Battlestar Wiki - User contributions [en]

Brent Stait

2007-09-15T07:06:36Z

Omgoctagons: correction of character's name on andromeda

{{Cast Data
| image= Bastille_Day-Mason.jpg
| born_month=09
| born_day=09
| born_year=1959
| character= [[Mason]]
| nationality= CA
| imdb= 0821609
}}

'''Brent Stait''' (born 9 September 1959<ref name="imdb">{{cite_web|url=http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0821609/bio|title=IMDb biography on Brent Stait|date=|accessdate=07 July 2007|last=|first=|format=|language=}}</ref>) is a Canadian actor who portrayed [[Mason]] in "[[Bastille Day]]".

Born in [[w:The Pas, Manitoba|The Pas, Manitoba]], [[w:Canada|Canada]]<ref name="imdb"/>, he is best known for his role of Rev Bem in ''[[w:Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda|Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda]]''.

==References==
<div style="font-size:85%"><references/></div>

{{stub}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stait, Brent}}

[[Category:A to Z]]
[[Category:Cast]]
[[Category:Cast (RDM)]]
[[Category:Former Stargate Cast and Crew]]
[[Category:RDM]]

[[de:Brent Stait]]

Hero

2006-11-21T08:49:04Z

Omgoctagons: /* Analysis */

{{Episode Data
| title= Hero
| image= Season 3 - Promo - Hero -Adama Tigh and Novacek.jpg
| season= 3
| episode= 8
| guests= [[Carl Lumbly]]
| writer= [[David Eick]]
| story=
| director= [[Michael Rymer]]
| production=
| rating=
| US airdate= 2006-11-17
| UK airdate=
| dvd=
| population= 41,421
| prev= [[A Measure of Salvation]]
| next= [[Unfinished Business]]
}}

== Overview ==
:''A [[Bulldog|figure]] from [[William Adama|Adama]]'s past returns to haunt him. His return raises questions about why the Cylons launched their initial attack against the [[Twelve Colonies]]. <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tv.com/battlestar-galactica-2003/hero/episode/748771/summary.html |title=TV.com Episode Summary}}</ref>''
== Summary ==

=== On ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]'' ===

* ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]'' detects three [[Cylon Raider|Raiders]]. Much to the surpise of the [[CIC]] crew, two Raiders are pursuing a third. [[Kara Thrace|Starbuck]] and [[Louanne Katraine|Kat]] are dispatched. After destroying the pursuing Raiders, they go after the third.
* In CIC, Adama orders Kat and Starbuck to escort the Raider to ''Galactica'', after hearing [[Bulldog]]'s communication squaks.
* Kat and Starbuck escort the Raider in. In the hangar bay, Adama and the party that meets the Raider, surprised at the fact that a human appears to have piloted the craft. A visibly weak Bulldog salutes Adama; Adama returns the salute.
* Over a meal (noodles eaten with chopsticks) Adama asks Bulldog how he escaped. He relates a story of plague on the [[Basestar]] and escaping after killing a Number 3 with a blow to the nose delivered through the cell bars.
* Bulldog is debriefed by the president with Adama present, where they tell a (decidedly shaky) story of a mining facility too close to the Armistice Line. When it is concluded she asks Adama if he is going to tell her what really happened. He replies that it is his mess and that he will deal it. After she leaves he kicks over a table in frustration.
* Bulldog goes to see Saul Tigh in his quarters shortly after Adama talks to him. Saul informs Bulldog that he was shot down by the ''Valkyrie'' to get rid of evidence.
*At the same time, Adama confesses the mission's actual specifics to Lee, and his belief that he provoked the Cylon attacks on the colonies. Aghast at first, Lee then tries to console his father, blaming the admirals in command and saying that he was "only one man." Adama responds, "It only takes one."
* Starbuck reviews the gun film from the fight with the Cylon Raiders and realizes that they were deliberately missing their target, letting Bulldog get away. She goes to Saul Tigh with this information, who deduces that Bulldog was sent there by the Cylons to kill the admiral.
* Tigh finds Bulldog in the process of killing Adama and stops him. Bulldog has flashbacks to being let out of his cell.
* Later, Adama presents his resignation to Roslin. Bemused, she refuses to accept it, and points out that the Admiralty may have been trying to provoke a war, and that he cannot shoulder the entire responsiblity for the holocaust on his shoulders. She then tells him that his penance will be to accept a Medal of Distinction for his long years of service, and to be a hero.
* After sending Bulldog off to a berthing on another ship with a uniform, Tigh and Adama sit down for a drink in the admiral's quarters.

=== On a [[Basestar (RDM)|basestar]] ===
*In a dream, [[Three]] is trying to avoid marines on ''[[Galactica]]''. The marines corner her against a hatch labelled End of Line. The marines raise their weapons and Three tells them to shoot.
*As the shots go off, Three wakes up in bed with [[Baltar]] and [[Caprica-Six]]. She has apparently been having a sexual relationship with Baltar and possibly Six as well.
*In the Cylon control room Caprica-Six questions Three about her bad dreams. Caprica asks if the dreams are about Baltar and Three tells her that it's nothing like that, but does not elaborate.
*Three gives a centurion orders to shoot her, and then delete any information regarding the incident. The centurion obeys and shoots her in the head. In the moments before she is downloaded, she experiences images from her dream mixed in with memories from New Caprica and other more cryptic scenes.
*Three awakes in a rebirthing chamber where a worried Caprica-Six tries to help her recover. Three tells her, "There's something beautiful, miraculous between life and death."

== Questions ==
*Were the Admiralty's fears valid, or was the Cylon force that destroyed the Colonies built up just since that mission?
*Did Bulldog know of or see other human prisoners during his three years of captivity?
*How was Bulldog directed to the precise location of the fleet?
*What class of battlestar does ''[[Valkyrie]]'' belong to?
*Why would a "Stealth Ship" in enemy territory break radio silence?
*Was ''[[Valkyrie]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s mission the only one the admiralty undertook or were there others?
*Was [[Laura Roslin]] right in speculating that the admiralty might have sent ''[[Valkyrie]]'' in order to provoke a war?
*Why did the Cylons have one craft jump in and fire on the stealth star and then jump out, then sending two more ships to finish the attack?
*Who were the white-robed figures [[Three]] saw in her vision before downloading?
*Were the Cylons on the baseship where Bulldog was held actually sick?
*Does Bulldog have information regarding the other humanoid Cylon models that nothing is known of?
*How did Baltar's status change from torturee in "[[A Measure of Salvation]]" to an apparent sexual relationship with [[Caprica Six]] and [[Number Three]]?
* Was Adama's whole command staff transferred from the ''[[Valkyrie]] ''to ''[[Galactica]]'' after the failure of the recon mission?
*Why did Number three go through all the trouble to program the Centurion to erase its memory once it shot her? Was she afraid of being 'boxed' by the other cylons for reasons of insanity or because it would do some sort of damage on the centurion once its processed the kill?

== Analysis ==
*Adama and Roslin know each other well enough by now to tell when the other is lying, or is not fooled by a lie, even when others around can't.
*At the end of the episode, [[Saul Tigh]] appears to be attempting to try and deal with his guilt over his wife, but he does not seem to want his job as XO back, at least not any time soon.
*Adama's feelings of guilt over his actions during ''[[Valkyrie]]'s'' mission seem to shed new light on the motivation for his speech at ''[[Galactica]]'s'' decomissioning ceremony at the begining of the series. Also, they explain his near-monomania with safeguarding and/or rescuing those under his command or protection.
*The Cylons seem to have been able to detect and destroy The Stealth-Star that had only entered two kilometers into their space. This seems suspicious given the fact that they were unable to detect the [[Blackbird]], presumably a far less sophisticated design. Either the Cylons had more advanced detection equipment on the [[Armistice Line]], or they had advance knowledge of Bulldog's mission.
**It is only speculation that the Blackbird's stealth capabilities were less effective than those of the Stealth-Star. The reason that the Blackbird went undetected by the Cylons is that its hull, at Helo's suggestion, was made of carbon composite. There is no way of knowing whether or not this was true of the Stealth-Star.
***In addition, the Cylons near the [[Armistice Line]] would have known to look for stealth ships, as they probably suspected that the Colonial fleet would try to gain intel on Cylon military status. After the destruction of the colonies, it is unlikely that the Cylons believed that the Colonials were still in possession of any kind of stealth fighter and would not attempt to detect one.
***The fact that the Cylons expected penetration by stealth ships suggests that they may have done their share of Armistice Line violation.
**Bulldog was communicating to the Valkyrie before being attacked. The Cylons may have been able to detect this radiation and fire at the source of it.
*Bulldog's story is even less believable given the fact that it took Kara Thrace several hours to gut a [[Raider]] and learn how to fly it. Granted, the Raider Kara captured was damaged, but it would still have taken Bulldog some time to adapt the raider for his own use.
**As the episode implies that Bulldog was deliberately released by the Cylons in an effort to direct his anger towards Adama, it is possible that the Cylons allowed Bulldog to gain a working knowledge of the raider.
*Bulldog probably could have stolen a Heavy Raider, which unlike the light versions seems to have a crew compartment and perhaps piloting controls, but then the production crew couldn't have re-used the captured-Raider prop from "[[You Can't Go Home Again]]" on the flight deck set.
*That Kara Thrace goes to Tigh with her findings is an acknowledgment of their shared semi-pariah status and the connection that was shown in "[[Collaborators]]" for the first time
*The last two scenes of "Hero" appear to have been edited to ensure that the final scene was with Adama and Tigh. Right after the celebration scene, Adama is seen giving Bulldog a new uniform, but Adama is wearing his everyday uniform. In the final scene with Tigh, Adama is wearing his dress grays from the celebration. It appears at the very least, the two scenes were in reverse order, meaning the episode originally ended with Adama giving Bulldog his new uniform.
*During her non-corporeal limbo between death and download, Three finds herself reliving a mismash of memories from her various lives, including her final moments during "[[Downloaded]]" before her death, her discovery of Hera on New Caprica ("[[Exodus, Part II]]"), and also a memory we do not know her to have experienced: the opera house revealed to Baltar by his internal Six during the final moments of "[[Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II]]".
**This sequence, as well as this episode as a whole, showcases a number of fundamental BSG leitmotivs that have had little to no exposure in their original form since the end of season one/beginning of season two. The sound, as well as the imagery, reminds us that we've seen the opera house before, and the associated musical themes will likely help elucidate the symbolism behind the two visions.
*Three's flashbacks after being shot by the centurion indicate that she is the same individual who was killed on Caprica by [[Caprica-Six]] in "[[Downloaded]]" and who found Hera in "[[Exodus, Part II]]". It is of course possible that some of these recollections are the result of memory-sharing rather than direct experience.
**If she is the same Three that died on Caprica, that leaves the question how it can be that she didn't get the Opera House experience on her first death, even though she was stuck in limbo for thirty-six hours because of the massive casualties at the cafe in [[Downloaded]]. It is plausible that this Three wanted to die because she'd never experienced death before.
***It is also plausible that God is only just now trying to tell her something. The opera house may act as a cue, a signal sent from God that facilitates reflection on one's own destiny at a pivotal point in their existence, when it is no longer acceptable to ignore their role in God's plan out of arrogance or inconvenience (Baltar, "[[Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II]]" ), or because it seems a contradiction of the identity they'd formed by refusing to question their fate (Three, from the final days of the Occupation through "Hero"). In both cases, the opera house is revealed to a soul straddling the line between life and death, both in a physical and spiritual sense, and it is perhaps this balance that can uniquely invoke the presence of God, and guide the chosen instruments towards their intended destiny.
****It is interesting to note the central role Hera plays in both of the visions that bring us to the opera house.
*There's at least one other doctor of some kind in the fleet, because Cottle instructs Bulldog to report to him.
**This doctor is probably a psychotherapist that specializes in some sort of mental trama issues. Considering that Bulldog was in captivity for such a long time, and his breakdown while attacking Adama, at the very least, Bulldog will need a counselor to help him work through all of the emotional and mental scars that he's endured.
*The Cylons appear to know the current location of the fleet.
*It appears that the Admiralty transferred those directly involved with the mission to ''Galactica''. This is supported by Geata made a statement during the [[Mini-series|miniseries]] about serving with Adama for three years (prior to the attack), as well as Tigh's comment saying that the mission, "wasn't exactly a boon to [Adama's] career."

===Adama's Dossier===
Laura Roslin reviews a dossier prepared for her by [[Billy Keikeya|Billy]] on her first day aboard ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]''. It includes large photos of battlestar ''Galactica'', a photograph of the CIC crew of battlestar ''[[Valkyrie]]'', a (mostly illegible) certificate bearing [[Saul Tigh]]'s name, and a cursory biography of William Adama, reproduced in full below:

:'''Commander William Adama'''

:*Born H5/21290 and raised on the colony of [[The Twelve Colonies (RDM)#Caprica|Caprica]], in [[Qualai]], a small coastal community
:*Mother, [[Evelyn Adama]], an accountant.
:*Father, [[Joseph Adama]], a prominent attorney who specialized in criminal defese and civil liberties.

:'''Military Service'''

:D6/21311 First comission, Battlestar Galactica, fighter squadron 
:E4/21312 Commendation for shooting down Cylon fighter in first combat mission. 
:D5/21314 Mustered out of service post-armistice 
:R6/21317 Served as Deck Hand in merchant fleet and as common […] aboard inter-colony tramp freighters 
:D1/21331 Recomissioned to Fleet 
:D6/21337 Major: Battlestar [[Atlantia (RDM)|Atlantia]] 
:R8/21341 Executive Officer: Battlestar [[Columbia (RDM)|Columbia]] 
:C2/21345 Commander: Battlestar Valkyrie 
:C2/21348 Commander: Battlestar Galactica

This provides some interesting information. The fields in the format X#/##### appear to be dates, with the five-digit string following the solidus apparently corresponding to the year. This corroborates various points of information supplied thus far:

* Adama's father was named Joseph ([[Hand of God]]), and was a civil rights attorney ("[[Litmus]]", "[[Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I]]").
* In a [[List of Deleted Scenes (RDM)#Valley of Darkness|scene cut]] from "[[Valley of Darkness]]", it is noted that Adama joined the fleet toward the end of the war, and was attached to ''Galactica'' as a fighter pilot.
* Adama served on ''[[Atlantia (RDM)|Atlantia]]'' during his thousandth landing, which indicates that he was still a flight officer at that time. Given his rank of Major, he was likely the [[CAG]] on ''Atlantia'' ([[Act of Contrition]]).
* The date of the [[Cimtar Peace Accord|Armistice]] is correct at 42 years before the present, as stated in the [[Miniseries]] and accounting for the passage of slightly over two years since that time.

The following can be deduced from this document:

* This episode marks the 45th anniversary of Adama's commissioning, which puts it in the year 21356, and makes Adama 66 years old.
* Adama spent three years in between being mustered out and finding a job on a tramp freighter. We may speculate that it was during this time that his relationship with first wife [[Caroline Adama|Caroline]] deteriorated.
* Adama spent a total of 14 years serving in the merchant fleet.
* Adama met Tigh roughly 30 years ago ([[Torn]]). That would be 21326, which correctly puts it in the middle of Adama's merchant fleet service.
* Adama was a major by the time he arranged for Tigh to be reinstated in the fleet ([[Scattered]]), which means that at least six years passed in between Adama's recomissioning and Tigh's.
* Ronald Moore [[Podcast:Scattered|revealed in his podcast for "Scattered"]] that the flashback scenes for [[Scattered|said episode]] took place 20 years before that episode, or in 21334. In fact, they appear to span at least an eleven-year period between 21326 (Adama and Tigh's first meeting) to 21337 (Adama's promotion to Major).
* The first [[Colonial Day (holiday)|Colonial Day]], marking the unification of the colonies, was probably in 21304. The one celebrated in "[[Colonial Day]]" was the 52nd, and it is now two years later.

If the five-digit string following the solidus is in fact the year, as seems inescapable based on the above, the letter-digit sequence before it must indicate the position in the year. There are 260 unique letter-digit sequences of that format, which may indicate a shorter year in the Colonial calendar (a year of twenty-six ten-day weeks?) However, what has been revealed about Colonial timekeeping is too incomplete to draw any conclusions.

It is astonishing to learn that the Colonials have (or believe they have) over 21,000 years of recorded history. By comparison, Pythia was said to have recorded her prophecies 3,600 years ago ([[The Hand of God]]) and the exodus from [[Kobol]] took place just 2,000 years ago. On [[Earth]], Human civilization is only about 6,000 years old — though it should be noted that the series does not indicate the time frame for the events that have taken place in relation to Earth time.

Adama's resignation letter at the end of the episode appears to be dated in an entirely different format. It's difficult to read clearly, but it appears to be dated "27/89/9923".

== Notes ==
*In Adama's flashback, the admirals are wearing their decorations on their day uniforms. This contrasts with most Colonial Fleet officers shown thus far, who only wear their decorations on their dress uniform sash.

*Both Baltar and Sharon Agathon appear in this episode, but neither one has any lines.

*In Number Three's dream, the door at which she is shot by the marines is labeled "End of Line". As well as being a metaphor for death, this is a statement repeated often by the Cylon [[Hybrid]].

*This episode shares some plot elements with the TNG Episode "The Defector", written by RDM. Notably, it begins with a dramatic chase delivering a dubious ally into friendly hands that is later shown to be staged. Additionally, both episodes feature plots revolving around a contested border.

*Admiral William Adama names Major Lee Adama to succeed him as commander of ''Galactica'' in his resignation letter.

== Noteworthy Dialogue ==

* '''[[Number Three]]''': (to [[Caprica Six]]) "There's something beautiful, miraculous between life and death."

* ''[[Bulldog]] calls on [[Saul Tigh]] at Saul's quarters:
:'''Tigh''': So ... drink?
:'''Bulldog''': You have no idea!
:'''Tigh''' (scowling, unseen): Yes, I do.

