Talk:Season two timeline discontinuity/Archive 1

Please explain the basis for the statement:

"Shortly before Cally's release, Dr. Cottle updates Laura Roslin's prognosis, stating that she has one month to live, "at the outside". This puts her projected death at day 114."

On the DVD copy of Flight of the Phoenix on the Season 2.0 set, the order events in this episode are. 1) Cally is released from the brig, 2) Tyrol begins construction of the Blackbird. 3) Laura is given one month to live. There is no basis for the above statement unless the DVD version of this episode is somehow different to the broadcast version. --Rexpop 21:01, 4 March 2006 (CST)

Interesting. I seem to have been convinced that Cally's release constrained Laura's life span projection somehow, but I can't seem to remember my reasoning on review. The alternative, I guess, is that about two and a half months passed in between Helo and Tyrol's fight (which was the same night as Cally's party) and Roslin's diagnosis. In the intervening scenes...

• Dualla gets fried by the logic bomb and sent to Cottle
• Lee nags Tyrol about Viper 289, leading him to come up with the idea for the Blackbird.
• Tyrol starts the Blackbird project

Still, all the construction work on the blackbird takes place after Roslin's diagnosis. I can see fudging a week here at the outside, but nothing more than that. Anyone else have thoughts? --Peter Farago 21:44, 4 March 2006 (CST)

There's always the "different scenes do not take place concurrently" explanation. --Redwall 22:27, 4 March 2006 (CST)

If we work backwards. 'Epiphanies' happens on Day 189. Therefore if we assume that Roslin lasts the full 30 days that means her final diagnosis comes around day 155-158.

There is enough slack for the remaining events in 'Flight of the Phoenix' to happen in the time before the arrival of the Pegasus.

So the question becomes is there any reason why around 70 days (10 weeks) could not have passed between Cally's release and Roslins diagnosis ?.

The answer is difficult to come by for the reason that the episode was edited to avoid having to track the passage of time. But we have a few metrics that we can use to judge the passage of time. The main one is the progress of construction of the Blackbird.

When we first see Tyrol building the Blackbird (which is before Roslins diagnosis), he has complete plans and the first frame ready. The next time we see the Blackbird after Roslins diagnosis it has a complete airframe with some electronics installed (but no wings). Given that Tyrol is working on the Blackbird by himself and in his spare time it is not unreasonable to say that it took several weeks to get to this point so it would lead to a decent chunk of time passing before Roslins final diagnosis.

There is also scope for time to be added between Tyrol and Apollo's conversation and the beginning of Tyrol building the Blackbird. Given when he starts construction of the Blackbird he already has detailed plans, so its likey that some time has passed between deciding to build it and the actual build. It would not be unreasonable to say that putting the plans together took time a couple of weeks given that he is working part time on the project.

There is one other metric we have for judging the passage, which is Gator debugging the ships systems. He says it could takes days, and the next time we get an update on this it is after Roslins diagnosis. It's obvious that some passage of time has occurred but how long remains up for debate. But I do think that several weeks might be pushing it a little, but there is nothing to say that it didn't take this long after all a Battlestar is a big ship with lots of systems and Gator may just have been talking about just debugging the console code.

To be honest I think we are making a mountain out of a molehill. Yes the timeline goes a bit screwy in this episode, but there is nothing that flat out contradicts the statement that 'Pegasus' takes place six months after the fall of the Colonies. Similarly there is nothing that flat out proves beyond doubt that 'Flight Of The Phoenix' happened over 100 days.

In either case, this page and the timeline need to be re-edited as several of the statements made are based on the faulty premise that Roslins final diagnosis was before Cally's release. Given that this is not the case I think that the discussion on these pages needs to be changed. --Rexpop 12:51, 5 March 2006 (CST)