The Finale

katefan
Lieutenant jg
Lieutenant jg
Posts: 358
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2008 7:15 am

Re: The Finale

Post by katefan »

the best pilots who is serving under Adama who is the best.

Going by that logic, then, all of his pilots should be the best. Yet from the finale we know Boomer sucked.

the best shooter... never saw her acting as a sniper.

But they did say she was the best shooter on board Galactica. Compared to all the Marines-whose job it is to actually shoot things-that says a lot.

the best tactician, again she serves under Adama who is the best.

See logic statement above in regards to piloting.

painter... crappy one from what I remember.

I actually found some of it to be quite good...which makes me pissed off because it was yet another of her talents.

piano... not a big deal since she's not that good at it.

Still another part of her list of great accomplishments.

And don't forget expert Pyramid player.

Destiny is nothing. She's dead and got replaced by someone else.

From what I understand the Starbuck we saw was the ghost of Starbuck. Or Starbuck turned into an angel. The flashbacks certainly hinted at that when she talked as if death was nothing for her to fear.
Tsukiyumi
4 Star Admiral
4 Star Admiral
Posts: 21747
Joined: Fri Oct 12, 2007 2:38 pm
Location: Forward Torpedo Tube Twenty. Help!
Contact:

Re: The Finale

Post by Tsukiyumi »

Cpl Kendall wrote:
Tsukiyumi wrote:I can shoot rather well.
I've never had the opportunity to fly, but I ace simulators every time.
I paint.
I play the guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, xylophone, and I'm a decent singer.
I write at a college level, even though I never finished 9th grade.
In fights, I tend to come out on top due to superior training, and keeping a cool head.
I can also do plumbing work, carpentry, and electrical.

Off the top of my head. Does that make me a real-life Gary Stu?

I haven't seen the show, so I'm not really attacking your argument; I'm just pointing out that just because a character is talented in a number of different fields doesn't necessarily make them unrealistic.
No it doesn't because your not a character in someones fiction. I can forgive any of the hobbies, that's no big deal but to be an ace fighter pilot and an ace sniper? That stretches SoD so thin it might be catgut.
Yeah, actually, I'd be a really good commercial pilot, and a decent sniper with a good scope, but certainly no expert in either. Crappy vision. :wink:

However, many of my other skills are near-expert level if not actually expert, and if I were fictional, many people might decry my character as unrealistic. :lol:
There is only one way of avoiding the war – that is the overthrow of this society. However, as we are too weak for this task, the war is inevitable. -L. Trotsky, 1939
katefan
Lieutenant jg
Lieutenant jg
Posts: 358
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2008 7:15 am

Re: The Finale

Post by katefan »

Yeah, actually, I'd be a really good commercial pilot, and a decent sniper with a good scope, but certainly no expert in either. Crappy vision. :wink:

However, many of my other skills are near-expert level if not actually expert, and if I were fictional, many people might decry my character as unrealistic. :lol:
Those are some good points, but when you write a series where one character is constantly portrayed as being more artistically incline, more tactically intelligent and more lethal as well as more athletic than most then yes, they are being a Mary Sue.
User avatar
Deepcrush
4 Star Admiral
4 Star Admiral
Posts: 18917
Joined: Thu Sep 06, 2007 8:15 pm
Location: Arnold, Maryland, USA

Re: The Finale

Post by Deepcrush »

Somebody tell me since when is she an ace sniper????
Jinsei wa cho no yume, shi no tsubasa no bitodesu
Aaron
3 Star Admiral
3 Star Admiral
Posts: 10988
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:01 pm
Location: Timepire Mobile Command Centre
Contact:

Re: The Finale

Post by Aaron »

Deepcrush wrote:Somebody tell me since when is she an ace sniper????
"I'm the best shot in or out of the cockpit" Bastille Day. And Tigh actually backed her up.
User avatar
kostmayer
Captain
Captain
Posts: 2812
Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2007 11:08 am

Re: The Finale

Post by kostmayer »

There was the episode that introduced Zarek - Starbuck had him in her sights but Lee saved him - the numpty.

