The new episode was both revealing and mysterious.

We learned quite a bit about the Cylons this time... finally understanding what 'projection' is (and hence why the Basestars are so bland on the inside). I was somewhat puzzled at the notion of the 'hybrid'. Are the hyrids one of the missing five models that the other skinned Cylons "don't talk about"? And what kind of hybrid is this, exactly? Part machine and part machine? Seems a bit odd to me.

Now both sides have found a landmark toward Earth, and the race is on, but for once, the Cylons have something crippling them. I wonder what it is about this device left by the 13th tribe that caused the disease? It certainly isn't radiation, since nuclear weapons are haphazardly tossed about in battle with little ill effect, in earlier conflicts. It is a spreadable disease (but not a software virus...?). Quite puzzling, indeed.

I got the distinct impression that the Hybrid is NOT one of the 5 *unmentionable* models, but rather is akin to the cybernetically-enhanced telepaths used to pilot Shadow Crabs in B5, except one would presume that the Hybrids are bred for the purpose rather than being forced or even volunteering. Hybrid in the sense that's it's not an independently functioning organic entity like the humanoid Cylons (even though they are artifical in nature) nor is she completely mechanical like Centurions, nor does she seem to have any concept of self. Having said that, Hybrid might refer to something related to the religious aspect. Who knows yet?

I also reckon that the "projecting" thing as well as being a way to explain Balthar's visions, also cuts down on set design costs for Basestar interiors! tush, too cynical there. Note his mental 6 again stated that she was an Angel of God; Balthar doesn't believe in God (or at least he didn't) so I doubt that it's his subconscious at work there.

I think the answer to the ancient device left by the 13 th tribe is in the Scriptures. Everything (if you believe the Scriptures) is a Cycle of Time, all has happened before and will happen again. Roslin is the dying leader, Sharon is the lesser demon, the Fleet is the Caravan of the Heavens etc etc and thus if you choose to accept this interpretation then you must perforce accept that the Cylons or their equivalents pursued humanity to Earth on at least one previous occasion and that this device was left behind to guard against them. That it's obviously very old, man-made, has no effect on humans, and just happens to be on the legendary way to Earth pretty much confirms that. I dare say this will be confirmed next week; you can call me a toaster if it's not! Perhaps Sharon who obv has some knowledge or premonition of what's happening will inform Adama and Roslin?

So Agathon is confirmed as Galactica XO? cool, he deserves it, he was always one of my favourite characters. What will become of Col Tigh I'm not sure but I imagine he will sink even further into his paranoid and almsot shizophrenic depression, until he gets a chance to redeem himself. Absolutley brillaint depiction of degenerative mental illness brough on by stress; grief and guilt can have exactly that effect, so well researched there and well acted too by Michael Hogan. I knew Starbuck would come round, she's so desperate for Adama's respect and attention.

I should add that these deeply flawed and often unlikeable characters are one of BSG's great strengths, imo, over TOS; rather than being strong noble heroes fighting epic battles against one-dimensional baddies, they are ordinary people thrown against their will into extraordinary circumstances, and rather than react with overblown stoic dignity they suffer trauma, anguish, bitterness, anger, jealousy, as well as displaying courage, affection, and a sense of duty - although to be fair, Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict put more depth and commitment into their TOS characters than perhaps the Columbia execs ever intended. Making Starbuck female, which I originally assumed was a dreadful move just to garner a female audience, turns out to have been a stroke of genius, as it's enabled the writers to take the character to places that otherwise wouldn't have been possible, or plausible at any rate.

Did you hear the nicknames suggested for Sharon's callsign? Chromedome, Toaster, Skinjob i'm sure I heard. Interesting that she doesn't consider herself to be Boomer - and what's going on with the original Boomer who presumably is on the base ship with Caprica 6 and D'anna 3? does she still think of herself as human and is she still sympathetic to the Colonials? And will 6 bubble up Balthar's lies about the ancient device to the other Cylons, or will she keep schtumm out of affection for him? (or will her internal Balthar advise her to keep mum?)

