Battlestar Galactica Season 4 - Page 48

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Stated in front of Ellen to sell the ruse of course. John was around long enough to know that it took all of the F5 to reinvent resurrection so unless he was absolutely convinced that it only took one, then he's taking a huge risk if he breaks open one of his golden eggs and breaks her yolk.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Watch the reruns?

I for one can't wait for the series to appear on Blu-Ray. When the end of a series answers so many questions as BSG has accomplished, the re-watching of the entire series puts the storyline into a whole new perspective.

Ron Moore has accomplished quite a feat here: a series that can be sold again and again! Very few television series have ever accomplished such a high level of marketability.

Still, *sniff*, it's over! It's all over!

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Great finale to a great series. I'm not one to require every single thing explained, but just a line about GhostKara or GhostViper would have eased my mind. But I'm not complaining. (Well, there's much of season three, now that I think about it... ) Epic story with a very satisfying, climactic ending.
I don't think Cavil ever believed that the secrets to resurrection could be attained by dissecting Ellen's brain. That was just a lie to make Ellen believe that Boomer's rescue of Ellen was genuine. Hera was Cavil's goal all along.
Good question. The 13th-colony Earth must be within just a few light years (as in under ten) of our Earth for their constellations to resemble ours, and even then they won't be identical.

Poor Xena, stuck on that radioactive wasteland when she could have lived her remaining days in Paradise. Im sure it's better than being boxed, though.

I know that there's absolutely nothing to be gained by forming tribunals and leveling recriminations when establishing colonies in Paradise, but it just bugs me a little that Caprica Six (and, to lesser extent, Baltar) would be welcomed into Paradise since she alone is responsible for the deaths of more people than Hitler, Darth Vader,Cthulu, and the Shadows combined. I'm not sure I'd feel completely at ease living in a world knowing that the farmer's wife across the ocean is a genocidal sociopath.

Nevertheless, Caprica Six's and Baltar's new beginning was one of the most touching and compelling dramatic elements of the finale, and I wouldn't have changed a thing. I admit, though, that I'm a complete sucker for redemption stories.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

One more item.

I liked the part with Baltar and Caprica Six where Baltar says he knows something about farming, knowing that Tricia Helfer happens to be a farmer's daughter!

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Wow, who knew that after all this time, BSG would end up being a documentary?

BTW, one of the robots shown at the end of the show was featured in the news this past week as the most life-like robot yet seen. No word if she is known as a skinjob.
Japan's latest supermodel--a robot | Crave - CNET

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

[quote=Mikah Cerucco][quote]The finale shows how pointless saving all those people were. If Helo and Athena had just gone off on their own, it would have resulted in the same thing.

Near the end, when they did a close-up of Hera's face as she walked along (before dissolving to rolling landscapes), I half-expected that she was about to walk up to a little Chaka and smile.*

*(Land of the Lost)

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Actually, that's a different model. The one shown at the end of BSG is mainly a facial specific model which isn't mobile, and which was revealed a few months ago. But yes, the one in BSG did remind me of the model in your link which was revealed only a couple of weeks ago.

I'm afraid to ask what will show up next. If I ever see one with a red light in its head bouncing like a ping pong ball, I'm getting a gun!

