Talk:Daybreak, Part II/Archive 1

Move

Why move this? The way I understand this, this is still episode 20, but it will be lengthened to actually be 3 episodes long. So in a away there are 21/22 episodes even, and not 19. However, This says that the season will be 11 hours and not 12, but that doesn't mean that we need to get rid of episode 19 already. Especially given that the finale will probably air in at least 2 parts. So it makes some sense to have separate episodes guides for two airings. By production numbers this would be one episode, but split apart by airdate numbers. Maybe we should wait for some further clarification. -- Serenity 06:45, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

It could be split up into 3 parts in reruns. I think it would be easier to start with a single article and then split as necessary after it airs. -- Gordon Ecker 07:41, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

If Sci Fi is gonna pull a Miniseries and air this thing in two parts, we should pull a Miniseries too and have separate articles. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:08, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Which we can do after we know where the break point is. -- Gordon Ecker 09:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

There's no reason to split the article at this time. We won't know how things will be aired until they're actually aired. All we know for now is that the finale's been extended... that's it. Creating two or three sections based on something we have absolutely very little information on is just... ill-advised. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 13:14, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

The proposal wasn't a split, but a merge with 419 I think (the article exists. It just isn't linked to, because it's an empty skeleton). But the result is the same. The way I understand it, 419+420 will be the finale then, with both episodes running 3 hours together (incl. ads I guess). We'll see. -- Serenity 15:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, ok. Sounded like it would be a split, with at least one additional article, seeing as each article would cover an hour. Anyway, we don't have enough information to be certain; it's still really all up in the air, and they have now until doomsday to figure out how to release the thing. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 15:19, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Title

Daybreak, Part 2 (and Part 3) according to producer Mark Verheiden.--Werthead 19:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Can we PLEASE change the title of the page to Part II & Part III -- It is being sold on iTunes, Amazon, etc. and two completely different episodes and this actually screwed me up immensely because I ended up reading spoilers for Part 3 before I started watching it. Yes, this is how it aired, but it is not how it is being archived. -- Namtastic 13:38, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Analysis

"Ronald D. Moore appears in a cameo as the man holding a National Geographic magazine in New York City. "

I think there is much more to it. Ronald D. Moore is appearing as himself reading that article because his knowledge of "Eve" influenced the series. In other words, the series is a result of the events depicted in the series. With that scene, Battlestar Galactica becomes part of Battlestar Galactica.

This is impossibel since as of 2009 mitochondrial Eve's remains haven't been found yet, this scene is set in the future, after the series ended.

--Gully 20:02, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Checkout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve. First articals apearred in 2003 ;)

It's not the same thing: we've known about mitochondrial Eve since before the series started, but her actual remains have not been found, there were never any bones of her found up to this day. It's possible that Moore knowing about Eve's existence may have influenced the show, but he has never read an NGC article about the finding of her remains, simply because those remains haven't been found and thus never made their way into an NGC article. --Gully 20:38, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Notes

I recognised it immediately when watching the episode (and it's already on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_(Battlestar_Galactica)#Outside_references ), the "Kodiak" spacecraft from Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun can be seen among the fleet during this episode.

(Un)answered questions)

The following Ron Moore interview clears up some misunderstandings about the show: http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/03/battlestar_galactica_ronald_d.html

1) Kara Thrace's father was NOT the lost cylon Daniel.

2) The Missiles Racetrack's Raptor (accidentally) fires at the cylon colony were nukes that severely damaged the colony and made it fall from its stable orbit into the singularity (black hole) so the colony has been utterly destroyed.

3) The Earth which is discovered in this episode is not the same planet that was discovered in "Revelations." The Earth of "Revelations" was not the planet we now live on, but our Earth was named after it.

There are still a bunch of unanswered questions:

1) What is the nature of the divine power (although this was probably intentionally left unanswered.)

2) Who were the Lords of Kobol and what happened to that world?

3) How did the colonials get from Kobol to the colonies and if they were technologically advanced, how did they loose all knowledge of Kobol, save for some religious texts?

4) What happened to those who nuked the old Earth 2000 years ago, some of these victors would have survived, but they re never seen or heard from.

5) Why didn't Cavil and his cylons try to re-invent resurrection themselves as the technology wasn't that far ahead of them (it was re-invented by the final five on old-Earth in a civilization that hadn't even invented jump drives.)

6) How could the resurrection hub control all resurrection ships while there was never any mention of FTL-communication on the show and why wasn't the resurrection hub integrated into the colony rather than floating around in deep space, vulnerable and guarded by only 2 baseships.

