Battlestar Galactica - RAZOR Airs Tonight...

[Zim]

No, they knew that would happen. So, a marine strike team was sent to each ship at the same time.

Excellent, I obviously missed that! It makes much more sense knowing that.

I imagine they could have still made a jump for it. Secure the bridge and engine rooms, then jump and take the boarding crews with them.

Then the marines would have simply overpowered the crew and jumped back.

[Typhonis 1]

I'd sure like to know why the Cylons downgraded into the whole organic bullshit.

Money. It may be just simpler to use actors in the show than the CGI Cylons. also given they were going for a new look may have thought the use of the old centurions was not woth the effort of making centurion costumes.

[His Divine Shadow]

True but I liked the whole man vs. machine concept. I wouldn't have minded if the Cylons made those models purely as infiltrators either and most cylons where machines and happy with it, but I get the feeling sometimes of BSG trying imitate B5's cocksucking of the organic tech concept.

[Anguirus]

^ The difference is that the part-organic Cylons don't really seem to be drastically more effective than the fully mechanical ones. Whereas in B5 their Raiders would be self-healing or something.

The humanform Cylons strike me as a race that tried to become like their old masters and lost their way, under the misapprehension that to be human-like is somehow more natural or more spiritual. In Razor the old Cylons worship a Hybrid as a god. The seven Cylons we are most familiar with seem quite enamored of the sensations and capabilities of their human forms, only wanting to exterminate humans because they feel they have succeeded them. The more they tried to be human in form, the more human they started behaving, so that they are increasingly affected by internal strife and steered in different directions by the actions of individual Cylons like Caprica, Boomer, Athena, and D'Anna. It's pretty weird, but IMO quite interesting to watch.

[His Divine Shadow]

Okay I admit I didn't see Razor with all that much attention to detail, just where is the hybrid supposed to be the cylon god? From what I understood he and his ilk where according to the latter cylons a evolutionary dead end from what I remember.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

just where is the hybrid supposed to be the cylon god?

He isn't. IIRC, Sharon just said that the Cylons guarding the first hybrid practically regard and worship it like a god.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I saw it back on the 12th with Maya, and I considered the episode excellent. I don't think that, frankly, Cain's descent into madness was anymore precipitous than, say, Darth Vader's.

Also, I can't help but wonder if Cain had some kind of suspicious of treachery when she attacked that relay station. Her behaviour makes little sense otherwise, and she knew that the fleet had been lost because of the backdoor into the computers. Someone had to put it there. If she thought that there were Cylon agents or Cylon viruses still on her ship, she may have felt the only way to flush them was in beam-baiting.

I can't help but speculate that Cain was always a paranoiac, probably with a real mental condition, which she hid from the military (to carry that line further it's likely she was taking medication without a prescription on her own, which obviously ran out). She does not exhibit, in any case, the behaviour of a normal person, and I cannot see a normal person descending that rapidly into madness. She basically had to have a prior mental condition. In that situation the execution of her XO, her willingness to risk her ship like she did, all fit the pattern. Each thing that goes wrong was just proving her right.

The only genuinely shocking event was with Gina, probably because Gina was the only person Cain actually trusted at the time. The revenge that she sought on Gina shows that she had spent quite some time thinking about brutal ways to punish those who betrayed her--another sign of someone with a mental disorder inducing chronic paranoia.

Also, it seems that none of you noticed the fact that Kendra Shaw and Cain were almost certainly lovers. Kendra's reaction to Cain's death--right down to intentionally getting herself busted down, and drug us--is very extremely weird otherwise, seeing as Kendra was the newest member of the crew and one would think least attached. They were extremely close from the moment that Kendra reported Gina's betrayal, and Cain goes from treating Kendra like crap into making her essentially her Striking Arm on the ship, her private executioner, to the exclusion of Fisk the lackey. Kendra's abrupt promotion to Captain with very little experience also reflects a certain.. Favouritism, shall we say?

Gifting Kendra with the Razor was another sign of personal favour, and it's interesting how Starbuck got it next with the way her and Cain had been eyeing each other all through those episodes and how Starbuck's funeral speech made her sound frankly infatuated. Anyway, the best evidence for it is that Kendra and Gina died in exactly the same way, suicide-nuking a ship. That is, I'm pretty sure, symbolic of how Cain ultimately destroyed the heart and mind of anyone that she loved, and is to intentional to be a coincidence. Kendra was Gina's replacement in Cain's heart.

[Anguirus]

Also, it seems that none of you noticed the fact that Kendra Shaw and Cain were almost certainly lovers.

Well, now I just feel STUPID.

