Battlestar Wiki:Official Communiques/Archive2

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To what extent does the writing staff keep track of the fleet's limited resources? Ronald Moore has identified the disregard that Star Trek: Voyager showed to resource issues to be one of his pet peeves with the series, and I'm curious to what extent the BSG staff try to address this. Notably,

Although survivor count figures throughout both seasons are broadly consistant, the off-screen casualties sustained in several second-season combat situations seems suspiciously small. The opening credit survivor count reveals that 11 people are killed offscreen during the boarding action in "Valley of Darkness", 4 in the Battle of the Resurrection Ship, and none during "The Captain's Hand".

Two ways to look at this: 1) The casualties aren't updated on Laura's board in as timely a fashion as she'd like (so they were factored in later). OR 2) We screwed up. The staff (post, writing, and art) took a hard look at that question at the end of season 2 and then again at the beginning of season 3 to come up with a reasonable number... Ngarenn 19:59, 19 June 2006 (CDT)

The size of the Fleet changes from 40 FTL capable ships in the miniseries to (apparently) around 75 during the second season.

My best information is that there were 57 ships listed on the board for the election that Laura tried to steal. Ngarenn 19:59, 19 June 2006 (CDT)

Galactica is able to deploy six Raptors simultaneously in "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II", during which only two are destroyed. Oddly, in "Fragged", which seems to take place late in the same day, Lee Adama orders a raptor scrapped for parts to make up a two-ship rescue party, then a few days later in "Resistance", Tigh is able to have five raptors standing by to board ships protesting his policies.

As is usual in Fleet Air operations, the availability of operational aircraft is affected by scheduled maintenance, exceeded TBO's (Time Between Overhauls), pilot squawks, parts on hand (or due to be fabricated), glitches, etc. These headaches are why Tyrol looks frazzled a lot of the time. Ngarenn 19:59, 19 June 2006 (CDT)

Do you keep informal track of statistics such as crew totals and raptors/vipers on hand? Is there a list of pilot and ship names to avoid verbally identifying more people or craft than are supposed to exist? --Peter Farago 00:39, 18 June 2006 (CDT)

The list does exist, but it reflects only one moment in the history of Galactica. With so few people and so much to do in a fleet under seige, accountants and future historians get the short end of the priority stick. It's been one of the President's complaints for over a year. Ngarenn 19:59, 19 June 2006 (CDT)

Red Line

What is the definition of the "Red Line"? As you can see on the discussion page for Red Line, there has been some confusion over if it means "the maximum safe distance a Colonial ship can Jump" or "the imaginary line separating explored for unexplored space". --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 19:31, 27 June 2006 (CDT)

As originally defined, the Red Line is the distance beyond which Jump calculations have an unacceptable uncertaintly factor. I'm sure Kevin Grazier (our Tech guy at JPL) could put it more accurately, but the calculations involved at that distance involve so many variables that we're not always sure where we'll end up -- such as in the center of a star, for example. We've been using five light years as a rule of thumb, but the actual capabilities of Colonial jump calculation computers are classified. The Cylons, however, are considerably better at making those calculations - Ngarenn 15:47, 28 June 2006 (CDT)

Human sacrifice

I've been wondering about this for some time: in "Valley of Darkness", Number Six shows Baltar a pile of old human skulls on the surface of Kobol, and tells him that human sacrifices used to be performed on Kobol, and the Sacred Scrolls are really just a bunch of lies to cover up the brutality of humanity's past. --->Should this scene be taken at face value? That is, did this entire scene "actually" happen, were there actually skulls there, or did all of this occurr as a Number Six induced manipulation inside of Baltar's head, to manipulate him and turn him more and more against humanity? --->Or (of course), is this one of those "we intentionally wanted the audience to be confused as to whether that scene was "real" or not, and it's still an open question with no answer" things? ---->Or, another possibility, were the skulls themselves there, but Number Six was just lying about them? I mean just by looking at them (assuming they were actually real) Baltar couldn't confirm Number Six's statements that they were the result of human sacrifice rituals: they could have been just bones lying around from some old war or cataclysm. (We don't need a definative answer given away, we just need to know if this was intentionally open to interpretation)...was what Number Six saying meant to be actually true, or is there the *possibilty* that she was lying about the skeletons Baltar found and it's open to audience interpretation?--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 21:50, 21 June 2006 (CDT)

