For a limited time only, leaving the question, where did she hitch the horse?
Anders is gonna be found out soon if he keeps getting all curious about all things Cylon.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
I seriously did not recognize her until the scene on the ferry.
I wasn't the only one to notice that by the end, Starbuck was the only human left on that baseship, was I? And yeah, I'm surprised nobody noticed Anders being a bit curious about the control interface. Of course, they could have just chalked that up to him just being a curious human.
I thought it was rather stupid that the Cylons wouldn't know how to interface with the Raptor's jump drive. That thing is practically ancient technology compared to their ships. Besides the fact that they've probably had plenty of captured ships and pieces to study.
It seemed that this episode kept building up to something, and then suddenly the show's over! I'm not sure what I was waiting for, though.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
I loved it when they were going on about "the three from the five" etc and the expression on Anders's face was like "durr I don't know anything... I don't know where Earth is...."
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Well, they did seem have build up a setting where Roslin and Adama will be susceptible to Baltar's religion.
A few select Hybrid quotes:
quote:The Children of the One Reborn shall find their own Country. (repeated twice)
quote:But you are a spark of God's fire.
quote: Thus will it come to pass.
The Dying Leader will know the truth of the Opera House. The Missing Three will give you the Five, who have come of the home of the Thirteenth.
You are the Harbinger of Death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end.
End of line.
So, it seems that simultaneously, Kara Thrace represents the salvation and the destruction of the humans. Considering the apparently cyclic history the Cylons prefer ("All that has happened, will happen again.. again.. again..", to quote the First Hybrid), there could be some twisted truth to this. Maybe finding Earth will somehow paradoxically lead to the destruction of the Colonies!?
The other revelation is that the Final Five are apparently from Earth. How would that work!? Did the original robotic Cylons find Earth and found these artificial humans? Did the Thirteenth Tribe find the Cylon machines and used them to create this new order of Twelve Cylons? If the latter is true, then it would mean the Thirteenth Tribe are behind both powers, via the humanoid Cylons and via the Sacred Scrolls. My head is spinning.
It also seems the First Hybrid might have known about the Cylon civil war and Kara Thrace's coming. But make of it what you will.
quote: At last, they’ve come for me. I feel their lives, their destinies spilling out before me. The denial of the one true path, played out on a world not their own, will end soon enough. Soon there will be four, glorious in awakening, struggling with the knowledge of their true selves. The pain of revelation bringing new clarity and in the midst of confusion, he will find her. Enemies brought together by impossible longing. Enemies now joined as one. The way forward at once unthinkable, yet inevitable. And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering. I can see them all. The seven, now six, self-described machines who believe themselves without sin. But in time, it is sin that will consume them. They will know enmity, bitterness, the wrenching agony of one splintering into many. And then, they will join the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.
Now, that notion of the First One is interesting. The only one suffering and in search of some kind of religious 'redemption' may be... the dying leader? Don't quote me on this.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
I'm tired of trying to make sense of all this prophecy business. I'm just gonna lay back and the waves carry me.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
...what if the entire human race are skin-job cylons? or the colonies are birthed from skin-job cylons?
or when they reach earth, they meet all the New Macross class battleships in orbit... or they come across Macross 7 and Basara sings a fucked up Jap-pop song and fucks up the cylons...
...uh, i was actually serious about the Entire Colony bit. everything else was WTF quality WTFism's...
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
What if they reach Earth, and its really Bajor. And Major Kira tells them to get lost. Posted by Mikey T (Member # 144) on :
They reach Earth and Sector 001's crawling with Starfleet vessels asking 'Who the frak are you?' questions.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Something tells me that there's going to be some interesting meetings in the near future... The altercation between the Six and what's-her-name (okay, Jean Barolay... damn, I recognized her, but forgot that she was on Anders' pyramid team and the original Caprica resistance!) has to be just the tip of the iceberg.
There's another piece of the puzzle that most of us seem to have forgotten so far... sure, we've discussed the Temple of Five before. But that temple was supposedly built by the thirteenth tribe. How can that relate (apparently directly) to the Final Five Cylons? There's a pretty big chronological disconnect there.
