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| Great Cylon Turkey Shoot | |||||||||||||||||
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| Conflict | Second Cylon war | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | Roughly two weeks after Day 89 | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | Interstellar space, specific location unknown | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | Decisive Colonial victory | ||||||||||||||||
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Battle in which battlestar Galactica turns the Cylon's own logic bomb computer virus against them to completely power down a massive fleet of hundreds of Raiders and Heavy Raiders in a reversal of the Cylon's use of it in the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.
Galactica suffers system failures and malfunctions throughout the ship. Watch Officer Lieutenant Gaeta and Dr. Gaius Baltar determine that the Cylon virus which infected the ship shortly after the Fleet reunited (Scattered) and downed several ship functions for a time (Valley of Darkness) had returned. Apparently the virus had a latent element that hid itself, slowly emerging throughout ship computers, testing and probing for weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
Gaeta and Baltar determine that this logic bomb is a prelude to a Cylon attack. They determine a way to remove the bomb by erasing all ship computer hard drives, then reloading the computers from backups made before the war. However, this would leave the ship completely vulnerable for several minutes. If the logic bomb was "detonated", the virus would likely turn Galactica against itself and her fleet.
Commander Adama elects to use the incarcerated Caprica copy of Sharon Valerii to aid them. She interfaces her body to the ship's mainframe and communication systems via a fiber-optic link placed inside her left forearm. A massive Cylon force arrives to attack, and all Vipers are scrambled. As Galactica erases her hard drives, Valerii apparently copies the logic bomb code into herself and manipulates it. She releases the altered code through the communication channels, transmitting it to the Cylon attackers. In an amazing turn of historic events, the entire Cylon fleet loses all power as Valerii's version of the virus disables every Cylon ship in a very similar way to how Colonial ships were shut down by the Cylons during the Fall of the Colonies.
Many out-of-control Cylon ships are destroyed as they crash into each other.
Commander Adama and Colonel Saul Tigh order Galactica's Vipers to destroy all of the disabled Cylon fighters. Galactica's Vipers proceed to tear through the jumbled Cylon formations, destroying the entire disproporationately larger Cylon force while not losing a single Colonial ship in the process (Flight of the Phoenix).
Notes
- According to Ron D. Moore's podcast for "Flight of the Phoenix", this battle was specifically inspired by the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" of World War II. This page is named in light of that reference.
- Number of Cylon Raiders present was given on the Scifi.com official site's episode description.
- Visually, there are at least 42 Vipers on screen, but there is a strong possibility that this is a visual effects mistake: Apollo said in "Act of Contrition" that there were only 40 Vipers left. On top of this, several Vipers have been lost since then (see Galactica). The current count leaves only 34 Vipers: 1 lost in "Act of Contrition", 4 lost in "The Hand of God", and 1 lost in "Final Cut". This doesn't take into account Tyrol's retirement of unserviceable craft, worn down by wear and tear. Furthermore, Galactica is severely limited by the number of pilots they have on hand - in this episode, no more than 22.
- RDM admitted in an interview (see "Flight of the Phoenix") that this was probably a visual effects gaffe. Number of Vipers was thus more probably 34 at the most.