Brad Ideas - On 33, and FTL Radio in Battlestar Galactica - Comments

No comment

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:46:30 -0700

As I said, I'm not asking for anyone to agree. I'm just stating my position. As Brad said earlier, attitude isn't welcome around here and I'm not going to feed it.

I don't like being

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:14:19 -0700

I don't like being bullshitted or lied to to, and Ron can carry the tab for the that.

Proof please. You can't get anyone here to agree what the Mission Statement meant, so what makes you the almighty decider of how it should be interpreted. Other than the Mission Statement everything has pointed to unexplainable acts and possible religious exhibitions. So please, enlighten us with where Ron Moore promised us hard science? Or show me where he even lied to the audience about anything? Misunderstanding what someone's intentions are and building up a fantasy based on your misunderstanding isn't RDM's fault, that is yours for being so closed minded as to think you know what he was thinking. You aren't him.

New Paint, Old Fence

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:36:15 -0700

In other words Ron pulled the new paint on an old fence trick.

I'm just riding the show out to see how it ends and getting more enjoyment from Brad's analysis and the conversation. I stopped downloading and listening to Ron's podcasts and have no interest in hyping Caprica. I might download them just to shove them in my media library for reference if there's a compelling need and might watch Caprica if there's nothing else on but that's as far as it goes. I don't like being bullshitted or lied to to, and Ron can carry the tab for the that. I'm not asking other people to agree, just stating my position.

I don't want him to explain it

brad — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:20:43 -0700

But I think if things are well written, there is a reason underneath, so that things make sense. The universe is like that — we don’t know all the rules, and in fact you can know none of the rules, and it still makes sense. It follows patterns, and it never is impossible. Fiction can, unlike reality, present the logically impossible if the background is not thought through.

But not explaining is great. Sometimes the author can not even know how it works, as long as they know what’s not truly impossible.

I would say that shows us

Terry — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:40:36 -0700

I would say that shows us Ron Moore abandoned any notion of rational scientific explanations very early on and end that part of the debate once and for all, or at least didn't consider science as a big deal in terms of his Mission Statement, as some have argued.

Why 33 minutes?

Darryl K — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:30:21 -0700

January 13, 2005

Why 33 minutes?

The truth is, there's no real answer. It's just a random number that felt right when I came up with the idea that our people were under continuous, relentless attack since the end of the pilot. I wanted it to be a short interval, just long enough for them to grab a bite to eat, jump in the shower and maybe try to catch a catnap before dragging themselves back to their duty stations and begin the whole tedious, terrifying ordeal all over again.

A deeper truth is, I was never interested in coming up with an explanation for Why? Never. I mean, I suppose I could've come up with a sufficiently important-sounding bit of technobabble that would've made sense (you see, the Cylon double-talk sensors tracking the Olympic Carrier's nonsense drive signature needed 15 minutes to relay the made-up data wave through the pretend continuum, then the Cylon navigational hyper silly system needed another 10 minutes to recalculate the flux capacitor, etc.) but what would that have really added to the drama? How does explaining that 33 minute interval help our understanding of Laura's terrible moment of decision, or bring us to any greater knowledge of Dualla's search for her missing family and friends, or yield insight into Baltar's morally shattered psyche?

It doesn't, of course. The answer, however artfully it may (or may not) have been crafted can only subtract from the experience we have in watching the episode. Not knowing the how's or why's of the Cylon attack puts us in the same seat as the characters we're watching. They're in the dark, and we're in the dark. The relentless attack is unfathomable in its origin and unstoppable in its execution. It's mortality coming at you on a loop. If you only had 33 minutes before the next time you could die, what would you do? And what about the time after that? And the time after that? At a certain point, you stop caring about why it's happening, all you know is that it is happening, and it's happening to you.

So the mystery of 33 will be permanent on this show. No explanation, not even the attempt. Let it just be a number that seemed like an eternity for five long days on the Battlestar Galactica.

http://blogs.scifi.com/battlestar/archives/2005/01/#a000012

Seriously. Listen to the Moore. That was the first episode of the series after the mini. Sometimes it is just a blinking box, folks.

No, not tracking

brad — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:00:54 -0700

That ship was moving with the Cylon fleet, not the colonial fleet! At least as shown in the show. The theory is that something might have been secretly tracking the colonial fleet, but it would have to do so quickly. After 1 jump it would take 10-30 years for a resurrection signal to reach that resurrection ship otherwise.

FTL and Downloading

Master Prudent — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:48:00 -0800

In regards to downloading and resurrection there was indeed a ship tracking the Galactica at all times as revealed in Resurrection Ship pt 1. Once it was destroyed in pt 2 the cylons ceased constant attacks.

