BattleStar Galactica:Season 3.0--11/10/06--Arc 6

[Steel_Wind]

Helo and Sharon both go out the airlock - just to be sure.

Sorry boys and girls - this is for the species. It's not about vengeance or eye for an eye or dressing any of the BS up as justice.

It's not about any of those things: this is about survival of the human race.

You do it in a blink of an eye. If you spend more than 3 seconds contemplating the downside, you spent two seconds more than you should have.

Helo and Sharon both - out the airlock - dead. No appeal. Only way to be sure.

 

[MadWand]

I'm a pretty peaceful person, but I wouldn't hesitate committing genocide against the Cylons. Helo was a fool. The Cylons committed genocide against the humans first, and appear to want to continue to do so. Survival of the human race overrides any moral considerations, just as a Viper pilot need have no moral concerns about shooting down enemy Cylon pilots. Both are murder in self-defense, just on different scales.

Helo lost all my respect that episode. Athena gained a bit of respect for her understanding of the situation, and not freaking out.

Were I Adama, I would try to capture more skinjobs, infect them, and try the plan again. It's by far the best weapon the humans have found so far.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I dislike the senseless techno element that somehow says a virus travels to the resurrection ship, and the extended idea that this somwhow infects the entire cylon civilization, and the idea that they can't cure it and none of them is immune. Way too many stretches of scientific credibility for my taste.

That was what the Cylons believed. Important distinction. As we saw with Three torturing Baltar, the Cylons are very inflexible with regards to their beliefs. I'm not just talking the fate discussion either. They assumed, instantly, that Gaius was the cause, that he was lying. Nothing he could do or say would dissuade them of that. Heck, I don't think they believe him still, after all the torture.

Personally, I don't think downloading would have done anything anyway... and I'm a little disappointed they didn't go that way. I think it would have been more satisfying if the plan wasn't stopped by Helo and to have it fail anyway. Maybe it's the biochemist in me, but this way, the door is still open for biological weapons - just get some rats off the other ships! For that matter, any other virus Humans may be immune to can be used.

Overall, I wasn't too thrilled with the episode. It was good, a far stretch from Black Market, but definitely the low point of the season for me so far.

I don't agree with the genocide decision, for the sole reason that Galactica has made it this far, with their only major screw up being New Caprica. The Humans have adaptability on their side, something that we've seen very little of from the Cylons. At this moment, the moral evil of genocide doesn't make up for the possible total destruction of Humanity. There may come a time when that isn't true, but that time is not now. There was also no guarantee that the Cylons wouldn't have been able to cure it, especially with Hera in their possession, who is also presumably immune.

However, both Athena and Helo have shown repeatedly that they can not be trusted. At the very least, Adama should remove them both from Galactica, and it may even be justifiable to airlock them. They certainly shouldn't be on Galactica at all. It was a cop-out at the end of the episode, with Adama refusing the investigation. Perhaps he realized that biological weapons are a Cylon weakness, perhaps not. It still felt like a cop-out on the writers' parts. Hopefully we see some stuff go down with him next week.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I have to wonder why the Cylons want Earth, anyway. It's not like they don't have 12 (well, 13 with New Caprica) freshly-cleansed planets to live on.

The Cylons won't stop, and there will be no such thing as peace. Apply the same solution as the Albigensian heresy, since the Cylons seem to have this philosophy themselves: "Kill them all. God will know his own." Save the species, save the moral arguments for afterward.

Helo's too close to a Cylon and has gotten squeamish. Athena should definitely go out the airlock -- before she gets it in to her head to tell the other Cylons that she's immune due to her antibodies.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

The rules are always the same, everywhere and all the time. If humanity cannot afford trials for collaborators now and genocide against an enemy is the best option now and absolute martial law is the best way to operate now, then that is the way things will always be. The belief that things will change or improve does not reflect realty.

The democratic society of the colonies – that reflection of America the writers made – failed, but they all kept acting like it did not. They need to grow up, get rid of their moral squeamishness.

There are similarities between the Aenied and Battlestar. At the end of the Aenied, the refugees from fallen Troy conquer parts of Italy, setting the stage for the creation of Rome later.

I hope the writers and producers have the Battlestar crew at least attempt to conquer Earth.

Edit: Something occurred to me about the “missing’ five Cylon models.

What if there are only a few individual specimens of those models, or for that matter what if those models are “unique” individuals?

We seem to be assuming that there will be gobs of those missing models simply because there are gobs of the known seven models. However, that might not be the case.

If there is only a single unit of, say, Model Eight, active at a time and copies are kept around incase the live unit dies, and other Cylons are not programmed to recognize them…

Then anyone might be a Cylon.

