I figured someone would have started a thread about this ep by now, but hey...
And yes, I'm sticking to the SFC's numbering scheme, so there, Chris.
I like how Roslin kept Adama from following the simplistic explanation of the consequences of his mission. And I agree with her. In real life, there can be a single trigger for a war, but only after lots of built-up factors on either side have contributed to a tense situation. If the Cylons truly wanted to avoid a war, they would have sent representatives to the Armistice Station at least once in those four decades to do more than shoot the human representative in the face.
I like Bulldog, and hope he stays at least recurring.
Tigh is still a long way from recovered, but at least he's working on it, and hasn't given up. I wonder how he and Helo are going to work out who is gonna really be the XO...
And for the first time in this series, I am truly jealous of Baltar.
--Jonah
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
...Except for the part where Roslin had his painting put under the toilet, right?
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
I'd love there to be a scene in a future episode that actually shows Colonial One's bathroom with Baltar's portrait above the loo, though I can't imagine a situation that would require it. Maybe some sort of brawl that spills through the ship until they get to the bathroom and the painting gets knocked into the bog, and everyone stops fighting and just points at it laughing.
Er, yeah.. anyway. This was a good episode. I liked last week's, although I accept all the criticism that it got. This week however, there weren't any huge plot holes, so a few people's fears will have been allayed, I should think.
Bulldog is a great character, and nicely fleshed out considering he was only really there as a catalyst for Adama's flashbacks. We still don't really know how he did escape from the Baseship, do we? He still seemed convinced to the end that he killed the Number 3, but everything else seems to suggest that was in his imagination.
Nice to see two new ships as well. The Valkyrie wasn't really very adventurous, it was basically the same layout as Galactica but with differently shaped and detailed sections. The stealth fighter was also good, especially since it was similar in shape to the Blackbird. Shows Tyrol didn't just pull that design out of his arse.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Considering that it was a convert mission, how would Tyrol know about the stealth fighter design?
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Presumably the ship wasn't built for that one mission.
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
Or at least, the concept of stealth ships in general.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
True, but was that particular stealth ship made of the same material as the Blackbird? Can't know for sure, but I can see Tyrol drawing upon from stealth ships of the past for his design.
Posted by Paladin181 (Member # 833) on :
The thing that made me wonder the most was the ship that attacked Bulldog, it hit him and then went away. While the cylon ships come in from a differnt direction and velocity it seems. This could be more fuel to the fire that the Admirality wanted a war and had a second Stealthstar attack Bulldog.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
If the Admirality wanted war, they certainly underestimated the cylons. Not in terms of armaments, but in strategy. While they may have thought they could take on the cylons in ship-to-ship battles, they probably never conceived that the toaster would use their fleet wide computer program against them.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: Considering that it was a convert mission, how would Tyrol know about the stealth fighter design?
Well he didn't design it to be a Steath ship from the get go, that only came later when Helo thought up using carbon composite for the skin.
Also the design of the Stealthstar didn't look much like the Blackbird to me, looks more like a Viper Mk VII crossed with a F-117 Nighthawk.
Am I imagining things, or was one of those big wigs that briefed Adama the same bloke who was on the Armastise station in the Mini-series?
Posted by FawnDoo (Member # 1421) on :
What struck me as odd was Adama's transfer from the Valkyrie to the Galactica after the mission over the armistice line ended in failure. I can accept Tigh's analysis that it was a sideways promotion and a means to ease Adama gently into retirement after a mission went bad, but did they transfer the entire crew of the Valkyrie onto the Galactica?
I just wonder because I'm sure Adama had a few exchanges in the miniseries with officers thanking him for their years of shared service (if I recall right I think Gaeta said something about three years, and I think Captain Kelly said something as well). If Adama took over as CO of Galactica within a year of the attack of the colonies, they must have moved at least some of his crew with him, which seems a bit strange...or was the entire crew tarred with the same brush as Adama and shuffled off to a less prominent posting?