I wonder, is the "One Reborn" supposed to be a reference to Hera...?
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Oh, and also, anyone notice when one of the Eights mentioned "the plan"? The one that apparently got royally screwed up? Kind of an interesting nod to the change in the opening sequence. Though I'm still not entirely sure if we're supposed to know what the Cylon plan actually was in the first place...
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
The Cylons aren't the only ones who prefer a cyclical version of history. That's part of the Colonial's religion as well, as shown by the conversation between Roslin and Thrace when Roslin asked her to jump back to Caprica and retrieve the Arrow. What was that, S3? 2?
Hee. Maybe all this jumping around faster than light means that the fleet will arrive at Earth *before* any of the tribes left Kobol, and set all this stuff in motion again and again. That's what you get when you fuck with special relativity, man. Information traveling faster than light = weird temporal paradoxes.
Fuck it. I'm'n'a just watch and quit trying to figure it all out.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Good man.
Edit: You know FTL Drive seems more like instant teleportation that actual travel. I mean when the raptor jumps, we get to see it from a 1st person perspective, and its all just a bright flash and BOOM! your there. No subspace for you!
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
I liked the scenes on the basestar. The scenes in the sickbay with Roslin and Kira bored me.
I kind of figure Anders will be found out first. I was hoping he would have touched the cylon console and see what would happen. I think Boomer will be the first to know.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Teleportation is still FTL travel. If you appear in a new location more quickly than you could get there traveling at lightspeed, it violates relativity and the law of cause and effect.
I was sure Anders would touch the data font and suddenly all the Cylons in the room would look up, eyes wide, gasp, and there'd be that "bum bum bum bum" drum music they play at "oh shit" moments.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I read Nana Vistor was goign to be in Galactica this season, but didn't twig it was her until the ferry scene.
I don't think this is the first time we've seen FTL from the first person. If memory serves we also got a glimpse back when Crashdown and Boomer found Kobol. As for how it functions, I've always assumed it was a form of space folding, which I suppose is a form of teleportation, just not the disintegrate->transmit->reintegrate variety.
The fact the the Five have already been to Earth does answer at least one question and that is why they were "triggered" in the nebula - because they've been there before! OF course in true Galactica style, every answered question breeds twenty more as yet unanswered ones, like if they've been there, why come back and hide with the humans? Was Earth unwelcoming or was it a dead world? When did they go? How long were they gone and when did they get back? Logically that should have been 20-30 years back when we know Adama met Tigh, but that makes it a very tight timeline since we're not even sure how long ago the Cylon made the full switch from toasters to skinjobs.
One thing I wonder about is was the Centurion that shot the Eight just acting protectively or are they still in some way tied into the Hybrid?
Oh and it looks like I was right about Orion being a deliberate, since that system is indeed close to Sol.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I took the Hybrid's message as meaning the Five were from Earth, not that they'd been there.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
...well then strictly speaking, they wouldn't be Cylons then, would they?
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Excepting temporal paradoxes, cyclic time effects, Earth being the tribe that actually first created artificially intelligent robots, or the Cylons finding Earth and then building the first five skinjobs there.
Which reminds me...why are the five FINAL and not INITIAL? It seems to me that if they were there before the other seven skinjobs (and at least Tight was), they ought to be models 1-5, and the other Cylons we see in the show should be models 6-12.
Posted by shikaru808 (Member # 2080) on :
quote:Originally posted by Daniel Butler: Excepting temporal paradoxes, cyclic time effects, Earth being the tribe that actually first created artificially intelligent robots, or the Cylons finding Earth and then building the first five skinjobs there.
Which reminds me...why are the five FINAL and not INITIAL? It seems to me that if they were there before the other seven skinjobs (and at least Tight was), they ought to be models 1-5, and the other Cylons we see in the show should be models 6-12.
Because that would make sense. Obviously
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Perhaps the goal of all the agains is to reach earth and that they will continue the loop until they do?
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
quote:Originally posted by Daniel Butler: I took the Hybrid's message as meaning the Five were from Earth, not that they'd been there.
Well, if they are from Earth then wouldn't they have had to have been there?