I think she was also part of the rescue team in the episode where Billy got killed.
"You ain't gonna get off down the trail a mile or two, and go missing your wife or something, like our last cook done, are you?"
"My wife is in hell, where I sent her. She could make good biscuits, but her behavior was terrible."
katefan
Lieutenant jg
Lieutenant jg
Posts: 358
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2008 7:15 am

Re: The Finale

Post by katefan »

One more thing in regards to mining. Human beings have been mining with pick axes for years, so the need for high tech gear is not necessary when you have enough strong backs. It is a lot harder, though.

But mining made a quantum leap when explosives were used. We know from watching the series that they had to be making explosives for the Vipers, and that they had explosives already in play via the munitions. And it is true that gunpowder is relatively easy to make...if you know the formula. There is not guarantee this knowledge will last. Indeed, we know it does not last.

Also, another method of mining is using water to strip mine. All you need is a water, the pump to produce flow and a host to create pressure. It is simple hydraulics.

So from a mining perspective the technology that was abandoned could have been employed in many ways to take advantage of ores found. And the sensor suites on the raptors could have found key ores. And the ships could have been used to transport them to their city.

Just because key equipment had been left behind on New Caprica does not mean what they still had could not have been used to good effect.
User avatar
IanKennedy
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 6155
Joined: Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: Oxford, UK
Contact:

Re: The Finale

Post by IanKennedy »

katefan wrote:One more thing in regards to mining. Human beings have been mining with pick axes for years, so the need for high tech gear is not necessary when you have enough strong backs. It is a lot harder, though.

But mining made a quantum leap when explosives were used. We know from watching the series that they had to be making explosives for the Vipers, and that they had explosives already in play via the munitions. And it is true that gunpowder is relatively easy to make...if you know the formula. There is not guarantee this knowledge will last. Indeed, we know it does not last.

Also, another method of mining is using water to strip mine. All you need is a water, the pump to produce flow and a host to create pressure. It is simple hydraulics.

So from a mining perspective the technology that was abandoned could have been employed in many ways to take advantage of ores found. And the sensor suites on the raptors could have found key ores. And the ships could have been used to transport them to their city.

Just because key equipment had been left behind on New Caprica does not mean what they still had could not have been used to good effect.
Please learn to use the quote system, it's so hard to read what you are on about.
email, ergo spam
katefan
Lieutenant jg
Lieutenant jg
Posts: 358
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2008 7:15 am

Re: The Finale

Post by katefan »

Please learn to use the quote system, it's so hard to read what you are on about.
It was just an addendum to the earlier argument about how since apparently all the heavy equipment was left behind on New Caprica there was no method for extensive mining. This is obviously incorrect.
Sionnach Glic
4 Star Admiral
4 Star Admiral
Posts: 26014
Joined: Fri Jul 13, 2007 10:58 pm
Location: Poblacht na hÉireann, Baile Átha Cliath

Re: The Finale

Post by Sionnach Glic »