The question at the bottom of this is: "Who is Six?" In such cases, I'm not going to embellish what Ron & David have put on the screen. - Ngarenn 18:39, 22 June 2006 (CDT)

Centurion armor

In "Valley of Darkness", the boarding-party Centurions can only be destroyed with exploding rounds, but in every episode before or after that (like Home, Part I) we've seen them destroyed with regular bullets--->Do different Centurions have heavier armor than others? I mean it would be logical that a boarding-party Centurion would be expected to see heavy combat, and would thus have more armor. (If you check the "Home, Part I" podcast, Ron and Dave seem to mention that there was a lot of discussion about this point in the writers room). --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 21:21, 19 June 2006 (CDT)

The Centurion in "Downloaded" was also immune to normal ammunition, Anders shot it for a long time, but only the bomb seems to have worked on it. It's probable that the Centurions we've otherwise seen (the ones harassing Helo) were given weaker armor for the purpose of the experiment, while the typical armor is the strong variety. --Sauron18 22:09, 17 June 2006 (CDT)

Centurions are constantly being upgraded - new ones come out with better armor, quieter servos, better battle software. Some are designed for different uses (the ones designed for submarine use have REALLY heavy armor but are exceptionally slow, and have reduced ammunition carrying capacity.) Not to mention that the Colonials have remarkably bright backyard engineers -- they've been hot-loading our small-arms rounds, coming up with better armor-piercing projectiles -- it's the constant ebb-and-flow of wartime technology. - Ngarenn 21:13, 20 June 2006 (CDT)

Tom Zarek / Ellen Tigh involvement

"Colonial Day" made it very clear that Ellen Tigh furnished Zarek with the information he needed to have Valance killed, and later intended her husband to meet with his agents afterward. Why was this plot thread dropped, after making such a big deal of it in the episode? --Peter Farago 00:09, 18 June 2006 (CDT)

Zarek also stated that he had no connection with the death of Valance. And though we're not privvy to all of Tigh's bedroom conversations, we might assume that Ellen's machinations failed to gain her husband's co-operation. After all, she couldn't even get him to shake hands with the ex-terrorist. Ngarenn 19:40, 19 June 2006 (CDT)

There are many plausible in-continuity explanations for why this wasn't followed up - I was more interested in what was going on in the writer's room, and if you all had plans to pursue this thread before the course of season 2 was settled upon. --Peter Farago 15:14, 20 June 2006 (CDT)

Peter - There were many arguments pro and con as to where this would go. But events passed us by and we haven't returned to it. Sometimes we plant seeds without knowing whether they'll sprout. Like Boxey - who was written into several early episodes, then left on the cutting room floor because of time constraints. Giving Baltar a nuke was one of those seeds, and throughout the first two seasons we constantly wondered what he'd do with the thing. There were some pretty whacky ideas. But having it in our back pocket was really useful when "Lay Your Burdens Down" came up. It's part of the fun of writing the show - Ngarenn 21:01, 20 June 2006 (CDT)

Thanks. Your clarification will be helpful for closing out that line of speculation on Ellen's article. --Peter Farago 03:57, 21 June 2006 (CDT)

That isn't to say that WE have closed it out. :) - Ngarenn 16:50, 21 June 2006 (CDT)

"Caprica-Six"

