Battlestar Galactica: Season 4 Thread

[Werthead]

[quote name='Domaine Raidneé' post='1294805' date='Mar 31 2008, 17.51']From the commentary, it's pretty clear that

SPOILER: potential spoiler from Revealed

that Starbuck [i]did[/i] really die, but is also somehow really back. It also seems like she's [i]not[/i] a Cylon.

Don't know how that could be, but there it is.[/quote]

Oh fuck, they're going to go all Ships of Light on us. Bet Starbuck is the one who turns out to be Satan.

In case you think I'm tripping this is a real plotline from the original series. The Colonials meet this guy, Count Iblis, a former statesman from the Twelve Colonies who takes command of the fleet away from Adama and promises to lead them to Earth (IIRC). They eventually find a crashed ship with the real Iblis' corpse in it. The Iblis they've been hanging out with turns out to be the devil. He also takes on the form of the Cylon Imperious Leader when shot with blaster bolts. It was all very bizarre.

The only other answer is that Starbuck has been to Z'ha'dum. Look out for a weird tall alien with ridiculously long fingers hanging about. That's a giveaway ;)

[Guest Domaine Raidneé]

[quote name='Blanc de Wert '79' post='1294819' date='Mar 31 2008, 11.59']Oh fuck, they're going to go all Ships of Light on us. Bet Starbuck is the one who turns out to be Satan.[/quote]

Oh [i]god[/i].

Something weird is going on there. Maybe it's my old professor's theory about the 13th (seeing, as, you know, there's always 12 + 1 extra-special Jesus-like person), and she's so far advanced that she's not really a Cylon anymore, but not necessarily human either?

Also, she's [i]been to earth[/i], right? Maybe she's earth technology created to ape the advantages of being a Cylon?

One question - when D'eanna says "oh, it's you...I'm so sorry I didn't know" or whatever it was exactly in that episode where they found the temple and she saw the final 5, can we be pretty settled that it was Tigh she was talking to, and isn't a clue as to who the last of the 12 is?

Also, is there any reason that Baltar can't be the last of the 12?

[mcbigski]

[quote name='Blanc de Wert '79' post='1293559' date='Mar 30 2008, 06.44']AFAIK the only major additions are to [i]Unfinished Business[/i], which is 20 minutes longer with all the things restored about why Starbuck and Tigh are now friends and that kind of stuff.[/quote]

So how exactly did Starbuck and Tigh end up friends anyway? I'm probably not going to shell out the $$ for the Season 3 DVDs.

[Werthead]

Full plot summary [url="http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Unfinished_Business_%28Extended_Version%29"]here[/url].

But, basically, Anders and Tigh became friends on New Caprica and Starbuck and Ellen became close as well as a result, and that led to them all talking to one another. Starbuck needed to confide in someone after she slept with Apollo and Tigh was the only person around to talk to, so she told him, something I don't think has ever cropped up in the show.

[Relic]

coco i love your fucking av. those are my two favorite muppets. Jeordhi and I compared ourselves to those two dudes back in the day. hahaha i even have a tshirt with them on it. <3 <3 <3 <3

[Derfel Cadarn]

[quote name='Blanc de Wert '79' post='1294819' date='Mar 31 2008, 11.59']Oh fuck, they're going to go all Ships of Light on us. Bet Starbuck is the one who turns out to be Satan.

In case you think I'm tripping this is a real plotline from the original series. The Colonials meet this guy, Count Iblis, a former statesman from the Twelve Colonies who takes command of the fleet away from Adama and promises to lead them to Earth (IIRC). They eventually find a crashed ship with the real Iblis' corpse in it. The Iblis they've been hanging out with turns out to be the devil. He also takes on the form of the Cylon Imperious Leader when shot with blaster bolts. It was all very bizarre.[/quote]

According to the commentary it wasn't the real Iblis' corpse they found per se, rather his corpse had cloven feet. But they cut that out as they felt it would be too much for a kids show. Presumably he created himself another body or something. Ironically they cut that bit but left in the bit where Iblis tells Sheba he wants to 'go inside her'. If memory serves Iblis implies to Baltar that the reason the Cylon Imperious Leaders sound like him is that he was there when the cylons-robots were created by the cylon-lizards. I read that to mean that Iblis/Satan was behind the uprising that saw the cylon-robots kill of their creators and become warlike.