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, why should these supreme beings, with powers of life and death, require Hera be delivered to (new) Earth in order to start the cycle again? Through quite extraordinarily roundabout ways, it must be said. Far easier to let the indigenous hominids evolve naturally? (They can surely speed up the process by providing them with language?) Why? Out of an appreciation of irony? To throw a spanner in the Mice's plans? I suppose when you're angels you've gotta get your weird kicks somehow.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Wrong god. The god of the hominids was obviously less powerful that the god of Cylon/Kobal. Of course, the hominids were probably already contaminated by previous visitors. The Galactica could probably have made good use of the phone sanitizers, however, with all of their wired communications.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I think the Cavill Cylons' hopes for Hera were largely in vain. They were trying to find a scientific explanation for a metaphysical occurance My guess is that the settlers on the new earth named new constellations after the ones from their mythology. In other words, the stars that make up our Sagittarius, etc. are a similarly arranged but completely different set of stars from the original Sagittarius on the original earth. Because they carried out God's work. What little we know about God (or whatever He/it's called) in this universe, He's not a gentle and fluffy New Testament style God. Had the Cylons not decimated the colonies past the point of recovery, the cycle never would have been broken. After all the angels (or demons, or whatever) didn't appear to them until after the genocide. Only by all but wiping out humanity did they earn an audience with God's messengers. It's really dark and really twisted, but that's how I understood it. That's the part that blew me away; the MSNBC report in the window was a real news package that I saw a week or two ago! Talk about lucky timing for them... "God [or whatever] works in mysterious ways." (Quentin's gonna hate that non-answer)

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I vaguely remember the original BSG when the Dirk Benedict Starbuck "died" and returned in a all white version of their flight suit. Without the internet as we know it in 1979 we will never know the metaphysical outrage of fans then, either. :-) I don't remember why he died or why he was brought back but sadly the result was them arriving in the year 1980 vs. 150k years ago. Look where that got us.

Anyone remember that episode? I have the series in my Netflix Watch Instantly queu but those episodes are hard to watch. Nostalgia doesn't help with that series, sadly (though i remember liking the last one a lot...will have to try that again some time).

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

On a metaphysical note, was Ronald Moore responsible for the Prophet stuff in Deep Space 9? That had the most spiritual stuff on it than any other ST show (and most sci-fi shows). B5 had the same stuff, too (hmmm...).

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

When Caprica Six hacked the defense computers to destroy the colonies, it was an act of war. The cylons were breaking the peace treaty, but it was war, where all is fair. I wouldn't call her genocidal sociopath. The humans had made peace with her long before the series finale, with the alliance after the cylon civil war. It wasn't an easy peace, but it was one that had already been made.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

It was the two parter "War of the Gods" where the Ship of Lights and it's angelic looking beings were introduced.

It wasn't Starbuck who died, but Apollo at the hands of Count Iblis, who was a fallen angel of sorts, trying to mislead the colonials. The "angels" revived him and imprinted the coordinates for Earth in his memory, as well as that of Starbuck and Sheba. Their uniforms were white only while they were aboard the Ship of Lights.

One episode of Galactica 1980 that went unfilmed (because of the sudden cancellation) brought Starbuck back a second time as one of the "angels". He was being tested by them in the previous episode where he crashed on a desolate planet and rebuilt a Cylon to keep him company.

I can't help but think the producers of the current show were reworking these ideas all along.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Oh, yeah? Are you forgetting that she also killed a BABY? Think of the children!

Another question I had was this: In Adama's interview, he was asked if he was a Cylon. Didn't this scene flash back to a time before they ever knew about skin jobs?

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I think this was a fitting finale for the show. As I expected, it created some clever explanations for some of the mysteries, and left other mysteries completely up in the air - which is sort of how they started anyway. That's OK. As expected, characters received the best send-offs, although the "back to nature" consensus among the humans I found way too much of a stretch. After watching so many years of cliques and in-fighting with the colonies, it was quite a lot to ask. So not one colonist is going to keep any bit of technology?

I also didn't like the idea that Adama (Sr) would leave behind his son to live out his life alone. That really didn't make any kind of emotional sense to me. And Kara's an angel? I'll say this: it's not like they didn't warn us!

Galen's behavior was unexpected, but understandable. Kind of a sad place for him to end up. As for Baltar, his arc was the most fun to watch, even if they'd stop his development every season so he could lounge around in a harem. But his last line to Caprica about farming was one of the most powerful moments in the season.

Considering where this show was a year ago, I think they surmounted a lot of obstacles to provide the series with a beginning, middle, and end, even if the "we're all cylon hybrids" angle was probably the least challenging way to link the societies and themes from BSG to our own planet. But again... it's pretty much what they were planning all along, with the song and everything, so it's not like they didn't warn us.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Killing one baby doesn't make you a genocidal sociopath.

I thought when they asked Adama whether he was a cylon, it was to get a baseline for the lie detector. So yes, before they knew there were skinjobs and a question where they knew what the answer was supposed to be.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

It was a powerful moment, but it was nearly 100% set up within the last episode(s) itself.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

That was always ambiguous, though - was it a brutal remorseless act, or a mercy killing knowing the holocaust was to come?

It was a control question, which is intended to only have one answer. Since cylons are not human looking (according to the knowledge of the interviewer and Adama at the time), the answer was "no", which allowed the lie detector to determine how Adama acts when telling the truth. He could have just as easily asked him "are you a tree?" or "are you a toaster?".

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

The specific farming detail may have been brand new, but the fact that Baltar had a less than royal/famous heritage has been known for quite while.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

He already made the same choice earlier when he waited for Roslin in a raptor by himself. If one recalls that it's not too surprising.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

No it wasn't. His upbringing, including the part about changing his accent, was actually revealed long before the scene with his dad.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I was thinking something similar. I can believe everyone abandoning all technology. But I have to believe that not long after these people start their pre-historic existence there would start to be occasions where the knowledge in all their head would be brought out for use. I mean are we really to believe that two years from the landing and a child falls down and breaks his leg people are just gonna leave him to his fate? I would think every effort would be done to save him, using a splint to set the break and finding someone that has rudimentary knowledge of plant medicine to help with infection.

How long after that would all kinds of technology be re-discovered?

I also belive that before they even build a house, the Tighs would be building a still

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I thought it was far less ambiguous. My first and continued impression on subsequent viewings was that it was a sheer accident. She had never seen a human baby (or any other baby for that matter), actually commented on how fragile they looked, and was just touching/examining it unintentionally snapped its neck. The look on her face immediately afterwards seemed to be much more surprise or remorse than either malice or mercy.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

OK -- I don't think anyone said that renouncing technology meant becoming stupid. They got rid of space flight and such, but of course they will manage with the full extent of the knowledge they have.

Still, even that seems pretty silly to me but of course I might feel the same way if I had gone thru what they did.

I liked the finale, but I can't say I loved it. As was said earlier, it would have worked much better as a 3 hour ep. As it were, that action packed hour, as spectacular as it was, did very little for me because it was removed from the setup of last week. I wish I had seen the previous episode right before to put me in the mood.

--
H

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Well, humans don't become angels -- they're considered different species if we're going by the religions we know. (The idea that humans who die become angels is more of a Hallmark idea.) So she's not like Head Six and Head Baltar. She was reembodied, as was her Viper... but she wasn't an angel strictly speaking.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I say that Kara, Head Six, and Head Baltar were all beings from the Ship of Lights.

Did anyone else find it amusing that Helo got shot through his leg, again?

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Great stuff. Agree with many points already made so won't repeat them.

It was kinda funny to see Romo Lampkin become president. And Hoshi (Gaeta's boyfriend -- oh the irony!) become admiral, and then Lee properly addressing them but Hoshi still thinking he was a junior to Lee when they were leaving on the last flight out. But then again, which other reasonably known supporting characters are there left which could have taken on those two positions, since all our 'heroes' were on the suicide mission? Maybe Doc Cottle, but he'd go "I'm a doctor, not a politician!"

Not exactly. If you read the Wiki explanation on Mitochondrial Eve, it explains that although all living-day humanity is descended from Eve matrilineally, it doesn't mean Eve was the only woman living at the time -- it just means that none of the other women living at the time can do what Eve can do, which is trace their descendants all the way down to present-day exclusively through the female line. Some may have no living descendants remaining, others might have some but cannot trace lineage solely through the female line, i.e. in some generations lineage must be traced through sons.

So actually I suppose it's possible that some modern day humans (as we call ourselves) have a bit of Six, or Baltar, or Apollo, or whoever else landed on our Earth, in them. Just traced differently, but Hera is our one certain common ancestor. "Great (X?) grandmother of us all", basically.

In that respect her creation and existence itself was necessary for human life on our Earth?

I too wonder why Bill Adama was said to not be coming back. Unless the loss of his two ladies, Galactica and Laura, one after the other, but safe delivery of the fleet's population to new Earth and in effect the conclusion of his last mission, left him with no will to live? Which also makes no sense, since he's hardly the suicidal type. But whilst I fully understand Tyrol's need to become a hermit (I too interpreted that as Scotland), there is no reason for Adama to do the same, unless he's just tired of playing father-figure, as he no doubt would have been in any new settlements even without commanding a battlestar, and wanted to live out his days in peace and quiet. Sadly this would be alone, and not with Laura.

Some other small points: whilst a bit deus ex machina, a dead Racetrack firing off the missiles wasn't quite as far-fetched as a complete fluke shot -- her dead hand hit the single fire button to launch all missiles, presumably already targeted and locked in, so the fact they hit wasn't a lucky shot.

I also liked that they used the Hendrix version of All Along The Watchtower. Yes, Dylan's a genius for writing it in the first place, but I just prefer Jimi's version.

I'm sad it's over. But it was great while it lasted.

Oh, and one final thought: this means the entire series can also be prefaced by (more or less), "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

(A million light-years is half-way to Andromeda, the next nearest large galaxy. So not as big an astronomical mistake as the old series which got solar system and galaxy mixed up...)

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Some other odd things to consider since we don't know all the details of how the Cylon genes were developed. Athena has the same Mitochondrial DNA as Hera and any of Hera's subsequent siblings (or half sibs) would have the same m-DNA. The assumption based of Head Six/Baltar obviously was the remains found were Hera, but it technically could just as well been any of Athena's daughter's/Grand Daughter/GGD/etc.

Depending on how the 3's and 6's DNA were designed relative to the 8's from the original maternal DNA stocks presumably from Ellen and/or Tory (though it was never explicitly stated that they hadn't prestored some other DNA samples prior to Cylon Earth's destruction) it possible that all the 6's and 8's have identical Mitochondrial DNA to pass on. If they found Athena's remains and could accurately tell who was older, then Athena would become Mitochondrial Eve.

As far as the rest of the saved people being irrelevant, that assumes that none of them had anything to do with raising Hera, nothing to do with any subsequent cultural developments, saving Young Hera from all the dangers of the New Earth, etc which is of course not a very logical argument.

Kill the lone butterfly that pollinated the flowers that the ancestor of the insects ate that the herd of animals ate to stave off starvation that the people ate/skinned/weaponized to stave off death of the smartest Human that developed fire ........... (Apologies to Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder")

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I suppose Hera would have been more meaningful as our progenitor if there had been something about the Cylons that offered some quality that humanity did not already have. But since there wasn't, it isn't as poignant a merge as it could have been. She didn't even have the Six's awesome body.

One criticism: I think the whole Final Five subplot -- the entire storyline in season 4 about the Final Five having had something to do with a lab on "old" Earth -- could have been skipped. It didn't really go anywhere, and it wound up having to be explained away in that awful exposition scene a few episodes ago. "Hey, we all worked at a lab that was working on something or other, and you were there, and you were there, and you were there too! Oh Auntie Em!". It was convoluted, if not outright bizarre.

The idea that these five all worked at some company, working on incarnating again, was ...unlikely.

It would have been enough to have said that some humans felt themselves to be from old Earth once they got near old Earth, and, that this was because all the souls that perished on old Earth had started to reincarnate (naturally, not via any tech) both as humans on the 12 colonies, and also, as the new human-shaped Cylons. I.e., just souls finding familiar shaped bodies. No labs, no technology, just, incarnation. You could have even had lines that were supposed to all be identical (such as all the Sixes) exhibiting unique personalities because they were more than their programming, they were infused with a soul, each of them.