How to FIX the Battlestar Pegasus, by breaking it first
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- Опубликовано: 24 ноя 2024
- A while ago i made a video called the Pegasus problem. Something that outlines and explains what i think the problems are with the Pegasus and why they forced the writers into a miserable, disappointing conclusion to the ship. In this video, I aim to rewrite the events of the show and make a few minor but significant changes to improve the fate of the ship. Giving the beast a proper send off and making the choice between her and the Galactica less cut and dry.
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Honestly the better way to still keep some of the Pegasus "Essence" for the rest of the show.
Would be to have something similar to the Galactica's last jump.
Where both battlestar jump out of New caprica but we get a couples scene where the already damaged Pegasus is truly on its last legs.
And the decision is made to cannibalize it so that the Galactica can be brought back to as close as it was possible to full power.
Pegasus getting cannibalized to restore Galactica to Cylon War footing would have been amazing. Getting her fully armor played and possibly having her main nose guns reinstalled would have been something to see.
Some of her squadron's pilots constantly clashing with Galactica's pilots would have been a nice on going riff/rivalry.
I would have had the Pegasus crippled mostly by cyber warfare. So in a pragmatic move we see the Galactiga be modified to be better defensive with added guns and armor. But by the end of the Pegasus it basically one ship fleet battles the orbital defense of the Exodus fleet at New Caprica and just before the end as the Pegasus wracked with cyber attacks and a few Base Stars jumps with an overcharged drive burst taking literal chunks off the attacking ships and giving the Galactiga a window to escape with a majority of the Pegasus crew.
Or keep it's fate ambiguous like the original, was it destroyed? captured? or have it brake away with a few ships into a second fleet that want to try and take the fight to the cylons and take back the colonies that's really a suicide mission.
the other option would have been to have the og galactica be the ship that was lost, then re-commission the peg as galactica
Careful doing 40K lore, sooner or later you start buying the minis and can’t stop.
How dare you call me out like this
I do the same thing. I have more boxes than I do finished ones.
Luckily I'm not a youtuber or should I stop consuming 40k lore vids altogether to stop falling into the rabbit hole.
.....the Grey legion grows eternal
@@addisonchow9798 keep watching the lore vids. They’re nice to listen to while you put together your army of whichever faction you chose.
One correction to the revised scene: when going down the gravity well, show (and later tell on the debriefing!) that the Pegasus doing its best to turn and go for the basestar that is falling with it.
Not even death can satiate her lust to kill everything that looks funny. It’s also a nice little touch that even from beyond her rapidly rising grave, the dumb mindless machine is infinitely more faithful to its creators than the toaster even when the only thing it can do is beam malicious thoughts their way.
I agree that Lee Adama's handling of _Pegasus_ during the Exodus from New Caprica was particularly awful. I differ in that I actually think that makes a lot of sense, though the reason is something that I've filled in from my own knowledge rather than actually being stated in the show.
Lee Adama was a Viper pilot with the rank of Captain when he came aboard the _Galactica_ during the miniseries. He slotted in as Galactica CAG because he was senior to all of _Galactica's_ surviving pilots, but make no mistake - he was still a very junior officer for that posting. (He was too junior to command a single squadron under normal circumstances, let alone an entire air wing.) Eventually he was bumped to Major, and then immediately skipped at least a couple of grades to take command of _Pegasus_ after that ship lost 3 COs in a matter of weeks. And if he was awfully junior to be a CAG, he was *WAY* too junior to be a Commander! Normally a battlestar command would go to somebody _a lot_ more senior - and with that seniority would come not only years (more likely at least a decade) of experience but also a significant amount of professional development, both in terms of academic coursework and time serving in staff roles. They'd have spent years learning how to do things like "command a battlestar in combat" over the course of their career, rather than suddenly being thrust into it with no preparation and required to learn it all on the fly. Thus Lee Adama handles his battlestar poorly, and gets it blown up foolishly, because he was promoted too fast and now finds himself in a role he just isn't qualified for.
If anything, this reflects poorly on Bill Adama. The smart move would have been to transfer his flag to _Pegasus_ after Cain's death and his promotion, leaving Tigh in command of _Galactica;_ but Adama's sentimentality prevented him from doing (or, probably, even thinking of) the rational thing. Add to that a hefty dose of nepotism, and we get Lee Adama being promoted way past his competency.
