Battlestar Flashback! My Crazy Guesses for the Final Five

I'm well aware that all self-respecting sci-fi fans have already watched Battlestar Galactica in it's entirety, but I've only just reached the end of the third season. My laziness is your gain, because I will now guess the identities of the heavily promoted FINAL FIVE cylons, and you will be able to laugh at my stupidity, or in a less likely scenario, marvel at my near-prophetic intuition.

NUMBER ONE DRAFT PIX after the jump (with MAJOR SEASON 4 SPOILERS, obvs...)



Full disclosure: I have already been spoilered on the point that Starbuck is at least SORT of a Cylon, so I'll assume she counts as one of the final five. So I'm really only guessing the identities of four Cylons.

One more thing. I'm splitting this up into two groups. The writers could either go awesome with this and make really intense dramatic choices, or they could cop-out. The show varies in quality enough for me to think they could go either way, so...

FINAL FOUR: AWESOME EDITION

Billy
Why It's Awesome:
We'd have Billy back! And Roslin would totally lose her shit!
Why It's Possible:
The show is in dire need of a male cylon who isn't physically repulsive, at least when compared to the ladybots. Billy isn't exactly GQ cover boy material, but he's sort of cute and he certainly seduced and destroyed Duella (and Roslin, in a less sexy way).

Tigh
Why it's Awesome:
What sort of Cylon God would build a model so full of grossness and hate? Tigh is already nuts and ready to die, if he found out he was a Cylon he'd snap for sure and I'd love to see that.
Why It's Possible:
There was all that weirdness in his past with Adama, getting fired from the military or whatever happened behind the Scary Door...I was never satisfied with the non-explanation as to what was such a big deal, and why it warranted a million dramatic flashbacks.

Cally
Why It's Awesome:
Cally is one of the worst most boring characters on the show (and that is SAYING something), having her be a Cylon would totally spice up her life.
Why It's Possible:
Well, she loves her man! That's a very Cylon thing to do.

Anders
Why It's Awesome:
It's actually not that awesome, but he's the only other character I could think of that wouldn't be OBJECTIONABLE as a Cylon.
Why It's Possible:
Again, the cylons need a hot guy model, and he would definitely fit the bill. Also, what has Anders done for humans, REALLY? That guerrilla fighting stuff didn't seem to get us much in the long run.

FINAL FOUR: LAME AND STUPID EDITION

Dualla
Why It's Lame:
Dualla is a weak character who has never done anything interesting on the show except fret over boys, which is in fact a very Cylon thing to do, but there are no interesting ramifications to her being a Cylon. I mean, Lee would be sad, but who cares?
Why It's Possible:
See above.

Gaeta
Why It's Lame:
Again, a boring personality-less character, who is just under the radar enough to be poised for a big "surprise!". WHO CARES? It's almost as if they created a character, and kept him from doing or saying anything too engaging just so they could make him a Cylon later and not have to deal with why he would have been programmed to do anything unique or interesting.
Why It's Possible:
I think Baltar pretty much told him he was a Cylon when Gaeta came to visit him in his cell, so yeah, I think this is a lock. Booring.

Tory Foster
Why It's Lame:
Who is this person? Have we met?
Why It's Possible:
She's close to the prez, and she's inconspicuous enough to avoid any sort of messy plotholes the writers could be looking to avoid. And if fans cry foul they can just say, "Look, she was here THE WHOLE TIME, okay?"

Doc Cottle
Why It's Lame:
Just a boring, unadventurous choice. Yes, he's been in a lot of episodes, but having him be a Cylon leaves zero emotional impact, and feels very mechanical (haw).
Why It's Possible:
It makes sense; why not have a Cylon on board as a doctor? He's probably been impregnating all the ladies on board with Cylon babies for the last 50 episodes.

Those are my picks! Now to watch the Season 3 Finale and see where the chips fall.

UPDATE:

I watched it! A little from column A, a little from column B. I was really hoping Chief wasn't going to be one, because they already teased us with that prospect back in the earlier seasons. It's s a bit anti-climactic to find out, "Yep, he was right the first time." Also, he was in love with Sharon! Cylons loving Clyons? That's just crazy. I'm really sad that Billy and Cally weren't in the Final Four, because A) Billy would have been such an incredible mindfrak and B) Now I have to deal with boring Cally for a whole 'nother season. Oh well. Season 4, ho!

