Brad Ideas - Do Cylons have an FTL radio? - Comments

Numbering is a retcon

brad — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:54:36 -0700

RDM didn’t plan at the start to have a special group of 5, I think he wrote that 3rd season.

But he had already declared 12 models and given out numbers 3, 6 and 8, so there was no way to make it be two groups of contiguous numbers.

But then.. if the final 5

Tom — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:02:29 -0700

But then.. if the final 5 had something to do with the programming of the 7, then why would the 7's start count from 1. Meaning, wouldn't the final 5 be models 1 through 5, instead of 8 through 12?

One certainly hopes not

brad — Mon, 07 May 2007 12:46:46 -0700

Time travel has become the bane of television SF, ruining perfectly good shows left and right. It's OK to do a show that's about time travel (Doctor Who, Time Tunnel etc.) but usually when a "regular" show throws in some time travel it ruins all consistency. Babylon 5 did OK, I guess, but even there it takes away from it. Heroes is also starting to wallow.

And based on what he has said, Ron Moore thinks the same way, and does not plan to use time travel in BSG. Though he does strongly feature a "cycle" theme we have yet to see why.

Past or Future cylons?

bweather — Mon, 07 May 2007 11:25:47 -0700

Ok, maybe this is a stretch, but if you have the ability to make FTL jumps, then you basically have the framework for time jumps as well. Could the final 5 be the decendents of Hera, and Nicholas Tyrol, and any other future Human/Cylon spawn? Perhaps there is the possibility of a harmonious future in which the new combined race lives, and the final 5 are sent back in time to lead both humans and Cylons to that end. Just an idea. Care to comment?

The plan does keep changing

brad — Wed, 02 May 2007 18:52:12 -0700

But a few things are worth noting:

a) The attack on the colonies was not expected to be nearly that easy. Six was named a Hero of the Cylon because they judged her efforts as the lynchpin in making it work. Without her, it would have been a longer, protracted war.

b) For the S7 Cylons, they were in many places, such as the Gina that ended up on Pegasus. I bet 6 other battlestars had a Cylon on board in the military, and probably many civilian ships had them as well (where the duplication woudl not be so obvious.) However, you can bet there was not another Tigh in the military (at least not near his age) as he would be famous enough as a Colonel to not be somebody you duplicate. Anders was also famous. But you could duplicate them at different apparent ages.

c) We don't know who planted the transponder. Could have been Tigh (unconsciously.)

e) Destroying the Galactica at New Caprica doesn't destroy the human race, just its main pesky military threat. Throughout all the attacks on the fleet, they have aimed almost entirely at the military ships, even though civilian ships would be easy for them to nuke -- especially if killing all humans is their goal.

Continuing On . . .

Boris — Wed, 02 May 2007 16:56:39 -0700

A couple of points (mostly read on this blog) stick in my mind, though not in any really coherent fashion unfortunately . .

The final 5 Cylon trigger at the nebular is also a signpost to Earth - some might say the final signpost. Thus, they have to be related. That is too strong a sign to be a random insertion by the writers (I'm operating on the assumption, mostly from what I've seen and some things RDM said in his interviews, that the mythology isn't completely planned, and thus not everything is going to make sense, but that they tend to have a general direction they are aiming for . . . )

The Cylons did seem to know that some humans would escape the attacks on the Colonies . . stationing a man in the ammo depot, for example, and putting Cylons on the Galactica.

Also, Galactica did seem prepared in some ways for the attack - it had a Cylon transponder installed in it, plus 4 of the final 5 Cylons seemed to have positioned themselves to be in Galactica.

But, the other Cylons really did seem to be trying to wipe these humans out of existence. If they weren't, then they have been faking it all along, and that would have required an extremely high degree of knowledge about what was to happen - eg, that Galactica wouldn't explode when being pounded by 4 basestars at New Caprica, etc.

So, it does look like two opposing forces, with limited knowledge of what would happen, trying to control events.

Roslin, Starbuck, and Baltar . . . who knows where they fit in.

Anyway, the more I read, the more I see some of these ideas have been thought of already, just kind of clarifying them for myself.

Cheers!

Not quite

brad — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:38:18 -0700

I am not sure the F5 are from Earth, but it is a likely place given they are associated with the Temple of Five, which was built by Earthlings.

There is no reason to conclude there was human-Cylon friendship in any given cycle, but it is true that the Final Five were not involved in the genocide of the colonies, and further that they appear to have been involved in Galactica and the fleet escaping it. Furthermore Tigh fought in the first cylon war.

The mystery of why the 7 Cylons know there are 5 others, though they have not seen them and are forbidden from curiousity or discussion about them remains unresolved. But it makes it likely the final 5, or somebody associated with them, had something to do with the programming of the 7.