As for the officer on the armistice station, I don't think it was the same guy. The officers who briefed Adama on his mission seemed pretty senior: I don't think they would be sent to a backwater assignment like armistice station, especially when they weren't expecting the Cylons. I thought the guy at the station was just a minor officer, since after 40 years the colonials only maintained a token presence.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
I was under the impression that Adama had been in charge of Galactica for quite some time... Now it seems that he was barely there before the Cylons wiped out the colonies. Does this have any continuity problems? For example, Chief Tyrol was with him for at least five years in the first season... I suppose he and others could have come with him to Galactica from the Valkyrie, but I'd always thought that the Bucket was Adama's for a good few years. It makes it a little wierder that Adama would be so attached to the ship after so little time that he wouldn't swap for a clearly superior ride when the Pegasus came to town.
And about Valkyrie - it was just Peagsus redressed, right? I don't remember so many larger turrets on the ship, though the camera was even shakier than usual this week and I coulda missed it. The interior of the ship isn't the Pegasus C&C room, as that set must have been struck by now.
EDIT - I've scrutinized some screencaps, and Valkyrie and Pegasus are two different designs. They seem to share the same drive section engine pods, but the Valkyrie's midsection is proportionately larger and the forward section is different. Looks very much actually like what a current-day equivalent to Galactica's design would look like, with technology of the Mercury class.
Mark
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
For some reason I thought Adama might have served on Galactica before, during the original war, explaining his attachment to it. Can we perhaps explain some of these things with Adama being commander of Galactica, given a temporary transfer to Valkyrie with the possibility of it being permanent, and the mission's failure resulting in his return to Galactica?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
Hmmm, to be honest. Not a big fan of these "retrocon" flashback episodes. Black Market kinda nnoyed me the same way, but at least it only had less than annoying consequences for Apollo's character, not the whole Cylon-Human plotline.
As with the others, I was always under the impression that Adama was the crusty old commander of Galactica. Examples being FawnDoo's examples of conversations and what I assumed was his stubborn quirk of being able to keep his Battlestar from having any networked systems as others were computerized. Now, did he similarly strip the other vessel and then strip the Galactica when he got there? Or was the previous Commander of Galactica similarly paranoid? It starts stretching belief.
Other annoyances are that Adama would have to have sit on this guilty secret for more than a year (when part of the storyline had Sharon convincing him to not feel guilty for leaving behind the people on New Caprica...a much smaller guilt trip it would seem), that any hotshot pilot with an attitude can re-wire a raider (and use the FTL and a radio that Starbuck couldn't find/get working), Bulldog would have to have "accidentally" found the co-ordinates for the fleet, the fleet would have to accept his story and that he had time to do all this while presumably other Cylons were (pretending to) look for him.
Well, maybe next weeks episode can show that modern science fiction can actually do a fighting ring after the horrible B5 TKO and the two horrible Voyager episodes
Omega: Didn't seem like my impression since Bulldog asked "How did you end up on this bucket?" while looking unfamiliar with the Galactica rather than "back on this bucket."
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Did anyone notice in one scene, something Adama said was bleeped out?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Bullshit", I believe, is what he said. But I could be wrong.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Omega: Didn't seem like my impression since Bulldog asked "How did you end up on this bucket?" while looking unfamiliar with the Galactica rather than "back on this bucket."
I think there's a glimpse of his service record at the start of the episode and I'm pretty sure I spotted Galactica near the top of the list, before his mustered out after the armastise. Bulldog may have just been unaware that Adama served on Galactica during the war, which is plausable since the dude isn't old enough to have served back then (if he was alive at all.) I think it also had Adama as XO of the Colombia.
[ November 21, 2006, 04:49 AM: Message edited by: Reverend ]
Posted by FawnDoo (Member # 1421) on :
The good people of the Battlestar Wiki transcribed what was seen on screen in this article - Adama's service record includes the following:
* D6/21311 - First commission: Battlestar Galactica fighter squadron * E4/21312 - Commendation for shooting down Cylon fighter in first combat mission * D5/21314 - Mustered out of service post-armistice * R6/21317 - Served as Deck Hand in merchant fleet and as common [...] aboard inter-colony tramp freighters * D1/21331 - Recommissioned to Fleet * D6/21337 - Major: Battlestar Atlantia * R8/21341 - Executive Officer: Battlestar Columbia * C2/21345 - Commander: Battlestar Valkyrie * C2/21348 - Commander: Battlestar Galactica
So it seems that Adama was in Galactica's fighter group and, depending on how long he served aboard her, might even have risen up to CAG. That could explain why he is so fond of his ship, but I did always get the impression up to now that Adama went way back as Galactica's commander.
