This sequence is one of the most memorable in the show for me for whatever reason. It just feels like life in a space carrier in a time of war. You have mechanical failures, human error, fatigue, uncertainty, etc. I love it. The bit about pulling the valve stuck with me as well, and I think of it sometimes when troubleshooting urgent issues in production.
What killed the show later on was the writer's strike revealing that they were flying by the seat of their pants the whole time - if they had someone like JMS running the show (guy who did Babylon 5) it would have been amazing.
I see Kara's failed start, and I think:- this is what happens when you are sent into battle with something that until 5 minutes ago was a museum exhibit! I LOVE this series! 😊
I love how that even though Kara is pissed about the abort, she still follows procedure and safes the tube before going off on anyone. Such a small touch, but exactly what a military trained pilot would do
@@jetboy5589 Her viper is in the tube, inner door closed, outer door open, engines on full and waiting for the launch button to be pushed. Basically the gun is loaded and cocked. She has to make sure the tube is 'uncocked' (Safe) before being extracted. Her rant waits till after she does that.
I love how textured and 3d the characters are, it's completely missing in more modern storytelling, you can be contradictions ( as most humans are) yet still make complete sense.
At least a Jupiter-class Battlestar. She was built with an active war around her with the goal of enduring through it. Anything built after the war wouldn't have endured what the Galactica did taking the survivors to Earth.
@@dynestis2875 That depends on the model. Jupiter-class was a beast, and Galactica was the finest ship of that class in the first war. The Post-War Mercury-Class (Pegasus) Outclassed Galactica it in all aspects. Galactica was crippled from the start, since it was a flying museum in a process of decomission. Most of its outer plating was gone, It only had the port launching pod operational, and it's ammo stores were empty.
@@OpenMawProductions At the time yes, but for many people who watched Battlestar Galactica later, they never saw the mini-series and just started with 33. The mini-series was not on Netflix originally and got added later which confused quite a few people.
At first I was wondering why they struggled to deal with 2 Raiders. But then I remembered it's probably the first actual combat most, if not all, have seen. On top of that they're in old Vipers they don't know as well as the newer ones and it's the first time against an unknown enemy. They needed to get to know the Cylon's capabilities while also getting a feel for their own ships.
There is the added detail that these are the reserve pilots. Galactica's main squadron had been destroyed shortly beforehand by those Raiders. Besides Starbuck, these pilots aren't the best, and they're working in an ad hoc formation. It takes a while before Galactica's pilots become more confident and skilled. By the time they meet up with Pegasus, Galactica's pilots are beating the Cylons with relative ease as they've become more experienced.
@@Cailus3542 Yah, early in the show they have a whole episode dedicated to finding new pilots as well as training the ones they have. The lack of skill is an actual plot point.
@@damirserbanovic They do. But they don't have any ammunition at this point. Galactica was decommissioned. The only thing they had were reserve fighters. Later they go to the Ragnarok Station to get ammo.
I love how calm he is even though he knew there was a nuke incoming. The trust that the vessel was designed well, will hold and was designed to take so much punishment from serving with it for decades
Fun fact: Ronald Moore enjoyed that he didn’t need to come up with some technical speak excuse for the missile getting through like he would have done on Star Trek. She simply missed it.
This show had, hands down, the best score. Love the constant use of drums to really lay down the tension of what's to come. Then, later in the series when Pegasus arrives, the steel guitar that comes in and gives that calming, soothing relief where you're just like, "Yeeess, friendlies!!!" (which later turned sour).
So. Damn. Cool. Adama maneuvering that huge ship in combat "Bow up half, forward left one quarter" "engines all ahead full" "Ahead full, sir! Engines report all ahead full!" That feeling when Starbuck finally gets to launch and get in the fight Us fans of this stuff need to have a bake sale or something to raise some money so we can fund more of this This is the king of sci fi
If you havent seen it (you probably did, if youre a scifi fan) I would recommend the expanse. There is a bit more politics, but also a lot of personal drama and space combat akin to BSG in that series. Also interesting because its relatively realistic for a sci fi show.
Reminds me of that episode in DS9 where the Defiant's computer was fritzed by Eddington and after the cavalry was taken out, Sisko took the Defiant out with everything being done hands on.
I love all the little navigation commands they did in the pilot. They dropped that real quick in the show. Also the Cylons were terrifying in the beginning of the show, the more we learned about them, the more they were revealed to be angsty teenagers angry at their daddy.
Well, Cavill and the Dorals, and frak me, what was the black Cylon's model name? May have been, but the others, at least in the beginning, just sort of deferred to him as a defacto leader. At least at first.
Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kilotomb bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law? First Recruit: Sir! A object in motion stays in motion, sir! Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot! First Recruit: Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir! Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this husk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip! Second Recruit: Sir, yes sir!
@@piotrd.4850 Love it! I remember when I came across this conversation in-game and couldn't help but stop and listen to these 2 rookies get chewed out by their chief.
So, when are we due for for a meteor shower from Viper, Raider and Battlestar ammo that missed their target? Anyone up to try to do the math? Surely some of it's coming our way.
I like how when Starbuck's viper gets jostled, you can see her helmet seal comes undone. Even if it was a production mistake, it makes sense that a jolt like that would cause the seal to come undone.
Personally i always thought it was because she didnt pop it back in after removing her helmet on the 3rd abort, showed the side of kara that was willing to just get stuck in
Until that jolt comes at a point when you have to immediately eject. Now you're in space with an unsealed helmet. Sounds like it'd be a bit of a problem lol
I can't remember, are those mark 2 vipers? I always got the feeling in the early episodes that the pilots weren't familiar with their vipers because they were older models and that translated to the dog fights we saw. They definitely seemed to improve in later episodes
@@eschatollog9968 That's actually the perfect analogy. In BSG the first Cylon war was about 40 years ago, and it has been about the same amount of time in real life since the F-14 was in active service.
Some of the best battle sequences in sci-fi history, forgive me Star Trek and Star Wars... but the truth is difficult. Every battle was like the Battle of Endor or Wolf 359.
Frankly speaking - saying as ST fan myself - Star Trek never really worked in big battles. It was not B5. And Star Wars, especially prequels...well... had their charm, but were purposefully over-the-top. Best space combat I read about was in Starcarrier book series.
Piotr Dudała Starcarrier was and is still a good series. Very detail oriented and it was interesting to see what a “realistic” fight would look like (granted some technology while sound in concept is still very much non-existent today)
Wolf 359 is a really bad space battle. It's literally just a borg cube tearing through ill-equipped ships. Star Trek space battles were the best, when they simulated submarine warfare like the original TOS episode Balance of Terror or the space battle of Undiscovered Country. Low action and high tension. BSG and Star Wars are more naval warfare above the waterline. One way more plausible than the other.
@@JoniWan77 Well Star Wars is Space Fantasy and not Science Fiction in my opinion. All the battles there are just completely dumb from tactical perspective. Sure fun to watch but only if you don’t think about it
IMO BSG and the Expanse got the best space battles you can watch. They got the grounded nature, the charachters and the tactics to give each battle a level of tension and complexity to make things work. I find that BSG is brillant in the dramatic aspect, while Expanse is more interesting in the tactics and realism department. Kinda interesting how both are a lot about missiles and point defense though, with a somewhat grounded experience. Star Trek not keeping up with that is excusable I think, considering its about so more than a fight for survival or interplanetary war. Still, Wrath of Khan style battles are pretty neat; and DS9 dominion war is quite flashy I'd say, nothing to be ashamed of. But its really disappointing that Star Wars of all series failed to put up much after the original trilogie. Prequels were fun, but not very involved or interesting, and most of the new movies are just a bit of a snorefest. I hate how most of JJ Abram space battles are generally decided by gimmicks and relying on a pretty mediocre level of drama.
Galactica, Starbuck. The forward section of the port flight pod has sustained heavy damage. Galactica, you've got violent decompression all along the port flight pod, do you read me? Galactica?