== Official Statements ==
*A video blog gives an insight to this episode during filming. <ref>{{cite_web|url=http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/video/index.php?cat=videoBlog&vid=34824|title=Introducing Bulldog|date=2006-10-11|accessdate=|last=|first=|format=VID|language=}}</ref>

== Guest Stars ==
* [[Michael Hogan]] as [[Saul Tigh]]
* [[Aaron Douglas]] as Chief Petty Officer [[Galen Tyrol]]
* [[Tahmoh Penikett]] as Captain [[Karl Agathon|Karl "Helo" Agathon]]
* [[Alessandro Juliani]] as Lt. [[Felix Gaeta]]
* [[Kandyse McClure]] as [[Anastasia Dualla]]
*[[Lucy Lawless]] as [[Number Three]]
*[[Carl Lumbly]] as Lt. [[Daniel Novacek]]
* [[Donnelly Rhodes]] as Doctor [[Cottle]]
* [[Matthew Bennett]] as [[Number Five]]
*[[Rekha Sharma]] as [[Tory Foster]]
* [[Luciana Carro]] as Lt. [[Louanne Katraine|Louanne "Kat" Katraine]]
*[[imdb:nm0447921|Barry Kennedy]] as Admiral [[Corman]]
* [[imdb:nm0461101|Tiffany Lyndall-Knight]] as [[Hybrid]]

== References ==
<div style="font-size:85%"><references/></div>

{{episode list (RDM season 3)}}

[[Category:Episodes written by David Eick]]
[[Category:Episodes directed by Michael Rymer]]
[[Category:RDM]]

Hero

2006-11-21T08:42:02Z

Omgoctagons: /* Analysis */

{{Episode Data
| title= Hero
| image= Season 3 - Promo - Hero -Adama Tigh and Novacek.jpg
| season= 3
| episode= 8
| guests= [[Carl Lumbly]]
| writer= [[David Eick]]
| story=
| director= [[Michael Rymer]]
| production=
| rating=
| US airdate= 2006-11-17
| UK airdate=
| dvd=
| population= 41,421
| prev= [[A Measure of Salvation]]
| next= [[Unfinished Business]]
}}

== Overview ==
:''A [[Bulldog|figure]] from [[William Adama|Adama]]'s past returns to haunt him. His return raises questions about why the Cylons launched their initial attack against the [[Twelve Colonies]]. <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tv.com/battlestar-galactica-2003/hero/episode/748771/summary.html |title=TV.com Episode Summary}}</ref>''
== Summary ==

=== On ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]'' ===

* ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]'' detects three [[Cylon Raider|Raiders]]. Much to the surpise of the [[CIC]] crew, two Raiders are pursuing a third. [[Kara Thrace|Starbuck]] and [[Louanne Katraine|Kat]] are dispatched. After destroying the pursuing Raiders, they go after the third.
* In CIC, Adama orders Kat and Starbuck to escort the Raider to ''Galactica'', after hearing [[Bulldog]]'s communication squaks.
* Kat and Starbuck escort the Raider in. In the hangar bay, Adama and the party that meets the Raider, surprised at the fact that a human appears to have piloted the craft. A visibly weak Bulldog salutes Adama; Adama returns the salute.
* Over a meal (noodles eaten with chopsticks) Adama asks Bulldog how he escaped. He relates a story of plague on the [[Basestar]] and escaping after killing a Number 3 with a blow to the nose delivered through the cell bars.
* Bulldog is debriefed by the president with Adama present, where they tell a (decidedly shaky) story of a mining facility too close to the Armistice Line. When it is concluded she asks Adama if he is going to tell her what really happened. He replies that it is his mess and that he will deal it. After she leaves he kicks over a table in frustration.
* Bulldog goes to see Saul Tigh in his quarters shortly after Adama talks to him. Saul informs Bulldog that he was shot down by the ''Valkyrie'' to get rid of evidence.
*At the same time, Adama confesses the mission's actual specifics to Lee, and his belief that he provoked the Cylon attacks on the colonies. Aghast at first, Lee then tries to console his father, blaming the admirals in command and saying that he was "only one man." Adama responds, "It only takes one."
* Starbuck reviews the gun film from the fight with the Cylon Raiders and realizes that they were deliberately missing their target, letting Bulldog get away. She goes to Saul Tigh with this information, who deduces that Bulldog was sent there by the Cylons to kill the admiral.
* Tigh finds Bulldog in the process of killing Adama and stops him. Bulldog has flashbacks to being let out of his cell.
* Later, Adama presents his resignation to Roslin. Bemused, she refuses to accept it, and points out that the Admiralty may have been trying to provoke a war, and that he cannot shoulder the entire responsiblity for the holocaust on his shoulders. She then tells him that his penance will be to accept a Medal of Distinction for his long years of service, and to be a hero.
* After sending Bulldog off to a berthing on another ship with a uniform, Tigh and Adama sit down for a drink in the admiral's quarters.

=== On a [[Basestar (RDM)|basestar]] ===
*In a dream, [[Three]] is trying to avoid marines on ''[[Galactica]]''. The marines corner her against a hatch labelled End of Line. The marines raise their weapons and Three tells them to shoot.
*As the shots go off, Three wakes up in bed with [[Baltar]] and [[Caprica-Six]]. She has apparently been having a sexual relationship with Baltar and possibly Six as well.
*In the Cylon control room Caprica-Six questions Three about her bad dreams. Caprica asks if the dreams are about Baltar and Three tells her that it's nothing like that, but does not elaborate.
*Three gives a centurion orders to shoot her, and then delete any information regarding the incident. The centurion obeys and shoots her in the head. In the moments before she is downloaded, she experiences images from her dream mixed in with memories from New Caprica and other more cryptic scenes.
*Three awakes in a rebirthing chamber where a worried Caprica-Six tries to help her recover. Three tells her, "There's something beautiful, miraculous between life and death."

== Questions ==
*Were the Admiralty's fears valid, or was the Cylon force that destroyed the Colonies built up just since that mission?
*Did Bulldog know of or see other human prisoners during his three years of captivity?
*How was Bulldog directed to the precise location of the fleet?
*What class of battlestar does ''[[Valkyrie]]'' belong to?
*Why would a "Stealth Ship" in enemy territory break radio silence?
*Was ''[[Valkyrie]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s mission the only one the admiralty undertook or were there others?
*Was [[Laura Roslin]] right in speculating that the admiralty might have sent ''[[Valkyrie]]'' in order to provoke a war?
*Why did the Cylons have one craft jump in and fire on the stealth star and then jump out, then sending two more ships to finish the attack?
*Who were the white-robed figures [[Three]] saw in her vision before downloading?
*Were the Cylons on the baseship where Bulldog was held actually sick?
*Does Bulldog have information regarding the other humanoid Cylon models that nothing is known of?
*How did Baltar's status change from torturee in "[[A Measure of Salvation]]" to an apparent sexual relationship with [[Caprica Six]] and [[Number Three]]?
* Was Adama's whole command staff transferred from the ''[[Valkyrie]] ''to ''[[Galactica]]'' after the failure of the recon mission?
*Why did Number three go through all the trouble to program the Centurion to erase its memory once it shot her? Was she afraid of being 'boxed' by the other cylons for reasons of insanity or because it would do some sort of damage on the centurion once its processed the kill?

== Analysis ==
*Adama and Roslin know each other well enough by now to tell when the other is lying, or is not fooled by a lie, even when others around can't.
*At the end of the episode, [[Saul Tigh]] appears to be attempting to try and deal with his guilt over his wife, but he does not seem to want his job as XO back, at least not any time soon.
*Adama's feelings of guilt over his actions during ''[[Valkyrie]]'s'' mission seem to shed new light on the motivation for his speech at ''[[Galactica]]'s'' decomissioning ceremony at the begining of the series. Also, they explain his near-monomania with safeguarding and/or rescuing those under his command or protection.
*The Cylons seem to have been able to detect and destroy The Stealth-Star that had only entered two kilometers into their space. This seems suspicious given the fact that they were unable to detect the [[Blackbird]], presumably a far less sophisticated design. Either the Cylons had more advanced detection equipment on the [[Armistice Line]], or they had advance knowledge of Bulldog's mission.
**It is only speculation that the Blackbird's stealth capabilities were less effective than those of the Stealth-Star. The reason that the Blackbird went undetected by the Cylons is that its hull, at Helo's suggestion, was made of carbon composite. There is no way of knowing whether or not this was true of the Stealth-Star.
***In addition, the Cylons near the [[Armistice Line]] would have known to look for stealth ships, as they probably suspected that the Colonial fleet would try to gain intel on Cylon military status. After the destruction of the colonies, it is unlikely that the Cylons believed that the Colonials were still in possession of any kind of stealth fighter and would not attempt to detect one.
***The fact that the Cylons expected penetration by stealth ships suggests that they may have done their share of Armistice Line violation.
**Bulldog was communicating to the Valkyrie before being attacked. The Cylons may have been able to detect this radiation and fire at the source of it.
*Bulldog's story is even less believable given the fact that it took Kara Thrace several hours to gut a [[Raider]] and learn how to fly it. Granted, the Raider Kara captured was damaged, but it would still have taken Bulldog some time to adapt the raider for his own use.
**As the episode implies that Bulldog was deliberately released by the Cylons in an effort to direct his anger towards Adama, it is possible that the Cylons allowed Bulldog to gain a working knowledge of the raider.
*Bulldog probably could have stolen a Heavy Raider, which unlike the light versions seems to have a crew compartment and perhaps piloting controls, but then the production crew couldn't have re-used the captured-Raider prop from "[[You Can't Go Home Again]]" on the flight deck set.
*That Kara Thrace goes to Tigh with her findings is an acknowledgment of their shared semi-pariah status and the connection that was shown in "[[Collaborators]]" for the first time
*The last two scenes of "Hero" appear to have been edited to ensure that the final scene was with Adama and Tigh. Right after the celebration scene, Adama is seen giving Bulldog a new uniform, but Adama is wearing his everyday uniform. In the final scene with Tigh, Adama is wearing his dress grays from the celebration. It appears at the very least, the two scenes were in reverse order, meaning the episode originally ended with Adama giving Bulldog his new uniform.
*During her non-corporeal limbo between death and download, Three finds herself reliving a mismash of memories from her various lives, including her final moments on Caprica during "[[Downloaded,]]" her discovery of Hera on New Caprica ("[[Exodus, Part II]]"), and also a memory we do not know her to have experienced: the opera house revealed to Baltar by his internal Six during the final moments of "[[Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II]]".
**This sequence, as well as this episode as a whole, showcases a number of fundamental BSG leitmotivs that have had little to no exposure in their original form since the end of season one/beginning of season two. The sound, as well as the imagery, reminds us that we've seen the opera house before, and the associated musical themes will likely help elucidate the symbolism behind the two visions.
*Three's flashbacks after being shot by the centurion indicate that she is the same individual who was killed on Caprica by [[Caprica-Six]] in "[[Downloaded]]" and who found Hera in "[[Exodus, Part II]]". It is of course possible that some of these recollections are the result of memory-sharing rather than direct experience.
**If she is the same Three that died on Caprica, that leaves the question how it can be that she didn't get the Opera House experience on her first death, even though she was stuck in limbo for thirty-six hours because of the massive casualties at the cafe in [[Downloaded]]. It is plausible that this Three wanted to die because she'd never experienced death before.
***It is also plausible that God is only just now trying to tell her something. The opera house may act as a cue, a signal sent from God that facilitates reflection on one's own destiny at a pivotal point in their existence, when it is no longer acceptable to ignore their role in God's plan out of arrogance or inconvenience (Baltar, "[[Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II]]" ), or because it seems a contradiction of the identity they'd formed by refusing to question their fate (Three, from the final days of the Occupation through "Hero"). In both cases, the opera house is revealed to a soul straddling the line between life and death, both in a physical and spiritual sense, and it is perhaps this balance that can uniquely invoke the presence of God, and guide the chosen instruments towards their intended destiny.
****It is interesting to note the central role Hera plays in both of the visions that bring us to the opera house.
*There's at least one other doctor of some kind in the fleet, because Cottle instructs Bulldog to report to him.
**This doctor is probably a psychotherapist that specializes in some sort of mental trama issues. Considering that Bulldog was in captivity for such a long time, and his breakdown while attacking Adama, at the very least, Bulldog will need a counselor to help him work through all of the emotional and mental scars that he's endured.
*The Cylons appear to know the current location of the fleet.
*It appears that the Admiralty transferred those directly involved with the mission to ''Galactica''. This is supported by Geata made a statement during the [[Mini-series|miniseries]] about serving with Adama for three years (prior to the attack), as well as Tigh's comment saying that the mission, "wasn't exactly a boon to [Adama's] career."

===Adama's Dossier===
Laura Roslin reviews a dossier prepared for her by [[Billy Keikeya|Billy]] on her first day aboard ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]''. It includes large photos of battlestar ''Galactica'', a photograph of the CIC crew of battlestar ''[[Valkyrie]]'', a (mostly illegible) certificate bearing [[Saul Tigh]]'s name, and a cursory biography of William Adama, reproduced in full below:

:'''Commander William Adama'''

:*Born H5/21290 and raised on the colony of [[The Twelve Colonies (RDM)#Caprica|Caprica]], in [[Qualai]], a small coastal community
:*Mother, [[Evelyn Adama]], an accountant.
:*Father, [[Joseph Adama]], a prominent attorney who specialized in criminal defese and civil liberties.

:'''Military Service'''

:D6/21311 First comission, Battlestar Galactica, fighter squadron 
:E4/21312 Commendation for shooting down Cylon fighter in first combat mission. 
:D5/21314 Mustered out of service post-armistice 
:R6/21317 Served as Deck Hand in merchant fleet and as common […] aboard inter-colony tramp freighters 
:D1/21331 Recomissioned to Fleet 
:D6/21337 Major: Battlestar [[Atlantia (RDM)|Atlantia]] 
:R8/21341 Executive Officer: Battlestar [[Columbia (RDM)|Columbia]] 
:C2/21345 Commander: Battlestar Valkyrie 
:C2/21348 Commander: Battlestar Galactica

This provides some interesting information. The fields in the format X#/##### appear to be dates, with the five-digit string following the solidus apparently corresponding to the year. This corroborates various points of information supplied thus far:

* Adama's father was named Joseph ([[Hand of God]]), and was a civil rights attorney ("[[Litmus]]", "[[Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I]]").
* In a [[List of Deleted Scenes (RDM)#Valley of Darkness|scene cut]] from "[[Valley of Darkness]]", it is noted that Adama joined the fleet toward the end of the war, and was attached to ''Galactica'' as a fighter pilot.
* Adama served on ''[[Atlantia (RDM)|Atlantia]]'' during his thousandth landing, which indicates that he was still a flight officer at that time. Given his rank of Major, he was likely the [[CAG]] on ''Atlantia'' ([[Act of Contrition]]).
* The date of the [[Cimtar Peace Accord|Armistice]] is correct at 42 years before the present, as stated in the [[Miniseries]] and accounting for the passage of slightly over two years since that time.

The following can be deduced from this document:

* This episode marks the 45th anniversary of Adama's commissioning, which puts it in the year 21356, and makes Adama 66 years old.
* Adama spent three years in between being mustered out and finding a job on a tramp freighter. We may speculate that it was during this time that his relationship with first wife [[Caroline Adama|Caroline]] deteriorated.
* Adama spent a total of 14 years serving in the merchant fleet.
* Adama met Tigh roughly 30 years ago ([[Torn]]). That would be 21326, which correctly puts it in the middle of Adama's merchant fleet service.
* Adama was a major by the time he arranged for Tigh to be reinstated in the fleet ([[Scattered]]), which means that at least six years passed in between Adama's recomissioning and Tigh's.
* Ronald Moore [[Podcast:Scattered|revealed in his podcast for "Scattered"]] that the flashback scenes for [[Scattered|said episode]] took place 20 years before that episode, or in 21334. In fact, they appear to span at least an eleven-year period between 21326 (Adama and Tigh's first meeting) to 21337 (Adama's promotion to Major).
* The first [[Colonial Day (holiday)|Colonial Day]], marking the unification of the colonies, was probably in 21304. The one celebrated in "[[Colonial Day]]" was the 52nd, and it is now two years later.

If the five-digit string following the solidus is in fact the year, as seems inescapable based on the above, the letter-digit sequence before it must indicate the position in the year. There are 260 unique letter-digit sequences of that format, which may indicate a shorter year in the Colonial calendar (a year of twenty-six ten-day weeks?) However, what has been revealed about Colonial timekeeping is too incomplete to draw any conclusions.

It is astonishing to learn that the Colonials have (or believe they have) over 21,000 years of recorded history. By comparison, Pythia was said to have recorded her prophecies 3,600 years ago ([[The Hand of God]]) and the exodus from [[Kobol]] took place just 2,000 years ago. On [[Earth]], Human civilization is only about 6,000 years old — though it should be noted that the series does not indicate the time frame for the events that have taken place in relation to Earth time.

Adama's resignation letter at the end of the episode appears to be dated in an entirely different format. It's difficult to read clearly, but it appears to be dated "27/89/9923".

== Notes ==
*In Adama's flashback, the admirals are wearing their decorations on their day uniforms. This contrasts with most Colonial Fleet officers shown thus far, who only wear their decorations on their dress uniform sash.

*Both Baltar and Sharon Agathon appear in this episode, but neither one has any lines.

*In Number Three's dream, the door at which she is shot by the marines is labeled "End of Line". As well as being a metaphor for death, this is a statement repeated often by the Cylon [[Hybrid]].

*This episode shares some plot elements with the TNG Episode "The Defector", written by RDM. Notably, it begins with a dramatic chase delivering a dubious ally into friendly hands that is later shown to be staged. Additionally, both episodes feature plots revolving around a contested border.

*Admiral William Adama names Major Lee Adama to succeed him as commander of ''Galactica'' in his resignation letter.

== Noteworthy Dialogue ==

* '''[[Number Three]]''': (to [[Caprica Six]]) "There's something beautiful, miraculous between life and death."

* ''[[Bulldog]] calls on [[Saul Tigh]] at Saul's quarters:
:'''Tigh''': So ... drink?
:'''Bulldog''': You have no idea!
:'''Tigh''' (scowling, unseen): Yes, I do.