I just can't wait for Saturdays!

edit - in answer to a previous point that we raised, re: Galactica's starboard flight pod, I checked on Exodus Part 2 and the Vipers do indeed launch from starboard, and various other sources concur that the starboard pod is indeed in working order. So at least they did something useful whilst sitting around in space for all at time!

Edited by - Tawakalna on 11/6/2006 2:06:40 PM

Season 3, Episode 7 - A Measure of Salvation.

Am I wrong to have found this episode rather unsatisfying? I must confess that I found it rather predictable and was annoyed at the deliberate confusion and continued mystery. That the ancient beacon turns out to have been infected by accident rather than actually being a weapon was very disappointing and i felt it was a cop-out on the part of the writers.

Lee's plan was very clumsy. Why risk Galactica and all those Vipers and Raptors when having one infected Cylon on a lone Raptor could have done the job? And, surely even if the Resurrection Ship had been infected, all the Cylons needed to do was isolate that ship like they'd isolated the Basestar. And for Simon to turn traitor so quickly was all too convenient and implausible

Sharon's immunity was obvious, and again I feel was a bit of an easy screenplay device. I thoight that what would happen was that the Cylons would get infected and that Balthar would save the day and ingratiate himself further by using Hera's antibodies to synthesise a vaccine, thus making her even more of an object of veneration amongst the Cylons than she is already (although that plot was already done on Voyager with B'elanna's unborn baby) The only real interest was in Helo's morally impelled "betrayal" - which i'm sure that he will come to regret in future episodes, and Balthar's torture, although again, we still are left in limbo as to whether his internal 6 is real or not. Does D'anna think he was talking to her when he was screaming that he loved her (although we know of course he was talking to his internal 6) and will this set the scene for a bizarre love triangle? She certainly seems closer to Balthar now than Caprica 6 does.

I really hope this unsatisfying episode which was so well built up yet failed to deliver is not going to be typical of episodes to come. I'm hoping for a return to normal standards with the next episode, Hero.

Season 3, Episode 8 - Hero.

I had high hopes for this episode after last week's shoddy offering, and unfortunately it was again rather disappointing. Whilst it did give us an insight into Adama's motivations, and an explanation of the burden of guilt that he's obviously been carrying for some time, once again it was implausible and clumsily handled.

If the whole point of the Cylon plan was to murder Adama, they could have done that on numerous occasions with a much higher chance of success than this. They couldn't possibly be sure that Bulldog would be close enough and isolated with Adama to get a high probability of killing him. Also, i found it unlikely that given the nature of the original black-ops mission, Adama would have blamed himself to that extent for the attack on the Colonies, let along Bulldog's presumed death. Again, given the risky nature of said mission, the destruction of the Stealth Star would surely not have been seen as a failure to the extent that Adama was "demoted" to command of the Galactica as "honourable retirement"? surely that in itself would have raised questions in the Fleet since he'd previously been in command of a modern Battlestar, the Valkyrie?

it just didn't ring true and seemed very contrived. On the plus side, Col Tigh got the meat of the acting and lines again, and delivered them extremely well - you really can beleive his character is going through seven shades of hell. And the provocation of the Cylons by the stealth mission crossing the Armistice Line on the orders of the hawks in the Colonial Admiralty but without the knowledge of the civilian administration was also completely plausible. Roslin's dominance of Adama although in keeping with the story is becoming a little too marked - he's not that weak and she's not that strong.

The Cylons continue to prove more engaging as characters than most of the Colonials, the whole Balthar/6/3 menage a trois is really very bizarre, and I really want to know what's going on with 3 - is she getting messages from God, is her consciousness gettting confused with 6's, is she in love with Balthar? (looks like the latter is def on the cards! Cylons "share" obviously - yuk!)