[Gil Hamilton]

I don't know about that. With Darth Vader you had a series of compromises and Palpatine leading him down the path over the course of several of his more formative years, not to mention the weird Greek Tragedy thing where in attempting to cheat fate he only ended up assuring it in the third movie.

Cain was not like that. She went from having a dinner party where she literally made a point of saving that they cannot compromise their humanity to airing out her XOs skull for doing his job and protesting a barking mad order, who up that point was not only a colleague but clearly a friend (after all, they established that Cain visits his family often enough).

I know they only had 2 hours of real estate to work with but they needed to give Cain some time to arrive at batshit crazy thematically. As you say, her snapping could only have come from prior mental illness, but the movie and the episodes that she was in certainly tried to give the impression that she became a monster rather simply going off the deep end. I could see the attempts at making a gray area in there, but they failed. I blame the writing and the lack of development time on it.

And to be fair, I did get that Shaw and Cain were lovers, but it didn't strike me as particularly important as Shaw and Cain were codependant on each other emotionally even if they didn't sack up together.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I don't know about that. With Darth Vader you had a series of compromises and Palpatine leading him down the path over the course of several of his more formative years, not to mention the weird Greek Tragedy thing where in attempting to cheat fate he only ended up assuring it in the third movie.

Cain was not like that. She went from having a dinner party where she literally made a point of saving that they cannot compromise their humanity to airing out her XOs skull for doing his job and protesting a barking mad order, who up that point was not only a colleague but clearly a friend (after all, they established that Cain visits his family often enough).

I know they only had 2 hours of real estate to work with but they needed to give Cain some time to arrive at batshit crazy thematically. As you say, her snapping could only have come from prior mental illness, but the movie and the episodes that she was in certainly tried to give the impression that she became a monster rather simply going off the deep end. I could see the attempts at making a gray area in there, but they failed. I blame the writing and the lack of development time on it.

Cain was simply a lunatic, but in that her behaviour is indeed somewhat forgiveable; we never hold mentally ill people entirely responsible for their actions, after all. She did, however, get what she deserved from Gina, in spades. And Kendra died in pretty much the only way that would ever make up for what she did, too.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Also, it seems that none of you noticed the fact that Kendra Shaw and Cain were almost certainly lovers.

:shock:

Well, now I just feel STUPID.

I'm a girl. We notice these things.

[Gil Hamilton]

Cain was simply a lunatic, but in that her behaviour is indeed somewhat forgiveable; we never hold mentally ill people entirely responsible for their actions, after all. She did, however, get what she deserved from Gina, in spades. And Kendra died in pretty much the only way that would ever make up for what she did, too.

Cain, if we are taking her as completely gone and rabid, possibly. I don't think Shaw went out in a way that makes up for what she did, because unlike Cain, she, along with Thorne and his goons, clearly weren't crazy. Fisk might have been serving out of cowardice, but Shaw believed in Cain as an idea. Nuking the Cylon ship and sacrificing herself in the process doesn't make up for how many innocent people she killed in Cain's name.

She didn't even save anyone. The hostages were already rescued and chances are Adama would have probably made a point of destroy the Guardian's ship anyway, albeit with a slightly bloodier nose. Her sacrifice didn't amount to much when the Pegasus was bound to have smashed the Cylons anyway.

[Master of Ossus]

Cain, if we are taking her as completely gone and rabid, possibly. I don't think Shaw went out in a way that makes up for what she did, because unlike Cain, she, along with Thorne and his goons, clearly weren't crazy. Fisk might have been serving out of cowardice, but Shaw believed in Cain as an idea. Nuking the Cylon ship and sacrificing herself in the process doesn't make up for how many innocent people she killed in Cain's name.

She didn't even save anyone. The hostages were already rescued and chances are Adama would have probably made a point of destroy the Guardian's ship anyway, albeit with a slightly bloodier nose. Her sacrifice didn't amount to much when the Pegasus was bound to have smashed the Cylons anyway.

I don't read her suicide-bombing mission as redemption at all, but as the ultimate expression of loyalty to Cain's ideals: kill yourself just to screw with the enemy.

And I still think you two are discounting how close Adama came to becoming a Cainanite at Ragnar Anchorage. He was prepared to do the EXACT SAME THING, only while consigning a lot more civilians to their deaths and albeit not killing any of them directly but just leaving them to the Cylons. I think it clear that the writers view Cain as a natural, though unjustifiable, response to the destruction of the Twelve Colonies. Nagala seems to have made a similar choice, albeit off-screen and albeit when it's possible he still had hopes of turning the thing around.