== Official Statements ==
*A video blog gives an insight to this episode during filming. <ref>{{cite_web|url=http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/video/index.php?cat=videoBlog&vid=34824|title=Introducing Bulldog|date=2006-10-11|accessdate=|last=|first=|format=VID|language=}}</ref>

== Guest Stars ==
* [[Michael Hogan]] as [[Saul Tigh]]
* [[Aaron Douglas]] as Chief Petty Officer [[Galen Tyrol]]
* [[Tahmoh Penikett]] as Captain [[Karl Agathon|Karl "Helo" Agathon]]
* [[Alessandro Juliani]] as Lt. [[Felix Gaeta]]
* [[Kandyse McClure]] as [[Anastasia Dualla]]
*[[Lucy Lawless]] as [[Number Three]]
*[[Carl Lumbly]] as Lt. [[Daniel Novacek]]
* [[Donnelly Rhodes]] as Doctor [[Cottle]]
* [[Matthew Bennett]] as [[Number Five]]
*[[Rekha Sharma]] as [[Tory Foster]]
* [[Luciana Carro]] as Lt. [[Louanne Katraine|Louanne "Kat" Katraine]]
*[[imdb:nm0447921|Barry Kennedy]] as Admiral [[Corman]]
* [[imdb:nm0461101|Tiffany Lyndall-Knight]] as [[Hybrid]]

== References ==
<div style="font-size:85%"><references/></div>

{{episode list (RDM season 3)}}

[[Category:Episodes written by David Eick]]
[[Category:Episodes directed by Michael Rymer]]
[[Category:RDM]]

Hero

2006-11-21T08:02:05Z

Omgoctagons: /* Analysis */

{{Episode Data
| title= Hero
| image= Season 3 - Promo - Hero -Adama Tigh and Novacek.jpg
| season= 3
| episode= 8
| guests= [[Carl Lumbly]]
| writer= [[David Eick]]
| story=
| director= [[Michael Rymer]]
| production=
| rating=
| US airdate= 2006-11-17
| UK airdate=
| dvd=
| population= 41,421
| prev= [[A Measure of Salvation]]
| next= [[Unfinished Business]]
}}

== Overview ==
:''A [[Bulldog|figure]] from [[William Adama|Adama]]'s past returns to haunt him. His return raises questions about why the Cylons launched their initial attack against the [[Twelve Colonies]]. <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tv.com/battlestar-galactica-2003/hero/episode/748771/summary.html |title=TV.com Episode Summary}}</ref>''
== Summary ==

=== On ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]'' ===

* ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]'' detects three [[Cylon Raider|Raiders]]. Much to the surpise of the [[CIC]] crew, two Raiders are pursuing a third. [[Kara Thrace|Starbuck]] and [[Louanne Katraine|Kat]] are dispatched. After destroying the pursuing Raiders, they go after the third.
* In CIC, Adama orders Kat and Starbuck to escort the Raider to ''Galactica'', after hearing [[Bulldog]]'s communication squaks.
* Kat and Starbuck escort the Raider in. In the hangar bay, Adama and the party that meets the Raider, surprised at the fact that a human appears to have piloted the craft. A visibly weak Bulldog salutes Adama; Adama returns the salute.
* Over a meal (noodles eaten with chopsticks) Adama asks Bulldog how he escaped. He relates a story of plague on the [[Basestar]] and escaping after killing a Number 3 with a blow to the nose delivered through the cell bars.
* Bulldog is debriefed by the president with Adama present, where they tell a (decidedly shaky) story of a mining facility too close to the Armistice Line. When it is concluded she asks Adama if he is going to tell her what really happened. He replies that it is his mess and that he will deal it. After she leaves he kicks over a table in frustration.
* Bulldog goes to see Saul Tigh in his quarters shortly after Adama talks to him. Saul informs Bulldog that he was shot down by the ''Valkyrie'' to get rid of evidence.
*At the same time, Adama confesses the mission's actual specifics to Lee, and his belief that he provoked the Cylon attacks on the colonies. Aghast at first, Lee then tries to console his father, blaming the admirals in command and saying that he was "only one man." Adama responds, "It only takes one."
* Starbuck reviews the gun film from the fight with the Cylon Raiders and realizes that they were deliberately missing their target, letting Bulldog get away. She goes to Saul Tigh with this information, who deduces that Bulldog was sent there by the Cylons to kill the admiral.
* Tigh finds Bulldog in the process of killing Adama and stops him. Bulldog has flashbacks to being let out of his cell.
* Later, Adama presents his resignation to Roslin. Bemused, she refuses to accept it, and points out that the Admiralty may have been trying to provoke a war, and that he cannot shoulder the entire responsiblity for the holocaust on his shoulders. She then tells him that his penance will be to accept a Medal of Distinction for his long years of service, and to be a hero.
* After sending Bulldog off to a berthing on another ship with a uniform, Tigh and Adama sit down for a drink in the admiral's quarters.

=== On a [[Basestar (RDM)|basestar]] ===
*In a dream, [[Three]] is trying to avoid marines on ''[[Galactica]]''. The marines corner her against a hatch labelled End of Line. The marines raise their weapons and Three tells them to shoot.
*As the shots go off, Three wakes up in bed with [[Baltar]] and [[Caprica-Six]]. She has apparently been having a sexual relationship with Baltar and possibly Six as well.
*In the Cylon control room Caprica-Six questions Three about her bad dreams. Caprica asks if the dreams are about Baltar and Three tells her that it's nothing like that, but does not elaborate.
*Three gives a centurion orders to shoot her, and then delete any information regarding the incident. The centurion obeys and shoots her in the head. In the moments before she is downloaded, she experiences images from her dream mixed in with memories from New Caprica and other more cryptic scenes.
*Three awakes in a rebirthing chamber where a worried Caprica-Six tries to help her recover. Three tells her, "There's something beautiful, miraculous between life and death."

== Questions ==
*Were the Admiralty's fears valid, or was the Cylon force that destroyed the Colonies built up just since that mission?
*Did Bulldog know of or see other human prisoners during his three years of captivity?
*How was Bulldog directed to the precise location of the fleet?
*What class of battlestar does ''[[Valkyrie]]'' belong to?
*Why would a "Stealth Ship" in enemy territory break radio silence?
*Was ''[[Valkyrie]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s mission the only one the admiralty undertook or were there others?
*Was [[Laura Roslin]] right in speculating that the admiralty might have sent ''[[Valkyrie]]'' in order to provoke a war?
*Why did the Cylons have one craft jump in and fire on the stealth star and then jump out, then sending two more ships to finish the attack?
*Who were the white-robed figures [[Three]] saw in her vision before downloading?
*Were the Cylons on the baseship where Bulldog was held actually sick?
*Does Bulldog have information regarding the other humanoid Cylon models that nothing is known of?
*How did Baltar's status change from torturee in "[[A Measure of Salvation]]" to an apparent sexual relationship with [[Caprica Six]] and [[Number Three]]?
* Was Adama's whole command staff transferred from the ''[[Valkyrie]] ''to ''[[Galactica]]'' after the failure of the recon mission?
*Why did Number three go through all the trouble to program the Centurion to erase its memory once it shot her? Was she afraid of being 'boxed' by the other cylons for reasons of insanity or because it would do some sort of damage on the centurion once its processed the kill?

== Analysis ==
*Adama and Roslin know each other well enough by now to tell when the other is lying, or is not fooled by a lie, even when others around can't.
*At the end of the episode, [[Saul Tigh]] appears to be attempting to try and deal with his guilt over his wife, but he does not seem to want his job as XO back, at least not any time soon.
*Adama's feelings of guilt over his actions during ''[[Valkyrie]]'s'' mission seem to shed new light on the motivation for his speech at ''[[Galactica]]'s'' decomissioning ceremony at the begining of the series. Also, they explain his near-monomania with safeguarding and/or rescuing those under his command or protection.
*The Cylons seem to have been able to detect and destroy The Stealth-Star that had only entered two kilometers into their space. This seems suspicious given the fact that they were unable to detect the [[Blackbird]], presumably a far less sophisticated design. Either the Cylons had more advanced detection equipment on the [[Armistice Line]], or they had advance knowledge of Bulldog's mission.
**It is only speculation that the Blackbird's stealth capabilities were less effective than those of the Stealth-Star. The reason that the Blackbird went undetected by the Cylons is that its hull, at Helo's suggestion, was made of carbon composite. There is no way of knowing whether or not this was true of the Stealth-Star.
***In addition, the Cylons near the [[Armistice Line]] would have known to look for stealth ships, as they probably suspected that the Colonial fleet would try to gain intel on Cylon military status. After the destruction of the colonies, it is unlikely that the Cylons believed that the Colonials were still in possession of any kind of stealth fighter and would not attempt to detect one.
***The fact that the Cylons expected penetration by stealth ships suggests that they may have done their share of Armistice Line violation.
**Bulldog was communicating to the Valkyrie before being attacked. The Cylons may have been able to detect this radiation and fire at the source of it.
*Bulldog's story is even less believable given the fact that it took Kara Thrace several hours to gut a [[Raider]] and learn how to fly it. Granted, the Raider Kara captured was damaged, but it would still have taken Bulldog some time to adapt the raider for his own use.
**As the episode implies that Bulldog was deliberately released by the Cylons in an effort to direct his anger towards Adama, it is possible that the Cylons allowed Bulldog to gain a working knowledge of the raider.
*Bulldog probably could have stolen a Heavy Raider, which unlike the light versions seems to have a crew compartment and perhaps piloting controls, but then the production crew couldn't have re-used the captured-Raider prop from "[[You Can't Go Home Again]]" on the flight deck set.
*That Kara Thrace goes to Tigh with her findings is an acknowledgment of their shared semi-pariah status and the connection that was shown in "[[Collaborators]]" for the first time
*The last two scenes of "Hero" appear to have been edited to ensure that the final scene was with Adama and Tigh. Right after the celebration scene, Adama is seen giving Bulldog a new uniform, but Adama is wearing his everyday uniform. In the final scene with Tigh, Adama is wearing his dress grays from the celebration. It appears at the very least, the two scenes were in reverse order, meaning the episode originally ended with Adama giving Bulldog his new uniform.
*The architecture of the place Number Three visits between life and death is similar if not identical to that of the operahouse on Kobol which Baltar and his internal Six entered in "[[Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II]]".
*Three's flashbacks after being shot indicate her to be the same individual who was killed on Caprica by [[Caprica-Six]] in "[[Downloaded]]" and who found Hera in "[[Exodus, Part II]]". It is of course possible that some of these recollections are the result of memory-sharing rather than direct experience.
**If she is the same Three that died on Caprica, that leaves the question how it can be that she didn't get the Opera House experience on her first death, even though she was stuck in limbo for thirty-six hours because of the massive casualties at the cafe in [[Downloaded]]. It is plausible that this Three wanted to die because she'd never experienced death before.
***It is also plausible that God is only just now trying to tell her something. The opera house may act as a cue, a signal sent from God that facilitates reflection on one's own destiny at a pivotal point in their existence, when it is no longer acceptable to ignore their role in God's plan out of arrogance or inconvenience (Baltar, "[[Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II]]" ), or because it seems a contradiction of the identity they'd formed by refusing to question their fate (Three, from the final days of the Occupation through "Hero"). In both cases, the opera house is revealed to a soul straddling the line between life and death, both in a physical and spiritual sense, and it is perhaps this balance that can uniquely invoke the presence of God, and guide the chosen instruments towards their intended destiny.
*There's at least one other doctor of some kind in the fleet, because Cottle instructs Bulldog to report to him.
**This doctor is probably a psychotherapist that specializes in some sort of mental trama issues. Considering that Bulldog was in captivity for such a long time, and his breakdown while attacking Adama, at the very least, Bulldog will need a counselor to help him work through all of the emotional and mental scars that he's endured.
*The Cylons appear to know the current location of the fleet.
*It appears that the Admiralty transferred those directly involved with the mission to ''Galactica''. This is supported by Geata made a statement during the [[Mini-series|miniseries]] about serving with Adama for three years (prior to the attack), as well as Tigh's comment saying that the mission, "wasn't exactly a boon to [Adama's] career."

===Adama's Dossier===
Laura Roslin reviews a dossier prepared for her by [[Billy Keikeya|Billy]] on her first day aboard ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]''. It includes large photos of battlestar ''Galactica'', a photograph of the CIC crew of battlestar ''[[Valkyrie]]'', a (mostly illegible) certificate bearing [[Saul Tigh]]'s name, and a cursory biography of William Adama, reproduced in full below:

:'''Commander William Adama'''

:*Born H5/21290 and raised on the colony of [[The Twelve Colonies (RDM)#Caprica|Caprica]], in [[Qualai]], a small coastal community
:*Mother, [[Evelyn Adama]], an accountant.
:*Father, [[Joseph Adama]], a prominent attorney who specialized in criminal defese and civil liberties.

:'''Military Service'''

:D6/21311 First comission, Battlestar Galactica, fighter squadron 
:E4/21312 Commendation for shooting down Cylon fighter in first combat mission. 
:D5/21314 Mustered out of service post-armistice 
:R6/21317 Served as Deck Hand in merchant fleet and as common […] aboard inter-colony tramp freighters 
:D1/21331 Recomissioned to Fleet 
:D6/21337 Major: Battlestar [[Atlantia (RDM)|Atlantia]] 
:R8/21341 Executive Officer: Battlestar [[Columbia (RDM)|Columbia]] 
:C2/21345 Commander: Battlestar Valkyrie 
:C2/21348 Commander: Battlestar Galactica

This provides some interesting information. The fields in the format X#/##### appear to be dates, with the five-digit string following the solidus apparently corresponding to the year. This corroborates various points of information supplied thus far:

* Adama's father was named Joseph ([[Hand of God]]), and was a civil rights attorney ("[[Litmus]]", "[[Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I]]").
* In a [[List of Deleted Scenes (RDM)#Valley of Darkness|scene cut]] from "[[Valley of Darkness]]", it is noted that Adama joined the fleet toward the end of the war, and was attached to ''Galactica'' as a fighter pilot.
* Adama served on ''[[Atlantia (RDM)|Atlantia]]'' during his thousandth landing, which indicates that he was still a flight officer at that time. Given his rank of Major, he was likely the [[CAG]] on ''Atlantia'' ([[Act of Contrition]]).
* The date of the [[Cimtar Peace Accord|Armistice]] is correct at 42 years before the present, as stated in the [[Miniseries]] and accounting for the passage of slightly over two years since that time.

The following can be deduced from this document:

* This episode marks the 45th anniversary of Adama's commissioning, which puts it in the year 21356, and makes Adama 66 years old.
* Adama spent three years in between being mustered out and finding a job on a tramp freighter. We may speculate that it was during this time that his relationship with first wife [[Caroline Adama|Caroline]] deteriorated.
* Adama spent a total of 14 years serving in the merchant fleet.
* Adama met Tigh roughly 30 years ago ([[Torn]]). That would be 21326, which correctly puts it in the middle of Adama's merchant fleet service.
* Adama was a major by the time he arranged for Tigh to be reinstated in the fleet ([[Scattered]]), which means that at least six years passed in between Adama's recomissioning and Tigh's.
* Ronald Moore [[Podcast:Scattered|revealed in his podcast for "Scattered"]] that the flashback scenes for [[Scattered|said episode]] took place 20 years before that episode, or in 21334. In fact, they appear to span at least an eleven-year period between 21326 (Adama and Tigh's first meeting) to 21337 (Adama's promotion to Major).
* The first [[Colonial Day (holiday)|Colonial Day]], marking the unification of the colonies, was probably in 21304. The one celebrated in "[[Colonial Day]]" was the 52nd, and it is now two years later.

If the five-digit string following the solidus is in fact the year, as seems inescapable based on the above, the letter-digit sequence before it must indicate the position in the year. There are 260 unique letter-digit sequences of that format, which may indicate a shorter year in the Colonial calendar (a year of twenty-six ten-day weeks?) However, what has been revealed about Colonial timekeeping is too incomplete to draw any conclusions.

It is astonishing to learn that the Colonials have (or believe they have) over 21,000 years of recorded history. By comparison, Pythia was said to have recorded her prophecies 3,600 years ago ([[The Hand of God]]) and the exodus from [[Kobol]] took place just 2,000 years ago. On [[Earth]], Human civilization is only about 6,000 years old — though it should be noted that the series does not indicate the time frame for the events that have taken place in relation to Earth time.

Adama's resignation letter at the end of the episode appears to be dated in an entirely different format. It's difficult to read clearly, but it appears to be dated "27/89/9923".

== Notes ==
*In Adama's flashback, the admirals are wearing their decorations on their day uniforms. This contrasts with most Colonial Fleet officers shown thus far, who only wear their decorations on their dress uniform sash.

*Both Baltar and Sharon Agathon appear in this episode, but neither one has any lines.

*In Number Three's dream, the door at which she is shot by the marines is labeled "End of Line". As well as being a metaphor for death, this is a statement repeated often by the Cylon [[Hybrid]].

*This episode shares some plot elements with the TNG Episode "The Defector", written by RDM. Notably, it begins with a dramatic chase delivering a dubious ally into friendly hands that is later shown to be staged. Additionally, both episodes feature plots revolving around a contested border.

*Admiral William Adama names Major Lee Adama to succeed him as commander of ''Galactica'' in his resignation letter.

== Noteworthy Dialogue ==

* '''[[Number Three]]''': (to [[Caprica Six]]) "There's something beautiful, miraculous between life and death."

* ''[[Bulldog]] calls on [[Saul Tigh]] at Saul's quarters:
:'''Tigh''': So ... drink?
:'''Bulldog''': You have no idea!
:'''Tigh''' (scowling, unseen): Yes, I do.

== Official Statements ==
*A video blog gives an insight to this episode during filming. <ref>{{cite_web|url=http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/video/index.php?cat=videoBlog&vid=34824|title=Introducing Bulldog|date=2006-10-11|accessdate=|last=|first=|format=VID|language=}}</ref>

== Guest Stars ==
* [[Michael Hogan]] as [[Saul Tigh]]
* [[Aaron Douglas]] as Chief Petty Officer [[Galen Tyrol]]
* [[Tahmoh Penikett]] as Captain [[Karl Agathon|Karl "Helo" Agathon]]
* [[Alessandro Juliani]] as Lt. [[Felix Gaeta]]
* [[Kandyse McClure]] as [[Anastasia Dualla]]
*[[Lucy Lawless]] as [[Number Three]]
*[[Carl Lumbly]] as Lt. [[Daniel Novacek]]
* [[Donnelly Rhodes]] as Doctor [[Cottle]]
* [[Matthew Bennett]] as [[Number Five]]
*[[Rekha Sharma]] as [[Tory Foster]]
* [[Luciana Carro]] as Lt. [[Louanne Katraine|Louanne "Kat" Katraine]]
*[[imdb:nm0447921|Barry Kennedy]] as Admiral [[Corman]]
* [[imdb:nm0461101|Tiffany Lyndall-Knight]] as [[Hybrid]]

== References ==
<div style="font-size:85%"><references/></div>

{{episode list (RDM season 3)}}

[[Category:Episodes written by David Eick]]
[[Category:Episodes directed by Michael Rymer]]
[[Category:RDM]]

Hero

2006-11-21T07:59:32Z

Omgoctagons: /* Analysis */even more three/god/opera house speculation

{{Episode Data
| title= Hero
| image= Season 3 - Promo - Hero -Adama Tigh and Novacek.jpg
| season= 3
| episode= 8
| guests= [[Carl Lumbly]]
| writer= [[David Eick]]
| story=
| director= [[Michael Rymer]]
| production=
| rating=
| US airdate= 2006-11-17
| UK airdate=
| dvd=
| population= 41,421
| prev= [[A Measure of Salvation]]
| next= [[Unfinished Business]]
}}

== Overview ==
:''A [[Bulldog|figure]] from [[William Adama|Adama]]'s past returns to haunt him. His return raises questions about why the Cylons launched their initial attack against the [[Twelve Colonies]]. <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tv.com/battlestar-galactica-2003/hero/episode/748771/summary.html |title=TV.com Episode Summary}}</ref>''
== Summary ==

=== On ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]'' ===

* ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]'' detects three [[Cylon Raider|Raiders]]. Much to the surpise of the [[CIC]] crew, two Raiders are pursuing a third. [[Kara Thrace|Starbuck]] and [[Louanne Katraine|Kat]] are dispatched. After destroying the pursuing Raiders, they go after the third.
* In CIC, Adama orders Kat and Starbuck to escort the Raider to ''Galactica'', after hearing [[Bulldog]]'s communication squaks.
* Kat and Starbuck escort the Raider in. In the hangar bay, Adama and the party that meets the Raider, surprised at the fact that a human appears to have piloted the craft. A visibly weak Bulldog salutes Adama; Adama returns the salute.
* Over a meal (noodles eaten with chopsticks) Adama asks Bulldog how he escaped. He relates a story of plague on the [[Basestar]] and escaping after killing a Number 3 with a blow to the nose delivered through the cell bars.
* Bulldog is debriefed by the president with Adama present, where they tell a (decidedly shaky) story of a mining facility too close to the Armistice Line. When it is concluded she asks Adama if he is going to tell her what really happened. He replies that it is his mess and that he will deal it. After she leaves he kicks over a table in frustration.
* Bulldog goes to see Saul Tigh in his quarters shortly after Adama talks to him. Saul informs Bulldog that he was shot down by the ''Valkyrie'' to get rid of evidence.
*At the same time, Adama confesses the mission's actual specifics to Lee, and his belief that he provoked the Cylon attacks on the colonies. Aghast at first, Lee then tries to console his father, blaming the admirals in command and saying that he was "only one man." Adama responds, "It only takes one."
* Starbuck reviews the gun film from the fight with the Cylon Raiders and realizes that they were deliberately missing their target, letting Bulldog get away. She goes to Saul Tigh with this information, who deduces that Bulldog was sent there by the Cylons to kill the admiral.
* Tigh finds Bulldog in the process of killing Adama and stops him. Bulldog has flashbacks to being let out of his cell.
* Later, Adama presents his resignation to Roslin. Bemused, she refuses to accept it, and points out that the Admiralty may have been trying to provoke a war, and that he cannot shoulder the entire responsiblity for the holocaust on his shoulders. She then tells him that his penance will be to accept a Medal of Distinction for his long years of service, and to be a hero.
* After sending Bulldog off to a berthing on another ship with a uniform, Tigh and Adama sit down for a drink in the admiral's quarters.

