Tag: Cylons (Original)

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Battlestar Galactica (New Series) Miniseries

Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar GalacticaForty years after an armistice was signed with the Cylons, a race of cybernetic servants created to aid man, a neutral space station set aside for peaceful negotiations – but never visited by a Cylon representative – is ambushed and destroyed by Cylon forces.

Battlestar Galactica is en route to its decommissioning from regular service. Long since surpassed on a technological level by newer craft, the gigantic Galactica will become a museum commemorating the era of open warfare between humanity and the Cylons; Galactica’s Commander, Adama, delivers a speech at the ship’s decommissioning ceremony warning against becoming complacent against the Cylons. Adama is also grappling with some personal demons as well – his eldest son, Lee “Apollo” Adama, has arrived to participate in the ceremony, leading a symbolic flight of Colonial Viper fighters, another spacecraft retired from service after the Cylon wars. The reunion of father and son is awkward, as the two have barely spoken since Adama’s younger son, Zac, died on patrol.

On the planet Caprica, the seat of the Colonial government, cybernetics expert Dr. Gaius Baltar has been engaging in an affair with a woman who later admits to being a Cylon – but not the kind of Cylon anyone has ever seen before. She’s almost completely indistinguishable from any human. And she has used Baltar’s access to Caprica’s computer networks to render the Colonies’ defenses useless. A massive Cylon assault begins, as the surface of Caprica is peppered with thermonuclear weapons. Even the most advanced Colonial fighters prove useless in the fight, their integrated computer systems wiped out by a previously unknown Cylon weapon. Baltar is led to safety by the Cylon woman known as Number Six, his role in the fall of Caprica known only to himself – and even after they’re separated when Baltar boards a rescue ship, he continues to see and speak to visions of her. The ship he is taken to is also where Education Secretary Laura Roslin was when the Cylons attacked – and the attacks have destroyed so much of the Colonial government that she’s now next in line to assume the Presidency. Apollo is also on that ship, having escorted Roslin away from the decommissioning ceremony in his father’s aging Viper – and having discovered in the process that the decommissioned fighters, which lack integrated systems, are immune to the Cylons’ secret weapon.

The military command structure has also collapsed, any most of the Battlestar fleet has fallen, leaving Commander Adama in charge of what’s left of the military. Adama orders an immediate course for the Ragnar system, a turbulent nebula into which a Colonial munitions depot is tucked away, dating back to the original Cylon conflict. When Galactica arrives, Adama’s crew finds weapons aplenty to rearm the ship – but there’s also a lone human aboard. An accident with some of the munitions leaves him trapped with Adama, who discovers that the man is a Cylon – something that the rescued Baltar hasn’t shared with anyone.

Rearmed, and now set on a course for what Adama claims is the lost thirteenth colony, Earth, Galactica gets ready – with a largely defenseless civilian fleet in tow – for an escape from the advancing Cylon fleet…or the extinction of the human race.

Download this episodewritten by Ronald D. Moore and Christopher Eric James
based on a teleplay by Glen A. Larson
directed by Michael Rymer
music by Richard Gibbs / additional music by Bear McCreary

Cast: Edward James Olmos (Commander Adama), Mary McDonnell (Secretary Laura Roslin), Katie Sackhoff (Lt. Starbuck), Jamie Bamber (Captain Apollo), James Callis (Dr. Gaius Baltar), Tricia Helfer (Number Six), Callum Keith Rennie (Leoben Conoy), Grace Park (Lt. Boomer), Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh), Matthew Bennett (Aaron Doral), Paul Campbell (Billy Keikeya), Aaron Douglas (CPO Tyrol), Lorena Gale (Elosha), Barclay Hope (Transport Pilot), Kandyse McClure (Dualla), Connor Widdows (Boxey), John Mann (CAG), Alessandro Juliani (Lt. Gaeta), Nicky Clyne (Cally), Michael Eklund (Prosna), Alonso Oyarzun (Socinus), Tahmoh Penikett (Helo), Haili Page (Cami), Ty Olsson (Captain Kelly), Ron Blecker (Launch Officer), Ryan Robbins (Armistice Officer), Tim Henry (Doctor), Kwesi Ameyaw (Liner Captain), Brenda McDonald (Old Woman), Suleka Matthew (Reporter), Erin Karpluk (Woman #1), Jenn Griffin (Woman #2), B.J. Harrison (Woman #3), Zahf Paroo (Man #1), Robert Lewis (Man #2), Denzel Sinclair (Man #3), Lorena Gale (Elosha), Nadine Wright (Chantara), Michael Soltis (Chantara’s Husband), Moneca Delain (Blonde Woman), Fred Keating (Junior Reporter), Lymari Nadal (Giana), Biski Gugushe (Pilot #1), Nahanni Arntzen (Pilot #2), Nogel Vonas (Pilot #3), Ryan Nelson (Pilot #4)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Battlestar Galactica (New Series) Season 4

Razor

Battlestar GalacticaWhen she first boards the Battlestar Pegasus to begin her tour of duty, Lt. Kendra Shaw’s biggest worry is not incurring the legendary wrath of Admiral Cain. Her priorities change drastically when a massive Cylon attack leaves the ship heavily damaged: the armistice has been broken, and every Colonial world is being nuked into oblivion. With her computer network offline for a major refit, Pegasus is the only Colonial ship able to escape the carnage at the Scorpion shipyards. Cain orders Lt. Shaw to perform an uncalculated jump to random coordinates, because the incoming Cylon nukes mean that anywhere will soon be safer than Colonial space.

So far as they know, the crew of Pegasus are the last surviving members of the human race, aboard the sole surviving spacecraft. As they take stock and begin to repair the damage, Admiral Cain announces to her crew that they have a new mission: to take revenge on the Cylons. An early battle sees Pegasus critically outnumbered and outmaneuvered, and when her first officer refuses to act on her orders to keep up the hopeless fight, Cain shoots him through the head on the flight deck and orders the terrified Colonel Fisk to take his place or suffer the same fate. A Colonial networking expert with whom Cain had a relationship during the refit is revealed by Lt. Shaw to be a Cylon in human form; Cain orders her men to interrogate the woman, named Gina, with any means of coercion or degradation that they see fit.

When a small fleet of civilian ships is discovered, Cain orders her crew to board the ships and strip them of key supplies, equipment and capable personnel…and orders the rest left to die. Lt. Shaw and Colonel Fisk carry out those orders, and Cain shows her appreciation by promotion Shaw to captain. But Shaw can’t forget that her new rank pips have been paid for in the blood of others.

Ten months later, a meeting with another Colonial fleet led by Battlestar Galactica changes the crew of the Pegasus forever; in short order, Cain is killed (by her escaped former lover) and is replaced by Fisk (who is then murdered himself), and command then falls to Pegasus’ chief engineer, Garner, who perishes in a successful attempt to save the ship and her crew. Admiral Adama gives command of the troubled battlestar to his son, Lee “Apollo” Adama. When he reviews the records of the surviving senior officers of Pegasus, Apollo chooses Shaw to be his executive officer, hoping that the appointment will meet with the trust and approval of the rest of the ship’s crew. Their first major mission is a seemingly simple search-and-rescue assignment, to locate a mission raptor and its crew.

What they find instead, however, chills Admiral Adama: an outdated Cylon fleet, dating back to the first Cylon War. When Adama last encountered this kind of Cylon in the closing days of that war, he bore witness to grisly experiments that may have been the first steps in the creation of biological Cylons and their mysterious, ship-controlling Hybrids. Fearing that the missing raptor crew may be subjected to the same horrors by a group of outcast Cylons who think that first war still rages on, Adama transfers his flag to the Pegasus to personally oversee the risky rescue mission. Apollo assigns Shaw to come up with a daring rescue plan, and she’s surprised when her death-defying mission proposal is approved. But in her attempt to carry out her own orders, Shaw can’t decide if she should complete her mission or atone for her sins at last.

written by Michael Taylor
directed by Felix Alcala
music by Bear McCreary

Cast: Edward James Olmos (Commander Adama), Mary McDonnell (President Laura Roslin), Katie Sackhoff (Lt. Starbuck), Jamie Bamber (Captain Apollo), James Callis (Dr. Gaius Baltar), Tricia Helfer (Number Six), Grace Park (Lt. Boomer)

Guest Cast: Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh), Aaron Douglas (CPO Tyrol), Tahmoh Penikett (Helo), Michael Trucco (Anders), Alessandro Juliani (Lt. Gaeta), Kandyse McClure (Dualla), Michelle Forbes (Admiral Cain), Graham Beckel (Colonel Fisk), Stephanie Jacobsen (Capt. Kendra Shaw), Nico Cortez (young William “Husker” Adama), Matthew Bennett (Doral), Steve Bacic (Colonel Belzen), Brad Dryborough (Hoshi), Eileen Pedde (Sgt. Mathias), Fulvio Cecere (Lt. Alastair Thorne), Vincent Gale (Peter Laird), Campbell Lane (Hybrid), Kyra Scott (young Helena Cain), Chandra Berg (little Lucy Cain), Peter Flemming (Helena’s Father), Shaker Paleja (Medic Hudson), Andrew Dunbar (Marine DaSilva), Jacob Blair (Squad Leader Banzai), Peter Bryant (Frank Bruno), Chris Bradford (Ops Officer), Tyson Stanley (young Marine), Trevor Roberts (Scylla Protestor #1), Cameron MacLeod (Scylla Protestor #2), Ingrid Tesch (Mother), Joey Pierce (Marine Riggs), Matt Drake (Son #1), Dustin Eriksen (Son #2), Stefan Arngrim (Male Captive), John Hainsworth (Man in Cage #1), Victor Ayala (Man in Cage #2), Deni Dolory (Woman in Cage), Emily Hirst (Child in Cage), Ben Cotton (Terrified Man), Stefanie Von Pfetten (Showboat), Alyssa Minniss (Flower Girl)

Notes: The “ancient” Cylons, and their ships, are strikingly similar to the Cylons and Cylon Raiders from the original Battlestar Galactica, complete with primitive synthesized voices. (The original series Cylons and their ships had already been hinted at in the pilot miniseries’ museum displays, as well as a seldom-glimpsed painting in Adama’s office aboard Galactica.) With the phrase “all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again” once again coming to the fore, an interesting interpretation could be that the Cylon-Human conflict is a generational cycle that is loosely repeating itself, possibly meaning that the original Battlestar Galactica and the new series may be different epochs on the same timeline. (It should be pointed out that the above is, however, pure speculation.) The “present day” portions of Razor take place soon after the second season episode The Captain’s Hand. More of young Adama’s exploits during the first Cylon War were shown in a series of “mini-episodes” of “Razor flashbacks” aired during commercial breaks in the Sci-Fi Channel series Flash Gordon.

LogBook entry by Earl Green