Unless they are from Earth in the sense of being representatives or messengers. Perhaps someone at Earth has summoned them or sent them on this important assignment.
I suspect the final Cylon will know all. For some reason the other four have had their memories blocked or suppressed to the point that they didn't even know they are Cylons.
No one mentioned anything about Baltar quoting Shakespeare in his sermons.
Someone at BSG has been reading my mind and stole my idea. Either that or one of my friends has been selling my ideas behind my back. I had this idea/story point for a Trek series where the main ship's warp core is damaged and the only way to make it back is to use a shuttle's warp core to propel the main ship back to the fleet. What does BSG do? Use the Raptor's FTL to jump the Base Star back to the fleet.
I need to rewatch the end of the episode. Did the hybrid specifically state that Kara is HUMANITY's harbinger of death? Is she the harbinger of death for the Cylons?
I thought the one reborn was Kara.
Could Hera be the final missing Cylon? Or is she a hybrid of sorts? Of course if that's the case, then shouldn't Tyrol's baby also be the same thing?
On the one hand, I can understand the Cylons not being able to figure out the Raptor's FTL drive. Looking at it from the standpoint of primitive tech - there's plenty of primitive tech that I can't figure out. We still wonder how some ancient civilizations built the Pyramids, South American temples and walls, Statues, etc... Ancient tech gets lost and unable to figure out.
On the other hand the valid point has been brought up - there ought to be plenty of captured Raptors in Cylon hands that they have taken apart and figured out by now. On top of that, they had time before the attack on the Colonies to have various skinjobs infiltrate the military and get all kinds of intel.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I meant "from Earth" as in "originally constructed/born on Earth" as opposed to "been to Earth" as in "originally constructed/born in the Twelve Colonies, traveled to Earth, then left and returned to the Colonies."
Maybe they didn't care to take them apart and figure them out. They're not exactly archaeologists.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
quote:Originally posted by HerbShrump: Could Hera be the final missing Cylon? Or is she a hybrid of sorts? Of course if that's the case, then shouldn't Tyrol's baby also be the same thing?
Maybe Hera and Tyrol's baby *together* are the final Cylon, since each is half-Cylon? It almost seems like an Adam & Eve thing.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Maybe the Virtual Six & Baltar are the final Cylon who really IS incorporeal! Or, like, exists within the minds of others, a memetic organism.
Damn it to hell, I said I was going to stop speculating.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
The thing about the final Cylon is that when they are finally revealed, it will make so much sense that we'll all smack our foreheads and say "Why didn't I see that BEFORE?!"
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Right. Well, that, or, it'll be so contrived and/or nonsensical we'll all stand up suddenly, gesticulate wildly, and say "What the fuck was that!?" in an elevated voice.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
They really seem to be going ahead with this prequel, judging by the casting of Eric Stoltz. So my thinking is, a lot will be revealed which can then be elaborated on in Caprica.
I've been thinking about the idea of a time-loop. I'd previously discounted the idea because the notion of time-travel seemed far to hi-tech for the nuts'n'bolts science of BSG. But now, after what Daniel said in the last post on the first page, I'm mulling it over again.
I never really understood all that stuff about light cones etc. in A Brief History of Time. But there's one version of it I've encountered that makes sense to me, in Ken MacLeod's The Stone Canal. In it, a pair of wormhole gates are generated and then one is fired off at near-lightspeed, allowing what in effect becomes a portal into the future. From this wormhole a "daughter wormhole" is hived off to a solar system 10,000 light years away - but also 10,000 years in the future. Traveling to this system (New Mars its main planet is called) via the daughter wormhole is instantaneous, but to travel there in normal space even at near-c would take 10,000+ years. This is explored further in the sequel, The Cassini Division when, after the destruction of the wormhole gate, they receive messages transmitted by laser/radio immediately after, which have taken 10,000 years to get there.
Now, if anyone ever deserved to have "Not Good at Physics" tattooed on his forehead, it's me. And yet I began to wonder, is the FTL drive a time machine? Just as stepping (or rather, flying) back and forth through MacLeod's wormhole involves travelling 10,000 years through time, so does travel by FTL involve a journey into the future or the past.
