Posted on 06/17/2008 6:13:21 PM PDT by KevinDavis
The following story contains possible MODERATE SPOILERS for the final episodes of "Battlestar Galactica" in the second half of the fourth season. This story also contains RUMORS which have not been officially confirmed, and should be treated as rumor until confirmed by SciFi Channel.
Idle speculation, or is there something brewing here.
A lot of fans were puzzled by the fact that Chief Tyrol was made a Cylon -- a part of the Final Five -- despite the fact that he not only was married, but he had a kid.
"Battlestar Galactica" made a big deal about the hybrid child Hera and how she was the face of things to come. But the same amount of attention has been absent from Nicholas Tyrol, even after it was revealed he himself is a Cylon Hybrid.
So what does this mean? One source for the show says that the future story involving Nicholas and Hera will have its own Biblical proportions -- like Genesis.
(Excerpt) Read more at syfyportal.com ...
One shouldn't have to resort to a genetic analysis to determine whether someone has "stuff that can glow" in their spinal column or not. We know that humans don't, therefore anyone who does, is macroscopically different from humans.
On the other hand who says they actually glow at all, that could entirely be a “for the audience” thing so we’d know who some of the Cylons are,
Well if that's what it is, it remains on my list of complaints about the show, it just becomes a different kind of complaint ("something that's dumb and treats the audience like morons" rather than "something that's inconsistent and not well thought out").
As we get closer and closer to “jack-in” computing it is important to remember that most of our impulses cruise around our body in a way that’s similar to electricity and we already know can be mimicked by electricity. Maybe human hands can go in the Cylon goo and interface, Baltar chickened out so we have no data in either direction on that.
I guess I see this as a question of signal strength. Whatever electrical impulses fly around the human nervous system, it seems implausible that such a signal could be picked up by a 'resurrection ship' however-many thousands of miles away. Or that the signal sent to/from one's hand can carry the amount of information Boomer seems to get out of the goo.
Tigh: who knows. I think that’s part of the big reveal.
My point exactly: who knows?
My guess (100% totally unsupported by ANYTHING in the show so far, though not contradicted either): some human was screwing around with “merging” Cylons and humans before the first war and this is where the originals like Tigh came from. This would also explain why the Cylons put so much work into skin jobs, because they knew it could be done.
That's a pretty decent theory and you could very well be right (in the sense that, it seems pretty likely to me that that's the way the writers will go). If this is the explanation, I'm still wondering why everyone calls these guys "the final five", since under this scenario they were the original five.
One point I haven't mentioned is how utterly implausible it is that these random four, if they were so important and unique, all somehow managed to survive not only the Cylon attack but all the dangers that have come after, and ended up in the Galactica fleet. Think about how haphazard Anders's path was to get to the fleet. Or how essentially random and unimportant a person Tory is to be one of the "final five".
Both Tigh and Tori have said a switch went off in their heads and they knew.
Yes but how? Why? Maybe they are just insane.
The Final Five: what else should they call them.
Anything else, frankly. Anything that doesn't pull us out of the narrative and remind us that we're watching a TV drama. Again: there's nothing "final" about these 5 other than the fact that they are the last 5 revealed on the TV show.
There’s going to be some label for them, The Other Five, The Mystery Five, The Five We Don’t Know About, might as well be The Final Five, has a good ring to it.
Right; it had a good ring to it, on the TV show. It doesn't make sense in context however. Again, why would the people within the show think of them as "final"? It's as if The Sopranos had been written such that all the characters called Tony "The Protagonist". BSG seems to have some writers who don't realize how jarring and clunky it is to write like that.
There are certainly things that don’t mesh well, and things that are odd. But that’s part of story telling, especially when the story is incomplete.
It may be part of storytelling and it may be part of incomplete stories but it's also true that all other things being equal, it's better when stories mesh well than when they don't. Basically you're conceding my point here but trying to sweep it aside with "all stories do it". That doesn't really fly; on such grounds one can't ever judge stories on this basis at all. Which is silly, of course.
I remember when B5 was going on at one point a lot of the fans were complaining to JMS about how much the story was a generic “good vs evil”, “dark vs light”, it was all so obvious the Shadows were the bad guys and the Vorlons were the good guys and he’d promised something more than that. JMS only ever had one answer, and he said it over and over for a season and a half: wait for it. If you’re familiar with Babylon 5 then you know he was right and the complainers were wrong, but at the time before the story was complete it looked different. There’s still close to a dozen episodes of BSG to go, I’m not going to declare anything contradictory until the WHOLE story is told.
This is a perfect counterexample to illustrate my point: JMS had plotted out the story arc beforehand and knew where he was going. Ronald Moore did not. And I'm not just making that up, Moore has given interviews to this effect. He did NOT know that Tigh etc. would turn out to be Cylons when the show began. This is something he/the writers came up with later. Which is precisely my point.
JMS wrote Babylon 5 completely different and that's part and parcel of why it was better storytelling from a story-arc basis, and BSG has the problems it has. If you're telling me to "wait for it" that's a little disingenuous because you know as well as I do that BSG wasn't written the way JMS wrote Babylon 5. The best one can hope for is that the writers will come up with something on the fly that will turn out to have been worth waiting for and somehow tie up loose ends. But that's precisely my criticism, because when BSG began, it seemed to be so much better and more well-thought-out than that.
Not always (Babylon 5 was brought up earlier). But essentially, you're right, the criticisms I have trace to these things. But that doesn't mean I can't level the criticisms! For crying out loud, if I took this "defense" of yours seriously, I'd never be able to criticize a single TV show, movie, or any other piece of art ever again.
"It's created by humans. Humans mess up" is not a universal defense of art. I realize humans are fallible but nevertheless we can and do judge their output. So, you have "defended" BSG by saying that because they're only human, altered-plans and changed-minds were somewhat inevitable. Well, all this really does is concede my point, which is precisely that BSG contains many elements that seem to be the product of changed premises, altered plans, and changed minds.
That is a strike against it in my book. It would be better if BSG did not have these features.
Even if things are "a little contradictory", that doesn't mean it isn't an enjoyable television program.