Shaw, like Cain, had bought into the ideal of vengeance. Starbuck did so, too, but "snapped out of it" in Scar when she had the option of killing herself while taking out Scar--a decision that would've been just as much a suicide as Shaw's but with even less gain since it was clear that Kat could've killed Scar either way.

It's also clear to me that Cain saw in Starbuck the same sort of "Razor" material that she saw in Shaw, especially with her little instructional promo not to flinch, and her immediate acceptance of Starbuck as the CAG, which is identical to how she instantly adopted Shaw as her right-hand.

I think it clear that the writers believe Cain's ideals to be extremely pervasive, even if they result in behaviors which when fully developed are totally off-base. I don't think she can be dismissed as a singular lunatic, but rather as an extreme manifestation of the same temptations that have seduced a number of characters.

[Skylon]

And I still think you two are discounting how close Adama came to becoming a Cainanite at Ragnar Anchorage. He was prepared to do the EXACT SAME THING, only while consigning a lot more civilians to their deaths and albeit not killing any of them directly but just leaving them to the Cylons. I think it clear that the writers view Cain as a natural, though unjustifiable, response to the destruction of the Twelve Colonies. Nagala seems to have made a similar choice, albeit off-screen and albeit when it's possible he still had hopes of turning the thing around.

At Ragnar Adama wasn't going to strip the civilians ships and leave them helpless and for dead. He tells Roslin "You can leave if you like. This ship will stay and continue to fight." Adama seemed more resolved to go down swinging, not really thinking he had a shot at victory, or any worthwhile revenge.

As for Nagala, he still had a fleet and likely went down fighting (or trying to anyway). We really can't base anything there since we go from "Admiral Nagala has taken command of the fleet." To twenty minutes later "He's dead and we've lost our fleet."

[The Duchess of Zeon]

And I still think you two are discounting how close Adama came to becoming a Cainanite at Ragnar Anchorage. He was prepared to do the EXACT SAME THING, only while consigning a lot more civilians to their deaths and albeit not killing any of them directly but just leaving them to the Cylons. I think it clear that the writers view Cain as a natural, though unjustifiable, response to the destruction of the Twelve Colonies. Nagala seems to have made a similar choice, albeit off-screen and albeit when it's possible he still had hopes of turning the thing around.

At Ragnar Adama wasn't going to strip the civilians ships and leave them helpless and for dead. He tells Roslin "You can leave if you like. This ship will stay and continue to fight." Adama seemed more resolved to go down swinging, not really thinking he had a shot at victory, or any worthwhile revenge.

As for Nagala, he still had a fleet and likely went down fighting (or trying to anyway). We really can't base anything there since we go from "Admiral Nagala has taken command of the fleet." To twenty minutes later "He's dead and we've lost our fleet."

Seriously, it's ludicrous to suggest anything other than the idea that Nagala was trying to extricate the main body of the fleet from an extremely difficult combat with the main Cylon attack force, and simply failed in doing so. He only had twenty minutes in command and the colonies were still under attack; how is it even possible to assume that he wasn't planning on escaping and regrouping? And certainly it's quite likely that he had enough Battlestars--there were 120, after all, all of which had battlegroups-- and lighter ships under his command that he could reliably hope to defeat the attacking forces at Picon if his fleet hadn't been crippled by the Cylon virus, which made it impossible for the ships to jump clear anyway. Even with manuals brought on it would have taken a long time, and in the meantime he was supposed to leave Picon to be destroyed?

It's clear that he was in a situation where the fleet was simply overwhelmed by weight of Cylon numbers, and there wasn't much he could do about it. He probably tried to extricate the fleet, so it could at least regroup and then counterattack, but simply failed.

[Gullible Jones]

True but I liked the whole man vs. machine concept. I wouldn't have minded if the Cylons made those models purely as infiltrators either and most cylons where machines and happy with it, but I get the feeling sometimes of BSG trying imitate B5's cocksucking of the organic tech concept.

I haven't watched nBSG, but I do kind of wonder if it's going to turn out that the Cylons have some kind of crazy religious thing where they have to make themselves more biological, so that they can become "perfect" and replace their creators. Just an idea.

(Out of curiousity: aren't Cylon basestars in nBSG completely outclassed by battlestars, except for the ridiculous number of (nonbiological) fighters they can deploy?)

[Anguirus]

(Out of curiousity: aren't Cylon basestars in nBSG completely outclassed by battlestars, except for the ridiculous number of (nonbiological) fighters they can deploy?)

Not really. Two battlestars at close range can shred a basestar.