So, some interesting thing going on but on the whole a rather disjointed and unsatisfying affair. Carl Lumbly was a very poor choice to play Bulldog, he's as wooden as a doorpost. And I find it hard to credit that, granted he's been a prisoner of the Cylons for 3 years and gone through god knows what, an experienced officer like he's supposed to be wouldn't have smelt a rat at his all-too-easy escape. i take it then that the 3 who was tormenting him was only pretending to have a virus, it was supposed to be make up or something?

taw, i think that the reaon he got demoted was to keep face to the public.

We don't want to think the admirality wants to start a war, do we?

no, it was a black-ops mission so the public would never have known about it. Roslin certainly had no knowledge of it and it wasn't in Adama's military record which she'd been reading earlier. This is why it desn't make sense as a story; a respected and experienced commander like Adama gets re-assigned from a line command for no apparent reason to serve out his remaining time on a ship that's about to become a museum piece? That in itself would have rised a few eyebrows.

Actually, Taw, I wasn't too terrbily disappointed with this episode (though the Viper Mark II's showed up again...). It did give an important glimpse into Adama's past, and even though it wasn't the best episode, it needed to happen to carry the storyline. Adama no longer is the goody-two-shoes we were led to believe, and that makes him more... human, which is part of the director's objectives, IIRC.

What I didn't like is the bits about the Cylon plot line thrown in here with little or no dialogue. While I suppose they needed to be there to keep us from forgetting, it was a bit confusing to jump halfway across the galaxy to see Baltar in a Cylon love-nest and then be back to the real world, without the story progressing very far.


As for the previous episode, Taw, you suggest a Raptor with a single Cylon prisoner would have been a better idea. I beg to differ. First off, a single Raptor would hardly be much of a threat to the Cylons, certainly not enough to warrant bringing in an entire fleet and a ressurection ship. The second problem is that weapons discharge inside a Raptor is not a terribly good idea. I suppose they could have just opened the hatch and tossed the prisoner out while keeping on their space suits, but that doesn't make for much of a speedy getaway, which certainly would have been needed.

The plot with 'biological weapons' seemed a bit too cliche for me. The best part, however, was the fighter engagement during the final battle in which we saw Raptors finally get a piece of the combat action, and do quite well.

Also note- the Starboard flight deck was used in this episode, and not just for quarantine. You'll notice that the ships were instructed to land on the Starboard deck, so it must be at least partially operational.

my problem isn't that it shows Adama to have feet of clay, because that's sound character development, and gives added depth and pathos to his speech at the decommissioning ceremony and discussions with Sharon re: assassinating Admiral Cain. I just don't like the clumsiness with which such a good idea was portrayed; it was rather predictable and contrived, and just didn't seem plausible to me (althought the politics of it rang true enough) Maybe I'm being picky but considering what the writers have shown they're capable of, this seemed more like an idea that seemed great in pre-production brainstorming and then simply wasn't done justice to.

Normally in BSG I'm so engrossed in the plot and action that I don't notice continuity or editing errors, but there were some blinders in this one. On the Valkyrie, Adama was wearing admiral's insignia (and this is set before the attack on the Colonies) Also, if you look at the final scenes, Adama is wearing his grey dress uniform at the ward ceremony, then in his normal blue uniform when he sees Bulldog off on the Raptor, then is back in his dress uniform at the end when Tigh comes into his quarters. Even the Monkey spotted that one.

this Stealth-Star business. Cool looking ship, great idea, but what i want to know is how could the Cylons detect a state-of-the-art stealth ship built by the Colonial fleet at the height of its powers, yet were unable to detect the Blackbird which the chief knocked up in his spare time from leftover bits of junk? And it can't be that it was because the Cylons had prior knowledge of it being there because this was supposed to be taking place before the Cylon infiltration of the Colonies (I think) unless the date of the Cylon infiltration is now going to be pushed back in time? And I'm confident that if the Glactica deckhands could build a carbon-fibre bodied plane thats invisible to DRADIS as an hobby project, then the Colonial Fleet should have managed to do at least the same. Doesn't make sense.

