Snubbed by the Sci-Fi network

So apparently the Sci-Fi network held a big shindig for "the online media" last week on the set of BSG and we were completely NOT invited. Probably because they knew we'd just pony up to the Joe's Bar set and demand to do shots with Fat Lee.

Anyway, it was apparently QUITE the event, or so says Media Blvd (a site with not one but TWO embarrassingly ugly logos!). And there was even some pretty major spoilers revealed, that sound a lot like the theories we've been tossing around these parts.

So what's the nature of the final five cylons? Straight from the Chief's mouth:

Douglas revealed that the final 5 Cylons are in fact a different breed of Cylon than the human form versions that attacked the colonies. These 5 in fact are the original Cylon’s, are immortal, and are the Cylon Gods.

Yowza!

Also:

Apparently the sequence involves a sort of mini-rebellion with Cylon centurions gaining intelligence and rebelling against their human masters.

I would rather be in the midst of a Cylon mini-rebellion than have to deal with my son's refusals to go to sleep anymore tonight.

l0lz!!!!!;-)!!

Thank you, livejournal image feed:

It's official

According to Variety, Season Four will be the last one for BSG!

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117966089.html?categoryid=1417&cs=1&p=0

Ruminations on subtitles.

The screenwriter John August is one of the reasons that Hollywood fare is so frakkin' dreadful. He's responsible for a lot of the drivel you see in theaters, notably the Charlie's Angels movie franchise, Big Fish, and other insipid titles only a queer ex-journalist who's only writing movies for the money would write. He did, however, create a rather funny video when he was learning Final Cut Pro which underscores the fact that subtitles can say absolutely anything and people don't really care.

The purpose of this video and post is to enter the world of geekdom vis-a-vis the fact that Cylons speak English to one another instead of having, well, wifi built-in. I mean, I don't expect the toasters to have 802.11 g or even *gasp* draft N, but the idea they'd use such an inefficient language such as English to communicate their master plan is just plain silly.

I did enjoy it when the Cylons sunk their hands into the goo in order to communicate with their base ship - that at least was an interesting invention and seemingly better than subtitles. No human would sink their hands into mucus just to answer a phone call. Other limbs, maybe, but not their precious hands.

Enjoy.

entirely un-BSG related, except in almost every way

So NASA, yes YOUR NASA, has released a trailer for their trip back to the moon. And it's weird. And creepy. And feels like they hired BSG's CGI crew for at least part of it. And, well, does the government really need to create slick trailers for, well, ACTUAL projects?

Why I Am Somewhat Disappointed With How BSG Is Turning Out

One of the things I really liked about BSG for the first season, and the second season, is that it was relatively straightforward for a contemporary serialized show...there were mysteries and recurring plot points, but they were pretty straight-up. For example, we new Boomer was a Cylon in season one, it was just a matter of time before that played itself out, creating anticipation and suspense. Anyway, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of trickery or slippery mysteries going on, a la Lost/Twin Peaks/X-Files/Carnivale etc. Questions, sure, but not a bunch of unexplained shit going on that seemed that it would receive a completely left-field answer two seasons later.

As of late, though, it seems that the show has abandoned any kind of forward movement or eventual suspense. Ironically, Lost--to which BSG has been often held up as a superior example in genre fiction--has actually seen much more forward movement and streamlining in its story lately. Meanwhile, BSG seems to have ramped up the tricky WTF mysteries in place of building a real sense of suspense.

Cylon Logic Bomb

I have nothing to add to that; I just wanted to say the words "Cylon Logic Bomb."
It's really fun to say. Say it out loud: "Cylon Logic Bomb." See what I mean?

Like the mustache, BSG cut off as well...

“We’re heading into the final season,” “Battlestar Galactica” star Edward James Olmos told If Magazine at Thursday night's Saturn Awards. “This is the final season as we speak. All of us are very saddened by that, but we always knew there was going to be a conclusion and we would find Earth, so we will be finding Earth this season.”

