Battlestar Galactica: Season 2 - SciFi US broadcast thread - Page 14

I might agree that would be better. But given the realities of series TV, where they don't know how long they will be on, they may end up with too much or too little material. So there's some element of winging it and seeing how things develop naturally. Better writers can make it work; others -- [cough]24[/cough] -- not so much. I don't listen to the podcasts because of spoilers, and would rather not know. I definitely noticed the line though.

Just before that, when Adama first saw Apollo and Starbuck: the expression on EJO's face alone -- that guy can act.

As much as I'd love for there to be a renewed sense of unity in the fleet (for all the excellent reasons that Adam identified), it looks like that unity will be once again tested in next week's episode.

So we'll see how the writers handle this. I haven't liked the writing in this season as much as last year's, though the production values are higher this year, which helps to offset the subpar writing (compared to last year, anyway--this is still one of the better TV shoes I've ever watched).

He pegged Boomer as a toaster last season.

The writers didn't write that line. According to the podcast EJO thought the line up on set for Park to say and, during editing, they thought it was cool so they kept it in.

I recall that, but my memory, trickster though it is, says there was other information he used to do so. Don't take me as saying you're wrong. I'm just going to lay out my memory. I've already told you what condition that's in.

Boomer came to Baltar wondering about herself. He was afraid of being found out in terms of his test not working. Six was working on him heavy then. He decided to go with "no," even though that wasn't the right answer. He later found out she really was a Cylon. As I said, I remember him being challenged on the veracity of his tests and him being very nervous about being found out (that the test doesn't work).

Anybody remember more detail? I have all the episodes, so I could go back and watch if anyone has any idea where this all played out last season.

Mikah, Baltar's test definitely pegged Galactica Boomer as a Cylon (the lights on his machine were all red). He freaked out a bit, and told her they were green because Six was whispering in his ear that if he told her what she really was, her programming might kick in and she'd kill him on the spot.

Oh, and Doctor Cottle (sp?) is the greatest doctor ever!

The entire map sequence was really beautiful and evocative. There was a mystical quality to it that I really enjoyed. The way Starbuck said they really were on Earth, and then the president said the "old" names of the colonies -- which perfectly matched our astrological signs -- were eerie in their effectiveness. And I couldn't help but think that if this was a Star Trek episode, they would have wasted two minutes talking about how it must be a virtual environment or holographic projection or some other technobabble nonsense just so it could be explained, whereas the Galactica writers feel no need to offer explanations for the mystical (and rightly so).

Great, great show.

The "And you ask why" line for me was a total "OMG check out the implications!" moment. Especially given the cut back to Adama asked dead-Boomer "Why?" It sucked to hear on the Podcast that there are no implications at all.

So now I have to go with the general, "And you wonder why we are killing you all".

Finding the location of Earth: Adama's in a hot spot. He now knows where Earth is. If the others blab to the populace, "Now we know where Earth is!", then Adama will have some explaining to do. He already promised that he knew where Earth is. Now he has to say, "*Now* I know where Earth is, honest!"

Rosalin etc taking off for Kobol to find Earth makes is rather obvious that Adama had no idea about Earth.

Oops.

Thanks, guys. Hmmm. This needs to be fleshed out. What does his test check for? A missing or existing protein? DNA? Is the testing of the fleet still going on? Etc. I'm sure they'll get back to it at some point.

Why would it need to be fleshed out? In season one Baltar spent a moment discussing how the test works and to the audience it was shown to work.

The audience knows it works and that Baltar has not been honest with some of the results. I think the writers have gotten everything they wanted out of the situation and I just can't see any reason to revisit it anymore.

I think it's interesting in terms of how, if it is this hard to tell a humaniform Cylon, then you're eventually going to reach a point where the likes of Boomer #2 are effectively human. At some point, that's going to become an issue, since Boomer #2 can make an effective claim that she's been imprisoned despite not having personally committed any crime, and if she can breed with human beings, what makes her not deserving of human rights? And if she can work in that she remembers Baltar telling Boomer #1 that she wasn't a Cylon (which, sure, would undermine an "I'm human" argument, but you can point to President Roslin and her visions to say that psi abilities don't preclude humanity)... Well, then Baltar either has to fess up that he was manipulating the results or say that the testing is, in fact, useless.

