BSG Thread #12 (or 13)

[Werthead]

Among all the big complaints, there were a few more minor ones I had:

The [i]Galactica[/i] was [i]embedded[/i] in the hull of the Colony, but its jump didn't tear out the surrounding superstructure like it should have done.

How did Lee and his team, having dumped their helmets, and Kara, Hera and co, who didn't have them in the first place, get back through the non-pressurised ramming point and back onto [i]Galactica[/i]?

Where [i]the fuck[/i] does [i]Galactica[/i] keep getting its replacement gun batteries from? All four got blown off in [i]Exodus II[/i] but were back a few weeks later for the assault on the Cylon staging ground. One of the new guns then gets blown off in the Battle of the Ionian Nebula in the S4 premiere and all four are back again for this battle. I wouldn't mind but those guns are huge! It doesn't seem likely [i]Galactica[/i] is carrying tons of spares around with it.

If [i]Galactica[/i] had simply rammed the Colony the second it arrived, half the Cylon batteries couldn't have depressed enough to hit the ship, thus sparing it a lot of damage. Also, those gun batteries were pretty hardcore, especially the railgun-analogues. Why not stick a few on the baseships?

The Patriot Resource asks how the glass case with the Cylon in it in the museum is still in one piece after four years of battles and the atmo-drop. My question is how it survived having a fucking Heavy Raider [i]land on top of it[/i] in the S2 premiere.

I'm depressed we didn't get some more closure for the minor characters. Figurski and Seelix had become quite regular and even occasionally prominent characters over the years, but both vanished after the Mutiny (although the actor playing Figurski was busy - get this - filming [i]Watchmen[/i] at the time: he was one of the two cops investigating the Comedian's death and arrested Rorscharch later). Seelix's absence and the lack of any comeback or follow-up over her treatment of Anders felt a bit odd. I also wanted to see someone finally kill Charlie Connor. Guy ran a great bar, but otherwise was a total arsehole. Seeing Marine Nowart redeeming himself for the Mutiny would have also been cool, but again no dice. It's a shame because they did have time to spend on other minor characters like Cottle, Ishay, Racetrack, Skulls, Hoshi and Hot Dog. And I was expecting to see Captain Kelly, redeemed from the Mutiny after helping save the day, back for the Final Big Battle. I thought it was a physical requirement that Kelly had to be on hand for whenever the Really Big Shit goes down (the mutiny, the S2 premiere, the assault on New Caprica).

There should be about 70 ships left in the Fleet. Only 14 fly into the Sun with [i]Galactica[/i] at the end, and notably they're the ships that can't seem to land (like the liners and the Big Ring Ship). Maybe there's a missing scene in which the Quorum hold a vote about Lee's crazy idea and he gets voted down 69-1? The other ships land on Earth to provide the rudiments of civilisation for a while longer. Lee gets run out of office with sticks and Paulla gets voted President on the basis that her party consists of hot women and shitloads of guns?

Yeah, probably not.

[Werthead]

[quote name='TrackerNeil' post='1729874' date='Mar 23 2009, 01.12']Vipers can mag-lock by themselves; they did this to attach themselves to the Demetrius. [i]Galactica [/i]cannot jump without retracting the pods because the jump drive doesn't work that way, period. That's been clear since the miniseries, in which Tigh points out that the Cylons, in the Battle of Ragnar Anchorage, are deliberating targeting the flight pods to prevent [i]Galactica [/i]from jumping away. I think it has little, if anything, to do with vipers.[/quote]

Except that [i]Galactica[/i] does jump with the flight pods extended, several times (although the previous occasions had been dismissed as errors) and definitely and deliberately in this episode (since the CGI team animated Vipers falling off the end of the bay when it came back out). The jump drive simply has to wrap a wormhole around the ship. If the pods being extended or not is the issue, then both of them should have been sheered clean off by the jump, ergo there has to be another in-universe explanation (even if the out-of-universe one is clearly it was a retcon).

[Lord of Oop North]

[quote name='Bronn Stone' post='1729870' date='Mar 22 2009, 21.11']Had Colonials bred successfully, the Bering migration would have been met by a continent chock full o' humans. They likely had similar numbers (Colonials = Migrators) and a 135,000 year head start. Yet we know that there was no human activity in the Americas until the Bering migration. The only reasonable conclusion is that the Colonial settlements in the Americas could not thrive. Since the Americas are extremely well suited to human habitation, the only reasonable conclusion is that [b]Colonials could not breed successfully[/b][/quote]
This argument doesn't really make sense. We already know that the Colonials were breeding successfully during the Exodus. So ... why was Hera necessary again? There is no real reason for it. It's just something that RDM decided, with little explanation. It still feels really weak to me, but I'll leave it at that, because I know that there isn't a valid explanation for it.

