Battlestar Galactica -- Season 4

[Sammy033]

Pretty good episode to set up things to come. As for Hera playing with the models... was that someones vision?

 

[Foxbat]

Pretty good episode to set up things to come. As for Hera playing with the models... was that someones vision?

Hard to say. The flash with the Opera House could have been Hera, Athena, Caprica, or Laura. But it definitely looked like Hera was foreshadowing Galactica's end...

Closed Captioning revealed some interesting things.

Spoiler

"Watchtower" comes up again as the one Eight dies: "There's too much confusion".

Ander's console logs as the Hybrid:
The neuroanatomy of Fear and Faith
share common afferent pathways

Free will scuttles in the Swamp of Fear

There's a hole in the bucket,
Dear Liza, dear Liza


Also, the Cylon Colony is frakin' huge! Who needs a home world when you can grow a city-ship and move it around as need be. As Boomer lands inside (almost Geiger-est, but more woven than skeletal) did you notice the old-style Cylon raiders parked around the pad? The scale seems off, though. Boomer's Viper looks dinky compared to the other ships.

I guess you'd have to say that Hera and Auntie Boomer made a connection. Maybe there are some things that Cavil can't control...

 

[Jimmy 440]

Spoiler

Did I miss something,what happened to Chief Tyrol ? Did he die in the hull explosion in the 1st scenes ?

 

[Jimmy 440]

Spoiler

Was that the President & the Admiral smoking a bone in sick bay ? Adama closing the curtain & and taking a hit himself !!! Now that was priceless !!! I know,it was for medicinal purposes !!!

 

[nsaspook]

Spoiler

Was that the President & the Admiral smoking a bone in sick bay ? Adama closing the curtain & and taking a hit himself !!! Now that was priceless !!! I know,it was for medicinal purposes !!!

That was funny. The old man's a "juicer and a doper".

 

[Sammy033]

Spoiler

Was that the President & the Admiral smoking a bone in sick bay ? Adama closing the curtain & and taking a hit himself !!! Now that was priceless !!! I know,it was for medicinal purposes !!!

I thought 'nah cant be its a little too big'. But you never know. Who knows what else they grow on that agro ship.

 

[dfergie]

I think it was a cigar... I think anyone that hasn't seen this show will avoid this thread now... it is like I thought some other sites pretty much hated this episode...

 

[long_time_DNC]

Hated this episode? Um, why? I see nothing to hate about it. I really liked it.

Did the Chief die in the hull rupture? I thought it odd that we never saw him except very early (and very briefly) in the episode. Then, nothing after that...or is he still hiding out trying to come to grips with Boomer's betrayal?

Boomer and Hera definitely bonded. Question is, what will Boomer do next about the situation?

 

[dfergie]

I visited threads at tivo, gateworld, HT & Avs and most posters were disappointed... I think Boomer will play a big part with Hera in bringing down Cavil... I think Gaelen is in hiding...

 

[Sammy033]

I suppose they were expecting some kind of answer to whatever major revelation or at least one to their liking. Maybe they are waiting for Anders to wake up and say 'Boo!' to everyone. So long as the major ones relating directly to this story are answered the others can stay a mystery.

There were plenty of new little things to cause questions. For example: exactly what kind of new playmates is Cavil going to get for Hera? I think that was the word he used. Is his plan to have all kind of little Hera copies running around? Since he seems to hate everything biology related it cant more kids via reproduction. Maybe he has a new class of little centurions in the works. I suppose we can also maybe rule out Kara being a cylon after Baltar examined the blood from her dead self didnt find her to be one. So ok we dont know what she is but now we know what she isnt.

 

[long_time_DNC]

It's really odd that Anders is now very hybrid-like...unplug him and he's off...plug him in and he's a hybrid...where's the Anders that used to be in there? I think he's still in there somewhere...

Baltar never indicated whether the blood was human or cylon, just that it was Kara's necrotic blood (taken from a corpse). So, I don't think we can rule out cylon just yet. I'm leaning towards not cylon, but if not cylon, then what/how/who is she?

