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Farmer
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This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. If an article link referred you here, you might want to go back and fix it to point directly to the intended page. Also, if you wanted to search for the term "Farmer", click here.
Frank Farmer (born 5 September 1932) is an American character actor and playwright who portrayed Flight 2's Captain that Troy and Dillon encounter in Galactica 1980's "The Night the Cylons Landed, Part I". His performance in that episode was uncredited, but he was identified through computer-aided facial recognition.
Farmer's five decades of character acting roles cross the span of genres, with appearances in Mission: Impossible, Dallas, CHiPs, Fantasy Island, The Young and the Restless, Team Knight Rider, and Babylon 5.
Farmer is the nephew of actress Frances Farmer, and is a playwright and member of the Orange County Playwrights Alliance.
Her death spurs suicidal tendencies in Clellan, who later suicide bombs a New Caprica Police graduation ceremony, in an attempt to take out Gaius Baltar, who did not attend due to security considerations (TRS: "Occupation").
Notes
Farmer and Clellan in a photograph aboard Galactica.
Based on the photo of her and Duck during their time on Galactica, Farmer was a former Viper pilot, wearing a pilot's uniform with a Viper patch (The Resistance, "Maelstrom").
A goof up by the SciFi.com staff posted during the third and ninth webisode suggested that Clellan and Farmer are married. This is not true according to Bradley Thompson.
Nora's last name of Famer is never mentioned in either the webisode series "The Resistance," or in the series itself. The only mentions of Nora in the series are by Clellan, prior to his suicide bombing of the graduation ceremony for the New Caprica Police in "Occupation," and by Lee Adama when he looks at their picture on the memorial wall in "Maelstrom".
References
↑Her last name comes from the script, as noted here.
Aerilon is primarily an agricultural world, known as the "food basket" of the Twelve Colonies.
Despite this, Aerilon is considered to be one of the poorest Colonies (TRS: "Dirty Hands"). Its capital city is Gaoth.
Government
Aerilon's government provides little or no support for health care, education, or other social infrastructure services. However, Aerilonians accept police with broad powers to detain, imprison, and torture suspects.
Economy
Although Aerilon's soil is not very fertile and requires intensive cultivation to achieve plentiful harvests, it is primarily an agricultural world. The capital, Gaoth, started as a prairie town on intersecting cattle trails. Aerilon also has tylium mines, and Promethea, one of the larger cities on the planet, was founded as a mining town on the edge of a region known as the Badlands (Blood and Chrome, deleted scenes).
History
Fifteen people died when President Richard Adar, for reasons unexplained, sent the Marines to Aerilon (TRS: "Water").
Culture
While imprisoned on Galactica, Gaius Baltar talks extensively about Aerilon, confirming that it, not Caprica, was his birth world. He imitates the speech mannerisms of a stereotypical native, a farmer who likes to work with his hands, and "go down to the pub for a pint"[1] and have a fight at the end of the night. In doing this, Baltar puts on a strong raspy "Aerilon" accent[2](TRS: "Dirty Hands").
Likewise, the musical and visual arts of Aerilon are informed by simple, harsh agrarian and working-class sensibilities.
Education
Aerilon's prime educational institution, the University of Aerilon, is located in Gaoth. It is known for producing artisans, such as writer Mark Bailey whose works became well-known in YR42 (The Caprican: "The Bottom Five Backtalk Guests").
Its rival, the Promethea Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M), is based in the mining boomtown of Promethea (Blood and Chrome, deleted scenes).
A photo of a grief-stricken soldier staring out at the ruins of Aerilon's capital hangs behind President Roslin's desk and on the bulkhead of a pilot ready room on Galactica. The pilots touch the photo for luck and in a sign of respect as they leave the room. This photo of Aerilon gives viewers one of the few visual depictions of life on a colony other than Caprica.
Several of the Colonies' greatest artists, writers, and political leaders came from the planet, although their fame was almost always achieved after leaving Aerilon.
The spelling of this colony is sometimes inconsistent in the Re-imagined Series' official cast and crew notes and episode content, in the same way that the Original Series had inconsistent spellings of "Centurion" and "Centurian". The colony is spelled "Aerilon" in the episodes "Home, Part I" and "The Son Also Rises" in official Colonial documentation, as well as placards from "Colonial Day" and various Season 4 episodes. Further research into this has lead Battlestar Wiki to choose the more prevalent spelling that appears on various props in the series, as well as spellings from the scripts: "Aerilon".
