Willow ,'Empty Places'
A topic for the discussion of Farscape, Smallville, and Due South. Beware possible invasions of Stargate, Highlander, or pretty much any other "genre" show that captures our fancy. Expect Adult Content and discussion of the Big Gay Sex.
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For some reason, I think that this was a very fast-working virus and that she would have been showing signs of it fairly quickly. I could be wrong. (What made me think this? Possibly because that Cylon mission went to the Lion's Head Nebula and it seemed like their first reports back were the ones where everyone was sick.)
Do viruses live in space?
Viruses encapsulate, and I believe it's been proven that yes, they can survive vacuum in some circumstances. They're very simple, and I know it gets regularly argued as to whether they're 'living' in the sense that monkeys and mushrooms are.
I had issues with Cottle immediately calling it a virus, disregarding such pathogens as bacteria or fungi.
Then there was the whole "lymphocyte encephalitis" thing, which I ranted about.
I thought that was going to go the other way. That the plan would work, but that Baltar's Basestar, with a few accompanying ships, would have already gone far enough out to avoid the plague and isolate themselves. So we'd wind up with a small fleet of the last surviving Cylons. And I was so very excited about that idea that I'm disappointed now.
I share your disappointment. I guessed that a few of the Cylons would be immune to the disease. We had already seen difference among them, why not biological. If the disease wiped out a large number of them, then it would even the odds with the humans and make the fight a little fairer.
I was thinking that they'd just give her shots once a week or whatever. You know, like many other chronic diseases, she'd just live with it.
Me too.
Doctor Who -- I was disappointed. The idea was fine, but I thought the writing was not great and the characters seemed ... off. The Doctor in particular seemed too highly pitched. The writer is the same one on my least favorite Season 1 (9th Doctor) episode -- the one with Charles Dickens.
On the podcast for last night's BSG, Moore said that they wanted to move straight to the "to genocide or no" subject, so that's why they did a quick "everyone's all right" for the entire boarding party, including Sharon/Athena. Actually, they were originally going to have her do a fakeout on Helo (he comes into the room to see her crying, and she then reveals the happy face with the happy news and says, basically, Gotcha!), but they thought that was just too cheap and not worthy of their relationship. He did like the way Grace Park had Sharon go for Helo's fly like she was going to give him a celebratory blowjob--that wasn't in the script!
(They really should have picked up that beacon. I'm sure there are messages from the 13th Colony in it.)
That was my biggest qualm in an episode that filled me with qualminess. The amount of potential that was in that episode that went unused is just staggering. Oh well. It's kind of nice to down-shift into regularly passing time again instead of super-fast, accept all this truth about the human colony on New Caprica for one year even though we showed you none of it headspinning.
I think, though, that this episode and the one before us have set us up to watch a very literal race to earth between the humans and the cylons. I won't be surprised if we end up on or near earth by the end of this season; that just feels like what we're barreling towards. Now, what we'll do when either of them arrives there is an entirely different matter, and whether the earth they speak of bears any resemblance to the earth that we inhabit will be interesting to see.
Also, I'm curious to why they (being the humans on Galactica) thought that humans would get infected with what they thought was a Cylon disease. Also interesting, that a lymphatic cephalitis has an affect on Cylon biochemistry. But why on earth would such a disease download into the new body? I mean, maybe that's just the fakeout excuse the Baltar Basestar gave their compadres as a lameass reason for leaving them to die, but I don't see how a virus compound could be downloaded from one body to the next when only, essentially, their mind/soul/experiences/whatever gets downloaded. Funky.
Actually, I think the more interesting thing about the disease for me is that it affected the basestar, the centurions, AND the raiders. Obviously, there's organic tissue in the centurions too; we'd established that the raider's interior was brainy flesh. But it shows that the Cylon brain is essentially the same across the board, and subject to the same weaknessess. Before, the Cylons compared raiders to animals, like having less individualism or something, but if theyare subject to the same diseases... (Well. I'm not convinced that it's a perfect doctor:medicine::lawyer:law comparison. But it's interesting nonetheless.)
Surely, though, the Cylons would have found the vaccine in time, particularly since it is within the scope of human knowledge.
Oh, I forgot to mention - we also have a date. (Roughly.) Apparantly the 13th Tribe dropped off the beacon about 3000 years ago.
Remember, everything that is happening now has happened before. So, um....
Anyway, if the BSG-verse is in the same time as ours, then the 13th Tribe reached earth roughly 1000 B.C. Did anything exciting happen then? Anyway, that would make the Greko-Roman stuff somewhat consitent....
But why on earth would such a disease download into the new body? I mean, maybe that's just the fakeout excuse the Baltar Basestar gave their compadres as a lameass reason for leaving them to die, but I don't see how a virus compound could be downloaded from one body to the next when only, essentially, their mind/soul/experiences/whatever gets downloaded. Funky.Well, they said it had an electronic component to it, whatever the heck that means. But also, when one Cylon dies, its memories (so let's say 'mind') is uploaded to the resurrection ship computers, or whatever. So here's this virus that maybe alters the brain, where the mind lives, that has an electronic component, and it's uploaded...
Ah, I got nothing.
Okay, wait.
It's a virus, right. In humans, it was just a regular old virus. In cylons, which seem to be part humanized machines, it's a regular old virus + a computer virus.
Shhhhhhhh. Just look at the pretty.