April 5, 2008
GWC Podcast #94 (Live!)
Join the GWC crew for a special live podcast following the incredible season four premiere of BSG. We’re joined not only by numerous GWCers, but also Chase Masterson (of Star Trek DS9, Of Gods and Men, Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, and the new movie Yesterday Was A Lie), BSG visual effects designer Adam “Mojo” Lebowitz, BSG series writer David Weddle (who’s also responsible for dozens of Trek/DS9 episodes), Star Trek writer Andre Bormanis (Enterprise, Voyager, DS9, TNG, Insurrection), and writer Amy Berg (4400, Threshold, and the upcoming Leverage). A two-and-a-half hour podcast? On this occasion, it’s totally worth it!
Galactic Watercooler 
Modern Geek 
Save Eureka 
Eff This Week 
FitSmart
Hey Guys!
Well I am back from taking the same long hiatus as the show and wow am I blown away by all the great things going on around the GWC. GREAT podcast and I’m looking forward to all the rest in this finale season. I almost can’t believe how you’ve turned this little podcast from its roots in to this amazing site. Great work by all of you and thanks for making BSG even more fun!
Awesome podcast! I’m really impressed by the work you have put into this! It’s not only that your content and format is excellent–it’s that in your dedicated work you have created a real sense of community. Thank you for that!
A few of my own thoughts on “He That Believeth in Me”
1. Head Six, Head Baltar, Head Leobon–all of these, I think, are divinely sent angels/messengers; or personal manifestations of the divine (although, I’m not sure the “Cylon god” is exactly the force that is driving everything).
2. Totally agree that Starbuck is an instrument of the divine, not a Cylon. I think that it is more than symbolic that in the episode “Maelstrom” Starbuck gave Adama the Aroura goddess figure (goddess of the dawn, new beginnings) and now she herself has come back to light the way. (If Roslin will let her!)
3. In the podcast you asked the question: how many people get to “do” their angels? It’s actually interesting to learn that when you read about the medieval Catholic mystics, a number of them were doing *exactly* that! I’m just finishing up a dissertation on religion and sexuality that in part looks at how sex can be, or is, a conduit of “knowing”…whether knowing God, or other people. It always makes me smirk to see BSG riffing on this theme. 🙂
Listening to the podcast and the speculation of whether or not Starbuck is a cyclon, I have thought even since the episode where Starbuck is with her dying mother (back in season 1 or 2?), that she was not a cylon, but the very first cylon/human hybrid. Kara might not be one of the final five, but the daughter of a final five. That would make Kara the show’s Jesus not Baltar.
Wow, nice theory thudhead. I hadn’t thougth about Kara’s mother being a cylon. But it makes sense…otherwise why would she think Kara had some kind of special destiny?
And thanks so much Audra, Sean and Chuck for continuing to podcast and evolve with the site all this long, loooooooong time. I’ve been listening to your podcasts since the very beginning and I’m so appreciative of all your hard work and the great community that you’ve built!
So, I’m so excited by the new season that I’m going to do some rambling! Here are some of my thoughts on the season 4 premiere:
1) I can’t believe how much I loved this episode. It was SUCH a satisfying return to the world I’ve missed so much. The BSG Gods really outdid themselves on every level.
2) In the heat of the emotion of watching season 3 as it was broadcast, I really disagreed with Lee’s stance during the Crossroads episodes. But I re-watched Maelstrom and the Crossroads episodes over the weekend in preparation for watching my DVR’ed “He That Believeth in Me” and I found myself in total agreement with Lee this time around. Before I thought he was a naive, idealistic traitor who should have put the fleet’s survival ahead of fantasy-world morals. But now…I actually agree with him…which I find startling! It’s really apparent to me that the BSG world is always pitting the Practical against the Moral, showing how mutally exclusive they often are. Those writers are really something else.
3) Did anyone notice the totally different reactions Starbuck had upon seeing Lee and Sam again? She was really happy and warm when hugging Lee, and then was more distant, even casual with Sam. And then to tell him she’d “put a bullet between his eyes” if she ever found out he was a cylon? Wow, she really doesn’t care about him at all. I thought she cared a little bit about him in season 3, but now I don’t think she does at all. Her loss.
4) I LOVED the scene when Anders is in the viper and encounters the cyclon. How freakin’ brilliant was that slo-mo with the close-up of the eyes. The sound design in that scene was also so well done! It added so much to the intensity of cylon meeting meeting cylon. It’s so intriguing that Starbuck’s husband is a cylon; it makes her character’s human/cylon uncertainty so much more interesting and intense.
5) Tigh’s journey is riveting. The amount of emotion he conveys with that one eye is mind-blowing. I just love him!
I was thinking more along the lines of the father being a cylon. The mother being kinda crazy might be a result of that forbidden relationship she had with a captor.
