First comment: Usually I don't mind watching the promos for upcoming episodes, and we all KNOW that the cliffhanger won't be resolved as the conclusion implies... but it kinda destroys the effect of the drama and tension when the frakking network gives you a promo entirely about the ongoing Starbuck and Apollo Soap Opera, completely ruining any of the suspense. You'd think they'd at least play along with the cliffhanger and leave everything a bit obscure and uncertain!
My highlight of the evening: Chief, wistfully recounting his experiences sneaking into his father's study...
Also, is it blindingly obvious to everyone else too that the "Eye of Jupiter" is actually the STAR and not an object inside the temple? I kinda wondered after the first transition from that big circle-shaped poster on the obelisk out to the star in space, but the second time they did the same trick kinda gave the whole thing away.
In terms of plot and characters, I've been really impressed with how they've developed Anders this season. They took him from being "Token Guy Starbuck's Mooning Over" and ran with it. He understands her better than she thinks. And he's got Lee pretty well nailed, too (metaphorically speaking, you pervs!). Though I'm severely disappointed in Lee... even though we know he's had this thing for Starbuck for ages, I thought he was better than that.
I also feel vindicated, because I was pretty sure all along that Adama did NOT know that Hera was still alive, that Roslin had made that decision all by herself. Although Adama didn't come out and say it in the episode, his reaction pretty clearly showed it. It's the first time she's gone around his back since Kobol, too. But fortunately for Sharon/Athena, this is the best way for her (so to speak), because a great deal of her loyalty to the Humans (other than Helo, obviously) is to Adama directly. I hadn't gone back to see "Downloaded" again, but I was pretty sure that Adama hadn't been involved in that decision, thus leaving him mostly off the hook and still "worthy" of Sharon's loyalty. He's right, she'll manage to get over it. Mostly.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I was a bit confused about Adama's complicity, as well. When the Spouses Agathon confront him about it, he doesn't deny being involved, and he doesn't seem particularly aghast. But then, when he confronts Roslin about it, he tells her what he's been told, and she confirms it, implying that he didn't already know whether it was true or not. And I can't remember anymore, either, whether he was involved with the babyswitch last year, or not. You'd think, since the doctor was involved, the ship's commander would know about it, too, though.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Interesting to note how Baltar and D'Anna now "share a destiny" while poor Caprica is left in the cold.
Posted by Wes (Member # 212) on :
quote:Originally posted by TSN: I was a bit confused about Adama's complicity, as well. When the Spouses Agathon confront him about it, he doesn't deny being involved, and he doesn't seem particularly aghast. But then, when he confronts Roslin about it, he tells her what he's been told, and she confirms it, implying that he didn't already know whether it was true or not. And I can't remember anymore, either, whether he was involved with the babyswitch last year, or not. You'd think, since the doctor was involved, the ship's commander would know about it, too, though.
The podcast isn't out yet so we wont know for sure, but i'm pretty sure Adama did not know about it.
Also, I'm getting a strong vibe that there's some sort of connection between the Temple of the Five and the five missing Cylon models.
We'll know in six weeks i guess
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I'm pretty sure the temple was in the vision of the final five that D'Anna had a few episodes back.
As for Adama, I think his reaction says it all. He didn't know.
Slightly disturbing that Galactica has nukes for planetary strikes. I mean, who would they be used against in the days before the armistice line was crossed?
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
My guess would be possible separatists/ terrorist groups, those belonging to the same ilk as Zarek.
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
I thought Adama knew all about the baby being given to Maya, but didn't know that Roslin had been in so much contact with mother and baby on Caprica. Hera was supposed to disappear into the fleet and be watched over from a distance, not be looked after by the bloody President.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Well, former president. At the time.
Posted by Chris (Member # 71) on :
I may be a little slow on the pickup, but I didn't catch the Eye of Jupiter = star bit. And to me, it didn't look like the planet had a star. It appeared as though the planet got its light from the cluster.
Also, if the Cylons want the Eye bad enough and they believe its on the planet, couldn't they just jump a baseship into the path of the nukes?
