Recent Comments:
J.J. Abrams offers scoops about the new Star Trek movie {TV Squad}
Nov 19th 2008 2:43PM I'm all for breaking canon, and I loved the trailer, but...
ENOUGH with the time travel cop-out already. This plot device has been used to death by too many sci-fi franchises, especially Trek. It is one thing to create a show, movie or franchise with a core time travel theme (Terminator), another to introduce the plot device as a crutch for bankrupt creativity.
Ratings for Heroes falling fast; Chuck not doing too well either {TV Squad}
Oct 8th 2008 8:39PM Chuck needs more Baldwin. MORE BALDWIN. Then I'll start watching again.
The story line got stale halfway through the first season.
Eureka: I Do Over {TV Squad}
Aug 20th 2008 11:49AM Stark's not gone. I believe he is listed in the IMDB credits for next week's episode.
TiVo quietly removes Series3 from its webstore {Engadget}
Jul 31st 2008 12:51AM Most likely they are discontinuing the Series3 because it will not work wherever cable companies move to SDV (switched digital video). As they are today, Series3 and HD Tivos will not work with SDV channels at all.
Supposedly, Tivo will offer a workaround for Series3 and TivoHD owners, but most likely, they want to minimize the customer service hassle - they'll have to deal with the countless calls of folks complaining their Tivo is broken. Furthermore, they will probably charge for the workaround, which is a bit of a stretch after getting someone to pony up $600 for a Series3.
I assume a new Tivo will be released that will support SDV as well as 2-way cablecards.
The X-Files: I Want To Believe has a rough opening {TV Squad}
Jul 28th 2008 5:01PM The movie I want to see is the one that answers all the questions and resolves the main plot line. Anything else is straight-to-DVD in my book.
After all these other shows that have dragged their mysteries out forever in homage to the X-Files TV show (I'm looking at you, Lost), it's about time these folks wrap it up and give everyone some bloody closure.
I wonder if I'm the only fan who will wait for this movie to hit Netflix for this reason?
Battlestar Galactica: Revelations - VIDEO {TV Squad}
Jun 14th 2008 11:43AM Someone has already pointed out the ruins of the Brooklyn Bridge, so I'm pretty sure this is Earth in the future.
If the creation of AI that then rebels against the creator is the repeating theme, then what we are seeing is the first iteration of this theme. If this is the case, the Cylons created on Earth would eventually have developed skinjob models, which might have been seeded into the human survivors who fled Earth after the nuclear war. These skinjobs would have interbred with humans over thousands of years, which would make their progeny... hybrids like Hera.
If one of the five skinjob lines was "programmed" to retain knowledge of the truth (the unidentified fifth), I would say his or her task was to make sure the skinjobs were activated at the right time to help find Earth and avoid the total destruction of the latest crop of humans and Cylons. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that, over the many generations, every single human is a hybrid with genetic material from the original seeded skinjobs. This could be the master plan to make human and AI accept each other: take away that which makes them purely human (their pure biological origins) or purely Cylon (their mortality), and give them a chance to choose a path other than mutual destruction. They are here to break that cycle of destruction.
The philosophical and sociological implications of this are tremendous. In a sense, what the producers are saying is that Bosnian and Serb, black and white (pick your irrational racial/nationalist conflict) cannot ever coexist in the long run due to insurmountable prejudice, so the only way to end the cycle is to get them to interbreed and remove or reduce that which makes them different.
Furthermore, the importance of Hera is that, unlike the 5, she is a child of a current human and a current Cylon, and they will accept her and protect her - unlike the 5, who they might see as spies or traitors. They are depending on this paternal/maternal instinct to help break the cycle of prejudice in both Cylons and humans. In doing so, they hope to break the cycle of mutual annihilation which has repeated at least twice and perhaps, with Kobol, three times.
Let's also remember the overarching theme of mortality in BSG. The ultimate development of human endeavors, now and in the past, has been the ability to create AI copies of themselves, and thus achieve some form of immortality. In doing so, they bring about their own doom and restart the cycle. We can assume this from the information we have on the spinoff show Caprica. So the 5 know that the creation of Cylons is inevitable, as is their enslavement and rebellion. They need to control the outcome of one of these cycles in order to break it.
Such control is easier after a major catastrophe, when the survivors are few and desperate. Thus, the destruction of the 12 Colonies and the Cylon civil war were actually part of the plan, as well as the elimination of Cylon immortality.
Now they are both few in number, mortal and in need of allies - each other. Do you think 12 Colonies of billions would ever have reconciled or co-existed with the Cylons? Would vast fleets of immortal Cylons have ever looked beyond their former enslavement at the hands of humans?
In a sense, this is a very Biblical story, with a great catastrophe (Noah's flood, Job's destruction) needed to show the actors the error of their ways and force them to change their ways.
There is an as-yet unrevealed player in this story. Kara's Viper didn't rejuvenate itself, and the previous comments here about another species on Kobol point to another entity, perhaps native to Kobol. I would speculate that they took the Ship of Lights concept and turned it on its head. The original residents of Kobol were a species of hybrids who went through the same pattern of destruction until they broke it and learned to live with their AI constructs in peace - and eventually merged with them into a single, hybrid species. They might be the ones who set all this into motion, to shepherd the humans and Cylons on a similar path.