[Trebla]

[quote name='Relic' post='1295014' date='Mar 31 2008, 12.44']coco i love your fucking av. those are my two favorite muppets. Jeordhi and I compared ourselves to those two dudes back in the day. hahaha i even have a tshirt with them on it. <3 <3 <3 <3[/quote]

lol...those two guys are the ORIGINAL FANBOYS! "Why do we always come here? I guess we'll never know! It's kind of like a TORTURE to have to watch this show!!!!" :rofl: :love:

can't wait for the start...I finally got caught up watching the show. I think i liked season 3 a lil' better than most.

[HokieStone]

[quote name='Lord of the North' post='1294210' date='Mar 31 2008, 00.11']Hokiestone,

Why do the ranks of a fictional space navy have to correspond to modern military usage?[/quote]


I'm not complaining about them mixing and matching "real life" ranks - they can call their ranks whatever they want. My nitpick is that very junior officers are getting gigantic promotions. What could possibly have qualified Dualla to be XO of the Pegasus? And "Bulldog" was very chummy with Adama and Tigh...and yet he was only a Lieutenant?

[Lord of Oop North]

[quote name='HokieStone' post='1295320' date='Mar 31 2008, 18.01']I'm not complaining about them mixing and matching "real life" ranks - they can call their ranks whatever they want. My nitpick is that very junior officers are getting gigantic promotions. What could possibly have qualified Dualla to be XO of the Pegasus? And "Bulldog" was very chummy with Adama and Tigh...and yet he was only a Lieutenant?[/quote]

True. I'm not sure why Dualla became XO. But it was probaly because the Fleet lost so many of its members during the year at New Caprica. That certainly reduced the pool of availible officers on both ships. Especially on Pegasus, which had already lost almost its entire senior staff in the latter half of season two.

As for Bulldog, I figured it was simply because Bill used to be a pilot and seems to feel very close to all his fighter pilots. Viper pilots are like a little 'brotherhood' within the Colonial fleet.

[Shryke]

[quote name='HokieStone' post='1295320' date='Mar 31 2008, 17.01']I'm not complaining about them mixing and matching "real life" ranks - they can call their ranks whatever they want. My nitpick is that very junior officers are getting gigantic promotions. What could possibly have qualified Dualla to be XO of the Pegasus? And "Bulldog" was very chummy with Adama and Tigh...and yet he was only a Lieutenant?[/quote]

Who else is there? There's not exactly a ton of officers floating around. Dualla is only like 5 or so corpses from commanding the Galactica.

[Wouter]

[quote name='Cocomaan' post='1294517' date='Mar 31 2008, 15.38']This is my biggest worry going into Season 4, and I have feeling we're going to be dissapointed.

I too agree that Cylons are necessarily cybernetic, and that was partially the allure of the show in the first place - it was gritty. Believable. That's what made it outstanding.


Best episode of season three (besides the first 4) was the one written by Adama, and its name is escaping me right now. Brilliant, brilliant writing. Brought me back to the first season.[/quote]
Anders eyes' seem to be able to produce a red flashing light in certain circumstances (seen in a promo), so it does look like those aren't normal human bodies. According to Moore, some things are the same between the 7 and the 5 and some are "fundamentally different". But it at least looks likely they are machines similar to the 7. The main difference may be that the 5 are probably designed to grow older like a human would; certainly Tigh looked very different in flashbacks. AFAIK the 7 don't age, or if they do it's very limited.

As for season 3, I was disappointed in the New Caprica arc: while it was pleasant to follow, it was a very quick and dirty view of what such an occupation would look like. 4 episodes and a handful of webisodes weren't enough to do it justice (it could have been so much more).