[Bronn Stone]

[quote name='Lord of Oop North' post='1729882' date='Mar 22 2009, 18.24']This argument doesn't really make sense. We already know that the Colonials were breeding successfully during the Exodus. So ... why was Hera necessary again? There is no real reason for it. It's just something that RDM decided, with little explanation. It still feels really weak to me, but I'll leave it at that, because I know that there isn't a valid explanation for it.[/quote]

Different planet. Different sun. Different soil. Different viruses/bacteria.

[aeu]

[quote name='Bronn Stone' post='1729884' date='Mar 22 2009, 21.28']Different planet. Different sun. Different soil. Different viruses/bacteria.[/quote]

Same writers, who keep pulling stuff out of their asses.

I like my explanation better.

[Lord O' Bones]

I've been looking around for information about the earth 150,000 years ago so that when I eventually overcome Starbuck->Thin Air = FAIL, and I rejoin the discussion, I won't be talking out of my ass. I found a discussion on [url="http://www.alien-ufos.com/Humans-Neared-Extinction-150-000-Years-t20966.html"]this [/url]site linking to [url="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080424-humans-extinct.html"]this[/url] article. Maybe the writers were more diligent than we thought?

Highlight: "Maye aliens intervened and split us up so as not to put all of mother nature's eggs in one basket."

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Ran' post='1729829' date='Mar 22 2009, 19.21']Adama went after her because he was making a stand, a probably suicidal gesture, but one that offered a kind of validation for the existence of the human race (and the Cylons, at the same time). It was an emotional decision, and [b]I bought that a lot of people bought onto it for various reasons[/b]: a chance to kill Cylons, a chance to make an end without quite feeling like sticking a gun to your head and pulling the trigger, a handful that really believed that the child was worth saving, and so on. The military rationale struck me as extremely low on the totem pole.

...

Well, the stand Adama was looking at making was a moral stand, rather than a military stand.

I assume, given that Adama was the boss of the ship, and the man with the plan, that those who wanted to go out killing Cylons were going to accept whatever crazy, insane plan he had. Rescuing Hera was neither here nor there, I suspect, for a lot of them.[/quote]

And I don't buy it in the least. Its one of the dumbest moments in the series followed next episode by probably THE dumbest moment. Its also one that can't be papered over with 'God' explanations. Taking the cream of the humanity and the entire colonial leadership structure on a suicide mission to rescue a little girl is reckless and irresponsible. Pretending that not a single individual would raise a note of protest against such idiocy is silly, stupid, and an example of atrociously lazy writing. It could have been sold better, with a heavier emphasis on smacking around cylons (military necessity) rather than risking thousands for 1, but apparently they spent too many film-reels on bird swatting and Adama vomit.

Those things you 'buy' weren't really evident in the build up or execution. Maybe some people wanted to wack some cylons, but that wasn't what Adama pushed nor was that what they did. They didn't go to destroy the colony, they charged in, snatched Hera, and left as quickly as possible. It was only by sheer accident that heavy damage was done to the colony afterwards. The mission was just as absurd as a first glance suggests. Risking everything for a little girl. How fucking dumb does RDM and his staff have to be not to understand that may be a problem? Its shit that could've been resolved with minimal imagination and 5 minutes of screen time.


[quote]I should be surprised by the hate being flung around here, but since these are the same people who've been hating on the show for the last ummm three seasons, I'm not. Perfect ending? What show/book series has a perfect ending?[/quote]

A perfect ending? That's REALLY what we were looking for. Expecting? That is the true source of our dissatisfaction? What a joke. And a completely moronic argument.

[Werthead]

The guy talking at the start of [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS4JydFXRyc"]this video[/url] is really, really annoying, but the [b]Galactica[/b] skit is vaguely amusing. Good editing job.

[AndyP]

[quote name='Bronn Stone' post='1729831' date='Mar 22 2009, 19.25']Except that they DID presumably breed (or attempt to breed) and none of their progeny survived - except for those descended from Hera.[/quote]
Hera is refered to as the Mitochondrial Eve not the mother of all humanity which are 2 different things. From [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve"]wiki[/url].

