Elessar

If you get stuff like that I seriously recommend you run Peer Guardian while you DL. Keeps those fascist MPAA bastards off your tails.

I thought some of those questions were a little stupid. Is anyone sure for example that the number of ridges on Kira's nose was even constant? What if she has 5 at one time and 6 at another b/c costumes change in 7 years. Some were just worded badly, "The Klingons in TOS had flat foreheads because of a viral infection." Is that supposed to be TRUE because it's just a sloppy way to refer to the Divergence Arc in Enterprise, or FALSE because the right wording would be "genetic manipulation which caused a virus..."? Also, Bashir's IQ was never actually stated, but I believe he said when he was talking about his genetic manipulation that it "Jumped 5 points a day for two weeks" so you could figure out that it went up by... 70 points, and if you GUESSED about what his IQ was before that you could try to extrapolate, but I would suppose the answer to that is FALSE because it was never said. Same for, Q, i really hope whoever wrote this didn't write it such that Q's IQ is 2008 or 2006 or any number - you couldn't even begin to quantify Q's IQ realistically. When Barclay was genetically altered by an alien signal his IQ was like 1400...there's no way a mere human even with some screwing around like that would be even 600 pts from Q's.

No, they never did regardless of proposed fan-explanations. I believe I even read somewhere they hadn't even decided who it was. I think it would have been coolest to make it a character we'd seen before, like Captain Braxton from the USS Relativity in Voyager B)

Quick question - I've been gone for awhile. Do the afore-mentioned comments mean that we patrons here at Niteshdw are mere forum-posters, *wink wink* And that the FORUM is the only thing niteshdw provides, *nudge nudge*?

Whoever voted "no, there is no alien life" is pretty damn short sighted. show yourself mr. "God created humanity and only humans have souls". *rolls eyes* The universe, without gratuitious use of meaningless terms like "known" (we don't *know* a fraction of what there is to be *known* about the "known" universe *rolls eyes again*) is huge and vast. point being there are some 200-400 billion stars in this galaxy, how many hundreds of billions, perhaps trillons of galaxies in the universe, some larger and some smaller than the milky way galaxy. Given THAT DAMN MANY it's an absurdly tiny fraction to even hypothesize that something like 100 intelligent species per galaxy would exist, insanely, INSANELY tiny - and that's just assuming the kind of life form we are. this is completely ignoring the possibility of life forms that are spawned, evolve, exist and die out in star systems where solar evolution causes the planet to only be habitable for say 100 million years out of the star's life span. Just b/c our sun has been relaxed enough to be a main sequence star for about 5 billion years doesn't mean biological evolution has to be so lazy everywhere else, maybe other races are born and die within a few million years. astronomical phenomena like solar storms, gamma ray bursts, comet collisions, meteor showers - all of these things can affect life in more ways than just negatively. What if a star system that we would classify as not being able to support life blurbs out a burst of solar storms that irradiates a planet, forces monumental genetic mutation in some base life form like single celled organism and 10 million years later you've got an Asgard. a person doesn't even have to look at how likely it is that there is other humanoid/carbonbased/sun-like-solar-system/earth-like races out there, you can just imagine that beyond our particular "style" of life there are hundreds of other configurations. It's endless, and undeniable. you know right now, at this very moment there could be multi cellular, even intelligent aquatic life on Europa, or rather *IN* Europa since it's believed to contain liquid oceans beneath miles of ice and possibly geothermal energy to maybe sustain life....And we'd never friggin know it, not until we go there anyway ;) the possibilities are endless :)

i wasn't of voting age ;)

First of all, you're missing a crucial variable to the Prophet equation... Sisko. He is the Emissary and he is what they have been waiting for, the "time of the Emissary", the events that take place during that time and the Prophets' behavior cannot be evaluated based on a track record of the past - it's a time of revelation! Of massive change! And as for the Defiant....what do you mean by "Command" officers? Becuase as far as I count it, "Command" officers are the ones with the red collars or the red tags or the red upper shoulder dpeending on the season. And 1. Kira's not a Command Officer she's not even in Starfleet, 2. Ezri's not a command officer she's a SCIENCE officer, 3. Bashir's not a command officer he's a MEDICAL officer, 4. O'Brian's not a Command Officer he's an ENGINEER! So wtf are you complaining about?