A surprise attack from a battlestar can cripple a basestar.

Four basestars dominate one battlestar (new or old) so hard it can't even effectively fight back without ramming.

Three basestars once ambushed the Pegasus and nuked it, but Pegasus managed to stay in the fight long enough for someone to repair the jump drives and escape. It did manage to train its forward gun batteries on one basestar and do significant damage.

I think that these battles indicate that one on one, at close range, the battlestar smokes the basestar. But the Cylons usually engage at distance with tons of missiles (some nuclear) and/or they outnumber the Colonials. In the series, the battlestar usually does the smart thing and runs, even against one basestar.

The Cylon fleet seen at the end of Crossroads is more than enough to destroy the human fleet without Pegasus around

(And to be nitpicky, the Raiders have a considerable amount of organic material in them. In fact, they seem to be the OPPOSITE of the humanoids...the humanoids are completely human except for their nervous system [which contains "silicon pathways" and can interface directly with computer systems], and the Raiders are mechanical except for what appears to be a very significant biological nervous system.)

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Raiders seem to be essentially a brain with bits in a box.

[phongn]

Four basestars dominate one battlestar (new or old) so hard it can't even effectively fight back without ramming.

Well, to be fair, Galactica was damaged by its little stunt and short on crew and had no fighter cover. Pegasus had virtually no crew, had no fighters and deliberately was used as a shield.

Had Pegasus stood off and had fighters, I daresay it might well have taken down some enemy baseships without major problem (and then been able to escape at-will).

[Thag]

I just got around to seeing it tonight. Did anyone else get the feeling that they had too many people for the time frame they were shooting for? They had a bunch of bit players or people we've only heard about, but they did almost nothing with them:

-the female Pegasus pilot, secondary character in one ep, comes back, but is onscreen for maybe five minutes and serves no purpose.
-the Pegasus XO, who appears to have been good friends with Cain, but, again, gets a few minutes screentime before getting waxed with no further development.
-Laird, secondary character and a part of discovering the Cain's actions, got maybe three lines.
-Col. Fisk, shady Pegasus XO, and winner of the John Agar Do Not Act Award.

Okay, I understand that they're stuck with a limited time slot, but it seems like over half the cast could've been extras and nobody wouldve seen the difference. The show felt like the writers had a lot of leftover pieces that they jammed together.

[Gullible Jones]

Eh, wonderful. I'd heard the series was quite intelligent, but it sounds like they're going full in for the "organic tech is teh r0xx0r" crap. I mean, only complete idiots would put nervous systems in control of their fighters when they can produce electronic AIs - nerve impulses travel at 40 mph, the reaction time would be bloody awful compared to anything silicon.

[Darwin]

Eh, wonderful. I'd heard the series was quite intelligent, but it sounds like they're going full in for the "organic tech is teh r0xx0r" crap. I mean, only complete idiots would put nervous systems in control of their fighters when they can produce electronic AIs - nerve impulses travel at 40 mph, the reaction time would be bloody awful compared to anything silicon.

No reason to overengineer? the raiders are designed to counter human pilots. their reaction time is no doubt faster than the human pilots, because the raiders ARE the fighters. The organic components also give them an amount of animal cunning and creativity that's impossible for that level of AI, and if anything has been hammered into my by years of computer gaming it's that AI pilots are frakking predictable.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

The show also isn't approaching the Cylon's transition to an organic existence as superior or anything like that. It's simply how they Cylons are in the new series.

[His Divine Shadow]

No reason to overengineer? the raiders are designed to counter human pilots. their reaction time is no doubt faster than the human pilots, because the raiders ARE the fighters. The organic components also give them an amount of animal cunning and creativity that's impossible for that level of AI, and if anything has been hammered into my by years of computer gaming it's that AI pilots are frakking predictable.

Why is this relevant when Cylon AI's have progressed to level of sapience equal and likely surpassing human beings? It's not like they have to put an 8-bit nintendo in their raider. Personally though, the old raiders seemed better, so did the old basestars. The new fleshbag basestars are whiny meatbags who can't take any punishment.

Anyway I see no reason for why cylon AI's have to be worse than organic counterparts.

[Master of Ossus]

Seriously, it's ludicrous to suggest anything other than the idea that Nagala was trying to extricate the main body of the fleet from an extremely difficult combat with the main Cylon attack force, and simply failed in doing so. He only had twenty minutes in command and the colonies were still under attack; how is it even possible to assume that he wasn't planning on escaping and regrouping? And certainly it's quite likely that he had enough Battlestars--there were 120, after all, all of which had battlegroups-- and lighter ships under his command that he could reliably hope to defeat the attacking forces at Picon if his fleet hadn't been crippled by the Cylon virus, which made it impossible for the ships to jump clear anyway. Even with manuals brought on it would have taken a long time, and in the meantime he was supposed to leave Picon to be destroyed?

It's clear that he was in a situation where the fleet was simply overwhelmed by weight of Cylon numbers, and there wasn't much he could do about it. He probably tried to extricate the fleet, so it could at least regroup and then counterattack, but simply failed.

Re: Nagala, I haven't seen the miniseries in a while, but my understanding was that the Fleet HQ on Picon was destroyed along with a significant chunk of the fleet, and subsequently Nagala took command.

I did NOT think that Nagala was only in charge for 20 minutes. IIRC, we heard about him taking command of the fleet immediately after the attack. while the Galactica was still trying to get its act together with all the museum fighters and such. Galactica noted that there was other fighting going on, including combat in their own solar system, and then after their first fighter wing was wiped out and Sharon and Helo crashed down, Galactica got its museum fighters back in action (which should've taken a lot more than 20 minutes), had its little dogfight with the Cylon nukers, and then we hear that the fleet under Nagala was wiped out and Adama takes command. In the meantime, did Galactica ever get orders to disengage? No. Did we hear about OTHER battlestars being told to disengage? No. We heard that there was confusion at first, and then that a whole bunch of them were destroyed at the same time, and WELL after Nagala had taken command of the situation. To me, this suggests that the main body of the fleet was destroyed at once, under Nagala, and therefore that he went down fighting (or at least trying to fight) with the other ships.

Even if Nagala WASN'T trying to fight, though, that still leaves the fact that Adama was at Ragnar, which frankly is the much more significant event for me. Even at Ragnar, when NO other colonial military units showed up, he was ready to ditch the civilians and slug it out with just his own ship against the Cylons. Further, even after ADAMA changed his mind (which surprised Tigh, too), he gave explicit instructions to Lee to make sure that ALL of his pilots return, indicating that he expected some pilots to want to slug it out, too, regardless of the consequences.

In short, even if we don't read Nagala as trying to fight, despite the heavy combat that took place well after he had taken command of the fleet (which he only had after Picon HQ was already destroyed), we still have Adama and (at least in his expectation) some Galactica pilots prepared to fight it out at the cost of their lives and their ships for no appreciable gain or even to do any damage to the Cylons.

As for the claim that Adama wasn't going to kill the civilians, directly:
1. Killing the civilians wasn't Cain's goal, either. She was stripping their ships for parts and crew--her goal was to fight the Cylons. Had the civilians voluntarily given her the parts (which admittedly seems far-fetched seeing as how they needed them to live) and crew (again, admittedly far-fetched), Cain would not have killed anyone.
2. You're right. Cain took it further. Adama wasn't going to strip the civilian ships. He WAS going to leave them at the mercy of the Cylons. The President realized, and frankly everyone else should've figured out, that leaving them at Ragnar would've killed them (just as Cain left everyone on that civilian fleet to die--the ones she hadn't killed first). Focusing exclusively on the fact that Cain took it further, though, ignores the fundamental similarity between the choices. My whole point is that Cain is what Adama would have been had he gone through with it and left the civilians to die while he continued on his war with the Cylons. He was very close to making this call, which is fundamentally what Cain did. This makes it hard for me to write off Cain as a lunatic.
3. There was no reason for Adama to strip the civilians at Ragnar--not even a military one. Unlike Cain, who needed the parts to continue the war, Adama was literally docked with a munitions and supply dump. They had all the parts they needed. Taking the crews may have been helpful, but unlike Pegasus, his ship had plenty of crewmembers (and there didn't seem to be anyone of particular use, anyway, since there wasn't a lot of talk later in the series of useful civilians that wanted to join on--quite the opposite, really).
4. Your argument also dismisses Shaw, who clearly came to accept Cain's beliefs. Can she be written off as a mere psycho, too? Maybe, but it's harder with her.

In short, the ideal of standing and fighting wasn't unique to Cain. Even if you don't agree that Nagala shared it, Adama came within a hair's breadth of living it, as did Starbuck. Shaw bought into it completely. I don't think that Cain was that different from those characters, and we know that Adama is NOT crazy--he's not even close. Shaw probably isn't crazy, either. Starbuck could go either way, but obviously the writers want people to identify with her.

Given all of this, I do not see how people write of Cain as being anything other than a product of the circumstances. How can she be totally crazy when numerous others, including ones we know not to be crazy, were extraordinarily close to doing the exact same thing?