“I have thought even since the episode where Starbuck is with her dying mother (back in season 1 or 2?), that she was not a cylon, but the very first cylon/human hybrid”
if starbuck’s mother was a cylon why would she be dying from a disease?
“I was thinking more along the lines of the father being a cylon. The mother being kinda crazy might be a result of that forbidden relationship she had with a captor.”
that’s a valid point. i just can’t imagine the final cylon to be an unseen (so far) character.it lacks the dramatic intensity of seeing a character you know,(tie,chief) be revealed as a cylon
this has been mentioned before,but if the chief is a cylon than he and callie’s baby would be a hybrid too.
unless in order for the baby to be a hybrid she must come from a cyclon womb so athena can produce a hybrid but callie can not
going back to the beginning when chief and boomer had their thing ,if she had gotten pregnant ,would that not have been the first ful cylon baby.?
or was that not what the their research was all about, in the hospital where they held starbuck? that they could not breed amongst themselves, they needed a human to impregnate a cylon to breed.
Crazy theory I have is Lee will be the next president.
Hey guys, thanks for the shout-out! I promise someday I’ll track down the real Tomb of Athena, and the exact tree by which Helo made Sharon’s spine glow.
Soooo many questions still ping-ponging off my brainpan.
1. Power outage; How and why?
2. Is what caused the outage the same thing causing Kara’s headaches and to know that they’re getting farther from earth?
3. Head Leoben, head six, head baltar; same thing or different things? Additionally; they appear in the form of someone very special to them, so what is Leoben to kara???
I’m feeling a similar vibe on Starbuck’s hybrid idea. I’m suspecting that her mother was human, and perhaps Tigh might be her father, making her an different sort of hybrid than Hera- along the same lines as Nick. Maybe that’s where the more spiritual/divine aura comes from?
Wow, Tigh could be Starbuck’s father?? Nice. I’ve never even considered that!
I agree that Lee will be the next president and I think he’s the fifth of the final five. I also think Kara is a hybrid. I agree with thudhead. But please refresh my memory…in what episode do we discover who fathered Kara? I’d love to rewatch that.
I can’t stop obsessing about all this! 🙂
Luke.. i AM your father
Nice one sonicdave. I can’t stop laughing at that one. 🙂
I do not know the episode in which we discover who fathered Kara, however when Kara flew back to Caprica to get the Arrow of Apollo, she met up with Helo. Helo and Starbuck then went to her original appartment (which was that not the same set that Leoban held her captive on New Caprica or what?) where Kara then proceeded to play music that was by her Dad. Is that not when we find out that Kara’s Dad was a musician or was that just a side commentary and the real conversation was another time? That’s when I remember the conversation coming at least. This would be shortly after the fight between Six and Starbuck and Starbuck yells “bitch stole my ride”, probably the next episode or two. Sorry – I’m never very good with episode names.
I too would like to add my awe and amazement at the GWC crew for the phenomenal podcasting. I just finished the live cast this morning on the way to work. You guys have got the celebrity contacts, wow. Chase Masterson gets many brownie points for pimping out the podcast to her fellow party goers. That was delightful. All around fantastic podcast. I’ve been listening since like podcast #3 but I’m pretty much a lurker. So I just wanted to take a second and say how much I adore you guys and appreciate all of your hard work.
Many thanks Gizmogeek. I’ll have to check out that episode on Caprica between Kara and Helo.
So I’ve been thinking more about everything (ok, mildly obsessing)… and here I go, rambling again…
…Isn’t it interesting that the two of the people who hate cylons the most – Starbuck and Callie – have cylons for husbands? AND Callie has a hybrid child, just like Athena, who she hates because she’s a cylon. I’ll bet that Callie will have to rely on Athena at some point to save Nicky somehow, thereby making it impossible for Callie to continue hating her…
… Isn’t it interesting how the number of “good” cylons keeps growing? Why is that? I think the writers are trying to blur the lines between good and evil, good guys and bad guys, right and wrong, self and other to make us question our own biases and fears of other people…
…Tory is so not being developed as a character. Why is that? It’s like she’s only there for the purposes of exposition. It’s like she’s made of cardboard. Where did she live in the Colonies? What does she like to do in her spare time? Why does she want to work for Laura? How did she hook up with Sam?…
…on the subject of the Sam/Tory hook up, I can’t imagine that was written into the show to just disappear into oblivion. I could see this popping up in a nasty way now that Starbuck is back, especially if Tory is pregnant…or can cylons reproduce that way with other cylons…hmmm…and do their backs light up?… 😉
…I think there’s a lot to that theory about Starbuck’s father being a cylon…
…if Lee is the one of the final five, and let’s say the final five are all hybrids, that means Adama or Lee’s mother is/was a cylon…