There's a pretty obvious parallel here to this country's abortion rights cases and other civil rights protections for some of our "guests" at Guantanimo Bay. Forum rules prohibit a political discussion, and that's not what I am intending. But every one of these cases begins with an interpretation of our Constitution, which protects "persons." It's all how you define person, which is where you were headed. I just point out that the quandary isn't that far fetched. We deal with it here every time one of these cases is decided. You even are hearing the speculation of whether a cloned human would be a "person" for constitutional purposes, or have no rights such that they could be "grown" for spare parts.

Oh, absolutely. I don't know if Moore & company intend to go down the road of "does Boomer #2 deserve human rights"; I just meant it as an example of how they really should clarify what Baltar is testing for in order to tell a humaniform Cylon from a human being.

There's a portion of the audience that won't care because the simple "it's hard to find" is enough scientific exposition. But there's another, likely smaller, portion of the audience that will say, hey, if Doc Coddle can't tell Boomer from a human being from a blood test, X-ray, bone marrow sample, MRI, DNA analysis, etc., then maybe she actually is human, just with an unorthodox family history.

If they say her brain is full of nanomachines which form a neural net that actually does a great deal of her thinking (and broadcasts her memories when she dies), okay, that's something that makes her not-human. It also potentially explains how #6 could be in Baltar's brain without a chip showing up on Coddle's MRI, for that matter.

There's good stories to mine out of all of this, both the allegorical questions of whether Boomer should have the rights generally granted a prisoner of war and the hard-sf details of what makes humaniform cylons different from people: There are 8 others in the fleet; could they infect computers with these hypothetical nanite neural networks? Could their memory broadcasts be intercepted? What would the danger be in a human being getting an organ transplant from a recently-deceased "spylon"?

To be honest, I'd like to see some more stories keying off things like this. The recent tendency toward mystical stuff, Roslin having visions and all, has been rather disappointing to me. Once you've introduced the magical, it's hard for me to really buy into the gritty realistic tension.

Of course, I still hold out hope that Galactica will be revealed as taking place in the far future with Earth being revealed as the planet where humanity was born, rather than a "13th colony".

Right on, Jason. I'm not as bothered by the arrow of apollo creating a planetarium for them to get the map to Earth. Maybe growing up on a steady diet of Indiana Jones has desensitized me to some of the mystical explanations for things. I also don't think they went too far with it. I suppose they could have had them drink or smoke something as part of a ceremony to help explain the visions, like they did with Roslin's medication and her earlier vision of Kobol. It could've worked too, had they not killed the priest. She could've led them in a religious ceremony drinking some ambrosia where they then all had the same hallucination. I'm ok with the way they did it though.

Well, like I said earlier, how do we know it wasn't a hologram, or some kind of VR display to show the map? Just because they didn't explain it doesn't mean that's not the way it really works. Why does it have to be truly mystical? Why can't it be technology that seems mystical in its function?

I hope to hell we never hear the word "nanite" or any other variation of it on this show. I think the creators have made it abundantly clear that technology is not the focus. If you're looking for hard SF in the meaning of gee-whiz technology, this is not the show for you (and I notice Rex no longer posts -- I guess the lack of explanation about FTL/jumps did him in).

If they wanted to get into the details of the physiological differences between humans and humaniform cylons, they would have done so a long time ago by talking about the results of the autopsies they did on Leoben. I don't think they're interested.

The whole Arthur C. Clarke thing about "sufficiently advanced technology", eh? Still, I had no complaints about the vision of Earth - I assumed it was some piece of technology disguised as something else for unknown reasons. But Roslin having unexplained visions that motivates all this, that demands explanation.

As to why - well, we've got Adama and other military characters as central characters, and they seem like nuts-and-bolts guys. Just because Roslin and her mumbo-jumbo were right once doesn't mean they'll trust it in the future unless they can ground it in something they understand.

And leaning on mysticism without well-defined rules is an invitation for sloppy writing; it makes it too easy to pull a deus ex machina out of one's ass, or opens up charges of inconsistency when you don't.

Pity. That's far more interesting than prophecies and destinies.

Roslin's been taking a drug with known psychotropic side effects. The priestess said it had unlocked the future to her, or opened time, something like that. While it may not be to your liking, it is a semi-rational explanation that "nuts-and-bolts" guys like Adama and Tigh might, to some degree, accept. Certainly good ol' Isaac Asimov (and lots of other "hard SF" guys -- Frank Herbert comes to mind) used "mystical," or at least psionic or mentalic faculties to advance their stories.

Hmmph. I still hope they don't go to this well too often. I also think that it would be an interesting story if Galactica and the fleet follow one of Roslin's mystical visions and it blows up in their face. It is a science fiction show, after all, and if the mystical crud has too high a success rate, it takes away from the suspense.

Ahhh... but couldn't it be both?

"It's happened before, it will happen again..."

RG

I agree, that would be kind of cool, and lead to Roslin doubting herself.

They only did that because William Campbell, editor of the most popular SF magazine of the '40s and '50s, believed psionics were real, and including them in stories was a good way to get his attention. He also wouldn't publish any stories where aliens turned out to be superior to humanity, which is why classic SF is full of plucky humans proving they're smarter or braver than more advanced aliens. Writers of the time didn't really like Campbell's aesthetic, but he paid the best money.

Sean, I don't think Herbert's Dune novels had anything to do with Campbell. (And yes, I am aware of the Cambellian requirements in "Golden Age" SF.)

I'm pretty sure John W. Campbell had something to do with Dune; I've got a few Analogs at home which have Children of Dune serialized within (though I think Ben Bova may have been editor by then); I don't know if Dune first appeared that way or not.

There's nothing wrong with psi powers per se, it's just that the blasted things will make you write yourself into a corner if you use them consistently and often come off as totally arbitrary otherwise. And if the writers aren't giving any consideration to why Roslin and only Roslin has these abilities, then it's nothing but a cheap "chosen one" plot device - and I would think Chosen Ones would be the last place a show like Galactica, with its gritty, pragmatic world-view, would want to go.

But, if that were the case, then:



The above could not be true. If there were nanomachines, I believe normal medical science would be able to detect them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Tigh said something almost exactly like that ("Your Cylon detector is useless") to Baltar after Boomer shot Adama. I don't remember what the reply was though.



Yup, I agree. I was disappointed that the placing of the arrow in the bow transported them to a completely different place. I think it might never be explained exactly how that happened and where they were taken, and I can't think of an explanation that would make sense enough to be satisfactory.
Besides, how come they didn't show anything about the aftermath of that? Did they come back into the cave/tomb? Did they investigate it? How was the way back? It felt like the writers and others really dropped the ball on this one.

By the way, did anyone get an uneasy feeling that they're gonna show that the place they were taken to was Stonehenge?

The rest of the episode was good. The "And you ask why?" comment didn't bother me. Maybe Cylons can hear while they're dead. They can apparently transfer their consciousness across the universe, so why not?
Or maybe they can't hear, and it was a general rhetoric question.

I haven't listened to the podcast yet, I think it will be interesting to hear if they talk about the Stonehenge scene.

/Mike

They've already given the explanation why it was only Roslin -- she is taking a psychotropic drug. She is also the one in the "role" set out in the prophecies, which make her succeptible to the power of suggestion as well. If you want to remain sceptical about her "mystical" abilities, feel free to believe that the power of suggestion, coupled with her impending death and the priestess who continued to feed Roslin's "delusion" of being the fabled leader from the prophecies, is what has led to her "visions." And since they are spelled out in the prophecies themselves (the Arrow, the Map, and the Tomb of Athena -- Adama is able to find them out just by scrutinizing the text as an unbeliever), there's no reason to think that she received knowledge from some supernatural source. Her subconscious merely pulled together the disparate bits of information she already knew, and was learning from the priestess. Since the Cylons also have this knowledge, it must be available from some source other than the president's visions (which actually are not sufficient to locate the Tomb itself -- they need Boomer for that).



Who said they were taken anywhere? It could have been (a) a holographic projection, (b) a VR simulation, or (c) something else. Adama actually says he thinks there still in the Tomb. And showing them leave would have caused them to give some kind of technobabble bullshit explanation that has no relevance or importance to the story, wastes precious time, and detracts from the mystical "effect" they were trying to achieve. As I said earlier, just because the effect of the Map was mystical, doesn't mean the explanation has to be. It could very well be technological.