The point made about Adama's feelings regarding wireless networks is an excellent one - the Valkyrie looked like a newer model battlestar, and from the flashback scenes I think it's DRADIS display looked more like that of the Pegasus than the Galactica, which would imply newer technology (or at the very least, newer software). Presumably, it had a network installed much like most other pre-attack battlestars, so where did the strong anti-network feelings come from in the miniseries? Unless the Valkyrie's last mission spooked Adama so badly that his attitude in the miniseries was a recently developed thing...
Of course, the whole thing is made a little more harder to reconcile with the story because when you think about it, it might have made more sense to send a ship like the Galactica on such a mission: especially if there was a chance there could be contact with an enemy that could so easily take control of networked computer systems, so there was no need to include the Valkyrie at all! If the Cylons had detected the Galactica it would have given the colonials some plausible deniability - they could explain it along the lines of "Sorry, it's an old ship with faulty navigation systems, it jumped close to the armistice line by mistake" while at the same time putting a heavily armed, FTL capable ship close enough to the line to launch the stealth ship.
I'm actually surprised at this sort of thing happening on BSG, which up to now has presented its characters in a solid, consistent way with good backstories. This feels like tinkering, and opens up a whole load of questions about Adama that place some of his actions and motivations over the past two seasons in a new light...which is something I thought BSG would avoid. Don't get me wrong it's a great show, I enjoy it a lot and I'm not saying I'm against the idea of characters being developed and shown in different ways to challenge our perception of them as viewers, but in this one case it just feels a bit like the oft-used Trek device of "tweaking" someone's established backstory or some element of continuity for the sake of one episode.
[ November 21, 2006, 06:11 AM: Message edited by: FawnDoo ]
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
I have to agree with most of the sentiment here - good story, just doesn't quite fit. Rather than go over those points again, I've got a few other points that I noticed.
The StealthStar was anything but stealthy. It seems the Cylons were able to track it just fine. That might also explain why we don't see any of those later, on Pegasus especially. I was also suprised that the Cylons didn't shut down its computer (assuming that first ship was a Cylon, of course).
Lee's questioning looks at the end made it seem like he accepted his father's explanation for the Cylon attack. I'm a bit suprised at that. A person can easily blame themselves for something, but it ususally takes a bit more evidence for everyone else to see it that way. I'm with Roslin on this - there's no way a rational person can believe that Bill provoked the Cylons himself.
I can understand that Starbuck no longer has a problem with Tigh, but why did she bring her evidence to him? That seemed a bit out of character and certainly out of the chain of command. Unless I'm mistaken, I was under the impression that Tigh was taking a break from service until he figured things out. Starbuck should have gone to Adama or at least the CAG.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
The dating system is interesting. I wonder what happened 21,300 years ago? I couldn't be the Exodus from Kobol as that was "only" a few millenia ago (I think). It may lend credence to the "humanity originated from earth" theory as 20,000 years ago from today(ish), homo-sapiens had superceeded the Neanderthals and were gaining a serious foothold on the planet.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
That timeline posted isn't consistent. If Adama was commanding Valkyrie three years prior, that places this episode in 21351 at the latest, giving only forty years since his first commission.
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
quote:Originally posted by FawnDoo: The good people of the Battlestar Wiki transcribed what was seen on screen in this article - Adama's service record includes the following:
Hehe, I'm one of those good people. I'm not sure how much weight we should put in this service history, though. It was only shown very briefly, and a lot of pausing and rewinding was involved to actually figure out what it said.
The actual dialogue in the episode is more of a problem, though. I'd always assumed that Adama had chosen the Galactica and had demanded that it be stripped of computer networking. And come to think of it, that might've made a lot more sense if the stealth ship's computer had been taken over by the Cylons. Being a black ops mission, Adama would have had an inkling of what the Cylons were capable of, and would have had the foresight to get rid of the networks, while the rest of the fleet would've been in the dark. Bit of a wasted opportunity there.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
Off the subject (of course) but ran across THIS and couldn't resist.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:That timeline posted isn't consistent. If Adama was commanding Valkyrie three years prior, that places this episode in 21351 at the latest, giving only forty years since his first commission.