This was actually to ntroduce the fact that in my estimation TNG was largely based around stories of technology not humanity. If you want to call this my opinion, fine, but with enough hours of nothing better to do we could just quantify what % of the scripts were technobabble and out of the realm of opinion we go. It's hardly speculation. When I look at that scene, I ask myself this question. Is there anything Sharon could have told him that would NOT have resulted in physical abuse? Did he go there to actually get information out of her or did he just go there to wail on her? Well we can't ask him and nobody else did, so we look at the facts that we DO know and infer his motivation. A. Gina raped, beaten. B. Thorn's obvious reputation among Pegasus' crew. C. It took about 30 seconds for him to lose his belt, if he wanted information, he sure as hell didn't try very hard. It isn't slight, and I haven't mistaken the two. My observation of Thorn's motivation was based on facts, as I referred to above, not a baseless hypothesis. I agree all of your speculations have merit, we still don't know yet just how much the Cylons feel or how much they don't feel. But you sound a little as if you're inclining to believe they CAN and DO turn off their physical and emotional limitations after capture. Your reasoning is that as a tactical decision it would be logical to give them a failsafe, which has merit... but if it were as simple as that why not just a self destruct measure instead of reactionary precautions. Like in "Impostor", put a bomb in their organs to go off if they're caught, take the enemy out with them. Something tells me (and yes, this is speculation) that the Cylons wanted so bad for their models to mimic human capacity in every way that they've gone a little too far and done it a little too well. Why does Caprica-Six look distressed in of "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down" when the Doral model is talking about experiencing love? It'd be speculation to say what she's distressed about, but clearly she's upset about somethin which would be particularly dangerous around him, so why let it happen when it's not only not a tactical move (no human in sight) but a danger to her? I don't believe we have enough evidence to conclude either way, however I think there is more evidence to suggest that they can't just flip their emotions and vulnerability off like a switch. It may have been a design flaw on the Cylons' part, but I think there's going to be a motivation revealed at some point as to a particular reason (mystically related to their pentient for religion perhaps) that they wanted their models so human, even to the point of fault. Again I think the reason we differ on this point is that you are disappointed they used rape as an interrogative tactic whereas I rather don't believe its motivation WAS interrogation. It'd make more sense to critisize 'Flesh and Bone', which I would assume you did since all Kara did was beat the hell out of Leoben to try to get answers out of him. Here's one of my points about BSG though. "Let's run a charge through THIS area of the brain." how exactly do you plan to do that? Are there neurosurgeons in the fleet, are there Cylon cybernetic specialists besides Baltar? Is he in any way qualified to try to do that? And would he ever put one in danger by trying? Six would kick his ass. And if we're talkin about Pegasus, they obviously wouldn't have anyone medically or scientifically capable of doing it. Remember Pegasus and Galactica are both warships, the lab equipment Baltar has acquired has most likely been largely scrounged together around the fleet (a resource Pegasus didn't have) or pieced together of his own genius from parts Galactica could spare. While the people on Pegasus may have no ethical problems whatsoever in doing a little experimental brain surgery on Gina, they would have no guarantee that some half-witted, ill-designed procedure to goof around with her brain might just kill her and destroy any possibility of getting info from her whatsoever. What I'm getting at is in other sci fi, such as TNG (is why I mentioned it, not to knock it but to make a point), the MEANS to some mechanical end is completely obliterated for favor of seeing the end result. Why am I glad some fancy method of jacking into a Cylon brain wasn't hashed out in 15 minutes by Baltar? Because in BSG, thus far, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that obstacles (water, fuel, damaged spacecraft, injured pilots, food and supply shortages, manpower) aren't just magically solved with some technology. And yes, that's my opinion, I prefer to see things more involved, more difficult. Not just punching 3 buttons on a replicator to make a new Viper, Tyrol having to build one from scratch. That's ok, I quoted nearly every part, I think we're even :cyclops: :D