It actually does lessen the enjoyability for me, and for anyone who values these things in fiction (and especially in sci-fi). I agree that it doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable, just that it's less enjoyable than I believe it would have been had they remained consistent and thought out the story arc better.
So I guess I'm missing your point.
Yeah, I guess so....
Babylon 5 is a great example. They changed captains not because that was intended, but because the buy who played Sinclair ended up having the charisma of a bologna sandwich on camera. So yes - even in the best of series premises change, plans are altered, minds are changed over the course of several years. Maybe Babylon 5 responded to those changed premises better, maybe not.
I think the criticisms you have raised barely rise above the level of nitpicking (except the whole “Cylons can plug into computers”, which was stupid then and remains stupid now). The points in the show which are contradictory are by and large minor.
Not to mention that you’ve been factually wrong with some of your other criticisms, leading me to believe that you rather enjoy finding fault with the program. Which is cool - you’re not alone in that.
Why shouldn’t they have to do a genetic analysis? Bioluminescence is the result of genetics, which tweaks certain organs into release certain enzymes. We know that humans can’t but we’re also learning that the tweak to make it so humans can isn’t that big, we know from our experiments in making these mods in lower animals that it is not a macroscopic change, proven by the fact that most of them can breed with their normal counterpart.
The download and resurrection ship stuff I’m not sure about. It would have to be a pretty strong receiver, probably coupled with some changes to the bio-electric field of the Cylons to make it more of a carrier wave type signal.
But there’s nothing wrong with not knowing yet. There’s still a dozen episodes to go, you don’t want to have all the answers with half a season yet to show, then there’s nothing to do.
They’re the final five because they’re the final five. Gotta have a name, heck they aren’t even the final five within the Cylon numbering scheme (they’re 7, and 9-12). Remember they aren’t just the final five to be revealed to us, they’re the final five to be revealed to them, in spite of the number scheme, regardless of the order of creation, they are the last five Cylons to be known.
Implausibility is a major part of story telling, the bigger the story the more implausible it tends to be. How plausible is it that two barefoot midgets walked up the side of a volcano in the heart of the bad guy’s territory and threw his most precious item in the drink? How plausible is it that the best person at every single command position wound up on the same Starfleet ship? How plausible is it that the votes of a couple hundred people would decide whether or not we had a president that would stand and fight after 9-11?
I’m not conceding anything, just pointing out that expecting things to mesh before the story has been told to its completion is asking to be disappointed. That’s what the dénouement is for, explaining the unexplained parts and making the story mesh.
Well JMS had B5 running around in his head for a decade before eh even got the pilot green lit, Ron Moore kind of stumbled into this project. But there’s tons of B5 that didn’t appear to mesh until end. And even with all the prep work things changed due to changes in JMS’s thinking. Sinclair wasn’t supposed to leave after the first season, he was supposed to leave for Sheridan to come in but it was supposed to be late in the second if not all the way to the third. But after the first season JMS realized he’d pushed Sinclair further down the “gone Mimbari” path than he should have so he made the switch. Plans change, whether they’re plans come up with over the course of months like Ron Moore with BSG or the plans come up with over the course of a decade like JMS in B5.
If true, this was a real-world concern that forced the change. What real-world concern, I wonder, forced them to make Tigh a Cylon (which makes no sense) and Tory a Cylon (which is just stupid and random)?
Ratings. A stunt. "They'll never see that coming!" Right? But this is precisely what my complaint is.
So yes - even in the best of series premises change, plans are altered, minds are changed over the course of several years.
This is still just the 'everyone does it' defense. Yes ok all pieces of art are created by humans and thus are imperfect (etc etc), we've established that already. This doesn't mean we're not allowed to make distinctions and judgments among them.
Not to mention that you’ve been factually wrong with some of your other criticisms, leading me to believe that you rather enjoy finding fault with the program.
Maybe. But the thing is, I LOVED the show the first two seasons. I have no reason to 'enjoy finding fault' with it. What you're hearing is disappointment more than anything else. Best,
Do you even watch the show? Or do you catch some threads here and agree with the other knee-jerk types?
Well, virtually everything is the result of genetics one way or another. But do you need a genetic test to determine how many arms and legs a species has, or whether it has horns, or something along those lines? Or can you just...you know...look?
I think we must have a crossed signal here. I'm making a very basic point: the stuff in one's spinal column either can glow or it can't. You can tell this by examining the stuff. You don't need to trace back the genetic causality to tell you the end-state result of whether the stuff can glow. (People knew fireflies glowed, and probably a lot about the glowing stuff, without testing their genes, or even knowing about genes at all.)
What genetics might tell you is why/how the critter has glowing stuff. But I wasn't talking about that as a basis for the 'Cylon test' in the first place. My proposed basis was simply: 'does he have glowing stuff in his spine?' Again: one simply doesn't need genetics to test for that sort of property.
We know that humans can’t but we’re also learning that the tweak to make it so humans can isn’t that big,
Ok fine, the tweak wouldn't be that big in the DNA/informatics sense. Nevertheless, any humans so 'tweaked' would be relatively easy to tell from humans not tweaked: examine the gunk in/near their spine and see whether it contains material that could be biolumniscent.
we know from our experiments in making these mods in lower animals that it is not a macroscopic change,
'making the change' may not be macroscopic, but the evidence of the change (in your example) would be. In the case of 'glowing stuff in your spine', it definitely is. I still think you must just have missed the point I'm trying to make.
proven by the fact that most of them can breed with their normal counterpart.
This doesn't prove two critters have no macroscopic differences. It, rather, proves that they are the same species (by the conventional definition of species).
And by the way, I already made the point that I think humans and 'skinjobs' are the same species (by the most rational interpretation of what we've seen on the show), since as we have now seen, they can interbreed just fine. And so I think the 'glowing spine' stuff was just a cheesy thing they threw into the miniseries.
The download and resurrection ship stuff I’m not sure about. It would have to be a pretty strong receiver, probably coupled with some changes to the bio-electric field of the Cylons to make it more of a carrier wave type signal.
