17: The Hand Of God
 

This thread will be for discussion on changes etc. on adapting episode #17 "The Hand Of God" and conforming the story to a continuous season arc storyline.

The Hand of God
 

The only change I would have liked to see is that instead of Apollo head to the victory party he go back to Shebas quarters and they have a little party of their own! :)

LOL! Well, when I get around to summarzing what Sanna Guerin (moderator of the fanfic mailing list) and I did with this episode in adapted form, I'll be able to mention that at the very least, Apollo and Sheba had another moment together after he and Starbuck returned from the baseship and were greeted by a cheering crowd in the landing bay. HOG shouldn't end IMO with Apollo and Sheba "doing it" because taking the relationship to the next level should be part of someone's immediate post-HOG story.

This never seemed like a finale because there were no guest stars. I would have made it a two hour episode. I also would have shown if Adama did honor his agreement with Baltar, ie freedom and a transmitter. It looked like Baltar was to be elected to the council of twelve if they found Earth and would have been the Xavier villain of 1980 with Starbuck and Apollo in hot pursuit instead of Troy and Dillon.

Hi -

Personally, I didn't think Apollo and Sheba got together very soon after HOG. I figured it would happen later in "season 2". Why? Because, and don't flame me because I never did the hard math, I just figured Serina hadn't been dead for a year yet. I just kind of thought Apollo would need another 6 months before he'd be ready to "move on". Even though Apollo has feelings for Sheba, he still wasn't healthy enough to deal with them. I mean, Sheba just called him on his "death wish" thing, would he be over it right away? Or would it take more time to break a habit he's had for a year? And how would Boxey feel about Sheba "replacing" his mom? I got the impression that Boxey never knew his "real" father and excepted Apollo easily enough, but would the child be so excepting of Sheba? But these, of course, are questions for "season 2"...

I'll stop rambling now... ;)

Welcome mocha2112. Don't worry we will not flasme you for providing intellectual stimulation. In the novels Serina wasn't Boxey's mother. She found him on Caprica. This opens up another point however, who was Boxey's real father? He is only alluded to in Saga when Serina and Apollo are in the Landram looking for Tylium on Carillon.

That's what FanFic is for! Solving all problems.

Hello -

Thanks to Jewels for the "welcome" and I'll try not to be a bore, Kingfish. ;) I did remember that Serina and Boxey thing from the novels and it was one of those things I didn't like with the books, so I choose to blow that one off. ;)

As to what we saw in Saga, I took the easy way out and decided Serina's first husband died when Boxey was an infant. One could also conclude she never married Boxey's father, thus the secrets about him, especially in the late 1970s if you get my meaning (kind of like never hearing mention about Cassie's "old job" after the pilot), but either way it didn't seem to me Boxey had any memory of him thus allowing for Apollo to be the only "father" the kid would know.

later...

On Sheba as "mom":
Oddly enough, Boxey doesn't need a new Mom, as he already has one.

One of the advantages of a remake (or just rewriting) is that we are not faced with some of the limitations that the original show was. Case in point: not to slam anybody but Glen Larson was not happy with the level of talent Marin Jansen had, and that is why Athena's part got smaller and smaller until she disappeared.
However, in the original concept it was she who was primary parent to Boxey, as his "Dad" was off flying missions much of the time.

That is, IMO, one of the best arguements for placing Boxey with Apollo; he doesn't just get a Dad, he gets a whole family (Auntie Athena, Grampa Adama, etc.)


I really like Hand of God as-is, but I also have a reservation. As Stu Phillips (who did the musical score) said in an article in Not Of THis Earth Magazine (Nov 1993), "The thing about Battlestar Galactica originally was that it had no time period. It could have been the year 1000 or 3000."
So, while I love that last scene, I don't like how it narrows the time period by giving us a specific date it must be after.

It was meant to suggest a time, and so did go against the idea that the show wasn't tied to a specific date. However, as has been discussed on several other threads, if we accept other things about the series that go against our current understanding of the way the universe works, and come up with ways to explain them, then we can probably find some way to make the message "time-less"

-JJR

The moon landing transmission is shown in part only and it would be interesting to limit the rest of the info they recieve.
We know its earth, but the colonials might not realise it for some time (if at all) if the information was fragmenatry and non specific. They would be comparing it to other human cultures like Terra and their own pioneer settlements.

I'd prefer that the confirmation of the existance of earth came from them picking up on s SETI project transmission, not a random set of radio/TV transmissions. Someone who understands the nature of such things better than I do could surely explain a more viable scenario for that.

I believe the whole Apollo /Sheba thing needs to move slowly. I agree with Mocha that he doesn't seem the type to rush to replace Serina, who was obviously the love of his life.
If you accept the twist on the Mormon idea of sealing (which is eternal) then there may actually be specific barriers to him committing so deeply to another woman. There mat even be a deifference between marriage and sealing? Adama seems to be a church elder as well as a ships captain, and a scholar of the Book, so its reasonably to make the assumption that the family is conservative in their religious views.

HOG needs to be followed with a way of adressing the fleets new situation: the cylon threat has receded, the problems of housing and feeding so many people on such a diversity of ships must be causing problems in governence and logistics that will start to impact on the fleets priorities. The council was always written as foolish, but that shouldn't continue .
If the ep was fleshed out and lengthend, some of these changes could be forshadowed, just as the timeframe and real existance of earth is foreshadowed.

The idea of unrest within the fleet replacing the pursuit by cyclons as the source of tension/conflict is a logical step. Food riots and the rise of political groups vying for control would be fertile ground, but also takes the focus off of the established characters . The telling of the Celestra incident hinged on Starbuck's connection with an old flame.

Just some thoughts, for consideration..

Cheers,
Lara

That's a very impressive render, do you mind me asking if you had AA turned on at the time? how about lense flaires?

:eek: What are you talking about...really I don't know?

Long time getting back to this thread and going over what you wrote, Lara, but better late than never! :)


Certainly not a bad idea and HOG doesn't specifically ground the events of TOS in 1969 since who knows how old the transmission is, so it's certainly possible to use that in the future. The real question is how active will Apollo be in continuing to monitor that Celestial Dome for further transmissions, especially since he never sold Adama on the idea that the transmission wasn't a Cylon lure.

I'm the hopeless romantic when it comes to Apollo-Sheba. Eventually, I see them belonging together, though I have no problem with the idea that it needs to take time for that to happen.

Some good suggestions in the rest of those thougts regarding post-HOG storylines and some of them are to one degree or another being implemented in the ongoing "Second Season project" that Senmut, myself and some people from our fanfic mailing list are doing (finished stories at http://www.galacticafanfic.com/stories/season2.html). We're on episode #15 and except for a couple cameos of Lucifer and his baseship arriving at the scene of the destroyed one in HOG, the Cylons still haven't truly reappeared!

Shameless plug!!! Shameless plug!!!!!

The best kind! ;)

Well, keep on plugging!

Athena.......
 

IMO Athena should have been in this episode and she, Adama and Apollo in the last scene.
They should have stood together remembering Zac and their mother and wife looking out into the stars.....

Athena should have been a ace pilot by then trading jibes with Starbuck during
missions. But that was almost 30 years ago......but then CGI can always be used.

Yeah, the absence of Athena and Boxey for that matter I think are ultimately the only two tiny flaws in the episode. The adaptation that Sanna Guerin and I co-wrote rectified this, in that we had a scene where it was Athena who ultimately prodded Sheba into confronting Apollo in the raider cockpit, since Athena felt for some time that Apollo indeed had some kind of unconscious "deathwish" (something I established in the "Fire In Space" adaptation). There was also a scene with Apollo and Boxey before the mission too.

I agree, EP. Athena should have been in it, with Boxey as well.
AND, call me mystical, but as the scene fades out over the Dome, the spirit of Serina, smiling down on Apollo and Sheba and Boxey.
Oh well.

I wouldn't really change the last scene though, because showing the image of the Apollo XI landing allowed the series to end on a broader hopeful note: They haven't found Earth yet, but they are moving in the right direction and it's something we can envision happening some day.

Hence the need for VS2.

(Shameless plug!)

The more the better! :D

Okay, I hate to be a party pooper here, but if I might point out, radio and tv transmissions travel at the speed of light. With that said, the signal is now 36 lightyears out from earth, or out around Denebola, a KOV star about 36.180 lightyears out.

This was the only problem I had with the series, the implication that it was a concurrent time line, reinforced with the second battlestar galactica series.

So I would have made two changes, first, when the first transmission is recieved, make it a news broadcast with date and year. During the episode, I would have other messages come in, copied by the bridge crew, ending with the "one small step for man."

This gives the Galactica crew an idea on how far back the "lost colony" had fallen.

Personally, I feel that this would have broadened the story line and given the show a better chance at surviving.

There's one other little technicality about the transmission to note if we want to be completely realistic. TV audiences in 1969 did not see the images that we see in the episode because that was film shot that wasn't developed and aired until long after the astronauts returned to Earth. The TV audience at the time was watching network animated simulations as they heard the radio transmissions live (so that means one can argue that what the Galactica picked up was some "historic documentary" aired who knows how many yahrens after 1969!) :)

Well, the Network would never think in terms of that degree of realism, EP. And people want to "see" something. I noted that too, but I just put it down to the folks at ABC assuming that we the viewers were too slow to understand without pictures.

Naturally, that kind of realism wouldn't work because only TV history buffs would understand that. Sometimes what's "realistic" would make for lousy storytelling unless you had footnotes.

This would have been a good closing shot:

INTERIOR-CELESTRIAL DOME:
Apollo and Starbuck exit the dome as the Apollo moon landing transmission is seen and heard on the monitor. Cut to a shot of space. Spiritual images of Ilia, Serina, Zac, and President Adar smiling are seen amonst the stars.

It could be maybe that broadcast was 3000 years away in the past by speed of light, You can do anything with that broadcast just by moving the Galactica closer or farther from Sol. If there is FTL, (and there must be) among the Colonials then you have at least 50,000 years past or future to play with by radio.(You cannot transmit through the galactic core region as there is a hypermass there that swallows electromagnetic radiation.)

I kind of thought that Terra was a colonial settlement gone awry.

SETI is passive reception only for a very good reason. Our general broadcasts by the time the radio waves go out about a light month are reduced to hash by local natural radio jamming. We don't aim our active radio to burn through the noise at specific targets for a very good reason. We want to find the Cylons. We don't want the Cylons to find US.

Agreed.

A good read as I always thought of Adama as a Brigham Young.

Maybe not, but if history is any guide then the real danger to the RT fleet begins after HoG as the selfish among the Exodus squander resources as they perceive the Cylon threat receding This is the time that could lead to a Donner disaster in the fleet as a part of them rebel against discipline.

See above as to what has happened as regards to the radio transmission. You have bearing only(direction) but no range (time for the radio wave transmission to cross the distance) given with which you can work.
It is just a suggestion but there might be an episode for VS2 where the politics of food production rears its head as the disenfranchised farmers appeal to Galactica and Adama for redress of greivances. Sort of like the old tenant farmer land reform problem that plagued Lincoln in the midwest during the Civil War. Those New York bankers kept trying to foreclose on the families (wives and children) of Indiania corn farmers who were off fighting to save the Union. Forty acres and a mule? That was guaranteed to veterans and freed slaves as Lincoln's solution along with a postponement on farm mortgage notes until after the war was won. Sound familiar?

Should not something of a crisis along those lines, pitting Sire Uri and his gang of never do wells, form a good basis for an episode about the fleet's plight? This is also where a Count Iblis or Baltar-like infiltrator could again rear its/his ugly head to exploit divisions within the Colonials much as Korach and his followers exploited dissension to rebel against discipline during another famous Exodus?

We have had foreshadowings of this in "Saga" and subsequent episodes. Why not bring it to a head at last and deal with it?

As always;

Glad you agree. Ah, what should have been.