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.