How are the Cylons creating this 'changed' bio-electric field that you think they must have? What is in their bodies that creates such a bio-electric field? Why can it be picked up by a resurrection ship but not by someone standing next to the Cylon who wants to test for Cylons?
But there’s nothing wrong with not knowing yet. There’s still a dozen episodes to go, you don’t want to have all the answers with half a season yet to show, then there’s nothing to do.
My complaint is not merely that we don't know. My complaint is that not only don't we know, but that there's really no logical explanation that would tie together such things, and thus even if we do get some 'answer' it will be something made up and insufficient.
You really don't think BSG in the final half-season is going to explain scientifically stuff like how Cylons download, or their glowing spines, do you?
Implausibility is a major part of story telling, the bigger the story the more implausible it tends to be.
I don't know if "bigger" is the word you mean there. Lots of "big" stories are not in the least implausible. Also if "implausibility is a major part of story telling" is meant to be a principle, rather than an empirical observation (i.e. the beloved 'everybody does it' defense), I disagree with it.
What I think you're trying to say is that sprawling and fantastical stories (like BSG, and most sci-fi) are inherently implausible. This is 100% true, which is precisely why things such as getting the rules of their universe straight and abiding consistently by them is so important.
How plausible is it that two barefoot midgets walked up the side of a volcano in the heart of the bad guy’s territory and threw his most precious item in the drink?
Not plausible at all. Which is precisely why it's a good thing that Sam didn't turn to Frodo at the last minute and go "oh by the way, I'm really an Orc in disguise, and always have been. And that ring you have? It's really a meaningless paper clip, and always has been. Also, I don't even like you." The story was fantastical but consistent, and painted a picture of a world that was imaginary but believable on its own terms.
How plausible is it that the best person at every single command position wound up on the same Starfleet ship?
Not plausible at all, which is a knock against Star Trek in my book. Because it makes that world less believable on its own terms.
I’m not conceding anything, just pointing out that expecting things to mesh before the story has been told to its completion is asking to be disappointed.
Silly me, I think things should mesh pretty well all the way through.
It seems like what you're talking about is the fact that stories don't reveal all their mysteries. This is true but it's not what I'm complaining about. If I merely thought that BSG had a bunch of unexplained but conceivably explainable mysteries, I'd have no complaint whatsoever. Part of the reason for my criticism is that I know full well by this point - and I think you do too - that no satisfactory 'explanation' for these sorts of things is going to be forthcoming.
That’s what the dénouement is for, explaining the unexplained parts and making the story mesh.
There is no conceivable way for them to do this at this point. That's the problem with making things up as you go along and contradicting yourself in the process.
Well JMS had B5 running around in his head for a decade before eh even got the pilot green lit, Ron Moore kind of stumbled into this project.
Ok so "it's okay" if BSG is inconsistent then.
Wait a minute. Are you arguing with me or not? Seems like not.
But there’s tons of B5 that didn’t appear to mesh until end.
But there's more of BSG that doesn't mesh and is never going to. I'd bet on it. Do you honestly disagree? You really think a great, all-explanatory 'explanation' is coming up? Sounds like you're the one setting yourself up for disappointment.
By the way, I don't want to make it seem like I only like these serial stories if they're all 100% plotted out in advance. Plotting them out is a way of minimizing the inconsistency, but another way would be just good writing. Deadwood would be an example, I don't believe he plotted out the entire story. Indeed, I think he was making a lot of it up as he went along, and in many cases just following the characters and story whereever it took him.
But he did this in a way that respected the integrity of the world he created. He never did the equivalent of 'let's make Tigh a Cylon'. I honestly don't know how anyone can watch BSG all the way through and think it makes any sort of sense for Tigh to be a Cylon.
I think you’re making too many assumptions about the glowing. Bioluminescence of multiple enzymes secreted from organs combining and reacting, fireflies don’t directly have stuff that glows in them, they don’t even have stuff in them that combines to glow, they have organs that secrete stuff that combines to glow. So your test wouldn’t even work on a firefly, add to that the fact that we don’t know if the humans even know about the glowing spine thing. People knew about fireflies because the saw them glow, then they dissected them and eventually figured out why, if I gave dead fireflies to somebody that didn’t know what they were or what made them interesting it’s highly unlikely they’d figure out about the glow unless they got really lucky and squeezed the right two organs in the right way and the stuff inside them combined. If you don’t know HOW a critter is glowing you can’t test for IF they can glow. How do you look for glowing stuff in the spine if you don’t know how they glow?
Who the hell knows how they do it. Eventually you just have to accept that it’s fiction. Remember air tanks don’t really explode like in Jaws either, but it works in the movie so you move on. If you’re going to start getting obsessed at that level on things it’s best you just stop experiencing fiction. Nobody gets from point A to point B in LA as quickly as they do in 24, nobody moves around the planet as quickly as they did in Alias, mobsters don’t off each other at half the rate they do in Godfather, every story has SOMETHING that separates it from reality. That’s just how it goes, eventually you’ve just got to say “it’s part of the story”. How do Cylons download? Who give a $#!+ it’s in the story, deal.
And actually I don’t WANT them to explain those little craps. Story points, like how long has Tigh been a Cylon, should be explained, tech points shouldn’t. When you explain tech points you wind up with lame crap like midichlorians, do you want a midichlorians explanation?
If things mesh all the way through the story then there’s no reason to continue telling the story. Part of the point of having mysteries in a story is to give the viewer a reason to watch the next episode. It’s part of the difference between an arc story and episodic TV. You’re demanding episodic TV, all mysteries solved by the end of each episode, no dangling questions, no reason from this week to watch next week. Arc stories don’t work like that, arc stories leave those dangling ends, so that even if the teaser commercial for next week doesn’t interest you the possibility of solved mysteries will get you to tune in anyway.
I’m not saying it’s OK to be inconsistent, because BSG isn’t anyway, I’m saying if you don’t sense 10 years worth of pre-thought behind BSG it’s because it’s not there. Heck even JMS has never come close to telling another story as tight as B5, and we know he can, but he’s never told another story that was kicking around his brain for 10 years either.
