BSG 3.20: Continuity is Hard

[wrog]

If you really have written yourself into a corner, just go ahead and do the frigging Bobby-Ewing-steps-out-of-the-shower scene already.

We won't mind. Honest.

I could perhaps accept for now that they think they're Cylons.

But if it actually turns out that they are Cylons in the same sense as Sharon, Six, et al -- which, I might remind, is pretty much the only official sense right now in which one can be a Cylon, solarbird's Cylons for Workgroups vs. Cylons NT vs. Cylons Vista being still just a theory at this point — well,... sorry, but we'd be solidly in Retcon Territory then:

Remember the pilot?

Remember Ragnarok Station and the wonky radiation that was eating away at Leoben and Doral?
Really eating away at them?
As in hair-falling-out-ants-crawling-up-my-insides-oh-my-god-get-me-out-of-here eating away at them?

Remember how Tigh and Tyrol were both there?
... on screen a fair amount of the time actually Doing Stuff...
... on the station itself?

Did we see them similarly deteriorating in that sequence?

No?

Busted.

Comments

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Actually, if they planned this from the beginning, that scene would have played exactly the same way.

Given the foreshadowing all along the way, I think they've always known there was going to be a split among the cylons, and that some of the cylons were fundamentally different. The exact details were probably not known, and they didn't know for sure was who the cylon characters were, though they had an inkling of the likely choices down the road. Given that split, and given the need for some of these additional cylons to be embedded in the fleet without being discovered by either characters in the show or the audience watching the show, it makes sense for them to act like humans in as many ways as possible, even more than the typical human cylon models.

[wrog]

without being discovered by ...the audience watching the show,

and that's what we call Cheating the Audience. It is fully established at this point that the cylons act like humans in as many ways as possible but that they are not perfect and they get occasional stuff wrong. That's one of the major points of the Ragnarok incident.

see response to solarbird. They would still have dropped a ton of hints (e.g., Gaeta handing the gun to Boomer) if they'd known they were going to do this, so
Retcon

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I do think they intended to have Gaeta be a cylon at some point, but changed their minds to include Tigh instead. But I still don't see how this is writing into a corner when the overall story arc laid the groundwork for this and there's a clear path forward that is not at all inconsistent. It's true that there was never a detailed grand plan, and that adding details later requires some low-level retconning here and there, but I guess I see that as a good thing in this case. I really don't know how you can release a collaborative creative project in serial form without these kinds of low-level retcons, and it's just not a big deal. If this were a multi-novel series by one author, it might seem a bit manipulative and poorly thought out, but it's TV. Good TV.

[wrog]

low-level? This completely undermines and renders stupid the whole Tyrol (major character) & Brother Cavell sequence. We'll say nothing of what it does to all of the Tigh storylines.

but changed their minds

Right.
Retcon

I can do this all day.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Does it count as retcon if it actually breaks continuity? More like retdiscon.

Really, to me the whole BOB DYLAN SONG thing is much more troubling (and jarringly goofy) than whether or not they're Cylons. Not to mention the whole Starbuck The White resurrection thing.