Grimnosity

Television, Movies Games and Books BSG-2003
#1

With the benefit of several days hindsight, it occurs to me that EJO’s comments from several months back were right on the money. Remember - grim, dark, they are left with essentially nothing. Lots more survivors than I thought, but not much to live for - let’s sum up what “we” have discussed:

  1. Parasites

  2. Big hungry animals

  3. Big (hungry?) homo sapiens (somebody point out to me of one known occasion in “modern” history, when the confluence of “modern” man and “primitive” man has worked out well, regardless of technology)

  4. Crummy survival in the wilderness skills and lots of wilderness

  5. No ongoing agriculture and your best farmer is Baltar

  6. Unrelenting exposure to the elements

  7. Limited ammunition and medicine

  8. “Bad Guys” from the fleet to deal with

  9. “Good Guys” from the fleet that go off the deep end to deal with

  10. Adama alone on a hill

  11. Tyron alone on a frigid island

  12. Flies and all sorts of vermin - limited insect repellant, if any

  13. No indoor plumbing

  14. No toothpaste

No thanks. No wonder Hera died as a “young woman”.

#2

Yeah, no kidding. Spreading all those people out across the globe without any knowledge of the seasons. I bet a large portion were dead within a week or two.

Also, I don’t think they took ANY projectile weapons with them since that was part of Lee’s “pipedream” speech.

I just have this vision of every Colonist who got to take a raptor cowering inside it with the door shut while bears and what-nots are tearing at it from the outside trying to get in.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was nearly a 100% mortality rate within a year simply because of the new diseases that they had no exposure to prior.

#3

Don’t forget drought and farming with a stick to make furrows.

Boy, the OGG hit on his predictions. Kara did lead the human race to its end (that resurrection ship stuff was a red herring). The “pure” human race ends up on Earth and essentially dies out in Lee’s attempt to break or, at least, lengthen the cycle. What we’re left with is a Hylon race and 150,000 years to get back to where the BSG humans were - sort of. And it’s not just in terms of technology. It’s the arts, philosophy, you name it - good and bad.

When you look at it this way, IT becomes a whole lot less important.

#4

That list really reinforces my opinion that there’s no way 30,000 people would all agree to face those hardships for the rest of their lives. Agree to settle on Earth? Yes. But they would’ve insisted on keeping many elements of their own technology, even if eventually that tech would wear and break down. I still can’t believe RDM asked us to go for that.
But I think he got pretty lazy this season anyway.

Regardless, the finale could’ve been worse and I still like it.

#5

Same here. Oh yeah - and as noted, their two most able leaders (sorry Lee, Helo and Athena) decide to become hermits.

#6

I can’t disagree with most of what you said - except that I don’t necessarily agree that Baltar was their best farmer - out of 30,000 people there had to be folks who were farmers before all this happened…

Also they did say the distributed supplies evenly so they had food and such to last them a bit right? Probably also kept some medicines. Depending on how many supplies they had left. I bet you money they also kept weapons. There really is no way of knowing how much “technology” they gave up other than the obvious - space travel and computers.

#7

I know - but wouldn’t be great if it were he? (You mean we’re depending on THAT guy to keep us alive? Break out the algae burgers.)

#8

I see your point. Especially since he probably hadn’t actual done any farming since long before the colonies were destroyed.

I don’t know - I’m just pretending that things were great for all of our main people and that they lived out their lives happily - cause it makes me feel better. I imagine Baltar and Caprica with children living on a farm. I imagine Lee taking a break from his exploration to visit his dad at the cabin - I NEED MY ILLUSIONS DAMMIT!!!:mad:

#9
  1. Saul and Ellen living together…without booze.
#10

Inconceivable. Hence the first “machine” made by primitive man was not the wheel - but the still.

#11

Sorry - truly.

Look, there is a not out of the question better spin. Plenty of game (it is interesting to think about whether they became farmers or hunter/gatherers). Plenty of clean water. Smaller groups far more able to be self sustaining. Climate in East Africa quite tolerable for those who remain there. Ditto Macedonia (generally believed to be cooler than currently). Hera may have died young, but she bore children (females), who obviously were quite hearty and were survivors.

It is also possible that the survivors and their progeny lived simple lives (they did not “leave” their knowledge behind). With some hard work, perhaps creating a simple, notable society - think of the Amish.

Then the Ice Age came along and it was as a consequence of that…

I was just going on what I think is a pretty straight forward interpretation of what the OGG said.

#12

No don’t be sorry. You are without question thinking much more logically than I am - the fact of the matter is that they probably didn’t live very long lives. After all Hera did die as a “young” woman (how old do you have to be to stop being referred to as a young woman? 30? ) They most likely all starved to death. It would be like if we were suddenly thrust back in time to 150,000 years ago - how many of us would be able to take care of ourselves? I know I would be dead in like a week probably.

I just prefer to live in my little fantasy world where they all lived happily ever after…even though it’s not likely that they would have - you know - if they were real people and all of that had actually happened…:smiley:

#13

And I bet you’re right. I mean, in a universe with magically inexhaustible ammuntion they’d be fools not to keep the weapons! :smiley:

I can see Baltar farming and all, but I have trouble imagining him building a house. What did they cut the timber with? What did they join the beams with?

#14

The same stick that they plow the fields with???

(I can envision quite a few non-powered hand tools from the fleet being kept. But even on New Caprica their shelter was pretty rudimentary.)

#15

See, I buy that it was as bad as all that. I just don’t see that they had a choice. Living on the ships indefinitely was not an option. They had to settle down somewhere, and Earth was clearly the lushest planet they had ever seen (including the Colonies and Kobol). Yes, they may have been able to land some of the ships like they did on New Caprica, but that would have only gotten them shelter for a while. Eventually power supplies would run out, tools would wear down and break and they’d be left right were they were anyway at the end of Daybreak. Who knows if the ships would have significant power anyway? Maybe they couldn’t have their tylium fueled engines running on a planet surface.

Anyway, life was harsh and it should have been. Even in agrarian Native American societies of only 1000 years ago life expectancy was on the order of 20 years. But the issue wasn’t how long each Colonial survived, it was the survival of the human species as a whole…

#16

You’ll get no argument from me about any of that. It would make more “sense” to hang on to all the tech and set up their own “city” - but we’d already seen that with New Caprica (just like we already had seen Erf in the future) and what RDM made for a better story ending (everything from the theme of the Cycle to the exhaustion of Adama and Tyrol) from a dramatic point of view.

Oh yeah - snakes too. Really big snakes.

#17

Well, yeah, but they didn’t seem to have anything taller than grass to work with there.

#18

Hmmm. Well a deluxe leanto community would be certain to please the survivors. Sort of a prehistoric Levittown.

#19

I also wonder how much of their supplies necessary for making a viable tent city actually got left down on New Caprica. They appeared to have left in a hurry and didn’t seem to have taken many supplies that had been previously offloaded with them…

#20

It appears that the fate of the remaining Raptors either was written but not filmed or filmed and cut, due to time constraints. One does not have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.

We shall see the ultimate fate of The Colony in the DVD.