Skinjobs

So Janice and I started watching Blade Runner last night, and I was totally blown away by the similarities with BSG. Sure, there are a lot of differences, but man you can see where Moore and co. got inspiration from--Blade Runner even has Edward James Olmos with a mustache!

WTF roll call

peoples, i think we have to acknowledge that there are seven of us actual official blog members here, not counting the fakers and the dupes (we'll call them "Baltars" and "Starbucks" and divide 'em along gender lines), and therefore we have to embrace the potential geekiness of each adopting a cylon avatar.

I propose, for example, that Janice, whose contributions are rare but deeply significant, is our black doctor cylon. Roman I think has to be Leoben. Sorry dude! But you're both, you know, a little too smart for your own good. Dan is totally Boomer. I would want to be Boomer, but I just don't have the tech skills.

Glowing Spinal-Column Cylon Sex

I am going back and starting BSG from the very beginning (the mini-series) to help allay the inevitable withdrawal of the one year wait till season 4. A few observations:

1. I forgot how cool it was that, when the space station explodes in the opening sequence, a piece of the debris smacks right into the camera and knocks it spinning.

2. Whoah, Caprica 6 totally killed a baby!

and most importantly,

3. Cylon's spinal columns visibly glow when they have sex! This seems like a major security risk: I guess Cylons must always insist on doing it sitting on top, facing their partner -- since even one simple session of doggy-style would reveal their secret? "Whoah, baby -- your spinal column is glowing right through your skin, um, what's the deal with that?"

SPOILER WARNING

I had an actual a-ha moment the other day when i realized that, in fact, this whole kara thrace business may not be about starbuck at all. it might just be a hallucination on lee's part. which might make him the key player here, instead of her, and she would just still be dead. "key player" being a term i'm coming across frequently as i study for the LSATs, meaning a player who is central, or key, to proceedings. i mean, lee could be, like, the messiah figure here, whoch would suck royally.

by the way, paul invited all sorts of people to read this blog without making sure they had seen every episode of every season beforehand. therefore, i'm just going to call this post SPOILER WARNING and hope they are all adult enough to handle the mature contents.

Hello, frakkers.

It's me, DMcG, aka Anne's mythical friend. I can now verify that I am real and I am not (like some posters on this blog I could name) a figment of DrAEM's imagination. I am very computer illiterate, but having finally negotiated the intricacies of the sign-up process (which I assume would be child's play to, say, an actual child -- since, I am told, 5-year-olds now know how to work these things) I am now in a position to hopefully prove I am not a "Todd6" in anyone's mind.

I wish to make it clear, however, that I did not write the 15-posts-in-one non-easily-digestible entry below as an intentional attempt to destroy the readability of your blog. DrAEM took that from an email and posted it herself; I was a bit embarassed as it kind of makes me look like a dork. In case you were wondering why anyone would write an email so ludicrously long-winded or whether I have way too much free time or what, the answer is that such emails are only one of a vast repetoire of procrastination techniques I (entirely dysfunctionally) rely on daily to avoid actual responsibilities, and my capacity for such avoidance is evidently Herculean, if the last two decades or so of my life are any indication.

Anyway, thank you sinker for inviting me in to post official posts for actually real. Now that all that is out of the way, I promise my subsequent posts will be more to the point.

My first official post is this: the Final Cylon is a cat named THURBER, sent to Earth to spy on humanity in prep for the coming invasion.

other very important issues that require your thoughtful response and, probably, some further clarification on the part of the writer, who is not me

1. What is the deal with transmigration of personalities during Resurrection? Evidently at least one model of Boomers and one of 6 (identified as "Caprica 6") have individuated personalities that they maintained even after being killed and resurrected. Yet, do the all the other models subsequently recieve the same info those specific ones have? In some episodes it seems they do, in others not. have the show's creators not thought this through?

What is the Cylon religious motivation? Apparently the Dean Stockwell Cylon model doesn't even believe in God, yet the other models, to varying degrees, are totally devoted monotheists (unlike the polytheistic humans.) But where did Cylon religion come from? Unlike the humans, they know who created them (humans.)

How long have Cylons existed? We know there was a war when the Cylons turned against theor human masters, approxiamately 50 years before the start of the show. But were the Cylons around thousands of years ago in the dim prehistory of the 12 colonies? I thought hey were "recently" invented by the human race as robot servants of the human race, but the Final 5 are evidently part of the mystic ancient temple stuff on the eye of the nebula planet where they found the shrine thing that leads to Earth. So are Cylons just a few generations old or were they around thousands of years ago when the 13th tribe left for Earth?

2. What were the motivations behind the policy of genocide against the humans in the first place? in the early episodes, we were led to believe that it was a hardline religious crusade based on the fact that Cylons think (and, it is unstated but always alluded to, perhaps RIGHTLY) that humans are undeserving of life given their inherent "sins." Yet at least a few of the Cylon models seem to have been created with the purpose of emulation of human emotions (such as, particularly, love, in the case of Number 6) and the creation of a human/Cylon crossbreed hybrid baby seems big on their agenda. One of your blog poster friends said this may be because they lack the genetic diversity to reproduce properly so are attempting to gain said diversification capability from human gene exchange in sexual reproduction (rather than the presumed manufacture of identical models that constitutes their current reproductive mode.) This seems plausible to me but we have yet to learn their real agenda at all -- especially considering the complete wild card of the Final 5.

3. Why don't the 7 genocide-policy Cylons even know what the Final 5 look like? What was the source of the rift between them and the other models? How long ago did that rift take place, and if it was recently, how is it the other 7 models are completely unaware of any information surrounding the Final 5? The original storyline implied that in the first Cylon/Human War, the Cylons were the old-model (1978-style ) "centurion"models, and the human-looking biosynthetic types "evolved" during their 40-year silence of no contact with the 12 colonies. So why can't they remember the Final 5, if their very exiestence is less than 40 years old? Did they all get their memories wiped?

4. If Chief is, in fact, a Cylon, what purpose would it have served the Cylons to program him and the original deep-cover pre-self-aware Boomer to fall in love in the first place? That wouldn't advance their stated "create a Cylon/human hybrid baby" agenda at all, if neither one was human.

5. If "projection" is a Cylon ability, how come Balthar now has a phantom "projected" version of himself that is capable of messing with Caprica 6's mind the same way she once was able to mess with his?

(Before you say "maybe that proves Balthar is a Cylon", I want to point out that making Balthar a Cylon would be a really, really bad idea on the part of the writers. His whole function is to represent the flaws of humanity -- specifically, to serve the show as a brilliant evocation of human psychiatric dysfunction called "narcissism." Making him a Cylon would therefore be UTTERLY LAME. Even though it is in keeping with his character's grandiose self-image needs that he would SUSPECT himself of being some all-important lost model of Cylon, it should NEVER turn out to be actually true.)

And even after Caprica 6 reunited with Balthar in "real life" version, why does the "projected" Caprica 6 still have a different personality/agenda w/r/t to Balthar and their secret relationship than the physically-present model does?

For that matter, what is the Caprica 6 model's agenda?Originally it was all about manipulating Balthar's narcissism through a superior understanding of human psychology than our own. But she is evidently programmed to attemot to emulate lovem, and apparently does "fall in love' with him -- even if it's twisted sort of weird-ass version of it. Did her subsequent betrayal of the Cylons' original agenda represent a kind of corruption of Cylon purity by exposure to human (i.e. flawed) emotions? Did this "corruption" create a "projected" version of Balthar in her mind that functions independently of the personality of the real Balthar?

None of the shows I've seen (and I've seen all of them) seem to have addressed any of these questions. God, what if the creators/writers simply haven't thought this stuff through ahead of time, and are simply winging it?

That would SUUUUCK.

My last question here is about when all this is taking place. Did the Bob Dylan implanted memory thing indicate that they are now receiving signal information from present-day contemporary earth (as in the ill-fated "Galactica 1980" scenario, where they find Earth and it's Earth as is NOW) or is it an implanted memory from thousands of years ago? I.e. is the show taking place in the present or in the far future? All we can rule out is that it is taking place before Bob Dylan was born, obviously, so we know for a fact that it's definitely not happening in the past.

Final comment: here is my personal favorite BSG moment of the whole series: Adama telling Starbuck, during the parallel-editing mutual-assassination plot sequence at the end of the mid-season 2 cliffhanger,

"...I want you to pull out your sidearm... and shoot Admiral Cain in the head."

This was AMAZING. Because there are only about as many humans left in the entire species-wide population as there are students at the UW-Madison, obviously Colonials plotting against other Colonials is the worst possible thing that could happen -- yet Commander Adama is forced into this plot regardless, because Cain is EVIL and is plotting to kill him, too. Watching this, you're like "NO! You're just validating everything the Cylons said about why you should be destroyed in the first place!" but on the other hand it is difficult to see what else he can do. He is human, and as such he has no "correct", (i.e. non-evil) option open to him.

To his credit he does not go through with it, and neither does Cain in her identical plan to terminate his command -- but the mere thought that his father (and by extension, the whole human species) has come to this makes Apollo actually lose his will to live in the battle during the resurrection ship offensive -- he is literally willing to die in space with a slow oxygen leak rather than go on living as a member of the human race. For a moment, he believed the Cylons were right that the humans had no reason to live. This was brilliant, brilliant writing -- not even just "brilliant sci-fi writing", but brilliant writing period.

Something todd found on the internet

"By the way, look what exciting things can happen from a simple Wikipedia search -- in case you were wondering what all the throaty world-music vocals in the theme music is all about, here is the explanation:

The title sequence features a Hindu mantra, the Gayatri Mantra, taken from the Rig Veda... The words in the mantra are "Om bhūr bhuvah svah tat savitur varēnyam bhargō dēvasya dhīmahi dhiyō yō nah pracōdayāt", which may be translated in various ways but means approximately:

"Oh all-protecting lord, please guide our intellects, so that we may proceed in the right direction towards enlightenment"

OH MY GOD THAT'S AWESOME."

tighpatch: the question

So do you think that somewhere on the Cylon homeworld somewhere there's one of those Cylon ressurection hot tubs with just a single eye floating in it, waiting for the rest of Tigh to catch up to it?

EDIT: Who knew I was spelling Tigh's name wrong and didn't correct me??

Frakking Toasters Among Us

I've noticed a lot of duplicate names over there in the contributors list. Anyone picking up mysterious cover song transmissions? Feeling extra monotheistic? Craving a Baltar three-way?

Potentially Life-Supporting, Earth-Like Planet Discovered

Kobol? Caprica? THE GODS WANT TO KNOW!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9796321

Petition for Admiral Helena Cain to be the Final Cylon

We, the undersigned, believe Admiral Helena Cain to be deserving of both the immortal life and the infinite reproduction made possible by the Cylon lifestyle. Furthermore, we feel her position as the leader of the Battlestar Pegasus and willingness to destroy human life for practically no reason at all must receive recognition from the pantheon of the true whatevers the Cylons believe in, blah blah blah, therefore we officially stand by the welcoming of Admiral Helena Cain into official Cylonhood.

Sincerely,

Cyexperts

I'm wondering about cylon reproductivity and I look to you wisened ones for answers.

OK, we already know that they can be born again through their jelly infused hot tub of sorts. OK, we also know that both genders can reproduce the old fashioned way con womb y sperm as examplified by boomer and chief.

so, if cylons evolved separately from humans (different flesh and blood types), then WHY does their frakking plan seem to be to create a new hybrid generation with human dna? I mean if the cylons are so bloody better than humans and they have their own cancer curing blood, why human it up? you know?

Or do you think that we are not so biologically different and maybe they need our stuff to be who they are?

what the frakk?