In other words, the journey to Earth involves travelling back through time, and starts another round of the loop. the Twelve Colonies are then founded, eventually, from Earth by sublight ships, with the Five along in some form or other, waiting to be reborn (or whatever) and trying to break the loop. With Caprica we then see the events that lead to bringing the loop back to its start, perhaps with the hope that this time the loop will be broken.
We all read how wowed RDM was with the Sopranos' finale. Perhaps he'll take a leaf from that - they find Earth, and it ends. Boom, finito, no revelation of at what point in its history Earth is at, no nothing.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
quote:Originally posted by Fabrux: The thing about the final Cylon is that when they are finally revealed, it will make so much sense that we'll all smack our foreheads and say "Why didn't I see that BEFORE?!"
Watch the final Cylon turn out to be a CGI Lorne Greene or Dirk Benedict. Since all of this has happened before it turns out TOS BSG was real and they were really the first Cylons...
On a more serious note ... If the final Cylon is going to turn out to be an established character other than the main cast, then in my opinion that only leave Zarek or Gaeta. Anyone else wouldn't have nearly enough impact on the viewers.
I don't think the final Cylon is someone who died because that would have zero impact on the viewers or story. Unless the character never was really dead or was resurrected.
I'm still not sure what to think about Starbuck.
And I doubt it's the Galactica. I floated that idea in my own head before I read it here. Cute idea but I don't think it really works. What, suddenly the Galactica comes alive and reveals itself to be sentient? That'd be totally out of left field and out of place. Plus, wouldn't that mean that the original colonists hat to simply find the Galactica instead of it being built at a shipyard? Or did the other Cylons infiltrate the shipyards and manipulate the construction of the Galactica?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lee: They really seem to be going ahead with this prequel, judging by the casting of Eric Stoltz. So my thinking is, a lot will be revealed which can then be elaborated on in Caprica.
I've been thinking about the idea of a time-loop. I'd previously discounted the idea because the notion of time-travel seemed far to hi-tech for the nuts'n'bolts science of BSG. But now, after what Daniel said in the last post on the first page, I'm mulling it over again.
I never really understood all that stuff about light cones etc. in A Brief History of Time. But there's one version of it I've encountered that makes sense to me, in Ken MacLeod's The Stone Canal. In it, a pair of wormhole gates are generated and then one is fired off at near-lightspeed, allowing what in effect becomes a portal into the future. From this wormhole a "daughter wormhole" is hived off to a solar system 10,000 light years away - but also 10,000 years in the future. Traveling to this system (New Mars its main planet is called) via the daughter wormhole is instantaneous, but to travel there in normal space even at near-c would take 10,000+ years. This is explored further in the sequel, The Cassini Division when, after the destruction of the wormhole gate, they receive messages transmitted by laser/radio immediately after, which have taken 10,000 years to get there.
Now, if anyone ever deserved to have "Not Good at Physics" tattooed on his forehead, it's me. And yet I began to wonder, is the FTL drive a time machine? Just as stepping (or rather, flying) back and forth through MacLeod's wormhole involves travelling 10,000 years through time, so does travel by FTL involve a journey into the future or the past.
In other words, the journey to Earth involves travelling back through time, and starts another round of the loop. the Twelve Colonies are then founded, eventually, from Earth by sublight ships, with the Five along in some form or other, waiting to be reborn (or whatever) and trying to break the loop. With Caprica we then see the events that lead to bringing the loop back to its start, perhaps with the hope that this time the loop will be broken.
We all read how wowed RDM was with the Sopranos' finale. Perhaps he'll take a leaf from that - they find Earth, and it ends. Boom, finito, no revelation of at what point in its history Earth is at, no nothing.
If that were the case then they whole bit about the Cylons being one light year away from New Caprica when they detected the EMP from the detonation on Cloud 9 (that happened 1 year ago) wouldn't work. No I think their FTL has no noticeable relativistic effects because they don't seam to travel in the space between where they drop out and back in to sublight. Maybe it's space folding or some bizarre application of quantum physics in which the ship is in momentarily in two places at once. Either way it seams to be instantaneous.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I've seen two well-reasoned bits of speculation as to who it is.
