Olympic Carrier
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(Credit: Sky One)
The Olympic Carrier was an FTL-capable passenger liner destroyed by Colonial forces after it had apparently come under Cylon control.
The Olympic Carrier, sometimes referred to as simply the Carrier, was officially designated an "Intersun Passenger Cruiser". With a length of 825 feet, it comfortably accomodated 1,000 passengers in posh and luxury on journeys between the Twelve Colonies. A commercial passenger ship, it had neither weapons systems nor defense capabilities. It joined the rag-tag fleet carrying 1,345 survivors of the Cylon attack.
The Carrier was able to successfully execute the first 237 Jumps after the Cylon attack; however, prior to the 238th jump, a message was sent from it to President Laura Roslin aboard Colonial One. The message purportedly came from a Dr. Amorak, formerly of the Colonial Ministry of Defense and colleague of Dr. Gaius Baltar, with information regarding "a traitor in their midst". Soon thereafter, though, the Carrier went missing after failing to execute jump 238, apparently disabled by Cylon agents.
Three hours later, the Olympic Carrier suddenly materialized at the jump 238 coordinates, raising the suspicions of Roslin and Commander Adama. When asked how they avoided Cylon attack, a wireless message from someone on board claimed ignorance, saying that someone must have been looking after them; they had used the intervening three hours to fix their malfunctioning FTL drive. Baltar, fearing exposure, urged Roslin to cut off communication with the ship.
When radiological alarms sounded, indicating the presence of a nuclear device, Commander Adama and President Roslin came to quick consensus that the ship needed to be destroyed. Pilots Apollo and Starbuck reluctantly carried out the order and destroyed the vessel before the nuke could detonate. It is unknown whether the Cylons offloaded those aboard the liner or left them aboard (and out of sight) to die (33).
President Roslin later wrote the ship's name down on a piece of paper and left it in her desk aboard Colonial One as a reminder of her role in the tragedy. She had once seen President Adar do something similar when he also gave an order which resulted in the loss of innocent life through military action (Water).
Notes
The passenger count of the Olympic Carrier is not completely clear. Dualla tells us in "33" that there are "1,345 souls" on board, and Adama reflects in "Pegasus" that they "shot down an entire civilian transport with over a thousand people on board". However, the deduction made from the survivor count whiteboard amounts to a loss of 2,026 people on board the Carrier, and is never corrected.
See Discussion tab Above for why this note is inaccurate.
Cinematic Trivia
Producers Ron Moore, David Eick and director Michael Rymer noted in their DVD comentary for "33" that digital effects artists from Zoic hid small signs of movement within the Olympic Carrier during the up-close shots of the ship. In the scene where Apollo is trying to look for people inside through the windows, lights within the ship flicker on and off and several dark figures can be observed darting about the aisleways between seats in the lower part of the ship.