a pimp.  And that's why it worked for me.  He is genuinely trying to redeem his worthless self serving ass, yet he is more than happy to get some lovvin from the flock at the same time.
He had a look on his face like "Shit, these people are crazier than I am!  HAY BOOBS!  YAAAY!".

The one element of the "Final five" that I don't get is Tigh.  Adama has known him since the first war.  So there have been humanoid cylons since around much longer than the humans realize even at this point in the story.

Another dangling plot point (for me at least) is the relationships between the factions of cyclons.  We have the original group at war with the humans during the first war.  Were there other groups already in existence at this point or are all the known and suspected factions a result of a schism after the cylons disappeared when the first war ended.  At this point I'm suspicious that humans may not have invented the original cylons at all.  Perhaps a humanoid model invented or directed the invention of the first machine models while posing as a human.

Ron Moore has said that the final Cylon is NOT in the pic posted last page. Mind you, he could be lying.

Could be Gaeta? Not really that high impact, though. Could be Tom Zarrek. I like that theory, and Zarrek could be the Count Iblis/Lucifer figure from the original series. I know Richard Hatch would LOVE hamming it up like that, but I suspect they have Starbuck earmarked for that role based on the heavy handed spolier at the end of Razor.

Also, one of the actors (think it was Katie Sackhoff) says that they'll find Earth much sooner than anyone expects, so I strongly suspect that they will end up in orbit in the mid-season cliffhanger, and that Something Is Wrong with it -- it's a post-apocalyptic wreck, or devoid of life, or Cylon raiders fly up from the ground to meet them, or something similarly *clevah*. I absolutely do NOT expect them to show up all Galactica 1980 style flying motor scooters over California. Although that would be AWESOME.

Also, my guess on the end of the series is a massive Crossing of the Streams and the Good Cylons and the Good Humans (Adama, Roslin, Caprica 6, Boomer) fight the Bad Cylons and the Bad Humans (Baltar Manson and his Flower People, remnants of whatever bad Cylons are left) over New New Caprica on Earth, and they all go off to make 12 new colonies at the closing credits. All happens before, all happens again, etc.

There were zero Cylon factions prior to the series timeline - they were machines, after all.

During the series, the humanoid Cylons became more 'human' - and with that came fighting. First "Caprica 6", the only model to have an individual name, and her 'faction' of let's not actually nuke the humans until they glow, instead let's hug them and pet them and call them George. That didn't really work out. Then you had the rogue 3 model that went all trippy suicidal, and the one played by Dean Stockwell that's literally blaspheming all over the place from an overdose of cynicism. Apparently, based on previews, this is all going to break out into a flat-out shooting war between the Cylons once it hits them that the human fleet contains the Final Five models (well Final Four, anyway).

I've watched about half of the BSG episodes, couple questions for someone to answer:

1. What is Earth? Is it just myth? Is it some place they colonized a long time ago but then forgot about somehow? Is it the birthplace of humanity? From watching it seems to be pure mythology. How do they know there is an Earth at all?

2. Why don't the main cylons know who the final 5 are?

Yeah, Mr. Moore apparently said it won't be any of the more notable characters, in fact he said, "Even if you guess correctly it was still only a guess".

I think it's Doc Cottle.


You'll know in the first episode of season 4!

Wait, wait.

I distinctly remember Baltar interrogating a D'anna who knew/could see the final five cylons,  and asking if he was one.  Baltar knew that if he was actually a cylon,  he wouldn't be a traitor to his species who had collaborated in genocide.

Being a cylon was Baltar's way out of the guilt.  D'anna told him he wasn't. 


Baltar being a cylon would completely fuck his character arc, especially since he's entering the redemption phase of it.

Short version: Earth is scriptural myth that turns out to be true.

Long version: Earth is the "lost tribe" colony that went in one direction from Kobol (the "birthplace of the gods") while the other 12 colonies went the other. Many (including Adama, most of the time) believe Earth to be a fairy tale. As part of the miniseries opener (which you really should watch if you haven't), Adama tells the fleet "we're going to Earth to link up with the final human colony, because as a commanding officer I have the secret location!". Which he promptly tells Roslin that he doesn't, he's lying his ass off to give people a reason to keep going. However, as part of the first season, the fleet finds Kobol, which is the supposed birthplace of humanity (which, btw, is straight from Mormon scripture, which Glen Larson based the original Galactica on), and finds clues that the scriptures actually are all that and humans left for Earth. Since then they've followed the occasional clues and portents to keep them moving in the right direction.

Wiki version: http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Earth_%28RDM%29

And Earth was shown at the end of season 3.  It looks like our Earth, at least from space.

Ooh, that's a good one. Especially considering Number 3's "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know" line. The only human she was shown screwing with on air (other than Baltar, hurr hurr) was Cottle. Of course, that assumes the writers actually knew that when they wrote Season 3, which is a HUGE stretch these days.

Ok episode but yea the Starbuck thing bothered me with it's Bermuda Triangle thing. But what bothered me most is that she's trusted enough to have a light escort around the ship but not trusted enough to be given a Raptor and some accountable witnesses to try the route again.

My own guess on the 5th is the Richard Hatch character.


I think this last episode confirmed all five are on the Galactica, but I just erased it from the DVR so can't confirm.

Do you include Razor in that timeline? I ask because that included the "Faction" (if you will) of the genetically engineered cyborg guy.

Three knows Anders from his time as a terrorist on Caprica.

I watched it, must have missed that part, was doing work at the same time. So again, why don't the Cylons know who the final 5 are?

I thought the memory of the final 5 had been erased from the rest, as well as the reason that the memory had been erased. 

In other words, the writers probably don't know yet, but hopefully it'll all be wrapped up once the last one is revealed and we start getting some inkling of what their purpose is.

I smell an M. Night Shymalan-style twist coming up.  It will turn out that in the last Cylon war, the Cylons got ALL humans.  But the Final Five (smartest of the bunch) reasoned that they needed enemies to keep them sharp.  So they produced the colonial fleet, seeded themselves into it, and then erased the memory of the true end of the war from everyone. 

So, the same shitty ending as the last couple of Matrix movies then?

I hope you're wrong, but I'm afraid you're right.   :sad_panda:

Ever since that episode aired, I've taken the apology to be directed at Tigh. Hell, I called Tigh as a Cylon as soon as I saw that. She was the one who took his eye, after all, and the only one she really had anything to apologize in such a manner to.

They have a mental block. Six when talking to Roslin said something to the effect of "we aren't supposed to think of it.", which Roslin promply mocked in pure James T. Kirk "if you're thinking about not thinking about it, you're thinking about it" style. Three was boxed because she thought about it a LOT and repeatedly suicided/reincarnated because she thought she was catching glimpses of them between life and death.

I didn't know they clearly established Three was the one who poked out Tigh's eye.

Didn't Ty serve with Adama during the Mars war or whatnot?  I thought that was way before the Cylons became a problem in the first place.  I figured they replaced him as a Cylon when he was imprisoned and took his eye to make the whole story believable.

Do they actually replace people like that? They aren't pod people. I thought the Cylons had a specific look, not that they custom-built them. If they replaced him that would mean they built a new Cylon model to look like him which doesn't seem to match with anything else.

Whatever happened to hybrid baby btw?

Chief has a baby now so there are 2 half-cylons unless Cali cheated.

The final Cylon is on Earth already.  He has a very low approval rating.  Hoverbikes.

Danke.

Anyone but me notice that the series is shaping up to recreate some of the biblical mythos?

Baltar = jesus. Polytheistic religions going bye bye, here comes the mono.

EDIT: also someone mentioned that there were no factions before this shows time line. I recall the Hybrid cylon, adama, and the FIRST cylon war (Apparently the original series, sorta....  :uhrr:)

I think it would be hard not to - they were heavy handed with the Jesus motif in Baltar.  What I think is more fun is how they've broken with that notion; Baltar was up to be crucified, but he was released by Pilate (Adama).  He never died, and was not resurrected.  Kara, however, did and was.  Baltar is doing miracles anyway and has an "angel" in his head.  Kara is the herald of the apocalypse (per the hybrid), which is similar to ideas on the second comming.  Note, apocalypse isn't intended to be entirely negative; it's the end of the current world, but the beginning of a new one.  Between what the hybrid said and Kara's inner compass, it strongly suggests that she really does know the way to Earth.  Whether the fleet will want Earth once they find it is another question.  Also, 12 colonies, 12 cylons, 12 disciples, with the Baltar/Kara Jesus thing.

Nothing suggests that God is benign, though.  According to legends of the Lords of Kobol, there was one god who deigned to place himself over the others.  The trouble at Kobol was due to the gods fighting, and eventually throwing out one of their own (or one of their own leaving on its own).  If that one is the same as the Cylon God, it has a role similar to Lucifer (the Count?).  If they are not, there could be a more interesting relationship between Head Baltar and Head Six, who at the moment have taken on roles of demon and angel, respectively.  Also, creating and directing advanced Cylons that lead an army to murder tens of billions of humans and nearly exterminating the species doesn't on the surface look all that kind. 

Personally, I think half of all that is just the writers having fun with people who think too much on it.  The other half will matter.

And Jesus, by all accounts, not a complete douchebag like Baltar. 

I like the Apocalyse theme and go with Baltar as the anti-Christ, a false Messiah.

Aren't the 12 tribes directly analogous to the 12 tribes of the Jews in the old testament?

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/ben01.jpg)

What the hell is that?

FIFY.

As for the 12 tribes thing, yes they are based upon the 12 tribes of Israel as the original was a rip of the Book of Mormon which postulates that the lost 13th tribe came to America circa 600 BC.

