GWC Re-Watch Frak Party: Occupation/Precipice
It’s week thirty-one of our planned off-season re-watch of the entire “re-imagined” BSG canon, and it’s time to move on to the season three premiere “Occupations/Precipice.” So why not join us here for the GWC online frak party? There’s room for everyone, though you’ll have to bring your own snacks…
Feel free to jump in at any point with your comments on this week’s episode as the re-watch is by definition spoiler free. We’ll be in and out, but we’ll definitely take a look at your comments before we start next week’s podcast.
Note: Though a lot of the frak party will likely take place in the GWC Forum — click [here] to enter and join the fun — we’re going to leave comments open here as well as some listeners and readers have asked us to do so. Enjoy!
Galactic Watercooler 
Modern Geek 
Save Eureka 
Eff This Week 
FitSmart
Hey all! I’ve fianly gotten settled in my new school and my NROTC unit and now I’m finaly ready to get back into GWC! Win. But first, some background: I spent about a week rewatching all of season 1 and 2 with a friend who had never before seen BSG and one who had (and we picked up on a few things I’ll send in voice mail form) but we didn’t get to season 3 because I don’t feel like shelling out 40$ for a season in which I only liked 4 episodes. I tried to find this ep on youtube or something, but failed. So now I’m just going off of my original opinions and refresshing my timeline off of Wikipedia. Here we go!
Why the entire plan of the insurgency is flawed: I don’t take issue with trying to escape and rebel, that is exactly what they should be doing. Heck, half of the USA’s code of military conduct is about how you should always try to resist if captured. My problem with the situation (and I don’t know if this falls on the characters or the writers) is they don’t recognize thier position. This is not a Nazi prison camp where if you can get over the fence and 200 miles to the west you might meet help. This is a planet out in space completly controlled by the enemy, who also controlles the only ways off of the planet (the ignition keys of the space craft) and the only help is light years away, and you don’t even know if they’re willing/able to help you. The logical steps would include getting the codes for contacting possible help (which they do, but only after Gaeta gives it to them. We don’ know if they even had the brains to ask of if Gaeta just figgured it would be cool. I love Gaeta…) But even more importantly (because help is weak, far away, and not certain) they should be devoting time to escaping on their own: getting the keys and fixing the engins. BUT NO! they spend more time building and blowing up bombs then trying to find a solution! Which brings me to my next point:
Tactics: They try to bomb instead of making actual progress. Just as this is not a Nazi camp, this is not Iraq (though TPTB tried their darndest to make it so.) The insurgents there seem to operate under the assumption that if they killl enough of us we’ll be good little lazy imoral americans and go back home to our tripple cheese burgers and reality TV. (I died a little inside typing that…) This won’t work with the cylons. Sure, they might get bored with this expreiment, but they won’t just leave, they’ll nuke the last of humanity and then go home and write bad poetry about how god loves them. (I’m looking at you Leben) They have a spy, they should know this. If they don’t they should know to ask for the cylon’s view point (are they getting frustrated? Is it working at all?) you can’t really rely on Gaeta for this b/c I think he’s a little suicidal at the moment… Speaking of this, why arn’t there more spys? Gaeta came to them, and Duck exploded. It would be a million times more effective to hide the resistance if they knew where the NCP would be looking. If only Tyrol hadn’t scared Jammer so bad I think he might have served this purpose, but they let hate and rage get in the way of doing the job. As for suicide bombings, they’re using a finite resorce (human life) to destry an infinite resorce (cylon life). The bombing of that supply ship was good (except what was it transporting? did some little kid not get their penicillin because of it?) because it had bang for it’s buck without harming the general populace. Bombing the graduation ceremony/power plant was bad – high cost, no return. Baltar didn’t die, only a handful of cylons had to be downloaded, and dozens (hundreds?) of humans died. (Don’t talk about politics. At 40K heart beats matter more then party lines) In the power plant a half dozen chrome jobs, skin jobs, and humans bite the dust (bad!) as does the power grid. To quote from TWOP: way to make living in a prison camp even more crappy! What’s next, fire bomb the hospital? Level the school tent? Honestly! No wonder so many people signed up for the NCP, the rebles will kill humans just as easily as cylons, not such a good thing for the neigborhood. (I’m not going to get into morals here, that would be a huge under going. But I will say this, when they linked our heroes to terrorists it didn’t make me think about current global politics, it made me hate the heroes, and I really haven’t recovered yet.)
So basicly, it’s the sort of plan you’d expect the recently lobotmized chief (it’s the only explanation that makes sense, he used to be so competant!), an alcoholic (and very tramatised) toture victem and a baket ball player would come up with.
So, anyone want to know how I feel about yaio? [/fandomwank]
Also: Gosh dangit! But Gaeta looks beautiful in that scene where he’s talking to Tyrol. Why do we get a sex scene (MULTIPLE!! AH!!) with Ellen and Caville but this guy gets no love?
Sorry I didn’t post this on the forum, but it’s so long and so ranty I think it should go somwhere where people wont read it 🙂
Actually, the goal of any insurgency is to wear down the will of the occupiers, which they were arguably doing. Where they went wrong, here, is that “death” means something far less for the Cylon/s/z than for the humans. (Although they indicated that it does give them a headache.)
The original idea was to have the humans abducting and NOT killing the Cylon/s/z, which would really freak them out. I think that was a better idea, but unfortunately they got their hearts set on making good guys suicide bombers, which doesn’t map so well to the pretty western/liberal society we’ve seen so far (it would have been more interesting if the resistance were intent on getting Geminons or Sagitarons to blow themselves up in the name of their religion.)
The purpose for bombing the NCP ceremony was not to kill cylons. Duck knew that killing cylons is futile. He was after Baltar, but I believe that was secondary. The real goal was to discourage people from joining the NCP.
The purpose of the NCP, from the cylon perspective, was to put a human face on the occupation. Presumably the humans would respond better to being policed by their own kind. The cylons were hoping that a human face to the police would undercut support for the resistance.
This is why the resistance sent Duck in as a suicide bomber. The resistance was concerned that the cylon’s stragety could work. By killing members of the NCP, the resistance was sending a message to the general population that if you collaborate with the cylons, you become a target.
But that goes back to my biggest gripe: the resistance is more about causing useless trouble to the enemy (in this case by scaring the crap out of the populace) and even if they accomplish their goals it wouldn’t *do* anything to help the situation. There is no *gain*. You kill Baltar, the cylons pick another puppet. ust like they’d be able to find new people for the NCP. You scare off the ‘honest’ folks who really belive the BS about helping keep stuff safe and eventualy you get thugs who do the dirty work so they can get free rein in the camp from the cylons (which compounds the problem, now there’s danger from the robots, and from these crazies who are backed by the cylons.)
Basicly, I just don’t understand how doing what they’re doing results in any kind of victory.