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
They specifically mentioned that the planet's star is about to go nova.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: My guess would be possible separatists/ terrorist groups, those belonging to the same ilk as Zarek.
Perhaps, but what are they about to do with enough nukes to glass a continent? Then think the kind of payload the likes of Pegasus were carrying.
Besides, don't terrorists & rebels have a habit of blending in with the civilian population? Nukes aren't much good against an enemy like that.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
Maybe the nukes aren't specifically used against ground targets. The Cylons do have a habit of using nukes on colonial vessels afterall.
Posted by Chris (Member # 71) on :
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: They specifically mentioned that the planet's star is about to go nova.
Yes, I know that but I said it didn't look like it had its own star. And when they said the star was going to go nova it threw me for a loop; "what star?" said I.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Awful bright for a planet with no star...
Mark
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
Don't they mention in the miniseries or right after specifically how many nukes they have? And isn't it on the order of half a dozen or less? And haven't they used about that many in the intervening two and a half years?
Also, on a cosmic timescale, isn't it just as likely for a star to go nove 10,000 years from now as tomorrow?
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
It's possible that Pegasus had spare nukes or the materials to build them. In fact, knowing he was going to sacrifice Pegasus, Lee probably would have left its nukes behind, just like its fighters.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Yeah, Adama said they only had ten or so nukes, back when Baltar (or rather, Fantasy-Six) asked for one.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
About ol' Baltar, even though I'm sure everyone hates his guts, do they know about his part in the nuking of Cloud 9? Do they even know that the warhead they gave him and the one used in the bombing are one and the same?
Posted by Chris (Member # 71) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: Awful bright for a planet with no star...
Mark
It was an awful bright star cluster, as I recall. Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Yes it was. But after everyone jumped out in orbit of the planet, the flace wasn't any brighter than any other planet they've been in orbit around. The local light was more localized radiation or something, no? And it's not visible except when you're IN the soup, for the same reason we were never able to "see" the Dephic Expanse from "Enterprise"?
Mark
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
MNW: Yes, Adama and the others knew that the nuke was the one that Baltar had. From Adama's dialogue briefing him on the situation, he seemed to believe that it had been stolen from Baltar's laboratory.
Because I'd guess that Adama doesn't think that even Baltar would want to nuke a Human ship... at least not on purpose! (Giving the nuke to Gina was the single stupidest thing he's ever done, though.)
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: (Giving the nuke to Gina was the single stupidest thing he's ever done, though.)
More stupid than letting the rise of his wanker bring about the fall of all humanity?
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Yes, simply because Baltar had absolutely no idea, and couldn't possibly have known, the potential stakes involved. Sure, giving Caprica Six access to the defense mainframe was stupid, but there's no way he could've figured she was a Cylon planning universal armageddon.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Not only was it stupid but I'm pretty sure it was illegal and even if she wasn't a cylon she could still have been a spy or some other enemy of the colonies(not that I could think there could be many).
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I'm assuming that at some point the roof of the temple will open to show the star, and comprehension will dawn on all involved.
And, Mathias turns out to be a bit of a hottie under all that body-armour.
Posted by bX (Member # 419) on :
I noticed this also...
I did like the Chief wandering off. I thought that was pretty cool. The Starbuck/Apollo romance thing is wearing a bit thin for me at this point. I do like that Anders is becoming more three-dimensional, but again, Lee's behaviour strikes me as incongruous.
So I guess I'm a little unclear about why and how they had to jump through the firey bit in the previous episode. Like why they couldn't go around? What the firey bit was? How this relates to the near-nova star the Algae planet is orbiting. If it was surrounded by the firey bit, how did they know the algae planet was even there? Stuff like that.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I don't know about other people, but I have a low tolerance for watching characters behave stupidly. There's only so much I can take before I give up in disgust. And Starbuck is getting that way. After all that she's been through, it still turns out that the main interest she has for Lee (gah!) is the danger of an adulterous relationship. "I don't believe in divorce, it's a sin?" The fuck?!
