This week we discuss the BSG/Firefly re-watch episodes Rapture and Our Mrs. Reynolds. Highlights: Chuck gets a cunning hat (thanks, Riza!) and we discuss the origin of Yo-Saff-Bridg, review the benefits of getting kicked in the head (and not), debate the differences between being a Jaynesville mudder and working on the RTF’s tyllium ship, relate our own personal Selective Service experiences, wonder how Helo felt shooting his wife, question again Starbuck’s “infidelity,” chat about “the sons of Soong” and other early RDM work, take calls that re-open the no-guns-for-KITT discussion, and only mention Mass Effect once or twice. Really. (And don’t miss Chuck/Sean’s comments on bungie jumping/skydiving.)
Automan … Ok … my brain is going to literally come out of my scull and pimp slap me for this …
so … Automan had three vehicles that were all “drawn” into reality by Cursor
The countach (yes)
A lear or similar jet … got yelled at by boss when I made a comparison of a gulfstream to a lear jet while we were doing some work for gulfstream …
A helicopter - not a huey … more like a Jet Ranger … and of course I personally feel that it was a ripoff of the ENCOM corporate helicopter with the cool ass lights on the rotor tips from TRON.
Ok … now if my wife ever sees this I’m probably never going to “get any” ever again.
I always assumed the resurrection ships more or less worked like a server printing. When a cylon dies, the data gets sent to the server (resurrection ship). At that point the server then decides whether to “print” the cylon to locally attached printer (onboard tub of goo) or a printer located somewhere else on the network (any other ship close-by ship with a tub of goo). If the resurrection ship is destroyed/out of range then the cylon data is just lost, because you still need the server to print to the printer. Having a printer alone isn’t enough. The resurrection ship is probably necessary to 1) figure out where the cylon is going to be resurrected 2) create a queue (store the cylon until a tub of goo is available) 3) reformat the cylon data into a format the goo understands (along the lines of creating a postscript file) (cylonscript?). What I wonder is how the resurrection decides where the cylon should be resurrected? Presumably in a case like Sharon’s she put in a request before she died and that was somehow attached to her data, but what about when a cylon dies with no warning? I’m guessing there’s some sort of default printer (tub of goo)? And if that’s out of range they just get resurrected on the resurrection ship?
I think Mal was more funny than sexy because that’s the way the shot him. When shooting a naked woman they use soft lights, sexy poses, makeup, etc. I think any woman from the show would look unsexy if shot in the same basic style they shot Mal. I don’t mean unsexy as in ugly, just anatomical. They could have shot Mal much sexier, but I think they went for the more realistic shot of him. Probably most women wouldn’t want to be shot in the more unflattering style, especially if your career is tied to your looks!
Trillian, I LOVE this idea, except that on the original resurrection ship that we saw mid-season 2 we saw all these bodies. That implies, to my mind, that the downloads go directly into the bodies on the resurrection ships. Of course, once the resurrection ship that Kara destroyed was gone, have we actually seen another one?? They didn’t need it on New Caprica. In that year, the Cylons could have built a new series of new resurrection ships OR developed a new technology to make them unnecessary. The fact that Athena appeared to resurrect directly onto the base star where Caprica 6, Boomer, Gaius, and Hera are living supports the idea of a new technology. In that case, I bet Trillian is right on with how it works. Cy-fi. Hot.
I imagine though that the base stars also have the ability to do resurrections as well, but the resurrection ship is for mass resurrections – like all the raiders that get blown out of the sky during a battle. Whereas a skin job here and there can resurrect on the base star and they keep a “supply” of bodies on hand for that purpose.
Solai, I think most of us here on the GWC forums have already experienced Firefly and your avitar (amoungst us sci-fi fans) is well loved.
Trillian, I know I’m not the first to mention this but I always thought cylon downloading worked just as you described… just not so eloquently (or comically) put. Default tub of goo had me cracking up, I loved it!
I’m glad to see this podcast has already really brought out the comments, the forum has felt a bit on the quiet side the past two weeks.
Chuck, after you talked about being too old and fat for the armed forces, you mustn’t forget about John Candy from Stripes, he wasn’t in the best shape, but dang it, the army turned him into a lean, mean, fighting machine… well, they didn’t really turn him into any of those things, but he was allowed to enlist in the Army and they trained him that counts for something!
Oh, regarding porn in BSG, if you watch the deleted scenes from (I think) the first episode where Pegasus made an appearance, there was a scene between Gaeta and some random crew from “the Beast” (a nickname I’m ecstatic that was dropped). In the aired version, Gaeta received a whole bunch of manuals, encyclopedias and other general books of knowledge, but in the extended version, after receiving all those books, Gaeta (not so subtly) asks if they had any porn magazines to contribute as well!
Also, the cylons have showed that they are able to distinguish between different cylons of the same model. Remember back on the radiated mess that was Caprica, 3 had a convo with Caprica 6 and while the two were walking down the corridor, all the cylon skin jobs they passed would stare at Caprica and 3 even talked about how Caprica 6 specifically became a war hero after her heroics for the cylons while she was on Caprica with Baltar. Also, it seemed pretty easy for both 3 and Caprica to figure out which cylon was Boomer, back on Caprica. We even get another indication of this from Hera, while she was crying and crying for days, once her mother, Athena, made her way over to her, the crying ceased. Boomer was with her the whole time and she couldn’t get her to stop crying and Caprica specifically mentioned that fact!
I’m glad the podcast was 1hr 59min, instead of just 61min, if it had been 61min I would have felt like CRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPP. I love listening to the the podcasts, even if they ended up 3X length or more, I was cracking up while walking down the street today, I got the weirdest looks today because of that and it was GREAT!
Oh yeah. “Breakfast Club” was T H E iconic 80s movie. Not that I could pass judgment on things like that, though, I wasn’t even alive when BC came out. But in retrospective, it sums up the teen angst culture pretty neatly.
Trillian, great explanation of the resurrection ship. It all makes sense now!
Ironically, a friend and I were just talking about the weird cognitive dissonance of watching an actor you know from an iconic role playing someone completely different, no matter how good their performance is. It’s not sci-fi, but the one that always gets me is Sir Anthony Hopkins in Shadowlands (biopic about C.S. Lewis, the man who wrote the Narnia books) after seeing Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. I love both movies, but now, every time I see Shadowlands, the first few minutes I can’t help but think, “Hannibal the Cannibal is a children’s book author?”
You mentioned the near-absence of River in the otherwise impeccable Firefly episode “Our Mrs. Reynolds.” There’s a hilarious deleted scene from Our Mrs. Reynolds all about what River thinks of Saffron…and River’s belief that she’s pregnant with Simon’s baby. Poor Simon’s reaction is priceless.
I won’t out them…but at least three people have asked me, “What does your avatar mean?”
2 of the three upon learning what it was smacked themselves in the head. The third is now finally convinced to watch Firefly. Mission accomplished: Browncoat conversion by avatar!
Ok, love the server explanation, HOWEVER, where were the tubs of frakking goo? Am I missing something, selectively not hear something…?
As to the 61 minute issue, thank god mine was cleared up too - I don’t want to have to force myself to listen to another RDM podcast - I know, he’s a god, but I want to talk/think/ponder/ the actual story line, not irrelevant technical issues, input from his wife who doesn’t keep up with the storyline, or what type of scotch he’s drinking… was that too mean? Sorry, RDM, you are the creator of the masterpiece that is BSG and for that I will always be grateful/bow down to your greatness/etc…
Right around two hours of GWC goodness.
Seriously, Red Dwarf, A Fish Called Wanda, Breakfast Club, and BSG all at once?!