Yes I disagree, for one thing I have yet to find ANYTHING that truly doesn’t mesh. I see some dangling questions, which is the point of this kind of TV writing. So far every one of your complaints has either been wrong or just been a part of dealing with fiction. You might not want to make it seem like that’s the only kind of story you like, but your complaints demonstrate that really is the only kind of story you like. Which is fine, like whatever kind of story you want, but it’s clear that your complaints really boil down to BSG isn’t your type of story. None of claimed inconsistencies exist, you just don’t like having mysteries open when there’s story left to tell.
Ok. Well, humans don't. And Cylons evidently do, or something like it. So something about their biology is pretty different. In saying this I'm not "assuming" anything in particular about the mechanism except that the result is (evidently) a glowin' spine. Cylons have a fricking glowing spine and humans don't. They don't have glowing spine, they don't have glowing stuff near their spine, they don't have organs that secrete stuff that combines to glow near their spine, none of it. This is a not-very-subtle biological difference and thus (whatever the precise mechanism) ought to be usable for making a distinction between Cylons and humans.
Why are you even arguing this point? I doubt you actually disagree.
add to that the fact that we don’t know if the humans even know about the glowing spine thing.
Aha. I expected that explanation to come up. But in that case my next question will just be: why not?
Cuz humans haven't really delved all that much into Cylon biology. Right? (Even leaving aside the fact that numerous humans have had sex with Cylons now without, according to your story here, ever noticing it.) I guess humans kinda sweepingly concluded, or Doc Cottle said offhandedly early on, or something, that Cylons and humans were indistinguishable, and that was that. No one got curious. No one asked questions. No one said gee I wonder what's under the hood. There was the short time period of the (supposedly) failed Baltar test, but since then no one's really been all that curious. If you're going to try to tell me that humans haven't looked at Cylon biology enough to learn about the glowing spine, that is.
So maybe you're right that humans haven't based a test on the glowing spine for the simple reason that they don't even know about it. But that would only make them stupider and even more unbelievably incurious in my book. In other words, it would remain a 'believability' strike against BSG's writing, just for a different reason.
If you don’t know HOW a critter is glowing you can’t test for IF they can glow. How do you look for glowing stuff in the spine if you don’t know how they glow?
Well at the very least to even get to that point, you have to dissect the critter and poke around in him and try to figure out what makes him tick. In the process you'd encounter organs and chemicals that are at least somewhat dissimilar from what humans have. Unless you're really trying to claim here that it's physically possible for Cylons to be both indistinguishable from humans on all but the molecular level and have spines that can freaking glow. But I don't think that's believable and this constitutes my complaint.
Eventually you just have to accept that it’s fiction.
Um, it's not that I "don't accept" that it's fiction. It's that the fictionality of it is too jarringly obvious sometimes. And this is not a good property of science fiction, which is by its very nature speculative. What you're really saying is that it's on some level okay to be unbelievable/implausible 'because it's fiction'. But by saying that you're no longer even arguing with me.
Remember air tanks don’t really explode like in Jaws either, but it works in the movie so you move on.
If the things I'm talking about 'worked' in BSG then I'd move on as well. My point is precisely that they don't 'work'. Remember, I'm totally able to let slide things such as walking gun-toting robots with a pointless sliding red eye, giant starships, etc etc etc. It's because sci-fi asks you to suspend your disbelief to such a great extent to begin with, that getting the world consistent and believable (on its own terms) is so important. BSG, for all its merits, has faltered in this regard.
And actually I don’t WANT them to explain those little craps. Story points, like how long has Tigh been a Cylon, should be explained, tech points shouldn’t.
I don't nec. want them to 'explain' it either. But I do want to be able to tell myself that an explanation is possible. For many of the things I'm talking about, I don't think a true explanation is logically possible.
If things mesh all the way through the story then there’s no reason to continue telling the story.
I don't really agree with this kind of thing. In fact it's a weird thing to say (try repeating it back to yourself).
Part of the point of having mysteries in a story is to give the viewer a reason to watch the next episode.
'Mysteries' and 'unexplainable, unresolved inconsistencies and fantastical notions' are not one and the same. It's not as if this is an Inspector Poirot story and I'm complaining that they haven't revealed the murderer on page 1. This is a speculative fiction story (that purports to show a rich, alternate universe populated by faraway humans) and my complaints are about technological nonsense, humans who don't behave in believable ways, etc. It's not as if the glowing spine is a 'mystery' in BSG. The glowing spine is just an unexplained thing that makes no sense (and which was thrown in there 'because it would be cool', most likely) in BSG. Not. the. same. thing.
You’re demanding episodic TV, all mysteries solved by the end of each episode, no dangling questions, no reason from this week to watch next week.
No, I'm really not. And you're asserting two things here that I really disagree with, (1) that stuff like the glowing spine constitutes some sort of 'mystery', and (2) the main reason to watch serial drama is to learn what the solutions to the previous week's 'mysteries' are. Becuase you're implying that without 'mysteries' there would be 'no reason' to keep watching. But this leaves out a whole host of other reasons, including characterization, interesting themes, action, adventure, heroism, tragedy etc etc. Many of the most successful dramas involve very few 'mysteries' as such. You really can't be saying that the whole point of watching serials is merely to go from one 'mystery' to the next.
I’m saying if you don’t sense 10 years worth of pre-thought behind BSG it’s because it’s not there.
Indeed.
You might not want to make it seem like that’s the only kind of story you like, but your complaints demonstrate that really is the only kind of story you like.
No they don't. Again, one of my favorite shows of all time was Deadwood and I do not perceive Deadwood to have been pre-thought-out. Are you just ignoring the part where I said that?
Which is fine, like whatever kind of story you want, but it’s clear that your complaints really boil down to BSG isn’t your type of story.
Well, wait. I still watch. And I loved it the first two seasons. How does that add up to "not my type of story"? It's not my type of story yet I somehow loved it the first two seasons? Huh?
Again, I'm just disappointed in it.
None of claimed inconsistencies exist,
None. None! There are NO inconsistencies whatsoever in BSG. NONE! Got it.
