{"id":808,"date":"2006-11-11T08:58:26","date_gmt":"2006-11-11T08:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/11\/11\/subtle-battlerstar\/"},"modified":"2006-11-11T08:58:26","modified_gmt":"2006-11-11T08:58:26","slug":"subtle-battlerstar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/11\/11\/subtle-battlerstar\/","title":{"rendered":"Subtle Battlerstar"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent a while idly channel-surfing after we watched the final couple of episodes of Martian Successor Nadesico<\/cite> last night, and ran across the new Battlestar Galactica<\/cite> on the Sci-Fi Channel. Lots of smart people like the show, but I didn’t get into the premiere, and the occasional attempt to watch it in sub-optimal circumstances<\/a> hasn’t really convinced me of its brilliance. The few clips I saw last night didn’t really help, either, though they might be considered spoilers, so I’ll put them after the cut:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On the first pass, I saw them explaining that there’s some virus infecting the Cylons, and for technobabble reasons, they could control but not cure the disease. This fact was used to induce some diseased Cylon prisoners to provide them with crucial information, which in turn led to a genius plan to destroy the Cylons once and for all.<\/p>\n

All they needed to do was to put themselves in range of a Cylon fleet, and then execute the (helpless and plague-infected) prisoners, who would then be uploaded by the Cylons, taking the virus with them. The virus would then run through all the Cylon ships, exterminating the entire race.<\/p>\n

Gee, do you think you stacked the moral deck enough, there? Are you sure the plan wouldn’t work better if you were simultaneously drinking the blood of unbaptized kittens?<\/p>\n

A later pass caught the crucial moment, when the Cylon fleet appears, and Supreme Commander Lt. Castillo orders the execution of the prisoners. At which point, the execution team swings into action, and marches through a quarter mile of miscellaneous passageways, and three sets of locked doors before reaching the cell containing the prisoners, only to find that they’re already dead (presumably helped by a character who turned up in the next scene, looking angst-ridden, though I didn’t stick around long enough to find out).<\/p>\n

If the whole plan depends on executing the sick and helpless at exactly the right moment, shouldn’t your death squad be, I don’t know, in the same place as the prisoners? Maybe in the next room over? Perhaps with a doctor on staff, to make sure they don’t die too soon?<\/p>\n

I realize I’m being hugely unfair to the show, slagging it on the basis of a couple of five-minute excerpts, but it’s hard to imagine a context in which these things wouldn’t bug me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent a while idly channel-surfing after we watched the final couple of episodes of Martian Successor Nadesico last night, and ran across the new Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi Channel. Lots of smart people like the show, but I didn’t get into the premiere, and the occasional attempt to watch it in sub-optimal circumstances… Continue reading Subtle Battlerstar<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}