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    Passage & Meaningless Deaths .Spoilers

    Long time lurker here and a great fan of the series, but this is just bugging the heck out of me.

    #1 Raptors
    Spoiler:

    Round 1

    The Raptors were used to lead the Colonial ships through the Ion/Radiation storm because their nav units were geared to survive in those types of environments.

    So the Raptors would fly in ahead of their ship, computate the jump point to the clear area of space, transmit those coordinates to the Colonial ship, and then jump to safety.

    Now as we saw , a few Colonial ships were lost because the Raptors lost *sight* of them, and could not transmit their coordinates to retrieve them safely.

    Wait for it....wait for it...

    Why did they not just have a Raptor docked on each one of the Colonial ships?
    Do you have someone running out infront of your car with a GPS unit and a radio telling you where to go?

    There was absolutely no logical reason that any of those ships or crew members had to be lost like that.

    Even if they could not dock a Raptor to each ship I find it hard to believe that they would not have military grade nav units available as spares/refits to temporarily equip the Colonial ships.

    Round 2

    There is no reason that a Raptor could not have docked within the ships as described above, but lets say fo funs sake they could not.

    Why could they not use the jump points already computated by Athena? So now they cannot preprogram a series of jump points based on solid numbers crunched by the Raptor?

    When a Battlestar jumps, it does not know what is in the area that it is folding into, so saying that they needed to scan the area prior to each jump doesn't work here. This is not Star Trek technology you know!

    Even though the Colonial ships would not be able to compute the jump point within the radiation storm, they could reliably coordinate and jump in from normal space to the Raptors known coordinates in the radiation field, and jump out to the known coordinates in the free area.


    #2 She's dead Jim!
    Spoiler:

    Kat's death was pointless, and not heroic in any way.

    As I pointed out above the danger that the people were placed in was completely unneccesary!

    Kat commited suicide because she could not face telling Adama that she was a smuggler. Oh noes! Kat put the lives of that ship in danger because she had a deathwish. She was already cooked by the radiation, and she went back in for more knowing that it would be fatal instead of letting another pilot with a lower radiation rating and a clear head lead the Colonial ship.

    Radiation poisoning destroys the major organs i.e. eyesight, causes hallucinations, destroys motor functions.

    This is akin to a bus driver not wanting to go home and tell his wife that he cheated, so he gets hammered and goes on a wild ride with 30+ people in the bus while smashing into everything in sight but luckily ends up at the destination intact before dying of a heroin overdose.

    Why put people at risk when all you want to do is off yourself?

    #2
    Originally posted by Darschu View Post
    Long time lurker here and a great fan of the series, but this is just bugging the heck out of me.

    #1 Raptors
    Spoiler:

    Round 1

    The Raptors were used to lead the Colonial ships through the Ion/Radiation storm because their nav units were geared to survive in those types of environments.

    So the Raptors would fly in ahead of their ship, computate the jump point to the clear area of space, transmit those coordinates to the Colonial ship, and then jump to safety.

    Now as we saw , a few Colonial ships were lost because the Raptors lost *sight* of them, and could not transmit their coordinates to retrieve them safely.

    Wait for it....wait for it...

    Why did they not just have a Raptor docked on each one of the Colonial ships?
    Do you have someone running out infront of your car with a GPS unit and a radio telling you where to go?

    There was absolutely no logical reason that any of those ships or crew members had to be lost like that.
    You're making a few assumptions that don't line up with things we've seen in the past.

    Spoiler:
    First of all, I'd say that this clearly demonstrates that one ship cannot be docked to the exterior of another during an FTL jump. The why hasn't been explained, but we've never seen it done.

    The way light runs along the hull of a ship when it jumps could suggest that the FTL drive interfaces with the outer hull. If one ship could dock to another and take both with it's jumpdrive, there would have been no reason for Roslin and Apollo to leave all those civilian ships behind way back in the miniseries.

    A more reasonable idea might be to consider that many of the ships have hanger bays. Why not put Raptors aboard each ship and let them either do their work from inside, or fly out after the jump? We can scratch both of those possibilities out. The Raptors must need to be in flight to function, and I would assume that the ships wouldn't want to open their bays while inside the cluster, as that would be inviting all kinds of new dangers.



    Originally posted by Darschu View Post
    Spoiler:
    Even if they could not dock a Raptor to each ship I find it hard to believe that they would not have military grade nav units available as spares/refits to temporarily equip the Colonial ships.
    Spoiler:
    All things considered, that’s highly doubtful. Spare parts are not in generous supply, and who’s to say that each model of ship doesn’t have its own proprietary jump computer? Of course, the “simpler” suggestion it to rip those military grade jump computers and other needed gear out of the Raptors and install them in the civilian ships. But that would take time, which they didn’t have because they were swiftly starving to death. You have to remember what a desperate situation they were in at the time. Speed was the only consideration. If they wanted to play it safe, they would have gone somewhere else.



    Originally posted by Darschu View Post
    Round 2

    Spoiler:
    There is no reason that a Raptor could not have docked within the ships as described above, but lets say fo funs sake they could not.

    Why could they not use the jump points already computated by Athena? So now they cannot preprogram a series of jump points based on solid numbers crunched by the Raptor?

    When a Battlestar jumps, it does not know what is in the area that it is folding into, so saying that they needed to scan the area prior to each jump doesn't work here. This is not Star Trek technology you know!

    Even though the Colonial ships would not be able to compute the jump point within the radiation storm, they could reliably coordinate and jump in from normal space to the Raptors known coordinates in the radiation field, and jump out to the known coordinates in the free area.

