Brad Ideas - More on pappa, Tyrol - Comments

FTL and relativity

brad — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:32:16 -0800

The problem with FTL is that our current understanding of physics does not expressly prohibit it, but does say that it is the same as time travel, that the concept of causality fails if you have FTL.

So while you can come up with theories to generate FTL, no matter what they are, they mean time travel. (Unless you also declare the existence of a fixed reference frame, and there’s a lot of evidence there is no fixed reference frame, and most of modern physics is based on the assumption there is no such frame.)

Nonetheless, space opera with a chase through the galaxy, which is the premise of BSG, requires FTL to work. So Moore put it in and we accept it. But breaking one rule (for a reason) is no excuse for breaking other rules for no reason.

The other hint that this was

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:23:51 -0800

The other hint that this was pre-planned was the ease of Boomer and Ellen's escape. Even in No Exit, I'd suspected that Boomer was still working for Cavil -- were we supposed to believe that he allowed her to hang out with Ellen for 18 months, and then left a conveniently unguarded Raptor just sitting around on the Basestar the day of the surgery...? No way. The "escape" was much too easy, and now we know why.

Time sink

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:30:00 -0800

Moderator's note:

This tree of messages is deleted. Talk about the show, not about each other (especially if you are anonymous or responding to an anonmymous poster.)

Avoid the word "you" in your messages. If you find yourself talking about the other person, rather than their arguments and the subject matter, just don't post.

We get it. You feel the

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:22:02 -0800

We get it. You feel the show fails so badly that you continue to watch it and go to websites to discuss it. Makes perfect sense. Really, it does. Serious.

Wheel of misery

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:16:35 -0800

Not really. He's admitted it himself (as well as moving on to other projects). If people want to fall into fanboi idealisms and start squealing is that Ron's fault? My fault? Or is there some issue of perfectionism and clinging you have to address?

The more right you are and the more personally challenging things are the more people tend to bury their heads in the sand or lash out. This continues until they're calling each other names and issuing death threats. I can't be bothered with that but there's things on the table for when you want to pick them up.

Doesn't bother me. I've got my own gig to run.

The almighty power of basic

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:57:21 -0800

The almighty power of basic logic.

You say "Moore fucked up.

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:54:44 -0800

You say "Moore fucked up. Fact." Isn't that turning it into a black and white issue?

I don't think Moore screwed

Terry — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:54:37 -0800

I don't think Moore screwed up anything. As for the theme of the show it is obviously about what it means to be human. I didn't think the show was necessarily trying to teach me anything though. I just thought it was an exploration of humanity. Not all art is meant to teach. Sometimes it is just art. Meant to be enjoyed, not teach.

I would say unlike Moore,

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:46:18 -0800

I would say unlike Moore, the stuff Lucas did to "get paid" as you put it were the stuff that people liked. Because anyone familiar with how Lucas got filthy rich knows that the prequels and the recent cartoon, even if they were on par with the greatest selling of each category all-time would be worth less than 1% of his empire. Lucas can continue Star Wars purely because he wants to and never go broke because ILM dwarfs anything he could put into Star Wars and ILM is only 1 piece of his media empire. It is so funny when people try and make a backhanded comment about Star Wars having become a cash grab, it shows how little they truly understand. The truth is the story is never over when you create something as big as that. Did Tolkien stop writing in Middle Earth? How often does R.A. Salvatore return to Drizzt Do'Urden? Ridley Scott and Blade Runner and that is for what 6 frames of film at this point? George Lucas stays in the Star Wars realm at this point because like all authors the world is his baby and it inherently speaks to him and gives him ideas he wants fleshed out. Lucas happens to also be the smartest single person to ever work in the film industry. You name it he has had a hand in perfecting it for use today. Whatever he touches in the technology of film becomes better and that is where he has made his money. Not to mention here is a guy that unlike a certain other "Star" named series allows the fans full access to Star Wars brand so long as they don't try and profit off it (or defame it), allowing for some of the most creative work in fan fiction, fan films and fan websites on the internet. I am fine with people thinking the Old Man has lost his marbles. That is your point of view, but when you call it a cash grab, well, it shows how little you know about it and invalidates your opinion because you obviously don't get it.

Nothing changes

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:40:55 -0800

You're turning things into a black and white issue when that's not the case. Moore fucked up. Fact. Audiences can't pull shows out of their ass. Fact. Life is sometimes about making compromises. This isn't about the show or conversation it's about you trying to force your view and protect your investment in the show.

People can demand perfect or everything go their way but as I commented in my response the world doesn't work that way. By trying to force it you're pulling the same stunt an tard CEO, politician, or religious nutcase pulls. Hey, wake up. What has the whole theme of the show been about? Have you paid attention? Have you learned anything?

Agreed

Eric — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:28:35 -0800

If Caprica was changing the story that would be a retcon. BSG playing itself out isn't a retcon, you just don't like the story, which begs the question why did you continue watching, or are you just mad they didn't use your idea and you resent it publicly, but privately you are fine with it and love the story so you continue watching?

Good comment. Moore, like

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:07:17 -0800

Good comment.

Moore, like Lucas, wants to look like a winner and get paid. A lot of that is down to blind luck and fan input. They've pulled it off well enough to fool most people but it's an old game. That's pretty much why I dismiss a lot of it as ego but there's no point in throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The problem with analysis is people can get anal, and the "run with it" crowd can look like slack jawed idiots. Life seems to be about striking a balance between the two. That's why anyone who is being honest would admit mistakes and fanboism, and treat it as a learning curve.

