Soon To Be Classics

Sunday, February 19, 2006

There Are Many, Many, MANY, MANY Copies

Something about the new Battlestar Galactica has been bugging me for some time now. Since learning that Ronald D. Moore was driving the ship, and hearing that the Cylons could now take human form, I expected BSG to look just like Moore's Star Trek DS9 did, where every other week one of the lead actors got to play himself as one of the shape-changing infiltrators. If nothing else, it saves a ton on special effects and also lets the actors "mug" for the cameras.

That didn't exactly happen, and let me say that I really like the job Moore has done on BSG. (As those of you who know me know, I was pretty underwhelmed by DS9.) However, something different happened on BSG which I can't wrap my brain around. For some reason, I'm stuck with the number 18 in my head as the number of different Cylon infiltrators there are. It seems to me that this number came from an early episode or the mini-series. If this is incorrect, please let me know.

To date, we've seen maybe 8 of these Cylons. There's Boomer, Six, they guy that Adama left behind, the guy they jettisoned from the ship, Lucy Lawless' reporter (who hasn't yet been exposed) and it seems like a couple of others. So if everyone knows what Boomer or Six look like, why would the Cylon's contunue churning out those copies? It seems to be a very suspect strategy to put multiples of the same person into a controlled group (IE: The Military). At one point, there were two Boomers serving at the same time, even though one was with the fleet and the other on Caprica.

Will there ever be a use for the hundreds of other Boomers or Sixes that are living on Resurrection Ships, Base Stars and Caprica? They cannot be integrated into the 49,000 people living on the fleet since everyone obviously now knows what Boomer looks like and it can be argued that everyone knows what Six looks like. Sooner or later, the reporter Cylon will be exposed and everyone will know about her. Unless they start churning out unique infiltrators, they're going to run short on their best advantage.

But of course, they have a plan. And they haven't told me about it.

By the way, the Cylons need better light on their Base Stars. Nuff said.

3 Comments:

  • Twelve models. Twelve colonies. Twelve donuts in a baker's dozen. Oops, sorry.

    As any red-blooded Colonial man will tell you, that room on the base star full of dozens of naked Boomers showed that there can't be too many.

    Remember, they revolve and they have no pants. Or something like that.

    By Blogger Shocho, at 2:25 PM  

  • Aha! So there's a MOQ (minimum order quantity) on the Boomer models.

    I can see that. Put me down for 12.

    By Blogger Mkae, at 11:57 AM  

  • Skynet had a similar problem. I think it has something to do with achieving the best COG possible and recouping all those R&D costs.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:58 AM  

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