7) Was the colony really the place where all cylons lived, was their civilization so small (and clearly no match for the colonial military before the holocaust) and are there no baseships left out there that still have cylons aboard who want to exact their revenge on humanity? They may die out like the article suggests, but there's nothing stopping them from taking Earth with them (provided they find it within their lifetime.)

8) What happened to the other rebel cylons? Was it just the 3 baseships that rebelled, and if not, where are the other 2's, 6's and 8's?

9) How did Lee get everyone to agree to give up technology (even medical)?

10) Had it not made more sense to build new cities on Earth and rebuild the advanced colonial civilization, when everyone understood how important equal treatment of cylons and humans is, instead of letting Earth's humans build their own civilization thousands of years later, humans who are likely to make the same old mistakes with artificial intelligence and repeat the cycle?

11) How come no intelligent alien life has ever been encountered by colonials or cylons in their histories, but when it finally happens these aliens are identical to humans, who somehow evolved separately from the Kobol humans? Somehow this amazing coincidence being an "act of God" seems like a rather unsatisfactory answer.

12) Since all the fleet's decisions after the Ellen's reapperarance have been about breaking the cycle, is Lee afraid that by having superior technology on earth the cylons and colonials would "enslave" the native population, creating yet another cycle?

--Gully 21:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

He doesn't actually say that about Kara. -- Noneofyourbusiness 20:00, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

You're right, I've edited my post.

--Gully 21:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd still like to know the origin of Kara's pristine Viper from her resurrection or how she died going into a gas giant with her corpse resting on a planet light-years away. And what the deal is with the Centurions from "Razor" and the Hybrid they deified. And while I understand his prophesy, I'd like to know why the old Hybrid didn't want Kara to lead a new civilisation to Earth. --Mars 02:36, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Her being sent back with a new viper was supposed to be an act of the divine power. I think the Razor centurions were explained as regular mutineers, they saw the first hybrid as some kind of prophet because of the way it talked and wanted to protect it from being scrapped. Seeing as how Kara was largely responsible for the end of Cylon civilization, except the few centurions that are still left, this explains why 'CYLON" hybrids call her the harbinger of death (it was never stated she was the harbinger of death for humanity.)

--Gully 20:48, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Gully, as for question four the Thirteenth Tribe's Earth got nuked by their Centurions. From the surface, not from space. M.A.D.(Mutually Assured Destruction). The Final Five secretly built a ship and rebuilt resurrection(Which the 13th Tribe hadn't needed since first achieving reproduction on Kobol). That was how they escaped. ZeldaTheSwordsman 04:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Alright, but being centurions the radiation wouldn't really hurt them, they could easily have created their own civilization after the dust settled (a bit like the machines in the "Terminator".)

--Gully 15:47, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

From the article: “Since the notes of All Along the Watchtower lead to Earth, do they still serve a purpose on Earth?” answer: yes. -- LaloMartins 12:28, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

The Angels Make Life In This Galaxy Boringly Homogenous.

I slept on this, but my original impression after watching Daybreak Park # 2 is that these Angels make things boring:

They create pidgins, dogs, cats, foxes, people, oranges, tuna, et cetera. I would not be surprised if the Angels dropped a big rock on the dinosaurs just so they can have a clean slate for creating rats.

Once they create people, they make the people invent pianos, worship Zeus, Yahweh, Thor, et cetera. They make the people play “All Along The Watchtower”. They see to it that the people create Cylons.

We are not descended from apes, but from # 8s — a little wordplay because 8 and ape sound similar. the mitochondrial DNA of the # 8s is so similar to that of Homo neanderthalensis that we apparently have a common ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis half a million years ago even though that is impossible.

If we explore the Galaxy, will only find humans and cylons. ¿What is the point? ¿Why bother exploring?

Arthur C. Clarke in 2001 had a similar idea of lonely aliens helping intelligent life evolve, but the beings did not care about the final form. In other words, diversity is the rule in 2001.

We still do not know the nature of these Angels other than that Starbuck seems to be one of them

I do not know how this fits into the article, but it fits into the article somehow. I figure that I should but this on the talkpages for Virtual Beings and Daybreak # 2.

---

From Act 10 section of article: "(This is in the year 1987 AD.)" How can it be 1987 when the flat panel TV clearly showed MSNBC logo at the bottom? MSNBC was created in 1996.--Steven512 14:43, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the robots you see in this scene were also developed after 1987 and as far as I know the remains of mitochondrial Eve have never been found.

In 1987 it was discovered that there had been a mitochondrial Eve, this was based on DNA-research among modern humans, her actual remains have not been found to this day so the scene takes place in the near future (it could even be tomorrow), not in 1987! --Gully 15:58, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Hera's Mate = Boxey?

