The Download concept: Cylons are mechanical creations who now have created humanoid bodies that pass for human. But somehow at the moment of death, even in deep space, have a transmitter powerful enough and quick enough at the instant of destruction to transfer their psyche into another body light years away.
Cylon fighters are supra-light capable: Starbuck swipes a captured Cylon raider to travel back to Caprica to retrieve an artifact. From an economic stand-point it renders Cylon Basestars superfluous since it is far cheaper to produce many raiders than one Basestar. From a tactical standpoint, Basestars are redundant since one raider scout can jump out and then bring back, all the way from Caprica perhaps, thousands of raiders to swarm the Colonial refugee fleet and kill all the humans. Colonial Rattlers are also jump capable but not the fighters. Another thing to ponder on this, is fuel source. Maybe able to adapt a Cylon nav-unit to a Rattler, but what about range?
Violating Chain of Command: When the President convinces Starbuck to disobey Adama's orders, swipe that Cylon raider, travel back to Caprica, battle Six and others, and retrieve the needed artifact.
Leaving AuxCon unmanned: During combat, a new type of Cylon toaster is injected into Galactica. As it makes it way towards Auxiliary Control it falls upon Apollo and a few others to stop it. One would think with such a large crew as Galactica boasts, the Cylon would encounter damage control parties, security forces, and crew carrying out their post-battle tasks. But strangely there are no such encounters until a valiant last stand by Apollo stops it.
Pegasus Problem: The President of the Colonies tells Adama that Commander Cain is a problem. That he must be ready to do what needs doing to protect them from Cain. Excuse me Madam President, but Cain is under your command. You could tell her to stand down and she would have to unless Cain wants to mutiny. Then it would be by her choice to rebel and force Pegasus' crew to make a cruel choice. Instead we have Starbuck being subborned into being an assassin while Cain dispatches her Chief Engineer Carter over to Galactica to play hit-man also.
The Murder of Cain: One would think it would be hard to commit murder aboard a starship. Look at what happened to poor Sharon. But Baltar manages to get it done and protect the killer.
Apollo Gets Pegasus: Carter has been laboring as Commander of Pegasus since Cain's murder. Now they are in the middle of a fight with Cylons and Pegasus has taken serious damage to the FTL drive. Carter is indecisive, torn between trying to command or rushing down to Engineering to save Pegasus. In a courageous moment, Carter turns command of Pegasus over to Apollo. Alas other crew are not as brave. As Carter plunges into a compartment leaking air to redirect coolant for the FTL drive, no one disobeys his order and come to his rescue so he dies alone.
But I do like the whole Baltar/Six inter-mingle. I think Baltar has taken on all of Six's Cylon cold calculations while Six has all that is human in Baltar with her. It is akin to the Kirk/Spock/McCoy triangle from the original Star Trek series. Get to see the various sides verbally expressed without it seeming to be long winded boring talk.
So there I ended this negative post on a positive note. :)
Update: 200610070856 New Caprica Time.
Watched last night the season two hour premier of Battlestar Galactica.
- Now they talking about tanker birds for the Vipers. But none went with the Rattlers to Caprica. What is powering the Rattlers? Starlight? Jelly-Babies?
- Why do Viper and Rattler crews get spacesuits but assault troops in the Rattlers and crew aboard the Battlestars do not? If Carter had had a spacesuit he would not have died.
- I thought energetic nebula like that protecting New Caprica made the humanoid Cylons wonky? At least that was revealed in the original movie.
- Occupied New Caprica? Why do the Cylons even bother with a land occupation? If I want a cliched Resistance movie, I will watch Red Dawn again. We are talking a whole planet here and the Cylons control the high ground; if they want to discuss religion with the Colonials, there is a thing called television to broadcast the messages.
- As for Vichy Baltar being a Cylon, nice teaser that makes no sense. If Baltar was a Cylon, then he could have coded in the trapdoors himself while under Cylon control. Be no need for Six to sex him up then. Speaking of sex, good gosh Dean Stockwell as the dirty old Cylon who is complaining about delusional machines? *YUCK*
4 comments:
You and Skye ought to get together. She's posted TWO stories on BSG :
http://midnightbluesays.blogspot.com/
I've never seen it, so cannot comment.
For someone who's never seen it, Mike sure posts a lot in BSG threads! Hehe.
Anna, I just try to look past all those logic fallacies the same way I "turn the other cheek" on their blatant and annoying Iraq liberal paradigming.
I agree with your statement over at Skyebuck's blog about your preference for the original concept of cylons. Go back to the pilot of OBSG, and tell me admiral adar doesn't typify the pacifist Democrat whose desire for appeasement gets the whole human race all but killed? Fortunately, the Adama of that series and all the Colonial warriors understand the concept of "peace through strength" and having a vigilant military.
The problem with the original Battlestar series was it devovled into threat of the week writing.
New series, with the opening movie it seemed it might be good. But instead it went off the rails and has stayed that way.
If the writers can not stay consistent in the underlying framework; then it is not science fiction because that genre, while specualtion to some extent, has logical justification for why things work the way they work in that universe.
This consistency problem should be no surprise to anyone since Moore comes from the Star Trek: Next Generation gaggle who never bothered to stay consistent with the original series unless it suited them. To quote DC Fontana and David Gerrold's broadside after the first season of that series, 'Boldly going nowhere.'
And the new Battlestar Galatcia is doing the same thing. Willfully violating what should be show underpinnings that results not in science fiction but soap opera in space.
Gah, misspent youth... Heavy Metal flashback as Earth girl talks to alien robot while in bed, "How do I know I wont find you one day screwing the toaster?" And I get images of Tigh's wife and Dean Stockwell. I think I will get the mental floss now, what next... Desperate Cylon Housewives?
Let's see...for starters, they're not called "Rattlers." They're Raptors. There are also huge other huge differences.
In TOS, ALL Cylons are sentient. Not so in this one. The raiders are considered animals and can also be downloaded when they are killed. The Centurions are true robots; they have been programmed as such to prevent them from rebelling just like the originals did.
And follow the prophecy. "All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again."
So Say We all.
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