[SpardaSon21]

It could have been publicly listed as mostly wrecked and with 100% crew losses and fit only for the salvage yards when it was in fact repairable and with some crew remaining.  That way the Cylons think they completely wrecked it even though it was actually salvageable.  I don't think anyone from the Archeron survived yet enough of the hull is intact for the FTL to stay operational (as infeasible as working FTL in a destroyed ship is).

[David cgc]

I doubt the drive was anywhere near working, just that it was spun up when the ship was destroyed and kept moving on inertia for... minutes? Hours? High quality space-grease and nanometer alignments on an unobtanium spinner, who knows how long that thing might keeping moving, especially without whatever brakes might be applied to stop it in an intentional shutdown or abort.

[newman]

That's way in the category of thinking about it more than the authors. You've put on a valiant defence of the show, in any case - I just wish the target material was deserving of it.

[raging_ninja]

Been reading this thread and it made me register to post my opinions.

And who's winning the war, anyway? On the one hand, Captain Mustache and Commander G-Man seem to think things are going pretty bad, but whatever draft there is doesn't seem to be very comprehensive judging by the fact that Coker doesn't expect to be stop-lossed, and that Adama's peripheral connection to the underworld could've gotten him out of harms way, and the Colonies can afford to have a dozen-odd ships in a secret reserve unit.

Regarding stop-loss: back in WW2 allied bomber crews went home after 30 missions, and fighter crews after 25 missions. This was due to the high rate of casualties among these units. It's possible (probably?) that the Colonial military has a similar protocol.

[Herra Tohtori]

Regarding stop-loss: back in WW2 allied bomber crews went home after 30 missions, and fighter crews after 25 missions. This was due to the high rate of casualties among these units. It's possible (probably?) that the Colonial military has a similar protocol.

Unlikely, considering they were fighting a defensive war against the Cylons as far as I understand it, and definitely were not in a strategically favourable position.

When the US and British air forces started conducting daytime bombing raids over continental Europe, they were on the offensive and the Luftwaffe was defensive. Luftwaffe, by their policy as well as lack of other options, kept their most experienced pilots on the front lines flying mission after mission after mission; that's one of the main reasons the German aces scored such high kill counts. The Japanese did the same. And, unless I'm much mistaken, the Soviet VVS also didn't really let pilots out of service after certain amount of sorties.

The US and British air forces used a system where airmen flew their allocated sorties, and could then return to home if they so wanted. On the other hand, the commissioned officers were usually rotated off the frontlines after certain amount of combat sorties, and re-assigned to training duties.

This is also one of the reasons why the pilot quality in USAAF, USN, USMC, RAF and Fleet Air Arm increased substantially as the war progressed. While the Germans and Japanese burned through their excellent pilots from the pre-war time, the training of new pilots for them suffered as the veterans did not get to impart their experience on the new pilots; while in the US/UK air forces they did.

I'm sure the Colonials would have done the same as US/UK air forces, if they had the chance to do it. But we don't have enough information about the Cylon War to determine whether they could have feasibly had so much freedom in recycling their frontline flight crews like this.

[David cgc]

A lot also depends on what the goals of the war are. If the Cylons just wanted to be left alone, they could've gone off into deep space after stealing a bunch of ships in their initial revolt. If they wanted to exterminate humanity, they were in a much better position to do so before they began an armed rebellion. They probably more access then than their spies did 50 years later. Similarly, are the Colonials fighting a defensive war? They don't seem to be operating with a siege mentality, making sure the Cylons stay on their side of no-man's-land. What would either side have needed to be convinced they'd won?

My guess is that Cylon stereotypes about the Colonials (combined, perhaps, by a less than live-and-let-live response from the humans to the cylons blowing up a bunch of stuff then flying away) have the Cylons fighting to cripple the Colonial military, but not necessarily to finish off every last person as they later did. It doesn't seem to me that they'd care to actually conquer the Colonies and rule over the survivors. The Colonials may well be more interested in total destruction of the enemy, given the fact that both Colonial strikes we've seen during the war were attacks on ostensible Cylon weapons depots that were actually cybernetics research labs (I wonder its they're the same planet both times), and that later military leaders tried to gin up a war by having a Battlestar loiter around next to the Armistice Line on the least stealthy stealth mission ever.

I suppose in that case, it's possible both sides thought they were fighting defensively and losing, if neither had any strategic goals other than to prevent the other side from continuing to be able to fight the war. If the Final Five hadn't shown up, the war actually might've lasted a thousand yahrens.

[Ace]

At the same time though we see ground actions on Tauron towards the end of the war in what is probably a civilian area? But yes if outright extermination was their goal they would have easily been able to do that...

It could easily be the case that the Cylons weren't willing to wipe out humanity despite having the chances to do so, but also didn't know how to stop the aggression on either side.

[raging_ninja]

At the same time though we see ground actions on Tauron towards the end of the war in what is probably a civilian area? But yes if outright extermination was their goal they would have easily been able to do that...

