Battlestar Galactica #15 : No Exit/Season 4 Finale

[Mark]

John Hodgman as the brain surgeon was both incredibly jarring and incredibly hilarious.

Yupper! He is truly the newest incarnation of Dr. Science. It's a hilarious persona.

 

[Ahnehnois]

That nurse has a horrible bedside manner.

Maybe she just doesn't like Cylons.


For an episode where most of the time was spent on characters talking about mythology it was watchable.

 

[Krug]

Fell asleep twice watching this. This one really took the air out after two excellent episodes. The Galatica falling apart subplot was definitely more interesting.

 

[Arnwyn]

Absolutely loved the exposition, because they're finally telling me something. And it's about time, too.

Glad they at least attempted to explain the mess that they made in previous seasons, due to lazy story-telling and mythology-building. This episode's partial payoff made the journey through the execrable S3 and beginning of S4 almost worth it. I look forward to the rest of this season for more payoffs!

(Not explaining Starbuck's death/resurrection/return thingy would be insulting. Hell, not explaining Baltar's head-cylon - who knew and communicated things to Baltar that Baltar couldn't have known - is insulting.)

Best episode this season, by far.

 

[Styracosaurus]

Thoughts of mine, not in any particular order:

1) Didn't Gaius Baltar know that Ellen was a cylon? Adama gave him the blood sample to be specially tested.

2) I think that Starbuck was resurrected by the same ship that resurrected the final five. So, she is a cylon. She just wasn't one of the final five that the centurions met thirty years ago.

3) Consider, IF Saul Tigh and the Six are able to reproduce in a biological way, then what else could separate the skinjobs from regular old humans?

4) I think that humans...........are cylons. The skinjobs live as humans do, eventually decide to make artificial life. It is a cycle; lather, rinse and repeat (or rather; become human, build centurions, get nuked, final five show up and start over)

5) What is up with the opera house and Baltar and Six and the President?

 

[delericho]

1) Didn't Gaius Baltar know that Ellen was a cylon? Adama gave him the blood sample to be specially tested.

There was a lot of back-and-forth in that episode about who was to be tested first. I forget what the outcome was. Anyway, pretty soon after the Cylon detector was completed, Baltar reprogrammed it just to give everyone a pass. Oh, and we also know that the Final Five are in some way different from other Cylons, so perhaps they wouldn't have shown up anyway?

Besides, they're making this up as they go along. She probably wasn't a Cylon back then.

2) I think that Starbuck was resurrected by the same ship that resurrected the final five. So, she is a cylon. She just wasn't one of the final five that the centurions met thirty years ago.

Did it also resurrect her Viper? There's more going on there than we know about.

5) What is up with the opera house and Baltar and Six and the President?

Nothing. They're all insane.

Or, I don't know.

 

[Styracosaurus]

[/QUOTE from delerecho]
Besides, they're making this up as they go along. She probably wasn't a Cylon back then.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, come on now, don't be so pessimistic. I'm pretty sure that they had the final five down because they knew the series would be only a few years long. It feels to me as though the end of the main characters are/were already determined.

[/QUOTE from delerecho]
Did it also resurrect her Viper? There's more going on there than we know about.
[/QUOTE]

Yep, that is a weird one. The builders could not have built the viper from observation since Starbuck crashed it on Earth. I think that when she was resurrected, the Original Final Five ship read her memories and were able to build a viper from her memories. Then send her home....

BUT....
But why not just write her a note and send it back to explain everything to Captain Adama?
AND....
The Original Final Five do not have FTL capacity to send Starbuck home. Why did she show up in a few months (time to build her viper I guess) rather than in a few thousand years?


Big One:
How did the final five all end up on the fleet though? At the beginning I was convinced of time travel or some other nonsense to resolve the "it has happened before and will happen again" meaning. Now I think that the show is presenting existence as a recurring cycle that just repeats certain patterns.

 

[dravot]

Besides, they're making this up as they go along. She probably wasn't a Cylon back then..

Oh, come on now, don't be so pessimistic. I'm pretty sure that they had the final five down because they knew the series would be only a few years long. It feels to me as though the end of the main characters are/were already determined.

I heard a podcast from Ron Moore, and to some degree Delerecho is right. I'm not sure when, but prolly between the 2nd and 3rd seasons Moore had a flash of insight as to who the Final Five were. Prior to that Baltar had tested Ellen as a cylon, but we never knew the results.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Besides, they're making this up as they go along.

It's one of the main reasons why they're releasing a telemovie called "The Plan" after the series ends. So they can retcon parts of the series about what the Cylons plans were, in regards to the tagline "The Cylons have a plan". Which they never really thought of in the beginning, but ended getting stuck with it for the marketing of the show.