This time, I'm rootin' for the Cylons <g>

[Joseph DeMartino]

Re: This time, I\'m rootin\' for the Cylons <g>

"A series of minis" might not be economically viable. It is expensive to store sets, props and costumes for "occasional" use, and a nightmare trying to pull a cast together at odd intervals, not to mention the problem of telling a coherent story. That's why original "series of minis" have never been done for television. Only the rare adapation of a series of books (often done years apart and with different actors in the roles) has been done as more than one mini-series. (The Dune books, The Winds of War and War and Rememberance, for example.)

And I agree with your criticism of the constantly-moving camera. I was ready to reach for the Dramamine a couple of times. But despite not being thrilled with that aspect of the show, I did find some recent comments by the director, Michael Rymer. Here's an excerpt for those not inclined to read the whole interview:

"I wouldn't have wanted to do a continuation of the original show because frankly I didn't think the original show warrented it. Having seen the original show now, I feel it was very much a creature of the 1970s; it was a product of its time. Ron Moore's script carries on all the good elements of the show - which are the relationships, the politics and the central idea - but it also has a great correlation with our world right now."
.
Rymer states that a lot of thought has gone into the production, and says that this Galactica is very much "a war story". He would also call it "a political drama".

Sound familiar?

Regards,

Joe

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Re: This time, I\'m rootin\' for the Cylons <g>

Sorry guys I just cant buy into it. We have physiological reasons for having emotions the cylons do not except for humanoid ones. Though that in itself could be a plausible explanation as to how they developed emotions. Stumbling onto emotions as a byproduct developing humanoid cylons. Wonder if that will come around to bite them in them in the ass later on? I still cant by the religion angle.

Now back to back to the bullets.

1) Who said that they were not being literal?

2) The very way a bullet works is what keeps from being a practical space weapon. The air in the cartridge case is not just an oxidizer it keeps the interior pressure equalized with exterior atmosphere. With the viper constantly moving from a pressurized atmosphere of the landing bay to the vacuum of space how do you keep the interior of the bullet equalized with outside environment? If you keep the interior of the bullets a vacuum to have it equalized with space the bullets would implode in on themselves when they were in the pressurized landing bay with the shells being sucked into their own cartridge casings. If you kept the interior of the bullets pressurized to match the atmosphere of the landing bay you end up with a bigger problem. What happens when the landing bay depressurizes for a launch? You would have just recreated the same condition that occurs when you fire the bullet, a sudden massive increase in internal pressure relative to the outside pressure, and all the bullets would effectively go off inside the fighter.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Re: This time, I\'m rootin\' for the Cylons <g>

We have physiological reasons for having emotions the cylons do not except for humanoid ones.

Well, we were talking about the humanoid cylons (who were the only ones shown to have emotions) and since you've just allowed they could have physioligical reasons for having emotions, I'm not sure what it is that you think you're "not buying". Certainly nothing that I said. (BTW, don't be so sure that physiology entirely explains our emotions. We don't know as much as you think we do.)

1) Who said that they were not being literal?

Who said they were? (We should be able to keep this going for a few weeks... )

2) ...

WHAT? Have you ever seen a gun or a bullet?

There is no "air" to speak of in a bullet "cartridge", bullets are not hollow and "equalizing pressure" has nothing to do with anything.

A modern round consists of three parts:

1) A bullet (a solid piece of metal, sometimes with a "cup" at the base and in rare cases with a hollow tip, but generally a solid piece of metal like lead, sometimes jacket in a harder metal such as copper or steel.)

2) A cartridge. This is the brass part at the back of the round that contains the propellant and attaches the propellant charge to the bullet. There is essentially no air in the cartridge, it is filled with solid propellant. There is no "equalization of pressure" involved in any of this. And it would certainly be a ridiculously trivial matter to make the bullet-cartridge combination air-tight - in which case all of your vacuum/no-vacuum objections disappear in a puff of gunsmoke.

3) The propellant itself.

When the hammer falls and hits the back of the round, it causes the primer to ignite. This in turn ingnites the propellant, producing a small explosion. This explosive force pushes the bullet out of the cartridge (which remains in the gun) and the bullet goes down the barrel. The bullet (sometimes called the slug) expands from the heat and pressure behind it to completely fill the barrel, which thus contains the high-pressure explosive gases behind the bullet. The bullet then exits the barrel and the gases dissipate. The impetus given the bullet carries it to the target.

There is nothing in this system that would not work in the vacuum of space provided that there is an oxidizer incorporated into the propellant. (Because the propellant cannot ignite in the absence of oxygen.) As long as the mechanism is made air-tight so that the gases can't escape from other parts of the gun and reduce the force imparted to the bullet, existing guns could fire bullets in outer space, to say nothing of what a bullet firing system designed expressly for use in space could do. A slightly modified submachine gun would work quite well in vacuum. (In fact, Ben Bova, one of the hardest hard science fiction writers of all time wrote a short story, "Men of Goodwill", in which Americans and Russians do exchange automatic weapons fire on the Moon - but only once. ) Bova checked his assumptions with military weapons experts as well as NASA experts in orbital mechanics (if you read the story you'll understand that last) before he sent it off for publication. They agreed that what he posited was completely workable.

An advantage of firing bullets in space is that there is no atmosphere to slow them down, so they strike the target with the full velocity they left the barrel with, and the full kinetic energy. Add that to the closing speed of two spacecraft, and I would imagine bullets could be a quite devastating weapon in a space battle, at least at ranges close enough to make evasive action difficult.

Regards,

Joe

 

[HeinleinFan]

Re: This time, I\'m rootin\' for the Cylons <g>

You scared me with that one-word answer, Joe. For a minute there, you sounded like a Vorlon. (But you’ve reassured me with your “chicken-[expletive deleted]” post in another thread.)

I noticed the attempted imitation of the Johnson swearing-in, but wasn’t impressed. The Clark ceremony at the end of "Chrysalis" was much closer to the real thing, IMO.

 

[Lyta]

Re: This time, I\'m rootin\' for the Cylons <g>

Yeah, I finally got around to watching the series and it wasn't bad. Wasn't great either but I would give it a chance if it made it to series.

Did anyone else get some things that reminded them of B5? I thought the uniforms were sorta b5ish and there was something else too but I can't remember now...

I didn't like the jerky camera movements -- at least to the extent they were used -- as well as the going round and round in circles all the time. Distracting.

Still, they got me with the cylon spy.

Call me crazy, but I don't find the Cylon girl attractive at all. But I did like seeing what's her name from Jeremiah's first season as the coms officer. The Chief character was just on Jeremiah too right?

Yes, she wasn't attractive at all to me either. You know cylon #6 was in Jeremiah too? Here is the complete list of Jeremiah crossovers:

Tricia Helfer .... Number 6 (Sarah in THE LONG ROAD)
Aaron Douglas .... Chief Petty Officer Tyrol (Davis in STRANGE ATTRACTORS)
Kandyse McClure .... Petty Officer Dualla (Elizabeth Munroe)
Alessandro Juliani .... Lt. Gaeta (David in JOURNEYS END IN LOVERS MEETING)
Kwesi Ameyaw .... Agro Ship Captain (Samuel in TRIPWIRE)