It could easily be the case that the Cylons weren't willing to wipe out humanity despite having the chances to do so, but also didn't know how to stop the aggression on either side.

Or it could just be that the Cylons want to take planets with their infrastructure intact, which orbital bombardment makes difficult. Kind of hard to simply up and go off into the vast emptiness of space with no means of resupply and no spare parts beyond what you can carry is a difficult proposition.

Hence, the armistice line - there's a good chance that the Cylons got to keep a couple of planets with natural resources and manufacturing facilities.

[StarSlayer]

You can't eviscerate human meatbags with a sword if you orbitally bombard.

[General Battuta]

So far this one's almost good!

[YIIMM]

Definitely my favourite so far, mainly because we actually get some decent character interaction and development!

I did feel there was a very obvious cut after "you're going to regret this" which left things a little too lightly implied, that's probably my only gripe.

Loved the piano playing.

[General Battuta]

I still didn't like this one all in all, but it contained a lot of things I liked - particularly some semi-genuine character moments and the suggestion of believably superhuman accuracy and perception on the part of the Cylons. Of course, then we had one being beaten to death with a piece of rebar or a cleaver or whatever -- and as usual a science fiction show passed up the obvious truth that it would take about half a second for a machine in close combat with a human being to permanently disable and kill its opponent. (BSG was actually pretty good about this, since the Centurions had those claw-hands.)

[YIIMM]

Unfortunately they had only the one tertiary character to work with and they burned through him pretty quickly so plot armour prevails this time, even if something closer to what happened at the start of Valley of Darkness would've been more believable.

[General Battuta]

What did the art/design people think of those Cylon models? I kinda liked em

[newman]

I have no real gripes with these centurion models, provided they're additional subtypes and not a real retcon. Overall I thought this episode contained the least amount of fail, these character moments might have actually had some potential had they not butchered the whole thing into tiny segments. Agreed about beating a Centurion to death with a steel pipe (or whatever that was) was dumb. It's a bit like overpowering a forklift with boxing gloves - the thing was designed to be stronger than a human.

One thing I'm not sure about is Centurions feeling pain. Humanoid models, sure - but if you're a machine not feeling pain or hunger, not having to sleep and not ever feeling tired strike me as benefits, particularly if you happen to be a combat-oriented machine. Not really sure why would anyone build in pain. Sounds to me like Graystone got a case of feature creeps, though it is possible the Cylons actually modified themselves in some sort of an effort to make themselves more human like. Otherwise, in a combat model you're looking for what Kyle Reese said best: "It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

[swashmebuckle]

I like the non-terminator qualities of the individual cylons. It makes the whole "war that isn't over in a week" seem a lot more plausible if you think of them as 14 year old girls inside forklifts rather than perfect merciless killing machines. Maybe these models are zamboni drivers or something.

[Ace]

Actually them feeling pain makes sense, they've bought into a monotheist ideology where they want to be human (thus the whole agreeing with the Five thing).

Of course, genocidal tantrums aside, it's why Cavil makes the most sense: why the hell do you want to be human instead of embracing what you are?

[SypheDMar]

Are these things really combat models? Besides the ones that shot the Toth, none of the Cylons inside the facility had guns. And given how the Cylon was more interested in scanning Beka's dog tag than anything. If they wanted to kill everyone, they could have. It seems that the reason Toth got shot was because he pointed a gun at another Cylon, and the Cylon's buddy saw that as a threat to his buddy. The one that got killed by Coker looked like it wanted to tell Coker that it's not aggressive, too.

I'm probably giving Syfy too much credit, but I enjoyed these two episodes too. The idea that Cylons feel pain is pretty neat. I'm getting a sense that the Colonials are the aggressors, and the Cylons just want to be at peace. Human fears, hatred, and irrationality is what seems to be escalating the war.

The bad: I don't know why Toth is even there. He is so pointless as a character. In this webisode format, he's unrelatable. The lensflares are annoying. Why is Adama alive?

[karajorma]

Of course, then we had one being beaten to death with a piece of rebar or a cleaver or whatever -- and as usual a science fiction show passed up the obvious truth that it would take about half a second for a machine in close combat with a human being to permanently disable and kill its opponent. (BSG was actually pretty good about this, since the Centurions had those claw-hands.)

To be fair, it had been shot at close range before the hand to hand started. But yeah, it should have still been able to kill Adama in a few seconds. They really should have shown it taking more damage from the first shot, the fight might have been more believable if half its head was missing.

[raging_ninja]

i've enjoyed blood & chrome so far. considering what seems to be the obvious inspiration for the artistic style (spartacus: blood and sand) i was expecting it to take more artistic license, as compared to the 'realism' offered by the BSG. And to be honest, I'm fine with that artistic choice.

besides, if you look previous shows, the 'realistic' shows suffered in ratings as they went on (bsg, stargate universe).