You Can't Go Home Again - GREAT, but one nitpick

[viper1212]

Phenomenal episode, from start to finish. I couldn't believe that even after reading the spoilers for this one, then watching it, I was so moved by the Apollo-Adama scene, when Apollo asks if Adama would order the fleet to stay behind to search for him if he were lost. And I was also moved by the Starbuck-Adma scene at the end. The FX were great, as usual, in ways TOS could NEVER have achieved.
That said, I have a nitpick.
Considering that Starbuck was out of oxygen and needed to be inside the Raider to breathe, how could she then have gone outside the craft into an oxygen-deprived atmosphere, found material to affix under its wings, do so and then fly home?
Also, how could she see out of the ship? (As the first CAG said in the miniseries, of the Cylon Raiders, before he and his squadron were blown away by them, "There are no cockpits.")
And, how did she figure out its navigational system that got her back to the exact position of the fleet?

[mjm800]

viper1212 said:

Phenomenal episode, from start to finish. I couldn't believe that even after reading the spoilers for this one, then watching it, I was so moved by the Apollo-Adama scene, when Apollo asks if Adama would order the fleet to stay behind to search for him if he were lost. And I was also moved by the Starbuck-Adma scene at the end. The FX were great, as usual, in ways TOS could NEVER have achieved.
That said, I have a nitpick.
Considering that Starbuck was out of oxygen and needed to be inside the Raider to breathe, how could she then have gone outside the craft into an oxygen-deprived atmosphere, found material to affix under its wings, do so and then fly home?
Also, how could she see out of the ship? (As the first CAG said in the miniseries, of the Cylon Raiders, before he and his squadron were blown away by them, "There are no cockpits.")
And, how did she figure out its navigational system that got her back to the exact position of the fleet?

Yes, at that point I had to place my Sci-Fi blinders on (you know the ones that render me oblivious to the impracticality and impossibility of a scene). Otherwise, I absolutely loved that episode, it is one of my favorites of the season.

[MHall]

First, suppose Starbuck either refilled her oxygen tank from the raider's supply or else she found a long oxygen line in the raider and went outside with it (or spliced together some tubes, using that yellow duct tape of hers.) Or maybe should could have just filled her lungs and helmet with oxygen, staying outside for only a minute or so at a time before refilling. Think about if you had to make a word out of tape underwater... you could do it without a scuba suit, assuming you could return to the surface for air.

Second, suppose Starbuck is a (sleeper) Cylon. Now the problem is solved regarding her figuring out the raider, including nagivation and her exceptional piloting skills. It also solves the problem of her being the best shot in or out of a viper cockpit (to which the army grunts on the 'net seem to take offense.)

[Dangermouse]

MHall, you are beginning to scare me with Starbuck=Sleeper Cylon. It sounds plausible. La, la alalalalalla, can't hear you But wouldn't she wonder how she managed to do so if she is a sleeper? (the same way Boomer wonders about herself?)

Re: tape. She might have also written it *before* she found the cylon fighter's oxygen supply. It's not as if her tank was already depleted when she climbed in.

[Big Brother]

MHall said:

First, suppose Starbuck either refilled her oxygen tank from the raider's supply or else she found a long oxygen line in the raider and went outside with it (or spliced together some tubes, using that yellow duct tape of hers.) Or maybe should could have just filled her lungs and helmet with oxygen, staying outside for only a minute or so at a time before refilling. Think about if you had to make a word out of tape underwater... you could do it without a scuba suit, assuming you could return to the surface for air.

Or perhaps she did it before she ran out of oxygen in her suit, we just didn't see it on screen.

I'm still wondering how she saw out the front, but have come up with a barely-plausible explanation.

In the shots of the Raiders in space, we can see a metallic visor-like thingy raise up before the red glow of the sweeping eye is seen. Perhaps, to protect the delicate internal working parts of whatever produces that glowing eyebeam from the vacuum of space, there is a clear window of some glass/lexan-like material, perhaps even the infamous transparent aluminum, in front of the glowing eye. Perhaps Starbuck ripped that out from the inside with her knife ("This looks like your eyeball...you won't be needing it any more...luckily, I brought along two of my own!") but left the window in place.

As to navigation, yeah, finding the fleet again would be tough, but a pilot of Starbuck's caliber possibly could remember the relative bearings of the moon, the gas giant, the fleet, and the local primary star. Then she just did an incredibly complex bit of trigonometry in her head, and worked out how those bearings would change in 45 hours, based on the oribital velocity of both the gas giant and the moon she was on. Or perhaps amongst her equipment was the equivalent of a nice graphing calculator with stellar-navigation software....or perhaps the fact that the entire fleet had joined the search of that moon meant that the moon was encircled by the 60-some ships of the fleet, and pretty much any direction she went would have taken her within visual range of one ship or another. Then when she was intercepted by Apollo's Viper, she followed it home to the Galactica.

That said, I would have much preferred it if she hotwired her busted radio into being sort of a video game console controller, with wires hooked into bits of the Raider's nervous system to get a galvanic response out of the attitude thrusters. But that might have been difficult to film in a coherent and concise manner.

MHall said:

Second, suppose Starbuck is a (sleeper) Cylon. Now the problem is solved regarding her figuring out the raider, including nagivation and her exceptional piloting skills. It also solves the problem of her being the best shot in or out of a viper cockpit (to which the army grunts on the 'net seem to take offense.)