Lots and lots of interesting things to come, I'm sure!

 

[theoak]

I suppose they were expecting some kind of answer to whatever major revelation or at least one to their liking. Maybe they are waiting for Anders to wake up and say 'Boo!' to everyone. So long as the major ones relating directly to this story are answered the others can stay a mystery.

There were plenty of new little things to cause questions. For example: exactly what kind of new playmates is Cavil going to get for Hera? I think that was the word he used. Is his plan to have all kind of little Hera copies running around? Since he seems to hate everything biology related it cant more kids via reproduction. Maybe he has a new class of little centurions in the works. I suppose we can also maybe rule out Kara being a cylon after Baltar examined the blood from her dead self didnt find her to be one. So ok we dont know what she is but now we know what she isnt.

And so this is where my next theory comes in.

Cavil did not like "Daniel" ... why? Daniel could procreate.

Why is this bad?

1. Because the 5 can't.
2. Cavil probably couldn't.
3. Cavil does not want a "human" body anyway.

So the fact that one of the skin jobs could procreate probably:

1. Made Cavil extremely jealous.
2. Spoiled Cavil's plans of wanting a "perfect" body. If the 5 found out that they could procreate, they might abandon plans of resurrection.

What is the big deal about Daniel procreating? His daughter was Kara.

Cavil however, like he did with the 5, wanted Kara to suffer, so he let her live out her life. In the process though he (or someone else ... don't know who) entered some "code" across the whole cylon network that Kara was the "harbinger" of death.

Why then is she? Literally because she destroyed the resurrection hub. Figuratively because she means the end of resurrection and back to procreation and hence death.

I believe Kara is the first Hera.

Spoiler

So her blood DNA matches exactly to the body found on Earth. I have not quite fit that into my theory yet ...

Did she get resurrected?

Is there someone else "afoot" ...

We have not learnt yet why Baltar is in the visions ... my theory is the rest have "cylon" blood (Pres got hers with a blood transfusion a season or two back).

Adama mentioned he is going to give the Galactica a proper send off. I have a feeling he is going to send the "rag tag fleet" off one way, and is going to send the Galactica in the middle of Cavil's fleet with all guns blazing ...

 

[dfergie]

Starbuck also found and helped destroy the Resurrection ship shortly after Pegasus showed up...

 

[Foxbat]

I think Gaelen is in hiding...

I would be if I'd been instrumental in letting someone kidnap someone else's child. But it still raises the question of where he is. Also, why wasn't Athena still on the warpath trying to figure out how Boomer broke out of the brig and another Eight was in her place? It's not like the Chief was careful about his first couple of visits to see Boomer.

Regarding the other sites and some people's disappointment about the last three episodes, I'm going to quote my friend who summed up his feelings pretty well:

No doubt I'm in the minority here, but I think that if Deadlock was bad, STWOM was much, much worse. This was self-indulgent, narcissistic soap opera twaddle, with the writers at their most self-absorbed worst. These last episodes have left me frustrated. This is what comes of farming out each episode to a different group of writers -- it doesn't seem that anyone is in real artistic control of the story arc anymore, and each group of writers gets to indulge its whims at the expense of clarity and intelligent, linear continuity.

Gosh, we're supposed to put together all these arcane, opaque little clues scattered throughout the episodes, and somehow make sense of it all? "It's the journey, not the destination" claims one of STWOM's writers in the Tribune blog. Horsefeathers! BSG fans have invested over four years in this "journey," carefully trying to track and remember all these clues and story threads because the show's creators have implicitly promised to take us to a particular, and particularly attractive, destination -- a denouement that answers all of the questions and ties together all the myriad story lines into a comprehensible, internally consistent, and ultimately satisfying conclusion.

