[Pred the Penguin]

I completely forgot. I need to watch Razor again. o_o

[StarSlayer]

Now if we'd seen something like that in a real life situation, I'd be just as inclined to think it was stupid.

Not to belabor the point...

I won't argue its dumb, but at least they both missed. 

[Dirt McStain]

I'm still waiting for the Cylon snake. Hopefully, it will be on a plane and someone will mutter the phrase, "I have had enough of these motherfraking snakes on this motherfraking plane!" old Adama could pull that off but I'm thinking Coker's got young Adama beat.

[An4ximandros]

Well, it's not a snake but from the trailer, it looks like there's a robot wolf thing there.

[David cgc]

Revisiting the Viper Mark III, I took this diagram Doug Drexler posted of the B&C hangar deck with Vipers and did a to-scale comparison with the Mark II and Mark VII. At first I though there must've been some mistake in either the marked scale or my conversion given the size, but comparing the cockpit to the one in the Mark II (which is the same set), it looks like it really is that big (and, thus, not a Mark II retcon or variant). I guess it's another one of those things where since they didn't have to build one in real life (and crate it up and truck it to a ferry for filming), they could make it a bit less fun-sized than the original Vipers.

(That link also has some interesting comments from Drexler answering questions about the design process. It doesn't fully explain why, say, Pegasus had the same basic hangar design as the pared-down Galactica, but I suppose the only difference between a bulkhead and a closed sliding door is if you ever see it open. And it led me to this photo from earlier in the year, with a front view of what looks like a B&C Viper, but they say is a render of a concept for the Viper II from the miniseries. I've never seen it before, and Google reverse image search doesn't recognize it).

[attachment deleted by a basterd]

[newman]

The question is, does it fit the launch tubes at that size.

[YIIMM]

And it led me to this photo from earlier in the year, with a front view of what looks like a B&C Viper, but they say is a render of a concept for the Viper II from the miniseries. I've never seen it before, and Google reverse image search doesn't recognize it).

That's definitely the basis for the model used in the show, if you look here the only difference I can see is the elevation on the nose that that MkII also has.

[David cgc]

The clay model is also missing the raised racing stripe between the canopy and the nose, which fits with it being an early version and not just a mislabeled leaked still from B&C. It's always interesting when older, discarded stuff finds its way back into the limelight. I wonder if they'll ever figure out a way to use the Thirteenth Colony Viper.

(The link doesn't explain what it was intended for, but judging from the fact that the canopy matches the Mark II, and that Starbuck's Mark II when she first returned was all CG instead of the full-sized prop on a gimbal and greenscreen like it would normally be for a shot like that, my guess is they considered having her come back in a new Terran Viper instead of the one she blew up in, but changed their minds during post-production).

[karajorma]

I seriously hope they don't.

[SypheDMar]

Our approach was that 40 years ago, Galactica was the tip of the spear, able to go toe to toe with the Cylons, and meet them head on. With the end of the first Cylon War, and as newer more efficient ships came on line, Galactica became displaced, eventually becoming second, or even third string. Economically she became a white elephant, whose cost to run was out of proportion to her worth. Facilities were stripped to the bone, bulkheads went up where there used to be extensive service areas, and flight crews reassigned to more advanced ships.

So I took the sets from the last show and said, that wall wasn't always there... this ceiling used to be higher, those viper service bays used to handle a steady stream of planes.The Eddie Olmos BSG established a modest number of (three or four) elevators that brought vipers from the landing deck above. The turn over capability was insufficient. Even if you only landed 50 vipers, it would take forever to get them downstairs, inspected, repaired, refueled, re-munitioned, and back on line. Our solution was that back in the good old days, each viper bay had four levels, inspection, minor repairs, avionics, munitions and fueling. Each bay had it's own independent conveyor system. It's almost like a Tokyo car park. With this system, each bay was like the magazine of an automatic pistol, the vipers being bullets. You could just keep pulling that trigger and launch wave after wave of vipers, as fast as you could land them. I remember in an early story meeting I described it as the viper "hot stack". David Eick loved that, and it got a big reaction all the way around. Ding! Ding! Ding! The boy wins a cigar!

So now we got an explanation of the Galactica "retcon".

... The Galactica was designed to counter a Basestar, and you've seen the cloud of raiders a Basestar can launch. So figure that the Galactica carries almost 2000 vipers. There are about 20 planes in a squadron. That is an immense force, but when you consider the size of a Battlestar, not so out of sight. Our civilian" cargo" doesn't know her ships. Not really her specialty. The Archeron is in reality a Battlestar.

Well, Battlestars are so far still the only canon large warship designation. Hmph.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151098819296104&set=pb.570346103.-2207520000.1352928227&type=3&src=https%3A%2F%2Fsphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net%2Fhphotos-prn1%2F51722_10151098819296104_1110263665_o.jpg&smallsrc=https%3A%2F%2Fsphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net%2Fhphotos-prn1%2F63361_10151098819296104_1110263665_n.jpg&size=1576%2C2048

[YIIMM]

2,000 does seem like a large number, especially when factoring in the crew that would go with it. That said, a Nimitz-class carries 1/20th of that, with less than 1/4 the floor space, no 3-tier system and significantly larger aircraft. It'd be very busy, but I think it's feasible.

I've no problem with the idea of retconning the main series hangar bay to be a stripped down version - some thought's gone into there at least -  but the external stuff could've been done a lot better: half the guns intersect with the armour and they've blocked off at least one of the RCS thrusters.