I doubt you really believe that so I'll chalk that up to hyperbole.
It could be a subtle biological difference, that’s what I’ve been telling you. Who knows how it glows, could be one little enzyme sack at each end of the spine in the bone and the right things happen and woosh there’s a glow. You ever seen how big a healthy gallbladder is? Or an appendix? Really easy for little things like that to hide, and if they’re at opposite ends of the spine who’s going to think they work in conjunction?
I’m arguing the point because you don’t actually have one. You’re assuming the glowing spine must be caused by something obvious that could be spotted by a cursory and non-invasive (since you want them to use it to detect live Cylons) procedures. I’m pointing out that what we know about bioluminescence says 100% the opposite, that indeed it would be caused by something inobvious, difficult to figure out and probably requiring dissection to find once you even know what was causing it.
What “aha” I pointed out over the weekend that we’ve never seen a human actually see the glowing spine on a Cylon. which is the answer to your question. We’ve never seen a human see the glowing spine, we have no way to know if a human has ever seen the glowing spine, anything else is again assumption on your part.
I’m sure folks like the doctor have been curious. Let’s keep in mind that for most of the post attack time Cottle has been one of the few doctors in the entire fleet. Just how much time and opportunity do you think he had? Even if he had lots of time on his hands, which it never looks like he does, he had ONE Cylon to work with and it was dead. Dead Cylon is probably very unlikely to have the glowing spine thing.
Sorry but your objection is base entirely on your assumption. You assume the glowing spine is easy to decipher and then detect, you assume they know about it, you assume they had tons of time to work massive experiments. Remember they had a computer programmer (Baltar) working on what was essentially a biology problem (detecting differences between what’s basically subspecies). They’re not in a situation to make any of your assumptions come true.
No actually the first thing you need to get to that point is to know it glows. If you don’t know that the best you can hope for is to find a couple of weird organs that secrete something that appears completely pointless. To borrow a concept from Rumsfield, it’s the difference between a known unknown (we know it glows but we don’t know how) and an unknown unknown (we don’t know it glows so we don’t even know we should wonder why). You’re acting like it’s in the first group but as far as we know it’s in the second.
Most of the stuff you’re asking for is explanation of the Force type junk. How do Cylons download? Don’t know, we can theorize but we don’t know. How do Cylons get info through the goo? Don’t know, we can theorize but we don’t know. And the lesson from Star Wars is it’s better to NOT explain that stuff. The Force became stupid after the midichlorian thing. JMS never bothered to explain how telepaths work, how hyperspace works, how the Great Machine works, how time travel works, they all just do. Much vaster more important parts of B5 go unexplained than in BSG, and you’re not complaining about those. Why do all these things have to be explained for BSG, they just work, it’s a story, make believe, midichlorians would only screw it up.
No you DO want them to explain it. If you didn’t want them to explain it it wouldn’t be on your list of “inconsistencies”. when you complain that you don’t know how it would work that’s wanting it explained, that’s asking for midichlorians. You can pretend you don’t, but the very fact that you asked the question proves you do.
Actually the resolution of long term plot points is the reason to keep on arc serials. That’s why they make them that way, to hook the viewers. That’s why in this time period of extra competition the networks have grown so fond of arc serials and moved away from pure episodic. It’s emotionally easier to miss an episode of episodic TV, and once you miss one you might miss another and another and another and then they’ve lost you. Arc TV has an extra addictive factor, you know if you miss one episode you miss part of the story, that the story and the characters will be in a different place, so you don’t want to miss any and they keep their audience. It’s been the key to comic books success for a long time, publishing house have gotten into it and are now constantly pushing for everything to be a series, and TV has grabbed the idea too.
How could you have loved the first two season? Half your complaints date back to the first half of the first episode of the mini-series. Glowing spine goes all the way back to the start, why is that so bad now when you loved it the first season?
Well so far none of the supposed inconsistencies you’ve complained about exist. There certainly are some, every story has some, even B5, but none of the ones you’ve mentioned exist. They’re all basically based off either your assumptions about what’s happened off camera (the humans knowing about the glowing spine but never using that info), or you wanting midichlorians, neither of those sources are a problem with BSG.
If Cylons have these enzyme sacs at the ends of their spines, along with whatever else is necessary to trigger them, plus whatever else is necessary to make "the right things happen", these are biological differences from humans that are not merely on the molecular level. Period. Which is all I've been saying.
You’re assuming the glowing spine must be caused by something obvious that could be spotted by a cursory and non-invasive
No, I assume it could be discovered at least on dissection. Following discovery, a non-dissective test for it could be devised.
We’ve never seen a human see the glowing spine, we have no way to know if a human has ever seen the glowing spine,
Right. So we can either think they know about it, or don't. If they know about it this doesn't jibe with their helplessness about distinguishing human-Cylon biology. If they don't know about it, despite several folks having sex with Cylons, and Cottle dissecting one, that is strange. And that about covers it.
Dead Cylon is probably very unlikely to have the glowing spine thing.
Right, but it would still have the enzyme sacs or whatever the mechanism was.
If you don’t know that the best you can hope for is to find a couple of weird organs that secrete something that appears completely pointless.
Sure, but if they had at least found weird organs that secrete something, organs which humans don't have, this would be a biological difference.
If you didn’t want them to explain it it wouldn’t be on your list of “inconsistencies”. when you complain that you don’t know how it would work that’s wanting it explained, that’s asking for midichlorians.
I'm not complaining because I don't know how it would work. I'm complaining because (for some of these) there is no possible way it could work. The difference between this and Star Wars is that Star Wars is fantasy and the Force was essentially magic, and one accepted it on that level. But BSG from the start never purported to be fantasy, it was supposed to be gritty, realistic science fiction. If what you're saying is that I just should accept these things as 'magic' in the sense that one accepts the Force in the first 3 SW films, well fine, but that radically changes the BSG universe. For the worse IMHO. Being forced to accept things as magic makes me like this show a bit less. This is precisely my complaint!
