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    #46
    yea I know this threads been dead for a while but I just wanted to say Crashdown wasnt as bad as people are making him out to me. I like the show a lot, I thought season 1 was good and season 2 just blew me away but a few things bother me.

    The biggest weakness was the subordinates. They had horrible attitudes, Crashdown didnt need all the doubting and second guessing, he needed them to follow orders and do what they were told, and the things he was telling them to do were not out of line. They definitely lacked the "warrior ethos" todays military strives to cultivate. In today's army they probably would be punished for their actions.

    First off, you just crash landed and made a lot of noise on the way in. You grab what you can and you go. You leave as soon as possible because the bad guys just saw and heard that big smoke trail you made on the way in and are moving to you. This is true even when not crashing. When you make a helicopter insertion as soon as the birds leave you grab your pack and run for the nearest covered and concealed area because company is coming.

    The chief did a good job in telling the LT that they should make sure they had all their equipment. As the senior enlisted man he should've been acting as the platoon sgt and part of that job is to sweep the area to make sure nothing is left behind whenever the patrol leaves an area. But not at the cost of getting caught by the cylon welcoming committee.

    The 5 graph plan surprised me. That's a tool the military actually uses a lot but it's called an operations order and it is used in the field. When an oporder is properly briefed it takes about 2 hours to get it all out. Oporders are very detailed and are performed for every mission. Often you get an oporder before you go out on mission and you get follow on missions while in the field in the form of fragmentary orders. If the Lt did something wrong it was that he wasnt detailed enough when he was briefing the plan. Now unless you have plenty of time and are in a secured area while in the field you usually wont do a full blown oporder but instead brief a frago but you still use the original oporder. You'll say something like "situation (paragraph 1) is the same, no changes" and also service and support (graph 4) and command and signal (graph 5) usually remain the same. I was impressed that Crashdown used a terrain model to brief his plan.

    As far as the criticism that Crashdown was too by the book, in the military the book is derived from lessons learned in real world applications. If its in the book, it means it works. The problem is its a pain in the ass to go by the book all the time because it takes a lot of discipline. When you start to get tired you start taking shortcuts and that's where you get in trouble. In the military if you can do everything by the book you will greatly increase your survivability.

    There's a saying in the army that goes "poor plans violently executed are better than brilliant plans poorly executed." If you want to maximize your chance of living through a fight, when you're committed and you're told to go you go and you go hard. Violence of action will save your life, the hesitation, the refusal to perform their part of a plan they raised no objections to earlier, by cally and others put everyone's lives in danger. The chief argued that the patrol should hit the dish a "klick" away. A klick is 1 kilometer and in that terrain you're not moving 1 kilometer safely (meaning tactically in a manner that would prevent you getting discovered and engaged) in much less than hour. Realistically, if your friends are in the sky above you at that moment you hit the cylons where they are or the rescue plane is done.

    All that noise from cally and the others about how the Lt couldnt expect them to do the things he was asking them to do was horrible. There are plenty of stories about how in major battles where the entire chain of command was wiped out in the first few minutes of a battle, privates would take charge of companies of men and win the day. The military might not expect kittens to fight like lions but it does expect them to try. Now in their situation where they had just crashed they should have initiated their escape and recovery plan which usually means avoiding contact with the enemy but when the enemy is gearing up to shoot down your ride home you should probably do something about it. As the senior enlisted man it should've fallen to the chief to keep everyone else in line and squash the whining.

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      #47
      Another pretty powerful episode. I like the way Crashdown reacted to the deaths of those under his command, and lost a little bit of perception. Thats realistic writing imo. Baltar was very good in this too. He did do the right thing imo. They were outgunned, and outskilled.

      Tigh wasnt to good with dealing with the press, but thats to be expected i guess. Everyone has their weaknesses. His reliance on the drink showed a lot too. Declaring military law at the end was quite an interesting move to, and was pretty much the only real one available to him.
      Science Fiction is an existential metaphor; it allows us to tell stories about the human condition.

      Isaac Asimov once said individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

      [/QUOTE]

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        #48
        Well, I don't think I need to add anything here .
        Besides the fact I can't believe it's taken a year and a half before I could finally watch this epsiode on t.v.! At least my station went right from season 1 into season 2 so I only had a week after the cliffhanger!

        Though I do miss the drums in the opening.
        Orphan Black: Join the Clone Club Dance Party!

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          #49
          Just watched this episode on the DVD last night plus one deleted scene - Roslin's nightmare. I had read plenty of spoilers beforehand and I was expecting more from this episode, somehow. I agree with whoever it was that said (about two years ago!) that there seems to be a part missing that would lead up to the declaration of martial law. I certainly think that the episode could have been improved in that way.
          I didn't mind the absence of Helo and Boomer, but did miss Starbuck. If only she could have been back on the Galactica commenting on Tigh's leadership!