    Spoiler:
    It seems clear now that a jump has to be calculated while at the departure point. We've never seen preplanned jump calculations of the type you suggest. All signs point to them calculating one jump at a time: arrive at the destination, then calculate the next jump. They've never had a "calculations notebook" or any such thing.


    Originally posted by Darschu View Post
    #2 She's dead Jim!
    Spoiler:

    Kat's death was pointless, and not heroic in any way.

    As I pointed out above the danger that the people were placed in was completely unneccesary!
    Spoiler:
    Starving to death isn’t a good reason to take a few risks?



    Originally posted by Darschu View Post
    Spoiler:
    Kat commited suicide because she could not face telling Adama that she was a smuggler. Oh noes! Kat put the lives of that ship in danger because she had a deathwish. She was already cooked by the radiation, and she went back in for more knowing that it would be fatal instead of letting another pilot with a lower radiation rating and a clear head lead the Colonial ship.

    Radiation poisoning destroys the major organs i.e. eyesight, causes hallucinations, destroys motor functions.

    This is akin to a bus driver not wanting to go home and tell his wife that he cheated, so he gets hammered and goes on a wild ride with 30+ people in the bus while smashing into everything in sight but luckily ends up at the destination intact before dying of a heroin overdose.

    Why put people at risk when all you want to do is off yourself?
    Spoiler:
    1. She asked Starbuck to let her tell the Admiral herself. She tried to do it even when it didn’t matter anymore.

    2. Deathwish? I don’t know where you get that. I suppose there’s the fact that she’s a pilot, the single most hazardous occupation in the fleet. But she’s made a practice of cheating death, and had other things on her mind at that moment. Which leads me to…

    3. Why she went: call it pride, arrogance, or foolhardiness, but she wasn’t going to back down from her duty. Especially not after her confrontation with Starbuck. If anything, she was trying to prove that she did belong in the company of such good people.

    3a.
    Spoiler:
    There is purportedly a cut subplot on Helo’s concerns about radiation exposure. Probably because he already had a good amount of it on Caprica, I’d guess. So Kat stole his cleaner radiation badge and did him a small favor while accomplishing her own goals.


    4. Black badges meant “it’s time to stop”, not “you’re already dead”. She was still healthy enough to frak her old boyfriend before going out on the last mission. All the pilots were starved and radiation sick, she wasn’t worse off than anyone else when they launched. It was the extra time in the cluster that did her in.

    5. You’re analogy would work better if your bus driver were carrying a load of orphans to a hospital that could only be reached by passing through a minefield, and he’s got an injury that will leave him bleeding to death if he doesn’t hurry. His wife would, of course, be irrelevant to the situation.



    All in all, I think it was a great episode for a tertiary character, and one of the best departures we’ve yet seen.


    a time to mourn

    Comment


      #3
      Nice departure yeah, but there is no reason they could not rip out the nav computer and install it on the raptor, drill a few holes in the hull to place the sensors in if they must.

      Better yet, why did they need to be in visual range anyway? It's not called wireless for nothing...

      Comment


        #4
        i don't think it was a meaningless death.

        it got rid of a character i don't like, so it had purpose!
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        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by yaaayoubetcha View Post
          i don't think it was a meaningless death.

          it got rid of a character i don't like, so it had purpose!
          Quoted for truthiness and my agreement. Pragmatism can be good

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          Comment


            #6
            What gets me is that in the last 9 episodes of this season, things have gone from worse to down right quagmire for the fleet.
            Spoiler:
            This episode brought the loss of a few ships and crews, which means more overcrowding, just about every pilot in the fleet has radiation poisoning, now. civilian and military, and I'm sure the radiation didn't go over too well on the condition of the ships. I wonder why they just didn't go over the stars? It was depicted as being a wide cluster, but not very tall. Maybe there is a huge fuel shortage?

            Comment


              #7
              If you want to see a real meaningless death, watch Season 5 of 24

              Spoiler:
              the death of Tony

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Azselendor View Post
                What gets me is that in the last 9 episodes of this season, things have gone from worse to down right quagmire for the fleet.
                Spoiler:
                This episode brought the loss of a few ships and crews, which means more overcrowding, just about every pilot in the fleet has radiation poisoning, now. civilian and military, and I'm sure the radiation didn't go over too well on the condition of the ships. I wonder why they just didn't go over the stars? It was depicted as being a wide cluster, but not very tall. Maybe there is a huge fuel shortage?
                Spoiler:
                Not very tall still means a hundreds or more light years. I've gotten the impression that the fleet jumps only a few lightyears at a time (Adama called 10-15 lys a long jump back in season one). Going around could have meant dozens or hundreds of jumps, wasting time or fuel that they didn't have.


                a time to mourn

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by Dutch_Razor View Post
                  Better yet, why did they need to be in visual range anyway? It's not called wireless for nothing...
                  The radiation most likey was interfering with their transmissions, which severely limited any kind of tranmsion range..
                  I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by yaaayoubetcha View Post
                    i don't think it was a meaningless death.

                    it got rid of a character i don't like, so it had purpose!
                    LMAO!!! Indeed!
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                    Comment


                      #11
                      I thought the episode was rather boring, and her dieing was pointless, but she was a pointless minor charater anyways.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        I don't think her death was necessarily "meaningless"... It was a dangerous mission, something had to give... She died bravely and in spite of her shady past, died a hero. They spent an entire episode explaining how and why so one can hardly call it "meaningless".

                        "Meaningless" would be if she was suddenly stabbed in the dark on the Galactica, with no rhyme or reason.
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                        Comment


                          #13
                          Her shadowy past was more suprising than all the deaths imo.
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