I really don't see where you come up with this "exploiting the viewers emotions" ?? Just because it's sci fi doesn't mean every single plot device has to be laced with technobabble and involve technology... If I wanted that I'd stick to watching TNG reruns because after seeing a lot of other sci fi out there, I've realized that not ALL of it, but 85% of TNG was devoid of humanity. I'm not making this a tirade against TNG, but I'm making a point and using it as an example. In a storyline replete with technology, something as simplistic as rape and violence is intended to show us that at the very core of human flaws there is no shiny disruptor to vaporize a person in an instant, or a "mental rape" like even in Enterprise's 'Fusion'. What Thorn did wasn't motivated by interrogation, that's exactly the underlying morality check that I think is going to come out of the continuation. They didn't have any information to get from Gina, Admiral Cain even said so, they just raped her for vengeance, not for interrogation. And all these ideas about plugging into her brain and downloading her memories... The fact that didn't happen is exactly why this show isn't crap. They can't whip magical technology out of their hats, hell it took Baltar half the season to get a working Cylon detector when TNG would have invented it in 5 minutes. And now he's saying it doesn't work! The difference is this show isn't about technology, it's about humanity, the way the very BEST (but not nearly every) Star Trek episodes were written. Nearly every week of BSG for me is like Inner Light, The Visitor, Ties of Blood and Water, Real Life, etc. I went off on a tangent but my point was, I don't see how the rape was "exploiting emotion". :thinking:

Well first are you gonna argue it's in fact scientifically plausible to have 12 habitable bodies in one system or are you going to say it's sci fi and let's let it go? B/c if it's the latter then there's no point in 85% of threads like these existing because a lot of the debate is ABOUT things like these in sci fi. I am not an astrophysicist but I'm a junior in astronautics and there are only certain orbital distances around a star that would be habitable for life, and considering we're talking about human life, we can assume most of the conditions that would be necessary. It depends on the mass, age and composition of the star but the larger and hotter it is, further that range is going to be pushed out towards the further reaches of the system. Meaning closer planets will be not unlike the surface of Mercury. If it's smaller and more like our sun or even cooler, the outer planets would be iceballs. And you can't cram the orbits too much closer together because rocky-planets like Earth and Mars only form at certain distances b/c of their density. It's generally accepted that by natural stellar evolution, astronomers doubt more than two habitable planets in one star system could develop. The scapegoat here for BSG could be moons. Saturn and Jupiter have a number of large moons like Europa and Ganymede that, given extremely sophisticated terraforming, could support life. I'll confess there are really bizarre situations where life could be sustainable on a planet far from the sun if it had a tremendous amount of radiated geothermal energy, but that's reaching for straws to say there could be nearly 10 of those. Then again now that I think about it, given terraforming, you could probably populate 2 or 3 other barren planets like Mars. the bottom line is even with all these caviots there's no concievable way 12 distinct habitable human planets could exist in a solar system.... Unless it were binary...or trinary...

The answer to about 80% of questions about Star Trek can be answered "because it wouldn't have worked". In cases where there's at least a decently plausible Trek-verse explanation, the fact that it served the story purposes should be abandoned in favor of the story-line idea, IMO. Besides the fact, there are two answers. First of all if you want to destroy an enemy ship, you're not about to beam your people over there and then destroy it. You send a boardin party when you want to capture someone or confiscate something, not destroy. It's not easy as clockwork to beam a team to a ship, destroy it and get off in time, it would require the Trek equivalent of a SF team, that's why we see Starfleet do it so rarely in any Trek. And in this case I had thought they encountered few hostile species who had transporter technology. Off hand, who that they encountered had it?

Oh right yeah, good point. They haven't mentioned anything about "un-networking" their computer systems or any of that... Plus I think there's a lot about Pegasus' more advanced technology that simply couldn't be "unhooked", Baltar's "CMP Program" I think they called it which controls all of their navigation was totally cracked by the cylons. They'd have to manually navigate like Galactica does. Got me :thinking:

Forgetting whether or not Doc Cottle is a cylon, you can't just "forget about that b plot" for thing, it's not a b plot, it pretty much IS the plot. The very point is that the fact that just about anybody COULD be a cylon has caused rampant paranoia, just like it really would, hell just like it has, the Red Scare is a prime example. So far as I've been able to tell, the real story of BSG is very much an exploration of humanity and that part of it is how far we can be pushed by paranoia and anxiety. It's not going to go away, there are still like 7 models we haven't seen yet (and 8 total in the fleet), they're going to keep finding them in the fleet, no doubt about that.