I'm no biologist but there was an episode where the Cylons die to a virus that was deadly to humans hundreds of years ago but not anymore. Since Cylons are nearly identical to humans in terms of DNA and IIRC haven't been shown to suffer from any other diseases, the logical conclusion is  they modeled themselves after humans and this was done hundreds of years prior to the first Cylon War.  :grin:

BTW, I'm fairly certain this means one should be able to determine the difference between a human and a cylon. Cylons shouldn't have a "copy" of the virus in their DNA, but humans should. Correct me if I'm wrong.

BSG jumped the shark when they made Cylons human.  :dead_horse: but hey, nekkid Boomer ftw. (well ok, we only see her back, but it still counts. )

(http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/9570/gracepark2ou2.jpg)

NSFW AND I DONT CARE

"nam nam nam nam"

I think you meant FAP FAP FAP FAP

I like to nibble.  :thumbs_up:

FAP FAP FAP FAP

NOOO, IT ARE MY BIRTHDAY!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Versus_the_Volcano (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Versus_the_Volcano)

The Waponi Wu, the thirteenth tribe.

Cally > Boomer

(http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/4339/dsc0253qa2.jpg)
(http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/5237/img0034yd9.jpg)
(http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/1450/8nclynelowlp3.jpg)
(http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/3664/18nclynelowxt3.jpg)
(http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/5981/20nclynelowps3.jpg)
(http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/5821/clynenicki212zh8.jpg)
(http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/2064/clynenicki229fo9.jpg)
(http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/6947/clynenicki245gj5.jpg)
(http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/9517/clynenicki317ik1.jpg)
(http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/4145/clynenicki336wb9.jpg)

Psssh.  Just because she's approachable?

Whos is that chick?

Because she's hotter than Grace Park.

Because she's plainer and there's more chance?

Nicki Clyne looks way too much like my high school/college girlfriend for me to find her hot.

That's the point I'm trying to make.  She looks like someone everyone has dated at some point. 

(http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/8094/dentistcally5tx.jpg)

I'll be in my bunk

Woops wrong galaxy.

Depends on the picture, really. The ones with the hair looking like red tinted Cally wins hands down. But then I'm the curvy redhead type, and since different men have different tastes this whole derail is retarded!

This is Internet.

Which always needs somebody in a given thread to tell everybody how retarded participation in the thread is. While ignoring the hypocrisy of his own actions.

Let me do my job, dammit!

A thread that has broken down to the discussion of hot Vancouver girls. Win!

I was expecting either someone flaming me for being too analytical or tearing apart my argument. Instead I get pix of BSG chicks. I  :heart: teh internet.

Next we will retitle this thread "spoilers/ejaculation".

 :-o

Closest one I could find to an O face.

This is my O face.  :drill:

We know there was a schism some time in the past.  I'm not sure they don't know the details of the split so much as none of the seven were willing to talk about it at all.  I'm guessing they wanted to protect humanity or at least interact with them.  (Further far-out guessing is that they followed the 12th colony a long time ago and left a handful of sleeper agents behind, thus our four.)

As far as why the seven don't know what they look like, we don't know.  It could have been a collective wipe as a punishment ("you're dead to me").  Maybe they were the early human models, the new ones never met them, and the old ones didn't want to tell them.  At this point I have no solid guess.

My guess for the last Cylon is also the doc.  It fits with my protector of humanity idea, and I don't think we have a healer archetype yet.

Maybe we find out tonight!  :drill:

(http://www.geocities.com/quantock_school/ID/Dr_John_Reid_MP_so_long_cylon_No_2_ID_Cards.png)

I find it odd that we haven't seen the doc lately. Did he run out of cigs?

Same reason you rarely see the black Cylon. The actor who plays him isn't a regular on the show so they have to pay extra every time he appears.

I believe he is currently hiding out from the law in Jessica Tate's basment.

There is a certain elegance in the doc being a cylon.  But that would seem to lead no where story wise.  I hope who ever it was always knew they a cylon.  No more of this "sleeper" nonsense.  It was cool for Boomer but it's played out.

I thought he was the doctor archetype.  Or is he more of a scientist archetype?

He also struck me as melee DPS. 

ZOMG RACISM! :awesome_for_real:

Well.  After tonight's episode, he sure as hell isn't the group tank.

Found this photo, apparently from 2006, and thought it was cool (unfortunately out of focus) - Starbucks at Starbucks (http://media.battlestarwiki.org/images/d/dd/Starbucks_at_starbucks.jpg)

Man, I hate Starbuck.  But even if I didn't, I still would think this episode blew.

I think I'm gonna have to give this a shot again. I couldn't last through the intro/movie episodes, but I've pretty much exhausted the list sci-fi shows I've wanted to see.

Le broke. And I couldn't find that one. Instead I found Starbuck and Starbuck at Starbucks:

(http://www.wohlmut.com/kevin/pictures/starbuck-n-starbuck-at-starbucks.jpg)

That episode was largely pointless. Hope nobody was surprised Kara was gonna be cut loose. They should have done that right away rather than dragging out the President/Adama split.

I get the impression though that they've invented this split to make the last season more interesting. I mean, I don't read all the news and forums and watch the fan crap about BSG. So to me, the casual (heh) viewer, this whole deep-seeded disagreement feels last-minute outta nowhere, like they needed some controversy to run parallel with the one happening in the cylons.

And even that seems last-minute/forced because while they had minor disagreements on New Caprica, now they're all of a sudden at each other's throats? I feel like they pulled that plot this way just so they can go back to the 70s mindless killing machines we can hate for the next, err, 12? episodes of chase/fight/chase/fight.

Finally, somebody kill Baltar. Whatever he was the first two seasons, he's now just the sequences I fast forward through if I'm feeling impatient.

I'm giving it two more episodes. If it doesn't do something interesting, I'll write it off as buildup towards the inevitable two-part season finale/cliffhanger-that-justifies-the-movie and grab the cliffs notes a week prior. I'm sure there's a bunch of religious crossovers and whatnot. I'm too arsed to care at this point though. If they're following some scripture, great, I'll catch it at the conclusion. The path is getting less interesting.

I enjoyed the episode, but I have enjoyed almost every BSG episode, even the ones 90% of the Internet seems to hate.  (Which probably means about 10% of everyone else.  Also see: Firefly, Ron Paul, Snakes on a Plane.)

Character stuff happened, and the Cylon thing seemed more to be them being human which in spite of everything the toasters say, is what they basically are.  One group wants to do bad things and insists they are right.  The other side knows they are right and these dipshits are wrong, so fuck em, power to the masses we are sticking up for our lil buddies.

It was like Cylon PETA.  Except instead of cute fuzzy wuzzies, we have angry robots with gun arms.   :drill:

Give the cylons with MACHINEGUNS FOR ARMS independent reason?  Yeah, that won't backfire on their current allies or the skin models in general.  Idiots. 

Judging by the previews that is going to happen next week. As for Darniaq's points:

The Adama/Roslin split makes sense actually and my general feeling was "About damned time!" If there is anything Adama would disagree with the president about it'd be Starbuck. And honestly, Roslin pissed me off when Starbuck made her point about "We've been following you for how long based on your visions?" And frankly, Roslin needed somebody to tell her "guess what? You might not be the prophecied leader!"

Finally, Baltar is actually really interesting this season. I'm intrigued by him seeing Head Baltar and am curious how well he maps onto Caprica's head Baltar. Are they similar at all? And lastly, the Cylon civil war, that's been coming since at least the end of Season 2.

I still like Baltar, even though I find the whole Manson cult thing he's got going to be rather silly.  Of course, one of the reasons he's still cool is because he thinks it's silly, too.

That's a good point. I forgot the link between what both Starbuck and Adama independently said to her.

What I don't like, and maybe I'm just misremembering here, is that Roslin being dogmatic feels like a new thing. Hasn't she been open-minded in the past? Now it seems like it's her way and, well, no other way at all. You'd think Starbuck coming back at all with visions of Earth would compel them to say "hey, maybe there's something to this."

I think I'm just pissed they didn't immediately load a Raptor with Starbuck and three trustworthy folks with video cameras. It's just so obvious and Adama-like decisive that it's lack feels like a plot device to compel the nonsense that's happened since.

She's actually been like that from the beginning.  Even before the emphasis on the spiritual aspect of it, she was a self-righteous, hypocritical hardass who wouldn't listen to anybody.  Over the course of the series she has become less and less diplomatic about it, but it was there from the start.

Baltar v head Baltar was fucking hilarious. I want to see more of that action.

Exactly, there was plenty of cool stuff going on, but they spent the majority of time wanking on about Starbuck and Lee which was going no where.

Roslin's hardened up and Adama's pussied up.  They seem set up to change back at some point.

Yeah, the whole Starbuck and Apollo storylines are completely pissing me the fuck off. Ever since Lil' Adama lost the weight and started fucking Kara, he's been one of the least interesting characters in the show. Kara is just fucking annoying. And frankly, the fact that she ISN'T dead after the whole holding the President hostage is retarded as hell. The President has shown no qualms about spacing people she thinks are Cylons and if she really thought Kara was a Cylon (which she totally should think), she'd have sent her out the airlock after this episode's stunt. And Adama the Senior would have agreed, no matter how he felt about Kara.

And now he gives her a SHIP, when they are already low on ships?

Yeah, bullshit. I'm not buying it. They seem to be padding this season out already with contrived conflict, which just follows along from the last half of last season. They don't need a full season to wrap this up, because it's only going to get worse and more nonsensical.

The Baltar bits are funny, and I dig the Centurion Revolution. More of that, please. Most of the "humans" are just pissing me off, making me root for the Cylons.