One concludes it's Roslin - but he ignores the fact that RDM has said she's not, and that the FC isn't in the Last Supper painting (when Roslin is). OK, acknowledge Moore's statements then discount them as smoke-screens if you desire, but don't just ignore them.
And, as I said in the discussion thread for a previous ep (I think, might have been on a different forum), the other blogged argument constructs a short-list of potential secondary characters, only to then largely ignore why it might or might not be A, B, or C to then concentrate on why he's absolutely certain it's D. His logic is better but still sloppy.
Another interesting note: in the podcast for the episode where Ellen Tigh puts in an appearance, RDM acknowledges the fact that her appearance on the set became public knowledge and led to speculation that she was back for a flashback appearance. However, he completely ignored the other speculation making the rounds - that she was filming her appearances as the FC. Make of that what you will.
And, much much better ep this week. A welcome return to form. I was dreading Nana Visitor's appearance but she put in a really great performance. And, how shocking was Bald Laura when you first saw her? Other confusion: when we first saw Barolay she had long hair, while Seelix had short hair; now it's the other way around and I did keep wondering if Seelix had had a haircut between the teaser and getting on the Raptor!
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Reverend: I have to repeat, whether they actually travel through space or not is irrelevant. The end result is the same: Information is going from point A to point B more quickly than it could get there traveling through space at light speed. It isn't physical travel through space faster than light that is prohibited by relativity; it's any exchange of information including quantum states, location, momentum, mass, and so on. It's why quantum physics is such a headache; there are things that appear to happen instantaneously. Either we're wrong about that or we're wrong about relativity. If BSG wants to be less speculative and more "hard" sci-fi, they can't invent a magical FTL that has no relativistic effects, because according to our current knowledge that's flat-out impossible.
Might Ellen Tigh have been showing up on-set to film the sequence where Col. Tigh sees her when talking to Caprica Six? Cuz that's what I assumed...I mean, Tigh died on New Caprica, so if the Final Five reincarnate then she'd have been reborn on the Cylon occupation force's resurrection ship. Hence the Cylons proper would've known about her, but the "alliance" Cylons in this ep didn't have a clue who any of the Five were.
I think the Last Supper painting was a smokescreen. Too many people in it. Just a hunch though.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
quote:Originally posted by Daniel Butler: If BSG wants to be less speculative and more "hard" sci-fi, they can't invent a magical FTL that has no relativistic effects, because according to our current knowledge that's flat-out impossible.
Why not? They seem to have other contrivances that are rooted firmly in the realm of speculative fiction such as artificial gravity.
Further, the Cylon resurrection process defies quantum physics. The Cylon dies and his/hers consciousness is transferred to a resurrection ship or base that is several light years distant.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
We're not certain exactly what the range of a resurrection ship/facility is, they're very clever about not painting themselves into a corner that way.
As for Galactica being "hard" sci-fi; as Herb points out that's simply not the case. Yes the phones have cords and yes the visual effects team seam to have a reasonable grasp of physics; that is enough to fake it so it looks authentic enough, but not at the expense of drama. However there's plenty in the show that is more fiction than science. Harvey Six being a huge example, as is Cylon cybernetic technology in general, artificial gravity and let's not forget the light show in the tomb of Athena. FLT is a necessary plot devise. Without it, it'd take them millennia to get anywhere. As far as the lack of relativistic effects go, as I said, the detection of the Cloud 9 explosion proves that there is none (at least not very much) to say nothing of the numerous instances of timed rendezvous.
As for the how, we can only theorise it uses higher dimensional physics that is at present, beyond our understanding. I mean it's not like we've cracked all the secrets of the universe and even what we do "know" isn't correct 100% of the time. After all, it's called the THEORY of relativity, not the laws of relativity. I think even Einstein wasn't totally satisfied that they'd accounted for everything.
Posted by shikaru808 (Member # 2080) on :
You are all wrong. Boxey is the last Cylon, obviously.
Blind fools... Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I'm willing to dismiss artificial gravity in even the most gritty hard sci-fi until it becomes cheap as dirt to do zero-gee effects. It's just not practical, after all.