Is it possible he was a non-com for ten years from '01 to '11? (It was 50 years long service, right?) Is it totally unheard of for a Naval Captain* to work his way up the ranks from a crewman?
*I presume that's the Earth equivilant to the Colonial Commander, or is it Fleet Captains for carriers?
As for the computers, it's possibile that Galactica was never fitted with the newer computer systems because it was due for decommissioning and it simply wasn't worth it. The systems that Adama was arguing about in the Mini-series were to do with the ship being turned into an museum/educational facility and the computers were for the benefit of the teachers & students.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote: Is it totally unheard of for a Naval Captain* to work his way up the ranks from a crewman?
I'm fairly sure there have been at least a couple of instances of this. Particularly in times of war, with high casualties, promotion would be rapid and particular emphasis would be given to identifying potential leaders in the ranks.
For that matter I know at two of my relatives worked their way up from enlisted personnel to Squadron Leader (RN: Lt. Cdr/Colonial: Major) in peacetime.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I wanted to say Nelson started as a crewman, but I'm pretty sure that if he was, he'd have been pushed right into being a midshipsman for officer training, being a toff and all.
Posted by FawnDoo (Member # 1421) on :
Nelson did start as an ordinary seaman, but on a ship captained by his uncle so he hit the officer track pretty fast - especially when his uncle went on to become comptroller of the navy. Of course his uncle had the fantastic name of "Captain Suckling" so he had his own crosses to bear, but he was able to help Horatio on a bit.
Come to that, by way of an interesting similarity between the two and a deft switch from one admiral to another, didn't Adama's wife have some good connections in the colonial fleet hierarchy? I seem to recall in the flashback scenes in "Scattered" that he made some mention of her being able to get him back into the fleet after he was booted out post-armistice.
As for Adama's timeline not being consistent, it is possible that the 45 years service medal he received was for his time in the colonial fleet, period - including the time spent at the colonial equivalent of Starfleet Academy. Or is it normal practice for these things to refer back to dates of commission as an officer?
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
It almost certainly wouldn't include his stint at the Colonial Academy. Presuming the model to our military holds, you wouldn't be considered an officer until you have graduated and are commissioned as one.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
But surely service as a non-com would still count as service, correct?
Regarding the timeline; wasn't there a flashback in the 1st season showing the events immediately after Zak Adama's funeral? If memory serves it was 2 years prior to the Cylon attack and I'm reasonably certain Adama was Commander of Galactica at that point. So if that was 2 years before "zero day" and 'Hero' takes place 2 years after (about a year when you take the 6-8 mounths in seasons 1 & 2, plus the year on New Caprica before the Cylons arrived and the several months that they were there for.) Then that means Bulldog's mission (3 years ago) was one year after Zak died, which again, if I remeber correctly, is when Adama was on Galactica.
Not the end of the world, but it makes the whole story seam all the more "tacked on" and out of place.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Funny how no-one's complaining about having a black man in a cage this week. Unless they all left after last week.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I think it's supposed to be ok when the baddies do naughty things like that, only heros need to be politically correct.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
Like Mel right?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
This is a bit off topic, but I didn't think it worthy of it's own thread as it may have been brought up before.
Anyway, I was browsing through Youtube and came upon this early trailer for the mini-series. Watch closely and you'll spot Mk2 Vipers fireing lasers at old (read original) Cylon Raiders, with an old twin saucer Basestar in the backround! It's probably from the effects companies pitch reel, but still it's a fun teaser at what the 1st Cylon war would have looked like.
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
According to some of the comments the bits with the lasers and the old ships are from one of the BSG computer games, although the fact that the scifi logo is seen the whole way through makes me wonder..
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
I don't think its official.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Interesting. I think it's kinda obvious that they were still just in the early effects stages, so that's why they just put in some quick-n-dirty lasers and an old basestar. Pretty cool trailer, though it gives away most of the meaty stuff, including a few surprises and twists (like the Starbuck/Zak background, the identity of Doral and Leoben as Cylons, etc).
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
I liked last week's, although I accept all the criticism that it got. This week however, there weren't any huge plot holes, so a few people's fears will have been allayed, I should think. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)