How could you have loved the first two season? Half your complaints date back to the first half of the first episode of the mini-series. Glowing spine goes all the way back to the start, why is that so bad now when you loved it the first season?
Because when we were first exposed to things like that, a logical resolution still seemed to be in the realm of possibility. Glowing spine = ok, because at that point I had no idea what Cylons were under the skin, for all I knew they were mechanical. Glowing spine + being told that Cylons are biologically indistinguishable = not ok. Get it?
You're right though that it's not as if the first two seasons were perfect in this regard while the remainder have not been. Things like this did pop up and start to bother me in the first two seasons, it's just that for me the good still outweighed the bad at this point. Ok?
Well so far none of the supposed inconsistencies you’ve complained about exist.
Of course they 'exist'. It's just that you think logical resolutions for them could be cooked up, as you've labored to do here. I am not so motivated, therefore they bother me.
But you’re still talk small stuff. You’re talking about the possibility of two appendix sized organs (which when healthy is about the size of the last knuckle on your pinky) somewhere near or possibly IN the spine, said organs would need to connect to one or more of the primary systems in the body. They could very easily just dump their enzymes into the blood stream, so you’re “plus whatever” could be absolutely nothing. All I’m saying is there’s nothing about bioluminescence that makes it necessarily easy and obvious to detect like you’re assuming. Sure MAYBE if Cottle had cracked open every single bone in the body of their Cylon corpse he MIGHT have found a couple of odd thing, IF he didn’t accidentally break the things in the process of the search. And there’s no reason to think that even if said things were found and deciphered it would be at all useful for finding live Cylons.
I’m saying you should just accept these things. All of them have a certain level of plausibility. We KNOW creatures can be modified to make bioluminescence with minute enough changes that they’d be very difficult to detect if you didn’t already know what to look for and the differences wouldn’t be useful to identify live modified creatures from their original no-glow counter parts. This is a known thing from our own genetic experimentation and study of bioluminescence. Given this known quantity there’s no reason to assume Cylon spine glowing is any different, and therefore not useful as a Cylon detector. We KNOW human synaptic processes are similar enough to electricity that they can be detected and modified electronically, we’re already working on data transmission directly to the human mind this way. Thus Cylons controlling the base ships this way isn’t a big jump from technology we’re working no right now, and there’s a theoretical possibility of long range detection and capture of thoughts for download into another host. Also it’s not that terribly new a sci-fi concept, cloning and memory implantation has been around for a while, all BSG really added was the upon death semi-instant thing.
None of it is magic, it’s just slightly outside the realm of what’s known but not entirely outside the realm of what we already do theorize with what’s known. If you need more explanation than that then you’re asking for Ron to do something he hated doing on Star Trek, stupid tech talk using made up words. Known science tells us this stuff might be vaguely possible sort of. All you need to do as an audience member is accept it and move on. Honestly these are much smaller leaps than telepathy and hyperspace in B5, neither of which are even vaguely supported in the science of today or even the science of now.
But that was first season, you LOVED the first season yet in the first season is when they gave you glowing spines + Cottle can’t detect them (it really wasn’t not biologically indistinguishable, it was not detectable by that doctor with that equipment in those circumstances). And again who knew to even look? That’s what you’re refusing to get. You’re giving them knowledge they didn’t have then saying Ron screwed up because they didn’t do anything with that knowledge that they didn’t have. Cottle didn’t know about glowing spines, he didn’t know to go over everything near, attached to and inside the spine with a microscope to look for the slightest minor anomaly. And keep in mind the timing too, just how long do you think Cottle had, looked to me like hours at best, that’s enough time for a basic autopsy type thing, poke around in the guts see that all the major organs are there, see there aren’t any big organs you don’t know what they are, go through the basic liquid and tissue test to see that the blood is human blood the bile is human bile the tissue is human tissue and that’s about it. He didn’t get time for a full dissection of every single organ and every single bone, that’s months worth of work, months without him doing other normal doctor work.
I haven’t labored at all. These are all painfully obvious explanations, that you just don’t want to accept because accepting them mean you’re wrong they aren’t inconsistencies. And it seems very important to you that BSG has MAJOR HORRIBLE inconsistencies. don’t know why it’s important to you but it’s obvious at this point they’re all coming straight from you, not from anything on the screen. You’re refusing to accept that these things are not very far from known science and simply move on. You’re assuming that when Cottle says he can’t tell the difference it’s because he’s cracked open every single organ in the Cylon corpse and full perfect lab conditions and found no differences. You’re making too many assumptions.
Okay, so here's the end point we've now reached: in order to not be bothered by the fact that Cylons have things like glowing spines (not to mention that they are super-transmitter/receivers, and have super-strength), but everyone in BSG acts helpless to distinguish them biologically, I have to tell myself a story like this:
The Cylon-robots spent years and years bioengineering humanoids that they could control, so they could infiltrate human society. They made them like humans in every way imaginable. They gave them personalities and souls. BUT, they also took the trouble to add a little, barely detectable (and purposeless?) 'enzyme sac' at each end of the spine that would secrete biolumniescence when they had sex.
I agree, that would basically resolve my 'glowing spine' thing logically. It would also be extremely stupid. This is part and parcel of what I'm trying to say: in order to resolve this sort of thing I have to bend over backwards and tell myself an extremely stupid story. This is a knock against BSG, pure and simple.
I’m saying you should just accept these things.
Well, I don't. Now what?
All of them have a certain level of plausibility.
That level being "very low", in the cases I've mentioned.
We KNOW creatures can be modified to make bioluminescence with minute enough changes that [..]
Well, that's great. And the REASON Cylons 'modified' their engineered humans to have glowing spines = _____?
[a dozen or two more sentences into your nth post to me about how the glowing spines maybe could be interpreted as making sense after all]
I haven’t labored at all.
Heh. Nope, not at all.
No what you have to do is understand the difference between what’s said in the show and how you’re interpreting it. I don’t think anybody in the show ever said there are no biological differences, all they said was there were no differences THEY COULD FIND. There’s a major scope difference there. Quite possibly had they had more than 3 doctors to handle 50,000 people they could have spent the time to do a full dissection and found the source of the glowing spine and then had a biological difference. But they only had 3 doctors to handle 50,000 people and 1 of them is a shrink and and another turned out to be a murderer so they don’t really have the time for full dissections, so they have FOUND no differences.