=== On a [[Basestar (RDM)|basestar]] ===
*In a dream, [[Three]] is trying to avoid marines on ''[[Galactica]]''. The marines corner her against a hatch labelled End of Line. The marines raise their weapons and Three tells them to shoot.
*As the shots go off, Three wakes up in bed with [[Baltar]] and [[Caprica-Six]]. She has apparently been having a sexual relationship with Baltar and possibly Six as well.
*In the Cylon control room Caprica-Six questions Three about her bad dreams. Caprica asks if the dreams are about Baltar and Three tells her that it's nothing like that, but does not elaborate.
*Three gives a centurion orders to shoot her, and then delete any information regarding the incident. The centurion obeys and shoots her in the head. In the moments before she is downloaded, she experiences images from her dream mixed in with memories from New Caprica and other more cryptic scenes.
*Three awakes in a rebirthing chamber where a worried Caprica-Six tries to help her recover. Three tells her, "There's something beautiful, miraculous between life and death."

== Questions ==
*Were the Admiralty's fears valid, or was the Cylon force that destroyed the Colonies built up just since that mission?
*Did Bulldog know of or see other human prisoners during his three years of captivity?
*How was Bulldog directed to the precise location of the fleet?
*What class of battlestar does ''[[Valkyrie]]'' belong to?
*Why would a "Stealth Ship" in enemy territory break radio silence?
*Was ''[[Valkyrie]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s mission the only one the admiralty undertook or were there others?
*Was [[Laura Roslin]] right in speculating that the admiralty might have sent ''[[Valkyrie]]'' in order to provoke a war?
*Why did the Cylons have one craft jump in and fire on the stealth star and then jump out, then sending two more ships to finish the attack?
*Who were the white-robed figures [[Three]] saw in her vision before downloading?
*Were the Cylons on the baseship where Bulldog was held actually sick?
*Does Bulldog have information regarding the other humanoid Cylon models that nothing is known of?
*How did Baltar's status change from torturee in "[[A Measure of Salvation]]" to an apparent sexual relationship with [[Caprica Six]] and [[Number Three]]?
* Was Adama's whole command staff transferred from the ''[[Valkyrie]] ''to ''[[Galactica]]'' after the failure of the recon mission?
*Why did Number three go through all the trouble to program the Centurion to erase its memory once it shot her? Was she afraid of being 'boxed' by the other cylons for reasons of insanity or because it would do some sort of damage on the centurion once its processed the kill?

== Analysis ==
*Adama and Roslin know each other well enough by now to tell when the other is lying, or is not fooled by a lie, even when others around can't.
*At the end of the episode, [[Saul Tigh]] appears to be attempting to try and deal with his guilt over his wife, but he does not seem to want his job as XO back, at least not any time soon.
*Adama's feelings of guilt over his actions during ''[[Valkyrie]]'s'' mission seem to shed new light on the motivation for his speech at ''[[Galactica]]'s'' decomissioning ceremony at the begining of the series. Also, they explain his near-monomania with safeguarding and/or rescuing those under his command or protection.
*The Cylons seem to have been able to detect and destroy The Stealth-Star that had only entered two kilometers into their space. This seems suspicious given the fact that they were unable to detect the [[Blackbird]], presumably a far less sophisticated design. Either the Cylons had more advanced detection equipment on the [[Armistice Line]], or they had advance knowledge of Bulldog's mission.
**It is only speculation that the Blackbird's stealth capabilities were less effective than those of the Stealth-Star. The reason that the Blackbird went undetected by the Cylons is that its hull, at Helo's suggestion, was made of carbon composite. There is no way of knowing whether or not this was true of the Stealth-Star.
***In addition, the Cylons near the [[Armistice Line]] would have known to look for stealth ships, as they probably suspected that the Colonial fleet would try to gain intel on Cylon military status. After the destruction of the colonies, it is unlikely that the Cylons believed that the Colonials were still in possession of any kind of stealth fighter and would not attempt to detect one.
***The fact that the Cylons expected penetration by stealth ships suggests that they may have done their share of Armistice Line violation.
**Bulldog was communicating to the Valkyrie before being attacked. The Cylons may have been able to detect this radiation and fire at the source of it.
*Bulldog's story is even less believable given the fact that it took Kara Thrace several hours to gut a [[Raider]] and learn how to fly it. Granted, the Raider Kara captured was damaged, but it would still have taken Bulldog some time to adapt the raider for his own use.
**As the episode implies that Bulldog was deliberately released by the Cylons in an effort to direct his anger towards Adama, it is possible that the Cylons allowed Bulldog to gain a working knowledge of the raider.
*Bulldog probably could have stolen a Heavy Raider, which unlike the light versions seems to have a crew compartment and perhaps piloting controls, but then the production crew couldn't have re-used the captured-Raider prop from "[[You Can't Go Home Again]]" on the flight deck set.
*That Kara Thrace goes to Tigh with her findings is an acknowledgment of their shared semi-pariah status and the connection that was shown in "[[Collaborators]]" for the first time
*The last two scenes of "Hero" appear to have been edited to ensure that the final scene was with Adama and Tigh. Right after the celebration scene, Adama is seen giving Bulldog a new uniform, but Adama is wearing his everyday uniform. In the final scene with Tigh, Adama is wearing his dress grays from the celebration. It appears at the very least, the two scenes were in reverse order, meaning the episode originally ended with Adama giving Bulldog his new uniform.
*The architecture of the place Number Three visits between life and death is similar if not identical to that of the operahouse on Kobol which Baltar and his internal Six entered in "[[Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II]]".
*Three's flashbacks after being shot indicate her to be the same individual who was killed on Caprica by [[Caprica-Six]] in "[[Downloaded]]" and who found Hera in "[[Exodus, Part II]]". It is of course possible that some of these recollections are the result of memory-sharing rather than direct experience.
**If she is the same Three that died on Caprica, that leaves the question how it can be that she didn't get the Opera House experience on her first death, even though she was stuck in limbo for thirty-six hours because of the massive casualties at the cafe in [[Downloaded]]. It is plausible that this Three wanted to die because she'd never experienced death before.
***It is also plausible that God is only just now trying to tell her something. The opera house may act as a cue, a signal sent from God that facilitates reflection on one's own destiny at a pivotal point in their existence, when it is no longer acceptable to ignore their role in God's plan out of arrogance or inconvenience (Baltar, "[[Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II"), or because it seems a contradiction of the identity they'd formed by refusing to question their fate (Three, from the final days of the Occupation through "Hero"). In both cases, the opera house is revealed to a soul straddling the line between life and death, both in a physical and spiritual sense, and it is perhaps this balance that can uniquely invoke the presence of God, and guide the chosen instruments towards their intended destiny.
*There's at least one other doctor of some kind in the fleet, because Cottle instructs Bulldog to report to him.
**This doctor is probably a psychotherapist that specializes in some sort of mental trama issues. Considering that Bulldog was in captivity for such a long time, and his breakdown while attacking Adama, at the very least, Bulldog will need a counselor to help him work through all of the emotional and mental scars that he's endured.
*The Cylons appear to know the current location of the fleet.
*It appears that the Admiralty transferred those directly involved with the mission to ''Galactica''. This is supported by Geata made a statement during the [[Mini-series|miniseries]] about serving with Adama for three years (prior to the attack), as well as Tigh's comment saying that the mission, "wasn't exactly a boon to [Adama's] career."

===Adama's Dossier===
Laura Roslin reviews a dossier prepared for her by [[Billy Keikeya|Billy]] on her first day aboard ''[[Galactica (RDM)|Galactica]]''. It includes large photos of battlestar ''Galactica'', a photograph of the CIC crew of battlestar ''[[Valkyrie]]'', a (mostly illegible) certificate bearing [[Saul Tigh]]'s name, and a cursory biography of William Adama, reproduced in full below:

:'''Commander William Adama'''

:*Born H5/21290 and raised on the colony of [[The Twelve Colonies (RDM)#Caprica|Caprica]], in [[Qualai]], a small coastal community
:*Mother, [[Evelyn Adama]], an accountant.
:*Father, [[Joseph Adama]], a prominent attorney who specialized in criminal defese and civil liberties.

:'''Military Service'''

:D6/21311 First comission, Battlestar Galactica, fighter squadron 
:E4/21312 Commendation for shooting down Cylon fighter in first combat mission. 
:D5/21314 Mustered out of service post-armistice 
:R6/21317 Served as Deck Hand in merchant fleet and as common […] aboard inter-colony tramp freighters 
:D1/21331 Recomissioned to Fleet 
:D6/21337 Major: Battlestar [[Atlantia (RDM)|Atlantia]] 
:R8/21341 Executive Officer: Battlestar [[Columbia (RDM)|Columbia]] 
:C2/21345 Commander: Battlestar Valkyrie 
:C2/21348 Commander: Battlestar Galactica

This provides some interesting information. The fields in the format X#/##### appear to be dates, with the five-digit string following the solidus apparently corresponding to the year. This corroborates various points of information supplied thus far:

* Adama's father was named Joseph ([[Hand of God]]), and was a civil rights attorney ("[[Litmus]]", "[[Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I]]").
* In a [[List of Deleted Scenes (RDM)#Valley of Darkness|scene cut]] from "[[Valley of Darkness]]", it is noted that Adama joined the fleet toward the end of the war, and was attached to ''Galactica'' as a fighter pilot.
* Adama served on ''[[Atlantia (RDM)|Atlantia]]'' during his thousandth landing, which indicates that he was still a flight officer at that time. Given his rank of Major, he was likely the [[CAG]] on ''Atlantia'' ([[Act of Contrition]]).
* The date of the [[Cimtar Peace Accord|Armistice]] is correct at 42 years before the present, as stated in the [[Miniseries]] and accounting for the passage of slightly over two years since that time.

The following can be deduced from this document:

* This episode marks the 45th anniversary of Adama's commissioning, which puts it in the year 21356, and makes Adama 66 years old.
* Adama spent three years in between being mustered out and finding a job on a tramp freighter. We may speculate that it was during this time that his relationship with first wife [[Caroline Adama|Caroline]] deteriorated.
* Adama spent a total of 14 years serving in the merchant fleet.
* Adama met Tigh roughly 30 years ago ([[Torn]]). That would be 21326, which correctly puts it in the middle of Adama's merchant fleet service.
* Adama was a major by the time he arranged for Tigh to be reinstated in the fleet ([[Scattered]]), which means that at least six years passed in between Adama's recomissioning and Tigh's.
* Ronald Moore [[Podcast:Scattered|revealed in his podcast for "Scattered"]] that the flashback scenes for [[Scattered|said episode]] took place 20 years before that episode, or in 21334. In fact, they appear to span at least an eleven-year period between 21326 (Adama and Tigh's first meeting) to 21337 (Adama's promotion to Major).
* The first [[Colonial Day (holiday)|Colonial Day]], marking the unification of the colonies, was probably in 21304. The one celebrated in "[[Colonial Day]]" was the 52nd, and it is now two years later.

If the five-digit string following the solidus is in fact the year, as seems inescapable based on the above, the letter-digit sequence before it must indicate the position in the year. There are 260 unique letter-digit sequences of that format, which may indicate a shorter year in the Colonial calendar (a year of twenty-six ten-day weeks?) However, what has been revealed about Colonial timekeeping is too incomplete to draw any conclusions.

It is astonishing to learn that the Colonials have (or believe they have) over 21,000 years of recorded history. By comparison, Pythia was said to have recorded her prophecies 3,600 years ago ([[The Hand of God]]) and the exodus from [[Kobol]] took place just 2,000 years ago. On [[Earth]], Human civilization is only about 6,000 years old — though it should be noted that the series does not indicate the time frame for the events that have taken place in relation to Earth time.

Adama's resignation letter at the end of the episode appears to be dated in an entirely different format. It's difficult to read clearly, but it appears to be dated "27/89/9923".

== Notes ==
*In Adama's flashback, the admirals are wearing their decorations on their day uniforms. This contrasts with most Colonial Fleet officers shown thus far, who only wear their decorations on their dress uniform sash.

*Both Baltar and Sharon Agathon appear in this episode, but neither one has any lines.

*In Number Three's dream, the door at which she is shot by the marines is labeled "End of Line". As well as being a metaphor for death, this is a statement repeated often by the Cylon [[Hybrid]].

*This episode shares some plot elements with the TNG Episode "The Defector", written by RDM. Notably, it begins with a dramatic chase delivering a dubious ally into friendly hands that is later shown to be staged. Additionally, both episodes feature plots revolving around a contested border.

*Admiral William Adama names Major Lee Adama to succeed him as commander of ''Galactica'' in his resignation letter.

== Noteworthy Dialogue ==

* '''[[Number Three]]''': (to [[Caprica Six]]) "There's something beautiful, miraculous between life and death."

* ''[[Bulldog]] calls on [[Saul Tigh]] at Saul's quarters:
:'''Tigh''': So ... drink?
:'''Bulldog''': You have no idea!
:'''Tigh''' (scowling, unseen): Yes, I do.

== Official Statements ==
*A video blog gives an insight to this episode during filming. <ref>{{cite_web|url=http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/video/index.php?cat=videoBlog&vid=34824|title=Introducing Bulldog|date=2006-10-11|accessdate=|last=|first=|format=VID|language=}}</ref>

== Guest Stars ==
* [[Michael Hogan]] as [[Saul Tigh]]
* [[Aaron Douglas]] as Chief Petty Officer [[Galen Tyrol]]
* [[Tahmoh Penikett]] as Captain [[Karl Agathon|Karl "Helo" Agathon]]
* [[Alessandro Juliani]] as Lt. [[Felix Gaeta]]
* [[Kandyse McClure]] as [[Anastasia Dualla]]
*[[Lucy Lawless]] as [[Number Three]]
*[[Carl Lumbly]] as Lt. [[Daniel Novacek]]
* [[Donnelly Rhodes]] as Doctor [[Cottle]]
* [[Matthew Bennett]] as [[Number Five]]
*[[Rekha Sharma]] as [[Tory Foster]]
* [[Luciana Carro]] as Lt. [[Louanne Katraine|Louanne "Kat" Katraine]]
*[[imdb:nm0447921|Barry Kennedy]] as Admiral [[Corman]]
* [[imdb:nm0461101|Tiffany Lyndall-Knight]] as [[Hybrid]]

== References ==
<div style="font-size:85%"><references/></div>

{{episode list (RDM season 3)}}

[[Category:Episodes written by David Eick]]
[[Category:Episodes directed by Michael Rymer]]
[[Category:RDM]]

Talk:Language in the Twelve Colonies/Archive3

2006-11-17T12:47:20Z

Omgoctagons: How many accents does D'anna Biers use?

==Radio Alphabet==

''Discussions moved to [[Talk:Colonial Wireless Alphabet]] by [[User:Joe.Beaudoin|Joe Beaudoin]] at 20:07, 10 October 2005 (EDT).''

==Aerelon Accent==
:''(It is probably some subtle nuance that a Colonial character like Baltar could notice, but that is indistinguishable from an American accent to the audience).''

No, listen. None of these characters are actually speaking English. The whole thing is a conceit to make it intelligable to the viewer. I'm sure that in the fictional universe of BSG, Boomer does speak with a "trace of an Aerelon accent", but since the show chooses to represent this as Standard American English, there's little point speculating about phonological variations that we can't hear. It's not a matter of Baltar being able to hear something we can't, the showmakers have just chosen not to give us the information. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 01:38, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

: Yeah. I tend to agree. My agreement is influenced by a couple of things in addition to the above.

: '''One:''' I have a BA in Linguistics. I know a bit about accents and the sounds of human speech, etc. I'm also somewhat used to hearing differences in sounds that most Anglophones aren't used to (like distinctions that are meaningful in other languages, but not in English). These two things make it hard for me to believe that, after reading about this theory and listening to Boomer speak with the purpose of hearing an accent, I'd somehow be unable to hear it simply because I'm ''missing'' it.

: '''Two:''' I'm a rather large Tolkien dork and am familiar with the idea of "translating" something into English for the benefit of English-speaking viewers (to say nothing of over-dubbed versions of this show for non-English-speaking viewers. Additionally, being familiar with Tolkien's special flavor of language-centric crazy, I don't get that, well, vibe from RDM. He seems much more interested in the story and the cinematics than correctly representing the names of people from Dale as corrupted Old English names in order to show their long-ago linguistic connection to the Rohirrim, whose language is tacitly represented by Old English--as he should be.

