I've blogged before about Battlestar Galactica's opening credits and the accurate and ever-changing count of the number of survivors. This week's episode was interesting in that the count went up one from the previous week, as Helo finally joined the fleet. (And how nice it will be for that actor to finally interact with the rest of the cast after a season-and-then-some being separated from them.)
Toasters are not counted among the survivors (and for a logical enough reason, I suppose), as the count did not go up two to include formerly-of-Caprica-Boomer. And my friend brought up an interesting point related to this:
Now-dead-Boomer told Baltar there were eight Cylon moles in the fleet. We don't really know if this is information she had or simply made up out of desperation... and even if she did know, we don't know if she was being truthful. But, for the sake of argument, let's say the number of eight Cylon infiltrators is correct. We now know that Cylons among the fleet aren't counted as "survivors" by the opening credits. We can perhaps then assume that because the count is omniscient, it doesn't include those Cylon infiltrators (however many of them there actually are).
Now, flash back to the first season and the scenes with Roslin aboard Colonial One. She also kept a count of the survivors on a dry erase board in her office. This count also was maintained and kept accurate from episode to episode, whenever it appeared in the background of a shot. But her count is not omniscient. So wouldn't it be interesting if the always-impressive BSG continuity is in fact so accurate that, if we see the board on Colonial One again in a future episode, her count differs from the opening credits count? Say... eight higher?
Fan wanking aside, tonight was a great episode. I'm totally in love with the way this show depicts characters at their best and at their worst. A character we love one week can take a very dark turn and become rather unlikeable the next week. They're actually realistic -- a better word would be real -- people. Indeed, the only level, conventional-TV-likeable character from week to week is Six, the Cylon. Clearly a deliberate statement by the creators.
I just love this show.
6 comments:
I love it too! The best part for me is that there are some things that you know must happen [like the fleet getting back together] but the trip they take you on to get there is so exciteing that one can for get where one is going watching this show.
Great show!
They also have a great way of setting you up to THINK you know what's going to happen, but then pulling the rug out from under you.
For example, during the episode where Baltar interrogated Boomer in the holding cell, you were totally set up to think "oh, I see where we're going from here... Boomer's gonna be the 'Hannibal Lecter' in the cell they're going to try to squeeze information out of every week for a while." And then YANK! Instead, she gets Jack Ruby'd at the end of the episode.
the show is too good for it's own, um, good...sometimes. there are times when I wish they would slow it down and do more with the situations, like the Pres. interrogating Boomer which was just touched on, but would have been a great episode all by itself. or how starbuck is ignoring the mystery scar, you think she would be going crazy thinking about what did they do to her...all part of their anticipation-misdirection-suspence-coolness writting, just sometimes the pacing is a bit off (Adama's recovery for example, I guess a few weeks passed?)
I would have really enjoyed a dual boomer scene where the one boomer would be jealous/depressed that the other one was pregnant. I'm starting to think that maybe the boomer model cylon is some kind of programed biological clone instead of a machine (half-cylon?) and that's how she got pregnant (if indeed she really is...)
-the mole
Kosmo -- Ditto.
Dr. H. -- I honestly thought they would somehow eliminate Boomer-Who-Loves-Tyrol so that Boomer-Who-Loves-Helo could step in. Putting the two of them together wouldn't have the same impact of Tyrol loosing Boomer and then seeing her alive again, knocked up with Helo's baby.
Anon -- Adama's recovery is well-paced. He's clearly composing himself as well as he can, but he's very stiff. Good acting on EJO's part. And we have no idea whether Cylons are actually organic in origin. The show's creators have been silent on their true origin. The Colonials think they're just "toasters," but they could have been some freak cocktail of human genes and mechanical parts. Perhaps their evolutionary leap isn't so much of a leap.
I think Adama's recovery is being handled well for a TV show. They've given him a life-changing incident early on and, like Picard post_Locutus, he has more depth now. Not that he was lacking any!
I lost your logic about the onscreen survivor count somewhere along the line. I think it should agree with Roslin's count. AFAIK it's not omniscient: Socinus' death on Kobol was counted because the fleet knew about it; Helo's survival on Caprica wasn't because they didn't.
The evidence for Baltar being a cylon mounts... notice how he and 6 appear in the opening credits right after the naked Sharons, while the words "There are many copies" are still onscreen...
Re: Baltar is a Cylon. In some ways it makes sense, and in other ways, it doesn't. The writers are being as vague as possible, but I doubt they intend for him to be a Cylon. Six wouldn't have been pounding that point about "being human means you can murder" a few episodes back.
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