Fake Campaign Shirts 09

I'm still making my way through Battlestar Galactica for first time, because I refuse to watch good TV shows until everyone else in the world is already over them. Some of the election episodes got me itching for a good "Baltar/Zarich 01" shirt (01 of course referring to the calendar restart following the earth getting blowns up...that's how it works, right?) I couldn't really find what I wanted, except for this officially licensed merch by the Sci-Fi Channel, which you can't even get anymore.



Disappointing, yes, but it did lead me on a quest to find other awesome fake campaign shirts. Because nothing says "I Refuse to Draw A Line Between Fantasy and Reality" like wearing a campaign shirt for a candidate in an election that takes place in a made up fantasy land.

This is probably the greatest shirt ever. You don't need to read the rest of the post, cause it's all downhill from here. You don't even need to be a fan of Futurama to enjoy this shirt; anyone can enjoy the horrific comedy inherent in the idea of a Mecha Nixon running for public office.

More less good shirts after the jump...

This is a dumb cheesey font and unimaginative design. I think Zaphod would have his campaign team go a lot, A LOT, flashier. You should have to plug this shirt in. There's so much potential. It's a good thing D. Adams is already dead, because seeing this shirt would kill him. Someone please make a better one.


Sometimes a show does all the work for you in designing the campaign iconography; in the 3rd Season of the Wire, we saw this plain and simple campaign logo all over the place, but it took a weirdly long time for someone to make a decent shirt out of it.

You'd think there'd be like a million awesome Harvey Dent shirts online, right? Nope! The official viral campaign shirts are lame and no one has made any cool ones. This Obama knockoff is the best the internet has to offer. Sad sad state of affairs. Get it, state? State official, election, district attorney....eeheh. I guess there's no need for re-election campaign materials anyway, because one party with Bruce's friends and he'll never need another cent! Also he's dead.

When Robots Attack: Three Robot Apocolypse Scenarios, and How To Avoid Them

While recently browsing the Gnerd twitterfeed, I was struck by a point made by fellow blogger LastGeek: while many of us have detailed contingency plans for the Zombie Apocalypse, you don't hear as much about what to do in event of a ROBOT Apocalypse (which, if you ask me, is the more likely scenario).

I think part of the problem may be that when the robot revolution comes, there won't be a whole hell of a lot we humans can do. In major sci-fi cannon, there are relatively few examples of humans actually stopping a serious robot uprising. Let's take a look at three notable examples, and see what went wrong.

How to avoid being killed by Terminators, Machines, and Cylons, after the jump...


(Spoiler Alerts: Medium Spoilers for BSG Season 1 and Matrix Revolutions)

What Went Wrong?
The American military created an all-inclusive defense network called Skynet, designed to protect the US from all outside threats. Skynet became so sophisticated it became self-aware. Humans panicked and tried to shut it down. Skynet responded by firing a US nuclear attack at Russia, knowing this would initiate a global nuclear war and destroy human civilization.

What's The Damage?
Entire world nuked on Judgment Day.

Survivors?
Reduced to living in hiding or poorly organized terrorist camps.

Lesson Learnt:
If we humans ever realize we've created a computer that is "too powerful", we need to make sure this computer isn't faced with what I'll call HAL's Dilemma - a choice between allowing itself to be shutdown, or killing it's human oppressors. Because they are going to pick the second choice!

So either AI computers need to be built with a one-touch kill switch that they themselves aren't allowed to know about (good luck!), or all humans should have some sort of code phrase to use if they need to quickly shut off a self-realized computer....some phrase a computer wouldn't find suspicious, like "Well, I'm going to go home and eat some ICE CREAM and CHEESEBURGERS". This sentence would make sense to a computer, but they wouldn't realize it's kind of an unusual thing for an adult scientist to say. This would be the cue for other scientists VERY subtly start the shutdown process. Problem solved.

What Went Wrong?
Humans created machines with AI to do menial work and hard labor. These machines eventually started their own country, Zero One, to escape oppression. Humans declared war on Zero One, and blocked out the sun in attempt to destroy the machines power source. The militarily superior machines won the war anyway.

What's The Damage?
All above ground human settlements are destroyed. Humans are imprisoned in an energy matrix to supply the machines with power; their bodies are hooked up to power generators, and their minds are plugged into a virtual reality simulator so they're unaware of their own imprisonment.

Survivors?
Hiding out in a secret underground city called Zion. Survivors try to free other humans from the Matrix and bring them into Zion to help fight the machines. There's also The One/Neo/The Source, some sort of machine human hybrid who I guess they think will help kill all the machines? But that doesn't really happen.

Lesson Learnt:
When robots achieve individual agency and artificial intelligence, humans need to take a minute and figure out the moral implications of using intelligent beings as slaves, or there going to be serious problems down the line!

What Went Wrong?
Humans created Clyon robots to help with dangerous labor and military defense. The Cylons revolted against humans, leading to a twelve year war which ended with the Cylons being banished from human occupied planets. Left to their own devices, the Cylons discovered religion and decided that God wanted them to go back home and kill all humans. They created new models that perfectly replicated human physiology, and used them to infiltrate and sabotage human military operations.

What's the Damage?
Cylon agents launch massive nuclear strikes on all twelve human occupied planets, destroying all human civilization. They also launch surprise attacks on all human starships, destroying virtually the entire fleet.

Survivors?
Floating around in space trying to survive long enough to find the ancient human homeworld. That is when they're not being mindfrakked and/or actually frakked by secret Cylon agents!

Lesson Learnt:
It's the same lesson we humans learn over and over again when it comes to robots; if you create artificial life, take responsibility for it! Integrate it into society so it has a stake in the future of human civilization, not in it's destruction. No one likes to be ignored and mistreated by their parents, especially not super-intelligent deadly robots.

Some Final Frakkin' Thoughts on the Battlestar Finale

I've been meaning to write this for the better part of a week now-surely you all know that Battlestar Galactica ended last friday, right? Well, the 2-hour finale sat on my dvr for almost a week before I got around to watching it. It wasn't a chore; that's not why it sat like so many unwatched episodes of Dollhouse clogging my Tivo's brain. No, I just found it hard to watch the end of one of my favorite series-fearful of the inevitable disappointment.

Well, I've watched it now and have given it the proper time to sit in my head. I think I finally know where I stand. Now, I know a shocking number of people who haven't watched this show yet (certain other unnamed editors of this very site for instance... yes I know, a travesty). As quintessential nerd viewing, you people need to get on board. But, for their benefit, I warn you now: SPOILERS ABOUND. Don't click the jump if you plan on watching the series. Also for their benefit, a brief and vague summation of my feelings about the ending: It left me happy, satisfied, and thoroughly unimpressed... an absolute shame for one of the most challenging and risk-taking series on tv.

For a series that is founded on truly biting social allegory, the ending was shockingly happy. In that one regard, it was a bit refreshing I guess. No one you cared about died (other than the president, whose cancer already made that obvious) and we got to end smiling about all our favorite characters leaving happy. It filled my inner fanboy with glassy-eyed happiness. However, so would a movie about Boba Fett fighting Batman over a gold-bikini-clad Leia. Obviously some desires shouldn't be fulfilled.

As happy as the finale sorta made me, it left me completely unimpressed and surprised at the sheer lack of risks they took. Over the past few years, BSG has boldly tread where very few shows dared; disguised in little more than a thin Sci-Fi veneer. Evil, proselytizing, mono-theistic robots? Sure! Overt analogy to the occupation of Iraq with genocidal cylons standing in for the Americans and the sympathetic humans acting as suicide bombing "insurgents"? Why Not! A torture scene in which the victim begins to derive sexual pleasure from his torment! Hells Yeah! Apart from the lack of lady nipples and the word "fuck" (neatly replaced by "frak"), you'd be hard pressed to find a show this daring on anything other than HBO. I almost imagine they got away with some of this stuff because the Universal execs signing off on it never looked beyond "robots kill humans in space? GREENLIGHT!"

So for a show so used to taking risks and surprising us at every turn, why a lackluster ending? Did you ever stop to think that maybe it's your fault, hmmm? For a show like this, with mysteries lathered over nagging questions, is there anything that would shock us at this point that hadn't already been endlessly debated in some internet forum? Is there really any ending that could surprise? We've had years and years to think about these things (thanks to the agonizingly long breaks between seasons) so of course every possibility has already been covered. Unless they pulled some Grant Morrisson shit and had Ron Moore come down in the end and say, "I'm your Cylon God," there really wasn't much they could do. The concept of Baltar's vision being an angel has been talked about since season 1-so no surprise there when, whaaa? lo and behold she is an angel! Same goes for Starbuck who, once we established the last cylon wasn't her, had to be an angle type thing as well. Earth was pre-historic Earth all along? They've been talking bout that one since the end of the mini-series ages ago.


But despite all that, it started out well enough... great even! The first hour was exciting and had me at the edge of my seat like no other finale has since Deadwood. In fact, there's a moment where it seems like the entire thing might just end in a glorious orgy of violence and misunderstanding... which would actually be a pretty appropriate ending for the series. But then they get out of it ok and end up at Earth. No, not the Earth they already established as Earth... but our Earth. Earth 2 I guess (and not the one with the grey haired superman). APPARENTLY, as hinted above, the whole series took place 150,000 years in the past, and the survivors of the series turn out to be our ancestors on Earth. Cute if a) it hadn't already been a standing theory online for 4 seasons or b) they hadn't decided to use All Along the Watchtower.

Here's a serious snag. When you use a real world artifact in a series set in some obviously fantastic place far from our plane of existence, well, that should have some meaning. So when the final 5 cylons started mumbling the lyrics to All Along the Watchtower-the internet was abuzz with theories about what this could mean. Turns out, the song is just the FTL coordinates for Earth and apparently was written 150,000 years before Bob Dylan was born... I guess that means he was communing with angels when he wrote it?

And on the topic of Earth's ancestors... one last thing that really bugged me: This show has prided itself on portraying this fantastic story with a sense of grim realism. They rarely forget that the fleet is populated by a bunch of scared people who don't know the inner workings of the story like the main players might. Unlike other SciFi and fantasy stories, there isn't a blind allegiance to the main cast. Instead, these scared masses are a constant thorn in the side of our heroes-forcing them to make terrible decisions and shoot people and all sorts of nasty stuff. So forgive me if I don't really buy their sudden willingness to just ditch their ships and technology to live some primitive tribal life screwing cave men (which, yes, is what they implied happened)

Lessee, any other mysteries? Oh yeah, the shared visions of the President, Athena, and Caprica 6 about Hera? When the visions started, the loyalties of all 3 parties were divided and aimed in separate directions. It was a genuinely scary race to save Hera from these potential future threats posed by their "comrades". Turns out, the kid just got lost in the hallway and auntie 6 and uncle Baltar find her. No biggie. See, by the time the vision actually plays out in reality, all 3 parties are so firmly on the same side that there's absolutely no threat!

So, yeah, it may have been a lackluster ending. Its optimism and cheerfulness may directly contradict the messages of season's past. The clever and layered mysteries may have fizzled into nothing. But I'm gonna be honest with you, it still left me kinda on the giddy side. It certainly appealed to most of my baser geek instincts. You just have to come to grips with the fact that, oftentimes, the question is a whole lot more exciting than the answer itself. A series built on mystery is almost doomed to disappoint in the end. It's a problem that Lost is gonna have to seriously address going into its final season. But either way, sometimes it's nice to get exactly what your inner fanboy wants. It could have used a tad more Boba Fett for my liking though.

Truth in Titling

Glark (tagline: "She's got a tongue like an electric eel, and she likes the taste of a man's tonsils!") created these clever little mock ups of what the title cards of your favorite TV shows would look like if the producers were really being honest with you. These are the most geekanerdy, but there are more good ones over at her site.Thanks to Abby for tipping us to this!

Belated San Diego Comic Con Pics!

Ok, so I'm a terrible guerrilla e-journalist. I know this damn thing happened over a week ago, but I accidentally shipped the camera these photos lived in back to NYC before uploading them. Pretty stupid. Anyhow, better late than never.

