I've got mechanical parts too, Sean. I'm assuming, however, that thing has a nervous system (I'm not aware that pulling on muscles makes them work -- I'm open to education). Mechanics makes me speak, for instance, or walk -- I can't imagine how to climb inside my tummy and pull my puppet strings. I can't imagine any reason that should be not only human readable, but human decipherable in a high stress situation by a non biologist.

Again -- I don't think that wotsername should have been able to fly the Prometheus. Starbuck and the Raider is even further afield.

I've got mechanical parts too, Sean.

Well, whatever. I don't see how your mechanial parts are even remotely analogous to flight control surfaces and thrusters, but obviously you do.

I only meant to say I had no problem with it.

Finally saw Friday's BSG...I liked it, but that was more disbelief than I like to suspend on a regular basis.

Either the ship was supposed to have had a pilot (which it pretty clearly didn't), or it shouldn't have had frelling handles to make it fly (and cutting off its air supply and brain should have killed it). (And not everything biological needs oxygen. In fact, most things don't. Something designed by robots to survive in deep space? Almost certainly shouldn't have. But whatever.)

I'd have been much happier if they'd had Starbuck poking it with wires and running current to various parts of the brain to see what did what. I mean, I still would have had some issues with her being able to fly it that well, but I could have gotten past it.

And not everything biological needs oxygen. In fact, most things don't. Something designed by robots to survive in deep space? Almost certainly shouldn't have. But whatever.

This actually gave me more pause than figuring out how to make it fly by poking it.

figuring out how to make it fly by poking it.

Even poking, I might have been okay with. It was the fact that (a) the controls worked with the thing's brain hacked out, and (b), the controls looked suspiciously like Viper controls covered in spaghetti sauce. If the ship flies itself, then it shouldn't have any manual controls. Everything should be electrical impulses. No pulling or grabbing of any kind should have worked.

t sits alone in the "it worked for me" corner

I did a lot of mental hand waving. I don't expect logic from this show anymore than I do from SG-1. This ain't Farscape or Babylon 5.

Starbuck: "Every flying machine has four basic flying controls: power, pitch, yaw, and roll. Where are yours?"

Also, she ripped out the robot brain when she first got in there, so she was probably grabbing and trying the various "wires" that had been attached to it, for a start.

Dude, Farscape is many things, but "logical" wouldn't be the first word to come to me in describing the show. There's tons more handwaving required for that show than BSG.

I mumbled past the not-sense-making Starbuck & Cylon ship bits for the emotional pay-off, since the the Lee/Kara, Lee/Adama and Adama/Starbuck bits around and after the rescue were so gorgeously handled. (I choked up at "If it were you, we'd never leave." Yeah, I'm a huge sap.) But since the whole plot sort of converged on how Kara survives after the oxygen runs out (and I agree with Jessica that what Kara was able to do with the Cylon ship makes no friggin' sense whatsoever), there had to be A LOT of suspension of disbelief for me to enjoy the pay-off.

Starbuck: "Every flying machine has four basic flying controls: power, pitch, yaw, and roll. Where are yours?"

Yeah, Starbuck said a lot of things I didn't buy this ep. (See above, re: biological organisms and oxygen.)

so she was probably grabbing and trying the various "wires" that had been attached to it, for a start.

Even if the brain weren't at the complete opposite end of the ship, she still wasn't doing anything that even came close to looking like rewiring anything. She was squeezing and pulling on things. If I lose my sense of propioception, and you cut out my brain? There ain't a damn thing you can squeeze to make me stand upright again.