Starting with it actually being an occupation, as this wasn't the original plan, for sure, that Sharon and Cap-Six got in "Downloaded". Things should have explained a bit more - was this the result a compromise between different Cylon factions (some of which presumably still wanted to exterminate "the human pestilence", as the "Cavil" model would put it)? I suppose so, but the motivations of the Cylons in general and Sharon and Cap-Six in particular were almost completely left in the dark. OK, sometimes we got Cylons debating what to do, but is was always in reaction to what the resistance was doing and at a time that things had gone very wrong already.

Other things that are left in the dark include how relatively benevolent the Cylons were in the beginning - in a webisode, one of the Dorals claims that Cylons and humans are working together on farms (it's unclear if he is lying or not). They may have been replenishing the stock of medicines (there was a shortage on New Caprica before the Cylons arrived, as shown with Anders falling ill), as human and Cylon doctors were apparently working together - or not. They may have attempted to improve NC's limited infrastructure (power stations perhaps?) or not. Problem is, those things are left very vague. The only thing we do know is that they built a detention center and that some people disappeared quasi immediately (Starbuck, Zarek); other than that the Cylons appear to have been relatively lenient at the start of the occupation; back when the colonies were getting nuked (and Adar offered unconditional surrender) and when the fleet had to jump every 33 minutes, I think most people would have signed up for NC in a heartbeat if the Cylons had offered it then.

We weren't shown much about different human reactions to the occupation either, except for the black/white views of people like Tigh and people like Jammer, respectively. Either full resistance from the get-go (perhaps not the smartest course of action when you're at the mercy of genocidal killer robots who seem to have had a slight change of heart - but only slight), or collaboration to an extensive degree. I would have liked to have seen organised factions wanting to do what Duck and Nora had hoped to - ignore the Cylons as much as possble and live their lives, or factions who would try to reason with the Cylons (at least 2 would be willing to really listen, and since there even was a pretty ridiculous pro-Cylon 'peace-movement' in season 2, then surely such a faction could come up) without forming into a Gestapo-like police force.

And why were people like Gaeta (and even Baltar, allthough word of his Cylon girlfriend coming out would indeed change things) so universally hated? When the nazis occupied many european countries in WWII, not all the lower-level civilian governing (at the municipal level, certainly) was expected to stop functioning even by resistance members. They may have been looked at with some suspicion as sometimes there was real collaboration, but in the meantime someone has to keep the basic services running, and it was better than a full German ersatz-government; partially because there often were resistance sympatisers among them. Seems like people like Gaeta were doing that, and Baltar being hated because he surrendered makes little sense. It's not like he had any choice (at the time, of course he is responsible because of Gina, but the colonists don't know that).

The faction of Tigh especially turned into a charicature of itself, probably because of forced analogies to Iraq. Already the reasoning that they have to keep the Cylons on their toes so Galactica could return makes little sense to me (wouldn't a complete surpise attack, coordinated with Galactica's return and after the Cylons let their guard down because everything was going well, be much better??). OK, they have to gather weapons to be ready, an attack on the NCP is understandable (if perhaps a bit premature at the time, and convincing a friend of yours to commit suicide isn't terribly sympathetic). But then they attack a powerstation, again with a suicide bomber (are they all that heartbroken and suicidal? Most human beings don't want to die especially if they're not religious fanatics)? Was this station crucial to the Cylons (it didn't seem to faze them much, other than the injuries to Cylons that were inflicted), or did they simply set their own kind in the dark? To top it off, Tigh wants to attack a market place with another suicide bomber. Is he completely nuts? I don't think the Cylons went to market to buy stuff there; I would expect Ellen, Cally, Nora and co to get their celeries (see webisodes) there, though - way to reduce the human populatiopn, Tigh! Perhaps they might catch a lone skinjob walking around (who then promptly resurrects), and if really luck a chrome job as well. Cavil wouldn't have stopped laughing seeing as the humans are now killing themselves off without any Cylon "assistance" necessary (and he could then use it to ridicule Boomer's and Caprica's original ideas even more, until the Cylon collective is back to plain extermination mode).

On the whole, it feels to me like the New caprica arc was setup by the writers to fail very quickly, I don't know why they went to the trouble of making "Downloaded", and follow it up so abruptly in "Lay down your burdens", only to basically use the reset button by ep 6 of season3. And they wasted characters like Tigh and Boomer in the process of doing so, because it had to fail quickly and spectacularly.

And given how much filler there was in the rest of season 3 (besides some strong episodes), they could easily have spend half the season with a much more nuanced portrait of New Caprica and the different factions involved on both sides.

[Wouter]

[quote name='Cocomaan' post='1294647' date='Mar 31 2008, 16.53']Don't see how that's any greater leap in logic than:
- virus infecting Cylons
- People who fought cylons being cylons
- People who died coming back to life
- ect[/quote]
Agreed on the last one if you mean Starbuck (the explanation for the Cylons is quite acceptable, to a degree; the problem is how their "brain" can anticipate death as it presumably needs some time to broadcast what's on the "Hard Disc", unless they upload "backups" constantly - still wouldn't remember their deaths then if it went quick enough).

Virus infecting Cylons can be acceptable, if it is more a question of the "operating system" getting corrupted rather than the hardware; a pure biological virus is by itself also not a problem as the Cylon are composed of flesh and blood (clearly with a bit "extra" components though), but such a virus getting uploaded, that's another matter.

People who fought Cylons being Cylons: this is not particularly unbelievable IMO. Boomer did it, after all (and so did Athena). I buy it that they (the 7 or the 5) can be programmed to think that they're human (this is not a big leap if you accept to suspend disbelief in the skinjobs in the first place), and if you accept that, fighting Cylons is a small step (it's what humans have to do, after all, so if you're convinced you're one...).
And the 5 (or whoever programmed them) may have serious differences of opinion with the 7 (or who programmed those), another possible reason to fight them. Or there is a "masterplan" that attempts to play both sides of the board at once, a la WOT with Ishamael, where the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.

[Relic]

they might as well have done an prolonged occupation Coco. Slim chance it would be worse than the silly mess that season 3 turned into. Imagine all the pain we might have been spared if 80% of the remaining humans died on New Caprica.

[Lord of Oop North]

I think the 'short' occupation was fine. But the writers of the show really missed their chance to make the Fleet into an even more desperate place. Resources and living space were all scarce after the evacuation. Thousands were killed or abandoned on New Caprica. The government was in shambles, and the military was in total disarray. The situation had all the ingredients necessary for the great drama that was at the heart of the show. Humanity barely managing to survive, and on the run from their conquerors.

[i]Collaborators[/i] was a good start, but they dropped the ball on this issue. There were hints of it here and there. Like the overcrowding on the Galactica, or the discontent of the workers and their strike. But they did not capitalize on any of these issues. Tom Zarek should have been riling up the people for revolution. Roslin should have had to assume more power. There should have been riots and famine, and military attempts at keeping order. It should have been an incredibly desperate time, but they failed to show real consequences of the occupation.

[IseultoftheWhiteHands]

I just finished watching season 3 and found it very entertaining. I thought the Baltar trial thing was kind of boring, though, and Caprica Six is underutilized. And what is up with the four of the final five cylons? If Tyrol is a cylon, and Hera is the only cylon/human baby, then how did he and Cally have a kid? Or is that supposed to be a whole other storyline?

The thing that I notice is that they keep saying "This has all happened before." Which makes me wonder about cylons and the thirteenth colony. Twelve human colonies, twelve cylon models and one more colony that took off as far from the rest as they possibly could. AND the beacon left by the thirteenth colony that was infected with a virus that specifically kills cylons- because... why? Was the thirteenth colony was running from cylons before? Are the humans in the Galactica fleet the descendents of a previous cylon race who actually did succeed in evolving and becoming human, as the current crop seems bent on achieving?

Also, nobody has answered the question of the cylon god. Is that their creator? Is Baltar connected somehow to the cylon creator- is that why he is starting to look so... [i]Messianic[/i] lately? He had his trial, there was a passionate speech about how everyone else was forgiven and Baltar was supposed to pay the price for all of humanity and make everyone clean again (sound familiar?) and then when he got off, some women took him away, not unlike Jesus after the resurrection. What's up with that? I can't imagine the parallels are accidental.

Starbuck turning up again makes no sense at all- I hope they come up with something good to explain that one. I have to be honest, I was kind of relieved when she bought the farm. She was becoming an angsty pain in the ass.

[Wouter]

[quote name='Cocomaan' post='1295915' date='Apr 1 2008, 16.17']That sounds godawful.[/quote]
Comes in handy though - you'll see.


[quote]If they were universally hated, they wouldn't be alive now.[/quote]
OK, good point. And Baltar was probably hated (by those who hated him) in large part because of his conduct in the year before the occupation, anyway (it looks like being governed by the Cylons actually may have been an improvement of sorts, as Baltar seemed to completely neglect his duties). But I was surprised by how hated Gaeta was, by his own comrades no less. He was probably the one member of the Baltar administration who tried to keep things from running into the ground; did people like Tyrol and Tigh never have even the slightest feeling he might be their source? Who else would it be? They just assumed the worst of him, even down to him being involved in the execution orders (where even Baltar and Cylons like Cap-Six and Boomer had no say in). I think it was more about Gaeta interfering with the stolen election.

[quote]Well, considering the genocide committed earlier in the show, surrendering to the murderers of your race is pretty whack.[/quote]
Then President Adar is pretty whack, as he tried to surrender while the nukes where flying. Baltar was given a chance to stop any more nukes from finishing off the human race by surrendering; and it worked, as the Cylons were merciful for once, to some degree ... enough to delay extinction. If he had refused, the end would have been right there, Cavil and co would have seen to that. I think Roslin would have acted no differently.

[quote]Not all suicide bombers are religious fanatics. You should really look into sociological considerations of suicide bombings, because its not as clear cut as you seem to think it is - plenty of suicide bombers aren't particularly religious, nor are they heartbroken.[/quote]
Care to give some examples of organised suicide bombings from people who are not motivated by either religion (dying for god, presumably with a reward in the afterlife), extreme despair (like they are going to be killed anyway, might as well take some with them), a totalitarian ideology mingled with religious undertones like the "Bushido" concept, or by extreme loss as was the case with Duck? With exception of the latter, those conditions were not met on New Caprica. Granted, all people must have lost scores of friends and family to the Cylon butchery, but none of those had committed suicide in the 2 years or so between the attack on the colonies and the occupation of New Caprica.

It's an extreme measure to kill yourself; the normal instinct in people is that they want to live, and you generally have to be convinced/motivated in a very strong way to go against that (and a strong belief in a rewarding afterlife, or extreme peer pressure as in Bushido Japan, appear to be the best way to do that). Suicide bombings did not take place in occupied Europe (or they must have been very rare, obscure cases) during WW2, for example, despite plenty of resentment/hate toward the nazis and plenty of more conventional acts of resistance.

[quote]I'm not really sure what you mean here.[/quote]
The writers had the Cylons change their apparent plans in very quick succession from "Downloaded" till the end of the occupation; in the space of 2 episodes, they went from "Cap-Six and Sharon want to convince the other Cylons that the attack on the colonies was wrong/a sin and there needs to be peace" to "the Cylons are convinced, stop fighting Anders and Starbuck in the midst of a firefight, abandon the colonies and cease pursuing the fleet" to "we have found the humans by accident, now we must control and guide them so they find God". And within the next few episodes, back to extermination again, basicially.