That’s the simple little reality in the show.
If you’ll notice 99% of what I’ve written is taking apart your assumption. That’s not labor explaining the show, that’s labor explaining your brain. The stuff in the show is simple, it’s all just one or two minor logical leaps away from stuff we know or theorize is possible today. All the other stuff is you assuming absolutes that have never once been stated in the show then complaining that those unstated absolutes are unsupported by events in the show. Since they never actually say there are no biological differences, then the fact that the glowing spine would seem to indicate some level of biological difference is not a contradiction. You assume since they could find a difference in whatever probably minor testing they’ve done equals no biological difference, but that’s YOUR assumption. Your assumptions make a lot of labor, but it’s fun labor (I actually enjoy deep analysis of shows), the show itself makes very little.
I only make 'assumptions' in the sense of working assumptions; a better phrase might be hypotheses or best explanations. I see something that doesn't quite add up and I try to come up with a best explanation, and if that best explanation still doesn't quite work, there's a problem. For example, my working assumption is that, because of that scene in the miniseries, Cylons actually do have spines that can glow, and I proceed from that point. But someone else (you?) mentioned the possibility that the 'glowing spine' was just for the TV viewers' benefit. I agree that's a possibility too! But it's a subpar explanation and just leads to a new critique. Another example is your explanation here, that the glowing spine results from something like two tiny 'enzyme sacs' that are nearly impossible to find - but that forces me to think that Cylon robots made their humanoids identical to humans in every way except for two tiny unfindable enzyme sacs whose only purpose is to make the spine glow during sex, which is even more stupid.
The point being that I'm not wedded to my 'assumptions' at all, it's just that if/when my 'assumption' (best explanation) is wrong, that's fine, but it tends to only raise new and more unresolvable questions. It's not that I think it's literally not possible for the glowing spine to be the result of what you describe, it's just that if I really thought 'unnoticeable enzyme sacs' were the best explanation, I'd have gone ahead and 'assumed' it, in which case my objection here would be how stupid it was for the writers to be telling us that the Cylons made their skinjobs identical to humans except for the enzyme sacs.
Finally, more generally I find it odd when I have a list of things, someone picks ONE item from the list (in your case the 'glowing spine'), ignoring the others, labors for a dozen posts to pick their chosen item apart, and then triumphantly declares all my points debunked. As if my entire critique against BSG was the glowing spine! This isn't even my main critique (which at this point centers on how little sense it makes for the final 4-out-of-5 to be suddenly, randomly Cylons).
Who has the time to find them? Remember to the best of our knowledge (going by characters introduced and mentioned) the fleet had at its peek 3 actual medical doctors and one of them is a shrink. 50,000 people at war, 3 doctors, exactly who do you think has the time to go dissecting every single organ in a Cylon corpse to find the most minute difference? Remember they wound up putting a programmer in charge of a biological study, a clearer statement that they don’t have the people for this kind of stuff couldn’t be made.
You’re not looking for best explanation, you’re looking for the explanations that create inconsistencies. Which by their very nature are the WORST explanation. I just threw out it’s for TV as one of many possibilities, because to the best of our knowledge no humans have seen it, so that possibility remains open. Is that a good explanation? No. But until a human sees the glowing spine it is an open possibility. There are a lot of open possibilities, that’s how these kind of story mysteries work, there’s a long list of open possibilities and slowly but surely things happen that closes them.
But you ARE making an assumption, and your entire complaint comes from that. You assume that when Adama tells Roslin that the medical staff on Galactica couldn’t find any differences that was a world defined declaration of their being no biological differences. Much like how you assumed after Baltar decided to fake the results he would still keep doing the tests.
You seem to assume the characters have greater knowledge/ desire/ opportunity for study than the show generally depicts them as having. I think people tend to forget the timeline and the resource level in Galactica. Most of the problems people see with the level of knowledge the humans have disappear if you remember that their primary source of medical/ scientific equipment is an ancient ship that was about to be turned into a museum and there tends to be very little time between episodes. Remember the election, last event of season 2 before the jump forward, was less than a year after the attack. They had very little equipment, very few skilled people, and very little time, and thus their knowledge grows very little.
Actually if you’ll look at the thread I discussed every single item on your list. The discussion has since then devolved to the glowing spine thing as you’ve dropped topics. I’ve attempted to answer every point you raise, I try to play fair like that.
Yeah. It's not very important what these robot-controlled humanoids that nearly wiped out humanity and constantly infiltrate human society are like anyway.
You’re not looking for best explanation, you’re looking for the explanations that create inconsistencies.
No, I'm looking for the best explanation. I've posited some. You say I make too many 'assumptions' and then posit a different explanation. What you don't seem to get is that your explanations do not satisfy me any more than mine; if they did, I'd have already used them as my working hypotheses. It's not as if I couldn't think of the genius possibilities you've brought up! It's just that I didn't find they resolved very much.
to the best of our knowledge no humans have seen it, so that possibility remains open. Is that a good explanation? No. But until a human sees the glowing spine it is an open possibility. There are a lot of open possibilities,
Indeed. None of them all that good. Which is my point.
that’s how these kind of story mysteries work, there’s a long list of open possibilities and slowly but surely things happen that closes them.
As I said, I don't agree that BSG is by its nature a "story mystery". The glowing spine is not a "mystery" that is going to be cleared up. It's a stupid factoid that makes no sense in light of what else we have been shown.
Nor do I expect that these things will be "closed" in any real sense. It's clear the writers are not interested in doing that. And how you can simultaneously tell me that I should "wait" for these things to be "closed" (which you know as well as I do is not really going to happen) while also telling me not to ask for closure at all because it's just TV, plans change, I have to accept things, and besides it's bad for storytelling if things mesh well (?), is beyond me.
You assume that when Adama tells Roslin that the medical staff on Galactica couldn’t find any differences that was a world defined declaration of their being no biological differences.
