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.

Re: 17: The Hand Of God
 

I agree.

Re: 17: The Hand Of God
 

I like that.

I also like the closing shot that we saw at end of the episode.

Re: 17: The Hand Of God
 

This has been an interesting read, old thread but i just found it ;)
I know this has been done before on another movie, I had this idea for long
time that the transmission received should've or could've been perhaps Hitler
opening the Olympics. (i think 70's TV mind set prevented that) and maybe
amplified through space via gravitational lensing or accelerated through a
white hole. I think it would've made more sense, I think, to have an older
transmission.

The other idea I had was no transmission received at all, instead, Galactica's
scanners pick up a large gravitational anomoly on the planet the 3 base ships
are hiding behind. They discover the USS Eldridge. (or is that to comical?)

Cheers.

Edit: umm, that last bit was an idea for one of my stories.

Re: 17: The Hand Of God
 

So I had this idea several years ago (actually in the late 90's) that Boxeys father is..... Sire Yuri.

My reasoning:
1. Yuri was a prominent politician and Serina was a reporter. Perhaps before the Holocaust She may have "done whatever it takes" for an interview, it happens in the real world all the time.
2. Yuri certainly wouldn't have been too faithful to Siress Yuri for this.
3. Yuri and Serina both escaped Caprica on the Rising Star, we know it was a hard ship to get onto (MOTRS), obviously Yuri bought his way on board, perhaps Serina blackmailed him to take her and his secret illegitimate kid too.
4. Serina KNEW what was going on in the elite class when Apollo was investigating the food shortage. She told Apollo he wouldn't like what he found there. Security at Yuri's door was good, too good to allow thirdclass refugees into that room to see what was going on. Serina obviously had ongoing contact with Yuri.
5. She refuses to tell who was his father, if its Yuri I dont blame her.
6. Boxey is a spoiled obnoxoius brat, a chip off the old block in some regards.

Anyhow, I'm sure this idea will piss some people off.

Re: 17: The Hand Of God
 

Interesting idea.

I think most fans tend to think of Serina as being above that sort of behaviour though. Maybe it's just me, but the idea of her--or any female with two good eyes and a brain--with Uri gives me the heebie jeebies. However, we don't really learn much about her, only deduce characterization through what we're shown. And when a heroine dies so tragically, she becomes respectable and untouchable in most minds.

And Boxey wasn't a spoiled, obnoxious brat, but a traumatized child. Hey, I wasn't particularly fond of the character either, but it certainly helped mold Apollo, keeping his character clearly defined and vastly different from Starbuck's. And the way those two men clicked despite those differences kept the show even more interesting, and for that I'm glad there was a Boxey.

Re: 17: The Hand Of God
 

When the 1936 Olympics were held, TV was very primitive. Low-power transmitters, which were very few and far between, and utilizing a cruder Ampilitude Modulation system that could scarecely have reached low orbit, let alone across the galaxy. There was no TV at the Games, only film cameras.
It has nothing to do with "70s TV mind set", whatever that means. It's simpky a matter of technology.

olympic games
 

The Olympic games transmission was a major point of the Jodie Foster movie "Contact."

Re: 17: The Hand Of God
 

Never saw it.

Re: olympic games
 

:salute: ;)

Re: 17: The Hand Of God
 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.................