: If, for whatever reason, the BSG production/directoral staff were interested in drawing parallels to Colonial accents with the use of English accents, it would be much more apparent. What is more likely is, as Peter posits, they aren't giving us the information. That's been screened out if for no other reason than the fact that they didn't really think about it. It's not a big deal. I think this is evidenced by Baltar's remark about Boomer's accent, actually. If they were keeping tabs of language enough to care about accents, they would realise the extreme unlikelihood that even a stereotypically recognized majority of an entire planet's population would have an accent that was the same. I mean--What's the most common (and thus, best seen as stereotypically Earthly) accent on our world? Chinese. Which is, you know, not precisely an accent. ;o)

: I think, actually, that the BSG crew ''are'' paying attention to accents, however. It's just not in a way that identifies characters geographically or--whatever. They pick accents that will predispose American and British (and, thus, probably Australian) viewers to certain preconceptions about their characters. Baltar speaks, more or less, the Queen's English, which will predispose Westerners to assume he's intelligent, wealthy, well bred and well educated. Baltar ''is'' these things. Kara Thrace speaks pretty standard American English and does it with a fairly high volume. She assumes the stereotypes of the loud American, so to speak. Notice, too, that the reporter had an English accent. At the end of her documentary, I half expected her to say, "This is D'anna Whatever, BBC news." I don't even ''get'' the BBC in Texas.

: This is getting absurdly lengthy. I apologize. I tend to do this when words are at issue. Anyway, one final point: I don't think the same thing can be neccesarily said for "race". Since where your genes are from, geographically, is a rather more visual thing, I tend to think that this would more easily occur to a TV producer as something worth keeping track of. That doesn't mean that it did and they are, but that most of my arguements here don't apply to that case much. I'll, ah, I'm done now. ;o) --[[User:Day|Day]] 03:31, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

::Well said. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 04:01, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

It is true that Grace Park is a fluent speaker of Korean, but her English--either as Sharon Valerii or as herself in interviews--bears no trace of a Korean accent whatsoever. I am married to a native Korean speaker, have friends and colleagues who speak Korean either as their first or second language, and have been studying the language for a few years myself, so I am absolutely certain that Korean has no bearing on what might or might not be considered an Aerelon accent. --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]]

:I tend to agree, but felt like someone would bring up her bilingualism inevitably and that it would be better to address it directly. If Grace Park (and thus Boomer) has a trace of ''any'' accent, it ought to be Korean, so I felt it worth a mention. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:31, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

::You said that Grace Park's bilingualism would come up eventually. I would recommend limiting discussions of her bilingualism to the actress' bio page. The label "Korean" doesn't meaningfully describe anything that's going on when Sharon/Boomer is speaking. My own Korean is getting good enough that I'm approaching true "bilingual" status, but nobody would use "Korean" to describe my English. --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]]

:::Discussing Park's bilingualism on the actress' bio page would not shed any insight for a reader of this page, nor would it allay any questions that such knowledge might raise. I understand that her spoken english is flawless, but the fact that it is not actually her first language is at least marginally relevant here, and is given the footnote it deserves.

:::As for her "northwestern" accent, I don't truly believe that that's any different from General American / Standard Midwestern - the only phonological difference I can think of is the caught/cot merger, which is too subtle to deserve the name "accent". --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 03:00, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::: Perhaps it should be specifically noted here that her Korean fluency doesn't seem to have any impact whatsoever on her English accent. I agree with Peter that it's important to note it here, so that someone who doesn't know any better doesn't come along and think we missed that point and that they've solved our problem by mentioning a (non-existant) Korean accent. Sometimes, when you are making an argument or assertion, you have to mention some things that are, really, irrelevant in order to make clear that they are, indeed, irrelevant so that others will not wrongly think that they are. Make sense? --[[User:Day|Day]] 03:08, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

::::I was just about to say something like that. Thanks, Day! --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]] 03:10, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::::Tried to make it a little more forceful. You can tell that this wiki is great because we spend whole evenings discussing single sentences. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 03:18, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::::: Nice edit. And I hope you were being serious. I spent a lot of time in college working on a print publication and for the last couple years, I was the Editor in Chief (kind of a joke because there were only six of us on staff). In any case, it was a humor publication and sometimes we'd spend hours debating about the wording of a single sentence in order to deliver the most punch. It almost always paid off. In this case, we're not looking to be funny, but I still think it pays to make sure a sentence communicates exactly the information we intend: no more and no less. --[[User:Day|Day]] 17:48, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

::::::: Quite serious. Concision is nothing without precision. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 23:48, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::::::: So, you're not really the Concision Fairy. You're the Concision/Percision Fairy. Which is less concise, but more precise. Maybe you're the (Con|Pre)cision Fairy. Phleh. --[[User:Day|Day]] 16:16, 20 October 2005 (EDT)

==Racetrack==
Is it just me or does Racetrack have a vaguely Canadian accent in her scene on the Raptor early in [[Final Cut]]? --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:10, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

==Stating the obvious==

:''Mister (Mr), Miss, and Doctor have all been used, but Missus {Mrs} has not.''

The concision fairy frowns in disapproval. Why is this interesting? --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:26, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

Nothing much since we haven't seen anyone married. Given the gender equality in BSG, however, it may well be that "Mrs" is not used. --[[User:Redwall|Redwall]] 17:20, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

==Valley Girl Accent==

[[User:Day|Day]] and I believe that [[Pythia]] likely spoke with [[Wikipedia:High rising terminal|High rising terminal]]s, also known as a "valley girl accent". We have concluded this based on the fact that no less than 67% of the direct quotes from her book of prophecy begin with the coordinating conjunction "and", as in the following passage:

"And, like, the lords anointed a leader to like, guide the Caravan of the Heavens to their new homeland?, and, like, unto the leader they gave a vision of serpents numbering two and ten?, as like, a sign of things to come?, which is like, totally spooky. And then, like, the Arrow of Apollo will open the Tomb of Athena, which is totally ''boss'', but Zeus like, got all uppity and warned the leaders of the twelve tribes that any return to Kobol would exact a price in blood, which is totally ''gross'', 'cause blood is gross, y'know? And like, a real ''bummer'', since Kobol is hot shit."

So say we all. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:19, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

: NO, that was meant to sound religious, in the tone of "And the number shall be "three". "Four" be too many, and "two" be too few (unless though then proceedeth to "three"). "Five" is right out. ---Ricimer, 17 Sept, 2005

::The effect is, as noted, somewhat different when you read them all out in a list. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:39, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

:::Damn both of you. My deykoard is ruimed from spittake effect with kola! [[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 18:03, 23 September 2005 (EDT)

==General American==
On a somewhat smaller matter, there is no linguistically accepted version of English called "General English," with a capital G. I am willing to accept a lower case g, "general English," to indicate "common sense" notions about the accent/group of accents. --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]]

:You are correct. The article previously referred to Standard American English (SAE), which I have encountered in contrast to African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in sociolinguistics. As I'm sure you can tell, I intend to refer to the midwestern "newscaster accent" used throughout the entertainment industry.

:As for Wikipedia, they referred to this accent as [[Wikipedia:Standard Midwestern|Standard Midwestern]] until last February. It was then [[Wikipedia:Talk:General American#move to "General American"?|moved]] to [[Wikipedia:General American|General American]] based on [[Wikipedia:User:Angr|User:Angr]]'s statement that "the accent is not standard in any official sense, nor is it limited to the Midwest."

:Since they are serving as our primary reference, I am inclined to follow their conventions on the matter. Perhaps you could take up your point with them? I realize that we are not powerless to employ our own terminology, but consistancy strikes me as a self-evident virtue. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:31, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:: Sigh. General American bothers me. I'd ''much'' prefer Standard American English. I mean--that's a term that linguists use when discussing American accents. I wish Wikipedia had a page entitled that, but I don't want to get into a land war there (or, really anything there as time is finite). A few things have to be understood about SAE (or, as it stands, General English):

:: 1) It doesn't really exist as a spoken dialect. No one grows up learning SAE the way one can grow up speaking Texan English or any of the various sub-dialects of AAVE or whatever. However, Americans seem to be able to sense what it is. This is still under research.

:: 2) When used in a non-scholastic setting (like this wiki), saying someone speaks SAE generally means that the region they learned English in is not identifyable by the way they speak. Apollo speaks SAE, for instance. However, Jamie Baber or however it's spellt, is British and really speaks some form of British English dialect (I've not heard him speak myself).

:: With these two trhings in mind, using a term like SAE to refer to dislects of characters is perfectly fine. I mean--the dialect is a kind of mental construct and so doesn't really exist and the characters, likewise, don't really exist. ;) Okay. That was a joke. My problem with the term "General American" is that I've never seen it before in a linguistic context. "Standard American English" is a term used in all caps like that in many texts by various authors. I'm tired and I think I'm losing coherancy. Does my point about, for lack of a better word, officialness come across clearly? I sure hope so. --[[User:Day|Day]] 03:04, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::I would be happy to have the relevant links marked as Standard American English and go to Wiki's General American article through pipes. The term General American was introduced on October 8th by [[User:Troyian|Troyian]] - I'd like to know if he is personally in favor of the term, or was just matching wikipedia's terminology. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 03:09, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

==Sanskrit to do==
*Link to credible text repository & audio recording.
*Transliterate Sanskrit properly, using IAST. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 00:53, 14 November 2005 (EST)

Hopefully the Don Davis sources may be of help to others in further translation from his Matrix Revolutions tracks (noted in our article now). Enlightening stuff--I use the "Navras" track and its chant in my daily workouts--gets my heart rate up. I was wondering why Elosha's chant seemed so damned familiar, and now I know why. Wild how my favorite SF topics and music merge like this. Speaking of which, I think a music article on BSG will be due sometime... --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 10:09, 14 November 2005 (EST)

:Am I the only one who finds this matrix stuff to be badly off-topic? Davis's transliteration isn't very good, either. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 14:04, 14 November 2005 (EST)

::I'm going to strike this. If anyone wants to make a note of the coincidence on the references page, that would be fine. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 21:12, 14 November 2005 (EST)

==Other Accents==
:What about all of the Canadian accents? I'm no linguist, but the way Tigh speaks sounds very different to the way Adama speaks. Besides, many characters on the show are played by Canadian actors like Aaron Douglas, Tricia Helfer, and Tahmoh Penikett, each with varying degrees of accent. --[[User:Drumstick|Drumstick]] 19:51, 17 January 2006 (EST)

::Many Canadian accents are very similar to the Midwestern SAE used in Hollywood. If you can name a character with a particularly strong accent, I'd be happy to identify them here, but Hogan, Douglas, Helfer and Penikett don't seem to fit the bill.

::Note that place of origin and accent do not necessarily coincide - nobody would claim that Lee Adama speaks with a British Accent, although Jamie Bamber certainly does. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:32, 17 January 2006 (EST)

:::I've always felt that Hogan's accent is somewhat obvious, but again, I'm not much experienced with Canadian-accented English. (I only know two or three Canadians myself.) Besides, you make a good point: even if Hogan's accent ''is'' strong enough to be considered noticable, it is no where near as different from SAE as, say, Baltar's. [[User:Drumstick|Drumstick]] 21:35, 17 January 2006 (EST)

:::: For me, Tigh's just got a few words that stick out. Unfortunately, the only word that comes to mind off the top of my head is one that doesn't really exist: Kobol. Everyone else says it as if it were some American saying Co-Ball (['kou.'bol]) or something (equal stress on both syllables), whereas he seems to say ['kou.bl] (with the syllabic l at the end). That's hack-IPA, there, because I've yet to take the time to figure out the way the thingie for it works, here. --[[User:Day|Day]] 23:51, 17 January 2006 (EST)

:Michael Hogan may be Canadian, but his accent sounds to my ears more like American Irish. The Canadian accent at any rate owes a lot to Celtic influences (that "aboot" that Canadians say is straight from Scotland/Northern Ireland), so it's possible that it's Canadian but it doesn't sounds like Canadian accents that I'm familiar with. The name "Tigh" is Gaelic for "house". He's also a drinker. So my sense is that his character has been outfitted with a Scots/Irish-American persona. For what it's worth, I'm a Scot living in the States myself, and profoundly lacking in confidence in the average American's ability to recognize accents. I'd say 95% of Americans guess that I'm Irish, when no one from the UK or Ireland would make that mistake.--Haecceity

==Texas Accent==
Y'know, Baltar's Six definitely refers to his "nucular device" in "[[Epiphanies]]". --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 14:49, 21 January 2006 (EST)

: Actually, that's not a Texas thing. We talked about that specifically in one of my classes, since that's such a common misconception due to G. W. Bush's hailing from our state and and pronouncing it thus. Apparently that's common in many Southern dialects (as in "The South" which includes states as far north as Virginia, but not, say, New Mexico). Not that Texas is really ''excluded'' from that list, I just thought I'd point out that it's more common than many city-dwellers think (including myself before I attended the afore mentioned lecture). Personally, I say it "NEW-clee-er" only slightly more often than "NEW-cue-ler". I feel like I"m rambling on, so I won't go into what factors contribute to a dialect switching the L and the following vowel in this word. --[[User:Day|Day]] 23:57, 21 January 2006 (EST)
*** PREACH! Ramble on, my friend. The mispronunciation of "NEW - clee - ar" as "NUKE - yoo - lar" is quite possibly my biggest language-related pet peeve, and it warms my heart to learn that there are those out there whose minds are open to re-education on the matter of nit-picky pronunciation issues, and furthermore, who would spread the word after learning something new? Very refreshing. To be honest, I have something of a Six/Tricia Helfer wannabe complex, and it actually makes me cringe and hurt a little inside every time I her her utter those three errant syllables, as if the miniseries kickoff infanticide-genocide double-whammy wasn't enough to alert me that my heroine was, perhaps, less than perfect... ;) I think you're all pretty fabulous for noticing *and* for the informative commentary that followed (and even managed to get a few W jibes in - excellent!). --[[User:Omgoctagons|omg octagons!!]] 14:19, 16 November 2006 (CST)
::Sounding off for a minute: the pronunciation is officially "New-clee-er", and Bush is yet again and embarrassment for pronouncing it wrong, then refusing to correct himself because he believes that he is infallible. --[[User:Ricimer|Ricimer]]

::: See, now you're gonna start arguing right and wrong with a [[Wikipedia:Descriptive linguistics|descriptive linguist]]. We're not your [[Wikipedia:Prescription and description|prescriptive]] Highschool English teacher. *wink* --[[User:Day|Day]] 15:29, 22 January 2006 (EST)

:::: PREACH! Ramble on, my friend. The mispronunciation of "NEW - clee - ar" as "NUKE - yoo - lar" is quite possibly my biggest language-related pet peeve, and it warms my heart to learn that there are those out there whose minds are open to re-education on the matter of nit-picky pronunciation issues, and furthermore, who would spread the word after learning something new? Very refreshing. To be honest, I have something of a Six/Tricia Helfer wannabe complex, and it actually makes me cringe and hurt a little inside every time I her her utter those three errant syllables, as if the miniseries kickoff infanticide-genocide double-whammy wasn't enough to alert me that my heroine was, perhaps, less than perfect... ;) I think you're all pretty fabulous for noticing *and* for the informative commentary that followed (and even managed to get a few W jibes in - excellent!). --[[User:Omgoctagons|omg octagons!!]] 14:24, 16 November 2006 (CST)

:::::It should be noted, to offset any non-germane commentary on the current president, that [[Wikipedia:Jimmy Carter|President Bush is not the only one]] who has difficulty in pronouncing "nuclear." I spent some minutes in childhood laughing at this. --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 15:38, 16 November 2006 (CST)

==Names==
I don't think its worthwhile to discuss the "meaning" of names that were borrowed from TOS here. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 23:17, 15 March 2006 (CST)
:Not sure that's entirely true (obviously :-) ), since in several cases Larson clearly borrowed those names from Hebrew/Greek himself, deliberately, and RDM is following in his footsteps.--[[User:UncleMikey|Uncle Mikey]] 23:20, 15 March 2006 (CST)
::I think we need to edit down "Names" a lot for relevance/concision. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] 23:58, 15 March 2006 (CST)
:::I can accept that—some days I'm good at concision, other days, not so much. I'd actually originally intended to merely provide a couple of key examples, and I kinda got carried away :-)--[[User:UncleMikey|Uncle Mikey]] 10:14, 16 March 2006 (CST)
:::By the way, Merv—thank you for your additions/clarifications to the names. And you may be right about the Roslin entry not really being highly relevant. I'll admit I just thought it was an amusing coincidence. And it may be more relevant than you think. The Cylons are clones, of a sort (albeit not clones of real human beings, but of 12 synthesized templates), and a Cylon-hybrid child saved Roslin's life... OK. It's a stretch :-) I can be convinced to remove the Roslin entry without much arm-twisting.--[[User:UncleMikey|Uncle Mikey]] 13:21, 16 March 2006 (CST)
::::Well RDM saying he deliberatley chose Dualla and Gaeta's names knowing their meaning is from the podcast of "Final Cut"; I think the Zarek thing is from the companion book. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] 17:08, 16 March 2006 (CST)

==French in the Colonies==
I wanted to point out that we recently realized that french is a spoken language in at least some of the Colonies. This is the first real language, other than english, that we see as present beyond accentuation. I guess you'll want proof? Here it is:

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/5766/wtfk1tn.jpg

On the Very top of the chalk board are the words :

*Aller ("to go")

*Avoir ("to have")

*Etres ("to be")

Three verbs of the French Language. Just Thought I'd mention it, since as far as I remember there is no other Earth Based Language which is seen beyond certain accents. --[[User:Sauron18|Sauron18]] 04:37 June 06 2006

:Nice catch, Sauron. Actually, the prayer chant sung by [[Elosha]] at the end of the miniseries is a Sanskrit prayer, so that's two possible languages in the Colonies outside the accented suggestions. Your discovery should be an interesting one to add. Also, we see "NaOH", which I think is the chemical name for ammonia...curious that the Colonials use our chemical naming process, too... --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 13:22, 6 June 2006 (CDT)
::sodium hydroxide ^_^ --[[User:Mercifull|Mercifull]] 13:33, 6 June 2006 (CDT)
:::It looks like it's part of an equation. X + NaOH yields -> Y. This does appear to be the first written instance of foreign language. --[[User:Steelviper|Steelviper]] 13:36, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

::::Ugh...stereochemistry (shudder). Oh, well the only other "french" thing we've got in BSG is when Stinger says "esprit de corps" in "Pegasus", but I think that and the LDYB II blackboard thing are just mistakes. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 15:59, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

:::::I don't think they're any more mistakes then talking of dogs horses and such. There's no reason why languages other than english can exist within the Colonies. Might even be a second language to them since they're teaching it to preschoolers--[[User:Sauron18|Sauron18]] 17:05 June 06 2006

:Very nice find, Sauron. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:39, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

== Clean-Up ==

Anything in particular, or just in general? I always look at an article's talk page when I see a delete or clean-up tag and I'm often annoyed because the tagger hasn't posted about why they tagged. I'm not looking for an exhaustive list, just maybe the direction you think the article should be headed or something. --[[User:Day|Day]] ([[User talk:Day|Talk]] - [[Battlestar Wiki:Administrators' noticeboard|Admin]] - [http://hiver.swordofthestars.com/ SotS]) 02:28, 19 July 2006 (CDT)
:Sorry, I thought I'd be able to get to this myself but I'm juggling 5 projects; I just meant it as a reminder tag for myself like 2 hours later. Basically a few new edits (the most recent ones) specifically in the "name origin" section sounded like too much speculation; I mean "well, Adama could stem from the Greek "Adamas"..." when we know that Glen Larson originated "Adama" as it sounds like "Adam". I'll get to this in a minute. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 10:12, 19 July 2006 (CDT)
::Done. Finished cleanup. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 12:17, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

I accept what you say about my "speculation" on the derivation of the name "Adama" but you've pretty much removed all the others, including my observation on the the name "Helena." As it happens, I happen to think that my reference to the Emperor Constantine's mother is more apt than Helen of Troy, because (according to the admittedely apocryphal Golden Legend of Jacopo da Varagine) Helena was a ruthless proselyte who wasn't remotely concerned who or how many people she had killed in her religious and political zeal for Imperial Christianity, especially if they weren't Christians (and for her bloodthirsty piety she was later made a Saint of the Orthodox Church) Helen of Troy however was (in all probability) nothing more than an archaic-period poetic device for a ''casus belli.'' The character traits of Empress Helena seem far more appropriate to Admiral Cain's personality than do those of the adulterous Face that launched a Thousand Ships. Of course, it could be just a coincidence, but in a show loaded with mythological and historical references, without asking the writers, we'd never know for sure, and sometimes even they might not really know why they use a reference; artistic works are often full of imagery and symbolism that even the work's creator isn't fully aware of the meaning of. That's why there are art historians. - Tawakalna Q'ubt ut-Allah.