Ship designs

brad — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:34:51 -0700

We don’t know where the Cylon fleet at Ionia is from. It does use the same ship designs as the S7 Cylons do. I said that Starbuck has come from Earth and it’s likely her patrons, who took her there, are from Earth or friendly with the folks there, if there are folks there. It’s true that Starbuck says that “it’s gonna be OK” which implies she is not worried about the Cylon fleet, and may even be friends with it, but we don’t know the latter.

Now as for design: The Galactica museum showed the Cylons as having body forms and base ships from the original 1978 series. The old ones looked like a sort of yo-yo. My personal suspicion is that the old cycle of Cylons, notably the Final Five, gave the new ones their humanoid bodies, so they may well have given them ship designs and superior jump tech and other technology as well, but that’s just speculation.

What we do know is:

Starbuck thinks there is nothing to worry about.
That fleet didn’t track them by following the radiation signature on the mining ship — that ship is going off elsewhere.
The fleet following them was hostile and shot a missle at the raptor.
We don’t know for sure how the other fleet was following. The radiation signature was simply Six’s offer of a possible technique. (Six wants to save her own skin and the child but would not otherwise give over Cylon secrets.)
This nebula was planned as a destination thousands of years ago.
Proximity to this nebula (but not any non-FTL signal) appears to be the trigger for the 4 Cylons to hear the music and know their nature.
The fleet was worried it was being followed for most of the trip and knew it was being followed for the last several jumps so it was probably not on any predictable course.

can't be fleet from earth

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:49:04 -0700

So the cylons from earth are from a different "cycle" than the current cylons, created at totally different periods of history, and yet they have the exact same ship designs???? The exact same signatures on Draydus? (sp?) History repeats okay, but the exact same ship design is ridiculous i'm not buying it

okay but

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:46:38 -0700

... this would probably mean that the final 5, if they've lasted this long, are probably 1) from earth and 2) are the product of a human-Cylon friendship concluded at the end of the previous cycle.* This would mean they will help the humans not hurt them. It also explains the whole Starbuck going to earth plotline (I don't think she's in Lee's head, and if she is, bummer; instead she must have been scooped out of her ship before it crashed by the same cylon transport that Lee saw). It also supports your notion of the last hidden Cylon being somebody like Adama, who will bring humans and Cylons together in the current cycle (interestingly, earth was his idea). Probably not Roslyn though--like Moses she appears to be fated to never see the promised land.

*but if true how could the current cylons know about these older cylons, if from different cycles, have never met face to face?

But the following Cylons

Boris — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:27:13 -0700

But the following Cylons aren't stupid either - they would have seen the general direction of the fleet, and when they repaired the fuel ship and suddenly jumped in a totally different direction to the huge nebular hanging in space, I think they would have seen what was happening and sent some baseships to the nebular anyway . .

All this has happened before

brad — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:47:35 -0700

You got it. The Cylons were created by man, but long, long ago. Our characters in this show only know of the most recent creation.

But wait!

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 23:56:18 -0700

so if the original cylons from 40 years back were the big metal guys, and the new cylons, and no human had ever seen them before, had taken human form, how can the final 5, if they're that old, even claim to be cylons? unless they're cylons from the "previous cycle"--you know, "all this has happened before, will happen again?"

That's a popular theory

brad — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:21:55 -0700

We know almost nothing about that Cylon fleet, or where Starbuck came from (other than Earth.) The only thing we know is that they didn't track the rag-tag fleet there by following the radiation signature of the now-decoy refinery ship.

Clearly some powerful forces have been planning something about that nebula for some time. Aside from leaving a 4,000 year old clue to point to it, the final 4 were set to trigger there. They were not triggered by something at the nebula itself, but by "proximity" to it of some sort. They started hearing the music hundreds of light years away from the nebula, which implies that they either had a hidden command to trigger when they became aware they were approaching the nebula, or there is some sort of non-FTL field that surrounds the nebula for a thousand light-years, or the being that sent the trigger is traveling with the fleet. Or they received an FTL trigger from somewhere distant.

Different fleet?

Boris — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:15:07 -0700

'However, it is not yet established if the fleet that appears there is the same fleet that was following.' - so . . . given the coincidence of Star Buck appearing with that Cylon fleet at the end of the last episode - these Cylons could be from Earth, and have turned on a beacon to activate the final five?

Do Cylons have an FTL radio?

brad — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:33:10 -0700

FTL is one of the exceptions to the laws of physics that RDM has allowed in the show. However, for colonials we only see the FTL jump. When they want to send messages via FTL, they have to send them in a ship that jumps. The Cylons have a better jump technology, but can they also send signals via FTL without using a ship? Examination either they can do this, or they have always had ships just outside of range of the fleet, just about everywhere it has gone.