While the "journey" so far has certainly been enjoyable, it is the anticipation of the destination that has given the journey its meaning and has compelled us to stay with it. Putting aside the fact that we haven't been getting much "sci-fi" lately in a show that aspired to be the all time sci-fi adventure, and that plot and action have taken a back seat to self-involved "internal character development" that adds little to the show, the fans still deserve better than what has often come to resemble Days of Our Lives or General Hospital lately.

My real fear is that when all is said and done, the final episodes won't answer all of the so far unanswered questions, that many compelling story threads won't be tied up satisfactorily, and especially that many of the clues planted by a host of different writers will lead either to huge inconsistencies -- or worse, simply nothing at all.

Here's one example of what I see coming:

The Final Five (FF), of whom Tigh is one, supposedly existed thousands of years ago on Earth. They died in the first human-cylon conflict, resurrected, and flew (sub-light) to the colonies, apparently to prevent history from repeating itself. Too late. But they showed the machine cylons how to make "skin jobs" in return for stopping the conflict. The FF made the 8 skin job prototypes, of whom Cavil was one. He subsequently killed the FF, boxed them, but ultimately resurrected them and programmed them with false human memories, presumably as a punishment, to teach them first hand that making cylons with human limitations and defects is a bad idea.

But we see that Tigh looked to be about 62 years old back on Earth thousands of years ago, the same age he looks now and presumably must have been after his various resurrections. Yet Adama has remarked several times throughout the show that he has known Ty for over 40 years, putting both men in their early 20's when they first met.​

It is this type of internal inconsistency that just kills the show for me -- and you know it came about because when the original characters of the FF were initially conceived and written into the show, absolutely no one connected with the show had any idea a) that they would eventually turn out to be cylons, or b) where in hell the show's story arc was actually going.

Now, if you will just give me a hand off this soapbox...

I know what he's getting at. We both hold Babylon 5 as the height of Science Fiction on television and a lot of that has to due with the Vision that J. Michael Straczynski had for the show. Over the 5-year store arc, he wrote most of the episodes (two whole seasons, in fact!) and set the bar pretty damn high!

BSG owes a lot to B5, actually. NewTek, creators of the LightWave 3D software that made B5 possible, gained a lot of awareness in the Business of what CGI could do. BSG is all LightWave 3D. When you compare the two shows, it's amazing how far the software has come.

 

[mike123abc]

It was a frustrating episode for me too. Not that it was bad, but that it did not answer any questions. 2 episodes/3 hours left to answer everything and tie it all up... What is going to happen, the last 5 minutes someone walks in confesses to everything gives all the answers and the show ends?

 

[dfergie]

This may be a clue...

 

[MikeD-C05]

Could KARA be a clone of the original Kara that crashed on earth? SHe took 4 months to get back to the ship , maybe CAVIL decided to clone her and grow her up really quick to send her back to cause more trouble. Maybe CAVIL plans on doing a quick clone job on HERA , so they can have lots of little "playmates" as he said in last nights episodes.

 

[long_time_DNC]

The only issue I have with Kara being a "fast-grown" clone is: how does she have all of Kara's memories then? She knows all the same things that the Kara that Lee (and we) saw go *boom* had...how is that possible with a clone?

What would be the point in Cavil wanting to clone Hera? He dispises flesh & blood. I just think he wants to find out how a human/cylon hybrid works. Cavil is a twisted, out-of-whack, narcissistic machine with one heck of a vengeance complex...

Don hit my point with that screen cap...Galactica will go out in a blaze of glory...my prediction anyway...

 

[Sammy033]

Maybe the Kara on Earth is the clone. Maybe it wasnt even a living clone. Considering how badly decomposed the body was, who knows?

So, clone her then put it in the original viper. Send it off to Earth via a base ship. Hold on to Kara, do whatever you are going to do over the next couple of months, and send her back in the new viper. Now... why bother with such a thing is beyond me. Also, it would presuppose that Cavil knew where Earth was to begin with and know where to send the viper.

 

[MikeD-C05]

I have a feeling that even when this show is all wrapped up , we will still have questions that are not answered. It seems to me that each show is written differently with different writers, making continuity a problem.