Someone mentioned this either here or at another board I was reading on. The explanation offered was that something in the conversation between Cain and Adama was mentioned referring to the Pegasus being in drydock. I think they took the implication that all of Pegasus' computer systems were shut down (?) so the Cylons couldn't access their computer systems... The only explanation from that would be that they powered up and jumped IMMEDIATELY before the Cylons could virus-rape them. :rolleyes: It's a little farfetched I know.

But it's pretty much physically impossible for them to be in 12 different systems because in the mini they talk about how they haven't used FTL drive in 22 years or something. It's not possible to maintain casual contact from starsystem to star system at sublight speeds.

Are they all planets in the same solar system? Are some of them moons? I didn't think they could be separate star systems because they say in the beginning they haven't used the FTL drive in like 20 years... But how could that part about "Kobol's Last Gleaming..." make sense where they said from Earth you could look up and see all 12 of "their brothers" ? That would imply that Sagittaron was in Sagittarius, Virgon was in Virgo....etc. But that would put them THOUSANDS of lightyears apart... Can someone explain where all the colonies are?

There are a lot of moral and ethical angles to this episode which is what made it so wonderful. The fact that it has people on both sides of the fence proves its a cusp in human morality.......treatment of the enemy. And it may have been unintentional, but it's of course a pretty fair representation of recent political events, without going into it - the treatment of POWs by the American gov't. I'm not saying the show takes a stance either way because we haven't seen the conclusion. IMO it will be very telling to see Adama's reaction and many others' reactions to what Chief and Helo did based on the fact that Sharon was being raped. Obviously the Pegasus crew will abhor them but what about the Galactica crew? There you will have mixed ideas... Chief is very close to everyone, Helo is part of the family yet more of a rift lies between him and the crew because of they felt about the first Sharon, having shot Adama. And the fact that Helo is with Sharon doesn't make him popular of course. So will the individuals back Helo as much as Chief, and Chief was really the one who directly killed the guy. What will Cally think, she was the one who killed Sharon 1, will she condone what Chief did to defend Sharon 2? The biggest question in my mind is Adama's reaction. Even once they get Chief and Helo back to Galactica, will they be off the hook? Most likely not, while not executed, how favorably will Adama look on the circumstances? Will he think it was justified based on the atrocity of what Thorn was doing? Will he THINK IT WAS an atrocity? I hope to the Gods he will, if there's anyone on the show is closEST to being of nearly spotless ethical character it's Adama. Plus she's saved his ass enough times IMO to warrant a little consideration. I think one of the directions the show is going is to show that the Cylons may have made some of their agents SO human that they're TOO human for their own good. It may sound a little cliche but they may be aiming towards the idea that silica pathways or neural pathways - both are living creatures. Yes the cylons butchered billions, but those were actions without conscience or guilt. What if the Cylon-models are so human that some of them (Sharon model) are capable of guilt? The biggest question that I kind of see burgeoning from this series is that of forgiveness and redemption... Who will accept Sharon as someone who is trying to redeem herself, who will accept her as a defector who they can trust? Has she done enough to redeem herself... Are there people who will NEVER feel like she can be redeemed. Is her very existence unreconcilable, is it impossible to forgive her for what she is? The fact that Helo fell in love with her before he knew what she was is the only reason he ever did....... Same with Chief. But now that love is forcing people to re examine whether it's such a simple issue anymore. And for my own ethical opinion on the matter, rape is about violation... There comes a point when in all practicality, she might as well be human because her screams and terror are just as real, even if they are produced by silica instead of carbon. Typically the kind of person who could rape a Cylon who looked, acted, sounded, felt and thought like a Human with zero compunction as Lt Thorn is capable - is probably the same kind of person who could rape an ordinary human being.