For those who missed it all the humanoid Cylons (with a capital-C) were given model numbers http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Humanoid_Cylon (http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Humanoid_Cylon)

I wish they'd kill off more main characters.  I realize that Hollywood almost never does this, but some of my favorite textual fiction involves big characters dying fairly regularly (e.g. Song of Ice and Fire).  Killing a major character is a huge emotional ace to play and keeps things interesting, like they did with Starbu. . OH WAIT SHE'S ACTUALLY ALIVE HA HA NO WOOREEZ!!

Goddammit.

Lets not forget the Colonels little daydream involving the admiral and a gun....



But it never happened.

That was the best part of the episode, regardless =/

The Admiral being killed would probably be a little too much.  Favorite character and all.  Tigh being shot through his other eye would be both hilarious and satisfying, however.

I just noticed something while scanning wikipidea, both Grace Park and Tricia Helfer were in Command and Conquer 3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_conquer_3#Casting).

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/96/Tricia_Helfer_Nod_Kilian_Qatar.JPG/150px-Tricia_Helfer_Nod_Kilian_Qatar.JPG)  (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/SandraTelfair.jpg)

And the admiral on the Pegasus was named Kane... hmm...  :grin:

It appears this week you're getting your wish.

I assume you didn't play it, because this wasn't, in fact, subtle.

I was really hoping the pres and Adama would have followed Starbuck on nothing but faith.  THAT would have been amazing, for the handful of humans to follow her on blind faith.  Of course I guess they are doing so right now with Rosiln.

I enjoyed the episode, for a change Starbuck's screaming fit made sense.  Apollo's ceremony was filler to me though.  I wonder what he's gonna do in the government, be a pain in the ass for Roslin I bet.  I bet she spaces him after what he did at the trial.

As far as Earth, heres my thoughts on the Earthlings.
1.  Ancient Earth would be no help vs. the Cylons.  Plus it would be boring as they worship the raptor as it touches down.  Not gonna happen.
2. Modern day Earth would be more interesting, but the urge to put in flying motorcycles might be too tempting to Ron Moore. :)  But again, no help.
3.  A futuristic Earth would help vs. the Cylons but I'm not sure how they would fit in the story.  Unless Earth is populated by Cylon/Human hybrids! zomg1
4.  They find Earth but no humans who have died off, fled to the stars etc.  Quite possible to me as Earth is re-colonized and the circle begins again.  "All of this has happened before."

With most of the Episode's focus on Apollo leaving, is he not going to be in upcoming episodes?  It seemed a big sendoff if we're just going to see him a civilian in the next episode.

The sendoff had to be that focused on for a reason.

I'm thinking he dies.

It definitely looked like the actor leaving the show, with the cast using the scene as a tribute to him, like the wakes on The Wire.

I don't know if Americans had the chance to see Hornblower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornblower_%28TV_series%29), the excellent series that brought people like Ioan Gruffudd and Jamie Bamber to the attention of many others. But this is what Bamber/Apollo looks like without dyeing his hair black to look like a son of Adama:

(http://users.on.net/~svandore/pics/hornblowera9.jpg)

Isn't he dreamy.

Cain

I watched it, good series.

Maybe Apollo "leaving" being the harbringer of his death foreshadows the actual split between Adama and Roslin? Maybe the latter either causes it or could have prevented it, or whatever, driving yet another grab at martial law or another almost-civil war or something.

Or maybe I'm just wildly hopeful there turns out to be an actual reason for all that screentime dedicated to yawning.


Bah. A mere homonym away  :-P

I have decided the final Cylon is Gaeta.  His pattern of behavior on New Caprica in particular plus his hatred of Cylons that was recently highlighted is in line with Anders, Tigh and Tyrol.

If the last cylon is a sleeper in the fleet, than there is no one left to be the source of Baltar's imaginary friend.

I'm pretty sure Baltar is the source of Baltar's imaginary friends.

So Baltar is the source of Capica's imginary friend as well?  And Baltar is giving Cylon secrets to himself?  That makes Baltar a prophet like Rosalin but with 100x the crazy. 

So many the the events of the show revolve around Baltar's failures as human being.  Anything that reduces Baltar's culpability, like being a cylon or being crazy, will be a huge disappointment.

/shrug

The imaginary friends are visions.

Plenty of people have had visions now, there is no possible explanation of visions that could avoid disappointment. They'll leave it unexplained, but continue to hint at drugs, gods, and cylon influences.


As for the final cylon, the empty seat at the table in the picture (with the chalice) is interesting. I took several lines from the last episode to be hinting at Apollo (Starbuck would shoot anyone she found was a cylon, the Adamas would love Zak even as a Cylon etc, but they might just be because of the whole omgApolloleaving theme).

IMO People you can't rule out at this point are Apollo, Starbuck (too obvious), Baltar (too obvious), DuWalla, or an unknown.


And as for the ending, I'm betting they find Earth, and through some godawful set of circumstances the Cylons and Humans are decimated to such an extent that there is no point fighting. The overall story can only have a satisfying ending if it is a tragedy.

Dualla the bridge wallah?

I considered Dualla but there haven't been any hints.  Moore said there were hints.  Gaeta has hints.  It's not Apollo because that is stupid.

Ending?  Humans and Cylons interbreed, cycle begins again.  Twelve Cylons submit to One, Twelve Colonies merge into One.  Earth becomes the new Kobol with One God/Leader.  Time passes, the One Tribe splits and Cylons disagree.  Explains "fleshy Cylons who existed before the previous war" and "why people left Kobol".  Also whiny monologue from Lee Adama.

Also, since this happened before, everyone is already a Cylon so everyone stops bitching about who's a Cylon and who isn't.

Maybe Roslin can throw everyone out the airlock!  :drill:

Exactly.

Woo hoo!

Wow. Just wow. The last season kinda lost me, but tonights ep brought me back.

:(

That was cold.

Wow, betrayal after betrayal. BSG seems to have become backstab central.

I still wouldn't rule out a lame comeback on this one, if you know what I mean.  Although the final slot would be wasted on her.  I still maintain my earlier Matrix-style prediction. 

You guys are better viral marketing than the freakin' viral marketing companies! Now I can't wait to watch this one  :-)

2 down, many many more to go.

The Cylon thing was awesome. There was at least three layers to it: get rid of the sixes, get rid of their unlocked cylons/raiders, quell the "uprising" in its tracks. I do wonder if this is really the end of it though. Did ALL ships rendeavous with the Resurrection Ship?

The Torry/Caly thing bothered me. But mostly because the latter was bringing her kid to the airlock (presumably for being a hybrid). There are certain things I don't truck with, and even just fictionalized violence to a fictionalized child by a fictionalized mother (in a fictionalized event on a fictio...) pisses me off.

Yes, but she wasn't throwing her kid out the airlock, she was committing a murder suicide because she couldn't live with what she knew her husband and child to be, which unfortunately does happen when people are confronted with seemingly insurmountable pain in the real world.


I took what we were seeing to be one of many such events that would be occurring to get rid of the sixes.

The Tory thing seems a bit off. She's having so much fun being 'evil' I almost expect her not to be a cylon. Just a horrible person.

The power and elevation in her throw of Callie certainly suggested she was a cylon.

I don't actually think any of them are cylons. All of the group who currently think they are cylons were on the ground in New Caprica. I think it's something that was done to them during their time in captivity there, like a hypnotic suggestion with a trigger, that has them believing they are cylons. They and the viewers are being taken for a ride.

Er, wasn't there something red and sparkly in whats-his-name's eye when he faced off with the raider?

A reflection or his imaginative version of what happened (given that he was thinking "holy fuck I'm a cylon").

My theory too. Also, Baltar said something to him to really upset him in season three. The audience didn't hear exactly what Baltar said, we just saw him whispering something in Gaeta's ear about "your secret", and Gaeta immediately tried to murder him! Baltar possibly knows who the cylons are, as his test back in season one did work - he just decided to lie about the results.

Then why would the raiders turn back and refuse to engage the fleet (on the grounds they knew the final five were there)? Also why would the other Cylons have made no mention/seem to have no idea that these guys are on the fleet with faked memories? The fact that noone else seems to know about them, the raiders recognising them as Cylons and Tori's super-human punch all seem to make it very unlikely that they aren't most of the final five.

How the hell they explain them being Cylons the whole time should be interesting/disappointing.

Bleh, didn't like this episode at all. Starbuck's still crazy, and after ignoring Cally for many episodes, they bring her back to kill her off in a really shitty way. Tory's transformation to evil crazy just seems stupid to me.

It was said that they felt/thought it, they didn't know it. It's a very Battlestar Galactica coincidence that it led to refusal to engage the fleet at that particular moment. But it's a pretty likely worry for a cylon to have when it's central to your religious faith that there are five unknown human-looking cylons somewhere, and you're engaged in trying to wipe out humans.


I can't see that Saul Tigh is a cylon. Adama has known him since they were young men, just after the first cylon war. Is skin job technology really that old and reliable? Nah, he's deluded, it's an implanted conviction that he must be a cylon. They're all deluded. I can't explain Tori's punch, but it did occur in an airlock right next to space - maybe gravity is slightly lower in the airlock?

Ya know, while I don't see it the way you do, I actually am at the point where I hope you're right. The series has lost a lot of its shock-value/turnabouts from season 1 and 2 and could stand to end on the mother of all turnabouts.

Yea, that part bothered me too. It was the same way I felt back when they introduced the Cylon Raider named 'scar' back in season 1 (or 2?). This whole backstory, "villain" and his defeat was compressed into a single Star-Trek-esque closure-style episode. That could have been a good running bit.