Starbuck took hours just to learn the basic flight controls of a Raider, after ripping it's brain out on the asteroid, and still could only fly it erratically. If you recall, it took weeks of testing before the Colonials really got to grips with the Raider's flight characteristics and technology. Yet Bulldog seems to have just jumped in one and flew it away, FTL and all? Even if we grant this as a wirthwhile plot device, why did no-one including Starbuck who'd know from first-hand knowledge, find this suspicious? (ok she suspected something but no-one cottoned on to that, and it seemed glaringly obvious to me)

while I found the Cylon sub-story actually more interesting, like I said earlier, i agree that it was confusingly handled and didn't really gel with the other story elements. Interestingly however, when 3 was dreaming about being on Galactica, the door she was trapped at said "End of Line" and isn't this something the Hybrid said in the other episode? i do hope that something significant comes of that in a future episode!

Xena's getting meatier stuff to say and do than 6 at the moment, which is good i think; but have you noticed how pronounced her antipodean accent is becoming? when she first appeared in BSG she was speaking Amurrican! (but that could have been for that particular 3, i suppose)

to be fair, it wasn't as disappointing as last weeks, but it could have been a lot better. One other thing before I forget - they could have just cut the Cylon's throats in the Raptor, or strangled them, or given them a lethal injection; it's not as if those sick Cylons were strong enough to fight back, after all, Blathar strangled the dark-haired 6 on the Basestar, didn't he?

Let us not also forget that Raiders are not flown by Centurions like in TOS, they are their own little robots (hence the glowing red on the 'windsheild'). The colonials spent a fair amount of time adapting their Raider to have flight controls, instruments, and life support, all things which wouldn't have been present in Bulldog's ship. However, at least we may see him show up to join Galactica's air wing at some point... always nice to have an extra pilot to warrant use of that starboard pod! Seriously... it's always used in a crisis situation... if they just cut it off then nothing bad would ever happen, they could weld Colonial 1 on to Galactica right there and save gas for all those ferry flights for Adama and Roslyn to get together...

speaking of which, have you seen the spoiler pics of them lying in the grass together smoking an "after" cigarette? <yeesh> as if a Cylon 3-some wasn't enough... vile.

looks like we're going to find out what happened in the intervening year on New Caprica. This should prove a lot more engaging than recent offerings as these were scripted and filmed at the same time as the superior early season story arcs.

Any ideas on what class of Battlestar the Valkyrie might be? Whilst it looked similar to the Mercury-class that Pegasus belonged too, it wasn't as long as the flight pods looked bigger in proportion to the hull, and the bow was more pointed. In fact it looked a lot like TOS Battlestars, and it seemed quite pale in colour And a further question: so far, BSG's mythological/cultural references have been solidly Graeco-Roman with some Celtic influence thrown in, yet with using the term "Valkyrie" we're now in the realm of Nordic-Germanic myth. Was this just laziness on the part of the writers do you think, because it sounds good, or are the Colonials supposed to be the ancestors of all of humanity's myths and religions? if so, what next? Hindus, Egyptians, Mesoptamians, Aztecs, Mayans? (having said that, we don't even know if this story takes place in Earth's past, present, or future)

Edited by - Tawakalna on 11/20/2006 3:58:32 AM

pah, no episode this week because of that silly Thanksgiving nonsense

@Taw,

I'm glad there was no new episode because I was out watching the local hockey teams send each other to the hospital that night... however I'm a bit scared of the content in the upcoming episode where we find out "what really happened between Starbuck and Apollo"...

my theory is that Starbuck once again taunted Apollo about his repressed attraction to her, insulted Dualla once again, and provokes Apollo into giving her a good hiding. But I bet she flings a really stinging personal comment into the fray which essentially destroys their friendship - she is, after all, extremely self-destructive and only Adm. Adama has ever really been able to keep her on the rails.

'course, i'm prob completely wrong, and none of that would explain how she ended up being such big pals with Col Tigh and Ellen.

I think you're right on most accounts there Taw. It'll likely focus on what happened after they got frisky in the pilot rec-room last season...