Battlestar Galactica February 4, 2005. Spoiler Talk

[Kid Charlemagne]

You just overloaded my sarcasm-o-meter. You owe me $19.95 for a new one.

I think they're on back order, but I'll see what I can do...

 

[Darrin Drader]

You just overloaded my sarcasm-o-meter. You owe me $19.95 for a new one.

Where are you buying your sarcasm meters? The cheapest price I can find on one is $49.99. Is there some sort of special mail in rebate program going on here, or what?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yeah. The episode should have been 45 hours long, since that was how much oxygen Strabuck had. Then we could have picked over every single step she took.

Oh, wait, then we wouldn't see what Adama and Apollo were up to. Make it 90 hours long then.

Time for a 24/BSG spin off.

(Imagine what someone like Jack Bauer could do on that show:
"You do want to break off the rescue for Starbuck? Son-of-a-bitch!" *grabs a Viper*.
45 minutes later, Jack has found Starbuck. 210 minutes later, he shoots her down as proof to a cylon agent that he is the missing 13th model ( ), and at the end of the day he has found Earth... But during the last 5 minutes,Mandy, the true 13th Cylon model flies a Colonial Viper to blow up the White House during the first face-face meeting between the Colonials and representatives of all countries of Earth, shortly before Adama and Roslin arrive with their own Viper escort...)

 

[fett527]

he shoots her down as proof to a cylon agent that he is the missing 13th model

I hope that's not some kind of spoiler as this was flagged to be an American non-spoiler viewing thread:

3rd post:

Ah Frabash, okay...just like 'the American only viewer for BG thread', the same rule applies here, for those, who don't have Sky One, no Bit Torrent, no nothing of the sort.

Edit:Uh-oh, sign of the devil post!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I hope that's not some kind of spoiler as this was flagged to be an American non-spoiler viewing thread:

Uh-oh...er... Not that I am aware of, just something I made up during the post - But maybe it makes sense? We´ll have to wait for season 2, but maybe it goes like this:
Origin World: Cobol; Colonies: 12 + 1 lost (Earth) =>
Origin Cylon: [yet unknown, maybe a Toaster with M$ Windows CE]; Cylon Models: 12 + 1 lost (Mandy).

 

[Umbran]

While I grant that a lot of that stuff could have been explained away by stuff we didn't see, the fact remains that it was not explained, and we didn't see it.

True. But then, no storyteller ever gives us every little detail as it happens. Expecting the audience to be able to fill in details retroactively is stanrdard, in every genre.

Battlestar Galactica does not want to fall into the Star Trek Technobabble trap. They seem to give only so much detail as is absolutely required to make a given story work, and no more. Exactly how she plugged the leak, and exactly how she got the name on the bottom of the raider, and exactlly how she managed to find the Galactica are all details that would be boring to watch if they did show them, and wouldn't impact the human emotions that are the real focus of the episode.

There are huge glaring technical holes in many of the basic premises of Galactica. YOu are able to ignore them. So, why worry over these fiddling details?

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Aintitcool is reporting that Battlestar Galactica is going to get a 2nd season. Number of episodes is unknown as of yet, though they had previoulsy ordered six scripts for a potential second season.

 

[dravot]

Uh-oh...er... Not that I am aware of, just something I made up during the post - But maybe it makes sense? We´ll have to wait for season 2, but maybe it goes like this:
Origin World: Cobol; Colonies: 12 + 1 lost (Earth) =>
Origin Cylon: [yet unknown, maybe a Toaster with M$ Windows CE]; Cylon Models: 12 + 1 lost (Mandy).

Eberron Dragonmarks: 12 + 1 lost (Death) => Khorvaire Nations: 12 + 1 lost (Cyre).

Coincidence?

 

[Amal Shukup]

Hey - I'm happy for you if you were satisfied with how several things that seemed extraordinarily implausible to me were resolved.


But I wasn't.

While I am well aware that showing every second of time passing in every episode would be both boring and impossible, the complaints I listed were not even hinted at - they have been created out of the imaginations of viewers (whole cloth!) without any even vague inference on the parts of the writers. You might call that "building suspense" (and if you do, I'm happy for you - you probably see a *lot* of good TV) but I call it "lazy writing."

See, I call it "lazy viewing".

I APPRECIATE the fact that they don't resort to trek-speak to handwave stuff, and I appreciate even more that they don't roll some 'lowest common denominator' exposition boy out every couple of minutes to explain the obvious. The writers are trusting us to keep up. They maybe gave their audience too much credit this time out. Alas.

The Patch: Flight suit material for space pilots. It's OBVIOUSLY vaccuum rated. Even modern day fighter pilot pressure suits are so loaded with plastics and polymers they'd probably suffice. Never mind a SPACE Pilots. Doesn't have to be a perfect seal on the planet. Once in space, presuming there was some backing (say a rock and some duct tape), vaccuum would provide a more or less perfect seal. Good enough for her purposes anyway. _I_ could patch that hole with those materials. I need Geordi Laforge to mumble on about differential pressure in the flux capacitors?

Flight Controls: OBVIOUSLY mechanical linkages (levers etc) intended to be manipulated by the original pilot's musculature (like thigh bones). The writers WERE explicit enough to remind us that only four controls were required for basic flight. They SHOW her manipulating them (hands and feet).

Air Tube: It's OBVIOUSLY a flesh and blood critter. Blood as in an 'oxygen transportation medium'. Probably engineered from a mammal - Human, most likely (demonstrated expertise from building Six et al). It OBVIOUSLY needs air every bit as much as we do. They even gave us an Oxygen detector to exposit the fact that it was air...

First thing I thought of when she opened it up: ("hey! It bleeds. It's gotta have air somewhere...")

Aside: This human or animal origin probably explains WHY the controls were physically situated where they were - to take advantage of existing nerve and muscular structures.

Duct Taping the Wings: 45 minutes of air shown on suit. A fresh supply of air provided. Duct tape explicitly shown, 40 odd hours not accounted for. Pick any of about ten plausible opportunities.

Finding her way to the BSG: Grab altitude, mentally review BSG SOP, establish a polar orbit (or whatever orbit is most likely to stumble across the BSG platforming for search and Rescue operations). Get lucky.

NOT Lazy writing at ALL: They SHOWED us all the equipment needed, and enough context to know what it could do. They spoon fed us flight controls (cause not everybody knows that only four controls matter). We can infer off screen capabilities and actions based on what we know about the characters involved. They left out out redundant exposition and fatuous handwaving, and they left IN all kinds of STORY...

LOVE this show. And NO, actually, I DON'T see a lot of good TV...

But somebody please explain why people from Kobol wear neck ties? Now THAT'S inexplicable...

A'Mal

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Uh-oh...er... Not that I am aware of, just something I made up during the post - But maybe it makes sense? We´ll have to wait for season 2, but maybe it goes like this:
Origin World: Cobol; Colonies: 12 + 1 lost (Earth) =>

Something tells me that all 12 colonies are named after the 12 signs of the horoscope...
So far I've heard...
Capricia = Capricorn
Saggitaron = Sagitarrius

And isn't their culture vaguely based off Greek culture, which gave the names as we know it for the horoscope (the horoscope was originally babylonian, I think).