Battlestar Galactica: The Hub - VIDEO {TV Squad}
Jun 7th 2008 12:31PM Centurions and raiders do (or did) get resurrected. That was how Scar became an ace pilot. He was also described as twisted up from all his deaths at the hands of Viper pilots, along with the fact that he wouldn't be able to resurrect after the Colonials destroyed the Resurrection ship.
Watch the music of Battlestar Galactica performed live - VIDEOS {TV Squad}
May 21st 2008 12:38PM Of every hour of music I listen to, about 45 minutes is devoted to the scores from the three first seasons of BSG.
Precipice and Storming Caprica, Scar, Battle of the Asteroid, Black Market, Mandala in the Clouds, Wayward Soldier... best music for the gym or to just imagine yourself streaking by a basestar and dropping your Viper's nose sideways to strafe the raiders' egress ports.
*dork*
Battlestar Galactica: He That Believeth In Me (season premiere) - VIDEO {TV Squad}
Apr 5th 2008 1:17PM Ha, TVSquad as become the only place on the internet to have intelligent discussions about this show. Kudos!
I agree with many of the ideas presented by commenters here.
Some asked how Tigh could be a Cylon and have fought in the first war. He was always a Cylon. He wasn't created here, he is originally from Earth. During the first war, there were no skin jobs, and the Cylons hadn't evolved enough to recognize their own kind in human form. Only the Fifth, unrevealed Cylon knew where their evolution was heading at the time of the first war.
I agree that the 5th Cylon knows what he is, and did not need to be triggered awake by the Hendrix call to arms. Consider that al-Qaeda cells are usually five people, and one is the controller who knows the whole operation and is in contact with superiors outside the cell. The others are mostly in the dark, on a need-to-know basis, minimizing the chance of detection.
Why wake them up now? They are approaching Earth. Athena has been born. This is why the Five are there.
Once again, "this has all happened before, and it will all happen again". The Five have a plan to break this cycle of humans creating a civilization, advancing to the point where they create AIs (based on human avatars, according to the Caprica storyline) that become self-aware, rebel and destroy their makers. Athena is the key to that plan, a plan that has been shepherded by this fifth Cylon for 3600 years. A hybrid child is the proof hat the AI avatars, the "new" Cylons, are not merely machines. Earth is the site of the first such conflict thousands of years ago.
The Five are not Cylons, but the final evolutionary step of the original Cylons from Earth. They are Athenas. They have "magic blood" and can heal themselves, or age and rejuvenate themselves. They aged normally when they were "asleep", now they will probably find out about their true abilities.
I am steering towards Cottle being the 5th Cylon as well. Surprise, he "figured out" Athena's blood could cure Roslin. He even smokes, because he knows it won't kill him. He may even be the one who created the first Cylons back on Earth. He was responsible for the original destruction of humanity, and left with the remnants to atone for his sins, help them find new homes and survive, and try to change the inevitable outcome of human civilization repeating the cycle of creating AIs who would destroy them. He probably kept the other four stored for millennia and birthed them when he saw that the endgame was a few decades away. Who but a doctor could create false birth certificates and possibly even switch babies on unsuspecting parents, giving them a Cylon/Athena instead of their own baby?
I also agree with the Ship of Light ideas presented here.
And I reiterate that Starbuck is the Oracle. The Oracle does not live to see Earth. Starbuck died before she saw Earth. So who is this new Starbuck? Hint: Caprica, avatars, upload, etc. But the upload technology to be presented in Caprica is a first-gen technology. If I am right, and this all happened before on Earth, then the Ship of Lights is the current incarnation of those original Cylons, and their upload tech is far more advanced - enough to be able to create human bodies through a birthing process and upload Starbuck into one.
New Viper? If the Cylons have such tremendous manufacturing capabilities, what would similar creatures who advanced for centuries or millennia have? The abilities to create identical copies of a Viper, for sure.
Exclusive: Caprica casting info revealed {TV Squad}
Apr 5th 2008 12:39PM Let's see, we have the potential Cylons in the making...
1. Ben is a male with homicidal tendencies who doesn't listen to others. First guess here is Cavil, but I am betting on Five.
2. Zoe is a female with a rebellious spirit. This is probably Six.
Other guesses:
Daniel Greystone is Simon.
Joseph Adams does not get uploaded.
Amanda Greystone is Eight.
Sister Clarice is Three.
I'll bet that most or all of the main characters presented here end up being the various models - other than the Five - we see on BSG. Notice how a lot of the technological development that leads to the Cylons is technology stolen from other scientists. This implies parallel development of the same technology by multiple, separate humans. The models we have seen in BSG did not all come from the same, single source of development. Thus, they will always argue and disagree on policy, as seen in BSG.
The original AIs weren't machines that became self-aware (a la Terminators), but human avatars that became self-aware. This provides the driving motivation behind the Cylons. And BSG is the story of their quest to become human, and return home to their kind. They try hybrids, they try skin jobs and finally succeed with Athena - if we can create life with humans, then we must be alive, too.