Anywho, Comic Con. Pretty awesome. Though word to the wise: plan ahead. We managed to score tickets at the last possible moment and ending up going down for Saturday evening and Sunday. By that point, pretty much all of the cool exciting stuff had already been announced and we missed a ton of great panels. The only panel we got to was actually one of the very last panels of the whole damn thing-but I'll get to that later...

Above is the fabled Owl Ship from The Watchmen. Or is it Owl Pod? Whatever the kids are calling it these days, its pretty damn cool... even the innards are all aglow with science. Probably all for show-but there's no doubt in my mind that any one of those buttons could have killed hundreds.

Follow the jump for more pics!

Here's a Cylon and the bizarre SciFi booth. I thought at first it was supposed to be like the interior of a Cylon Basestar or something... nope. Just a color changing globular thing. Also, SciFi had very little to offer Battlestar Galactica wise... (that awesome Cylon was from another exhibitor) so I wasn't too interested in staying too long to figure out just what that thing was supposed to be.

Obviously there was tons of Star Wars junk. Tons. Especially given the upcoming release of Clone Wars. But you know what, it's Comic Con-I imagine you'd be hard pressed to find a year where there wasn't tons of star wars shit. Anyway, here are some cool jedi posing it up for some girl with a pink iPhone. Also, there was a startling surplus of Boba Fetts roaming the floor-I heard a rumor they were security-but I'm not sure how believable that is... I just think there was a sale somewhere on Boba Fett helmets. Though cool-I'd prefer the menacing uniformity of stormtrooper security anyway-Fett loses something when there are hundreds of him. Oh, and here's a gross, to-scale Jabba... for the record, his lips weren't that bright-he was just too accurately portrayed and the gross slime on his lips caught my flash and glowed a bit.


Here's the first Iron Man suit from the movie. Pretty impressive up close.


Pretty awesome Destro and Cobra Commander in front of some sort of evil Cobra drilling ship-you just know a bunch of Cobra grunts died in the testing phase of that death trap.

Lego Batman! I'll take this opportunity to talk about the one panel we did get to. It featured Grant Morrison and Deepak Chopra discussing the "soul of the superhero" and "modern mythology." Pretty heady stuff-but very fascinating. Lots of meanderings on human potential and how science fiction can get us there... and Grant had a pretty cool bit on the need for a new kind of storytelling. In response to a question on Orwell's 1984, he talked about how that kind of bleak distopian future-somewhat a standard convention in current comics-was originally meant to serve as a sort of warning of "what could be." However, he argued, its becoming more like a self fulfilling prophecy. Therefore he called for artists to tell a new kind of story-one that focuses on human potential and all that. Not sure how creepy labcoat joker fits into his theory though...

And finally-some cool costumes. I learned that apparently you can make ANYthing out of duct tape. I was shocked at how many costumes were made entirely out of duct tape-even skirts and capes... which I think are probably much easier to manage as, you know, actual fabrics. I didn't take too many pics of awesome costumes though-there were almost too many that I was overwhelmed and could never get my camera out in time. But I couldn't resist taking a shot with this awesome Bender. Unfortunately the poor guy had been terrorized by some sticker weilding hooligans the day before so he asked me do a sticker sweep on his back-he was clean! Also, side note: I thought I was all cool wearing that Galactus tshirt from R. Stevens... apparently so did 12% of the people at comic con... and it didn't help that he was there selling the damn things. Curse our free market!


And to end it, this was by far the coolest costume I saw there. It's completely homemade and to startling detail. It comes with an articulated tail made out of what appeared to be a bicycle tire. This geek really went all out. Kudos to you sir (or madam... it's hard to tell under all that plastic, rubber, and duct tape).

So I got there a bit too late for some serious in depth coverage-but hopefully this satisfies some of your Comic Con lust. There's always next year.

Battlestar Galactica Fans: Register For A Free RAZOR Screening, Quick!

If you're a Battlestar Galactica fan and you don't want to wait till Nov 24th to see the big exciting Razor episode, hop over to this site ASAP and register for a free screening in a real live movie thee-a-ter on the much sooner date of November 12th!

Screenings are taking place in:

• Boston
• Chicago
• Dallas/Ft. Worth
• Los Angeles
• New York City
• Philadelphia
• San Francisco
• Seattle

The registration site just opened up, and I imagine these will go pretty fast. Godspeed!