[quote]Misconception: The Mitochondrial Eve and Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) are the same
Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent common matrilineal ancestor, not the MRCA of all humans. The MRCA's offspring have led to all living humans via sons and daughters, but Mitochondrial Eve must be traced only through female lineages, so she is estimated to have been much older than the MRCA. According to probabilistic studies[1], Mitochondrial Eve is thought to have lived around 140,000 years ago. On the arbitrary assumption that people mate with a random individual drawn from the whole of the global population, the theoretical MRCA could have lived as recently as 3,000 years ago.[2] The most recent common ancestor (MRCA) is the most recent person whom all of humanity can count as one of their ancestors. Because each person's number of ancestors double with each generation backwards, the MRCA of all humanity overlaps relatively recently in history. The MRCA answers the question, "Do any of my four grandparents overlap with any of your four grandparents? If not, then do any of my 8 great grandparents overlap with any of your 8 great grandparents?" Between one-hundred and two-hundred generations back, a single person will appear in every living person's family tree. However, each person has only one mitochondrial ancestor with each generation backwards because each person inherits their mitochondria from their mother. The question of "when did Mitochondrial Eve live?" is answering the question of "When does my mother's mother's mother ... overlap with everyone else's mother's mother's mother ... (all the way up the female lineage)?"
[edit]Misconception: Mitochrondrial Eve was the only woman alive at that time
Allan Wilson's naming Mitochondrial Eve[3] after Eve of the Genesis creation story has led to some misunderstandings among the general public. A common misconception is that Mitochondrial Eve was the only living human female of her time. Had this been the case, humanity would have long since become extinct due to an extreme example of a population bottleneck.[citation needed]
[b]Indeed, not only were many women alive at the same time as Mitochondrial Eve but many of them have living descendants through their sons. While the mtDNA of these women is gone, their Nuclear genes are present in today's population.[4][/b]
What distinguishes Mitochondrial Eve (and her matrilineal ancestors) from all her female contemporaries is that she has a purely matrilineal line of descent to all humans alive today, whereas all her female contemporaries with descendants alive today have at least one male in every line of descent. Because mitochondrial DNA is only passed through matrilineal descent, all humans alive today have mitochondrial DNA that is traceable back to Mitochondrial Eve.[/quote] Emphasis mine

So your wrong, there is nothing in the idea of Hera being the Mitochondrial Eve that precludes any of the other colonist from having succeeded.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='AndyP' post='1729956' date='Mar 22 2009, 22.59']So your wrong, there is nothing in the idea of Hera being the Mitochondrial Eve that precludes any of the other colonist from having succeeded.[/quote]

So that about settles it. Hera was completely useless and the decision to rescue her just tragically stupid from any rational point of view.

[Lord O' Bones]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1729973' date='Mar 22 2009, 21.32']So that about settles it. Hera was completely useless and the decision to rescue her just tragically stupid from any rational point of view.[/quote]
You have to assume that "god" required her to be there so that "we" would turn out like we did and hopefully break the cycle. Or something.

[Grim Shady]

I think the finale needed some more Fizban/Zifnab. *nods*

[tzanth]

I thoroughly enjoyed the first hour.

The second hour was disgusting; pure and utter shit. Not only did it make not sense what-so-ever, considering all the bull shit out there about evolution and such, its really sad to see popular culture needlessly perpetuating ridiculous myths, lies and false conceptions about our past.

ETA: Not to say that I expect people to take the show seriously, but the anthropologist/archaeologist in me just cant help but cringe at how completely inanely they portrayed concepts like mitochondrial eve or archaic humans. The utter stupidity of every single thing in the second half is just beyond belief.

[quote]So that about settles it. Hera was completely useless and the decision to rescue her just tragically stupid from any rational point of view.[/quote]
Yep.

[quote name='Werthead' post='1729875' date='Mar 22 2009, 17.13']There should be about 70 ships left in the Fleet. Only 14 fly into the Sun with [i]Galactica[/i] at the end, and notably they're the ships that can't seem to land (like the liners and the Big Ring Ship). Maybe there's a missing scene in which the Quorum hold a vote about Lee's crazy idea and he gets voted down 69-1? The other ships land on Earth to provide the rudiments of civilisation for a while longer. Lee gets run out of office with sticks and Paulla gets voted President on the basis that her party consists of hot women and shitloads of guns?[/quote]

Now [i]that [/i]is an ending I would have liked! :P

[CloudFlare]

Can someone bring me up to speed on how the Cylons came about? Here's how I understand it:

1. On the Twelve Colonies, humans develop Centurion model Cylons about 50 years ago.

2. These Cylons revolt, and a war ensues.

3. A peace is agreed upon.

4. The Cylons stay to themselves, and develop the newer robotic Cylons and the seven or so skinjobs.

Now, how did the Cylons know about resurrection tech, the Final Five and the one true god?

How did fake-Earth have what looked like Centurions on it thousands(?) of years ago?

[raft]

[quote name='Bronn Stone' post='1729672' date='Mar 22 2009, 17.13']I think that GRRM knows exactly how ASOIAF will end and that it will knock all our socks off.[/quote]
i think it will, too.