Knowing

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:51:00 -0800

I've found that knowing something can be done is 99% of the battle. I'll admit, replicating something can be hard but knowing something can be done changes the game. I don't know what it is about people but I've seen it in science, like planet discovery, and more everyday things, like the mobile phone. Everyone says X is wrong or Y is impossible until they're shown different then, suddenly, everyone's at it. Knowing something can be done seems to unjam something in our heads. (Section about other posters removed.)

The resurrection hub

brad — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:45:56 -0800

Since Cavil, Doral, Simon and Boomer together don’t know how to rebuild it, it seems pretty clear it was built by the final 5 (or robots under their direction) and they did not disclose some of the secrets. Ellen claims that only all of them together can do it.

It may be worse. They may have brought ancient Kobolian equipment with them that even they don’t fully understand, but just got working again.

Wasn't the fail safe device

Terry — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:40:38 -0800

Wasn't the fail safe device procreation with humans? Am I crazy, or wasn't that the goal for the Final Five, to give them the ability to love an and learn not to rebel against the humans, but love them.

There are many copies

Lisa — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:37:59 -0800

Which brings up the idea that evidently the Cylons had no redundancy plans and built a single resurrection hub. I'm wondering now if that was the Five's doing.

Cylon download

brad — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:33:09 -0800

Actually, BSG’s science advisor said that his view was that Cylon download needed to be incremental. I agree. First of all, it’s a huge amount of data to have to send, and you’re not going to send it while a body is being vapourized by a nuke like Tyrol was.

Second it’s the smart thing to do. If you are killed far away, your mind could reboot from an earlier version, though it is never exactly clear if that happens.

I assume they are talking

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:21:21 -0800

I assume they are talking about the fact that David Simon left the Sun because they stopped covering the news properly by gutting the newspaper of all their reporters, for the sake of profits and the bottom line. The Wire is based mostly on real life events, many actors like Snoop and The Deacon were real life serious drug runners. The Deacon is the basis for the Barksdale family. He was a massive drug kingpin who was busted by Simon's writing partner Ed Burns. The funniest thing is that in season 5 the newspaper industry, who attacked Simon about his views of the dying industry, didn't notice that his real critique was that the paper missed every single major story, not that they were prize hungry morons. The mayor, who was elected on the back of the previous mayor juking the stats, juked the stats. The money that was supposed to go to the police, went to the schools. I could go on but you get the picture. I am not sure what makes the newspaper industry look dumber, the plot of the show, or a bunch of news people not noticing all the major stories the news media in the show missed.

Know your limits

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 06:32:19 -0800

This is an EPIC FAIL for BSG. The producers admittted they painted themselves into a corner. The whole scheme looked a bit unlikely and the Scooby Gang act was cringing. I suppose, that's one of the differences between an amateur and professional actor. They can deliver complete bunk with a straight face.

Cavil's famous scene where he laments about inhabiting such a restricted body and later uncertain character delivery of Ellen makes me think the actors were thrown by the scripts they were being handed. A wooden performance by "Zarek" in earlier episodes was hailed as a marvel of acting. Disco Lee needs no comment.

Ron didn't have a plan at the start but the first two series were great. As he developed a plan we saw the Apollo-Starbuck theme dominate everything. Then we have the seriously planned final series become the most unevenly paced and badly acted series ever. We're talking 1970's bad. I'm glad it was on but we have to learn from this.

Know your limits.

On 33, and FTL Radio in Battlestar Galactica

brad — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:43:22 -0800

Well, readers could not help themselves from talking about 33, the first episode, due to a mention I made in yesterday’s topic. So it is time to write out some analysis of both that episode, and the general question of whether circumstances in the show demand that somebody has an FTL radio (over and above the FTL jump ships.)

The colonies certainly don’t have an FTL radio. And I suspect the writers do not intend the Cylons to have one either. The hidden string-puller (one true god) may be intended to have one.

Of course, all parties have jump ships. With a jump ship you can send a message FTL by putting it in a ship and jumping. While the colonies can’t jump anything smaller than a raptor, the Cylons probably have a small robotic probe which can jump with messages.

Using FTL jump ships for messages works fine, though it is expensive, and you can only send a message to somebody if you know exactly where they are right now. To make that work you need a constant stream of ships relaying data, so you can know where they are and where they go if you want to send them a message. Expensive, but it can be done. However, you can never get a message to a lost ship, unless it is sending message drones back to you to pick up the messages. A recent revelation, that the jump field is dangerous to use inside a ship, suggests that such message drones would need to be fired out of a ship, and then would jump. It is possible, in theory, that Cylon technology is sufficiently better than they could send a jump drone from inside a ship.