:There is a level of permissable speculation, but these other things you were saying were so obscure I don't think they are relevant, or worth including. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 13:58, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

::I ''don't'' see the significance of most of these edit reversions of Tawakalna's contributions, Merv. The Adama speculation is no less interesting than what can be found in "The Matrix" character name studies (given that no explanations have been, or probably will be forthcoming about them). Speculative: yes. Factual or interesting: (as far as all name and word origins go): Yes. While "Helena" might have been picked out of a hat by the writers, it nonetheless has an interesting comparison to history and/or mythology. Tawakalna obviously has a good grasp of this history, so unless you have a better source, I recommend restoration of the Adama, Tigh, Cain and Agathon edits. --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 15:05, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

:::Well if you feel it was okay, yeah, add it back. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 16:40, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

::::My two cents: I find practically none of this speculation interesting or insightful. The Matrix comparison is a bad one, since I don't find that line of inquiry interesting, either. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 14:47, 20 July 2006 (CDT)

Well, that's two to one against, so let's just leave it shall we? It was only an observation after all; if people really find such speculation useless to the point of being offensive, then it's hardly worth my time to carry on with something that's clearly creating hostility. - Tawakalna

:Well it wasn't offensive, and you could put it back if you want. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 09:26, 21 July 2006 (CDT)

== Starbuck's Tattoos ==

Kattee Sackhoff has two tattoos with a non-English language. One is the Latin "bona fiscalia" (public property). That fits nicely with the other Latin names on the show. Another is the Japanese Kanji for "choice" on the back of her neck. Maybe those should be added?
There could be a new title like "non-English languages" with that, the French noted above and also the Sanskrit in Elosha's prayer --[[User:Serenity|Serenity]] 12:28, 26 September 2006 (CDT)
:Those are noted on [[Tattoo]] at present (though I thought that article might be disappearing... I could be wrong). I'm guessing that those aren't intended to be visible onscreen, given the efforts they seem to take to conceal them, but they are visible at times. That's a tough one. --[[User:Steelviper|Steelviper]] 12:33, 26 September 2006 (CDT)
::I know that they are on both Kattee's page and the tattoo one. They might try to hide them now and then, but they are clearly visible several times. The only one they really cover up is the crucifix. I found the Japanese one to be actually more visible once she switched to the ponytail. It's not just one or two times and I for one, don't try to explain them away as production errors or something --[[User:Serenity|Serenity]] 12:45, 26 September 2006 (CDT)

== How many accents does D'anna Biers use? ==

Well, I just finished indulging a random little craving I had for "Final Cut," and all I heard was Kiwi, Kiwi, Kiwi. I'm not at all sure who this 'second' copy of D'anna who uses the Americanish voice is - does the sentence refer to whoever we see in the theatre watching the movie at the very end, or is there something I'm spacing on? As far as I know, there's never any mention of another copy who, as the section states, lives on Cylon-Occupied Caprica, and it never occurred to me that the D'anna at the Cylon film festival was actually an additional version. I guess it's conceivable that the movie premiere was on Caprica, but do we ever hear anyone say that? If memory serves me, the next time we see D'anna isn't until "Downloaded," and the article states that all post-DL'ed D'anna's only speak with a NZ accent. So, even if I'm a space cadet and missed the part where we learned about another D'anna on Caprica in FC, I still don't really notice a noticeable change in her accent during the few words the "other" copy says right before the episode ends.
So, if I'm just missing something obvious here and everyone else knows which "Second" D'anna is being described in this subsection, would anyone mind either "translating" for me so I can catch up with reality? Or perhaps rephrase the first few sentences so that an episode title is used as a reference point? And maybe substitute names for "her" and "she," etc.? Because I'm starting to wonder if I'm crazy like Gaius, here, and I can't figure out how to put all the pieces together on my own! And if nobody else hears another accent or remembers two D'anna models in FC, should we just delete the Kiwi section or reduce it to one sentence? --[[User:Omgoctagons|omg octagons!!]] 06:47, 17 November 2006 (CST)

User:Omgoctagons

2006-11-16T22:29:11Z

Omgoctagons:

i promise not to spell "frack" with a "c" in any official wiki pages. i like lists, cylons, and compulsive proofreading & formatting doctrine, so perhaps, in true BSG form, the battlestar wiki is my ''destiny.''

i don't understand why wiki markup is supposedly any less difficult to learn than html. at least i know where the ''' < > ''' keys are, in addition to the '''/'''. i tell you, they'll find earth before i find those infernal bracket thingies.

[http://www.airlocked.org airlocked.org] <<-- i have a little website where i post my crude screenshots of google maps decorated with red circles and arrows, and wildly postulate that i may have found the precise marshy puddle where they filmed gaius lying in his christ-figure pose at the raptor crash site on kobol. such updates are sometimes interrupted by breaking news flashes which inform my three viewers of any particularly astounding displays of idiocy on the latest episode of 7th heaven, the latest feats of sociopathic punditry on fox news, or perhaps even the latest digital wonders that have sprung from the loins of INTERNET and magic techno-gadgetry.

and i do love me some frackin' octagons.

Talk:Language in the Twelve Colonies/Archive3

2006-11-16T20:24:30Z

Omgoctagons: /* Texas Accent */

==Radio Alphabet==

''Discussions moved to [[Talk:Colonial Wireless Alphabet]] by [[User:Joe.Beaudoin|Joe Beaudoin]] at 20:07, 10 October 2005 (EDT).''

==Aerelon Accent==
:''(It is probably some subtle nuance that a Colonial character like Baltar could notice, but that is indistinguishable from an American accent to the audience).''

No, listen. None of these characters are actually speaking English. The whole thing is a conceit to make it intelligable to the viewer. I'm sure that in the fictional universe of BSG, Boomer does speak with a "trace of an Aerelon accent", but since the show chooses to represent this as Standard American English, there's little point speculating about phonological variations that we can't hear. It's not a matter of Baltar being able to hear something we can't, the showmakers have just chosen not to give us the information. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 01:38, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

: Yeah. I tend to agree. My agreement is influenced by a couple of things in addition to the above.

: '''One:''' I have a BA in Linguistics. I know a bit about accents and the sounds of human speech, etc. I'm also somewhat used to hearing differences in sounds that most Anglophones aren't used to (like distinctions that are meaningful in other languages, but not in English). These two things make it hard for me to believe that, after reading about this theory and listening to Boomer speak with the purpose of hearing an accent, I'd somehow be unable to hear it simply because I'm ''missing'' it.

: '''Two:''' I'm a rather large Tolkien dork and am familiar with the idea of "translating" something into English for the benefit of English-speaking viewers (to say nothing of over-dubbed versions of this show for non-English-speaking viewers. Additionally, being familiar with Tolkien's special flavor of language-centric crazy, I don't get that, well, vibe from RDM. He seems much more interested in the story and the cinematics than correctly representing the names of people from Dale as corrupted Old English names in order to show their long-ago linguistic connection to the Rohirrim, whose language is tacitly represented by Old English--as he should be.

: If, for whatever reason, the BSG production/directoral staff were interested in drawing parallels to Colonial accents with the use of English accents, it would be much more apparent. What is more likely is, as Peter posits, they aren't giving us the information. That's been screened out if for no other reason than the fact that they didn't really think about it. It's not a big deal. I think this is evidenced by Baltar's remark about Boomer's accent, actually. If they were keeping tabs of language enough to care about accents, they would realise the extreme unlikelihood that even a stereotypically recognized majority of an entire planet's population would have an accent that was the same. I mean--What's the most common (and thus, best seen as stereotypically Earthly) accent on our world? Chinese. Which is, you know, not precisely an accent. ;o)

: I think, actually, that the BSG crew ''are'' paying attention to accents, however. It's just not in a way that identifies characters geographically or--whatever. They pick accents that will predispose American and British (and, thus, probably Australian) viewers to certain preconceptions about their characters. Baltar speaks, more or less, the Queen's English, which will predispose Westerners to assume he's intelligent, wealthy, well bred and well educated. Baltar ''is'' these things. Kara Thrace speaks pretty standard American English and does it with a fairly high volume. She assumes the stereotypes of the loud American, so to speak. Notice, too, that the reporter had an English accent. At the end of her documentary, I half expected her to say, "This is D'anna Whatever, BBC news." I don't even ''get'' the BBC in Texas.

: This is getting absurdly lengthy. I apologize. I tend to do this when words are at issue. Anyway, one final point: I don't think the same thing can be neccesarily said for "race". Since where your genes are from, geographically, is a rather more visual thing, I tend to think that this would more easily occur to a TV producer as something worth keeping track of. That doesn't mean that it did and they are, but that most of my arguements here don't apply to that case much. I'll, ah, I'm done now. ;o) --[[User:Day|Day]] 03:31, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

::Well said. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 04:01, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

It is true that Grace Park is a fluent speaker of Korean, but her English--either as Sharon Valerii or as herself in interviews--bears no trace of a Korean accent whatsoever. I am married to a native Korean speaker, have friends and colleagues who speak Korean either as their first or second language, and have been studying the language for a few years myself, so I am absolutely certain that Korean has no bearing on what might or might not be considered an Aerelon accent. --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]]

:I tend to agree, but felt like someone would bring up her bilingualism inevitably and that it would be better to address it directly. If Grace Park (and thus Boomer) has a trace of ''any'' accent, it ought to be Korean, so I felt it worth a mention. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:31, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

::You said that Grace Park's bilingualism would come up eventually. I would recommend limiting discussions of her bilingualism to the actress' bio page. The label "Korean" doesn't meaningfully describe anything that's going on when Sharon/Boomer is speaking. My own Korean is getting good enough that I'm approaching true "bilingual" status, but nobody would use "Korean" to describe my English. --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]]

:::Discussing Park's bilingualism on the actress' bio page would not shed any insight for a reader of this page, nor would it allay any questions that such knowledge might raise. I understand that her spoken english is flawless, but the fact that it is not actually her first language is at least marginally relevant here, and is given the footnote it deserves.

:::As for her "northwestern" accent, I don't truly believe that that's any different from General American / Standard Midwestern - the only phonological difference I can think of is the caught/cot merger, which is too subtle to deserve the name "accent". --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 03:00, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::: Perhaps it should be specifically noted here that her Korean fluency doesn't seem to have any impact whatsoever on her English accent. I agree with Peter that it's important to note it here, so that someone who doesn't know any better doesn't come along and think we missed that point and that they've solved our problem by mentioning a (non-existant) Korean accent. Sometimes, when you are making an argument or assertion, you have to mention some things that are, really, irrelevant in order to make clear that they are, indeed, irrelevant so that others will not wrongly think that they are. Make sense? --[[User:Day|Day]] 03:08, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

::::I was just about to say something like that. Thanks, Day! --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]] 03:10, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::::Tried to make it a little more forceful. You can tell that this wiki is great because we spend whole evenings discussing single sentences. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 03:18, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::::: Nice edit. And I hope you were being serious. I spent a lot of time in college working on a print publication and for the last couple years, I was the Editor in Chief (kind of a joke because there were only six of us on staff). In any case, it was a humor publication and sometimes we'd spend hours debating about the wording of a single sentence in order to deliver the most punch. It almost always paid off. In this case, we're not looking to be funny, but I still think it pays to make sure a sentence communicates exactly the information we intend: no more and no less. --[[User:Day|Day]] 17:48, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

::::::: Quite serious. Concision is nothing without precision. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 23:48, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::::::: So, you're not really the Concision Fairy. You're the Concision/Percision Fairy. Which is less concise, but more precise. Maybe you're the (Con|Pre)cision Fairy. Phleh. --[[User:Day|Day]] 16:16, 20 October 2005 (EDT)

==Racetrack==
Is it just me or does Racetrack have a vaguely Canadian accent in her scene on the Raptor early in [[Final Cut]]? --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:10, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

==Stating the obvious==

:''Mister (Mr), Miss, and Doctor have all been used, but Missus {Mrs} has not.''

The concision fairy frowns in disapproval. Why is this interesting? --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:26, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

Nothing much since we haven't seen anyone married. Given the gender equality in BSG, however, it may well be that "Mrs" is not used. --[[User:Redwall|Redwall]] 17:20, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

==Valley Girl Accent==

[[User:Day|Day]] and I believe that [[Pythia]] likely spoke with [[Wikipedia:High rising terminal|High rising terminal]]s, also known as a "valley girl accent". We have concluded this based on the fact that no less than 67% of the direct quotes from her book of prophecy begin with the coordinating conjunction "and", as in the following passage:

"And, like, the lords anointed a leader to like, guide the Caravan of the Heavens to their new homeland?, and, like, unto the leader they gave a vision of serpents numbering two and ten?, as like, a sign of things to come?, which is like, totally spooky. And then, like, the Arrow of Apollo will open the Tomb of Athena, which is totally ''boss'', but Zeus like, got all uppity and warned the leaders of the twelve tribes that any return to Kobol would exact a price in blood, which is totally ''gross'', 'cause blood is gross, y'know? And like, a real ''bummer'', since Kobol is hot shit."

So say we all. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:19, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

: NO, that was meant to sound religious, in the tone of "And the number shall be "three". "Four" be too many, and "two" be too few (unless though then proceedeth to "three"). "Five" is right out. ---Ricimer, 17 Sept, 2005

::The effect is, as noted, somewhat different when you read them all out in a list. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:39, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

:::Damn both of you. My deykoard is ruimed from spittake effect with kola! [[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 18:03, 23 September 2005 (EDT)

==General American==
On a somewhat smaller matter, there is no linguistically accepted version of English called "General English," with a capital G. I am willing to accept a lower case g, "general English," to indicate "common sense" notions about the accent/group of accents. --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]]

:You are correct. The article previously referred to Standard American English (SAE), which I have encountered in contrast to African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in sociolinguistics. As I'm sure you can tell, I intend to refer to the midwestern "newscaster accent" used throughout the entertainment industry.

:As for Wikipedia, they referred to this accent as [[Wikipedia:Standard Midwestern|Standard Midwestern]] until last February. It was then [[Wikipedia:Talk:General American#move to "General American"?|moved]] to [[Wikipedia:General American|General American]] based on [[Wikipedia:User:Angr|User:Angr]]'s statement that "the accent is not standard in any official sense, nor is it limited to the Midwest."

:Since they are serving as our primary reference, I am inclined to follow their conventions on the matter. Perhaps you could take up your point with them? I realize that we are not powerless to employ our own terminology, but consistancy strikes me as a self-evident virtue. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:31, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:: Sigh. General American bothers me. I'd ''much'' prefer Standard American English. I mean--that's a term that linguists use when discussing American accents. I wish Wikipedia had a page entitled that, but I don't want to get into a land war there (or, really anything there as time is finite). A few things have to be understood about SAE (or, as it stands, General English):

:: 1) It doesn't really exist as a spoken dialect. No one grows up learning SAE the way one can grow up speaking Texan English or any of the various sub-dialects of AAVE or whatever. However, Americans seem to be able to sense what it is. This is still under research.

:: 2) When used in a non-scholastic setting (like this wiki), saying someone speaks SAE generally means that the region they learned English in is not identifyable by the way they speak. Apollo speaks SAE, for instance. However, Jamie Baber or however it's spellt, is British and really speaks some form of British English dialect (I've not heard him speak myself).

:: With these two trhings in mind, using a term like SAE to refer to dislects of characters is perfectly fine. I mean--the dialect is a kind of mental construct and so doesn't really exist and the characters, likewise, don't really exist. ;) Okay. That was a joke. My problem with the term "General American" is that I've never seen it before in a linguistic context. "Standard American English" is a term used in all caps like that in many texts by various authors. I'm tired and I think I'm losing coherancy. Does my point about, for lack of a better word, officialness come across clearly? I sure hope so. --[[User:Day|Day]] 03:04, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::I would be happy to have the relevant links marked as Standard American English and go to Wiki's General American article through pipes. The term General American was introduced on October 8th by [[User:Troyian|Troyian]] - I'd like to know if he is personally in favor of the term, or was just matching wikipedia's terminology. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 03:09, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

==Sanskrit to do==
*Link to credible text repository & audio recording.
*Transliterate Sanskrit properly, using IAST. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 00:53, 14 November 2005 (EST)

Hopefully the Don Davis sources may be of help to others in further translation from his Matrix Revolutions tracks (noted in our article now). Enlightening stuff--I use the "Navras" track and its chant in my daily workouts--gets my heart rate up. I was wondering why Elosha's chant seemed so damned familiar, and now I know why. Wild how my favorite SF topics and music merge like this. Speaking of which, I think a music article on BSG will be due sometime... --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 10:09, 14 November 2005 (EST)

:Am I the only one who finds this matrix stuff to be badly off-topic? Davis's transliteration isn't very good, either. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 14:04, 14 November 2005 (EST)

::I'm going to strike this. If anyone wants to make a note of the coincidence on the references page, that would be fine. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 21:12, 14 November 2005 (EST)

==Other Accents==
:What about all of the Canadian accents? I'm no linguist, but the way Tigh speaks sounds very different to the way Adama speaks. Besides, many characters on the show are played by Canadian actors like Aaron Douglas, Tricia Helfer, and Tahmoh Penikett, each with varying degrees of accent. --[[User:Drumstick|Drumstick]] 19:51, 17 January 2006 (EST)

::Many Canadian accents are very similar to the Midwestern SAE used in Hollywood. If you can name a character with a particularly strong accent, I'd be happy to identify them here, but Hogan, Douglas, Helfer and Penikett don't seem to fit the bill.