I like the "Boomer" character from the mini and the first 2 seasons, and I feel the writers wrote her out of character in season 3. She was way too meek in following the Cylon party line, with her original ideas already deformed beyond recognition when the Cylons landed on New Caprica, she was still associated with the "occupation authority" or whatever, and she didn't go further than some feable protests even when Cavil started to have random executions. Or at least, we weren't given any hints that she did more. Nor did we see her even attempt to make contact with her former friends - shouldn't she have at least tried, especially when it was clear the other Cylons were moving towards extermination again? And if she had tried and been dejected, at least that would have made her behaviour (and bitterness later in season 3) understandable. They did show Athena getting called names in the streets of New Caprica when she went to retrieve the keys; couldn't they have afforded a similar scene for Boomer and perhaps Caprica? Or show her attempt to talk to Gaeta, Tyrol, Anders, to explain herself and try to seek help when the other Cylons got murderous again? Attempt to talk to Starbuck (or to free her if she knew about Leoben)? As far was were shown, Boomer just surrendered completely to the majority opinion and this seems completely at odds with how she was before season3. Is this the Cylon who simply refused to live among the others on Caprica, who did not believe in the Cylon God and saw Galactica as her family?
They just didn't have room for that in those 4 episodes, I think (plus they didn't want 2 Sharons on Galactica at the same time). As it is, they seemingly decided that she suddenly became a loyal Cylon overnight and forgot her human life almost completely.

Similarly, Tigh may have been a bit of a bastard in some sense, but he always had his good sides, too, and he was not a butcherer (the Gideon incident was partly his fault, but that was never his intention). In fact, Tigh had been the voice of reason at times in seasons 1 and 2, occasionally siding with Roslin even when necessary. But on New Caprica, he started acting like a charicature. Bombing fellow humans - innocents just doing their shopping - just to make some point to the Cylons would have made him as bad a collaborator, or worse, then Baltar was. Killing humans should be the Cylon's work, not Tigh's.

A bit more New Caprica and less Lee-Dee-Starbuck-Anders would have the season better, IMO.

[Relic]

[quote name='Wouter' post='1296404' date='Apr 1 2008, 15.09']Killing humans should be the Cylon's work, not Tigh's.[/quote]


ironic given that he IS a cylon. Might be he has a subconscious drive to see fuck things up for the humans. But im pretty sure the writers werent thinking that far ahead in season 1, 2, and the start of 3.

[Wouter]

Probably not (allthough in the case of Chief - perhaps they were already toying with the idea, and I could see Tigh as well being in this case). However, the Four newly revealed Cylons, so far, all seem to be staunch human loyalists in fierce opposition to the 7. Their own plan may involve getting the fleet to Earth though, which may explain why Tory And Tigh were so dead set against settling on New Caprica and why Anders, Tigh and Tyrol made sure that the situation on New Caprica got out of hand real quick (could be a subconscious thing, as they obviously didn't realise they're Cylons).

[Guest Domaine Raidneé]

I don't seem to have any recollection of the Cylon encephalitis virus thing. I read a summary, but was wondering if it means Cylons are susceptible to diseases generally.

Anders had pneumonia or something like it on New Caprica, so I was thinking that might mean that the 5 are fundamentally different from the 7 if the 7 aren't susceptible to normal illnesses.

Or it could just be bad writing. :dunno:

[Shryke]

[quote name='Domaine Raidneé' post='1296562' date='Apr 1 2008, 16.13']I don't seem to have any recollection of the Cylon encephalitis virus thing. I read a summary, but was wondering if it means Cylons are susceptible to diseases generally.

Anders had pneumonia or something like it on New Caprica, so I was thinking that might mean that the 5 are fundamentally different from the 7 if the 7 aren't susceptible to normal illnesses.

Or it could just be bad writing. :dunno:[/quote]

Haha, always reminds me of a great scene from an episode of Duckman, where he something happens and Duckman goes off ranting about it"

"But why? Why would he do something so stupid, and idiotic and completely out of character?"

And then everything freezes and another voice comes in and says "The key word is: Bad Writing", while the words [b]Bad Writing[/b] flash in big yellow letters at the bottom of the screen.