As for the Athena tomb light show, well, it could've been a hologram and we've got the basis for that technology now. The Colonials are more advanced than we are, even at the time of the original Exodus.
The Cylons are also easily possible. I mean, the point of not being speculative in my book is that they're not doing anything magical in this show. No hand-waving, technobabble, unobtanium. Artificial intelligence is well within the possible if you have the technology; it isn't, for example, warp drive or ring transporters or stasis pods.
Reverend, I get that you're saying there obviously are no relativistic effects. I'm saying that ranks me. But man, don't call it a THEORY like that means it might not be true. I expect more out of the people on this forum...a theory is a group of ideas which explain a phenomenon or phenomena. It has nothing to do with how well supported (read: "true") it is; it doesn't progress from "theory" to "law." Laws are what make up theories. The theory of relativity is extremely well supported. For it not to be that completely untrue would be very complicated, and the universe tends to be built on simple laws, not complicated ones.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
A certain amount of suspension of disbelief is necessary. You're willing to suspend disbelief about artificial gravity due to FX limitations. Why not suspend disbelief about relativity affects for the sake of drama/story telling?
There really is no conceivable way they could tell this story if they adjusted every episode for time-dilation and relativistic affects. Sure, it's conceivable for the fleet to stay together but that's about it. Send a raptor off to patrol and jump back? Not a chance. Who would be in the future and who would be in the past? What could possibly happen to the Fleet during the years the raptor was gone on a simple scouting mission (when the raptor crew felt like they were gone only an hour)?
Cylon pursuit would be nearly out of the question too for the same reason.
Funny thing about our theories... they adjust and change over time as new facts are learned. We may yet learn something in the future that will cause us to adjust our current theory of relativity.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I didn't say the theory of relativity is fundamentally untrue, just that even the bloke that came up with it wasn't 100% satisfied it accounted for everything. In short, we don't know everything yet, so it's a fluid concept, not exactly set in stone.
As for gravity, anyone who watched B5 will know there's no reason to invent gravity generators just to get around production limitations. Just design ships with rotating sections - yes, I know they have at least one already - point is there's a conscious decision to make Colonial tech a little more advanced than we're currently capable of. That includes FTL, Artificial Gravity, glowing spines, magical Tylium juice and whatever they use to power those big arse sublight engines. We won't know for certain until we see the new Caprica series, but I suspect the colonies underwent a bit of a technological regression as a result of the Cylon war, at lest in terms of automation so we have a somewhat skewed perspective of their technology with a 40 year old Battlestar that seams to have been intentionally "dumbed down".
The fact is, this is a civilisation that was crossing interstellar distances millennia before they created the Cylons. For all we know the scientific know-how behind the jump drives may have been all but forgotten. The drives they're running now could very well be just copies of the original drive from the Kobol "Galleon" and while they know how to build new ones and basically how they work they may not actually understand WHY they work. Since that ship was apparantly made by "Gods" (who or whatever they might have been) you can easily say they were just REALLY advanced and invoke Clarke's Third Law. There are a few precedents for this in "hard" sci-fi. For example; the Holtzman effect from the Dune books is used to account for most of the "magical" tech (Foldspace, Shields & Suspensors) while it was stated that know-one actually knew how it all worked despite the fact the civilisation had been using it for more than 10,000 years. Also the Jumpgates in B5 are said to have already been there when all the current races first got out into space and none of them knew exactly how they worked, but were able to replicate them. One assumes the Vorlons were responsible, but they never owned up or asked for patent rights, so who knows. The Stargate Universe is based on exactly the same conceit with ancient and magical technology just left lying around all over the place.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
I've taken to thinking the glowing spines are simply glowing for our (the viewer') sake, much the same way as those scrimmage and down lines appear on the TV screen during a football game or the way the hockey puck used to glow during an NHL telecast.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I'm willing to suspend disbelief. I just want the thing to be consistent, i.e., either hard sci-fi or not. To me, it's either go all-out and be *really* scientific about it, or just do what the hell you want like they do in fantasy and soft sci-fi. I don't care if it's an Elven spell or an Alteran wormhole generator, the characters still get from A to B immediately, and that's fine if it doesn't become a deus ex machina. The story should be about the people, not the magic/tech. That's not something you can easily relate to. If stories are art they should make you feel something and that requires it to be character- or plot-driven but not environment-driven.