I also think he's tossed in a lot extra crap he didn't originally plan for (see: A Feast from Crows) that is unlikely to be resolved in a very satisfying manner. What happens in the middle WILL effect the ending, not necessarily the overarching master plotline, but certainly its scope and size and what characters and stories it focuses on.

[Ran]

You have to go further back, KingBread, to Kobol.

Humans on Kobol develop Cylons. Cylons and humans have a bit of a fight, and the Cylons take off to their own planet (fake-Earth) and are recorded in myth as the lost, 13th Tribe. Then humans on Kobol have their "Blaze", and twelve tribes of men run of from Kobol and settle the colonies ~2,000 (or is it ~3,000?) years ago. The 13th Tribe figure out how to procreate, so they lose resurrection technology, but somewhere down the road conflicts among themselves (possibly with their own Cylon machine servants) leads to their self-destruction, except for 5 people who are warned by messengers that no one else can see, who figure out resurrection and get a ship ready.

Then, about 50 years ago, Cylons are-reinvented on the Twelve Colonies. The slaves eventually break free and you have the First Cylon War. The Cylons already had monotheism, for reasons which shall probably become clear in [i]Caprica[/i] (

SPOILER: Caprica

It looks like the daughter of the creator of the Cylons plays a significant role in creating their AI, and she happens to have been a monotheist

). The Cylons did not, on the other hand, know about the "Final Five". That comes only when the five from fake-Earth arrive, find the Cylons gripped in a war with humans, and convince them to make the armistice in return for creating the human-form Cylons and giving them resurrection.

Something like that.

[Bronn Stone]

[quote name='AndyP' post='1729956' date='Mar 22 2009, 20.59']Hera is refered to as the Mitochondrial Eve not the mother of all humanity which are 2 different things. From [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve"]wiki[/url].

Emphasis mine

So your wrong, there is nothing in the idea of Hera being the Mitochondrial Eve that precludes any of the other colonist from having succeeded.[/quote]

Actually 'your' (sic) wrong. You are either mitochondrially slow or mitochondrially stupid.
You aren't even successfully reading your own post.

"Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent common matrilineal ancestor" (from your post). Let us explain that in small words, that you might understand. ME (ie Hera) is the most recent common ancestor of all humans, along the purely female line. EVERY. SINGLE. HUMAN. HAS. ME. AS A FEMALE ANCESTOR.

Then the article goes on to make it clear that there is a distinction betwen MRCA and ME. And yes, it is true, humanity can have an MRCA who is post-ME. BUT it doesn't change for a millisecond the idea that the ME is a female ancestor of EVERY FRAKKIN' HUMAN. It might be very much true that every surviving human is in fact a descendant of Hera's grandson Thag. And HE is the MRCA. But it is still Hera's blood that makes it happen.

It is possible that ME and MRCA are unique. But it is [b]by definition impossible[/b] for there to be an ME who is not a) MRCA or b) an ancestor of the MRCA.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I have two more important questions (for those of us without cable.) When's the Season 4.5 DVD going to be available? Is SciFi going to upload all of Daybreak Pt. 2 on Friday night?

[denstorebog]

Well, I felt satisfied after watching the ep, but that was then. After reading on various forums and having the collective consciousness point out all the flaws that my poor brain never registered on its own, I'm starting to like it less.

But it's times like these that we should focus on the Good Things. And one thing that I don't think I've seen anyone disagree on so far - nor expect to, really - is the quality of the work of composer Bear McCreary. Reading his blog (http://www.bearmccreary.com) is always a joy, and he outdid himself completely throughout Season 4 up until and including the final episode - which says a lot considering the S3 score. I'd say that between the high production values of Season 4 (visual effects, set design), the personal relationships between the characters, and finally McCrearys score, neither the finale nor the series itself could ever become a complete waste of time in my eyes. There would always be something there for me to come back to, and there was in the finale as well.

[Lord of Oop North]

[quote name='Bronn Stone' post='1730056' date='Mar 23 2009, 05.10']It is possible that ME and MRCA are unique. But it is [b]by definition impossible[/b] for there to be an ME who is not a) MRCA or b) an ancestor of the MRCA.[/quote]
That's not what he said. He simply said Hera being ME doesn't preclude the possibility that the other colonists survived, which is definitely possible. They can all live and [i]still[/i] have Hera as their mutual ancestor** Your theory is based on just as many unprovable assumptions as this theory.

*He said 'Mother of all Humanity', which I take to be a different term ... something along the lines of all she literally mothered all of humanity (ala, Eve). Perhaps I have made the wrong assumption about his post. But it still does not change his last statement, which is definitely a possibility.

** By mutual ancestor, I don't mean MRCA.