I also don't know what was going on in the previous ep. Something about the ships of the Fleet being unable to jump to the star's coordinates in one go. But why? It can't be the distance involved, if a Raptor was able to navigate its way through in real space. So they had to take the non-mil ships through in batches, empty, with their passengers transferred onto the Galactica. But why did they keep talking about round trips? Was the Galactica capable of doing the jump in one go, and even if not all it needed to do was keep the Raptors onboard for the outward leg (to pick up the next batch of ships)?
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
Or why didn't they use the heavy raider brain Raptor? You know, the one which let them get back to Caprica in only ten jumps? Seemed like it was just an excuse to kill Kat.
I understood the arguement for not being able to go round it (too big, not enough food left) and that they needed two jumps to get through and that the civvie ships didn't have sufficient shielding, etc. But they established the super jump brain raptor thing ages ago.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I don't think there's a technically plausable reason for the events of the last episode, at least I don't think they wasted too much time thinking one up. The story reason is that they needed the fleet endure "rough seas" and for it to have meaning they felt the need to kill off a popular character. Not that I disagree, just a little irritated that it had to be Kat, but then I suppose there can only be one Starbuck and lets be honest, Kat was in danger of becoming a more interesting character than Kara.
Speaking of which, in an odd way I sort of like her religious hypocracy, more evidence of a very screwed up childhood. Who's betting her mum was a psycotic Sacred Scroll basher?
P.S. Maybe the heavy raptor died? They are partly organic and will gradually degrage if not fed in some way. I'd be willing to bet that the fleet doesn't have the technology to maintain them for very long.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
I was under the impression that the ships couldn't jump from outside the cluster to the planet on the other side due to the immense gravity wells of so many stars so close together. They could get sucked into a planet if they didn't plot their course right. So I think that's why they had to jump into the cluster, navigate a bit, then jump out: they navigated through the most intense section of the cluster, gravity-wise.
As for why they needed to make round trips, that seemed pretty obvious to me: Galactica can't hold 50000 people. And even if it could, there aren't enough Raptors/pilots to have one per ship in the fleet.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
And as to why they couldn't go around the cluster instead, they said that would take too long, and everyone would've starved to death. (Well, half of them could've... )
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
There's also cannibalism. Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
That's exactly what I meant when I said "half"!
Also, to go back to the objection to the prediction of the timing of the upcoming nova, I have no problem believing that it's possible to have a much more solid and reliable model of star behavior if you have the chance to send people out there to do observations. All we can do is sit on our hands and watch the show, here on Earth. But if you've got a science ship actually watching a nova from a few AUs away (and then jumping out before getting fried), then you'll learn a lot more and be able to predict with much greater precision when the actual explosion could happen.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Interesting...but as you pointed out, it could be just generic religious imagery, Kara is known to be a bit of a closet zealot.
Mind you it dose put the odds of her being one of the final five up a bit, since Baltar clearly is not one of them.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I'm going to be pissed if ANY of the recurring characters turns out to be a Cylon at this point. Even minor ones like Gaeta have had some good, meaty scenes developing their depth. Making them a closet Cylon completely destroys that and makes them into a completely different character.
Posted by Bones McCoy (Member # 1480) on :
Well, we know Adama won't launch the nukes (at least not at the planet) because Sam and Apollo still have to duke it out over Starbuck, and the ground party has to come to fisticuffs with the centurions... My guess is that the Old Man's gonna launch against the BaseShips, and then extract the folks down below while the Cylons recover.
The temple, as a matter of course, will be destroyed... we all know what Cylons do to planets 'infested' by humans.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
I think Tyrol is gonna accidentally activate a shield or something.
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
Dualla will turn out to be a Cylon.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Her near-obsessive need to have someone, anyone, fall in love with her would seem to suggest that; but at this stage, if she did turn out to be one, it'd almost be a let-down. She's TOO obvious.