In "Downloaded", the Number Six that seduced Baltar is in-story referred to as "Caprica-Six" (as the Cylons didn't really have "celebrity" individuals before and simply no need to destinguish individuals before her, they say it's sort of an ad hoc name).---->There's an online fan convention which sort of developed over time for differentiating Cylon copies: Galactica-Sharon, Caprica-Sharon, Caprica-Six, Pegasus-Six, etc. (I've searched around and this is a true gestalt: no one person or website created this, but it simultaneously aggregated on many sites at the same time, to the point that by Season 2 it had simply become the common way to tell them apart: i.e. on the official messageboards we routinely call them "Galactica-Sharon" and "Caprica-Sharon"). --->Was naming the Caprica-based copy of Number Six "Caprica-Six" a referrence to this fan naming convention which developed? I thought it might be because that joke is included where Number Three points this out and says "They call you "Caprica-Six"...as if your the only Six on the planet!"....which I thought might be a little jest at the fans, because to be honest we'd seen in "Colonial Day" etc. that there were many other copies of Number Eight/Sharon Valerri on Caprica, but still called the one with Helo "Caprica-Sharon"...when she was only one of many on the planet. (As you can see on this section we were already discussing the "Location-Name" identification nomenclature when I (using my old screename, Ricimer) made up this hi-larious send up of the whole thing, in which I already refer to her as "Caprica-Six" in November of last year). --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 23:41, 14 June 2006 (CDT)

Caprica Six was named by the writers, either in the room, on the page, or in rewrites. I'm not sure when that appeared , but my best guess is that it was Ron. I doubt that it was because of the boards. We certainly weren't conversant with them when we wrote the show. Ngarenn 21:31, 17 June 2006 (CDT)

Cylon Homeworld

I've listened to the Writer's room podcasts on Scifi.com so I understand that exact details about the Cylon homeworld are very much a work in progress (For all we know it's just a bunch of Tylium-rich asteroids lashed together), but I've got a question about its location which was brought up in season one: In "The Hand of God", the following exchange takes place between Apollo and Gaeta:

Gaeta: "They'd build a refinery this far from their homeworld?"

Apollo: "Why not? They need fuel out here just as much as we do"

Judging from this dialogue, do the Colonials actually know where the Cylon Homeworld is? Roughly speaking at least? I mean they may have never set foot on it or seen it, but do they have a general idea of where it is? If Galactica has fled into deep space, far from the Twelve Colonies, and while in this same deep space location Gaeta said that they were also very far away from the Cylon Homeworld, does this mean the Cylon Homeworld is relatively close to the Twelve Colonies? I would assume so; that when they left the Twelve Colonies at the end of the Cylon War they didn't travel half way across the galaxy, but went somewhere relatively near.

We assume Armistice Station was built near a border that we promised not to cross as part of the cease-fire terms. Space is BIG. The Cylons vanished beyond these borders. Gaeta and Apollo are probably using Armistice Station as a house number for where that home world might be -- and that's a long way from where they are at the time of Hand of God. So either the Cylons have to truck their fuel all the way out, or they live off local resources they've found in this section of space they've guessed the resource-poor Colonials may try to exploit. Ngarenn 19:32, 19 June 2006 (CDT)

While I'm on the subject, they said that in the region of deep space Galactica and Pegasus had fled to by "Pegasus (episode)", they were out of "downloading" range from the Cylon Homeworld. In "Downloaded" they say that Cylons killed in the cafe will be reborn, and we also see that during the events of the Miniseries 9 months before, Caprica-Six was also reborn.--->Is the Cylon Homeworld close to the Twelve Colonies, and thus the Twelve Colonies are within downloading-range from it? That is, downloading worked fine on them and they didn't need the support of the Resurrection Ship to download while on Caprica?--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 21:41, 14 June 2006 (CDT)

The Cylons either built a downloading facility on Caprica or detailed one of their few Resurrection Ships to Colonial occupation duties. By "Pegasus," Galactica's a long way from both. Downloading is very touchy (and highly classified technology). Ngarenn 19:32, 19 June 2006 (CDT)