30,000 humans wound up being our specie's ancestor. Big deal.
No, Hera was the Mitochondrian Eve; the individual from which the majority of today's humans can trace their ancestry to. The others presumably weren't as succesful, and any tribes or families they started died off over the generations.
I never said they should keep going. But the ships are a source of power and shelter.
For how long? If they run out of fuel, just how long can they keep the ships running for? Can they even keep the ships running until that point at all?
They are the foundation for maintaining a level of technology and are a link to Man's past. By destroying them Mankind just went back to square one, and hence began the cycle all over again because now there is no way to remember any war with murderous robots.
The ships were of no practical use. They could do nothing with them, other than use them as a form of transportation. Presumably they stripped out anything of use before sending them all into the sun. As such, it'd be pointless having a bunch of empty hulls drifting around up there.
With a planet full of resources they could have rebuilt their civilization. New Caprica was a poor choice for this due to the marginal existence they sustained there. But on Earth with lush fields for growing, massive amounts of wildlife for meat and technology that put them on the top of the food chain they could have created a true New Caprica.
Really? And how would they mine materials? How would they process fuel? Do they even know how to do that any more?
The vast majority of their equipment was lost back on New Caprica. They simply didn't have the stuff required to build anything more than a giant tent city.
And I never said they had to leave this Earth. Those ships are more than just a means of transportation. They are the building blocks of a modern society.
How? Just what can they be used for?
How many of those Saggitarons survived all four seasons? For all you know all 5,251 got wiped out early on. If they stuck close together they could have been nuked in season two's finale. And just because I might be from Idaho doesn't mean I know a damn thing about potato farming.
Correct on both counts. But my point was that there are groups there that know about farming.
I am aware of a lot of rednecks who only know about how to drink beer and watch NASCAR. Backwards does not mean useful in a low tech situation.
Again, correct. Again, my point stands that there are groups who could know about farming.
And without a tech base to replace bullets or maintain those guns you are going to lose them in a few generations.
And then it's back to bows and arrows, right. By then they'd have presumably picked up enough knowledge to hunt well enough with such a weapon.
And I find it utterly moronic that 30,000 people went along with this.
Why?
They had their homeworlds wiped out by machines they'd created.
They'd been hunted across space by these machines.
They'd been trapped in the cramped and overcrowded confines of their ships, many of which were not designed to hold large amounts of people for long periods of time.
They'd tried rebuilding their civilisation, only to have it wiped out again and suffer the loss of most of their remaining equipment.
Back again to being hunted.
Back again to being stuck on the ships.
They get to Earth, the place they'd been promised they'd finaly be safe, and they find it had been nuked. By the machines they'd created.
Back to the ships.
Back to being hunted.
They have other humans destroying the fleet from within, including a mutiny among the crew of Galactica, the one ship they'd always thought would be a safe haven.
They have their leaders wiped out due to political power grabs.

Then they find a new planet. This one is beautiful, with lush fields, plentiful food, fauna in abundance, and lots of fresh water. To them, it's paradise. It's the promised land they'd been searching for over the past four years.

With all the shit that went on, it'd be pretty much impossible to avoid massive anti-technology sentiments from becoming rampant among the surviving members of the fleet. Add in a bunch of idealists yapping about how great it would be to get back to the basics, and I don't find it at all surprising that they collectively went "You know what? Frak this civilisation shit. Let's go and build farms and hunt animals and we'll be safe from that ever happening again."
Sure, within a few months they were all probably kicking themselves for doing that. But I don't find it at all surprising.
I have no idea what you are getting at, other than the poitn of the series was an exercise in futility. That the struggle we saw these people endure meant absolutely nothing because 30,000 people died and their struggle would be forgotten. The cycle would continue because there was no record. If this was the point of the series then it was pretty pointless.
The humans and cylons both survived in the form of Hera, and thus as us.
And Six implied at the end that the cycle may very well be broken (though that's just from sheer chance, admittedly).
How Cylons are almost indestructible early on and become cannon fodder by the New Caprica settlement.
The cylons were shown to have a pretty shit industrial base. They had The Colony, and that seemed to be it. As more and more Centurions got destroyed, they may well have started building them with sub-standard materials to get larger quantities available. The presence of survivors and resistance movements on the Colonies would have played a major part in this. It's all well and good having a million or so nearly indestructable soldiers, but when you need billions to properly scour and secure the worlds from surviving humans, then you'll have to sacrafice quality for quantity.

Another factor is that the Colonials would have had time to develop better rounds for dealing with cylons by then. By the start of the war, they had no idea what the new centurions were like. It doesn't surprise me that their guns were shit at countering them initialy. As their intel on them grew and they captured parts of damaged centurions for study (the failed boarding attempt in Season 2 would have been a major factor in this) they would have been able to figure out how to design better bullets to kill them with.

Basicaly, it's a combo of greater intel on behalf of the Colonials, and the cylons deciding the choose quantity over quality.
What the Cylons' plan was? Oh, that's right, I have to watch an entirely different series for that.
Yeah, the cylons hadn't a fucking clue what they were doing. There was no great plan, which is why they probably removed that segment for Season 4.
I can only assume the plan reffered to their attempted destruction of humanity.
How 30,000 people could be convinced destroying their ships and making their lives even harder and more miserable, as well as depriving them of even a hope of escape if the Cylons decide to wipe them out.
See previous answers on this point.
How if they know it has happened before and it will happen again that Lee and the rest don't try and determine some way of insuring their descendants will know it had happened. But without knowledge of what a robot even is how can they do that?
Maybe they did try. Maybe they left engravings, or something. Maybe that's why their mythology is similar to ancient Greece's. In the end, their attempt simply didn't work.
As opposed to the slow death of dealing with going primitive. You have a point about there being farmers in the fleet, but without modern medical technology these people are in for a bleak future.
Exactly what medical tech do they have? Most of those facilities were on Galactica, which was completely unsafe to use by that point. Most of their medicine and drugs would have been used up. They've no way of either recreating those facilities or making any more medicines or drugs.

