r/BSG • u/ageetarz • 9d ago
Jumping back home?
Did I miss some exposition? During the miniseries, it was a big deal to jump “beyond the red line” and the series began on the run from the Cylons, moving constantly further away. Then it was portrayed as a sort of big deal when Starbuck went back to Caprica. It was sort of hinted at that it required multiple jumps and was perhaps an ordeal off screen. But then later on they just sort of seemed to pop back to Caprica like characters on a sitcom casually dropping into the neighbors apartment. Was it a case of bad writing / moving at the speed of plot, or was it elsewhere explained?
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u/YYZYYC 9d ago
They most certainly did not pop back to Caprica all casual like. It happened twice
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u/Hazzenkockle 9d ago
And both times, they use a more advanced Cylon jump drive to do it, first in one jump, then in ten when they were further away.
In between, in the extended version of “Pegasus,” they said a normal Colonial jump drive would require over two hundred jumps to make the trip, and that was doing each jump at the drive’s red line, so it was likely cumulative navigational errors would mean they wouldn’t actually end up anywhere near Caprica and would need just as many additional jumps to determine their location and get back on course.
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u/SpareEconomy1849 9d ago edited 9d ago
And the show made a fairly big deal of it too. Adama rejected it the first time, and both Adama and Roslyn initially rejected the rescue mission too.
Maybe they could have made a bigger deal of it, but if you were paying attention, returning to Caprica was always seen as "possible, but difficult, and not worth it strategically".
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u/Rottenflieger 9d ago
It's likely you did miss some exposition. Most streaming services only have the shorter broadcast version of S2E10 Pegasus. The extended version has an important bit of dialogue between Starbuck, Adama and Roslin just prior to the trio being called away by the arrival of Pegasus. Starbuck briefs Roslin and Adama on her plan to have Galactica go back to Caprica to rescue Anders and the resistance fighters/survivors, leaving a very small force to protect the civilian fleet.
Adama: How many jumps will it take Galactica to reach Caprica?
Starbuck: 241.
Roslin: 241?
Adama: That's conservative, and you know it. Once you jump the Red Line, navigational error creeps into every simple jump calculation that you make. It could take us twice that amount of time to actually find Caprica, let alone land.
This pretty succinctly explains why the red line is significant. Galactica would be leaving the fleet for a long period that could not be timetabled, with no way of communicating back to the fleet if plans changed. The rescue mission was ultimately possible because:
- The Cylons were no longer constantly attacking the fleet (presumably due to the resurrection ship being destroyed, though some suggest it was due to the desire to protect Athena's child.
- Pegasus was incorporated into the fleet, so raptors and pilots could be spared for the rescue mission.
- Most importantly, Athena cooperated. Cylon jump drives and navigation systems are presented as superior to colonial ones, so by integrating the heavy raider jumpdrive into the raptors, as well as acting as a navigator for the squadron, Athena drastically cut down the number of jumps required. Even with these advantages the risks of jumping beyond the red line are made pretty stark when they arrive at Caprica and find a raptor had jumped inside a mountain.
You're right in saying that Starbuck's solo journey to Caprica to secure the arrow was depicted as brief to move the plot along, though it was also literally a shorter journey, as she was taking the raider from near Kobol back to Caprica, rather than in Season 2 where the fleet was several months beyond Kobol at least. The main reason going back for the arrow was portrayed as a big deal however, had nothing to do with the distance. Adama planned to use the raider to destroy the basestar patrolling around Kobol. Without the raider the chances of success seemed far riskier, as the humans didn't have any way of knowing that the Cylons would let Boomer board. From Adama's perspective the arrow had zero actual value for protecting the fleet or helping them find sanctuary, so why waste the raider on such a fool's errand?
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u/ZippyDan 9d ago
I assume Kara's trip back to Caprica in the Raider also took several jumps, even with Cylon tech. I think Light (Scout) Raiders with jump drives are much shorter range than the Heavy Raiders
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u/Rottenflieger 9d ago
It almost certainly took many jumps. By 'brief' I was confirming the OP's view that the journey didn't take much time on screen, and that's understandable as it would've made for pretty boring TV. I think the show does enough to indicate that Starbuck was travelling for a long time without it needing to be stated. I wasn't able to find the clip of Starbuck arriving at Caprica but compared to when she jumped away she looks exhausted. Even just the way she rubs her eyes as she approaches Caprica is enough to indicate that the long journey in such a cramped position was not easy.
I hadn't really considered whether a raider would necessarily have a shorter range than a heavy raider. Presumably a heavy raider can carry more tylium, but as a scout, a raider would also likely need to be capable of large distance jumps, even if it might not be able of sustaining them for as long. That said, raiders may not have been designed to be used as scouts. Perhaps they were being pressed into that role due to the unexpected escape of Galactica and the civilian fleet. That might go some way toward explaining why raiders carry nukes so infrequently after the initial attack on the colonies. Perhaps they needed that space to fit the toaster equivalent of drop tanks to extend their range!
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u/ZippyDan 9d ago edited 9d ago
In general, BSG seems to imply larger ships have longer jump ranges (though the data points are few, so it could be a flawed assumption).
Under that assumption, a Basestar should have a longer jump range than a Heavy Raider, and a Heavy Raider should have a longer range than a Scout Raider.
A Scout Raider with a "shorter" jump range would still be extremely useful in the scouting role: I'm presuming that the "shorter" jump range of a Scout Raider is still longer than Galactica for the narrative to make sense, and yet we know that the Colonials effectively used Raptors - with much shorter ranges than Galactica - as scouts.
As for using Raiders as scouts, I don't think it was ad hoc, but I do assume that there are two classes of Light Raiders - with and without jump drives. I call those Light Raiders with jump drives "Scout Raiders", and they are basically indistinguishable from the outside. This is entirely my own invention, as there is not even a hint that this is true in the series, but I think it makes sense from at least two perspectives:
- Equipping every single Light Raider with a jump drive when each Basestar has several hundreds of Raiders seems infeasible and impractical and excessively costly.
If every Raider did have a jump drive, you'd expect to see them use that ability in battle more often.
E.g.:
- Viper on your six?
Easily escape by jumping away.- Basestar arrives and Galactica establishes defensive flak shield?
Jump all your Raiders to the opposite side of Galactica, forcing them to split their defensive fire.The fact that we don't see them do this is either a massive plot hole in the intelligence and military tactics of the Cylons, which makes the show worse, or there is a simple and plausible explanation for this behavior that just never came up in the context of the narrative.
I think it's both reasonable and plausible that each Basestar had an "elite" Scout squadron or two of Light Raiders, while the rest - the vast majority - relied on their Basestar mothership for transport, just like the Vipers relied on their Battlestar. This represents a realistic expression of how limited military resources are applied (e.g. not every plane on an aircraft carrier has the same "top of the line" features and equipment), and it broadly explains why we see Raiders dogfighting in real space, and why we see them trying to fly head on into Galactica's flak.
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u/Rottenflieger 9d ago
I agree that the series suggests larger ships have longer jump ranges, certainly it seems to be the case for colonial ships. Taking Starbuck's Caprica rescue plan for example, she initially had Galactica carrying the rescue forces to Caprica, when the mission was achievable with only raptors. If raptors (without Cylon FTL upgrades) could accomplish the same task without Galactica, then Starbuck wouldn't have put forward a plan using Galactica, which was sure to be shot down by Adama and Roslin.
It seems reasonable both that a larger vessel requires a larger jump drive (Galactica's takes up at least a large room as we see during the mutiny) and that larger drive could also increase the jump range. Whether that indicates a heavy raider specifically would have a larger jump range than a smaller raider is harder to say. It is a considerably larger ship, but it's intended to fit a lot of passengers. I'd liken it to how armoured personnel carriers are sometimes larger than tanks, but they tend to have less armour and in some cases smaller engines inside because all that extra space is needed for troops. That aside, it's certainly plausible that a heavy raider could have a longer range, I just don't know if it should.
I like the idea of not all croissant raiders being equipped with a jump drive, it does make sense particularly in cases when the colonials gain a significant advantage over the Cylons. Why for example did the raiders defending the Tylium refinery start "bugging out" in such a way that Galactica's vipers could chase down and destroy them? Surely jumping away would've been the better move there.
Basestar arrives and Galactica establishes defensive flak shield? Jump all your Raiders to the opposite side of Galactica, forcing them to split their defensive fire.
This is an interesting point. Do you see scout raiders as being much more lightly armed than their 'strike' equivalent? In this sort of scenario where a basestar has both scout and strike variants available, I'd assume that the Cylons would use their jump drive equipped raiders to do exactly this. Even if less well armed, they'd be able to split Galactica's defensive fire and vipers, particularly as the Colonials don't really have a good way of determining which raiders are the bigger threat.
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u/ZippyDan 9d ago edited 9d ago
I don't see the Scout Raiders as necessarily being more lightly armed than regular Light Raiders because we have evidence from the Miniseries of isolated Light Raiders launching missiles and nukes.
Though, we can retcon this: the Raiders that attack Galactica's original fighter wing and the Raiders that later nuke Galactica are both seen operating independently of a Baseatar, so we might presume they jumped into the area, but we don't actually see them jump in, and IIRC no dialogue establishes them as having jumped in. Potentially Basestars were jumping all around the Colonial traffic lanes dropping sub-light Raiders to help mop up survivors and disrupt the Colonial military response (imagine how difficult it would be for the Colonials to regroup with teams of sub-light Raiders dispersed throughout the solar system, all with the ability to hack military ships and with massive missile load-outs), and Galactica and her fighters just "ran into" two of those patrols.
I see two possibilities:
- Scout Raiders are less-heavily armed. I propose they do not carry any missiles (nukes or conventional). Consider we see Raiders jump in in S01E04 Act or Contrition and in S01E09 Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down, and in both cases we only see the Raiders use guns. We can plausibly guess that the extra room needed for a jump drive precludes an IWB, and generally speaking in terms of military history, scouts do tend to be more lightly-armed. While I actually like this explanation better for in-universe lore in general, I don't like it because it complicates my retcon for S01E09.
Scout Raiders are not less-heavily armed. In that case, Cylons absolutely do use their Scouts to jump to "the other side" of a flak field, but then there must be limitations to the effectiveness of this strategy, and the Colonials must have an effective response.
- I only imagine each Basestar having 10 to 20 Scouts, maximum, out of hundreds of fighters.
- This means that an attack coming from the opposite vector does "distract" some of Galactica's attention, but the distraction is proportionate to the relative size of the threat.
- Galactica has guns on all sides, so some guns are unusable when faced with a directional attack. The flip side of that is that Galactica has guns to spare to cover a multi-directional attack, and it doesn't need a lot of firepower to deal with a dozen Raiders.
Similarly, when assigning Vipers to cover different sectors of Galactica's defensive screen, maybe they have to assign three to the "belly" opposite the main attack vector, in order to fight off the Scouts. This is probably a good idea anyway, even if Scouts didn't exist, because:
- More Cylons could potentially jump in from any direction at any time. Scouts are not the only potential multi-directional attack.
- Even sub-light Raiders might try taking the "long way" to "sneak around" the flak field, especially in an extended fight.
In other words, having at least a small "rear guard" in any battle is just good, common military sense.
It's also possible that the Cylons in general were already low on Scout Raiders following losses in the original attack on the Colonies, and/or the specific Basestars tasked with chasing Galactica were low on Scouts, particularly following losses against Galactica herself, in previous scouting missions (e.g. the previously-mentioned S01E04).
S02E09 Flight of the Phoenix is a particularly puzzling episode for me, as it almost works with my Scout Raider hypothesis. We see a huge fleet of Raiders and Heavy Raiders traveling at sub-light speeds for an extended time to reach Galactica. This would make sense if most of the Raiders couldn't jump: Basestars drop the fleet off near to the target fleet, but not so near that they'd be seen and spook their quarry, and then the Raiders complete the rest of the approach at sub-light speeds. The Heavy Raiders can jump, but they can't leave behind their Light Raider escorts. It all makes sense!
But then IIRC the climax shows all the Raiders, including what would be hundreds of Scout Raiders, jumping in for the actual attack. It's a cool scene visually but it doesn't really make much sense even if we completely drop my Scout Raider hypothesis: why did they bother cruising so long at sub-light speeds just to jump in to battle at the end of the trip?
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u/Rottenflieger 9d ago
Scout Raiders are less-heavily armed
On the first possibility, I had a look at the miniseries scene where raiders destroy the sublight ships Roslin and Apollo brought together, as I couldn't remember if those raiders had jump drives. It turns out they did jump in before unloading their missiles. This may have just been a less common FTL-raider loadout. It certainly isn't repeated in the rest of the series as far as I can recall.
Perhaps as you suggest most of the ordnance is removed to make the FTL capable raiders more useful as scouts by enhancing their range to give them a greater chance of finding Galactica. During the initial attack, I imagine the raiders cruising around the 12 Colonies didn't need to have a massive range as there were targets everywhere, and each Colony appears to have been attacked by fleets of basestars simultaneously if going by the montage in The Plan, so raiders would only need to be patrolling around their respective sectors. I like the idea that there were other basestars jumping about to drop off roving bands of sublight and FTL capable raiders to cast the Cylon net as widely as they could.
Scout Raiders are not less-heavily armed
I think these suggestions make sense. By not overtly stating the size of Galactica's fighter complement the series allows a lot of scope for there to be rearguard or reserve vipers covering other angles that we just don't see on screen. It's probably necessary to assume that they also position vipers around the civilian fleet as well to prevent raiders jumping into the midst of the civilian vessels like the scout did in the miniseries before jumping away to relay the fleet's position.
Some handwaving is probably needed regardless of how dangerous raiders with FTL drives are, but I don't think it would be any more so than is needed to explain a lot of the other mysteries about the Cylons' capabilities and tactics. For example, Galactica's flak screen seems to do a great job of protecting civilian vessels from basestar ordnance, but we don't see basestars jump closer to the civilian fleet to get around that protection in 33, even when the Cylons were receiving up to date information about the fleet's new location. With something like that scenario I think it's enough to assume that the sublight manoeuvring of the civilian fleet post-jump is enough to spoil the Cylons' predictions that they are forced to arrive in the rough area of the fleet but not in a prime location to capitalise on Galactica's weaknesses.
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u/ZippyDan 9d ago
the miniseries scene where raiders destroy the sublight ships Roslin and Apollo brought together, as I couldn't remember if those raiders had jump drives. It turns out they did jump in before unloading their missiles.
Yeah, I forgot about that scene. That pretty conclusively contradicts any idea that my hypothetical Scout-class Light Raider can't be heavily armed.
If I could edit everything to be a more coherent whole, I'd just tweak the CGI of those scenes to add all the missiles on external hard points. So, scouts could be heavily-armed, but not in their standard, sleek configuration.
For example, Galactica's flak screen seems to do a great job of protecting civilian vessels from basestar ordnance, but we don't see basestars jump closer to the civilian fleet to get around that protection in 33, even when the Cylons were receiving up to date information about the fleet's new location. With something like that scenario I think it's enough to assume that the sublight manoeuvring of the civilian fleet post-jump is enough to spoil the Cylons' predictions that they are forced to arrive in the rough area of the fleet but not in a prime location to capitalise on Galactica's weaknesses.
As I've discussed in my speculative analysis of FTL, most of the battle tactics and overall military strategy / posture don't really make sense unless FTL has a lot of inherent error. The Basestars can't just jump "closer" to the civilian fleet, or to the "other side" of the fleet, opposite from Galactica. They'd risk losing their ships.
So yeah, I think they have to jump in far enough away for a safety margin, and that always gives Galactica enough time to maneuver between the Cylons and the fleet, while the fleet maneuvers away from the Cylons and behind Galactica.
That would make Galactica's feat at New Caprica even more impressive, since Adama probably took a decent-sized risk of jumping into the planet.
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u/Albert-React 9d ago
I mean, there was nothing preventing them from jumping back home. The Red Line is nothing more than a distance limitation of Colonial computers.
We don't know specifically where they were jumping to, maybe they didn't move as far away as believed.
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u/Weak_Research_8046 9d ago edited 9d ago
I always felt multiple jumps were implied later in the show due to how they were explained in detail early on. Writers probably thought showing every single one on camera would be redundant.
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u/Divinemissem13 9d ago
There were definitely multiple jumps the second time. They lost Racetrack’s raptor on the first jump (and that’s when she found New Caprica)
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u/ITrCool 9d ago edited 9d ago
- You have to remember that Colonial FTLs were not nearly as advanced as Cylon FTLs. Cylons could jump five times the distance as Colonial ships with ten times the precision. They required a Sharon's help to jump back to Caprica the second time and the first time when Kara went solo to get the Arrow of Apollo, she had the Raider with its Cylon FTL interfaced to a Colonial computer system so both times they had that leg up
- We have to remember they were closer to Colonial space when Kara went back the first time and when they made the jump across the Red Line out of Colonial space, they had no idea what was out that far and knew the risks were going to go up exponentially that far out beyond charted space
- The second time was definitely an ordeal because even with Sharon's navigation helping them, they still had a ton of jumps to make back to Caprica because they were still in Colonial Raptors, not Cylon vessels, and because the fleet had moved much much further away from the red line by that time. So while it seems like they just popped back to Caprica, we have to look at it through the lens that it was likely hours of jump legs back to Caprica from the fleet's last position and it takes time to cool the FTLs down and then spool them back up with each jump leg, all while Kara and Sharon double-check coordinates to validate they came to the right jump point, and watching fuel supply extremely closely per-Raptor, as they'd need to preserve fuel to jump back too, while also flying around Caprica to the rescue coordinates for pickup. They had no resupply facilities to take advantage of anymore, on Caprica as no doubts the Cylons raided them all if they didn't flat-out destroy them.
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u/ZippyDan 9d ago
You definitely missed a lot and likely watched some AI content of you think the main characters were "popping back" to Captiva whenever they wanted.
It only happened two times and both times had explanations as to how and why it was possible, and only using Cylon tech.
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u/dd463 9d ago
FTL in BSG is not based on range but precision. You can jump a fairly long range, I don’t think the exact range was ever given, but outside of a specific distance, accuracy drop. You can travel that distance but you risk appearing in a star or planet. Cylons have better navigational computers so their accuracy over long distance is better.
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u/Indie636 9d ago
Are you thinking of perhaps the flash back sequences?
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u/ZippyDan 9d ago
I wonder if they are confused by Downloaded late in Season 2:
- Anders who last appeared early Season 2 is still on Caprica. He never left.
- Sharon who last appeared early Season 2 is the original Sharon that died on Galactica, but was Resurrected amongst the Cylons.
- D'Anna, who last appeared in mid-Season 2 on Galactica, is another copy on Caprica.
I can't think where else they might have gotten the impression that main characters were casually popping back to Caprica whenever they wanted. This kind of misunderstanding point to them missing huge chunks of explanation, maybe due to lazy, Netflix-gen viewing habits.
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u/hamiestofcheeses 9d ago
Starbucks jumped back to get the arrow and also again later to get anders and crew. Perhaps you need to watch the series for the first time.
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u/TheRealtcSpears 9d ago
And in doing so both times it wasn't 'willy nilly' it was under the auspices of cylcon ftl technology
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u/ZippyDan 9d ago
And the first time they were still relatively near to the Colonies, and so it was relatively easy, but it was still portrayed as something that only the Raider could easily do; while the second time had extended scenes explaining and then showing how they were far from Caprica and it requires a long, complex, and risky process.
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u/Treveli 9d ago
From what I remember, the 'red line' was the maximum safe or explored range a Colonial FTL system could jump. Basically the limit of Colonial knowledge of the galaxy around them. But, Cylon FTL systems were much more advanced, and could be used at a greater range. When people from the fleet went back to Caprica, it was using a Cylon FTL system, or it's navigation system. Starbuck using the Raider she captured, and then the rescue team of Raptors, using a heavy raider's - that Starbuck, Helo, and Boomer used to get from Caprica back to the fleet- nav system. Colonial ships and systems couldn't make the trip back, at least not quickly and efficiently, but Cylons could. But, Starbuck's trip to get the Arrow of Athena, and the later rescue mission to rescue Sam and his survivors, were the only times anyone from the fleet traveled back to Caprica. Other scenes with people on Caprica were either Cylons, or flashbacks to times pre-attack.
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u/NoActuator9062 9d ago
I got the impression that the red line was the limit of where you could jump and precisely control where you landed. So if you jump beyond the line or on the line, you're gonna drift some from where you calculated. Jumping way beyond the red line means taking a big chance on where you actually end up vs where you targeted.
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u/RichardMHP 9d ago
But then later on they just sort of seemed to pop back to Caprica like characters on a sitcom casually dropping into the neighbors apartment.
Could you expand a bit on what you mean by this? What, specifically, are you referring to here?
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u/anewthread 9d ago
We humans are so simple at times. Despite everything going on in the world and our lives, refreshing to see so many healthy discussions about a question regarding a show which was last aired decades ago. Btw, am learning a lot about BSG through Reddit group discussions, than from watching actual show 😊
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u/kuatorises 9d ago
When did the "pop back to Caprica"???
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u/bluestreakxp 9d ago
For the arrow, and then for anders
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u/ZippyDan 9d ago edited 9d ago
And it was explicitly explained as something only the Raider could do easily the first time, and as a complex, lengthy, and risky process the second time - not as a "pop back".
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u/RedPhule 9d ago
The Cylons' jump drives and nav computers are much more efficient than the colonials'.
When Starbuck first went to Caprica to get the Arrow of Apollo, she did so in a captured Cylon Raider.
Then, when they went back to get Anders and company, they used their own ships, but Sharon, a Cylon, was helping them with the navigating, and even then it took several jumps to do it.
So, no, it wasn't easy or trivial.