How Could The Colonials Have Won The War?
 

I've been dabbling in outlining a remake of the original series, laying it out over an 8 season span or so. And in coming to the end, I've often wondered if people here have any idea how the fleeing colonials could have eventually defeated the Cylons?

I have my own ideas but I"m interested in other opinions as well.

Howdy Dayton3! If you ever get up this way to Little Rock, shoot me an email! Be happy to buy you lunch!

This is actually something I've debated w/a friend of mine a few times over the years and has come up again w/TNS. Honestly, unless the Colonials found either a powerful ally willing to engage in a major war or a way to introduce some sort of virus in to the Cylon computer systems, I don't see how they could hope to win back the Colonies. Even if a few more Colonial warships happened to survive (let's say, five more battlestars, even) and they were able to gather up any remaining human survivors of the Colonies and get them out of there, they'd be up against insurmountable odds.

My reasoning is this - they have no infrastructure for their society at the point of TOS. All their resources are pretty much in the hands of the enemy. What they've got left is in the form of some few industrial and technology ships that are a part of the RTF. They'd have to stop somewhere they could fortify defensively, start building up a society again and then pretty much put all of their resources - both materials and people - in to one giant war machine.

Given what little we've seen in TOS of the attitudes of the civilian population in regards to war and fighting, specifically how quickly they were eager to lay down arms at Carrilon, I just don't see them becoming a military society bent on not only taking back what was theirs, but to deal a death blow to the Cylons. Their people were usually shown to be fairly quick to turn on the Warrior Mindset, which seems to run conter to the thinking of a society that had been at war for a millenia.

Anyhow, the only way that I think they could likely take back their Colonies and defeat the Cylons is if the Colonials were able to simultaneously infect all Cylon computer systems with a virus of some sort, which in theory would be taken in to each individual Cylon thru what is likely a wireless interface. Said virus would then shut down all Cylons it came upon, leaving their ships effectively derelicts floating in space waiting to be destroyed or salvaged. Otherwise, they'd stand little enough chance of defeating the Cylons w/o a major societal mindset change a couple of generations to build a massive war fleet.

Maybe Dr. Wilker could come up with something...? :D

I think that is the only way of doing a la Independence Day. Dr Wilker in BE was working on a way to gain control of the Cylons by examining Baltar's Cylon Raider crew.

Of course, the computer virus idea assumes the Cylons were smple robots.

While that was stated in the series, and was in fact the intention of the producers once the series got under wya....................the Cylons were originally intended to be cyborgs. Along the line of HR Geigers work in my mind.

And the times we saw the Cylon Imperious Leader, he/she/it was clearly organic.

Incidentally in my story notes for a proposed long original Battlestar series, the Colonials indeed find a homeworld where their civilians can settle (ironically though, the Galactica and most of the ragtag fleet have to keep running in order to draw the Cylons away.

The Colonials also encounter both considerably more refugees from the Colonies as well as long forgotten outposts. And the Colonials ultimately replenish their forces somewhat by both the return of the Pegasus and the finding of a top secret research base.

Finally and most importantly, the Colonials rebuild their society along highly regimented and militarized lines. Think of the Greek nation state of Sparta for example

...uhhh No.

Iblis and Baltar's conversation said otherwise.

Well, even a complex robot runs on computer coding of some sort.

And what... no "love" for your fellow Arkansan...? :(
With all due respect, regardless what the initial concept was, what we got in the course of the series was a fully mechanical android-ish critter. They weren't Cyborgs at all.
As Warrior already said, BSG canon tells us otherwise. I believe that the backstory is that Imperious Leader either wore the dead skin of the last living Cylon leader or was made to appear like the last Cylon leader.
Sounds like a kewel story idea. I like that you have the RTF "dropping off" the bulk of the Colonials. :thumbsup:

How is it that they find "considerably more refugees"? I ask because I'd have thought that the bulk of the people left on the planets after the RTF took off w/as many as they could carry would have left those stranded at the mercy of the Cylons - who were exterminating humans as efficiently as they could in "Saga of a Star World", if you'll recall. I could see maybe another couple dozen ships being patched up and possibly making it out before the Cylon's returned to start their extermination. However, I'd think that would only yield maybe a few thousand, at most.

Not sayin' it's a bad idea. Just sort of challenging it to see how you explain events seen in "Saga".

Sorry for not emailing you yet Griff. I don't live at Nashville anymore. I lived there when I first registered. I then move to Monticello while I taught at Hermitaqe. Now I'm living and teaching in Norphlet, AR. And yeah, I get up to LIttle Rock quite often. I'm from Dierks, born and raised, so I was up to watch them get beat by Charleston in the state title game, AA.

I'll send you a message the next time I come. Probably in January. My wife and daughter enjoy going up there as well.

On to new (or is it old business). I'd assume in a remake of the original, we could take pretty much any route we wish (just as the "current" series has done) and I personally think making the Cylons alien cyborgs offers considererably more opportunity for long term development of them as threats.

If you watch the original premier closely, you'll notice that the Cylon annihilation of the colonies wasn't an outright invasion and occupation of the 12 colonies. It was more like a massive raid that started with Caprica, Sagitaria and Taura (the first three mentioned as being in striking range of baseships by Colonel Tigh) and then went on to the more distant colonies.

The fact that Adama and Apollo are able to land on Caprica rather safely and examine the situation indicates this.

For that matter, when Starbuck encounters Aurora later, he refers to the "Cylon raid on Caprica"

So my thinking is that the Cylons swept through the largest most populous and important colonies, bombing everything into ruin, then moved on to the other colonies. This allowed the Galactica to return to Caprica and for the arrangements made for the evacuation of survivors that formed the ragtag fleet.

I think the sheer enormity of the attack and the inevitable confusion would naturally have allowed other groups of colonists to flee the destruction.

By the way, does anyone here remember that it was actually the Colonies that started the war with the Cylons?

I believe that Adama states in SOSW that the Colonies intervened to help the Hasaris, who were in a war with the Cylons. Don't know that this constitutes "starting" the war.

Any war is winnable of course. But needless to say the Colonials would've had to radically changed the way they had fought for 1,000 years (yahrens).

This sounds like a challenge for one of my famous essays.....

I'll work up a plausible Colonial Warplan as soon as I review the current literature on the referent enemy(Cylons).

As always.....

I'll be deploying to The Desert in a few weeks, just so you know. Mid-January is all I can tell you about a departure time. So, if you can't get up here before that, I won't be around and likely won't have access to my home email, as well as possibly not to these or any other forums I frequent.
Right, that tracks. However, that doesn't eliminate them coming back and starting their "purge".
Well... I don't really trust dialogue from TOS as a general rule. It's entirely possible that they might have been talking about a previous raid by the Cylon's on Caprica prior to the Cylon Apocalypse. There is a precendent, after all, given a part of the story from "The Man With Nine Lives" revolves around Starbuck being an orphan because of a Cylon raid.
No problems there. However, my comment was about the initial group of ships that Adama was able to organize, w/a line from "Saga" being something like "every ship that can fly". So, any ship that was space worthy took anybody who could be crammed aboard leaving behind those ships that couldn't fly.

It doesn't mean that they couldn't have gotten a handful of ships repaired enough to make it out, or that there weren't other ships in transit from The Colonies to an outpost world or a commercial venture to one of the nearby alien worlds returning back home. It's entirely possible that a deep space patrol ship was missed during the initial attack and was able to put together it's own RTF.

However, we see Baltar with two Centurions on Caprica not long after Adama rallies the 220 ships of the RTF and we see them leaving The Colonies. Baltar and the Centurions are talking about how some humans try to barter w/their lives by giving information about fleeing humans. Baltar's question to one is "what is the standing order for humans?" The answer - "Execution".
As rjandron said, what started the conflict was when the Colonials interceded on the behalf of the Hasaris, who'd been attacked by the Cylons. From what it sounded like, the Hasaris asked for aid from The Colonies. I agree w/rjandron in that I don't know that I'd call that "starting a war", tho.

The point the Cylons would make was that the Colonials intervened in a dispute they had no business in involving themselves in.

I once had a complete history (my history) of the 1000 Yahren War somewhere.

Oh, right. I understand that. But from what I gathered from the brief commentary, the Hasaris asked the Colonials for help. It's not like they butted in on something for no reason.

^True. That is what I gathered as well.

Perhaps a division in Cylon Society;
 

Baltaar mentions Cylon society in disorder after losing various basestars and countless raiders and the first Imperious Leader. Perhaps building a basestar uses up very many resources for even an advanced machine society. And the losses are enough to begin to topple the Cylon Society into WAR and LESS Than WAR So Long As the Imperious Leader IS SAFE factions.

Maybe the Cylons got a veiw of Wednesday TV last night and decided that if they let the Colonials find earth and settle there, that'd be a fate far worse than anything they themselves could mete out.

Whatever scenario one decides upon, the only way to finally and utterly defeat the Cylons is to take the war to the enemy. Like WWII, where we penetrated enough to smash the enemy in his den, some plan must be formulated to penetrate the Cylon defenses, reach Cylon itself, and then utterly wipe out the enemy homeworld. If, say, a base is established, and Colonial society rebuilds itself, eventually, when there are enough Warriors and vessels, attack the Cylon frontier. As forces move to defend, flank around, and scream straight for Cylon, at top speed, not stopping to engage the enemy, making the enemy run to protect home. As the frontier defenses thin out, they can be attacked in more places, spreading enemy forces out further. Once the main force reaches Cylon, open up with everything. A probable suicide mission, yes, but once Cylon is reduced to slag, the Alliance will collapse. A society so centralized cannot hold if the center is destroyed.