I'm not equipped for exhaustive reportage, so, to sum up: Torture does not always work, Starbuck makes a lot of assumptions about Cylon psychology that seem baseless (or, rather, based on what the Cylons were like a long time ago), and the general paranoia level gets knocked up a few levels.
Also, surely the Cylon corpse they've got ought to have been thoroughly dissected by now?
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
I've missed a few episodes of Battlestar Galactica, so I might have missed references to the Cylon corpse. However, I was under the impression that the corpse of the Cylon that attacked Adama in the miniseries was incinerated after it was brought onboard the Galactica? Am I mistaken about this, or is there another corpse I missed?
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Now that you mention it, I do seem to remember them talking about destroying it. Hmm.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
quote:Originally posted by Balaam Xumucane For instance, I believe Baltar mentions that they detected sythetic elements when they cremated the Arms-dealer Cylon. Why in the fuck would you destroy the singular prototype, presumably already incapacitated, of a brand new, and horrifyingly not-understood weapon.
From the miniseries thread. So the only Cylon bits they have to work on right now are the captured Cylon raider and whatever bits and pieces of Doral (or whatever the name of the public relations officer was) when he blew himself up in "Litmus". Of course, this leads to wonder how related the Cylon-humanoid tech is to the biological components of the raider.
And now that I'm actually watching this episode... so they didn't incinerate the Cylon from the miniseries at all. It's in the morgue. And this leads back to Sol's point: shouldn't it be dissected by now?
[ February 25, 2005, 10:38 PM: Message edited by: Siegfried ]
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
What I noticed in the episode is the fact that the cylon guy kept referring to "God" as if he was implying that the cylons have some sort of monotheistic religion and that they view the humans worshipping the "Lords of Cobalt" as infedels worshipping false idols. So are we to believe this war between the cylons and humans some sort of holy war?
Posted by Manticore (Member # 1227) on :
Guys, since we saw Leoben's body in this ep, clearly his body wasn't cremated, but the tissue sample that they tested.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Kobol.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
The God thing was present in the first part of the miniseries, if I recall correctly, not to mention every Baltar hallucination since.
I don't see why anyone would be concerned about cremating a tissue sample. I mean, as I said, I don't really recall the details, but I seem to remember the implication being that they had destroyed the Cylon body out of fear that it might come back to life, or transmit their location, or, in general, behave in ways unbecoming to human corpses. I mean, Cylons are bad enough, but zombie Cylons?
Another thing: Starbuck insists that since Cylons are "artificial" they can control what sorts of sensory input they receive, but what reason does she have to think this? Until this guy broke his restraints there was no indication that replicants were different from humans in any serious way. I mean, OK, so they are apparently grown in tubes somewhere, but if they look like human beings down to the molecular level, then it stands to reason that they will function like human beings. Like, OK, so apparently they are stronger than people. Well, that strength has to come from somewhere. Replicant muscles should be different than human ones, somehow. Or consider the haphazard design of living things. Have the Cylons improved upon it? Because if they have, any of those changes should show up in a suitably thorough examination, some more readily than others.
Of course, Starbuck was interested in asserting the mechanicalness of the Cylons in the hopes of getting this one to respond to her questions out of, I don't know, wounded pride. I'm just wondering, I guess, how much she or anyone knows about how the replicants are put together. I realize they've got plenty of other things to worry about, but this should be a high-priority intelligence issue. (Which also makes me think they really ought to have kept their prisoner alive for study, the toxicity of his notions notwithstanding. They could just post a sign, "Don't listen to this guy.")
Speaking of which: it seems to me that if either Adama or Roslin are Cylons humanity is hopelessly doomed.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
I'm curious as to why the Cylon was running about in the President's head? That, and she seemed to "see" what would happen in the near future. I don't know if she's got a chip in her head or what, but that was definitely wierd. No idea what it was supposed to mean, either.
As for the cremation, I don't think it's that important. The only thing I remembered was that they used his body to figure out that the humanoid cylons were slightly different. Other than that, it was a *minor* continuity error. Considering how good they've been at continuity so far (including injuries from fights, like Apollo's), I'll forgive them this.
B.J.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
Lots of people make assumptions all the time and believe those assumptions. All the Cylons Kara had ever heard about were the old robot Cylons the Colonies fought a war with. Her perceptions of the new Cylons are colored by those old stories. I've got no problem with Kara assuming the new Cylons are still, deep down, machines that can turn components ands inputs on and off.