People who don't get this tend to fuck up or be left behind.

So is Hera a giant retcon as

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:40:05 -0800

So is Hera a giant retcon as a character? Helo was not supposed to live past the mini. Boomer wasn't supposed to be a Cylon, therefore there is no Athena. The idea of a hybrid child was a spur of the moment idea. None of this, which has become the main story, was planned. Nothing. Zero. Moore can claim he had his one story he wanted told, but I think that was lie. Well, not lie, as I learned from Star Wars, he has his own point of view on it. I think his story that has held is the idea that at the end you will not be able to tell the difference between Cylon and Human (the skinjob type) and possibly, there is none. Other than that this was slapped together would good ideas, on the fly, to convey that message. That is the nature of the beast unless you are on HBO and if you were HBO you wouldn't have signed off on a re-imaging of BSG because the original was terrible. Don't kid yourselves here. This was not signed on as a show until the success of the mini. No one expected this to work except the people working on the show. People who were on the net when the show came out will remember that most fans of the original hated this version of the show at first. No, they did the best they could and delivered way more than anyone could have expected. I don't care if this ends with science or fantasy, the ride was amazing and that is all that matters.

I love how when Baltar talks

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:26:56 -0800

I love how when Baltar talks to Head Six people just accept it, but when Kara talks to a Head father, it is impossible for no one to notice. This is like the stupid mirror that Michael Hall posted about, which if you have any sense of perception you can tell it is an optical illusion and there was nothing done to change the image in the mirror.

Approach

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:05:54 -0800

There's some useful points about retcons and how you handle them going in or going out. People need to focus on that instead of getting precious or pulling a cheap troll.

More on pappa, Tyrol

brad — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:04:43 -0800

A few more notes (besides the comment threads on the other topics are getting too long…)

Tyrol

I noted that it remains curious just where he thought he was sending her. Some just think it was a dangerous attempt to find a habitable rock. One other line caught my attention in review, though. “Come with me. I can’t do it alone.” He doesn’t know it, but this means come be Cavil’s prisoner. Based on what we know, Tyrol was the technical wizard on the final five team. He’s as much of a prize for Boomer as Hera is, perhaps. His threat to open up Ellen’s brain was probably fake, but he definitely wants what Tyrol knows. He wants all five of them, I suspect.

What this means is that all of her last words to him, about meaning all that she said, are just as much a lie, even though they read like “I know I am about to betray you but I want you to know I have feelings.” Or perhaps it means that she truly is Cavil’s “Pet 8” and programmed to obey him, regardless of her feelings. She certainly has been under such compulsions before, in so many things she did. In which case she’s not really a traitor either.

Michael Hall notices that one of Boomer’s compulsions, long ago, involved her not seeing water readings when she was sent out to recon for water to replace the tank she had destroyed in the very 2nd episode, Water.

Slick, the piano player

Podcasts confirm what was already strongly shown, this is Starbuck’s father. Whether he is Daniel or not is another question. He is, however, different from the other “head characters” in the show. When Starbuck meets him at the bar, she has a loud conversation with him. Starbuck is at the bar, Slick is on the raised piano stage. Nobody even turns their head at Starbuck conversing loudly with a ghost, the way they did for Baltar. Some later scenes appear to be in private, but of course in the chilling climax, she starts playing the BSG intro for the Final Five Theme Song, and it’s clear she really is in the bar, really at the piano and presumably playing it. (Though she is not playing a bass guitar etc. which Tigh seems to hear, but he also can be in the illusion.) But nobody notices her talking to anybody invisible.

This is different from her Leoben (who seems to me was almost surely the same being) who appeared to her while seemingly unconscious. And different from Roslin’s Elosha, who appeared in a period of zero time between jumps. And they are different from Baltar’s and Six’s head characters, who are conversed with in real time.

More on the star hunt

Another bad realization for the star hunt. Galactica appears to have been stalled for several weeks in this region of space, which has the stars only seen from here in the solar system. They’ve been sending out week-long recon missions in raptors, looking for anything habitable. The Earth at the end of season 3 was such a planet. They could not miss it if they were sitting right on top of it the way the star patterns say.

So the most likely explanation is the star patterns are the work of careless post-production team members. But one last stretch of an explanation exists. That, like Boomer and the water, they are programmed to not see it, or it’s deliberately hidden in some way. Alas, the appearance of the star patterns (but not obvious ones) near the Ionian nebula makes it look bad. There has been no supernova right near Earth, nor will there be one for a very long time to come, if ever.

The jump damage

The jump damage starts to make sense if you consider that the jump field pushes away things near it. An entire raptor, near the jumping Tylium ship, would be pushed away as a unit, and it’s designed for the acceleration. The wall of Galactica, however, faces having a degrading jump field in the middle of it. Some parts are in the push field, some are not, and it is the difference in forces which tears it apart, and why you can’t jump in-ship.

Not being able to jump in-ship, if also true for Cylons, makes it harder for the Olympic Carrier from the first epsisode to have been sending back FTL signals to the Cylon fleet, except via a true FTL radio with no jump drive. Or of course, as it turns out they probably weren’t sending signals — it now seems almost certain that Starbuck and Apollo destroyed a ship full of innocent surviving civilians.