The tech or magic should facilitate the story, in other words, and not the other way around - I just want them to be internally consistent, instead of apparently obeying a certain set of laws (in this case real-world science) except when they don't want to (which jars me out of the experience and stops my suspension of disbelief). It'd be like Stargate suddenly allowing a wormhole to be open for more than 38 minutes for no apparent reason or explanation - you just start to go "What? The hell?" and spend the rest of the episode with your brow furrowed at the screen. Or I do anyway...
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
That is exactly what this show is; it's a drama about people and it is most certainly not about the hardware. The nuts and bolts feel of the show it's just that, a feel, not a sign that says "we've figured out every last technical detail of this ship". Despite that, by and large what tech we are exposed to (which is precious little as RDM doesn't want any Trek style technobabble) obeys certain rules. For instance the FTL takes time to spool up and calculate a jump and it has to be synchronised with the whole fleet or they won't all jump to the same place. If you open an airlock or blow a hole in the hull, there be vacuum outside and no magical forcefield to make it all better. When a ship's engine goes dead it keeps on drifting as per the laws of inertia and when you shoot someone it REALLY hurts. Now when it comes to the FTL, ALL Sci-Fi have to make the conceit and invoke Clark's 3rd law of of sheer narrative necessity and just so long as they obey their own rules, it's not a problem. Even "hard Sci-Fi" like 2001: A Space Odyssey does it. How dose Galactica's FTL work? Same as a Heisenberg compensator - very well thank you.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
Could something like the Galactica and the rest of the fleet really function without networked computers?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Why not? WWIII carriers and submarines managed it without any computers at all.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Rev, I'm pretty sure you mean either WWII, or WWIV. Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
See, that's why I think it IS believable. But such complicated actions like FTL, etc... I just don't know. Seems like advanced computers and networks would be needed.
Not saying they don't have advanced computers. There just must not be a central computer core. Every work station must have it's on CPU.
I'm just too jaded/used to this 21st Century life of networked computers, Internet, etc...
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Is it me, or has this "computer whiz" angle of the Cylons been forgotton a bit? Vipers, Raptors and civilian vessels apparently do not have networked systems either, or at least not at a level that makes them susceptible to Cylon hacking.
In this light, the inability of the Cylons to work with the Raptor jump drive is even more unbelievable. Although I guess you could claim the Raptor was specifically designed to be non-compatible.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
Which makes sense given its mission profile. Seems to me in the miniseries when the flight of Vipers went conko the Raptor was fine and continued to Caprica.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Boomer's Raptor had hung back, though, and might simply have been out of range or out of the targeted area.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by HerbShrump: See, that's why I think it IS believable. But such complicated actions like FTL, etc... I just don't know. Seems like advanced computers and networks would be needed.
Not saying they don't have advanced computers. There just must not be a central computer core. Every work station must have it's on CPU.
I'm just too jaded/used to this 21st Century life of networked computers, Internet, etc...
Yeah I think the basic idea is that the Jump Drive has it's own dedicated computer as to most systems, they're simply not connected so any communication between them has to go through their human operators. I think there's a line in "Razor" when the Pegasus first gets hit when someone (probably Kendra) says the networks are down so they have to do everything manually. In fact I think the Jump computer itself was down which is why it had to be a blind jump. So as a machine, the jump drives work fine without computer control, at least so far as actually making a jump goes and that the computers are purely there for guidance and navigation. So it's not like is Star Trek where the computer has to be constantly keeping a reaction contained or an energy field stable, it's more like Star Wars where the drive works as soon as it's activated, like a catalyst or a hypergolic reaction where it can't help but go off as soon as the valve is open or whatever principle the Galactica drives work on.
As for the Raptors, I imagine their systems are encrypted anyway and while the Cylons could crack it, it'd simply be easier and quicker for Athena to do it herself as she has all the codes.
And yes Dan, I meant WWII One of the drawbacks of a wireless keyboard is that it sometimes randomly doubles up my keystrokes!
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