Is she right? Is she wrong? Who knows? She believes it though and that is consistent with how people are.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
What I was wondering was why a mid-level fighter jock like Kara Thrace would have been so well-versed in interrogation techniques. Now, training to resist interrogation, I can understand, but actually running one?
However, given how little the Humans obviously know about what the humanoid Cylons are like now, it seems perfectly logical to figure that they are still machines on some level or another.
That doesn't answer why any of the Cylon bodies haven't been dissected, though...
Posted by machf (Member # 1233) on :
quote:Originally posted by B.J.: I'm curious as to why the Cylon was running about in the President's head? That, and she seemed to "see" what would happen in the near future. I don't know if she's got a chip in her head or what, but that was definitely wierd. No idea what it was supposed to mean, either.
Just wait for the next episode to learn the answer...
Posted by Manticore (Member # 1227) on :
From what I could tell, she was an awful interrogator--she didn't get anything out of him, and she let him get to her. But Adama only had her, so she's the one he sent.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Assuming Adama wanted answers.
(My point isn't "these are unreasonable assumptions to make" but simply that these are assumptions that would be ((and, indeed, were)) detrimental to an interrogation.)
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
Yeah that was a pretty shitty interogation. Was it because Leobon got to her? Surely they would have someone better qualified than the best pilot/sniper in the fleet.
I did particularly enjoy thinking about the ramifications of Roslin's prescient dream (from Starbucks persepctive, was it?). It was also interesting that Leobon wanted(needed?) to know Starbuck's name so badly. He wasn't too effective up to that point and so perhaps this indicates a weakness in Cylon strategy. Adama made a point of saying "this model" is a headfucker and whatever. You know, to distinguish it from the Doral model or something.
None of this is even getting into the theologies of the Humans and Cylons.
Did someone say they look like us "down to the molecular level" at any point? I don't remember that. In the miniseries the ship's doctor reported that at first glance everything in the arms dealer Cylon (also named Leobon) seemed to be human; organs, lymphatic system, etc. This doesn't necessarily entail a disection but I would think that would be prudent. Silicon pathways in the brain? Surely there would be some way of seeing this without the use of a nuclear device.
It could be that "Flesh And Bone's" Leobon was able to artificially stimulate his adrenal glands which might give him the speed, but I would imagine busting through handcuffs would require some cyber muscles.
For those who care, in the miniseries Gaius talks about the tissue sample yielding unique chemical compounds during the cremation that reveal the sample to be synthetic. Somehow that got twisted around in my head to mean "the tissue sample from the cremation of the body and not just a cremation of a tissue sample." Sorry.
It does seem like there is far too little actual analysis of the Cylon intelligence materials. Like, say, looking for genetic markers in the human models they've discovered or the nature of the biological bits of Starbuck's Cyclopian raider or the inner workings of the device they pried off the command console. You'd think those would be a priority. Nature of the enemy and all that.
OTOH, it is just a TV show.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
The fact that the only difference anyone has been able to find is a few chemicals after the rest of the tissue has been burned is what prompted my "molecular level" comment, but I think it is a reasonable inference anyway; for instance, if replicant cells were different than human ones this ought to be easy enough to determine with just a cheek swab and a microscope.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
One thing that occurred to me when I saw this one - do we know the Cylons need to breathe? There was a point when Leoben was head-down in the bucket and he just stopped thrashing and appeared to just wait. If he can hold his breath fro even a few minutes, he could survive the vacuum. Perhaps this is how agents move around the fleet, and how Shelley-Six got off the Ga;actica in "6DoS."
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I don't think we really know anything about what they can do, or do without. If Starbuck's guess about a limited transmission range was correct, he may have just detected a working upload link at that moment.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
They use Wi-Fi, and he suddenly found himself in a hot-spot, or near another Cylon? Probably not the latter, since the ships had all been moved farther away then they even were normally. Which would also tend to argue against him trying to cross the vacuum to another ship - in the distances the fleet are from each other normally, yes, but not 500km. . .
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
I just hope they don't start pulling the "Oh, yeah, in this episode we learn that Cylons can ______" crap. Then never bother to deal with it again. From what I've seen its almost like the Cylons are becoming like Giskards. I get the feeling they are herding the fleet for some reason. Why don't they simply track 'n smack it? Their use of spiritual inferences tends to lead me back to the Giskardian aspect. What is their real purpose? It also seems likely that they are attempting to reproduce with humans or I am totally missing the Boomer experiment's merits. Any guesses?
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
I've thought of the herding possibility myself. How else could the fleet have its water supply destroyed within range of a water-bearing planet, run out of fuel in range of a Cylon fuel station that was practically handed to them, and end up at Kobol, of all places?