I have doubts about the veracity of this claim:
- "At no time is it clear whether or not Amarak was aboard the Olympic Carrier, or whether the use of his name in these events was merely a Cylon ploy to further manipulate Baltar, drawing him further into their influence."
We do know that Dr. Amarak (or a humano-cylon) was initially onboard the Olympic before it failed to make jump 238. We know this because Billy informs President Roslin of the request received from the Olympic before the jump that someone onboard the Olympic calling themselves Dr. Amarak had urgent information for the President and had to be delivered in person. This was not simply in Baltar's head. It could be argued that the entire Olympic had be compromised at the time the request came across to Colonial One but this seems suspect as there would presumably have been direct contact with the people onboard the Olympic prior to the events we witness in 33. This would indicated that either Dr. Amarak was really aboard the Olympic before jump 238 failed, and was simply part of the passengers taken over after it failed to jump, or that Dr. Amarak was a humao-cylon before getting onboard the Olympic.
Or am I missing somethiing here? — Lestatdelc 21:26, 3 December 2005 (EST)
- No, I think you're right. Also consider the Cylons' actions in this episode: they were relentlessly pursuing the fleet, and essentially had it at their mercy - after a few more days, the fleet would have quickly seccumbed to attrition. However, as soon as the Olympic carrier had been captured, they broke off their pursuit.
- The only logical conclusion is that they didn't want to destroy the fleet at all, but rather something, or someone, on board the carrier. That person is Dr. Amarak, who stood poised to expose Dr. Baltar's role in the fall of the twelve colonies. After he had been captured, they sent the carrier back to the fleet with a nuclear weapon to force Galactica to destroy it, as a demoralizing tactic.
- Obviously this doesn't make an enormous amount of sense, but I haven't heard any other argument, and it certainly holds no water if Amarak didn't exist at all. --April Arcus 22:14, 3 December 2005 (EST)
- After thinking about it some more, what I see as a very plausible scenario is that Amarak was human, and was onboard the Olympic, though he knew nothing about Baltar's complicity in the Cylon attack by allowing the defense to be compromised. Rather he was simply onboard the Olympic when the attack began. He then may have become aware of the existence of humano-cylons as the ship was being infiltrated by one/some of them. He speaks to the captain of the Olympic to send a message to the President in confidence face-to-face in order to warn the fleet that now the Cylons look human and are within the fleet. This is "intercepted" by Six et al and they see the threat this poses. Six starts working on Baltar right away with the already proven tactic about his guilty conscience to get him to serendipitously try and prevent Amarak from spilling the beans about their progress in infiltrating the fleet and that their infiltration of the Olympic is the bread crumbs signal/trail that allows the Cylons to constantly find the fleet every 33 minutes. Six's tactic of working the "he knows about your treachery" could be entirely fiction used to work Baltar. However disclosure of the infiltration of the Olympic, if not stopped will without a doubt eventually lead to the Cylons catching them when they make a mistake and be annihilated, and/or through simple attrition will slowly pick off ships as mechanical failures, mis-jumps, etc. will cull the fleeing humans. So this threat of Amarak alerting the Fleet to the humano-cylon presence on the Olympic will disrupt this restless pursuit stratagem, and allow the humans to escape. So the humano-Cylons overtake the crew right before jump 238, and prevent the Olympic from making the jump. The Cylons then rendezvous with the "left behind' Olympic, and pack her with nukes and make the jump, since they still have the jump 238 already transmitted jump coordinates. At this point the human Dr. Amarak is either killed in the full take-over of the Olympic, or removed to other Cylon vessels or basestar as a prisoner, or is simply a held captive on the now commandeered suicide mission Olympic. It attempts to run the CAP quarantine line and is then destroyed.
- So the question is, was Amarak actually killed on the Olympic before jump 238, after the fleet jumped and the Olympic was captured, after it was captured, or when she was destroyed by the Galactica's CAP...? — Lestatdelc 22:39, 3 December 2005 (EST)
- Adama already knew that the Cylons had human forms, and the Cylons knew he knew. --April Arcus 22:47, 3 December 2005 (EST)
- True Adam knew it because of the encounter at Ragnar Station, but Adama at that point had no knowledge that there were in fact humano-Cylons in the Fleet, just a fear they could be. The hypothesis I was positing wasn't so much that Adama or anyone didn't about the human-Cylons or if the Cylons knew he knew, but rather that nobody knew they were on the Olympic (thus facilitating the homing of the Fleet) and the threat Amarak would pose if he discovered this infiltration of the Olympic (Amarok would not be aware Adama or anyone else knew of the humano-Cylons). Either that or somehow Amarok pieced together what may have occurred with the CNP and led to suspicions about Baltar, based on reports about the problems the Colonial Defense Forces had from system failures, after the fact. Since it would most likely be that Amarok was on the Olympic at the time of attack, since it was caught in flight and thus escaped destruction in the opening round of the Fall of the Twelve colonies. I say that because it seems unlikely that the Olympic would have been able to pick him up as a survivor from Caprica after the attack began. It was indicated in the mini-series that the "rescue operations" that coalesced the Fleet consisted of bringing ships stranded during inter-colony transit at the time of attack to a rallying/staging point. Or was there some other reason Amarak felt the urgent need to talk to Roslin in confidence face-to-face and was simply exploited by Six? — Lestatdelc 05:06, 4 December 2005 (EST)
- I really think it's simplest if we take Amarak's words at face value, and assume that the Cylons - for whatever reason - wanted to protect Baltar. --April Arcus 13:09, 4 December 2005 (EST)