That's what I said in my post in the 2x10 thread. If you think about it, if Cain was a cylon, why would she have allowed the severe abuse of Six? However, there's also the question of how the Pegasus survived. Adama and the President seemed somewhat skeptical that the Admiral was telling the truth about their 'escape'. I think the Pegasus' escape is a good reason to wonder about Admiral Cain, plus I'm kind of wondering, what happened to Pegaus' regular CO, the Commander in charge? If the Colonial Fleet is like the Navy, an admiral can take command but typically wouldn't be a field CO. :stare: I don't think the fact that Cain allowed Six to be tortured though necessarily puts doubt on her possibly being a cylon...I'm not saying I think she IS a cylon, but they allow all kinds of harm to come to the Models. One of the Six's on Caprica set it up so that Sharon would save Helo's life by killing ANOTHER Six model. And they clearly sent in the first Six to die on that remote outpost.....And Baltar's Six died in the nukes on Caprica. So I think the Cylons have very little problem with sacrificing models to get a job done.

Well, that's kind of stupid I mean, I don't know a single person who would actually cancel a channel for the half of the year that their show isn't actually playing.........that would seriously be major cheapness. Besides, I wouldn't be able to even if I wanted to, like most people I think. It's part of my satellite cable package...What am I going to do, cancel my satellite for half the year until it comes back on? If this is really their motivation, to make me pay for their channel half the year I'm not going to be watching it, it's pointless, because I'm too lazy and it's not feasible and completely stupid to actually NOT pay for it even if it did play out for a solid half of the year like a regular show.

Soo........does this mean I will be able to see the rest of the season continue on SkyOne rips......And when??

I don't think Cain is going to survive much longer, at first I thought it was unlikely that her XO or anyone else would kill her, rather they'd just arrest her, but at SF Channel's website she's credited as a "Special Guest Star", so something tells me either she, or the entire Pegasus, isn't going to last. Previously I thought they'd find a way to keep Pegasus in the fleet, and I bet they will. I'm thinking something else is going to "dispatch Admiral Cain" in some form or another. I've also read spoilers that Adama is promoted to Admiral, however, I think that'd be pretty petty if Roslin did that JUST to give him equal authority, for one thing it wouldn't solve anything, he wouldn't be Cain's superior. And depending on their military infrastructure, it could concievably accomplish nothing because often times more senior admirals are still considered superior officers to junior admirals. IMO, the promotion of Adama to Admiral will probably come after Cain is out of the way anyway, and she'll promote him just to make sure this kind of conflict of command can never happen again.... So that if they were to ever encounter another high ranking fleet officer, he'd still be the supeior officer. That's what I think'll happen, it'll be a preventative measure once the current situation is already resolved.

How is it not the season finale? Nobody's griping but I'm confused here, everything I've read says 'Season Finale' and Sci Fi Ch's website says next week's episode is Scattered....That's an old episode :thinking: Unless you're just talkin about how pretty soon Season 3 is gonna start in the UK...? Does anyone know if that means we'll get SkyOne HD rips? EDIT: Ok now I've found spoilers about "2x11 - Resurrection Ship".....I am SO confused :stare: :stare:, can someone explain what's going on? And what the hell is "The Gun on Ice Planet Zero" ? :stare:

Yeah this was a season finale, why they chose to show only 10 episodes I don't know.... The one interesting thing to note is that if you count the 3-hour miniseries as 3-1 hour episodes, then in two seasons they've made exactly 26 episodes. That's just kind of a significant number b/c many sci fi/primetime shows go exactly or around 26 episodes in ONE season, so Galactica's averaging half that. that may be why, they may be trying to average a half-sized season. I could easily seen BSG making a movie eventually, this show is just so phenomenal, there are so many directions for them to go, we love it as it is now and it's really just in its infancy! :cyclops: I'm anxious to see the continuation as well, and also quite a bit to see if they find a way to keep Pegasus a part of the fleet, and what they do about all their prejudices towards Sharon... :mad: And oh yes, the music is really powerful....It makes me tear up at times actually, I think it's the celtic undertones, it sounds Celtic...Anyone else notice that who....might, unlike me, know something about celtic music? B)

Sharon said there were 8 remaining cylons "in the fleet". Which poses two questions: 1) did sharon know the Pegasus was out there, thus did she count Pegasus as "the fleet" 2) are there cylon agents on Pegasus and who could they be...Adm. Cain!?! She's sure as hell causing a lot of dissention... :rolleyes: