Ok. Well, humans don't. And Cylons evidently do, or something like it. So something about their biology is pretty different. In saying this I'm not "assuming" anything in particular about the mechanism except that the result is (evidently) a glowin' spine. Cylons have a fricking glowing spine and humans don't. They don't have glowing spine, they don't have glowing stuff near their spine, they don't have organs that secrete stuff that combines to glow near their spine, none of it. This is a not-very-subtle biological difference and thus (whatever the precise mechanism) ought to be usable for making a distinction between Cylons and humans.
Why are you even arguing this point? I doubt you actually disagree.
add to that the fact that we don’t know if the humans even know about the glowing spine thing.
Aha. I expected that explanation to come up. But in that case my next question will just be: why not?
Cuz humans haven't really delved all that much into Cylon biology. Right? (Even leaving aside the fact that numerous humans have had sex with Cylons now without, according to your story here, ever noticing it.) I guess humans kinda sweepingly concluded, or Doc Cottle said offhandedly early on, or something, that Cylons and humans were indistinguishable, and that was that. No one got curious. No one asked questions. No one said gee I wonder what's under the hood. There was the short time period of the (supposedly) failed Baltar test, but since then no one's really been all that curious. If you're going to try to tell me that humans haven't looked at Cylon biology enough to learn about the glowing spine, that is.
So maybe you're right that humans haven't based a test on the glowing spine for the simple reason that they don't even know about it. But that would only make them stupider and even more unbelievably incurious in my book. In other words, it would remain a 'believability' strike against BSG's writing, just for a different reason.
If you don’t know HOW a critter is glowing you can’t test for IF they can glow. How do you look for glowing stuff in the spine if you don’t know how they glow?
Well at the very least to even get to that point, you have to dissect the critter and poke around in him and try to figure out what makes him tick. In the process you'd encounter organs and chemicals that are at least somewhat dissimilar from what humans have. Unless you're really trying to claim here that it's physically possible for Cylons to be both indistinguishable from humans on all but the molecular level and have spines that can freaking glow. But I don't think that's believable and this constitutes my complaint.
Eventually you just have to accept that it’s fiction.
Um, it's not that I "don't accept" that it's fiction. It's that the fictionality of it is too jarringly obvious sometimes. And this is not a good property of science fiction, which is by its very nature speculative. What you're really saying is that it's on some level okay to be unbelievable/implausible 'because it's fiction'. But by saying that you're no longer even arguing with me.
Remember air tanks don’t really explode like in Jaws either, but it works in the movie so you move on.
If the things I'm talking about 'worked' in BSG then I'd move on as well. My point is precisely that they don't 'work'. Remember, I'm totally able to let slide things such as walking gun-toting robots with a pointless sliding red eye, giant starships, etc etc etc. It's because sci-fi asks you to suspend your disbelief to such a great extent to begin with, that getting the world consistent and believable (on its own terms) is so important. BSG, for all its merits, has faltered in this regard.
And actually I don’t WANT them to explain those little craps. Story points, like how long has Tigh been a Cylon, should be explained, tech points shouldn’t.
I don't nec. want them to 'explain' it either. But I do want to be able to tell myself that an explanation is possible. For many of the things I'm talking about, I don't think a true explanation is logically possible.
If things mesh all the way through the story then there’s no reason to continue telling the story.
I don't really agree with this kind of thing. In fact it's a weird thing to say (try repeating it back to yourself).
Part of the point of having mysteries in a story is to give the viewer a reason to watch the next episode.
'Mysteries' and 'unexplainable, unresolved inconsistencies and fantastical notions' are not one and the same. It's not as if this is an Inspector Poirot story and I'm complaining that they haven't revealed the murderer on page 1. This is a speculative fiction story (that purports to show a rich, alternate universe populated by faraway humans) and my complaints are about technological nonsense, humans who don't behave in believable ways, etc. It's not as if the glowing spine is a 'mystery' in BSG. The glowing spine is just an unexplained thing that makes no sense (and which was thrown in there 'because it would be cool', most likely) in BSG. Not. the. same. thing.
You’re demanding episodic TV, all mysteries solved by the end of each episode, no dangling questions, no reason from this week to watch next week.
No, I'm really not. And you're asserting two things here that I really disagree with, (1) that stuff like the glowing spine constitutes some sort of 'mystery', and (2) the main reason to watch serial drama is to learn what the solutions to the previous week's 'mysteries' are. Becuase you're implying that without 'mysteries' there would be 'no reason' to keep watching. But this leaves out a whole host of other reasons, including characterization, interesting themes, action, adventure, heroism, tragedy etc etc. Many of the most successful dramas involve very few 'mysteries' as such. You really can't be saying that the whole point of watching serials is merely to go from one 'mystery' to the next.
I’m saying if you don’t sense 10 years worth of pre-thought behind BSG it’s because it’s not there.
Indeed.
You might not want to make it seem like that’s the only kind of story you like, but your complaints demonstrate that really is the only kind of story you like.
No they don't. Again, one of my favorite shows of all time was Deadwood and I do not perceive Deadwood to have been pre-thought-out. Are you just ignoring the part where I said that?
Which is fine, like whatever kind of story you want, but it’s clear that your complaints really boil down to BSG isn’t your type of story.
Well, wait. I still watch. And I loved it the first two seasons. How does that add up to "not my type of story"? It's not my type of story yet I somehow loved it the first two seasons? Huh?
Again, I'm just disappointed in it.
None of claimed inconsistencies exist,
None. None! There are NO inconsistencies whatsoever in BSG. NONE! Got it.
I doubt you really believe that so I'll chalk that up to hyperbole.
It could be a subtle biological difference, that’s what I’ve been telling you. Who knows how it glows, could be one little enzyme sack at each end of the spine in the bone and the right things happen and woosh there’s a glow. You ever seen how big a healthy gallbladder is? Or an appendix? Really easy for little things like that to hide, and if they’re at opposite ends of the spine who’s going to think they work in conjunction?
I’m arguing the point because you don’t actually have one. You’re assuming the glowing spine must be caused by something obvious that could be spotted by a cursory and non-invasive (since you want them to use it to detect live Cylons) procedures. I’m pointing out that what we know about bioluminescence says 100% the opposite, that indeed it would be caused by something inobvious, difficult to figure out and probably requiring dissection to find once you even know what was causing it.
What “aha” I pointed out over the weekend that we’ve never seen a human actually see the glowing spine on a Cylon. which is the answer to your question. We’ve never seen a human see the glowing spine, we have no way to know if a human has ever seen the glowing spine, anything else is again assumption on your part.
I’m sure folks like the doctor have been curious. Let’s keep in mind that for most of the post attack time Cottle has been one of the few doctors in the entire fleet. Just how much time and opportunity do you think he had? Even if he had lots of time on his hands, which it never looks like he does, he had ONE Cylon to work with and it was dead. Dead Cylon is probably very unlikely to have the glowing spine thing.
Sorry but your objection is base entirely on your assumption. You assume the glowing spine is easy to decipher and then detect, you assume they know about it, you assume they had tons of time to work massive experiments. Remember they had a computer programmer (Baltar) working on what was essentially a biology problem (detecting differences between what’s basically subspecies). They’re not in a situation to make any of your assumptions come true.
No actually the first thing you need to get to that point is to know it glows. If you don’t know that the best you can hope for is to find a couple of weird organs that secrete something that appears completely pointless. To borrow a concept from Rumsfield, it’s the difference between a known unknown (we know it glows but we don’t know how) and an unknown unknown (we don’t know it glows so we don’t even know we should wonder why). You’re acting like it’s in the first group but as far as we know it’s in the second.
Most of the stuff you’re asking for is explanation of the Force type junk. How do Cylons download? Don’t know, we can theorize but we don’t know. How do Cylons get info through the goo? Don’t know, we can theorize but we don’t know. And the lesson from Star Wars is it’s better to NOT explain that stuff. The Force became stupid after the midichlorian thing. JMS never bothered to explain how telepaths work, how hyperspace works, how the Great Machine works, how time travel works, they all just do. Much vaster more important parts of B5 go unexplained than in BSG, and you’re not complaining about those. Why do all these things have to be explained for BSG, they just work, it’s a story, make believe, midichlorians would only screw it up.
No you DO want them to explain it. If you didn’t want them to explain it it wouldn’t be on your list of “inconsistencies”. when you complain that you don’t know how it would work that’s wanting it explained, that’s asking for midichlorians. You can pretend you don’t, but the very fact that you asked the question proves you do.
Actually the resolution of long term plot points is the reason to keep on arc serials. That’s why they make them that way, to hook the viewers. That’s why in this time period of extra competition the networks have grown so fond of arc serials and moved away from pure episodic. It’s emotionally easier to miss an episode of episodic TV, and once you miss one you might miss another and another and another and then they’ve lost you. Arc TV has an extra addictive factor, you know if you miss one episode you miss part of the story, that the story and the characters will be in a different place, so you don’t want to miss any and they keep their audience. It’s been the key to comic books success for a long time, publishing house have gotten into it and are now constantly pushing for everything to be a series, and TV has grabbed the idea too.
How could you have loved the first two season? Half your complaints date back to the first half of the first episode of the mini-series. Glowing spine goes all the way back to the start, why is that so bad now when you loved it the first season?
Well so far none of the supposed inconsistencies you’ve complained about exist. There certainly are some, every story has some, even B5, but none of the ones you’ve mentioned exist. They’re all basically based off either your assumptions about what’s happened off camera (the humans knowing about the glowing spine but never using that info), or you wanting midichlorians, neither of those sources are a problem with BSG.