[StarSlayer]

Yeah even with some disarmament BS the over armament doesn't work from a structural standpoint when comparing the real Galactica and this modified turd.

[David cgc]

Drexler hasn't said anything about the guns or the armor, but my explanation ever since seeing the Columbia was that the additional armor plating was found to be superfluous and was removed (except for places that actually needed the protection) so the ship would be lighter and faster. Even the up-armored versions have asymmetrical gaps, so it's plausible the hull and ribbing was thought to be strong enough in general. As for the guns, I'm going to say newer batteries were developed with higher rates of fire, so they were consolidated into a few clusters rather than having them (and their highly explosive ammo stores) spread around the ship.

[StarSlayer]

The changes structurally do not work with the real Galactica.  They show a painful lack of thought or planning other than "lets add more guns and more lens flare."

[newman]

Watched episodes 3 and 4. I found them horrible, honestly. I'll just list the stupid:

- Adama evades giant plungers while flying a raptor in a true 1990 video game fashion. When a scene reminds you of "Attack of the Clones", it's not a good sign.

- Valkyrie during the first war? Have these people even watched the original show?

- Berzerks are in there too. Did the colonials have any ship that wasn't over 40 years old at the time of the fall? We'll be seeing the Pegasus in there soon at this rate...

- Osiris: ugly, fragile looking design that has reflective hull for some reason. Interior looks like a ww2 sub with lots of lcd screens added.

- Plot: nothing interesting so far.

[Ace]

The Valk being very recent is fanon, fanon that makes some sense though...

Since there is an untextured ship in the scene I'm wondering if using the Valk was a placeholder for an era-specific light battlestar... (basically something like the Sobek)

The heavy cruiser we briefly see isn't too bad, and the Osiris seems like it *should* be fragile as a type of electronics warfare capship.

Wasn't a huge fan of the FTL plunger sequence (didn't really like it when they showed off the drive in S4 for that matter either).

Honestly the Valk was the first true total cringe moment from me. I'm wondering why even bother with the MK3 considering that on a cursory look there's less difference between that and the MK2 than the MKVII and the season 4 in house CGI version. I know that there are more differences, but at a glance it mostly looks like a different skin.

The rear turret Raptor variant seems like the best thing to come out of this so far, and even then the XXXtreme quad guns seemed overkill.

[newman]

The Valk being very recent is fanon, fanon that makes some sense though...

While they didn't outright go and say "This ship was never in 1CW", I wouldn't call it fanon - I'd call it common sense. Here's what we do know about her:

- much smaller than Galactica, with less firepower and smaller air wing;
- Adama used to command it, then got reassigned to Galactica as a form of punishment.
- the Valkyrie was apparently considered a pretty good command.
- you'd typically send a modern ship on a stealth black ops assignment if you can help it, leading to conclusion that the Valk is small, but state of the art. Especially during peace time when your fleet resources aren't stretched thin and you can choose.
- the exterior and CIC resemble more modern battlestar lines, and compare well with the Pegasus style.

Basically, if the Valkyrie was also over 40 years old at the time of the fall, then how is reassigning Adama from a smaller 40+ year old ship to a larger, more powerful 40+ year old ship a punishment? Feels more like a reward to me. Sure, the Galactica was about to be decommissioned, but how much time would a 40+ year old Valkyrie have ahead of her at that point anyway?

I'd say this is yet another example of just throwing everything in without thinking it through. I guess we could pretend the Colonials used the same Valkyrie space frame because it's essentially good, and just kept updating it's systems and weapons over the years without too much external differences. So the old Valkyrie we saw here could be the original, and the ones in nBSG could be like tier 4 refits or something. That would explain almost everything apart from the modern lines that seem to suggest "modern light battlestar", not "1CW slugger".

And no, there's no way you'll defend the horrible, reflective hull Osiris. It makes the Berzerk look good in comparison

[Flipside]

I just watched the first few episodes and, all in all, wasn't disappointed, but wasn't blown away either. As was mentioned earlier, you start to worry when you think of the Star Wars prequels, and since by the end of the first scene I was half expecting a couple of droids to jump on his wing and start tearing at the fuselage after he shot the Cyclon ship with a hand-gun, it didn't get off to the best of starts.

Then there is the contrived 'send the rookie on a secret mission' plot which would have had the likes of SFDebris and Confused Mathew crying down their microphones. Frankly, if the war was going so badly that they had to pass war-vital missions to new recruits, they wouldn't be able to hide it.

Comments on the plot aside, the acting itself was pretty good for the main part, though possibly the difference between the war-jaded vets and the starry-eyed rookies is overdone on occasion. Adama himself wasn't badly acted, but I didn't 'feel' Adama in the character.

To be honest, I enjoyed the rendered stuff for what it was, fun space-action, but since we know how the war ends anyway, and that Adama survives it, you worry more about Adamas co-pilot during combat than Adama himself. As for the quality of the models etc, well, I suppose a bit of leeway has to be given considering the situation, and as someone who grew up watching the original BSG, with its ships on strings with toilet-roll tube thrusters, it's still a massive improvement

[newman]

The quality of the models isn't in question. Some of the designs are, as well as the oversaturated, overlit, everything-blue, full of lens flares rendering style.

[Dirt McStain]

I thought that the Valkyrie was the large Galactica-type battlestar on the far right, while the ship that looks like the modern Valkyrie (there's actually 3 of those) are CGI stand-ins for lighter support ships.