Right - I took his statement at face value as a working hypothesis and reasoned from there. An alternative hypothesis, as you suggest, is that there are sig. biological differences but they just couldn't find them. AS I'VE SAID MULTIPLE TIMES NOW, I find the latter explanation even less satisfying. Get it yet? I hope so cuz I don't feel like explaining the 'assumption' thing anymore. Please read my prev. post more carefully if you still don't get it, otherwise bye.
Again: 50,000 people/ 3 doctors. Who’s got time to dissect every single organ in some Cylon corpse? They’re busy dealing with the living. We’ve seen Cottle at work, did he seem to have lots of time to play with a corpse?
You haven’t posited any explanations, all you’ve got is it’s inconsistent. That’s the only explanation you’ve put forth, RDM screwed up.
But you’re wrong, there’s a perfectly valid explanation which you just keep insisting doesn’t exist: they just haven’t found it yet. That’s ALL the explanation any sane person needs. They simply haven’t had the time or opportunity. Nobody has seen the glowing spine so they don’t know to spend extra time working on the spine, so they haven’t spent extra time there, and they haven’t stumbled upon it during whatever other testing they’re doing. Why would any sane person need more explanation than that? They had 1 year with incredibly limited resources to look for something they don’t even know exists, why is it surprising they haven’t found it?
BSG isn’t a mystery. BSG, like most arc TV shows, INCLUDES many mysteries in the story. These mysteries are the reason for arc shows, they hook the audience.
No you did NOT take is statement at face value, you added to it. His statement was that his people had not found anything, that is the face value: nothing found. You ASSUMED that meant there was NOTHING TO FIND. Major huge massive difference very much NOT face value. Sorry you can’t understand that, but that’s YOU not RDM.
If this show really has implied that there are <=3 doctors for 50000 people on dozens of ships, go ahead and add that to my list of implausibilities. (In these 4+ or however-many years, no one saw the need or possibility of training/retasking people for medical work?)
Also, not sure why it requires someone to be 'a doctor' to work on the Cylon biology problem.
But you’re wrong, there’s a perfectly valid explanation which you just keep insisting doesn’t exist: they just haven’t found it yet.
This is a valid explanation but LIKE I SAID it raises new problems/questions for me so it doesn't help.
Nobody has seen the glowing spine
Which is problematic by itself. How long have Helo and Sharon been together now? How many times has Baltar slept with one Cylon or another?
BSG, like most arc TV shows, INCLUDES many mysteries in the story. These mysteries are the reason for arc shows, they hook the audience.
Again, I don't consider these things "mysteries" nor do I think they are "the reason" to watch BSG nor do I think they hook anyone per se. They are just stupid details that don't mesh and don't paint a coherent picture. In fact (as you've said a few posts back!) enjoying/getting hooked on BSG probably requires ignoring such details and not thinking about them too hard.
His statement was that his people had not found anything, that is the face value: nothing found. You ASSUMED that meant there was NOTHING TO FIND.
No I didn't. I made the hypothesis that there was nothing to find, and reasoned from there, and found it problematic. I know full well (thanks very much) that another possibility is that they just didn't happen to find the biological differences that are there but they are subtle, like an 'enzyme sac'. I find this possibility even more problematic. GET IT YET? Let's hope so because I'm not going to explain it again nor am I going to continue to listen to you tell me what I do and do not think.
From the characters that have been named then yes there’s 3 doctors, one’s a shrink. It’s not 4+ years it’s about 3. I’m sure they do see the need for more doctors, but seeing the need is just the start. Medical training is a good 6 year task just to become a GP, and of course they also need Viper Pilots, tylium refiners and just about everything else under the sun, and meanwhile they’ve been fleeing for their lives, occupied, resisted, and fled some more. Not exactly conditions conducive to making more doctors. Frankly if they HAD more doctors, especially if they’d TRAINED them that would be implausible.
It requires someone who knows human biology to cut open a dead Cylon and say “hey that’s different than how it is in humans”. Like a doctor.
No actually it doesn’t raise any additional questions. The answers are simple: there very well might be differences in the biology of humans and Cylons, but nobody with the skills has had the time and opportunity to find out. No additional questions, simple obvious answer.
How often do you see the spine of your lover in the middle of the action? And we don’t even know it happens every time, might just be during those special extra intense orgasms. Heck we’ve hardly even seen the glowing spine, I can only remember two or three (once on Six in the mini-series, and once or twice on Sharon).
They only don’t mesh because you don’t want them to mesh. None of your objections have washed with any real analysis of actual events in the show.
You just accidentally admitted it. You made your own hypothesis, one not backed up by anything any character has ever said in the show, one not backed up by the events in the show. During the time Adama said they hadn’t found any differences there was simply no way enough time had passed, not even under ideal conditions with a team of human biology experts and a perfectly equipped lab, to determine that there were no differences, so your hypothesis just plain never washed from the first minute. To be able to take a 150 pound corpse and say that it has absolutely no differences from a human body is man months worth of work, they didn’t have man months, thus there’s no way for them to definitely say there’s no difference. You took “we haven’t found anything” and blew it up into “there’s nothing to find” with zero supporting evidence and solid evidence against.
How is it implausible that in 3 years of mostly running for their lives without enough doctors or anything else to service the people of the fleet they were unable to find whatever subtle differences there are between humans and Cylons? That’s perfectly plausible, not just plausible but painfully obvious. They don’t have enough of anything, they eat algae, they’re short on all medical supplies including doctors, short on facilities, there’s pretty much nothing they aren’t short on. And yet you “hypothesis” that in those conditions they should have done a complete all organs all bones work up of the Cylon corpse during the mini-series mere HOURS after discovery of skin job Cylons, and the show doesn’t mesh because your “hypothesis” is not how things are?!
Go ahead and explain it more, the more often you explain it the clearer it is that your objections come from YOU not the show. Your “hypothesis” is an unfounded downright nonsensical assumption that frankly if it was backed up by the show they WOULD have inconsistencies. but luckily it’s not backed up by the show, not even slight, and thus these inconsistencies are yours.
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