          There seem to be many popular Tigh quotes in this episode, such as "Why aren't you in the brig?", "Your turn will come, laughing boy" (not sure if I got that one exactly right), but actually what I liked best was hearing how Tigh pronounces "boat load". I will have to listen to that part again a few times. Nearly as nice as "poetic cr*p" from the webisodes! Hope more stuff actually happens in the next episode...
          Please... leave the touching to the experts.

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            #50
            i loved this episode...
            ....kobol oh my god, what a scene....
            i just love this show....
            the president, she was so cool, the look on col tighs face like wtf..^^
            i was like yay when adama woke up...
            ...and captain apollo ^^.... love the way like he stands besides his president.
            the actors are unbelievibal, still sg1 is my favorite BUT...the actors are far more better than at stargate.
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              #51
              There are two big character threads in this episode, one for Baltar and one for Tigh. The latter works reasonably well; the former doesn't.
              Let's start with Tigh's. He obviously is not cut out for the job of Commander of a Battlestar; he simply doesn't gel with anything outside of military tactics and it doesn't help that he's hitting the bottle and has a manipulative wife. Speaking of which, I like the scene in Tigh's quarters in which Ellen manipulates him into letting the Quorum see Roslin (which of course blows up in her face when Venner gets the chamalla for Roslin).

              The other thread was Baltar's. This is an episode in which the role of the Head/
              Spoiler:
              Angel
              Six really becomes annoying, spouting the moral "you've murdered, now you're a man" and generally becoming a story nuisance with her obligatory and rather nonsensical advice and proselytizing. It really begins to wear on the viewer.

              Two bits of trivia: this is the first episode with no scenes on Cylon-occupied Caprica, and with the deaths of Socinus and Crashdown the show has killed off its first two supporting characters.

              This episode was above average, with the main plot on Kobol working rather well in its showcase of the frantic nature of a unit on the fringe and desperate.

              6/10
              sigpic
              Watching now: Doctor Who Series 3/29 (rewatch) - The X-Files Season 2 (rewatch) - Pushing Daisies Season 1 - Torchwood Series 1 - Red Dwarf Series 8 - Battlestar Galactica Season 2 (rewatch) - Northern Exposure Season 3 (rewatch)

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                #52
                saul declearng martial law was awesome great scene .... walking out of the room into the hallway ...then ruined when he stopped for a drink
                https://twitter.com/#!/Solar_wind84

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                  #53
                  Not too much to say about this ep for me.

                  First (and foremost!!) - Mary. Frakking. McDonnell. Bloody brilliant performance in this ep!!

                  Bear McCreary - as usual, his score was top-notch. "Martial Law" is one of my favourite BSG tracks!!

                  James Callis - He consistently and convincingly portrays this complicated character and he definitely deserves a nod for this ep.

                  Otherwise, this is a pretty middle-of-the-road episode, IMO.
                  "We still commit murder because of greed and spite and jealousy, and we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything we've done. [...] Its not enough to survive... One has to be worthy of survival."
                  ~William Adama


                  All this has happened before. All this is happening again.

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                    #54
                    I didn't like seeing Laura like that
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                      #55
                      Originally posted by Liebestraume View Post
                      My respect for Tyrol grows with each passing week. He knew Crashdown was not qualified for command but showed the respect due to his rank nonetheless. He made the appropriate command decisions, once in the position, and was willing to sacrifice his own life to draw enemy fires away from the others. Though I don't quite understand why he covered up for Baltar at the end, somehow it was consistent with his characterization. Recall his steadfast refusal to reveal Boomer's secret -- perhaps it had been more than his love of her at play there.
                      While i did like that they showed a military man doing what he was supposed to have done (respect the rank, not the person), i do think he should have stepped up and taken command TILL crashdown was ready to do his job.

                      Originally posted by entil2001 View Post
                      it was inevitable that Tigh would return to his drinking, and it sure as hell doesn’t help him make better decisions! It’s not very helpful that the entire crew seems to know that he’s losing stability, thanks to his past history, and that they don’t feel like they can do anything about it. After all, what would they do? They’re already reeling from the loss of Adama’s strong and consistent leadership. There’s really no one else that they could rally support behind, is there?
                      Someone that much of an alcoholic i am surprised was even allowed to be in the fleet. LET alone so high of an officer.

                      Originally posted by Zinfer View Post
                      I don't think Ellen is a Cylon. But she's always a dark influence. Definitely hungry for power. If you'll recall she was even after Tom Zerek in his rise to power.
                      If it wasn't for the fact that
                      Spoiler:
                      we find out she AND Saul are both members of the final five cylons
                      i would have LOVED to have seen someone put her A)) in her place. She definitely needed a smacking.

                      Originally posted by Liebestraume View Post
                      I agree. But, by so doing, Tyrol just truck a deal with the devil (so to speak). That uncomfortable secret between all of them is going to have ramifications down the road.
                      I was honestly surprised they never revisited that later..

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