::Note that place of origin and accent do not necessarily coincide - nobody would claim that Lee Adama speaks with a British Accent, although Jamie Bamber certainly does. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:32, 17 January 2006 (EST)

:::I've always felt that Hogan's accent is somewhat obvious, but again, I'm not much experienced with Canadian-accented English. (I only know two or three Canadians myself.) Besides, you make a good point: even if Hogan's accent ''is'' strong enough to be considered noticable, it is no where near as different from SAE as, say, Baltar's. [[User:Drumstick|Drumstick]] 21:35, 17 January 2006 (EST)

:::: For me, Tigh's just got a few words that stick out. Unfortunately, the only word that comes to mind off the top of my head is one that doesn't really exist: Kobol. Everyone else says it as if it were some American saying Co-Ball (['kou.'bol]) or something (equal stress on both syllables), whereas he seems to say ['kou.bl] (with the syllabic l at the end). That's hack-IPA, there, because I've yet to take the time to figure out the way the thingie for it works, here. --[[User:Day|Day]] 23:51, 17 January 2006 (EST)

:Michael Hogan may be Canadian, but his accent sounds to my ears more like American Irish. The Canadian accent at any rate owes a lot to Celtic influences (that "aboot" that Canadians say is straight from Scotland/Northern Ireland), so it's possible that it's Canadian but it doesn't sounds like Canadian accents that I'm familiar with. The name "Tigh" is Gaelic for "house". He's also a drinker. So my sense is that his character has been outfitted with a Scots/Irish-American persona. For what it's worth, I'm a Scot living in the States myself, and profoundly lacking in confidence in the average American's ability to recognize accents. I'd say 95% of Americans guess that I'm Irish, when no one from the UK or Ireland would make that mistake.--Haecceity

==Texas Accent==
Y'know, Baltar's Six definitely refers to his "nucular device" in "[[Epiphanies]]". --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 14:49, 21 January 2006 (EST)

: Actually, that's not a Texas thing. We talked about that specifically in one of my classes, since that's such a common misconception due to G. W. Bush's hailing from our state and and pronouncing it thus. Apparently that's common in many Southern dialects (as in "The South" which includes states as far north as Virginia, but not, say, New Mexico). Not that Texas is really ''excluded'' from that list, I just thought I'd point out that it's more common than many city-dwellers think (including myself before I attended the afore mentioned lecture). Personally, I say it "NEW-clee-er" only slightly more often than "NEW-cue-ler". I feel like I"m rambling on, so I won't go into what factors contribute to a dialect switching the L and the following vowel in this word. --[[User:Day|Day]] 23:57, 21 January 2006 (EST)
*** PREACH! Ramble on, my friend. The mispronunciation of "NEW - clee - ar" as "NUKE - yoo - lar" is quite possibly my biggest language-related pet peeve, and it warms my heart to learn that there are those out there whose minds are open to re-education on the matter of nit-picky pronunciation issues, and furthermore, who would spread the word after learning something new? Very refreshing. To be honest, I have something of a Six/Tricia Helfer wannabe complex, and it actually makes me cringe and hurt a little inside every time I her her utter those three errant syllables, as if the miniseries kickoff infanticide-genocide double-whammy wasn't enough to alert me that my heroine was, perhaps, less than perfect... ;) I think you're all pretty fabulous for noticing *and* for the informative commentary that followed (and even managed to get a few W jibes in - excellent!). --[[User:Omgoctagons|omg octagons!!]] 14:19, 16 November 2006 (CST)
::Sounding off for a minute: the pronunciation is officially "New-clee-er", and Bush is yet again and embarrassment for pronouncing it wrong, then refusing to correct himself because he believes that he is infallible. --[[User:Ricimer|Ricimer]]

::: See, now you're gonna start arguing right and wrong with a [[Wikipedia:Descriptive linguistics|descriptive linguist]]. We're not your [[Wikipedia:Prescription and description|prescriptive]] Highschool English teacher. *wink* --[[User:Day|Day]] 15:29, 22 January 2006 (EST)

:::: PREACH! Ramble on, my friend. The mispronunciation of "NEW - clee - ar" as "NUKE - yoo - lar" is quite possibly my biggest language-related pet peeve, and it warms my heart to learn that there are those out there whose minds are open to re-education on the matter of nit-picky pronunciation issues, and furthermore, who would spread the word after learning something new? Very refreshing. To be honest, I have something of a Six/Tricia Helfer wannabe complex, and it actually makes me cringe and hurt a little inside every time I her her utter those three errant syllables, as if the miniseries kickoff infanticide-genocide double-whammy wasn't enough to alert me that my heroine was, perhaps, less than perfect... ;) I think you're all pretty fabulous for noticing *and* for the informative commentary that followed (and even managed to get a few W jibes in - excellent!). --[[User:Omgoctagons|omg octagons!!]] 14:24, 16 November 2006 (CST)

==Names==
I don't think its worthwhile to discuss the "meaning" of names that were borrowed from TOS here. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 23:17, 15 March 2006 (CST)
:Not sure that's entirely true (obviously :-) ), since in several cases Larson clearly borrowed those names from Hebrew/Greek himself, deliberately, and RDM is following in his footsteps.--[[User:UncleMikey|Uncle Mikey]] 23:20, 15 March 2006 (CST)
::I think we need to edit down "Names" a lot for relevance/concision. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] 23:58, 15 March 2006 (CST)
:::I can accept that—some days I'm good at concision, other days, not so much. I'd actually originally intended to merely provide a couple of key examples, and I kinda got carried away :-)--[[User:UncleMikey|Uncle Mikey]] 10:14, 16 March 2006 (CST)
:::By the way, Merv—thank you for your additions/clarifications to the names. And you may be right about the Roslin entry not really being highly relevant. I'll admit I just thought it was an amusing coincidence. And it may be more relevant than you think. The Cylons are clones, of a sort (albeit not clones of real human beings, but of 12 synthesized templates), and a Cylon-hybrid child saved Roslin's life... OK. It's a stretch :-) I can be convinced to remove the Roslin entry without much arm-twisting.--[[User:UncleMikey|Uncle Mikey]] 13:21, 16 March 2006 (CST)
::::Well RDM saying he deliberatley chose Dualla and Gaeta's names knowing their meaning is from the podcast of "Final Cut"; I think the Zarek thing is from the companion book. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] 17:08, 16 March 2006 (CST)

==French in the Colonies==
I wanted to point out that we recently realized that french is a spoken language in at least some of the Colonies. This is the first real language, other than english, that we see as present beyond accentuation. I guess you'll want proof? Here it is:

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/5766/wtfk1tn.jpg

On the Very top of the chalk board are the words :

*Aller ("to go")

*Avoir ("to have")

*Etres ("to be")

Three verbs of the French Language. Just Thought I'd mention it, since as far as I remember there is no other Earth Based Language which is seen beyond certain accents. --[[User:Sauron18|Sauron18]] 04:37 June 06 2006

:Nice catch, Sauron. Actually, the prayer chant sung by [[Elosha]] at the end of the miniseries is a Sanskrit prayer, so that's two possible languages in the Colonies outside the accented suggestions. Your discovery should be an interesting one to add. Also, we see "NaOH", which I think is the chemical name for ammonia...curious that the Colonials use our chemical naming process, too... --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 13:22, 6 June 2006 (CDT)
::sodium hydroxide ^_^ --[[User:Mercifull|Mercifull]] 13:33, 6 June 2006 (CDT)
:::It looks like it's part of an equation. X + NaOH yields -> Y. This does appear to be the first written instance of foreign language. --[[User:Steelviper|Steelviper]] 13:36, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

::::Ugh...stereochemistry (shudder). Oh, well the only other "french" thing we've got in BSG is when Stinger says "esprit de corps" in "Pegasus", but I think that and the LDYB II blackboard thing are just mistakes. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 15:59, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

:::::I don't think they're any more mistakes then talking of dogs horses and such. There's no reason why languages other than english can exist within the Colonies. Might even be a second language to them since they're teaching it to preschoolers--[[User:Sauron18|Sauron18]] 17:05 June 06 2006

:Very nice find, Sauron. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:39, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

== Clean-Up ==

Anything in particular, or just in general? I always look at an article's talk page when I see a delete or clean-up tag and I'm often annoyed because the tagger hasn't posted about why they tagged. I'm not looking for an exhaustive list, just maybe the direction you think the article should be headed or something. --[[User:Day|Day]] ([[User talk:Day|Talk]] - [[Battlestar Wiki:Administrators' noticeboard|Admin]] - [http://hiver.swordofthestars.com/ SotS]) 02:28, 19 July 2006 (CDT)
:Sorry, I thought I'd be able to get to this myself but I'm juggling 5 projects; I just meant it as a reminder tag for myself like 2 hours later. Basically a few new edits (the most recent ones) specifically in the "name origin" section sounded like too much speculation; I mean "well, Adama could stem from the Greek "Adamas"..." when we know that Glen Larson originated "Adama" as it sounds like "Adam". I'll get to this in a minute. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 10:12, 19 July 2006 (CDT)
::Done. Finished cleanup. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 12:17, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

I accept what you say about my "speculation" on the derivation of the name "Adama" but you've pretty much removed all the others, including my observation on the the name "Helena." As it happens, I happen to think that my reference to the Emperor Constantine's mother is more apt than Helen of Troy, because (according to the admittedely apocryphal Golden Legend of Jacopo da Varagine) Helena was a ruthless proselyte who wasn't remotely concerned who or how many people she had killed in her religious and political zeal for Imperial Christianity, especially if they weren't Christians (and for her bloodthirsty piety she was later made a Saint of the Orthodox Church) Helen of Troy however was (in all probability) nothing more than an archaic-period poetic device for a ''casus belli.'' The character traits of Empress Helena seem far more appropriate to Admiral Cain's personality than do those of the adulterous Face that launched a Thousand Ships. Of course, it could be just a coincidence, but in a show loaded with mythological and historical references, without asking the writers, we'd never know for sure, and sometimes even they might not really know why they use a reference; artistic works are often full of imagery and symbolism that even the work's creator isn't fully aware of the meaning of. That's why there are art historians. - Tawakalna Q'ubt ut-Allah.

:There is a level of permissable speculation, but these other things you were saying were so obscure I don't think they are relevant, or worth including. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 13:58, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

::I ''don't'' see the significance of most of these edit reversions of Tawakalna's contributions, Merv. The Adama speculation is no less interesting than what can be found in "The Matrix" character name studies (given that no explanations have been, or probably will be forthcoming about them). Speculative: yes. Factual or interesting: (as far as all name and word origins go): Yes. While "Helena" might have been picked out of a hat by the writers, it nonetheless has an interesting comparison to history and/or mythology. Tawakalna obviously has a good grasp of this history, so unless you have a better source, I recommend restoration of the Adama, Tigh, Cain and Agathon edits. --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 15:05, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

:::Well if you feel it was okay, yeah, add it back. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 16:40, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

::::My two cents: I find practically none of this speculation interesting or insightful. The Matrix comparison is a bad one, since I don't find that line of inquiry interesting, either. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 14:47, 20 July 2006 (CDT)

Well, that's two to one against, so let's just leave it shall we? It was only an observation after all; if people really find such speculation useless to the point of being offensive, then it's hardly worth my time to carry on with something that's clearly creating hostility. - Tawakalna

:Well it wasn't offensive, and you could put it back if you want. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 09:26, 21 July 2006 (CDT)

== Starbuck's Tattoos ==

Kattee Sackhoff has two tattoos with a non-English language. One is the Latin "bona fiscalia" (public property). That fits nicely with the other Latin names on the show. Another is the Japanese Kanji for "choice" on the back of her neck. Maybe those should be added?
There could be a new title like "non-English languages" with that, the French noted above and also the Sanskrit in Elosha's prayer --[[User:Serenity|Serenity]] 12:28, 26 September 2006 (CDT)
:Those are noted on [[Tattoo]] at present (though I thought that article might be disappearing... I could be wrong). I'm guessing that those aren't intended to be visible onscreen, given the efforts they seem to take to conceal them, but they are visible at times. That's a tough one. --[[User:Steelviper|Steelviper]] 12:33, 26 September 2006 (CDT)
::I know that they are on both Kattee's page and the tattoo one. They might try to hide them now and then, but they are clearly visible several times. The only one they really cover up is the crucifix. I found the Japanese one to be actually more visible once she switched to the ponytail. It's not just one or two times and I for one, don't try to explain them away as production errors or something --[[User:Serenity|Serenity]] 12:45, 26 September 2006 (CDT)

Talk:Language in the Twelve Colonies/Archive3

2006-11-16T20:19:04Z

Omgoctagons: /* Texas Accent */

==Radio Alphabet==

''Discussions moved to [[Talk:Colonial Wireless Alphabet]] by [[User:Joe.Beaudoin|Joe Beaudoin]] at 20:07, 10 October 2005 (EDT).''

==Aerelon Accent==
:''(It is probably some subtle nuance that a Colonial character like Baltar could notice, but that is indistinguishable from an American accent to the audience).''

No, listen. None of these characters are actually speaking English. The whole thing is a conceit to make it intelligable to the viewer. I'm sure that in the fictional universe of BSG, Boomer does speak with a "trace of an Aerelon accent", but since the show chooses to represent this as Standard American English, there's little point speculating about phonological variations that we can't hear. It's not a matter of Baltar being able to hear something we can't, the showmakers have just chosen not to give us the information. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 01:38, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

: Yeah. I tend to agree. My agreement is influenced by a couple of things in addition to the above.

: '''One:''' I have a BA in Linguistics. I know a bit about accents and the sounds of human speech, etc. I'm also somewhat used to hearing differences in sounds that most Anglophones aren't used to (like distinctions that are meaningful in other languages, but not in English). These two things make it hard for me to believe that, after reading about this theory and listening to Boomer speak with the purpose of hearing an accent, I'd somehow be unable to hear it simply because I'm ''missing'' it.

: '''Two:''' I'm a rather large Tolkien dork and am familiar with the idea of "translating" something into English for the benefit of English-speaking viewers (to say nothing of over-dubbed versions of this show for non-English-speaking viewers. Additionally, being familiar with Tolkien's special flavor of language-centric crazy, I don't get that, well, vibe from RDM. He seems much more interested in the story and the cinematics than correctly representing the names of people from Dale as corrupted Old English names in order to show their long-ago linguistic connection to the Rohirrim, whose language is tacitly represented by Old English--as he should be.

: If, for whatever reason, the BSG production/directoral staff were interested in drawing parallels to Colonial accents with the use of English accents, it would be much more apparent. What is more likely is, as Peter posits, they aren't giving us the information. That's been screened out if for no other reason than the fact that they didn't really think about it. It's not a big deal. I think this is evidenced by Baltar's remark about Boomer's accent, actually. If they were keeping tabs of language enough to care about accents, they would realise the extreme unlikelihood that even a stereotypically recognized majority of an entire planet's population would have an accent that was the same. I mean--What's the most common (and thus, best seen as stereotypically Earthly) accent on our world? Chinese. Which is, you know, not precisely an accent. ;o)

: I think, actually, that the BSG crew ''are'' paying attention to accents, however. It's just not in a way that identifies characters geographically or--whatever. They pick accents that will predispose American and British (and, thus, probably Australian) viewers to certain preconceptions about their characters. Baltar speaks, more or less, the Queen's English, which will predispose Westerners to assume he's intelligent, wealthy, well bred and well educated. Baltar ''is'' these things. Kara Thrace speaks pretty standard American English and does it with a fairly high volume. She assumes the stereotypes of the loud American, so to speak. Notice, too, that the reporter had an English accent. At the end of her documentary, I half expected her to say, "This is D'anna Whatever, BBC news." I don't even ''get'' the BBC in Texas.

: This is getting absurdly lengthy. I apologize. I tend to do this when words are at issue. Anyway, one final point: I don't think the same thing can be neccesarily said for "race". Since where your genes are from, geographically, is a rather more visual thing, I tend to think that this would more easily occur to a TV producer as something worth keeping track of. That doesn't mean that it did and they are, but that most of my arguements here don't apply to that case much. I'll, ah, I'm done now. ;o) --[[User:Day|Day]] 03:31, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

::Well said. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 04:01, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

It is true that Grace Park is a fluent speaker of Korean, but her English--either as Sharon Valerii or as herself in interviews--bears no trace of a Korean accent whatsoever. I am married to a native Korean speaker, have friends and colleagues who speak Korean either as their first or second language, and have been studying the language for a few years myself, so I am absolutely certain that Korean has no bearing on what might or might not be considered an Aerelon accent. --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]]

:I tend to agree, but felt like someone would bring up her bilingualism inevitably and that it would be better to address it directly. If Grace Park (and thus Boomer) has a trace of ''any'' accent, it ought to be Korean, so I felt it worth a mention. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:31, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

::You said that Grace Park's bilingualism would come up eventually. I would recommend limiting discussions of her bilingualism to the actress' bio page. The label "Korean" doesn't meaningfully describe anything that's going on when Sharon/Boomer is speaking. My own Korean is getting good enough that I'm approaching true "bilingual" status, but nobody would use "Korean" to describe my English. --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]]

:::Discussing Park's bilingualism on the actress' bio page would not shed any insight for a reader of this page, nor would it allay any questions that such knowledge might raise. I understand that her spoken english is flawless, but the fact that it is not actually her first language is at least marginally relevant here, and is given the footnote it deserves.