This idea of the Final Five being so deep-cover that even the Other Seven don't know who they are means, in theory, that a lot of the "x can't be a Cylon because y" arguments can be rendered invalid (I'd give examples, but it's late and I'm tired and can't remember any). I'm however thinking that instead someone now dead, and missed by all, will suddenly reappear very much alive and thus be revealed as one of the Final Five. Someone like Billy, or Jammer, or Ellen Tigh. Someone whose death had a resonance that will be invalidated by the fact it was all, at the end of the day, a sham.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
That's an interesting idea, but I still disagree. Those characters still had great depth for their relatively minor roles, and the shock value of bringing them back doesn't cancel out the fact that their previous characterization would still be wiped out.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Billy would be a good one to bring back.
I'm not sure that the thing about the final 5 is even that they're deep cover agents at all. I'm thinking maybe there was a schism early on, maybe even before the end of the last war and they either just left for parts unknown or fled to the colonies and wiped their memories.
Another theory occus, what if they're not the final five but the FIRST five? Which could mean the reason that the Seven can't talk about them is that they don't know them, meaning the 5 were the ones who created the other 7. Just an idea.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
That's more the line I've been thinking along.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Except that D'Anna is Number Three, remember?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
And Sharon is Number Eight. If the numbers are consecutive or chronological in any way then wouldn't the final 5 include numbers Eight through Twelve?
So either the Sharons are one of the five or the numbers themselves aren't significant.
Posted by Chris (Member # 71) on :
I wish they all had numbers... My vote is Cavil is Number One.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
It seems that D'anna views the 5 other models almost as gods and wants desperately to see them. That means that the 7 models we know have had little or no contact with these 5 which brings into question the whole numbering thing and question if the all the models were made at different times. Also if I recall the 1st season, doesn't Baltar bring up the question of whether number six(perhaps the other 6 models as well) were based on real humans. Don't know how that might relate to our argument, but I thought it was worth bringing up.
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
quote:Originally posted by Chris: I wish they all had numbers... My vote is Cavil is Number One.
Could be. From the numbers we know, the theory that they're numbered by the age that their bodies appear makes sense.
Posted by Chris (Member # 71) on :
So if Cavil is Number One, Leoben or Simon would be Two... Probably Leoben.
Posted by ScottKey (Member # 1709) on :
Why one of those two? Why not one of the missing five? For all we know, two of the five could be Number Two and Number Three putting Simon and Leoben at Four and Seven.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
I didn't comment about it last episode, but I immediately thought of the connection between the radiation cluster of the last episode and the radiation field that was between the Galactica and Carilon in TOS. Deadly radiation field that the needs to be crossed because the fleet is starving and there is food and supplies on the other side.
I didn't make the connection about the eye and the star, but I should have. I've been thinking too much about Jupiter's red spot.
I was surprised the number of survivors didn't drop from last week. Did it? I'm thinking the number should be lower, since 4 ships were lost. How many people are on a skeleton crew?
Galactica is an older ship. Who knows why they carry nukes? At one time humans were fighting each other in the colonies. That was the original reason the Cylons were created. We don't know much about the time period of the first Cylon war. Where there Cylon planets and colonies? There had to be bases of some kind.
I was surprised by Lee and disappointed, but I like the story line. I was thinking they would be back on speaking terms and not having an affair, but hey, it happens. And Kara's reaction is the same reaction many people who have affairs have. The divorce is a sin, this is just bending the rules.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by Johnny:
quote:Originally posted by Chris: I wish they all had numbers... My vote is Cavil is Number One.
Could be. From the numbers we know, the theory that they're numbered by the age that their bodies appear makes sense.
On that note, wouldn't it be weird if 9,10, 11 & 12 are child-form Cylons? Especially twisted if they turn out to be the Cylon (re)creators/forbearers. The only reason it might not work is the difficulty in getting young actors that can pull it off.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I think the writers are slightly confused as to the numbers of the various models. Ron Moore referred to D'Anna as an "Eight" in the last podcast (she's Number Three, Sharon is Eight). And I'm pretty sure that one of the characters in the show referred to Cavil as a "Five" (but Doral is Number Five)...
I'm a little surprised no one's resorted to any "Who is Number One?" jokes yet, seeing how Number Six was named as a nod to The Prisoner. Or alternatively, any "Who does Number Two work for?" jokes. Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
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