From the notes section

On the second Earth Hera's mate that produced children was most likely human. Saul Tigh and the Leobens would be too old for her. While it was fairly common in ancient times for the men to be far older than their brides (particularly with royalty), for example with the female being as young as 12 and and the male being say 60 to take an extreme, Colonial mores, which are much like our own in real life, would forbid the Leobens from sexual congress with Hera when she reach the accepted reproductive age. On the other hand there were many human children about her age and slightly older in the Fleet. She could had also had children with a human child unborn at the time of the landing on Second Earth perhaps within five years to ten years of her age. It is possible that other hybrid children could had been born after the landing given that the Twos, Sixes, and Eights joined the humans. And it is possible that pure Cylon children could had been born to the age compatible Sixes, Eights, and Leobens but as noted in the series it is difficult if not impossible for a pure Cylon child to come to term making any pool of pure Cylon children that were successfully born very small. Cylon-Human mating with a human male with a Six or a Sharon is very possible with the example of Hera herself an significantly more likely than with a Cylon-Cylon birth, but it is harder than with human-human pairings making any pool of those pairing while much more likely and larger than Cylon-Cylon offspring, still quite small number compared to pure human offspring. Therefore Hera's offspring is most likely with a human. A more remote possibility is with another Cylon-human hybrid. Her producing children with a pure Cylon offspring is the least likely since pure Cylons are the least likely to exist.

Boxey could be Hera's mate. It would make sense.

Boxey as Y-chromosomal Adam? Or would that be "Adama"? heh--ManofTheAtom 15:42, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

The chromosomal Adam live tens of thousands of years after the Mitochondrial Eve.

Walabio 17:28, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Walabio is right and why would it be more likely for Hera to end up with Boxey instead of with one of the other hundreds of children from the fleet?

--Gully 18:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

The Y-chromosomal Adam reference was to make the pun based on Boxey being Apollo's adopted son in TOS :). As for why it would make sense, it be for no other reason that it would give the RDM version of the character some (belated) importance, which he lacked through the run of the show. Why have her end up with some random kid from the fleet than have her end up with a character who had some level of development? Plus, look at it this way, the original intent according to some references on this site say that the plan was to make Boxey, Tyrol, and Sharon (Boomer) a makeshift family. Having him end up with Hera accomplishes part of that intent as he'd be related to one version of Sharon (Athena)--ManofTheAtom 18:31, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Number Three

Couldn't they have sent a Raptor or an FTL-capable ship to find Number Three and bring her to the New Earth with them? It would have been the humane thing to do. --ManofTheAtom 15:53, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

She was left on a dead-to-humans world, where the only plant life we saw were grasses or other non-edibles, with a background radiation count above the safe level beyond short exposure: even the water was contaminated. She probably died within a few weeks of being left behind. -- Davidkevin 12:42, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Good point. --ManofTheAtom 14:59, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

"No Further Significant Revelations..."

I think this statement in the advisory tag is premature. There's still "The Plan", as well as, in theory, the Caprica series, both of which might provide further revelations with regards to Daybreak and the series itself. Certainly The Plan, anyway. Not to mention the presumed deleted scenes that will be on the DVD and there's a rumor Daybreak will be extended for the DVD as well. There's still a chance for some issues to be resolved. 23skidoo 13:42, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