 

[Chimera]

This whole thing is a serious can of worms. I don't necessarily like the "resurrection transmission of the virus" angle, but I'm going to have a serious problem if this is a one-off that they ignore from here on out.

Biological Weapons Program

Step 1: Create multiple samples of this virus and store them in un-registered and un-recorded locations so as to prevent mass-sabotage from destroying the program.

Step 2: Begin large scale production of the virus.

Step 3: Simultaneous Covert Introduction of the virus to all fleet ships. This will flush out the remaining 'skin jobs' and, if lucky, introduce the virus to any resurrection ships in range. If not and you uncover a few of them, you once again have subjects for the "get in range of a res ship and kill them" plot.

Step 4: Seed the 14 Worlds (12 Colonies, Kobol, New Caprica) with virus spores. This will prevent their occupation by Cylon 'skin jobs'. True enough, it won't prevent their controlling the space around them or sending down 'bullet heads', but it too offers the danger of mass infection of the new Cylon race. (It also gives any surviving Humans on those planets a chance.)

Step 5: Realize that you just gave the Cylons every reason in the Universe to get to Earth ahead of you.

Earth

Life began out there...

If life began on Earth, then moved to Kobol, then moved back... We now have at least two cycles on Earth, with a coming third.
1> Initial growth, reaching the point of FTL to depart Earth for Kobol.
2> Return of "The 13th Colony" to Earth.
3> Return of the meager survivors of the 12 Colonies to Earth. "3,000 years" after the supposed 13th Colony mission.

I'm going to find it very difficult to accept a Modern Era Earth at the end of the series, by this time-line. There also has to be the issue that Kobol seems to be quite a distance from Earth, so you would expect some explanation for this. In other words, either the original Kobol group was intentionally sent a rather extreme distance for some unknown reason, or it was a 'lost' group that unintentionally traveled too far, or ???

 

[Dingleberry]

Step 3: Simultaneous Covert Introduction of the virus to all fleet ships. This will flush out the remaining 'skin jobs' and, if lucky, introduce the virus to any resurrection ships in range. If not and you uncover a few of them, you once again have subjects for the "get in range of a res ship and kill them" plot.

My only real complaint about the episode is that none of the crew brought this up.

Well, that and it's similarity to the ST:TNG episode "I, Borg".

 

[Steel_Wind]

The more I think about this episode, the more I think this one was a mistake.

They just introduced too many plot hooks here that they are going to have to distatstefully ignore in that "Star Trek way" in future episodes.

It's not as if the virus has gone away. If it can last for 3,000 years in frozen snot particles on a probe amidst background radiation in deep space, it sure as hell can last a few years in a petri dish or a frozen cylon body (or 5) in the morgue.

You just can't put this bio-weapon genie back in the bottle. Baltar needs to find a cure for this thing, or the Cylons need to find a way to make sure the "electrical bio feedback" can't transmit to a resurrection ship so this armageddon weapon is an arrow removed from the Galactica's Big Quiver.

The idea of circulating the virus to make sure there are no more hidden cylons on the fleet is also a good idea. Though - at this point - the idea of hidden cylons among the known models in the fleet appears to be a dead plot thread.

BSG is a show that provokes debate by posing question and letting the viewer decide the answer. It's a brave political slant to the show and is one of the things that sets it apart from all other dramas.

But sometimes this fascination on the part of Ronald D Moore can go a little too far and introduce a question in the show that for reasons of technical consistency, just does not lightly go off screen never to be re-examined again. This is something the human RTF should be looking to exploit again.

I do think that this episode is the beginning of the end for Helo. It says a lot about this character that when push comes to shove, he's willing to TAKE for himself a decision that was not his to make. I don't think the audience is going to forgive Helo for this - I don't think his crewmates would - I don't even think they SHOULD.

There are going to be deaths this year on BSG and I expect the events of last night's episode are going to lead to Helo's dpearture from the series. This character is not going to make it to Season 4.

 

[Gunslinger]

Helo and "Athena" are both weak, and now Helo is a traitor too. You can't leave someone in the fleet who willfully disobeys orders, especially when he puts the entire race in danger by doing so. They cylons will not stop until they achieve complete annihilation of the human race; genocide is the only way to stop them.

 

[Aesthetic Monk]

Helo and "Athena" are both weak, and now Helo is a traitor too. You can't leave someone in the fleet who willfully disobeys orders, especially when he puts the entire race in danger by doing so. They cylons will not stop until they achieve complete annihilation of the human race; genocide is the only way to stop them.

Well, I think this is the last time I'll stop by a BSG thread here. Obviously, this wasn't and isn't everyone's opinion, but still. Seems like RDM's failure as a dramatist here was to assume that viewers would have a reflexive revulsion at the thought of genocide.