Sure, they might die of diesease down on New Earth, but that's far preferable to dying of diesease on a crowded, dilapidated starship.
Hell, it could even be argued that not having humans packed into ships with recycled air systems would make it less likely for dieseases to spread.
Yes, a lot of that stuff was left behind. But it was obvious there were plans for a new city.
Yes, a new city. How does that translate into them being able to rebuild their civilisation? The only indication we got of any plans was Lampkin commenting that a nearby river would be the best place to start building stuff. That doesn't mean it was going to be anything better than a giant tent and log cabin city.
Galactica, while crippled, could have provided plenty of raw material for construction.
And how are you going to get these materials? You've nothing to tear of chunks of the hull with. You can't go inside the ship and start taking it apart from the inside out in case it falls apart and kills you. Short of crashing the ship onto the planet, there was no way for them to get anything that was bolted down from it.
It had machine shops that could have been transferred to the planet below.
How? Can the facilities actualy be removed from the ship? How are you going to get them down below if they can? They can hardly fit them on Raptors.
Short of dismantling them into their tiny individual components, loading them on Raptors, and rebuilding them back on the surface (which they may very well now have the knowledge to do) those shops were staying on the Galactica.
Ships have engines, perhaps some of the fighters could have been dismantled. We saw the chief build a stealth fighter from scratch so innovation was nothing new to these people.
Chief was also an expert on fixing and rebuilding fighters. He would have had the experience and know-how to design and build a new one, and even then it took other crewmembers chipping in with their own bits of knowledge (Dee's comment that the Chief hadn't a clue about how to get the comms working being a nice example) to get it finaly built. Does that mean he can build, say, a combine harvester? A tractor? Car? No, not necessarily.
I disagree. The mechanisms were still there for an advanced civilization. Simply destroying all their ships deprived them of advanced medical care, durable shelter, data bases full of useful information.
When they were stuck on New Caprica they didn't have that stuff after a whole year. What makes you think they'll do any better off with most of their equipment gone, and their ships falling apart? It's rather cler that any attempt to rebuild civilisation would have just ended in failure.
Also, consider this. In Ireland the Potato Famine killed up to perhaps 1.5 million people. Imagine if such a blight had struck the colonists? With the ships they could have pulled up stakes and moved to another region of the planet.
Presumably that's why they were spread out across the planet in smaller groups, rather than staying in one large settlement.
Also, they have plenty of wildlife that can easily be hunted and killed if necessary. We didn't.
Or their medical databases could have found a cure for such a blight.
With most of their analysis equipment gone, and most of the chemicals they'd presumably require to treat it also gone, that's rather pointless. They may figure out what is causing it, but that's no guarantee they'll be able to cure it.
A small colony of 30,000 people could be wiped out in a year by such an event.
Which is exactly why they weren't grouped together in one big city, as any attempt to rebuild civilisation would have resulted in.
And
yet you think living simple is somehow better?
Better? Nope. Pragmatic? Yes.
She turned out to be an angel who led them to the promised land. I threw up a little in my mouth at that.
Why? Would you have had the same reaction if it was, say, Billy that came back and led them to Earth? Or is it just because it was Starbuck?
Sure, later on. But so much of what he did during the series involved butting heads with his father. Representing Baltar, for example, was more to spite Adama than anything else.
Agreed. As I said, he had father issues.
With that attitude then why bother watching Star Trek, which teaches us humans can be something better?
You may have noticed that I'm commonly the first to point out the idiocy of the whole pseudo-communist utopia the UFP is. I watch Trek because it had good plots, and interesting characters. When that stopped in VOY, I quickly stopped watching, and gave up on ENT after just the first three or four episodes.
What BSG pretty much says is humans are hamsters running in a wheel
That's because we are. Short of mass brainwashing, humans aren't suddenly going to change the fundamental ways in which they think over the course of a few centuries. We're going to be like this for a long time.
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"
Aaron
3 Star Admiral
3 Star Admiral
Posts: 10988
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:01 pm
Location: Timepire Mobile Command Centre
Contact:

Re: The Finale

Post by Aaron »

Rochey wrote:
The ships were of no practical use. They could do nothing with them, other than use them as a form of transportation. Presumably they stripped out anything of use before sending them all into the sun. As such, it'd be pointless having a bunch of empty hulls drifting around up there.
They were a source of ready made shelter but besides that I think the most practical use would have been to land the ones that could on the moon and engrave the story of their history into the walls.
User avatar
kostmayer
Captain
Captain
Posts: 2812
Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2007 11:08 am

Re: The Finale

Post by kostmayer »

"One small step for man, one giant - holy crap!"
"You ain't gonna get off down the trail a mile or two, and go missing your wife or something, like our last cook done, are you?"
"My wife is in hell, where I sent her. She could make good biscuits, but her behavior was terrible."
Sionnach Glic
4 Star Admiral
4 Star Admiral
Posts: 26014
Joined: Fri Jul 13, 2007 10:58 pm
Location: Poblacht na hÉireann, Baile Átha Cliath

Re: The Finale

Post by Sionnach Glic »

Heh, fair point.
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"
Aaron
3 Star Admiral
3 Star Admiral
Posts: 10988
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:01 pm
Location: Timepire Mobile Command Centre
Contact:

Re: The Finale

Post by Aaron »

As far as I'm concerned the entire conclusion of the finale was nothing but authors fiat. You want to go live on Earth, OK fine. But destroying your ships rather then use them to at least give a chance that this crap isn't going to happen again is just retarded. You had a whole fleet of Cylon Centurions that could have been used to engrave life like pictures into the ships bulkheads. Call me crazy but if we landed on the moon and found a fucking kilometer long ship covered in pictures that say "don't build these things, they will go genocide on your ass", I don't think we'd do it.

As a side note, nice to know that I was close in my assumption that the Cylons are actually humans.
User avatar
Captain Seafort
4 Star Admiral
4 Star Admiral
Posts: 15548
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2007 1:44 pm
Location: Blighty

Re: The Finale

Post by Captain Seafort »

Rochey wrote:No, Hera was the Mitochondrian Eve; the individual from which the majority of today's humans can trace their ancestry to. The others presumably weren't as succesful, and any tribes or families they started died off over the generations.
Not quite - Hera being Mitochondrial Eve doesn't mean that everyone else's lines have died out. There could be descendants of all the Colonials on Earth today, but Hera's the only on who's the ancestor of everyone.
And how would they mine materials?
Pick them up off the ground. We need to mine ores today because all the easily accessible stuff was used up millennia ago. The Colonials wouldn't have that problem. There's certainly no way they'd be able to rebuild their civilisation, but they could have established the basis of an iron age civilisation (and may well have done so).
The cylons were shown to have a pretty s**t industrial base. They had The Colony, and that seemed to be it. As more and more Centurions got destroyed, they may well have started building them with sub-standard materials to get larger quantities available. The presence of survivors and resistance movements on the Colonies would have played a major part in this. It's all well and good having a million or so nearly indestructable soldiers, but when you need billions to properly scour and secure the worlds from surviving humans, then you'll have to sacrafice quality for quantity.
Another possibility is that, since the only time I'm aware of Centurions being stated to be invulnerable to standard ammunition was during a boarding action, the Cylons may have a track record of using up-armoured models in such encounters. Of course, that leads to problems regarding the boarding in Daybreak, but by that stage, years later, your hypothesis regarding a degraded industrial base comes into play.
Yeah, the cylons hadn't a f***ing clue what they were doing. There was no great plan, which is why they probably removed that segment for Season 4.
I can only assume the plan reffered to their attempted destruction of humanity.
Oh they (or rather Cavil specifically) had a plan - revenge on the Five.
Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe: Albert Einstein.
Post Reply