Season 2 - Scattered

quad_red

Ok, started watching Season 2 last night and as Khannie suggested, why not start up a discussion thread.

Scattered and Valley of Darkness.

Season 1 ended with a suitably big bang and it was cool to see Season 2 jump straight into the action once again.

The good:
Packed full of tension and suspense, particularly the realisation that they'd lost the fleet (a nice shot panning back emphasising how alone Galactica was). The back story of Adama and Tigh (despite the terrible hair dye and Adama's YMCA-esque moustache) was well handled and alludes to something alot deeper. And Lady MacBeth (Tighs wife) is starting to show her colours. Tigh is becoming an increasingly flawed and more interesting character.

The vast gulf between the Chief and the Lt on Kobol is also interesting ie. The Chief continually proving his qualities whilst the Lt is clearly a twat of the highest order.

Whilst not getting much screen time, surely the corruption of Baltar and his conversion to the Cylon plan is of the greatest import. The Cylon plan then involves human/cylon hybrids (echoed by the up the duff sharon on capica).

Amazing effects - the flak wall being particularly cool.


The Bad:
The scenes with Helo and Starbuck on Caprica. These just irritated me. Helo never really interested me as a character - too gormless. From giving up his seat on the raptor in season 1, to wandering around like a clown with the pregnant toaster (most obvious plot twist ever - Sharons sick in the morning. She must be pregnant).

I've always liked Starbuck as a character but I don't think the direction they brought her here was believable.

Question:
Did the landing ship carrying the Cylon raiders have 'shields' of some sort??

Barry Aldwell

quad_red wrote:

The vast gulf between the Chief and the Lt on Kobol is also interesting ie. The Chief continually proving his qualities whilst the Lt is clearly a twat of the highest order.

The thing to realise here is that Crashdown is a pilot, not a field officer. He can operate the electronics suite in a Raptor, but it would have been a long, long time since he did any form of infantry tactics (similarly for most of the deck gang, who are mechanics). The Chief is Galactica's most senior NCO, he has been around a lot longer than anyone else, including Crashdown, and it is possible that he has been in a similar situation before. When they crash on Kobol, the military rank structure says that Crashdown is in charge, but he is not a leader, he is a pilot. This is a massive amount of stress, which he handles badly at times, but he regresses to his training as much as possible (as he should, see the 5 graph order format, which is the order format used by the US military).

Crashdown's fatal flaw was his inability to see the limitations of his force, or deviate from his established plans and go back to destroy the dish (of course, there was no proof that the dish was unguarded). Oh, and he went a bit crazy threatening to shoot Cally (it is, however, worth bearing in mind that officers carry sidearms to enforce discipline as well as self defence, as Admiral Cain did with her XO)

quad_red wrote:

Question:
Did the landing ship carrying the Cylon raiders have 'shields' of some sort??

No, it just plowed straight through the flak wall, which says a lot about Galactica's point defence systems - a heavy raider isn't the smallest of targets.

Khannie

I reckoned the cylon ship didn't have any special sheilding either. The assumption that I made was that the heavily armoured cylons just survived a nasty crash (this goes against what humans expect from a crash like that....which in turn reinforces the fear factor).

I had forgotten that crashdown was just a pilot. I actually thought he was trained as infantry. It does make his incompetence a bit more acceptable (to me at least). They clearly make the chief out to be the man of the hour though, especially with the "I think we should check the supplies before we bug out lt" comment. I found that to be a bit obvious.

I had a hillarious dream weeks after watching this episode: I dreamt that baltar looked into the crib and saw a miniature version of the original cylons (from the '78 series). I think I actually laughed out loud in my sleep.

edit: One thing that slightly bothered me at the end of that episode was that there was no clear ending in sight (one way or the other) to the Commander Adama predicament.

quad_red

more experienced, that Crashdown is only a pilot and that he is under stress.

But blaming the random red shirt for leaving the med kit then (petulantly) telling him he has got to go back for it alone is something none of the other pilots would have done. Particularly when the Chief wanted to stop and check supplies.

I've only seen the episode once but it looked to me like some sort of shields flashed - must've just been muzzle flashes.

quad_red

Khannie wrote:

I had a hillarious dream weeks after watching this episode: I dreamt that baltar looked into the crib and saw a miniature version of the original cylons (from the '78 series). I think I actually laughed out loud in my sleep.

Maybe you're a bloody cylon with dreams like that! (what we need is doctor melfy from the sopranos )

Khannie wrote:

edit: One thing that slightly bothered me at the end of that episode was that there was no clear ending in sight (one way or the other) to the Commander Adama predicament.

I agree - the pacing was a bit off.

Barry Aldwell

quad_red wrote:

But blaming the random red shirt for leaving the med kit then (petulantly) telling him he has got to go back for it alone is something none of the other pilots would have done. Particularly when the Chief wanted to stop and check supplies.

If anything, Crashdown did the right thing there. He stopped and sent a small party back for the kit. He didn't go John Ramboing off on his own, he stayed with the main group and delegated it to someone else, as he should have. What if he had brought the entire group back to the crash site to get the kit, and they had been caught in the Cylon ambush that killed Tarn? Sending Tarn alone wasn't a good idea, but the Chief pointed that out and Crashdown let the Chief and Cally go too. Criticising Crashdown for not checking the supplies is easy, but there was a real risk of the Cylons showing up. He made a decision under pressure.

I think it's a credit to the high standards of BSG that we are able to debate the actions of the characters like this.

quad_red

Yeah, but I think Crashdown was sort of punishing the guy for a 'mistake' - a mistake that was probably Crashdowns for not taking the basic step of ensuring they had supplies to survive on a hostile planet with no idea of when rescue might occur.

Khannie

Barry Aldwell wrote:

I think it's a credit to the high standards of BSG that we are able to debate the actions of the characters like this.

Agreed.

On the action of leaving without checking supplies: The chief did say twice that they should check the supplies (making it obvious that something was going to be forgotten) and the noise that was heard (AFAIK) only implied that the cylon ships had entered the atmosphere.

Agreed that it was a decision made under pressure, so it's hard to fault that, but he did try to shift blame onto the other lad.