BSG has a lot of main-ish characters, and it's sorta taking on a Soap Opera feel where only two or three storylines can be conveyed per episode while there's actually twelve or more happening.

And I forgot to mention I didn't like the Captain Ahab feel to the Starbuck sequences as she's trying to find her Moby Dick.

I figured Tory was more trying to survive then out to murder Cally, if she was truly evil she would of just killed their kid along with Cally to truly make it look like a murder suicide.

Tigh has been a Cylon the entire time because this has all happened before.  Tight was a Cylon before the humans -- actually the fleshy Cylons, I say -- invented the metallic ones.  Yeah that's right.  I say that the Fleshies created the metallic ones while living and dying among humans in secret.  The Seven that left with the metallics were opposed to the Five Fleshies during the Cylon War.

Tori has been corrupted by Baltar and his One God schtick.  I predict Tyrol will become dangerous.

I'm not a huge fan of the "big reveal" style of TV. I don't need elaborate mysteries and twists and such to keep me interested, just good plots and characters. For me season 2 was clearly the apex. It seems at this point too much is being done in the service of plot points they want to make and mysteries they want to stoke or introduce.

I really don't care who the last Cylon is. To me that stuff is on the level of the Carver stuff on Nip/Tuck. Especially when every Cylon so far is a major character, it seems a bit silly. Can't the last Cylon be some fucking janitor or something?

Reminds me of an old 70s movie where they were tracking some killer and everyone was speculating on who it might be. Was it the mayor? Turns out it was just a random nobody.

You mean who shot JR?  :-)

I don't know if Yeg's right but this sounds like the most satisfying way they could take the storyline. Tori thing does sound like it's on the money though they could have spent more time developing that rather than have her make a move on Tyrol and space his wife.

None of that would work at all from the perspective of trying to get all the storylines tied up.  Where's the dramatic payoff to spending this much time in the final season developing the storyline of these characters being Cylons, only time have it revealed as misdirection?  It would be one of those plot twists that just makes the story more complicated rather than complex and would mainly only appeal to viewers who think the characters have been damaged by being revealed as Cylons.

Sure it would work.

The dramatic payoff is when they are convinced they are cylons, they have revealed to everyone else they are cylons, they are doomed ... and then find out who the actual cylons are and there's only a slim chance to save themselves and therefore humanity.

Thats the worst possible plot twist at this point in the series (=the last few episodes). Nothing against you, but stay away from writing TV series plots.

You have your wires crossed. I'm not describing what I want to see or how I would write it, I'm saying what I think we'll see.

Ah well, then let me correct that.

If that is what we will see they should stay away from writing TV series in the future.

The final cylon will be one of the crossbreed kids. (either Callie and Tyrol's or Boomer and Helio's, maybe even both al la romulus and remus)
they will be the final realization of the cylon "gods" plans. 

In the end the 6's and (2's?) will look to one of the kids as their messianic leader and bring all the rest of the cylons back into the fold and then merge with humans as one big happy family. Although I'm sure it will be all dramatic and shit.

Oh and you can insert earth in there somewhere.

Since [she thinks] the Chief is a cylon, [she thinks] the kid is a hybrid.  Based on all the fooferaw around the other one, that's evidently a big deal. 

I agree that the hit that knocked Cally back (and would have snapped her spine.  thanks realistic physics) was the first real evidence I've seen that at least one of the suspected skin jobs really is.  And it'll be a troubling moment if it turns out they aren't.  Maybe just she is and the others are taken along for a ride.  She certainly seems to be warming to it more than the others.

And I agree with Darniaq that the 'carrying my kid out the airlock' scene was unfortunate and unwelcome.  I have kids, and I suspect something chemical goes on when you do that makes stuff like that no longer an acceptable part of fiction.  And yes, I'm aware shit like that goes on all the time in reality, but there's a lot of shit that goes on in reality that I'm not interested in consuming for entertainment.

Also, Starbuck's whiny "I'm erratic and crazy and maybe a prophet!" hissy is poorly implemented.

Otherwise, good ep.  Internecine cylon warfare is always awesome.

Oh, anyone else notice the Caprica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprica_(TV_series)) prequel pilot getting picked up?

I was sad to learn that the new series would be a prequel to the time before the Cylon invasion.  That's when all the good stuff happened.  I thought it was going to be Caprica after the Cylons nuked it.  Ragged bands of resistance surviving out in the jungle against an unstoppable Cylon occupation?  Come on!  That would have been awesome!


WTF? 

I have known there would be a show after this for a long time.

If it leads into the first Cylon war that could be epic, I'm not sure how much politics and relations stuff could be added into a series based on a war but I'd love to see me some old school Cylon on Battlestar action.

When Anders got the red-eye in the first episode of this season, I took that as a sort of message to the viewer that yes, they really are cylons, we're not going to duck out of the big reveal at the end of season three.

My prediction on a different topic - Laura Roslin is not the prophet who leads her people to earth but dies before they get there. The prophet is either Starbuck, Baltar or Adama.

It fits, Starbuck already died.

Does that make Sam her Mary Magdalene?

I understand what you are saying, but it's still totally foreign to me. Fiction is not merely entertainment. This seems to be a less-severe version of the attitude that movies have to have happy endings because otherwise they aren't fun and entertaining.

To me what makes the differences is how the author/director treats the characters. I can stand any amount of cruelty onscreen as long as I don't get the feeling that the producer buys into it, but conversely I'm really put off by even small amounts of cruelty if the producer seems to take pleasure in it.

For example I hate "torture porn" movies and movies with strong sexualized violence, not because of the torture and violence per se but because the directors of such things seem to enjoy them, not on a storytelling level but on a "torturing people is kewl" level. In this particular case I didn't get any sense of malice from the writer/director, it was just a logical part of the plot.

The Raiders and Cenurions are programmed to not harm any Cylon.  The skinjobs cannot recognize each other in such a fashion, however it's built into the "lower" models.

I don't have kids, but I'm with you guys on feeling very uncomfortable about that sequence (due largely to something that happened when I was a kid to a family that my family was friends with).

We were supposed to feel uncomfortable!

And it made sense for her to do it at this point after the history she had.

I hate it when TV pulls their punches and doesn't go where it is supposed to go because of fear to alienate some people. So Kudos to them!

I was more trying to see how Tale could explain this since he doesn't believe that they're Cylons. The question about the higher models was regarding how he could claim they've been brainwashed by the Cylons on New Caprica.

Yeah.  I don't think it's brainwashing and your quote flowed into mine more easily.  Think of it as reinforcement.  :-)

Obviously, but at that point it caused me to extremely dislike the character in an irredeemable way.

It was a bad episode for Cally.  It starts with her being paranoid and ends with her being suicidal while using the kid to heighten the horror.  On top of that, we hadn't seen her since the previous season.

I did find it incredibly disturbing, for several reasons, but it was made worse because I couldn't empathize with her at all through the entire episode.  And to take her out that way... it was just an ignoble ending all around.

She just seemed to be there to make Torry's evil more apparent.

Reminded me of the scene from the old flick 'The Brain that Wouldn't Die' where the Doctor convinces the girl that not everyone is bad, to trust again. All the while planning on cutting off her head and using her body to keep his girlfriend alive.

On the discomfort: it's as sidereal said, at least for me. It's sort of primal. My kids are young enough I remember them being that age. I remember the sort of mind triggers that flip when they're hurt/crying/hungry and how I felt when that all came on at 3am.

It could be the mind (shit, what's going on with my kid atm?), typical male ego (what would I do if I saw that?), not being arthouse enough (lemme wax poetic on the state of my emotion), or being too basic a person in general (ugh urgh, me kids, me club, yer head). This show used to be good at shock value. It's like they pulled in the b-team, or had run out of site gags or something.

Oddly, it's also the same reason I can't play Horde in WoW, no matter what they do with the classes. It took one time running into Undercity in early beta hearing a little girl trapped in a cage in the alchemists lab to quit that noise straight away.

It may make me a simpleton, but there's just some shit in this world you don't fuck with.

Again, what matters to me is the perceived authorial intent. The WOW thing just sounds cruel. What turns me off is the notion that the author is really enjoying it and expecting me to enjoy it as well.

I have the same problem with rape scenes in movies that are filmed to be sexy. Rape scenes don't bother me but the idea that the director was getting off on it is disturbing. That's one thing I liked about American Psycho, the sex scenes and women's bodies were filmed in a very clinical, passionless manner. (Woman was a director)

I didn't see Torry as evil - she just accepts that she is a Cylon. Though I agree her role may have been an attempt to make us think of Torry (and possibly the others) as evil.

The sequence reminds us that the Cylons can be vicious and effective, and will harm humans if they have to (since they've been a mess in the episodes so far, and the 4 of 5 have been nothing but wussy bitches), while at the same time acting rationally and within a reasonable moral code.

The Cylons stated overarching goal is to ensure the survival of their species.

They see the cylon babies as the only way to save their race permanently, and the humans as the greatest threat to the Cylon race.


Torry was put in a position where she can only save the cylon baby from human harm by intervening, and if she doesn't kill Cally then Cally remains a threat to the baby and to her.

In the opposite situation....

Starbuck sees a human baby in the arms of a cylon, and if she doesn't kill the cylon then the cylon would report back locations and put the baby and Starbuck at risk.

....there would be pew pew then tea and medals all around.



This whole scene was designed to realign the viewer with the humans and remind us that the cylon threat is real, all without breaking the rule the writers seem to have set that humans and cylons are morally equal in the round.



As for the comments about Cally suiciding with the kid, it was awkward, but I felt they used it well enough to justify the choice they made. Being trapped on a ship in that situation and on drugs at Cally's rank made the drive to suicide believable - if it had been one of the officer class, who seem to get more "life options", then it would harder to buy into imo.

BSG: Enterprise

Space Nazi Vampires Ho!

My prediction for this upcoming show is that 2,6,8s were actually expecting the betrayal by the 1,4,5s and have something even worse planned.

Cylon civil war.  What's the human fleet going to do when they end up with a few basestar defectors?

Invite them on board, stick them in an airlock and then nuke their resurrection ship.  :drill:

"We're going to need a bigger airlock"

They just have to improve the current airlocks to satisfy their needs...

(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/126/317371949_e6b0b97461.jpg?v=0)

Yes, that was exactly my problem with it. Cally has been a good character, a loyal one, and a tough one. She's never backed down, even when everything has been against her. She started out as the little mousy chick that no one noticed and she developed a real strong character through all that.

And then suddenly, she's a drug-addled milquetoast who wants to space herself and her kid. She went from Mouse Crusader to the Wayans Brother in Requiem for a Dream in one episode. She went out all Mace Windu, like a punk bitch. It felt like the writers realized: 1) we need to put Cally back on because we've got a contract but we really don't know where to take her character so let's kill her, and 2) we need to put some tension into this final 5 thing because it's sinking like a stone, so let's have someone find out about them then get kacked. She was treated like a redshirt, and her character had earned more than redshirt status, IMO.

It was a plot device to advance Torie's craziness. No more no less.

Cally has always been a shitty character. I'm glad she got spaced.

I liked her.

After tonight's episode, I finally get what's bugging me. It feels like the writers just fucking hate the living piss out of every character on the show. They are just abusing every single character in the worst ways possible. Either they've run out of ideas and are making shit up as they go along, or they just want to torture these characters because they can.

And I can't stop watching, because I just keep hoping somewhere deep in that shriveled up part of me that still has hope, that the story will start to make sense again and I won't feel like cockstabbing the writers after every episode.

I wasn't a fan of the directing this episode, too much jumping from scene to scene. That sort of technique can work but it was overused.

The episode itself was pretty decent. Not sure what to make of engineer-dude's meltdown. Any ep with lots of Tigh is a good ep for me.

Olmos directed this one.  I thought it was pretty good. I liked Tyrel's meltdown because he said basically what I thought about Cally.  I also liked Roslyn's confrontation with Baltar and I am really starting to like Lee.

I don't think the writers hate the characters. I just think they are setting up some resolutions based upon arcs of fallibility/redemption which seems to be a running theme.

EDIT: Superfluous drunken apostrophe removed.

It didn't advance it so much as throw up a big neon sign that said "SHE"S TURNED EEEEEEEEVIL!!!!!!!".  Tory is one of the weakest links on the show right now because she went from practically being a non-character (I can't for the life of me remember anything of note she said or did on the show before being revealed as a cylon) to being part of the dramatic cylon reveal at the end of last season and then quickly turning bad within the span of a couple episodes this season.  The writers made her into a plot device rather than a character.

Yeah I agree with that. The obvious idea is to show how different people are coping the revelation that they are Cylons and also to make us wonder how much of it is programming but her transformation seemed rushed.

I get the feeling she's been deeply affected by the Cylon thing and also by Baltar's cult thing. The problem is that explanation has only really been hinted at on the show, a couple of scenes prior to the air lock and hitting on the chief where she expresses concerns about "what we've become," or at least spouts some foreshadowing, "I get to make my own rules," stuff with Baltar's cult would have actually provided us with a character change rather than the seemingly new personality she has now.

Eh maybe we'll luck out and they'll actually delve into some of that soon so at least in retrospect we can look at the episode and see more than a needed threat among the new Cylons.

I think she's going to be killed and then we get to find out what happens when one of the 5 die.

This week's episode set up what will become flashbacks and paths people are on for the endgame.

1. Saul Tighe is going to have to walk into a fire to save humanity/find Earth. He just spent a whole episode learning to embrace and learn from pain.
2. Tory has gone clinically insane as a response to "lol we're cylons". She's psychopathic or a megalomaniac or both. The bursts of strength are part of that.
3. Baltar's cult is central to the endgame, probably the cause of whatever big plot twist is going to happen.
4. The Chief is going to be needed off Galactica to do something that saves humanity/finds Earth.
5. Roslyn's death will either crush Adama or turn him into a Saul Tighe to walk through fire to save humanity/find Earth.

P.S. I still think my theory that they are being written as deluded humans, not cylons, could be valid :)

So that's what a good episode of BSG looks like.  I'd forgotten what they were like.

Ya, I loved last nights episode.

Roslin is being set up as George Bush in a red wig.  Lee will be President sooner rather than later.

I could believe that but even the voiceovers and promotional material refer to them as definitively Cylons. I watched the special that aired before this season and they were very matter-of-fact about it. It would be too big of a middle finger to the audience to say "no, even in the out-of-character 'making of' we were lying."

Moore has specifically said that there are no shenanigans like that. Everyone who has been identified as a cylon is definitely a cylon.

It's not like it'd be hard to show a cargo bay full of frozen Tighs, and that'd put an end to the endless speculation.  Or are there only one each of the super5?  I forget.

I like the new turn Saul's taking.  He went from gruff, drunk cool guy to irritating, whiny gruff dick over the last couple of seasons.  His coping with being a Cylon by getting the shit beat out of him is good cinema.

Also, I found Adama busting the chief down for having an outburst a day after his fucking wife spaced herself a little unbelievable.  He'd knock him to the floor and tell him to sleep it off.

Or it might be a way of letting the Chief continue to do something to take his mind off things while keeping him out of the hanger bay.

Tori is trying to be the machine she thinks Cylons are.  Baltar told her they don't feel so she desperately wants to believe it.  That would make the situation easier for her, no?  Eventually she'll realize she cannot shut the pain off, which we just spent an episode going over.

Roslin is all "I know best even if it's wrong".  Her righteousness is getting annoying.  It's making me like Lee though, since he'll do the right thing even if it is the tough choice.

Actually he told her they do feel.  I don't remember the exact words but it went something like -

"You seem to suffer from an excess of feeling."

"I suppose it could be worse.  I could be a Cylon."

"Actually, Cylons definitely are capable of feeling, and just as strongly as you or I.  I know this from the time I spent with them on that basestar."

"Really?"

"Yup."

"Cool."

"Let's have more sex."

Huh.  My hearing must be off.  I thought he said they weren't.  (Heard the same in the flashback.)

It didn't make sense, but I was going with it.

He definitely said Cylons can feel.

Roslin is REALLY pissing me off. The whole self-righteous leader thing as a really hamfisted allegory to Bush is annoying. Matter of fact, I don't think there's one character on BSG that isn't pissing me off right now.

Athena

She'll do that on Friday since she'll be one of the Find Earth mission volunteers who'll be whining about Kara.

Agree. It took me until an hour ago to watch last week's episode, and only because I still have a half-assed interest in maybe watching tonights.

It was ok. As usual, it's taking too long to make points. Lee Adama seeing Baltar in speech-mode was a good "my gods, what have I done" wakeup moment for him. But otherwise the whole episode was just as weak as the season's been.

*face palm*  What is happening to my favorite show?  :ye_gods:  Maybe we can spice things up and have another trial.   :uhrr:

BSG has always had pacing problems, with too many long shots while dramatic music plays, but this episode was ridiculous. It had 15 minutes of content.

There was more content in the 'next week' bit than the episode.

I need to stop watching the 'next week' bit. It made this week seem... weak.

It's wierd, things are happening in the show that are pretty important but it feels like nothing is happening.

So now we potentially have Tori and the Chief on Baltar's one God path. That's a cylon belief. Tigh's bestest friend is a six. Anders has a Leoben and maybe an allied cylon base ship. It seems like all the sekret cylons are being set up for an education in what cylons believe, so they will do whatever the plot is ultimately going to make them do.

Haven't watched last night's yet, but with the busting down of the Chief, and the sidelined-advisory status of the assistant to a dying not-so-beloved nor trusted President, I'm not sure they can do much at all.

My one hope for this series is that these four turn around and instead teach the Cylons. While laborious, the dialog between Tigh and Six was actually pretty interesting. Not the "how to shut it off part" as much as the "do you actually realize what you've done to us part".

I'm blindly hoping that's a foreshadow of a final resolution that makes sense. No way they can do clean "ok truce, universe is big enough for both of us" ending. There's been way too much overlap. And no way they can wipe out either side. 30,000 humans versus X*millions of Cylons and neither by themselves is strong enough to seed a new race.

I'm with someone else here who at one point said both sides are actually the same, it's just one them knows themselves better than the others do. It would certainly explain the Tigh paradox (him being around since early days with Adama).

Geezus, this episode felt like the last three: advertisements for the coming attractions.

At least Kara finally hears what we all knew last season: she being the Harbinger and all. Too bad she had to bring a whole bunch of people with her to figure it out.

Also, boo on there being no Adama in this episode.

I've been mainly watching this season just to see how it's all going to end, but now I see that the series ended a couple of years ago, with one episode specials every few months.  :-P

Not really quoting you, but your avatar is the bestest thing ever.

As to BSG?  I'm enjoying the hell out of it the way I have enjoyed the hell out of almost every episode ever except for the one where they introduced Tigh's wife which kinda sucked.
I actually like the slow build up and the development of the characters.

Besides, if I want to hate a show, I have the ENTIRE creative output of Joss Whedon I can happily loathe.

This is the most wrong statement concerning entertainment I've ever read on this site... and that's AFTER reading Schild's opinions on various shows, movies, and games. 

Ah, so you're my polar opposite then!

Welcome to the whole goddamn season. Having a 22 episode season is killing this show, I think. The pacing has been terrible, and the "character development" has been anything but. The characters aren't developing, they are fitting into the slots the writer wants them to fit into whether that makes any sense or not.

All will be revealed, my ass.

It was slow episode, but I liked this last one.

Damn, thanks for reminding me! I hate that stupid tag line. I didn't believe it at the end of the first episode this season, and I didn't believe it on Friday. I agree, this show needed to not be constrained by the usual sicophant-driven committee-based business model of usual TV where everyone gets X cut of Y hours of work. It's probably a real weakness for Moore to be constrained by someone else's clock. Look what he was able to do on the "off time" with Razor. I have no idea if that made any money back, but I'd say that created renewed interest in the show... certainly a lot more than the weak-ass ending of the last season.

The problem with bringing minor characters to the foreground is that minor characters are often played by weaker actors. I'm not feeling it from Chief, even though I like the character. Sometimes they step up, like Tory who has been pretty good even though I don't like her character.  The current Starbuck storyline is painful imo.

I think they are setting up the 5 new cylons to take sides in the cylon civil war with Tory (at least) as a hardliner. I'm cool with that.

I miss the days of gritty economic/social conflict with Baltar's manifesto and the general strike. That was an interesting conflict. The debate between believers in Zeus and believers in "I'm OK, you're OK, we're all OK" psychobabble makes me hope a cylon base ship jumps in and nukes them all to Hell.

They really, really need to stop being so over-the-top with the Baltar-as-Jesus imagery. We get it. I thought the guards were going to cast lots for his clothing after he was knocked down three times while carrying that enormous cross. 

Anyway, I am still enjoying the show.

Hey, Joss Whedon is to geeky entertainment what Ron Paul is to politics.  Big on the Internet, but few people in the real world actually give a shit.
Except Ron Paul didn't turn Kitty Pryde into a cunt. 

Joss Whedon was involved with X-Men somehow?

I mean we are referring to Ellen Page here right?

There was a rumor at one point that Joss Whedon was going to direct X-Men 3, but that wasn't actually the case. That's the only thing I can think of.

I mostly agree, but wasn't Buffy popular for awhile? Not that Buffy being popular means Joss was known, just more of an idle question.

 Buffy never got higher than 118 in the season ratings according to the listings on Wikipedia and even at it's peak it was tied to be the #2 show on the WB.  It wasn't ever that big a show.

Whedon wrote 24 issues the Astonishing X-Men series. And I actually liked his take on Kitty Pryde, until he fucking killed her.

Oh, that wierdo comic stuff  :oh_i_see:

Thanks Merusk. Once again blinded by my market of one :wink:

He killed her?  Ok.. I never hated the guy, merely his work.
UNTIL NOW.

FUCKITYFUCKITYFUCK.

Comic book characters don't die. Come on! Were you guys born yesterday?

Joss Whedon kills everyone.  It's how you can tell he's a Serious Writer.

Yet he brought Colossus one of the more boring X Men back to life, seemingly so he could pork Kitty.

Yeah.

Should have been more specific: he kills all the interesting characters.  (They're the most difficult to write, you know.)

Hmm, I'm more and more convinced that this whole thing jumped the shark with the season 3 boxing episode.

You have a TV show about spaceships, killer robots, pew pew, and even mysterious destinies and gods, but you choose to run an episode about a bunch of drunks running an officially sanctioned fight club.

There is no way back from that shit.

The 22 episode thing is no excuse.

They could easily just break up plot epsiodes with a bunch of standalone pew pew episodes. It would seem clunky and forced, but would be better than this nonsense.


Oh, and btw, putting every officer we ever heard of on the Demitrius was a retarded decision, it makes the ship invulnerable. And drained any sense of drama out of the mutiny scene.

The whole Buffy universe was trash TV, the equivalent of shitty pulp fantasy novels. Not worth my time.

Firefly was genius.

None of this has anything to do with Battlestar Galactica, which is unlike either of the above.

(http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/8677/cgidw6.jpg)

haha love the cylon pic

I asked this on another forum but didn't really get a straight answer: didn't last week's episode verify Starbuck's virtual Leoben (that is, the one that was in her head when she was "died") was an actual Leoben?

 Gaeta seems a fairly strong candidate for the last Cylon, but i want to throw out the Ellen Tigh possibility, since i haven't seen it yet. Given that the producers have said there were clues...Ellen has had quite a few thrown out with no answer, though it of course may mean nothing.
 First being the original miniseries, you see Tigh burning a hole through her picture, though what we see is an orange/red hole where her right eye was, and they've indicated that the 'Cylon Eye' is more important than people think.
 Next her mystery appearance, nobody remembers saving her or treating her medically, it was just left hanging. I dunno how a resurrection ship would play into that.
 Then her Cylon test by Baltar, again no answer other than a very suspicious answer by Baltar and a cut away hiding the real result. Though you'd think Baltar would have more interaction with her if she really was one and he knew.
 The way she urges Tigh into taking power, allot like Head Six...
 Finally, there have been no children between her and Tigh that we know of and no explanation, and we know Cylons cannot reproduce by themselves.
 Anyway, anxious to find out but i wish they'd move faster this season, it feels like its really dragging.

~Edit for clarity

Ellen Tigh as the last Cylon would be a copout of major proportions... kind of like the final 4 they picked out as is. Gaeta, much as I would hate for it to happen, would be a much better choice.

The Battlestar Galactica itself is the final cylon.

Yes, because ratings have a ton to do with the quality of a show. Just look at American Idol!

A Transformer/Cylon!

I honestly don't care who the final Cylon is.  That whole who is/isn't a Cylon thing got old two seasons ago.  I still enjoy this show, but this is the mystery I'm least interested in discovering the truth of.

My thing is the only characters I'm truly interested in are the Cylons.

Yeah, me too.  It's just that this whole "Oooooooh, who could it be?" thing has worn thin.  This is the final season.  The time for plot gimmicks and forced drama is over.

Another terrible episode.  Its like they are treading water until we get to the final 2 or 3. 

The focus on big reveals reminds me of Nip/Tuck, which was tanked by the stupid Carver mystery and never recovered.

The problem I have with this season is that there are a lot of really interesting things going on, but they are all in the background. Cyclon civil war being one, the 4 revealed Cylons coping being another. Too much forced drama where there is real drama to be explored.

I thought that was an awesome episode.

I was coming here to say that they have a history of drifting for a while, then coming up with an episode like the one on original Caprica where a Six and an Eight rebelled for the first time, or the humans leaving New Caprica episode.

Significant things this episode did:
* Ended the Demetrius arc
* Confirmed I am wrong, the Galactica cylons are cylons - Anders was a miracle to the dying Eight
* Added a (crippled) cylon base ship or its remaining inhabitants to the human fleet
* Turned Laura Roslyn from a Lords of Kobol devotee to a One God agnostic, and looped Adama into that
* Killed off the sexbomb version of Six, except in Baltar's head
* Probably set Gaeta up for death or a miracle/revelation (fifth missing cylon theory?).
* Moved the main plot forward: Humans are now to look for the final five, who know where Earth is, and know Deanna/3 knows how to find them
* Deanna/3/Lucy Lawless is coming back

It was immense. Also Mary McDonnell - who I'm a fan of since Dances With Wolves (fuck you if you don't like that movie) - had a particularly good episode for her acting talents.

Downside: shitty close-ups of Earth 2008 qwerty keyboards on the Demetrius

 :roll:

Darniaq wasn't questioning the quality of the show, but it's popularity. 

Glad to see Nana Visitor. I was wondering what happened to the other Bajoran  :-)

Anyway, skinjobs suxors :dead_horse: but it's a small price to pay for the return of nekkid blonde Xena.  :drill: :awesome_for_real:

I agree. Good payoff to the ponderous build up of the last two eps.

No one else found it completely ridiculous that Roslyn and apparently Adama are one or two episodes away from being Baltar disciples?  Its a completely retarded plot swing.

People near death often cope by finding religion, and I am not yet sure Adama is roped in.

This was an excellent episode and the basestar stuff was pretty powerful.

Roslyn has always blown with the wind depending upon whatever dreams or visions she is having. Now compounded by being near death I can see her at a minimum questioning the conventional wisdom and being open to other things, i.e. covering her ontological bases.  I think Adama is just trying to make it easier for her. He's never been particularly religious and isn't now.

I actually think this episode was the best of the season, hands down. Unfortunately, I haven't thought the season was all that good to begin with, but this was an improvement.

The episode had a few too many forced drama moments, such as the timer for the Demetrius to jump out, the Six getting capped because she killed a human, Gaeta getting shot. We don't need the forced drama, the situations are dramatic enough as it is without feeling rushed. I really wanted Anders to touch the Cylon interface, just to see what would happen and finally get something moving on this final 5 storyline.

The Roslin/Nana Visitor moments were just damn fine writing and even better acting. I'm not sure about the switch to Baltar's religion, but I haven't gone with that story all season. I keep watching the show because of the narrative trainwreck it's become, but I also keep hoping they will pull something out worthwhile out of it. This episode was an ok start.

I find myself watching this season just for the Toaster Cylons reactions to things. Just seeing where they fall under all hierarchy and who/what they empathize with when they are 'free' from the inhibitor chip or whatever it was.


A Pair of episodes ago or so, when the Preacher skin job was negotiating with the renegade six's and the like, after they were done talking the six orders the Toaster to escort the Preacher to his shuttle and the Toaster just walks up a bit, stops, and stares at the Six doing nothing... then after a short pause the Six calmly says 'Please' and the Toaster goes about the task.


"It's a good thing you remembered the magic word."



Everything else though? Meh. I started watching the show because I love the actual Battlestar's and the space combat, and I was extremely pleased when the Pegasus showed up. The show actually had "plausible" space combat and tactics for awhile. Even the ground combat was for the most part, 'real' and any time a Toaster was fighting it was pure win.

All those kinds of scenes must be expensive to make or something, because we keep getting fewer and fewer of them and when we do get them, they don't make sense anymore, much closer to Hollywood Action Movie 'Drama' fighting then any kind of fighting that might actually work. Like the last battle with the Pegasus? That pissed me off so much (that whole story arc/direction did really), after what, 4 months of planning and training the best we can get is a last minute plan to suicide a entire fucking Battlestar?

 :angryfist:

You mean the giant brass balls maneuver of actually jumping a battlestar into the atmosphere of a planet and jumping out from freefall?

I still was high on that plan hours afterwards.

I have long accepted that the writers use the charcters as game peices to tell their moriality plays. Just look at every major plot with Helio, they just keep sliding up and down the board.

I'm just waiting for Baltar to translate golden plates out of a hat via a magic stone, it might not happen on broadcast tv but it'll be in the DVD extras.

The fifth cylon:

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/geicogecko-1-tm.jpg)

It's odd - I find Helio to be the only likable character. I thought tonights episode was great.

JUMP!

If it wasn't so telegraphed it would have been great.  It was still pretty good, though.

I hope the Centurions just kill everyone on that ship already, the whole lot of them are getting *really* annoying. "Can we trust them, can't we, must we, should we, maybe we..." TRUST is an issue, we get it.  :oh_i_see:

I was laughing my ass off through both the beginning and end of that episode.  As soon as the Demetrius failed to jump, the laughter began, and it stayed for a good long while.

I totally allowed that just because it let the Galactica point its guns at something again. Scrambling vipers  :heart:

The last few eps have been decent enough, but I'm still finding myself just watching to see how things end.

My bet's on Roslyn being the 5th, simply because it's the stupidest choice I can think of.

How many EPs are left anyway? I haven't been counting.

We just watched #8 of 22 so there's 16 left. Not sure why they're off next week.

This past episode was pretty good. Way too much Gaeta, and yea, the final hybrid/Jump! was way telegraphed. But enjoyable anyway. Finally some stuff getting revealed. Not much of it is interesting, but at least I can take solace in resolution :wink:

Memorial Day weekend, I guess.

Ah, that makes sense.

Yep, it does.  Sci-Fi always runs a movie marathon from Friday at 6pm until Monday at 11pm Memorial Day Weekend.  Not usually a big deal, because any series they're running have had the end of the season by then.

Kind of like how they always run Twilight Zone on Thanksgiving.. (or is it X-mas eve.. I forget.)

It's Gaeta. That's why he was singing and why the other 4 had a "meaningful" look when that was revealed.

Somewhere on the intrawebs Moore was quoted as saying it's Gaeta?  I mean they're trying to make it look like he's the fifth but I hope it's some effective misdirection and they blindside us with the REAL fifth.

I was totally expecting Gaeta's eyes glow red at the end.

A little silly, but at their is something happening now.

No, it's just my belief based on very few clues.

I think it's Gaeta as well, and frankly, he's the only one I'd want to be the 5th.

This episode was chock full of the contrived drama bits. The Demetrius failing to jump, the hostage thing, the jump at the end. There's more than enough drama in the story to not have to resort to cheap drama tricks, but with 14-16 episodes left, I guess you have to pad it somehow.

As well as the Cylon "leader" being assassinated by Athena.

Yeah, and I hated that one. The strawberry blonde Tricia Helfer is so much hotter than the platinum blonde. Can't Athena shoot the right damn one?

I'm upset she shot her, too.  They should make love, not war. ;D

Man, I can't believe I fell asleep like half way.  What the hell happened lol.

OMG, the lesbian is invading my thoughts. Just another example of the gay agenda.  

Yeah, I caught that.  It doesn't make it so, though, as it was just Anders interpretation.

I had a fucked up thought.  What if the dying leader bit really isn't Roslin but Baltar?

Lots of things could happen to our favorite lothario prophet supergenius with scary hot woman who talks to him in his head the way things are going..

After the last episode, the dieing leader could be the Rebel Six, since they had that whole Kara flashback thing during the little speech with her and the president.

Being the one to find and probably explode the Cylon's resurrection ability could certainly be interpreted as being the Harbinger of Doom or whatever the Hybrid said.

I'll be in my bunk.

I took it as Anders feeling guilty for shooting him, not that he thought Gaeta was the fifth.  He's becoming sensitive to all the death and violence around him.  Moreso than anyone else on either side.

Harbinger of Death.  With all their metaphysical talk, it might be as simple as being the  catalyst to the destruction of the resurrection ship and causing the mortality of the Cylons.  Rebel six said as much to the Council of Twelve and the Harbinger was brought up repeatedly.  I'm still hoping for some big space battles though.

My guess is that the twist is that Starbuck "ends the human race" by ushering in a new age of human/rebel cylon peace and love and copulation. So it's a good thing after all.

I was reading over at IGN that Natalie might not be dead, just severely wounded. I hope this is the case because killing her would be a damn shame.

Oh goodie.  Then we get her, Gaeta, and Roslin sharing hospital space.

Roslin's on the Basestar.

When she gets back.  I don't think Gaeta will be walking out of the med ward soon, and the toaster is gonna be laid up for a while.

I'd be surprised if that six survived.  She took two square in the chest at point-blank, and it looked like the second shot while she was down hit right under her ribcage, at an angle that should've nailed her heart.  On the other hand, I don't recall seeing any blood, so either they were censoring the hell out of the scene and not showing the bloodspray that should've been covering everyone, or she had some kind of body armor under her thin top.

On the next episode previews here, they have a camera angle of someone on a operating table with that oxygen mask being put on them, I assumed that was the Six that got shot.

I don't think they're worried about the accuracy of bullet placement.  It's about drama!  Adama was hit squarely in the chest, too.  There was some blood, but not a lot.

Are the Eights modeled on Assassins?  They seems to like shooting people at close range.  Not very good ones I suppose, since they keep doing it with rooms full of people.  And their victims survive.

Some news on a blog about casting for Caprica. (http://www.afterelton.com/gaygeek/5-21-2008?page=0%2C1)

Oh look it's the chick from Rome, she's kinda hot for being old.

I'd love to see the bookmark lists of the sites you visit everyday.

several webcomics
giveawayoftheday
abcnews
f13

365gay - occasionally
pam's houseblend - when I want to see bloggers write about news that pisses me off
livejournal - to watch a couple of community journals and wallow in emo

Plus a couple of websites I maintain so I should make sure they're working periodically.

It's not an exciting list.

You make websites that only work periodically?

Hows the market for that?  :grin:

I was trying to be a jackass because the link is to 'Gay Geek', I'd thought there would be a lot of gay niche tech sites and whatnot.

I'm sure there are plenty of niche sites.  There are gay and girl gaming sites I visit rarely, but I get enough gay culture from friends that I don't need to have my entire online life be coloured by the gay experience.  I'd rather get involved in other niche sites.  Like f13. ;D

It's great!  Job security.  They have to call me to make it work.

Given that I've never had the thought of, 'Gee, I'd better see what boys who like vaginas think about this game!', I consider it unlikely that a common thought among the gay boys is, 'Gee, I'd better see what boys who like cock think about this game!'  Unless they're the crazed gay fanboys who go around covered in rainbow necklaces and bracelets and have half a dozen pink triangles on their car.  I could totally see them going for a gay gamer site.

Fortunately, I think that most gamers hold their sexual preference apart from the games they play, and everyone's better off that way.

still downloading, but wow, that bad, eh?  :-P

I think only two folks here actually watch it on the night and time it airs.  I was busy last night so that puts it down to one.  I plan on watching it on the dvr later today, after the mowing and weed-pulling is done.

The q-2-3 crowd hated it, but frankly this is my fave ep this season.

"I need your judgment".

"I'm not asking them".

I take Haemish's point about forced drama vs. real drama. I think it's been apparent ever since they introduced Adm. Caine (Kane? I forget, heh). For the most part the writers stayed away from it this episode, but they are addicted to it and can't help themselves (and trust me, you'll know when they cave :roll: )

To me a lot of the plot was a retread. Odama goes out on his own in a single ship to quest for something nobody else believes in - where have I heard that before?

The confrontation between Lee and the lawyer guy didn't make any sense. My cat is dead - wtf? Seemed really out of character.

Family and death/loss seemed to be the themes the writers wanted to drill home during this episode.

The lawyer lost his family, the only link he had to them died, he could not accept this loss and it made him remember the past/go suicidal.

Meh, please to be blowing things up next time.

Margalis:

yah, the bit with the cat was what I was alluding to. This stuff happened in the last 10 15 min. IMO it was a good episode until it went off the rails when he pulled out the gun. IIRC Bill left after that too.

In any case, your point is still valid: we've seen the military vs. civilian gov't stuff before too. I guess I just hate all the religious babbling and visions stuff so much it clouds my judgment ;)

I wondered if he was being reintroduced to become the potential fifth cylon. He's so smart, perhaps he suspects it already? He's a superb actor playing the best new character from the last season - perhaps they've had him in mind all along.

Aside from that, I thought it was the worst ever episode of BSG. Lame scenes that achieved very little.

It almost looks like the plot is being determined by the availability of the actors. Mary McDonnell has put in for some time off, so they've jumped her out. Edward James Olmos appears to be taking his holidays next. When was this filmed - Christmas?

The wierd thing is most of these espisodes have very strong plot points, they just get subsumed by dumber ones.