Socrata Thrace and Galen Tyrol pronounce the name as "Air-lon," while Baltar pronounces it "Air-e-lon".
References
↑Baltar's use of the term "pub" and "pint" suggest that Aerilon's culture is reminiscent of that of the workers of Ireland, Scotland or England. Baltar's use of a unit of liquid measurement called a "jp" in the episode "Water" and "pint" suggests that the Colonials may have several units of liquid volume. The term "pint" is also a nickname for a glass of beer, which often is measured in Imperial pints.
↑Actor James Callis, who normally speaks in his own native accent, adopted an accent similar to a Yorkshire accent for Baltar's "native Aerilon."
Agro Ship is the common classification for spacecraft capable of growing any edible agro foodstuffs needed in a convoy or Fleet for long periods of time. These crafts have translucent hull plates interconnected in a structural enforcement grid, which allow the plants to receive the necessary sunlight from a nearby star or some other stellar formation to achieve the state of photosynthesis. Artificial lighting is, apparently, also an important function of these agro ships. One of the crops grown aboard the agro ships is the tallon plant.
Agro ships are unarmed, but can withstand an assault for some period of time.
Galactica's Fleet has three such agro ships; two of which are destroyed by the Cylons and the third, the Agro Ship 9, experiences a hull breach via a destroyed airlock (TOS: "The Magnificent Warriors").
Count Iblis also visits the Agro Ship 9 with Lieutenant Sheba during his time with the Fleet (TOS: "War of the Gods").
An interior shot of a Valley Forge bio-dome shows up just before the destruction of the agro ship. In the original cut of the episode, Bruce Durn as Freeman Lowell (and the planet Saturn) make their fleeting cameos due to the re-use of footage from Silent Running. Durn enters to the left of the frame briefly before the scene transitions to the ship's destruction by the Cylons. For the widescreen edit, Dern's fleeting cameo is cropped out.
The same shots of the agro ships destruction in "The Magnificent Warriors" were reused in the Galactica 1980 episode "Space Croppers." This continued Battlestar's tradition of reliance on and reuse of stock footage, a necessity due to the length of time special effects shots took to prepare for and produce in that television era, in combination with the hectic shooting schedule. As a side effect of this, a continuity error is created as, by the time the Fleet heads to Earth, they should have only one agro ship left.
According to Encyclopedia Galactica, a non-canonical piece of merchandise published in 1979:
Agro ships were created by Aeries and are capable of converting "artificial sunlight into raw foodstuffs at an average efficiency of eighty-four percent". Converting the food to "add variety and taste appeal" reduces the overall efficiency of food, such as hydronic mushies to sixty-two percent. Agro ships are capable of recycling and reprocessing nutrients and water.
To create the artificial sunlight, the ship gets its energy from the "reburning of solium wastes from the main drive engines of [ships in] the fleet". In addition, agro ships are equipped with foodstuffs that have been created to process the "solium light spectrum" efficiently and grow in the weightlessness of space.[1]
He is also present when Count Iblis "miraculously" manages to grow large amounts of edible food on the agro ship. Like the rest of the Fleet, he is lead to believe that this is a "miracle" from Iblis, however it turns out to be just another trick to take the Fleet on a journey of his own evils (TOS: "War of the Gods").
Cuffle's Breath Wash is a town on Aerilon.
Gaius Baltar was born on a dairy farm outside of it, but taught himself the speech and mannerisms of a Caprican to become more than "just a farmer" and live in more socially estimable company (TRS: "Dirty Hands").
Serenity is a human agro settlement on the planet Sectar. It is often raided by Borays, who live in the nearby wilderness, during the onset of a full moon for its food and, if the opportunity arises, its women. Their latest constable, Farnes, dies in a vain attempt to fend off one such attack.
The settlement is led by SireBogan, who orchestrates the theft of SiressBelloby's energizer in order to swindle Starbuck into accepting the constable badge.
The Borays raid Serenity one final time, absconding with Belloby, forcing Adama, Apollo, Boomer and Starbuck to pursue the Borays to their wilderness encampment. Starbuck trades the constable badge of the town to their Boray's leader, Nogow, thus establishing a peace between the two parties,
Belloby remains behind to pursue her relationship with Nogow, as the Fleet continues onward in its quest, having acquired the agro seedlings to replenish those lost during a Cylon attack(TOS: "The Magnificent Warriors").
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