That's interesting. I don't expect The Plan to reveal much of anything about what Kara became or who the Virtual beings were, but Caprica might explore it given the establishment that they appear at times when the cycle of time (machine on human violence) begins. Caprica might provide the answers to the lingering questions if for nothing more than to give fans of BSG a reason to watch. --ManofTheAtom 14:58, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Let's hope so, though I don't expect they will reveal much more about the divine powers or the angels, ever. It would take away the mystery and the sense that there is something bigger than us (humans and cylons), now we are left wondering if the divine power is a God, or just a very advanced race (maybe the perpetrators (or their descendents) of the first holocaust during the first cycle are feeling guilty) and I think that's how Ron Moore intended it to be. However, Caprica may reveal more about colonial history: what happened to Kobol, how did humans move from Kobol to the colonies, why was that history almost completely forgotten (was there a colonial dark age) and who or what were the Lords of Kobol? --Gully 15:34, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure that many people would agree, or at least theorize, that the virtual beings are Moore's version of the beings of light from the Ship of Lights, especially considering what happened to Kara, which I've seen (here or elsewhere, I forget) compared to what happened to the Starbuck from the original series on the last episode of Galactica 80. I think that the reason why Moore must have decided to leave things vague is that he didn't want to "cheapen it" by introducing something like the Ship of Lights into his show, which was more realistic than the original version. Now that I think about it, when Baltar tells Six that "it" doesn't like to be called God, it could be that "it" is the Ship of Lights or whatever version of it that exist in this version of the story. It would be cool if there was more exploration of this in Caprica, as well as further exploration of the "jealous God" from Kobol (which I'm sure we'll hear more of due to this headmistress in Caprica who doesn't believe in the Lords of Kobol) and all the other lingering questions from the show. In fact, given that religion is an important aspect of Caprica as it was in BSG (RDM) I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more of this down the line. --ManofTheAtom 17:49, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, guys. Here's my two cents, since I'm the Senior Chief that added the special notice. "No further significant revelations" means "the story is generally over." BSG isn't Star Trek, guys. RDM has stated that there are some elements of the story that he wouldn't resolve, but that he would resolve the important stuff. Is that etched in stone somewhere? No. I'm sure Caprica may open a few new questions. But until that series debuts, what we have is what we have. Battlestar Wiki allows some speculation because we're talking about a work of fiction. But to speculate further when no further answers are likely and people are making what's otherwise original research--that's fanwanking, and it's not allowed on Battlestar Wiki. For the purposes of this episode summary because its so long (and must be), we have to keep focus and not overload the article. Episode summaries are the only articles where questions can be asked (provided they don't go out of control) but many questions will not be answered. As soon as the noise dies down we can move some pressing questions to our special Q&A page answered by BSG co-producer Bradley Thompson. In my opinion, the nature of the Virtual Beings and Kara have been answered as far as RDM wanted to do. They are beings of divine source--and folks, religion is one thing that RDM loved to keep close to his chest to add to the BSG mystique. --Spencerian 18:53, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying that The Plan is going to answer all the unanswered questions, etc. However The Plan has been acknowledged as the coda for this series, and just as important to it as Razor was. However the special notice as I saw it wasn't just in reference to Daybreak, but to the Wiki in general, and that's where I think it's premature. In terms of Daybreak itself, I agree that any additional revelations in The Plan will likely be minor and there are unlikely to be any in Caprica at all relating to that particular episode. But I think questions that come to mind are still worth asking with regards to characters that could be addressed in The Plan. And unless someone has already seen The Plan, or RDM has explicitly stated otherwise, we can't really predict which characters may or may not be addressed. Something that might be interesting once The Plan airs and is analysed is to go through the episode articles and compile the outstanding questions that the series has left unanswered. I think there will be fewer than some think, with the remainder being just enough to put this series into the same league as "The Prisoner" in that people will still be arguing over "what does it mean" 40 years from now. 23skidoo 02:06, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

How did the fleet reach Earth 2 / New Earth?

As far as I understood it before Galactica departed for the Colony they agreed to a rendezvous location with the fleet. But when jumping away from the colony Starbuck punched in the numbers of the song and Galactica jumped for its last time. But when it reappeared over New Earth the fleet also jumped right in. How did they get the coordinates (a raptor jumping to the rendezvous location?)? But how did they get them so fast? DJ Doena 14:02, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Galactica still had a few raptors left (we saw 7 of them landed on Earth) and 12 hours passed between the shot of Galactica jumping near the Moon and the rest of the fleet showing up, nothing fishy going on there. --Gully 15:30, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

The key here was time pressure. Someone had the coordinates, but with the chaos of getting sucked into a black hole, no one could give them to Kara in time before Galactica's final jump. When all was stable, someone remembered/recalled the Fleet's coordinates, sent a Raptor, and all was good. --Spencerian 18:56, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Consolidation change

Hey everyone! I just wanted to take a moment to explain the format and consolidation change for Act I. This change is a test for updating the event summary because:

• Each detail does not require a bullet.
• Having bullets for every event make it look redundant.

• However, having bullets between major events makes the summary flow a little better. This was the approach I used when summarizing Daybreak, Part I. It gives each scene a sense of distinction, like this example.

Are there any other opinions regarding this proposed change? If it's OK, I can start work on the other acts. -- Sgtpayne 20:52, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Given the massive data, it's okay to condense a few points. But keep it to maybe three or four lines condensed. Any larger and it's hard to follow. Try to keep it looking like the other episode guides as much as possible for consistency. --Spencerian 21:57, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

The robot at the end

I corrected an addition in Story Notes that suggested the female robot at the very end is the one that was unveiled only a few days before the broadcast. That would have been very cool, but it's actually the "Actroid" which was unveiled 4 years ago. Interestingly I found Actroid, a 4-year-old technology, to be more lifelike than the one unveiled last week... 23skidoo 02:06, 24 March 2009 (UTC)