Battlestar Galactica:Season 2; Part 4 NSCR/8.5.05

[LightPhoenix]

Just to be pedantic, I'll point out that I made this point a while ago.

Not pedantic at all! I must have missed it amongst all the argument in the last two threads. Honestly, I kind of started glazing over all of it when it started getting out of hand in the last thread, and carried that over to this one as well. Sorry!

 

[MaxKaladin]

I suspect the various cylon factions have different reasons for wanting to allow humans to survive and some of them want them to get to earth, again for different reasons. I rather doubt they want Galactica to be around though so they're trying to get rid of Galactica without taking out the rest of the fleet.

Starbuck is joining my short list of characters who has some idea of how to be properly armed after the scene where she starts unpacking guns and handing them to Helo. The king is still Brendan Fraser's character in the "Mummy" movies with his roll-o-guns and then his trunk-o-guns, but Starbuck is now on the list. As a general rule, you're never properly armed until people start complaining about how much armament you have.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

As a general rule, you're never properly armed until people start complaining about how much armament you have.

I've seen more than my share of D&D characters with that attitude. "You couldn't have hit me! Any blow surely would have defelcted off of one of my five swords, two battle axes, eight daggers, and three shields strapped to my body."

 

[MaxKaladin]

I've seen more than my share of D&D characters with that attitude. "You couldn't have hit me! Any blow surely would have defelcted off of one of my five swords, two battle axes, eight daggers, and three shields strapped to my body."

Back in the early 90s I had a traveller character who kept an entire arsenal in his room on the group's ship. It was specifically designed to contain the maximum allowable armament for every law level so he could always be armed as well as legally possible on any world they visited (and he had plenty of concealable stuff as well that he carried even when NOT legal).

 

[drothgery]

So if the cylons' goal is to find Earth, does that mean that Adama is a cylon? It was his idea to go to Earth (based upon his lie that the command staff knew of its location). If Adama is not a cylon, and the cylons' goal is to find Earth, their entire plan hinged upon the chance of someone pulling the survivors together and searching for, or stumbling on, a legend. Unless of course the Cylons all along beleived that by doing what they did, they would set the conditions for the prophecy, and that the prophecy would be true and lead them to Earth.

Why? If the fleet didn't come up with the idea to look for Earth on their own after a while, one of the Cylon infiltrators could have suggested it, and made the idea sound reasonable, without too much trouble.

Besides, Adama isn't all that interested in looking for Earth; he just wanted the fleet to think that they had some goal in mind. The one move that could reasonably be considered "looking for Earth" was Roslin sending Starbuck after the arrow.

 

[Elf Witch]

I like this theory. It has seemed for a while like the Cylons are herding the Colonials, they have had them at the brink of extermination for some time, and always seem to let them get away.

It does seem like the Cylons are intentionally trying to make the Prophecy come true (not that they specifically wanted Galactica or Roslin to survive originally, just that they knew that some ships would escape according to their battle plan), and once the humans began their search for Earth, the Cylons are following them the entire way. The idea that they are seeking Earth as a place where humans share their religion is very interesting.

I won't go too far into detail to keep this non-religious on this board, but given what the major religions of Earth are, the Cylons would have field day with their own monotheistic belief system if they encountered modern Earth. Of course, we don't know what stage of development Earth is at in new BSG. In old BSG we knew it was "modern day" from almost the beginning when they intercepted a broadcast of the Apollo 11 landing, and of course found Earth in the abysmal "Galactica 1980" second season.

Just a little nitpick. The radio signal that carried the image could have been traveling in space for thousands of years that point was made by Boomer who had an understanding of this type of communication. So it was kind of up in the air about Earth and how far along it was in development.

The second season does not exist Both Glen Larson and Richard Hatch in their versions ignored it.


I always thought BSG story was about the journey finding Earth. Actually getting there was alaways something that should be left for the finale.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Ok, done being a nuke geek. Back to the real discussion.

I was kinda surprised to see, in the season ender, actual devastation in Caprica City. I mean, we'd seen so little devastation in the previous city.

Perhaps a mix of regular nukes and neutron bombs was used? Regular nukes used for hard targets (like, say, the Colonies' command bunkers), and airburst neutron bombs around the cities to exterminate the human vermin.

Brad

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Actually while an air blast does do less damage, the raditiation from such an attack dissapates much quicker than a ground blast. Ground blasts create the radioactive fallout that is the most dangerous (long term) part of a nuclear attack.
In tactical planning, a few well places air blasts create an EMP effect that would wipe out most electronic equipment. It does not create much fallout. To get a good long lasting radiation effect you need to turn up some dirt (so to speak). This means a ground burst.

Some of the nukes in the miniseries look like they hit the ground. Such as that one which took out Baltar's house and destroyed Six on Caprica.

 

[WizarDru]

One thing to take into consideration is the needs of a televison show and cinematic presentation versus totally consistent reality; I think we can't read too much into the visuals from the show, for example. I don't think Baltar's house was hit by the result of a nuclear explosion, unless Baltar received some form of radiation treatment I missed. It could have just been a mass driven projectile; the force of a nuclear weapon without the radiation. The ecosystem seems pretty unharmed by the whole thing, really....but again, it's expensive to represent the world otherwise. The same applies to Starbuck's competence value - she's central to a lot of conflicts and skills because it's much easier for the writers to create and audience to follow if they use the same viewpoint characters. They didn't use Starbuck because she was the best sniper...they used her because it was much easier to use her in 'Colonial Day' than another minor character we were unfamiliar with.

I really rather like Starbuck as a character. She's represented as uncompromising and unhappy...but all on her own terms. She is a mark of how far we've come in that her gender isn't really considered a factor in whethers she's believable as a character (or unbelievable, depending on your feelings).

I think the show has to make concessions (as all shows do) in the absence of an infinite budget and infinite time to develop the story. This sometimes leads to inconsistincies that only we die-hards actually notice. And that's OK in my book.

 

[dravot]

Interesting info on Starbuck's character from Ron Moore's <a href="http://blog.scifi.com/battlestar/archives/2005/07/index.html#a000059">BSG Blog</a>

The original character was supposed to be the best pilot in the fleet and the best card player, so I always saw those two attributes as integral to the role. Also in the original was the conceit that Starbuck and Apollo were inevitably assigned the most important positions in any mission and they carried out a variety of tasks that had little or nothing to do with flying Vipers and I decided to continue that conceit for continuity and for practicality -- you use your regulars to tell story in TV, that's why you're paying them. This is one of those areas where the realism of our fictional universe has to give way to the realism of producing the show. Could we have introduced a new sniper character for the final action scene in "Bastille Day"? Of course. But would that have been as dramatic or interesting as having Kara be the sniper while Lee is in the center of the action? Probably not. Could we have introduced a different pair of shipboard investigators to deal with the assassination plot in "Colonial Day"? Absolutely. But the show is about our group of regular characters, and handing over an entire investigative storyline to two people we've never seen before simply isn't as good as letting Kara and Lee do it -- as long as we can plausibly believe they'd handle those chores. And yes, I think that given the premise of the show, namely that there are only a handful of survivors to begin with and that Galactica herself was undermanned when the attack went down, I can accept Kara being asked to do a variety of roles.

I also frankly enjoy watching Kara take on many of the traditionally male roles in the show, as the leading hero(ine), which more often than not involves being extraordinarily adept at more than one thing. (James Bond, anyone?) Some of it is just my own perverse pleasure at watching us explode gender roles and stereotypes and seeing Kara Thrace be the go-to character in a genre which typically demands that person be a man. And truth to tell, if she were still a he, I strongly suspect that this question wouldn't come up at all.