I thought those were all the museum pieces pulled over after their regular wing was destroyed. Probably safe to assume Kara’s bird was a VII until it was lost.
@@Kokopilau77 If I remember correctly Starbuck was supposed to fly with the squadron that got disabled and destroyed by the first two raiders they saw in an earlier scene. She was replaced by someone else for that mission because she was thrown in the brig.
@@Warland3r Could have worded that better, but yeah! Exactly this. Just because your name is plastered on the aircraft, doesnt mean you actually own it or fly it exclusively
Ya, but the miniseries had some problems with the details, Galactica jumping with the pods still out and Vipers still fighting in the distance in Ragnar after it was said for Kara and Adams to be the last ones
The chill and cool professionalism of this action vs the full throttle, all hands on decks drastic desperate maneuvers as Galactica is trying to protect everything and survive
When I showed my friend this show, literally seconds before this scene, my friend goes, at least they don’t have to worry about nukes in space.” - I just looked at him like “oh you poor thing.”
Interested how they got the whole "fight with old stuff that you've never seen outside of a museum" setting right. sticking pilots used to new technology into antiquated equipment and expecting them to fight with it. Would be the same as taking the crew of an M1 Abrams, sitting them in an M4 Sherman, and telling them to go fight. No matter how well trained the crew is, the first couple fights are going to be tough because they don't know how the old machine reacts, don't have the same sort of fighting ability, etc..
To be fair, it's less WW2 to modern era, and more like 1980s to mid-2010s. Mk.2 Vipers still have digital displays, alongside analog components. Kinda like a F-14, the Mk.2s aren't in grays, but still have bright flash whites with reds for identification. The Mk.6s are meant to be much more modern representing - USAF gray, like with modern F35s The fundamentals of flight aren't different here. An F-14 is dated, but it's still a pretty effective machine in the air; just more hands on and requiring-of pilot input. The big takeway with the Mk.6 Vipers was that with a networked computer system, the vipers could automatically coordinate formation and tasking. This made engagements automated and reduced pilot labor, but meant that they could easily be hacked by the Cylons. So the Colonials had to fall back on simple communication for battle.
The military trains on the old stuff to show where the technology came from. The M1 crew might be used to the gee whiz targeting system but would soon figure out how to aim the Sherman's main gun.
@get sassy based on the BSG plot and results, more like F-15 to an F-4. The differences between 5th gen and 3rd gen are WAAAAY too far. If it was like that on the show, then the old Vipers would he getting their asses handed to them without even seeing the enemy.
One thing this show got right, is that early on everything looked rather clean, pristine, but as the seasons continued all ships, from vipers, civi ships, even Galactiva both inside and out show visible and extreme wear are tear.
Was this before Galactica docked with Ragnar station for rearming? As her AAA would have got the nuke you'd assume... Been a long time since I watched the Miniseries.
Yeah, this is before the ship was able to re-arm. At this point the ship has NO ammo, none, and is entirely defended by the Vipers, which themselves were in the frakking museum. They have bare minimum defense, and only survived because the ship was built to last
I like how that one raider tried to hack into the mark 2 Viper and it didn't work since the mark 2s used such old technology that they are impervious to being hacked XD
I don't think it counts as hacking when you are trying to activate malware that you had put in the machine. The scanning activated something that Caprica Six uploaded in the defense system, all computers that had been updated were vulnerable. While the older technology may be safe because it can't be updated, modern technology (like Battlestar Pegasus) can survive because it hadn't been updated yet.
@@hekkoCZ No, a lot of hacking involves planted malware on a system ahead of time, either through social engineering, malicious attachments in emails, physical access to systems, etc. Most hacking isn't just brute forcing your way into otherwise secured systems because it's time consuming and risky.
@@compmanio36 Yes, and Galactica would have been designed to resist brute force hacking attempts, as that was a known Cylon tactic during the war. The only time it nearly didn't was when they were forced to network their navigation computers in order to find out where the rest of the fleet had jumped to. They disconnected the network right before the Cylons broke through the last firewall.
You know, it says a lot about how big and heavily armored Galactica is that it isn't just immediately broken in half by a nuclear explosion. Sure, nukes aren't nearly as effective in space, but still, that's a lot of power to withstand.
About that...after the Cylon 'recognized' Starbuck, I don't think the attack was 'real' any more. Three nukes launched, none of them taking evasive turnings, only one made it through and it wasn't a kill-shot? Kind of sloppy for perfect killing machines, no? Why did the nukes fly in essentially straight lines, and why did the last one arc around Galactica rather than go directly in? The attackers weren't expecting to find Starbuck, and once they did they knew they couldn't destroy her. Breaking off the attack right away would be suspicious, so the attack is made to falter.
At a guess, those were smaller "tactical" nukes, probably in the multi-kiloton range (think Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The larger megaton range nukes would have been far too large to fit inside a raider like that. If Galactica took a close hit from a multi-megaton sized weapon it would likely have come out far worse than it did in this encounter.
@@pirobot668beta It didn't recognize her, it was trying to access the Cylon backdoor into the Viper's software and shut them down (as it did to the previous squadron). It failed because the Mark II Viper didn't HAVE the backdoor, and barely has a computer at all. The nuke arced into the flight pod, which is the more vulnerable part of the ship. Also, there were only two Raiders. They weren't experienced, and also not expecting to actually have to fight. Consistently in the show, Viper pilots were more than a match for Raiders, even though they were almost always outnumbered. Here, the Vipers outnumber the Raiders by quite a bit.
The response "I haven't heard that in a while" is telling; implying he has heard that (and therefore been on a colonial warship that's taken a nuke hit) before.
Single most impressive piece of tech on this show is this patently incorrect launch hook for Viper attached to the forward gear - there's no change it has a way to release the Viper at the end of the tube.
Maybe it releases before the end of the tube. That hook is not needed to get the vipers out to be honest, they are in space, there is no minimum velocity they needed for the viper to fly.
Not defending the choice but iirc the viper launch tubes are operated by magnetic forces rather than kinetic. So the hook might just be attached magnetically and is reversed at the end of the tube.
3:20 Yes, I'm sure all Vipers really give a shit about _your_ precious systems right now, what in the middle of a friggin' furball with tons of Cylon raiders.
Should have equipped the Vipers with heat-seeking missiles. Trying to shoot down small, high-speed nuclear armed missiles with a machine gun is very difficult. Seems that a civilization which has mastered trans-light speed travel would have weaponry at least as good as what we currently have.
Here's an idea. They use an EM system, but it doesn't act on the craft. It instead acts on a metal mass attached to the launch cable, and we see that metal mass moving backwards here.
0:42 I just realized that the catapult does all the work until the viper clears the launch tube. The start up sequence seems to include an engine pre-light but the real burn only happens once the ship is away.
These were the Mark II Vipers meant for the museum wing. None of them would have had the names or callsigns of active duty Galactica pilots, who would have flown Mark IVs.
@@firestorm165 OMG, I can't believe I messed that up. You're correct, the active duty pilots would have been flying Mark VIIs, not IVs. Thanks for the catch.
I would have loved to see more military drama in this show. They should have set up for more battles like some destroyers and support ships being recovered before the exodus.
@@blackjac5000 only about 5% of the fleet was not vulnerable to the Cylon shutdown signal...and thus add to that with the surprise assault and being horrifically outnumbered...
What I find interesting in this scene are the design choices. You don't see the rear blast doors closing and opening, but you do see the space doors because that's all CGI. To do the rear doors as well would have been more difficult to make because of the crew behind them. Must have been an expensive show to produce but this would have been one cost-saving measure.
That is one plot whole I find with this. IF the armor of the Galactica can take a nuke what hope would the small auto cannons of the fighters hope to do. It would be like firing 50 cal machine guns at an Iowa class battleship with 16 inch armor plate. There by both sides fighters pose no threat to the capital ships if they don't have nukes.
Galactica was really half of what it should be in the series. We all know it had only 1 flight pod operational, and its armor was removed on over half the ship.. but it you look at galactica on flash back episodes from the first war, its in dock and the top of the ship has like 20+ main cannons along the top spine. In the current events galactica only has 8, im suprised no one has mentioned this
Galactica actually has about 20 of those cannons, 4 are in the alligator head and 8 are on her keel. So Galactica in her prime would have had over 40 main cannons.
@@jeepsblackpowderandlights4305 the ship isn’t invincible, if a concentrated attack were to happen they’d be destroyed. The Galactica also wasn’t getting any time in dry dock either, the Colonials couldn’t give the ship the long service she needed. Metal Fatigue will defeat any ship.
@@jeepsblackpowderandlights4305 I know. I was saying if the ship were in its prime condition, eventually the ship would sustain enough damage to compromise the hull integrity.
one thing that people don't seem to understand about space ship construction for long term flight, it must be able to withstand atomic blasts, because of the radiation that is in space and asteroid impacts and micro meteor showers, the kinetic power of a meteor strike can be equal if not higher than an atomic blast, when you consider that meteors can travel at thousands of miles per hour, so it makes sense that the battlestars could take a hit from atomic weapons, i love that they factored that into the show, it shows that they understood what such a ship would have to be able to withstand. there are many dangers of interstellar space flight, from the above to the effects that 0g has on the human body when experienced long term, from reversed blood flow in certain veins and organs to physiological problems within the brain that could cause strokes when returned to normal gravity, NASA is only just now beginning to discover the effects of long term 0G on the human body and the outlook isn't good, extended spaceflight is going to require some kind of artificial gravity to be installed and that is before we even think of the other dangers of prolonged space flight like the above mentioned radiation and meteors, any manned mars mission is likely to be a one way trip with our current technology, the trip there alone is 6-8 months depending on when its launched, then there is landing and doing what is needed to be done, for a return trip the people may have to be on mars for a year because of the orbit of both mars and earth, with the trip there already being longer than is healthy, we only allow people to work on the ISS for 6 months now because of the health problems that begin to occur, then there is the mars gravity which is 38% of that on earth, which would take its toll on the astronauts, the trip back, another 6-8 months, returning to earth may be a death sentence.
A lot of people ask how Galactica can take a nuke and survive. Without getting too scientific, the basic gist is that the explosive force is expelled in the path of least resistance. When the nuke detonated against the armor, most of the explosion dissipated into the vacuum of space. If the nuke had penetrated the armor and burrowed into the ship before exploding, then the result would have been catastrophic. Tough ship.
Actually, in the vacuum of space, most of the nuke's energy is dissipated or converted into EM radiation since there's simply no matter to be moved to create a mechanical blast effect.
The catapult shuttle pulls the Viper from the airlock and up to it's launch speed then it hits the end of it's track where the shuttle stops. Inertia however means the Viper keeps going and since there is no gravity in the tube past the airlock, the Viper is "airborne" and can suck up the landing gear. You'll notice too that the Vipers don't light the cans until they are clear of the launch bay. It's a nice touch.
Why is my feed suddenly filling up with BSG content? Seen all the episodes multiple times (old and newer shows). Love it but c'mon I know all the words already!
Those were crazy time. I miss the old crew. I was in a war zone caused by the "good guys", watching a sci-fi TV show about a way caused by "good guys". Ironically entertaining.
It does, they have expansive flak batteries and a good point defense systems, I think they were due for a rearmament at this point. Only reason I can see for them not shooting other than not wanting to accidentally hit their own birds.
Galactica was literally on the way to be decommissioned - they're probably lucky they still had ammunition for their fighters, (the mkIV Vipers they're flying in this scene were actual museum pieces that were onboard and quickly pressed back into service, hence all the aborts they were having trying to launch them). After this they jump to a naval depot where they're able to re-arm and in the final battle of the miniseries they have a full flak defense.
Tremendous show with great plot , terrific writing and stellar acting. Interesting note that no sound emanates from the vipers only the cylons while in outer space.
Way to go cylons, you got a partial win. I know wins are hard to come since that devastating sneak attack you guys pulled off. Amazingly y'all destroyed the 12 colonies but left just one out of date Battlestar Boy did that mistake cost you It can be argued that destroying the 12 colonies wasn't near as devastating as the damage caused from this one Battlestar to the race of cylons which was reduced all the way down to one beat up base star crewed by the dumber cylons that have no way to reproduce These cylons are just one driving accident away from being extinct
Stephen Blackwell you’re forgetting the Cylon worlds left behind after they broke the armistice I’d imagine there’s plenty of Cylons back there, even if there’s no more human models left, and the Twelve colonies probably have some human survivors too, along with all the resources left behind The rebel centurions will do fine I always wanted a sequel book series set after the Cylons abandoned the 12 colonies about human survivors who rebuild there
The Jupiter-class battlestars have thick armor, yes, but nuclear weapons also aren't nearly as destructive in space as they are in an atmosphere. Anything other than a direct hit the Galactica would barely notice. In space there's no atmosphere to super-heat and create a nuclear shockwave, so the only damage you get is from the nuclear detonation itself, which has a very small effective radius.
Maybe they have HMS (Helmet Mounted Sight). Probably not, but I'm just trying to offer a theory that could be used to explain away this technical oversight.
You know every series has that universal question that's never answered. it usually involves a task or resource seemingly existing with no explainable reason. For instance in TWD it's "who's mowing all the grass in the apocalypse?". Well in Battlestar Galactica it's " Where do they keep finding replacement panes of glass for all the shattered windows? Seriously they shatter all the time yet every episode their replaced seemingly immeadiately! What do they have a storage bay on galactica filled with thousands of precision cut panes of replacement glass?! Out of all this questions left unanswered in this series, THIS always bugged me! LOL
They can probably melt the shards and make a new pane of glass. Granted tbey mught not have started their journey with such equipment, but it wouldn't be too hard to build makeshift machinery in main engineering. They might have actually had such equipment, so they didn't need to resupply as much, like how they also had a nearly 100% efficient water recycling system. They also definitely do have several spares for fast repair/replacement, ready to be installed during breaks in combat and they aren't sure how long it will last. My question is, why are they still using glass instead of something like plexiglass. Something that won't shatter as easily. Sure it's an old ship, but it was still built in their space age.
In canon, Battlestars - according to their size - can have certain levels of autarky when it comes to keeping the ship intact. Pegasus could fabricate frakkin' Vipers.
@@svenschwingel8632 No I get that. But where are they getting the resources to make glass. remember galactica had effectively been stripped of resources and was turned into a museum. I doubt seriously they had a vast store of glass resources in a ship being mothballed as a museum!
The one thing about the show that I didn't like was the digital "noise" effect that they added to make it look like a documentary. It can be a bit much on a large TV (easy to forget that when the show was new, LCDs were not really a thing and were expensive)
Yeah, they need to do something new. A prequel about the first Cylon wars would be great built on the 'Blood & Chrome' web series. How cool would watching Battlestars, Cruiser, Destroyers etc in an engagement. They even got more ships they can write into the canon with the 'Deadlock' game. Why reboot when you got it right? Its like painting over the Cistean Chapel ceiling.
In space, the engines are really just needed to give that initial burst of thrust and then ride that inertia in the direction they're flying and just "hit the gas" when they needed to change directions. Technically this is how space combat would work out IRL.
@@Boskov01 sure, but since they're dogfighting and going all around the place and have no inertia dampeners or whatever other scifi stuff, the g-forces would be brutal
@@Warland3r Inertial Dampeners or inertial compensators, you were right. But yeah, and the pilots train for that. I think it was the episode Scar that we get a glimpse of Colonial Pilot training.
@@Boskov01 yeah there was also an episode with Starbuck in the gym and Adama adding her more and more weight on her hurt leg to show her she's not ready, but such high g-forces aren't something you can train for to such a degree that a viper will do such crazy maneuvers. If you remember the episode where they attacked the tylium rafinery and Apollo went through that tunnel with a sharp 90 degree turn upwards... With that speed he would have just smashed into the end of the tunnel. Expanse has it done nicely, when they travel long distances they accelerate for half of the way and decelerate the other
@@Warland3r Dunno about in BSG but IRL fighter pilots wear inflatable compression trousers that prevent the blood from going into their legs during high-g maneuvers in order to maintain consciousness for longer.
Would have been hard to explain why a no shielded Galactica could tank nuke after nuke. And it might have been a holdover from the last war, you dont want to nuke the crap out of your battle site, that would in danger your own forces.
Galactica's Fire Solution (or Flak) can take nukes and cylon raiders/bombers out with easy. But to this be really effective vipers must be covering the breaches and blind spots of ye Old Bucket. Triple A pilots tend go for the inbound nukes and the rest for the swarming raiders and bombers. To do a successful strike on the fully armed BSG, cylon basestars must attack from *at least* three different directions at once, focusing the first attack wave on the FTL drives and to the enginering just to make sure it will be "dead on the water". Since the Colonial ragtag fleet was hiding, playing cat and rat with the cylon fleet, there was simply no time to deploy such a strategy. Clear exceptions to that rule are the battle right after the infamous Adama Maneuver on New Caprica AND the Battle of the Ionian Nebula, and the last one wasn't finished earlier by the cylons only because they were atacking from one flank only, allowing the Galactica's Flak to take a good deal of the punishment and because they're targeting the other colonial ships too. The BSG itself has an limited payload of nukes too , but they were old dated and could be possibily knocked down with easy by the cylon forces. But, to be fair, I think that, meanwhile, the change of tone of the human/cylon relationship trended to this change of tactics - less nukes, more talks. The moment the cylons learned about the existence of Earth they knew they had to colect intel in order to reach it. And during that, they became less hostile between them, specialy when Hera Agathon was born. And, of course, the budget: more nukes mean more CGI effects.
This sequence is one of the most memorable in the show for me for whatever reason. It just feels like life in a space carrier in a time of war. You have mechanical failures, human error, fatigue, uncertainty, etc. I love it. The bit about pulling the valve stuck with me as well, and I think of it sometimes when troubleshooting urgent issues in production.
Same. I always appreciated how grounded the miniseries feels in reality. Things got a little too over the top in later seasons in comparison.
What killed the show later on was the writer's strike revealing that they were flying by the seat of their pants the whole time - if they had someone like JMS running the show (guy who did Babylon 5) it would have been amazing.
@@anotherkenlon JMS was amazing, despite thinking they'd be cancelled every season.
@@anotherkenlon Was this before or after they suddenly killed off Cain? Biggest mistake IMO.
@@bellgrand Cain possibly couldn't have stayed, pretty sure she was dead right when they thought of her.
That reminds me, I'm about overdue to watch the Adama manoeuvre today.
I jumped off of my couch and cheered, I felt like a total, crazed, fanboy afterwards, but WTH 😄
Funny he also disproved the 'never jump a ship in atmosphere' trope the show and other shows/movies used.
So Say we All.
@@Hesitatedeye So say we all
@@someguy4844 Not necessarily. He may have jumped just outside of it, and allowed gravity to carry Galactica into it.
I see Kara's failed start, and I think:- this is what happens when you are sent into battle with something that until 5 minutes ago was a museum exhibit! I LOVE this series! 😊
I love how that even though Kara is pissed about the abort, she still follows procedure and safes the tube before going off on anyone. Such a small touch, but exactly what a military trained pilot would do
yes, she is a pro
What does "safes the tube" mean? Not being snarky or sarcastic...I honestly don't know.
@@jetboy5589 Her viper is in the tube, inner door closed, outer door open, engines on full and waiting for the launch button to be pushed. Basically the gun is loaded and cocked. She has to make sure the tube is 'uncocked' (Safe) before being extracted. Her rant waits till after she does that.
@@Cowracer67 Thanks.
I love how textured and 3d the characters are, it's completely missing in more modern storytelling, you can be contradictions ( as most humans are) yet still make complete sense.
Also best line: "I haven't heard that in a while"
Since it's been 40 years since the last Cylon-Colonial War, I'd say that's a well fitting line.
That a Battlestar can withstand a nuke and still fly shows what a beast a Battlestar really is
At least a Jupiter-class Battlestar. She was built with an active war around her with the goal of enduring through it. Anything built after the war wouldn't have endured what the Galactica did taking the survivors to Earth.
@@samsonguy10k there is no reason to assume post-war ships wouldn't be just as capable if not more capable
@@dynestis2875 That depends on the model. Jupiter-class was a beast, and Galactica was the finest ship of that class in the first war. The Post-War Mercury-Class (Pegasus) Outclassed Galactica it in all aspects. Galactica was crippled from the start, since it was a flying museum in a process of decomission. Most of its outer plating was gone, It only had the port launching pod operational, and it's ammo stores were empty.
@@rafaelfarias4359 also why it was a low priority for the cylons.
Fact is that nukes would have less power in space then in an atmosphere
The Mini-series doesn't get enough attention. It's so amazing in tone, depth, and quality of acting.
It's my favorite part.
The miniseries is one of my favorite science fiction movies.
Since when? It was critically accalimed across the board when it came out. It was literally the only reason the series got made.
@@OpenMawProductions At the time yes, but for many people who watched Battlestar Galactica later, they never saw the mini-series and just started with 33. The mini-series was not on Netflix originally and got added later which confused quite a few people.
seems weird now how clean and new everything looks compared to later on
J C CGI wise or model wise?
@@bcmm1880 the sets and props. the crew did an amazing job making everything look worn out and dirty as the series went on
@@JC-ze2et A lot of shows get that wrong. Like Voyager looking like it was in showroom condition after 7 years.
@@jblyon2 exactly the example I was thinking of. Voyager should have at least looked "lived in" after a while, if that makes any sense.
@@JC-ze2et Voyager was guilty of hitting the reset button from the start.
Galactica eats the nuke, spits it back at the cylons, then asks for seconds...Yea got to love that ship.
At first I was wondering why they struggled to deal with 2 Raiders. But then I remembered it's probably the first actual combat most, if not all, have seen. On top of that they're in old Vipers they don't know as well as the newer ones and it's the first time against an unknown enemy. They needed to get to know the Cylon's capabilities while also getting a feel for their own ships.
There is the added detail that these are the reserve pilots. Galactica's main squadron had been destroyed shortly beforehand by those Raiders. Besides Starbuck, these pilots aren't the best, and they're working in an ad hoc formation. It takes a while before Galactica's pilots become more confident and skilled. By the time they meet up with Pegasus, Galactica's pilots are beating the Cylons with relative ease as they've become more experienced.
@@Cailus3542 Yah, early in the show they have a whole episode dedicated to finding new pilots as well as training the ones they have. The lack of skill is an actual plot point.
and they did not have pdc for incoming misiles?
@@damirserbanovic They do. But they don't have any ammunition at this point. Galactica was decommissioned. The only thing they had were reserve fighters. Later they go to the Ragnarok Station to get ammo.
@@spartandud3 thanks for the reminder, I totally forgot about that. Maybe need rewatching it from the start
I love how calm he is even though he knew there was a nuke incoming. The trust that the vessel was designed well, will hold and was designed to take so much punishment from serving with it for decades
That and a nuke in space isn't as devastating as it is in atmosphere.
Fun fact: Ronald Moore enjoyed that he didn’t need to come up with some technical speak excuse for the missile getting through like he would have done on Star Trek. She simply missed it.
Bro in star trek no one ever makes mistakes
@S C so say we all.
to be honest, to hit alone 2 of this small missiles is like a miracle... So this is simply good writing, nobody likes a mary sue. ;)
@@dekonfrost7 Except Discovery, that whole show was a mistake.
@@attackhelicopter7403 I wish Disney understood this 😔
This show had, hands down, the best score. Love the constant use of drums to really lay down the tension of what's to come. Then, later in the series when Pegasus arrives, the steel guitar that comes in and gives that calming, soothing relief where you're just like, "Yeeess, friendlies!!!" (which later turned sour).
Plus drums have been used for millennia in military affairs so humans have grown a sense of associating them with military matters.
So. Damn. Cool.
Adama maneuvering that huge ship in combat
"Bow up half, forward left one quarter" "engines all ahead full" "Ahead full, sir! Engines report all ahead full!"
That feeling when Starbuck finally gets to launch and get in the fight
Us fans of this stuff need to have a bake sale or something to raise some money so we can fund more of this
This is the king of sci fi
If you havent seen it (you probably did, if youre a scifi fan) I would recommend the expanse. There is a bit more politics, but also a lot of personal drama and space combat akin to BSG in that series. Also interesting because its relatively realistic for a sci fi show.
Reminds me of that episode in DS9 where the Defiant's computer was fritzed by Eddington and after the cavalry was taken out, Sisko took the Defiant out with everything being done hands on.
The Expanse definitely filled a hole that BSG left behind, and you can see BSG's influence very well in the production of the show.
I love all the little navigation commands they did in the pilot. They dropped that real quick in the show.
Also the Cylons were terrifying in the beginning of the show, the more we learned about them, the more they were revealed to be angsty teenagers angry at their daddy.
It's cool to see it at first but would get old quick if they spent time on that. Just cutting to the action is better.
Well, Cavill and the Dorals, and frak me, what was the black Cylon's model name? May have been, but the others, at least in the beginning, just sort of deferred to him as a defacto leader. At least at first.
@@allenharper2928 simon
Their very old daddy... and mummy.
You know it's a well done show when you keep forgetting you're watching short clips on TH-cam and are like _wtf what happens next!?_
BSG is so re-watchable. It holds up so well.
facts
All of this has happened before, and it will happen again.
And all the bullets that missed are still traveling somewhere.
Sir Isaac Newton is in the driver's seat!
That means: Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space!
Gunnery Chief:
This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kilotomb bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law?
First Recruit:
Sir! A object in motion stays in motion, sir!
Gunnery Chief:
No credit for partial answers, maggot!
First Recruit:
Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!
Gunnery Chief:
Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this husk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!
Second Recruit:
Sir, yes sir!
@@piotrd.4850 Love it! I remember when I came across this conversation in-game and couldn't help but stop and listen to these 2 rookies get chewed out by their chief.
So, when are we due for for a meteor shower from Viper, Raider and Battlestar ammo that missed their target? Anyone up to try to do the math? Surely some of it's coming our way.
There's something cool about that quick little turn towards the action Starbuck makes after finally launching.
Look how nice and clean and shiny those Vipers were, not to mention Galactica herself.
yes, it almost looks like CGI lol!!!!
I like how when Starbuck's viper gets jostled, you can see her helmet seal comes undone. Even if it was a production mistake, it makes sense that a jolt like that would cause the seal to come undone.
Personally i always thought it was because she didnt pop it back in after removing her helmet on the 3rd abort, showed the side of kara that was willing to just get stuck in
Maybe on an Earth bound jet fighter but you'd think a star fighter helmet would have a bit better locking mechanism.
Until that jolt comes at a point when you have to immediately eject. Now you're in space with an unsealed helmet. Sounds like it'd be a bit of a problem lol
Best frakking show ever!!!! So say we all!!!!
Gabriel Paige so say we all!!😉
So say we all!
So say we all!
How many So say we all are here? Anywho, to the Galactica, best ship in the fleet!!!!
@@gabrielpaige3514
To Galactica
The friendship between Adama and Tigh is easily one of the best things about the show.
Help me I cant stop watching BSG clips! A shame I cant go back and watch this show for the first time again
I can watch these reruns a million times. I miss this series so much😭
yeah and the music was an excellent space symphony, to infinity.
The Pilot Season 1 BSG were great beyond Measures...
I can't remember, are those mark 2 vipers? I always got the feeling in the early episodes that the pilots weren't familiar with their vipers because they were older models and that translated to the dog fights we saw. They definitely seemed to improve in later episodes
Mark 2s, yep. They were literally museum pieces ffs
Something like an F22 pilot going into combat in an F4 Phantom, similar, but still different enough to be challenging at first.
Like when Rooster first hopped in the F14 with Mav, commenting on how antiquated it was and not knowing which breakers to check
@@eschatollog9968 That's actually the perfect analogy. In BSG the first Cylon war was about 40 years ago, and it has been about the same amount of time in real life since the F-14 was in active service.
Some of the best battle sequences in sci-fi history, forgive me Star Trek and Star Wars... but the truth is difficult. Every battle was like the Battle of Endor or Wolf 359.
Frankly speaking - saying as ST fan myself - Star Trek never really worked in big battles. It was not B5. And Star Wars, especially prequels...well... had their charm, but were purposefully over-the-top. Best space combat I read about was in Starcarrier book series.
Piotr Dudała Starcarrier was and is still a good series. Very detail oriented and it was interesting to see what a “realistic” fight would look like (granted some technology while sound in concept is still very much non-existent today)
Wolf 359 is a really bad space battle. It's literally just a borg cube tearing through ill-equipped ships. Star Trek space battles were the best, when they simulated submarine warfare like the original TOS episode Balance of Terror or the space battle of Undiscovered Country. Low action and high tension. BSG and Star Wars are more naval warfare above the waterline. One way more plausible than the other.
@@JoniWan77 Well Star Wars is Space Fantasy and not Science Fiction in my opinion. All the battles there are just completely dumb from tactical perspective. Sure fun to watch but only if you don’t think about it
IMO BSG and the Expanse got the best space battles you can watch. They got the grounded nature, the charachters and the tactics to give each battle a level of tension and complexity to make things work. I find that BSG is brillant in the dramatic aspect, while Expanse is more interesting in the tactics and realism department. Kinda interesting how both are a lot about missiles and point defense though, with a somewhat grounded experience.
Star Trek not keeping up with that is excusable I think, considering its about so more than a fight for survival or interplanetary war. Still, Wrath of Khan style battles are pretty neat; and DS9 dominion war is quite flashy I'd say, nothing to be ashamed of.
But its really disappointing that Star Wars of all series failed to put up much after the original trilogie. Prequels were fun, but not very involved or interesting, and most of the new movies are just a bit of a snorefest. I hate how most of JJ Abram space battles are generally decided by gimmicks and relying on a pretty mediocre level of drama.
It’s cool seeing combat commands getting issued in the cic, even tho they don’t seem to correlate to seeing the ship going in a straight line
"Galactica you have explosive decompression emanating from the port flight pod!"
Galactica, Starbuck. The forward section of the port flight pod has sustained heavy damage. Galactica, you've got violent decompression all along the port flight pod, do you read me? Galactica?
Her interview about not being able to remember this is hilarious. She had to put a cue card with the line in her cockpit
I used to have a lot of explosive decompression in my aft quarter. Now I eat less beans and more fiber.
Ikr
@@rickardodaggastina9057 Don't know why this quote gives me so much happiness but there it is.
Cool little detail at 2:31
Starbuck is not flying her Viper. IRL Aviators / Pilots dont always fly their own planes.
I thought those were all the museum pieces pulled over after their regular wing was destroyed. Probably safe to assume Kara’s bird was a VII until it was lost.
@@Kokopilau77 If I remember correctly Starbuck was supposed to fly with the squadron that got disabled and destroyed by the first two raiders they saw in an earlier scene. She was replaced by someone else for that mission because she was thrown in the brig.
Not only they don't always fly their own planes, they don't really have their "own" planes. Long gone are the times of Hartmann and Richthoffen
@@Warland3r
Could have worded that better, but yeah! Exactly this. Just because your name is plastered on the aircraft, doesnt mean you actually own it or fly it exclusively
Ya, but the miniseries had some problems with the details, Galactica jumping with the pods still out and Vipers still fighting in the distance in Ragnar after it was said for Kara and Adams to be the last ones
The chill and cool professionalism of this action vs the full throttle, all hands on decks drastic desperate maneuvers as Galactica is trying to protect everything and survive
To the Galactica, best ship of the fleet!!!
I really appreciate the fact the first half has no soundtrack. Lack of music makes it more tense, paradoxically
Good creatives know when "less is more".
When I showed my friend this show, literally seconds before this scene, my friend goes, at least they don’t have to worry about nukes in space.” - I just looked at him like “oh you poor thing.”
Interested how they got the whole "fight with old stuff that you've never seen outside of a museum" setting right. sticking pilots used to new technology into antiquated equipment and expecting them to fight with it. Would be the same as taking the crew of an M1 Abrams, sitting them in an M4 Sherman, and telling them to go fight. No matter how well trained the crew is, the first couple fights are going to be tough because they don't know how the old machine reacts, don't have the same sort of fighting ability, etc..
Not quite an M4, more like a M60. Obsolete but not an antique. M60's are 50 years old and still in service in a number of countries.
i would say closer example would be taking a F-22 pilot and giving him F-4 phantom.
To be fair, it's less WW2 to modern era, and more like 1980s to mid-2010s.
Mk.2 Vipers still have digital displays, alongside analog components. Kinda like a F-14, the Mk.2s aren't in grays, but still have bright flash whites with reds for identification. The Mk.6s are meant to be much more modern representing - USAF gray, like with modern F35s
The fundamentals of flight aren't different here. An F-14 is dated, but it's still a pretty effective machine in the air; just more hands on and requiring-of pilot input. The big takeway with the Mk.6 Vipers was that with a networked computer system, the vipers could automatically coordinate formation and tasking. This made engagements automated and reduced pilot labor, but meant that they could easily be hacked by the Cylons. So the Colonials had to fall back on simple communication for battle.
The military trains on the old stuff to show where the technology came from.
The M1 crew might be used to the gee whiz targeting system but would soon figure out how to aim the Sherman's main gun.
@get sassy based on the BSG plot and results, more like F-15 to an F-4. The differences between 5th gen and 3rd gen are WAAAAY too far. If it was like that on the show, then the old Vipers would he getting their asses handed to them without even seeing the enemy.
I need to rewatch this series. So good
One thing this show got right, is that early on everything looked rather clean, pristine, but as the seasons continued all ships, from vipers, civi ships, even Galactiva both inside and out show visible and extreme wear are tear.
Katee’s acting drives so much of this. She’s awesome
Was this before Galactica docked with Ragnar station for rearming? As her AAA would have got the nuke you'd assume... Been a long time since I watched the Miniseries.
Yeah, this happened before they jumped to Ragnar.
Not to mention the Anchorage would have to have automated defense systems since it was abandoned, which the cylons would have taken offline.
you are correct. this is pre-Ragnar. They had just moved the MK IIs from the starboard flight pod (museum) to the port flight pod for launch.
Yeah, this is before the ship was able to re-arm. At this point the ship has NO ammo, none, and is entirely defended by the Vipers, which themselves were in the frakking museum. They have bare minimum defense, and only survived because the ship was built to last
Tigh: Standby enemy suppression barrage.
Adama: Enemy suppression fire, all batteries execute!
Tigh: All batteries commence firing!
[Cylons retreating, after getting wreck'd by artillery]
I like how that one raider tried to hack into the mark 2 Viper and it didn't work since the mark 2s used such old technology that they are impervious to being hacked XD
I don't think it counts as hacking when you are trying to activate malware that you had put in the machine. The scanning activated something that Caprica Six uploaded in the defense system, all computers that had been updated were vulnerable. While the older technology may be safe because it can't be updated, modern technology (like Battlestar Pegasus) can survive because it hadn't been updated yet.
@@hekkoCZ I thought Pegasus survived due to the system being turned off?
@@hekkoCZ No, a lot of hacking involves planted malware on a system ahead of time, either through social engineering, malicious attachments in emails, physical access to systems, etc. Most hacking isn't just brute forcing your way into otherwise secured systems because it's time consuming and risky.
@@hekkoCZ pegasus survived because the main program that had the malware the cylons needed to hack a ship was offline.
@@compmanio36 Yes, and Galactica would have been designed to resist brute force hacking attempts, as that was a known Cylon tactic during the war. The only time it nearly didn't was when they were forced to network their navigation computers in order to find out where the rest of the fleet had jumped to. They disconnected the network right before the Cylons broke through the last firewall.
First couple of seasons of this show were awesome, miss it.
This clip reminds me of the game Battlestar Galactica online. Man do I miss that game
You know, it says a lot about how big and heavily armored Galactica is that it isn't just immediately broken in half by a nuclear explosion. Sure, nukes aren't nearly as effective in space, but still, that's a lot of power to withstand.
About that...after the Cylon 'recognized' Starbuck, I don't think the attack was 'real' any more.
Three nukes launched, none of them taking evasive turnings, only one made it through and it wasn't a kill-shot?
Kind of sloppy for perfect killing machines, no?
Why did the nukes fly in essentially straight lines, and why did the last one arc around Galactica rather than go directly in?
The attackers weren't expecting to find Starbuck, and once they did they knew they couldn't destroy her.
Breaking off the attack right away would be suspicious, so the attack is made to falter.
At a guess, those were smaller "tactical" nukes, probably in the multi-kiloton range (think Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The larger megaton range nukes would have been far too large to fit inside a raider like that. If Galactica took a close hit from a multi-megaton sized weapon it would likely have come out far worse than it did in this encounter.
@@pirobot668beta It didn't recognize her, it was trying to access the Cylon backdoor into the Viper's software and shut them down (as it did to the previous squadron). It failed because the Mark II Viper didn't HAVE the backdoor, and barely has a computer at all.
The nuke arced into the flight pod, which is the more vulnerable part of the ship. Also, there were only two Raiders. They weren't experienced, and also not expecting to actually have to fight. Consistently in the show, Viper pilots were more than a match for Raiders, even though they were almost always outnumbered. Here, the Vipers outnumber the Raiders by quite a bit.
The response "I haven't heard that in a while" is telling; implying he has heard that (and therefore been on a colonial warship that's taken a nuke hit) before.
@@locarno24 Both served in the first Cylon War where nukes were pretty heavily used on both sides.
Single most impressive piece of tech on this show is this patently incorrect launch hook for Viper attached to the forward gear - there's no change it has a way to release the Viper at the end of the tube.
Maybe it releases before the end of the tube. That hook is not needed to get the vipers out to be honest, they are in space, there is no minimum velocity they needed for the viper to fly.
It could be just to prevent the viper from moving during decompression when the gates open into vacuum.
It's possible that it releases when the gear retracts prior to the Viper leaving the launch tube.
Not defending the choice but iirc the viper launch tubes are operated by magnetic forces rather than kinetic. So the hook might just be attached magnetically and is reversed at the end of the tube.
It's also said that's how vipers land on the flight deck, their landing gear is magnetic.
3:20 Yes, I'm sure all Vipers really give a shit about _your_ precious systems right now, what in the middle of a friggin' furball with tons of Cylon raiders.
Should have equipped the Vipers with heat-seeking missiles. Trying to shoot down small, high-speed nuclear armed missiles with a machine gun is very difficult. Seems that a civilization which has mastered trans-light speed travel would have weaponry at least as good as what we currently have.
I've never understood - what's that moving thing as they exit the launch tube (0:39)
Its like the gimble on an aircraft carrier. It accelerates the craft to normal velocity saves fuel etc.
Here's an idea. They use an EM system, but it doesn't act on the craft. It instead acts on a metal mass attached to the launch cable, and we see that metal mass moving backwards here.
All the battles in the mini series are brilliant
BEST Dramatic Science Fiction Series *ever* MADE. BAMM!!
1:52 the chief looking like megaman
Bears.
Beets.
Battlestar Galactica.
0:42 I just realized that the catapult does all the work until the viper clears the launch tube. The start up sequence seems to include an engine pre-light but the real burn only happens once the ship is away.
It's really a shame the later seasons weren't nearly as good as the beginning of the first one.
Great show for 3 seasons then slowly wilted.
i LOVED IT. Right up until 4:26 when incompetent sound leveling blasted high volume.
I just noticed the viper that Starbuck was piloting had its Call Sign, “CPT Raymond Lai ‘RAYGUN”
It is likely she manned the first viper she saw.
noticed it too. Paused it to double check.
These were the Mark II Vipers meant for the museum wing. None of them would have had the names or callsigns of active duty Galactica pilots, who would have flown Mark IVs.
@@Arisugawa_dg close but they were using MK VII vipers before they got blown up
@@firestorm165 OMG, I can't believe I messed that up. You're correct, the active duty pilots would have been flying Mark VIIs, not IVs. Thanks for the catch.
I would have loved to see more military drama in this show. They should have set up for more battles like some destroyers and support ships being recovered before the exodus.
In Razor they showed the rest of the fleet succumbing to the Cylons' shutdown signal, so it wouldn't have mattered.
@@blackjac5000 only about 5% of the fleet was not vulnerable to the Cylon shutdown signal...and thus add to that with the surprise assault and being horrifically outnumbered...
Man, imagine how many pilots could have been saved if they used plot armor.
They did. Starbuck even survived dying by retroactive application of it.
@Grim Looters But Katie Sackhoff got paid all the same.
@@TommygunNG -- well only needed two Starbucks ... the Cylon models had millions!? 0.o
What an amazing show!
Brace for contact! Even knows a nuke is incoming. No one braces.
I'm about to launch into a pitch black space. Shine some lights in my eyes and light my face up so I can do my job.
Every Sci-Fi show does this. It's goofy and would not work, yeah. But it's all for the audience. Otherwise, we'd be staring at identical helmets.
What I find interesting in this scene are the design choices. You don't see the rear blast doors closing and opening, but you do see the space doors because that's all CGI. To do the rear doors as well would have been more difficult to make because of the crew behind them. Must have been an expensive show to produce but this would have been one cost-saving measure.
@David Davies Could they have CGI’d the doors in by using green screen on sliding walls? 🤔
@@UGNAvalon Probably. But again it's kind of like creating more expense where it isn't needed.
Where does the bsg get all its ordnance and fuel and food and water from to maintain its operational status ?
They are so green at this point^^
Super Green!
That is one plot whole I find with this. IF the armor of the Galactica can take a nuke what hope would the small auto cannons of the fighters hope to do. It would be like firing 50 cal machine guns at an Iowa class battleship with 16 inch armor plate. There by both sides fighters pose no threat to the capital ships if they don't have nukes.
casting EJO. fkn genius.
Galactica was really half of what it should be in the series. We all know it had only 1 flight pod operational, and its armor was removed on over half the ship.. but it you look at galactica on flash back episodes from the first war, its in dock and the top of the ship has like 20+ main cannons along the top spine. In the current events galactica only has 8, im suprised no one has mentioned this
Galactica actually has about 20 of those cannons, 4 are in the alligator head and 8 are on her keel. So Galactica in her prime would have had over 40 main cannons.
@@jamesxiaolong2199 makees you wonder with the right personel, flgitth deck and fully armored and gunned... how is that ship even destructable
@@jeepsblackpowderandlights4305 the ship isn’t invincible, if a concentrated attack were to happen they’d be destroyed. The Galactica also wasn’t getting any time in dry dock either, the Colonials couldn’t give the ship the long service she needed. Metal Fatigue will defeat any ship.
@@jamesxiaolong2199 i ment if she was in prime condition.. not with her cracking beams
@@jeepsblackpowderandlights4305 I know. I was saying if the ship were in its prime condition, eventually the ship would sustain enough damage to compromise the hull integrity.
What is the Galactica made of that it can tank a direct hit from a nuke like that
one thing that people don't seem to understand about space ship construction for long term flight, it must be able to withstand atomic blasts, because of the radiation that is in space and asteroid impacts and micro meteor showers, the kinetic power of a meteor strike can be equal if not higher than an atomic blast, when you consider that meteors can travel at thousands of miles per hour, so it makes sense that the battlestars could take a hit from atomic weapons, i love that they factored that into the show, it shows that they understood what such a ship would have to be able to withstand.
there are many dangers of interstellar space flight, from the above to the effects that 0g has on the human body when experienced long term, from reversed blood flow in certain veins and organs to physiological problems within the brain that could cause strokes when returned to normal gravity, NASA is only just now beginning to discover the effects of long term 0G on the human body and the outlook isn't good, extended spaceflight is going to require some kind of artificial gravity to be installed and that is before we even think of the other dangers of prolonged space flight like the above mentioned radiation and meteors, any manned mars mission is likely to be a one way trip with our current technology, the trip there alone is 6-8 months depending on when its launched, then there is landing and doing what is needed to be done, for a return trip the people may have to be on mars for a year because of the orbit of both mars and earth, with the trip there already being longer than is healthy, we only allow people to work on the ISS for 6 months now because of the health problems that begin to occur, then there is the mars gravity which is 38% of that on earth, which would take its toll on the astronauts, the trip back, another 6-8 months, returning to earth may be a death sentence.
Man, they all look so young.
Makes me feel old
They HAVE TO reboot this amazing show!
They are. But I don't think you're gonna like it.
That's just frakkin' cool I don't care how you paint it.
A lot of people ask how Galactica can take a nuke and survive. Without getting too scientific, the basic gist is that the explosive force is expelled in the path of least resistance. When the nuke detonated against the armor, most of the explosion dissipated into the vacuum of space. If the nuke had penetrated the armor and burrowed into the ship before exploding, then the result would have been catastrophic. Tough ship.
Actually, in the vacuum of space, most of the nuke's energy is dissipated or converted into EM radiation since there's simply no matter to be moved to create a mechanical blast effect.
What are these things made out of that allows it to take a Nuc. Broadside?
Plot Armor
One thing how does the viper retract it’s landing gear in the tube when their heading through it after launch
The catapult shuttle pulls the Viper from the airlock and up to it's launch speed then it hits the end of it's track where the shuttle stops.
Inertia however means the Viper keeps going and since there is no gravity in the tube past the airlock, the Viper is "airborne" and can suck up the landing gear.
You'll notice too that the Vipers don't light the cans until they are clear of the launch bay.
It's a nice touch.
@@pogo1140 yeah, and how is this forward grappling slider released from landing gear ? ;)
@@piotrd.4850 Same way it's released on an aircraft carrier catapult or a crossbow.
Why is my feed suddenly filling up with BSG content? Seen all the episodes multiple times (old and newer shows). Love it but c'mon I know all the words already!
looking at fresh painted white vipers and galactica still shiny its so weird, they end up so beaten at the end of the show lmao
Those were crazy time. I miss the old crew. I was in a war zone caused by the "good guys", watching a sci-fi TV show about a way caused by "good guys". Ironically entertaining.
How does the Galactica not have PDC's like in naval ships or even like the ships in the Expanse?
It does, they have expansive flak batteries and a good point defense systems, I think they were due for a rearmament at this point. Only reason I can see for them not shooting other than not wanting to accidentally hit their own birds.
Galactica was literally on the way to be decommissioned - they're probably lucky they still had ammunition for their fighters, (the mkIV Vipers they're flying in this scene were actual museum pieces that were onboard and quickly pressed back into service, hence all the aborts they were having trying to launch them). After this they jump to a naval depot where they're able to re-arm and in the final battle of the miniseries they have a full flak defense.
They had not visited the supply depot for ammo yet. All they had was bullets for the fighters.
Tremendous show with great plot , terrific writing and stellar acting. Interesting note that no sound emanates from the vipers only the cylons while in outer space.
Way to go cylons, you got a partial win. I know wins are hard to come since that devastating sneak attack you guys pulled off. Amazingly y'all destroyed the 12 colonies but left just one out of date Battlestar
Boy did that mistake cost you
It can be argued that destroying the 12 colonies wasn't near as devastating as the damage caused from this one Battlestar to the race of cylons
which was reduced all the way down to one beat up base star crewed by the dumber cylons that have no way to reproduce
These cylons are just one driving accident away from being extinct
Just like North Korea, Aye?
Well, the mistake did not completely cost them. After all, you, like myself, are half-cylon.
Stephen Blackwell it was their own fault.. that they had a civil war.. Galactica didn’t have to do too much ...
Stephen Blackwell you’re forgetting the Cylon worlds left behind after they broke the armistice
I’d imagine there’s plenty of Cylons back there, even if there’s no more human models left, and the Twelve colonies probably have some human survivors too, along with all the resources left behind
The rebel centurions will do fine
I always wanted a sequel book series set after the Cylons abandoned the 12 colonies about human survivors who rebuild there
I mean, they left 2 battlestars but Lee decided frack it, loosing humanities best defence is worth it for PLOT!
Just goes to show how thick the armour is on the Galactica as it takes a direct hit from a tactical nuke. She may be old, but god she's tough.
The Jupiter-class battlestars have thick armor, yes, but nuclear weapons also aren't nearly as destructive in space as they are in an atmosphere. Anything other than a direct hit the Galactica would barely notice. In space there's no atmosphere to super-heat and create a nuclear shockwave, so the only damage you get is from the nuclear detonation itself, which has a very small effective radius.
Did not ask when I saw this but I have to ask now. So galactica has hull plating that can withstand nuclear detonation? Impressive.
I don't get why adama said 'brace for impact' just to his XO like shouldb't that be heard across the ship?
The Space combat in BSG was really well done but the one thing I never understood was why the Vipers didn't seem to have any sort of gun sight
They had a gun sight. The nose of the vessel.
Maybe they have HMS (Helmet Mounted Sight). Probably not, but I'm just trying to offer a theory that could be used to explain away this technical oversight.
Best FRAKKEN show!!
Not how nukes in space works, but I'm willing to cut BSG more than usual slack. It's a good opera.
I know I can't be the only one who uses the word "frak" in his daily life. 😊
There were always like hundreds of cylon fighters and only about a dozn or so colonials. how did they survive for that long is a mystery
Just shows how much a beast this ship was. It took a NUKE and kept going through the whole show. "Bucket?" Yeah right!
It was designed to.
You know every series has that universal question that's never answered. it usually involves a task or resource seemingly existing with no explainable reason. For instance in TWD it's "who's mowing all the grass in the apocalypse?". Well in Battlestar Galactica it's " Where do they keep finding replacement panes of glass for all the shattered windows? Seriously they shatter all the time yet every episode their replaced seemingly immeadiately! What do they have a storage bay on galactica filled with thousands of precision cut panes of replacement glass?! Out of all this questions left unanswered in this series, THIS always bugged me! LOL
They can probably melt the shards and make a new pane of glass.
Granted tbey mught not have started their journey with such equipment, but it wouldn't be too hard to build makeshift machinery in main engineering. They might have actually had such equipment, so they didn't need to resupply as much, like how they also had a nearly 100% efficient water recycling system. They also definitely do have several spares for fast repair/replacement, ready to be installed during breaks in combat and they aren't sure how long it will last.
My question is, why are they still using glass instead of something like plexiglass. Something that won't shatter as easily. Sure it's an old ship, but it was still built in their space age.
In canon, Battlestars - according to their size - can have certain levels of autarky when it comes to keeping the ship intact. Pegasus could fabricate frakkin' Vipers.
@@svenschwingel8632 No I get that. But where are they getting the resources to make glass. remember galactica had effectively been stripped of resources and was turned into a museum. I doubt seriously they had a vast store of glass resources in a ship being mothballed as a museum!
The one thing about the show that I didn't like was the digital "noise" effect that they added to make it look like a documentary. It can be a bit much on a large TV (easy to forget that when the show was new, LCDs were not really a thing and were expensive)
And NBC wants to reboot Galactica for the Peacock Network? Yea, probably going to suck.
I’m wondering if they’ll reboot the original or reimagined series.
Yeah, they need to do something new. A prequel about the first Cylon wars would be great built on the 'Blood & Chrome' web series. How cool would watching Battlestars, Cruiser, Destroyers etc in an engagement. They even got more ships they can write into the canon with the 'Deadlock' game. Why reboot when you got it right? Its like painting over the Cistean Chapel ceiling.
@@daverage4729 I read it was going to be a new reboot . They said to honor both new and old series.
@@Omega_X_Factor a new reboot, what I read.
No reboot, a spin-off
what's the next part?
obscure fact: apparently the colonies use Allen-Bradley 800T push-buttons in there control consoles 0:35
Beste manier om dat te zeggen, brace for contact!
Star Wars and Trek ship shields after getting shot 10 times: 💀
Shieldless Battlestars after taking a nuke: 🗿
did the vipers like forget to use their engines?
In space, the engines are really just needed to give that initial burst of thrust and then ride that inertia in the direction they're flying and just "hit the gas" when they needed to change directions. Technically this is how space combat would work out IRL.
@@Boskov01 sure, but since they're dogfighting and going all around the place and have no inertia dampeners or whatever other scifi stuff, the g-forces would be brutal
@@Warland3r Inertial Dampeners or inertial compensators, you were right. But yeah, and the pilots train for that. I think it was the episode Scar that we get a glimpse of Colonial Pilot training.
@@Boskov01 yeah there was also an episode with Starbuck in the gym and Adama adding her more and more weight on her hurt leg to show her she's not ready, but such high g-forces aren't something you can train for to such a degree that a viper will do such crazy maneuvers. If you remember the episode where they attacked the tylium rafinery and Apollo went through that tunnel with a sharp 90 degree turn upwards... With that speed he would have just smashed into the end of the tunnel.
Expanse has it done nicely, when they travel long distances they accelerate for half of the way and decelerate the other
@@Warland3r Dunno about in BSG but IRL fighter pilots wear inflatable compression trousers that prevent the blood from going into their legs during high-g maneuvers in order to maintain consciousness for longer.
Does anyone know why the nukes were used so infrequently as the series went on? Especially since they were so devastating
Would have been hard to explain why a no shielded Galactica could tank nuke after nuke. And it might have been a holdover from the last war, you dont want to nuke the crap out of your battle site, that would in danger your own forces.
They dropped almost all of them on the colonies.
Galactica's Fire Solution (or Flak) can take nukes and cylon raiders/bombers out with easy. But to this be really effective vipers must be covering the breaches and blind spots of ye Old Bucket. Triple A pilots tend go for the inbound nukes and the rest for the swarming raiders and bombers.
To do a successful strike on the fully armed BSG, cylon basestars must attack from *at least* three different directions at once, focusing the first attack wave on the FTL drives and to the enginering just to make sure it will be "dead on the water". Since the Colonial ragtag fleet was hiding, playing cat and rat with the cylon fleet, there was simply no time to deploy such a strategy.
Clear exceptions to that rule are the battle right after the infamous Adama Maneuver on New Caprica AND the Battle of the Ionian Nebula, and the last one wasn't finished earlier by the cylons only because they were atacking from one flank only, allowing the Galactica's Flak to take a good deal of the punishment and because they're targeting the other colonial ships too.
The BSG itself has an limited payload of nukes too , but they were old dated and could be possibily knocked down with easy by the cylon forces.
But, to be fair, I think that, meanwhile, the change of tone of the human/cylon relationship trended to this change of tactics - less nukes, more talks. The moment the cylons learned about the existence of Earth they knew they had to colect intel in order to reach it. And during that, they became less hostile between them, specialy when Hera Agathon was born. And, of course, the budget: more nukes mean more CGI effects.
@@emersonalencarjunior8291 Thank you for the very detailed response. That made a lot of sense.
Plot armour.