For example in this episode you have:
The revelation that Tigh fucked a Cylon.
Tigh taking over command of the fleet.

The problem is that both were handled in 2 minutes or less. Tigh fucking a Cylon could be multiple episodes in itself, instead it was treated as almost at throwaway. And then moments later Odama hands the keys over to Tigh?

Well, we already know that Cylons can reproduce.

Chef and plain-jane.
Athena and the Hero.
So why not cyclops and six?

Also, Tigh having control of the battlestar fits in to the whole "the final five will lead you to earth" meme.

That's twice now. I thought you were doing it because Lee became president. But Adama seems to have gone all Obama in your posts.

Fixed.

>The confrontation between Lee and the lawyer guy didn't make any sense. My cat is dead - wtf? Seemed really out of character.
It was a scam to get Lee to commit to being president.

That makes tons more sense, as he was talking to the damn cat before he left.  i was all  :uhrr: when he said it was his cat in the bag.

I have Obama on the brain!  :awesome_for_real:

I hate when I get distracted and see the next week teaser bit at the end of the episode.

Wtf? Looks like Xena just told Roslin that she's one of the Final Five. Either misdirection or  :uhrr:

Actually that bit with Romo: anyone else get flashbacks of Fight Club and that scene with Brad Pitt and the cashier? Well I didn't really get the cat was a Head Cat so that's what I thought at first.  :oh_i_see:

Complete misdirection I bet.  Xena was likely talking to Anders.

Cyclops and Six are *both* cylons.

It's been established over and over that Cylons can't reproduce with other Cylons.

But love is a magical thing.

That was the missing ingredient before.

Time-shifting: the bane of advertisers everywhere :-)

Everyone see the Eve-online commercial?

I liked the episode, but agree it was a lot of advancement-of-plots in a very short amount of time. Adama going from Capt Bligh to solo-hero could have been a subplot over two episodes. Lee going from nobody to President happened way too quick. Romo should have been in two or three episodes leading up to that, at least. I love that character. Giving Tigh command should have happen more than the mere few minutes from the time he and Adama were duking it out.

Who said something about vacation time? It probably wouldn't have occurred to me had someone not mentioned that, but the way the plots are being hamfisted these days, I am getting that distinct impression.

As to Roslin being one of the final five according to Deanna: yea, I think that was a teaser-misdirect too.

There is no "in character" anymore. None of these characters even has their own character anymore, they are ciphers for the writers/creators/producers political and philosophical ideas. This episode was EPIC FAIL BAD. It was fucking retarded.

Tigh was fucking a Cylon captive in the holding cell, got her pregnant, and he and the Admiral fight about it. Then Adama gets all weepy about Roslin and decides to leave the ship AND GIVE IT TO THE GUY FUCKING THE CYLON PRISONER? WHAT... THE... FUCK? That makes so fucking sense in any universe. He's essentially committing suicide on "faith?" And giving over the whole human race to a guy that might have raped a prisoner? WHAT? Oh, and he released the Cylon assassin AGAIN despite her having potentially fucked up the entire alliance between the Cylon rebels and humans?

The whole Lee is president thing was SO telegraphed from the very beginning, and it also made NO FUCKING SENSE. If there is actually a Vice-President that is legally named as VP, the military refusing to recognize his authority IS A FUCKING COUP. And no one even bothers to mention that. Adama has essentially usurped legal civil authority and should have been court-martialed. But no, we want Lee to be president because he's shown such good judgement in the past. And their use of Roman with the dead cat just completely fucking ruined what I thought was a good character.

They had been improving, but this episode was just loads of fail.

Yes, but the revelation that your XO has been fucking a Cylon prisoner is somewhat major no?

Yeah Haemish, the characters now simply act in service of the plot. You can almost see the writer's fingers moving them around.

I agree. Bad episode.

I was under the impression that Athena was still in the brig, just that Adama let her have her daughter back.

Yea. They were pretty clear about that. Athena's in lockup with her kid.


Something just occurred to me: does anyone on the Basestar actually know Athena killed the Six? If I recall, she shot, the hybrid was plugged back in, they jumped out, all at the same time. No resurrection ship to rez the Six and therefore it's possible only the Galactica crew know what's up. Could be a setup for a future confrontation down the road. Or it could be a bygones-be-bygones thing telegraphed off of Lee's little speech with Romo.

A few points:

Romo with a gun: Complete setup and test of Lee. Remember, Romo is all about theatrical tricks to lead people where he wants them to go. I'm still on the fence about the cat, it did get shown, but only from Romo's point of view so maybe that part was "the Sixth Sense: Cat Edition". Or maybe foreshadowing Romo as one of the final five, which I'd greatly enjoy tbh.

Adama: Adama was clearly losing it in this episode in more ways than one. The writers have one hell of a job on their hands to get the civies and the military to respect him again. All this stuff with Adama felt like the writers were catering to the Adama/Roslin shippers.

Lee: Lee could be an interesting President. My prediction? Roslin is too sick when she gets back to resume her duties so Lee becomes the permanent President. Adama takes back his Admiral rank upon their return and we have episodes dealing with the fact that the Adamas have taken charge of both military and civilian life. Expect to see Zarek leading some kind of Fifth Column against them.

No one talked about that moment between Natalie and Doc Cottle. What did you think that was all about? Also, in the timeline, would the resurrection hub have still been up? Were they close enough for her to come back?

*insert some clever photoshop of that Time Magazine Most Important Person: You && The Final Cylon: You*

If I recall correct, Lee asked "man, don't you ever feed this thing?" when the cat meowed looking for food, and he made some other references to it. This is the part that made the last sequence so confusing. It went from Romo preparing to encounter Lee to cat-being-dead-in-bag. I felt that Romo was preparing to meet with Lee by killing the cat, but there'd need to be some more time between that and the encounter for it to smell in a way to make Lee wince. Unless the writers didn't really care about that in favor of just going the Seven route of implied head-in-box and person-being-sick-on-sight.

Man, I need to find some more words. To-many-dashes.

I thought Lee made that comment after he tripped over/kicked the empty cat bowl.

Could've been a different cat.

Manipulations and all that.

Tolerance and Love is the final Cylon.  Its the Cylon that is IN OUR HEARTS. 

Cholesterol?

Lee never saw the cat in Romo's quarters, as evidenced by him asking where the cat was when the cat was (apparently) in plain sight.  It was all in Romo's head; he's been carrying a dead cat around in his bag and talking to it as if it were alive and able to understand him.  Because he's gone a bit nutty and the cat is his Banquo.

That or the cat is the final Cylon.

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/image2981.jpg)

Hmm, good point. Sci-fi channel have the whole episode for viewing for free? Don't feel like buying it but this is something I'd love to re-see, in that Sixth Sense sorta way.

I did.  Didn't look like the EVE I remember.  Can I fly a Nyx into a station for major boom now?  Was that the fix for capship bowling?

Yeah, I groused about that loudly. "Ship collision?! I fucking wish,"  I think was my exact epithet.   That and Boarding/ Capturing ships would get my money forever.

Once, I understood the English language.

 :grin:

Yea, not familiar with "capship bowling" either. There was this thing you could do where if you came at a station at just the right angle at just the right time, you could knock other ships off of their docking tragectory. Not sure how big of a ship you could do that against though, but it does ring of "bowling".*

This lesson in etymology brought to you by Microbrew!

Don't we have three forums dedicated to Eve already?  What's wrong with you people?

They enjoy Eve.

Regular Cylons can't reproduce. Tigh isn't regular.

Hi, late to the party.  I actually like all the things you guys are complaining about.  The mysticism and religious stuff sets the show apart from the all-hard-science all the time norm of scifi shows.  It clearly does exist in some way, for example a Cylon hybrid knowing Kara's name?  I think the drama and pacing are good, and I didn't foresee JUMP even though my wife did.

I think they're having a hard time figuring out what to do with Lee.  It's too bad, because Jamie Bamber is a good actor and the character had some cool stuff to do in the past.  The love triangle seems to have evaporated, he had command of a battlestar but lost it, and he made a great pilot but now he's off being unimportant even though he's president.  I mean, come on, who cares really.  Roslin's the president and that's that; we don't care who tries to step into her shoes before the spot is even cold.

I'm thinking they better pay off the whole Cylon/human reproductive thing; in fact it better be pivotal to the whole resolution, since they give it such a big part between the Athena's kid and the Opera House, Tyrol's kid and now Tigh's.

I did see the EVE ad.  It took me by surprise, since I was thinking it looked VERY familar, then realized why.  I think they should have had a longer or more flashy one, because it was pretty forgettable even to me who already plays.

They have stores they wish to tell and they move the game pieces into position. Moving Lee into the president frees Roselin up for Roselin/Bill reunite/love story they have been setting up.  Obviously the president is going to have to make some really hard choices soon.  Having Lee in that position makes is more fun.  Roselin is so sure of herself, while Lee agonizes over everything.  It continues the "leaders making hard choices" theme they have been running since the beginning.  I think Lee stays as president.

Don't get me wrong, it's not religion in general I dislike. IIRC religion was central to a few characters in B5. The stuff here just wants me want to throttle someone. I don't know why exactly.

And I disagree somewhat with Haemish: this gov't IMO hasn't been legitimate since the Cylons landed on New Caprica. Baltar bent over for them, as soon as Tom made President he became a murderous thug. I don't remember the climax to that episode, but yah Roslin's president. She and Adama run things like a co-dictatorship. Roslin can barely disguise her contempt for the quorum. With Roslin gone, who's going to court martial Adama? I'd like to believe Bill actually reflected on his conversation with Romo, and that's why he stepped down, but maybe you guys are right and he was just lovesick.  :ye_gods: