Battlestar Galactic "Lay Down Your Burdens" 3/10/06

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In the BSG universe earthlings couldn't have evolved too much, since they share Greek mythology with the 12 colonies, right? It seems like you kind of have to throw out significant human evolution on Earth for that to work.

 

Actually, I think Caprica 6's voiceover at the end pretty much indicates that the Cyclons have every intention of establishing dominion over the humans. Her quote (I don't remember it exactly) about ruling like gods was fairly clear in that regard.

 

There's no indication that the Cylons need 33 minutes to recharge. As I remember it, it took 33 minutes to calculate new jump coordinates and distribute them to all of the fleet.
Subsequent episodes showed the Cylons being able to jump pretty quickly.

It seems that some are viewing a FTL jump as a predefined distance and possibly a predefined direction as well. I don't believe it has to be equidistant leaps like pawns on a checkerboard. If they always jumped the maximum allowable distance and headed it the same direction, It would be easy to track the Colonial fleet back in the first episode and the show would be over!

There are 3 factors to take into account with these jumps that would make it extremely difficult to find anything without a signal to home in on! There's the horizontal and vertical axis of the direction headed as well as the distance traveled in each jump. These three factors should be changed each time the fleet jumps.

Consider this example:
If you have a friend walk 10 miles due North and you walk 10 miles just a degree or two off of due North. There will be a point in your journey where you won't be able to see each other because you are too far way. Both of you would be going roughly the same speed and the same distance and almost the same direction but you'd still lose each other long before you'd reach that 10 mile mark in a simple 2 dimension situation. Add the ability to fly in the air (at walking speed) for the 3rd dimension and it becomes much harder to find each other. Finally, add the ability for your friend to stop anywhere he wants on that 10 mile due North path and you wouldn't be able to find him without a lot of searching. Finally, allow your friend to change direction, speed, and distance each time he stops and you'd be lucky to ever see him again. Give your friend a flaregun as a substitute for a nuclear warhead and you have a decent chance of finding him if you are looking the correct direction at the time and are close enough to see it!

FTL jumps can't be predefined distances every time. New Caprica can't be exactly 9 Cylon FTL jumps from Old Caprica. Nothing in nature is that exact. What if New Caprica is 8.5 FTL jumps away and the Cylons jump 10 instead? How many million miles could that be between the Cylons and New Caprica? Without a nuclear signature or other tracking method, it's feasible in my opinion that the Cylons might have never found that planet. It's nebula/cloud cover might have prevented anyone/anything from seeing that it was there at all. What does a dead spot look like in a universe of dead spots?

On top of that, where's the proof that the Cylons know that the Colonials were jumping in Cylon FTL increments? Where's the proof that they know which direction the Colonials went on the 1st jump, the 2nd jump, etc.? There's no indication that Cylons can track even half the distance of a Colonial jump. (Watch "33" again and you'll see what I mean.)
And, IF Brother Al was able to relay their position when he arrived on the Galactica, it was still before the fleet jumped in an unknown direction and unknown distance to New Caprica! Past episodes have shown that the Cylons can't send signals very far unassisted.

As Jonathan_S said, it's like looking for a needle in a (huge) haystack!

 

A Cyclon?

 

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Watching the ending now...
Sharon: As long as you offer no resistance, You won't be harmed.
Gaius: How do I know that?
Loeben: You don't. You also don't have any choice.

I'd like to point out that both Sharon and 6's reactions during the surrender sequence made them look as though things weren't going quite the way they wanted it to.

Later is 6's voiceover which I won't repeat. It does sound ominous and I do agree. We don't know if this is Caprica 6 2.0 or another 6.

 

Somebody may have already made this point, but why would the Cylons keep 6 basestars in orbit over a (mostly) defenseless human colony that has already surrendered to them? Besides, one well-placed Nuke from a single basestar could kill everyone on the planet, since they're settled in one isolated spot.

The other 5 ships will probably leave and try to hunt down the rest of the fleet.

 

That, or perhaps a "cyclon" is a recycled Cylon! Or, a "cyclon" could be a spinning Cylon. Maybe it's a Cylon version of one of my vacuum cleaner!

 

Now that's a novel concept! I could really get behind an idea like that and I do like the way you are thinking!
Joking aside, I think it's a definite possibility that would allow the Colonial fleet to effect a rescue next season. Thank you for stating the concept better than I was able to do!

Pardon me for a while, I've got some work to do!

 

I don't think it takes 33 minutes to calculate a jump and transmit to the fleet. It may take a couple of minutes, but not 33. I believe the 33 minutes is roughly the time it took for a signal transmitted from a spylon within the fleet to get back to the Cylon fleet since the transmission is not FTL. I assume that the colonial fleet can only jump as far as it is known to be safe. So, I'm guessing that their long range sensors can only see as far as 33 light minutes with enough resolution with which to determine wether a jump point is obstacle free for the fleet to jump into. Any further out and they would risk jumping into an asteroid field for instance.

They have already jumped beyond charted space. So their jumps have to be relatively short. If it was within their known space, they can probably jump around at will with little risk of jumping into objects. Jumping into another ship is probably the only risk. And that can be minimized by having registered blind jump points for any given ship.

They've expressed how insanely stupid a blind jump is (by the reaction of the Pegasus crew to Admiral Ro's order to blind jump during the Cylon first strike).

Okay. I've aparrently thought about this way too much.

Edit: Now that I remember "33" a little more, I seem to recall that Galactica would launch vipers to buy a little more time. So I guess that perhaps it was a combination of finding a jump target and calculating the jump. But I believe my 33 light minutes for the spylon message to reach the cylong fleet is still the reason that the cylong fleet was always 33 minutes behind the colonial fleet.

 

Actually, you are confusing Leoben and Doral. Doral, the press secretary, is the one seen during the conquering of New Caprica.

 

Hmm it occurs to me that all the debate over how the Cylons are going to move those 6 basestars around New Caprica may be based on a bad premise.

We seem to be assuming that the Cylons actually want to control or destroy the colonial fleet and the survivors. So our arguments have been about whether that goal would be more logically approached by:
1) tying up 6 basestars around New Caprica to keep the fleet away from the Colonials, and/or to destroy the fleet if it attempts a rescue mission.
2) leaving a smaller force to control New Caprica while the other basestars hunt down the remainder of the fleet.

But the Cylon's have stated a goal all the way back in Season 1 to use the Fleet to lead them to Earth. If that is still their long range goal then they may want to set up their strategy in a tactically unsound manner. Basically use this show of force to scare the Colonials back into flight, convincing them that colonising new worlds is a bad idea, so that the Cylons can continue to try to track them to Earth.

In this scenario it would make sense, from the Cylon point of view, to reduce their forces around New Caprica enough that a rescue mission from the fleet can succeed. Because until the population of New Caprica is freed the fleet is unlikely to continue the search for Earth. But after the population is freed they will be extremely reluctant to stop and try to settle any new virgin planet, because they would be concerned that the Cylons would find them again. They would be strongly motivated to continue search for Earth, which they believe has the ability to protect them from the Cylons.

Maybe the Cylons do have a plan; and this was just a wrinkle in it because the Colonials had stopped playing along (i.e. leading the Cylons to Earth)

 

You're assuming that Dradus range is equal to or close to equal to a maximum FTL jump range. From what I've seen, a maximum range FTL jump could be hundreds of thousands if not millions of times beyond the range of an FTL jump. There would be tremendous volumes of space that you'd be skipping right over every time you jumped. The only way to make a halfway thorough sweep of the entire space between 2 jump coordinates would be to traverse it at sublight speeds which could take decades.

As an analogy let imagine that a Dradus sweep is you on the ground taking a photograph. An FTL jump is a non-stop flight from L.A. to New York. You'd have great shots of the airports at L.A. and New York, but you wouldn't have anything of the entire cities, let alone the entire country in between. To get the complete "scan" with your camera you would have to walk around all of L.A., and then walk all the way to New York being sure to walk up every street, canyon, and mountain ridge along the way to get complete coverage.

 

I wish someone would repeat it

My recording cut off right at the end: I saw much of the stuff others apparently missed such as the surrender, toasters marching, and Starbuck and the Chief watching, but I didn't hear any voice-over...

 

But... If we repeat it, it wouldn't drive you crazy wondering what it said!

Hold on a minute and I'll watch it again...

This reminds me of an awful trick someone played on me back in high school! Someone once wrote in my yearbook something to the effect of, "Everytime you read this, you'll wonder who wrote it." It still drives me nuts!

 

I think that makes more sense. The rest of the stuff you wrote makes a lot of sense too!
Of course, if that was the intended manner in which it works, it pushes my theory of varying jump distances in the "33" episode out the window. The concept still stands for other situations I guess.

 

Ooops. Sorry, I keep getting their names mixed up!

 

They've been doing that all season long... RDM refers to it as his omage to Space 1999 which also showed parts of the episode in the opening credits like that.

 

Ignoring the medicine aspect, it still might be possible for Lee to have launched a single fighter, or radioed to one that was already out to go find Starbuck.

On the other hand, are we supposed to recognize the person that asked for her. They shoe him blurry (from Anders viewpoint) and then focus in on him, almost as if they were trying to make the viewer go "aha!" like it was a cylon that we have seen before.

Have we seen that actor/character before? I watched it again last night -- any one get a good look at his armband that they flash as he is walking into the tent?

I think this scene is a pretty important setup for next season, but I am not sure what it means.

 

Now that I think about it a little more. I think the reason the vipers were launch was to hold off the cylons while the last ship has jumped. Due to the constant jumping, some of lesser ships in the fleet were suffering fatigue and couldn't keep up the pace.

Can you tell I don't own the DVDs? I have to keep pulling this stuff from my terrible memory.

 

[Side Topic]
Anybody else saw "Al the Devil" from QL - The Boogieman, in Stockwell's facial expressions?
[/Side Topic]