And the map monoliths were defnintely not Stonehenge. There were only twelve, there were no fallen stones or outer or inner rings, and no lintels.

Personally, I think the map scene is one of the coolest things in the series thus far. I really enjoyed the feeling it evoked. Again, if you're looking for them to explain the technologies at work, you're watching the wrong show.

They were in fact taken somewhere else, but maybe not physically (for them).
Did you not read my next line: "I think it might never be explained exactly how that happened and where they were taken, and I can't think of an explanation that would make sense enough to be satisfactory." Certainly a holographic projection would be the least implausible solution. But then I imagine they (Adama & Co) might have seen that device first, or at least after the projection. But who knows.



It would not be "technobabble" (at least not if handled correctly) to explain one of the most important moments (if not THE most) in the entire show (so far). How can you say that it has no relevance to the story how the arrow of Apollo led them to find the way to earth, when the entire second season has been focused on this? I agree they were trying to achieve a mystical effect, and they did, but it left a sour taste in my mouth. It did not feel like something that belonged in this show.



I'm not looking for an explanation of the technology, but I would like to know, or at least here a discussion about, if it was technology or if it was something else. I'm looking for a discussion in the show about an extraordinary, history-altering event, and why and how it happened. Surely, these people could not have been magically transported (or whatever you want to call it) and then said "Wow, that was weird. let's get out of here and not care at all about what happened!", especially not when you have a believer and a non-believe there. Of course, maybe this will be discussed in coming episodes.



Maybe it was a crude hologram. I know it wasn't Stonehenge.



That's the position I've taken, and I've liked that the show has deliberately set up the story to accept and discuss both viewpoints. Same with Baltar, they have made a point of making it inconclusive what he really is. Good writing, good drama.

What they haven't done, up until now, is just throw out a random, magical, mystical event and not set up ANY kind of explanation for it, be it supernatural or whatever. It feels like they opened up a can of worms here, where they can start to justify any weird event with "well, it's mystical and religious".

I'm glad (an understatement) they didn't film and use the season one ending they originally wrote with Dirk Benedict walking up to Baltar, shaking his hand and saying "Hi, I'm God". They had no idea what it meant, but they thought it was a cool and weird thing to do. I suspect this Stonehenge vision was created in the same way, but they figured it wasn't too over the top so they kept it.

When I finished watching The Sound of Music, I wanted to know what happend to the Von Trapps after they went over the mountains. I wanted to know because I cared about them at that point. The movie didn't tell me the answer to a question I wanted to know. That does not mean the movie wasn't for me. It remains one of the 10 movies I'd want on a deserved island.

That might have some relevance at this point in the thread when considering suggestions that BSG isn't for some people if they express puzzlement, lack of clarity, or interest in certain things the show has thus far chosen not to explain.

Entertainment/art is about how it affects the observer. It's possible to have less than complete fulfillment and still immensely enjoy a product. BSG explains some things and doesn't explain others. The talent makes their choices and we live with it, for better or worse. However, I stand by the validity of my perception that the ability to detect Spylons is vague.

If it bothers anyone to know that I question what is unquestionably my favorite TV show, I suppose it will irritate even more when I point out that even though Baltar lost the chance to question Galatica Boomer about the specifics of the Spylons, we now have Caprica Boomer with all Sharon #1's memories. How long do you think we should wait before obtaining that information from her? Nah, let's focus on the Boomer/Helo/Baltar/Six Christ Child a bit longer.

Hmmm, maybe humans from Earth settled Kobol eons ago and the thirteenth tribe returned "home." Interesting possibility.

They actually wrote and shot another Cylon attack, which interrupted the cave sequence, which added another battle sequence, but in the edit, they found it was more effective not to spell out exactly how they got back, what the journey was like, etc. Instead, they went straight for the Big Speech scene, which, IMHO, was very effective.

I dunno, seeing them safely back on Galactica, wouldn't you just assume that they made it back safely, without incident, which is definitely the implication of the final cut of the show?

Yeah, I assumed they did. Which is really weird, considering Kobol is supposed to be Cylon-infested and dangerous. It would have made much more sense to have at least the first attack you mention (interrupting the cave sequence) left in, in order to still convey Kobol as a hostile place. They did this whole mission that was supposedly enormously dangerous and only suffered one death in Cylon combat. It felt a little thin.

/Mike