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.
If Cylons have these enzyme sacs at the ends of their spines, along with whatever else is necessary to trigger them, plus whatever else is necessary to make "the right things happen", these are biological differences from humans that are not merely on the molecular level. Period. Which is all I've been saying.
You’re assuming the glowing spine must be caused by something obvious that could be spotted by a cursory and non-invasive
No, I assume it could be discovered at least on dissection. Following discovery, a non-dissective test for it could be devised.
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,
Right. So we can either think they know about it, or don't. If they know about it this doesn't jibe with their helplessness about distinguishing human-Cylon biology. If they don't know about it, despite several folks having sex with Cylons, and Cottle dissecting one, that is strange. And that about covers it.
Dead Cylon is probably very unlikely to have the glowing spine thing.
Right, but it would still have the enzyme sacs or whatever the mechanism was.
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.
Sure, but if they had at least found weird organs that secrete something, organs which humans don't have, this would be a biological difference.
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.
I'm not complaining because I don't know how it would work. I'm complaining because (for some of these) there is no possible way it could work. The difference between this and Star Wars is that Star Wars is fantasy and the Force was essentially magic, and one accepted it on that level. But BSG from the start never purported to be fantasy, it was supposed to be gritty, realistic science fiction. If what you're saying is that I just should accept these things as 'magic' in the sense that one accepts the Force in the first 3 SW films, well fine, but that radically changes the BSG universe. For the worse IMHO. Being forced to accept things as magic makes me like this show a bit less. This is precisely my complaint!
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?
Because when we were first exposed to things like that, a logical resolution still seemed to be in the realm of possibility. Glowing spine = ok, because at that point I had no idea what Cylons were under the skin, for all I knew they were mechanical. Glowing spine + being told that Cylons are biologically indistinguishable = not ok. Get it?
You're right though that it's not as if the first two seasons were perfect in this regard while the remainder have not been. Things like this did pop up and start to bother me in the first two seasons, it's just that for me the good still outweighed the bad at this point. Ok?
Well so far none of the supposed inconsistencies you’ve complained about exist.
Of course they 'exist'. It's just that you think logical resolutions for them could be cooked up, as you've labored to do here. I am not so motivated, therefore they bother me.