:::As for her "northwestern" accent, I don't truly believe that that's any different from General American / Standard Midwestern - the only phonological difference I can think of is the caught/cot merger, which is too subtle to deserve the name "accent". --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 03:00, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::: Perhaps it should be specifically noted here that her Korean fluency doesn't seem to have any impact whatsoever on her English accent. I agree with Peter that it's important to note it here, so that someone who doesn't know any better doesn't come along and think we missed that point and that they've solved our problem by mentioning a (non-existant) Korean accent. Sometimes, when you are making an argument or assertion, you have to mention some things that are, really, irrelevant in order to make clear that they are, indeed, irrelevant so that others will not wrongly think that they are. Make sense? --[[User:Day|Day]] 03:08, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

::::I was just about to say something like that. Thanks, Day! --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]] 03:10, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::::Tried to make it a little more forceful. You can tell that this wiki is great because we spend whole evenings discussing single sentences. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 03:18, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::::: Nice edit. And I hope you were being serious. I spent a lot of time in college working on a print publication and for the last couple years, I was the Editor in Chief (kind of a joke because there were only six of us on staff). In any case, it was a humor publication and sometimes we'd spend hours debating about the wording of a single sentence in order to deliver the most punch. It almost always paid off. In this case, we're not looking to be funny, but I still think it pays to make sure a sentence communicates exactly the information we intend: no more and no less. --[[User:Day|Day]] 17:48, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

::::::: Quite serious. Concision is nothing without precision. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 23:48, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::::::: So, you're not really the Concision Fairy. You're the Concision/Percision Fairy. Which is less concise, but more precise. Maybe you're the (Con|Pre)cision Fairy. Phleh. --[[User:Day|Day]] 16:16, 20 October 2005 (EDT)

==Racetrack==
Is it just me or does Racetrack have a vaguely Canadian accent in her scene on the Raptor early in [[Final Cut]]? --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:10, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

==Stating the obvious==

:''Mister (Mr), Miss, and Doctor have all been used, but Missus {Mrs} has not.''

The concision fairy frowns in disapproval. Why is this interesting? --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:26, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

Nothing much since we haven't seen anyone married. Given the gender equality in BSG, however, it may well be that "Mrs" is not used. --[[User:Redwall|Redwall]] 17:20, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

==Valley Girl Accent==

[[User:Day|Day]] and I believe that [[Pythia]] likely spoke with [[Wikipedia:High rising terminal|High rising terminal]]s, also known as a "valley girl accent". We have concluded this based on the fact that no less than 67% of the direct quotes from her book of prophecy begin with the coordinating conjunction "and", as in the following passage:

"And, like, the lords anointed a leader to like, guide the Caravan of the Heavens to their new homeland?, and, like, unto the leader they gave a vision of serpents numbering two and ten?, as like, a sign of things to come?, which is like, totally spooky. And then, like, the Arrow of Apollo will open the Tomb of Athena, which is totally ''boss'', but Zeus like, got all uppity and warned the leaders of the twelve tribes that any return to Kobol would exact a price in blood, which is totally ''gross'', 'cause blood is gross, y'know? And like, a real ''bummer'', since Kobol is hot shit."

So say we all. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:19, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

: NO, that was meant to sound religious, in the tone of "And the number shall be "three". "Four" be too many, and "two" be too few (unless though then proceedeth to "three"). "Five" is right out. ---Ricimer, 17 Sept, 2005

::The effect is, as noted, somewhat different when you read them all out in a list. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:39, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

:::Damn both of you. My deykoard is ruimed from spittake effect with kola! [[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 18:03, 23 September 2005 (EDT)

==General American==
On a somewhat smaller matter, there is no linguistically accepted version of English called "General English," with a capital G. I am willing to accept a lower case g, "general English," to indicate "common sense" notions about the accent/group of accents. --[[User:BlueResistance|BlueResistance]]

:You are correct. The article previously referred to Standard American English (SAE), which I have encountered in contrast to African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in sociolinguistics. As I'm sure you can tell, I intend to refer to the midwestern "newscaster accent" used throughout the entertainment industry.

:As for Wikipedia, they referred to this accent as [[Wikipedia:Standard Midwestern|Standard Midwestern]] until last February. It was then [[Wikipedia:Talk:General American#move to "General American"?|moved]] to [[Wikipedia:General American|General American]] based on [[Wikipedia:User:Angr|User:Angr]]'s statement that "the accent is not standard in any official sense, nor is it limited to the Midwest."

:Since they are serving as our primary reference, I am inclined to follow their conventions on the matter. Perhaps you could take up your point with them? I realize that we are not powerless to employ our own terminology, but consistancy strikes me as a self-evident virtue. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 02:31, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:: Sigh. General American bothers me. I'd ''much'' prefer Standard American English. I mean--that's a term that linguists use when discussing American accents. I wish Wikipedia had a page entitled that, but I don't want to get into a land war there (or, really anything there as time is finite). A few things have to be understood about SAE (or, as it stands, General English):

:: 1) It doesn't really exist as a spoken dialect. No one grows up learning SAE the way one can grow up speaking Texan English or any of the various sub-dialects of AAVE or whatever. However, Americans seem to be able to sense what it is. This is still under research.

:: 2) When used in a non-scholastic setting (like this wiki), saying someone speaks SAE generally means that the region they learned English in is not identifyable by the way they speak. Apollo speaks SAE, for instance. However, Jamie Baber or however it's spellt, is British and really speaks some form of British English dialect (I've not heard him speak myself).

:: With these two trhings in mind, using a term like SAE to refer to dislects of characters is perfectly fine. I mean--the dialect is a kind of mental construct and so doesn't really exist and the characters, likewise, don't really exist. ;) Okay. That was a joke. My problem with the term "General American" is that I've never seen it before in a linguistic context. "Standard American English" is a term used in all caps like that in many texts by various authors. I'm tired and I think I'm losing coherancy. Does my point about, for lack of a better word, officialness come across clearly? I sure hope so. --[[User:Day|Day]] 03:04, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

:::I would be happy to have the relevant links marked as Standard American English and go to Wiki's General American article through pipes. The term General American was introduced on October 8th by [[User:Troyian|Troyian]] - I'd like to know if he is personally in favor of the term, or was just matching wikipedia's terminology. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 03:09, 19 October 2005 (EDT)

==Sanskrit to do==
*Link to credible text repository & audio recording.
*Transliterate Sanskrit properly, using IAST. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 00:53, 14 November 2005 (EST)

Hopefully the Don Davis sources may be of help to others in further translation from his Matrix Revolutions tracks (noted in our article now). Enlightening stuff--I use the "Navras" track and its chant in my daily workouts--gets my heart rate up. I was wondering why Elosha's chant seemed so damned familiar, and now I know why. Wild how my favorite SF topics and music merge like this. Speaking of which, I think a music article on BSG will be due sometime... --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 10:09, 14 November 2005 (EST)

:Am I the only one who finds this matrix stuff to be badly off-topic? Davis's transliteration isn't very good, either. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 14:04, 14 November 2005 (EST)

::I'm going to strike this. If anyone wants to make a note of the coincidence on the references page, that would be fine. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 21:12, 14 November 2005 (EST)

==Other Accents==
:What about all of the Canadian accents? I'm no linguist, but the way Tigh speaks sounds very different to the way Adama speaks. Besides, many characters on the show are played by Canadian actors like Aaron Douglas, Tricia Helfer, and Tahmoh Penikett, each with varying degrees of accent. --[[User:Drumstick|Drumstick]] 19:51, 17 January 2006 (EST)

::Many Canadian accents are very similar to the Midwestern SAE used in Hollywood. If you can name a character with a particularly strong accent, I'd be happy to identify them here, but Hogan, Douglas, Helfer and Penikett don't seem to fit the bill.

::Note that place of origin and accent do not necessarily coincide - nobody would claim that Lee Adama speaks with a British Accent, although Jamie Bamber certainly does. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:32, 17 January 2006 (EST)

:::I've always felt that Hogan's accent is somewhat obvious, but again, I'm not much experienced with Canadian-accented English. (I only know two or three Canadians myself.) Besides, you make a good point: even if Hogan's accent ''is'' strong enough to be considered noticable, it is no where near as different from SAE as, say, Baltar's. [[User:Drumstick|Drumstick]] 21:35, 17 January 2006 (EST)

:::: For me, Tigh's just got a few words that stick out. Unfortunately, the only word that comes to mind off the top of my head is one that doesn't really exist: Kobol. Everyone else says it as if it were some American saying Co-Ball (['kou.'bol]) or something (equal stress on both syllables), whereas he seems to say ['kou.bl] (with the syllabic l at the end). That's hack-IPA, there, because I've yet to take the time to figure out the way the thingie for it works, here. --[[User:Day|Day]] 23:51, 17 January 2006 (EST)

:Michael Hogan may be Canadian, but his accent sounds to my ears more like American Irish. The Canadian accent at any rate owes a lot to Celtic influences (that "aboot" that Canadians say is straight from Scotland/Northern Ireland), so it's possible that it's Canadian but it doesn't sounds like Canadian accents that I'm familiar with. The name "Tigh" is Gaelic for "house". He's also a drinker. So my sense is that his character has been outfitted with a Scots/Irish-American persona. For what it's worth, I'm a Scot living in the States myself, and profoundly lacking in confidence in the average American's ability to recognize accents. I'd say 95% of Americans guess that I'm Irish, when no one from the UK or Ireland would make that mistake.--Haecceity

==Texas Accent==
Y'know, Baltar's Six definitely refers to his "nucular device" in "[[Epiphanies]]". --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 14:49, 21 January 2006 (EST)

: Actually, that's not a Texas thing. We talked about that specifically in one of my classes, since that's such a common misconception due to G. W. Bush's hailing from our state and and pronouncing it thus. Apparently that's common in many Southern dialects (as in "The South" which includes states as far north as Virginia, but not, say, New Mexico). Not that Texas is really ''excluded'' from that list, I just thought I'd point out that it's more common than many city-dwellers think (including myself before I attended the afore mentioned lecture). Personally, I say it "NEW-clee-er" only slightly more often than "NEW-cue-ler". I feel like I"m rambling on, so I won't go into what factors contribute to a dialect switching the L and the following vowel in this word. --[[User:Day|Day]] 23:57, 21 January 2006 (EST)
*** PREACH! Ramble on, my friend. The mispronunciation of "NEW - clee - ar" as "NUKE - yoo - lar" is quite possibly my biggest language-related pet peeve, and it warms my heart to learn that there are those out there whose minds are open to re-education on the matter of nit-picky pronunciation issues, and furthermore, who would spread the word after learning something new? Very refreshing. To be honest, I have something of a Six/Tricia Helfer wannabe complex, and it actually makes me cringe and hurt a little inside every time I her her utter those three errant syllables, as if the miniseries kickoff infanticide-genocide double-whammy wasn't enough to alert me that my heroine was, perhaps, less than perfect... ;) I think you're all pretty fabulous for noticing *and* for the informative commentary that followed (and even managed to get a few W jibes in - excellent!). --[[User:Omgoctagons|omg octagons!!]] 14:19, 16 November 2006 (CST)
::Sounding off for a minute: the pronunciation is officially "New-clee-er", and Bush is yet again and embarrassment for pronouncing it wrong, then refusing to correct himself because he believes that he is infallible. --[[User:Ricimer|Ricimer]]

::: See, now you're gonna start arguing right and wrong with a [[Wikipedia:Descriptive linguistics|descriptive linguist]]. We're not your [[Wikipedia:Prescription and description|prescriptive]] Highschool English teacher. *wink* --[[User:Day|Day]] 15:29, 22 January 2006 (EST)

==Names==
I don't think its worthwhile to discuss the "meaning" of names that were borrowed from TOS here. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 23:17, 15 March 2006 (CST)
:Not sure that's entirely true (obviously :-) ), since in several cases Larson clearly borrowed those names from Hebrew/Greek himself, deliberately, and RDM is following in his footsteps.--[[User:UncleMikey|Uncle Mikey]] 23:20, 15 March 2006 (CST)
::I think we need to edit down "Names" a lot for relevance/concision. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] 23:58, 15 March 2006 (CST)
:::I can accept that—some days I'm good at concision, other days, not so much. I'd actually originally intended to merely provide a couple of key examples, and I kinda got carried away :-)--[[User:UncleMikey|Uncle Mikey]] 10:14, 16 March 2006 (CST)
:::By the way, Merv—thank you for your additions/clarifications to the names. And you may be right about the Roslin entry not really being highly relevant. I'll admit I just thought it was an amusing coincidence. And it may be more relevant than you think. The Cylons are clones, of a sort (albeit not clones of real human beings, but of 12 synthesized templates), and a Cylon-hybrid child saved Roslin's life... OK. It's a stretch :-) I can be convinced to remove the Roslin entry without much arm-twisting.--[[User:UncleMikey|Uncle Mikey]] 13:21, 16 March 2006 (CST)
::::Well RDM saying he deliberatley chose Dualla and Gaeta's names knowing their meaning is from the podcast of "Final Cut"; I think the Zarek thing is from the companion book. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] 17:08, 16 March 2006 (CST)

==French in the Colonies==
I wanted to point out that we recently realized that french is a spoken language in at least some of the Colonies. This is the first real language, other than english, that we see as present beyond accentuation. I guess you'll want proof? Here it is:

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/5766/wtfk1tn.jpg

On the Very top of the chalk board are the words :

*Aller ("to go")

*Avoir ("to have")

*Etres ("to be")

Three verbs of the French Language. Just Thought I'd mention it, since as far as I remember there is no other Earth Based Language which is seen beyond certain accents. --[[User:Sauron18|Sauron18]] 04:37 June 06 2006

:Nice catch, Sauron. Actually, the prayer chant sung by [[Elosha]] at the end of the miniseries is a Sanskrit prayer, so that's two possible languages in the Colonies outside the accented suggestions. Your discovery should be an interesting one to add. Also, we see "NaOH", which I think is the chemical name for ammonia...curious that the Colonials use our chemical naming process, too... --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 13:22, 6 June 2006 (CDT)
::sodium hydroxide ^_^ --[[User:Mercifull|Mercifull]] 13:33, 6 June 2006 (CDT)
:::It looks like it's part of an equation. X + NaOH yields -> Y. This does appear to be the first written instance of foreign language. --[[User:Steelviper|Steelviper]] 13:36, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

::::Ugh...stereochemistry (shudder). Oh, well the only other "french" thing we've got in BSG is when Stinger says "esprit de corps" in "Pegasus", but I think that and the LDYB II blackboard thing are just mistakes. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 15:59, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

:::::I don't think they're any more mistakes then talking of dogs horses and such. There's no reason why languages other than english can exist within the Colonies. Might even be a second language to them since they're teaching it to preschoolers--[[User:Sauron18|Sauron18]] 17:05 June 06 2006

:Very nice find, Sauron. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:39, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

== Clean-Up ==

Anything in particular, or just in general? I always look at an article's talk page when I see a delete or clean-up tag and I'm often annoyed because the tagger hasn't posted about why they tagged. I'm not looking for an exhaustive list, just maybe the direction you think the article should be headed or something. --[[User:Day|Day]] ([[User talk:Day|Talk]] - [[Battlestar Wiki:Administrators' noticeboard|Admin]] - [http://hiver.swordofthestars.com/ SotS]) 02:28, 19 July 2006 (CDT)
:Sorry, I thought I'd be able to get to this myself but I'm juggling 5 projects; I just meant it as a reminder tag for myself like 2 hours later. Basically a few new edits (the most recent ones) specifically in the "name origin" section sounded like too much speculation; I mean "well, Adama could stem from the Greek "Adamas"..." when we know that Glen Larson originated "Adama" as it sounds like "Adam". I'll get to this in a minute. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 10:12, 19 July 2006 (CDT)
::Done. Finished cleanup. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 12:17, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

I accept what you say about my "speculation" on the derivation of the name "Adama" but you've pretty much removed all the others, including my observation on the the name "Helena." As it happens, I happen to think that my reference to the Emperor Constantine's mother is more apt than Helen of Troy, because (according to the admittedely apocryphal Golden Legend of Jacopo da Varagine) Helena was a ruthless proselyte who wasn't remotely concerned who or how many people she had killed in her religious and political zeal for Imperial Christianity, especially if they weren't Christians (and for her bloodthirsty piety she was later made a Saint of the Orthodox Church) Helen of Troy however was (in all probability) nothing more than an archaic-period poetic device for a ''casus belli.'' The character traits of Empress Helena seem far more appropriate to Admiral Cain's personality than do those of the adulterous Face that launched a Thousand Ships. Of course, it could be just a coincidence, but in a show loaded with mythological and historical references, without asking the writers, we'd never know for sure, and sometimes even they might not really know why they use a reference; artistic works are often full of imagery and symbolism that even the work's creator isn't fully aware of the meaning of. That's why there are art historians. - Tawakalna Q'ubt ut-Allah.

:There is a level of permissable speculation, but these other things you were saying were so obscure I don't think they are relevant, or worth including. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 13:58, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

::I ''don't'' see the significance of most of these edit reversions of Tawakalna's contributions, Merv. The Adama speculation is no less interesting than what can be found in "The Matrix" character name studies (given that no explanations have been, or probably will be forthcoming about them). Speculative: yes. Factual or interesting: (as far as all name and word origins go): Yes. While "Helena" might have been picked out of a hat by the writers, it nonetheless has an interesting comparison to history and/or mythology. Tawakalna obviously has a good grasp of this history, so unless you have a better source, I recommend restoration of the Adama, Tigh, Cain and Agathon edits. --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 15:05, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

:::Well if you feel it was okay, yeah, add it back. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 16:40, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

::::My two cents: I find practically none of this speculation interesting or insightful. The Matrix comparison is a bad one, since I don't find that line of inquiry interesting, either. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 14:47, 20 July 2006 (CDT)

Well, that's two to one against, so let's just leave it shall we? It was only an observation after all; if people really find such speculation useless to the point of being offensive, then it's hardly worth my time to carry on with something that's clearly creating hostility. - Tawakalna

:Well it wasn't offensive, and you could put it back if you want. --[[User:The Merovingian|The Merovingian]] ([[Special:Contributions/The Merovingian|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/The Merovingian|E]]) 09:26, 21 July 2006 (CDT)

== Starbuck's Tattoos ==

Kattee Sackhoff has two tattoos with a non-English language. One is the Latin "bona fiscalia" (public property). That fits nicely with the other Latin names on the show. Another is the Japanese Kanji for "choice" on the back of her neck. Maybe those should be added?
There could be a new title like "non-English languages" with that, the French noted above and also the Sanskrit in Elosha's prayer --[[User:Serenity|Serenity]] 12:28, 26 September 2006 (CDT)
:Those are noted on [[Tattoo]] at present (though I thought that article might be disappearing... I could be wrong). I'm guessing that those aren't intended to be visible onscreen, given the efforts they seem to take to conceal them, but they are visible at times. That's a tough one. --[[User:Steelviper|Steelviper]] 12:33, 26 September 2006 (CDT)
::I know that they are on both Kattee's page and the tattoo one. They might try to hide them now and then, but they are clearly visible several times. The only one they really cover up is the crucifix. I found the Japanese one to be actually more visible once she switched to the ponytail. It's not just one or two times and I for one, don't try to explain them away as production errors or something --[[User:Serenity|Serenity]] 12:45, 26 September 2006 (CDT)