Eh, maybe she was on the target-shooting team at the academy, and practices regularly on a range in her spare time....yeah, a good ground-pounder sniper should have been much better, but the marines supposedly didn't have a dedicated sniper with them. Which makes some sense, since the Marines on the Galactica were probably mainly a ceremonial honor-guard unit for the decommissioning ceremony, not a true combat unit. So perhaps Starbuck is a good shot with great eyesight, but a true trained sniper would be much better at the sneaking-around and camouflage aspects of being a real sniper.

[Blade Runner]

She knew she had to fly it to Galactica so she put the tape on before she got in

[Skinwalker]

Dangermouse said:

MHall, you are beginning to scare me with Starbuck=Sleeper Cylon. It sounds plausible. La, la alalalalalla, can't hear you But wouldn't she wonder how she managed to do so if she is a sleeper? (the same way Boomer wonders about herself?)

That could be because Starbuck has such a huge ego, whereas Boomer does not. If Starbuck does anything out of the ordinary, she accepts it without question because she thinks so highly of herself; when Galactica Boomer does something exceptional, she thinks about it too much because she takes things more seriously than Starbuck does, and doesn't have the same kind of large ego.

In any case, it makes you think; however, I'm'onna be madder'nhell if Starbuck turns out to be a Cylon. I love that girl, dammitt!

David

[Darth Marley]

Blade said:

She knew she had to fly it to Galactica so she put the tape on before she got in

Someone shld ask RDM at SFC, see if there was edited footage about this.

[Big Brother]

Darth said:

Someone shld ask RDM at SFC, see if there was edited footage about this.

Probably not, as it works much better the way it is.

New viewers get the thrill of wondering how starbuck will avoid being shot down.

Old TOS fanboys like myself get to think "Oh, Starbuck will waggle her wings like Starbuck and Apollo did at the end of the original Hand of God", and then get pleasantly suprised that the new series came up with a much better way to get a captured Cylon fighter past the CAP fighters around the fleet.

BTW, that must be some fantastic duct tape to stand up to atmosphereic frictional heating during blast-off to orbital velocity. Instead of 90-mile-an-hour tape, it must be 9000-mile-an-hour tape...

[Dangermouse]

Skinwalker said:

That could be because Starbuck has such a huge ego, whereas Boomer does not. If Starbuck does anything out of the ordinary, she accepts it without question because she thinks so highly of herself; when Galactica Boomer does something exceptional, she thinks about it too much because she takes things more seriously than Starbuck does, and doesn't have the same kind of large ego.David

But I think anyone would wonder about not remembering about putting the tape on, or how they did it.Starbuck is cocky, not stupid. Darn it, she better not be. My fave character and all...

[MHall]

Hmmm? The hypothesis is that Starbuck is not questioning her skills as a sniper and viper/raider pilot, because she is cocky. And so she is even more of a sleeper than Boomer. Starbuck no doubt remembers how she put on the "STAR BUCK" - I don't think anyone said she blacked out for that.

For navigation, could it be that a fleet is not that hard to see in space? Might the fleet glitter, as different ships catch the starlight like a mirror and bounce it towards Starbuck's eyes, looking out of the raider's eye-slit? Like, have you noticed aircraft reflecting the sun in broad daylight? Also, didn't they pull the whole fleet in close to the moon, since they stripped the CAP for the search?

[Big Brother]

MHall said:

Hmmm? The hypothesis is that Starbuck is not questioning her skills as a sniper and viper/raider pilot, because she is cocky. And so she is even more of a sleeper than Boomer. Starbuck no doubt remembers how she put on the "STAR BUCK" - I don't think anyone said she blacked out for that.

I fail to see how Starbuck's ability to commandeer the Raider is evidence of her Cylon-hood. She didn't interface biologically with the Raider, and they showed her using trial and error to figure out the controls and find the air hose and so forth. But I find it odd that the Raider could function at all with its brain ripped out and so many blood vessel-equivalents sliced open.

If it's really a living organism, the loss of its brain should have severed the nerve links that control the various functions. If it was an atmospheric craft with ailerons and elevators and a rudder, then grabbing onto tendons and pulling on them might have given Starbuck a sort of rudimentary control, but something using thrusters should have had electrochemical nerve control lines, not mechanical controls you can squeeze or push/pull to control it. Unless its thrusters are REALLY simple rockets with valves controlled by tendon links?

MHall said:

For navigation, could it be that a fleet is not that hard to see in space? Might the fleet glitter, as different ships catch the starlight like a mirror and bounce it towards Starbuck's eyes, looking out of the raider's eye-slit? Like, have you noticed aircraft reflecting the sun in broad daylight? Also, didn't they pull the whole fleet in close to the moon, since they stripped the CAP for the search?

In the distances to be expected in space, even in orbit, a fleet would look like pinpoints of light, a lot like stars. Perhaps she has good eyesight and could spot the pinpoints of light moving against the backdrop of fixed stars, but I stick by my theory of her remembering the relative bearing on the fleet's last position and plotting a course by dead reckoning.

[Skinwalker]

Dangermouse said:

But I think anyone would wonder about not remembering about putting the tape on, or how they did it.Starbuck is cocky, not stupid. Darn it, she better not be. My fave character and all...

You know what? I think I'd best watch that episode again.

[zinfab]

many nitpicks on that episode.

1. she learned to fly the raider???
2. she "patched" the hole in the hull with her suit?

those are two quick ones.

[MHall]

I fail to see how Starbuck's ability to commandeer the Raider is evidence of her Cylon-hood.

Big Brother, I can't remember if you've seen all the episodes or not, but you'll eventually have to explain why the raider is responsive to some, while being unresponsive to others. Controlling the raider is not simply a matter of pulling the correct tendons.