This is exactly what I've been commenting under a few BSG videos. Expecting Lee to command a battlestar (well) is like expecting Tom Cruise's Maverick to command an aircraft carrier. He's awesome at the job he's trained to do and that's it. In fact, the last time we truly saw Lee in hos element was at the tylium asteroid. THAT'S the Lee I would have loved to see more of: kicking ass and then smoking a cigar.
Normally in a few decades Lee could have become a legendary battlestar commander just like his father.
the promotion of major major major major comes to mind there.
though i agree with what you are saying with adama transferring his flag. that could have been done, the original galactica go out in a final blazy of glory with old age fatigue, damaged structure from taking nuke hits where it had no plating, than having adama and president moonbeam recomission the peg as galactica. giving the writers more room to escalate the odds without wormhole jesus's uss defiant levels of plot armour
Yeah, he was too green. Plus the complexity of systems on a Battlestar would be... Absurd. It'd take years to learn them all, and decades to master them which is a requirement for commanding a particular vessel in any sensible navy
You don't jump straight from strike craft to battleship. It isn't the same thing at all, I'm sure there's some overlap but these are vastly different craft
What I want to know is why Lee was picked over Tigh. Even if Admiral Adama wanted to stay with the Galactica, there were other options before going to a fighter pilot.
@@ReddwarfIVBeing a good fighter pilot actually might be a good indicator of how fast can you think in the heat of the moment (while not losing your cool) and make irreversible decisions (at least that's my guess as a civilian). Also this way the commander actually knows intimately what he/she asks of the Viper pilots when he/she decides to send them out.
Tigh as a commander? We saw it while Adama was lying on the operating table. No. But I don't see him taking orders from anyone else but Adama. And Adama would have been the only logical choice for the Pegasus, so off they go to the Pegasus' CIC (long before Garner ever gets command, so that ship still has an experienced Chief Engineer as well).
Who to command the Galactica? Lee (let him practice), and put Hoshi there as XO. Keep Kara as CAG (the fleet needs a damn good one and she's a bit of a wild card anyway).
Sci: "Anime levels of silly, a billion base stars on screen please."
Star Wars Rise of Skywalker: Hold my rancid green milk.
One thing that always frustrated me about the BSG remake is that the Cylons had *forty years* of peace with which to build factories and replicate exponentially while the 12 colonies had two generations, tops.
Admiral Cain *explicitly* tried to fight an *offensive* war against self-replicating machines. The Pegasus should look like a rat that tried to swim across a deep fryer.
Well, not really. They only have what, like, 6 brains between them? That's a processing variety bottleneck. Worse, they're so incapable of admitting it that they wiped out their own that thought any different. They also lock down the centurions higher functions. They're comically handicapped.
Honestly that reflects more poorly on the toasters than it does the colonials. 40 years of peace and their mainline warship (and pretty much only ship, as far as the series is concerned) is a more-or-less flying strategic missile battery and carrier, with the durability of glass. They are *not* ship-to-ship combatants like the Cylons seem to treat them as when chasing the Galactica, and their ability to regenerate battle damage doesn't mean much if the ship shatters to pieces in the first volley of main guns from a battlestar
@@williamnixon3994Yeah, a fleet of non-self-aware drones could make mincemeat of Galactica from brute force.
That is a good point and I don't get how Cain managed to remain in command for so long.
@@arizona-hunter6684 -- "Kill the bad guys" is a simple call to action people who are very afraid will almost never directly oppose. Especially not when there's a fanatic in charge doing summary executions.
I was in elementary school during the Rwandan genocide, in High School when the September 11 attack happened in 2001 and just starting college when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. BSG ran from 2004-2009. I paid attention to the stories of foreign fighters flocking to the banner of ISIS/Daesh all through the 2010s. And I'm paying attention to the rise of political strong-men and authoritarians today spouting the same kind of anti-immigrant talking points as the Nazis did to claw their way into power in the 1930s.
I've had a lifetime of watching the Pegasus story play out.
The answer to the Pegasus question was to do what they did in the original series: make Pegasus a sister ship to Galactica. Same dated tech, same flaws and weaknesses. Make it a storage ship before the war, packed to the gills with Viper IIs and ammunition. More fighters than they have pilots. Reactivated by survivors of the Cylon attack/maintenance crew. But the big difference is Pegasus hasn't been playing escort, but fighting only when it wants and raiding other surviving ships for what they need. It would have been powerful like Galactica and a great reinforcement, but still a finite resource that could be lost when the humans get too cocky or desperate with an attack.
Except with this scenario, Michelle Forbes' Admiral Helena Cain, the psychopathic civilian-genociding and grape-enthusiast witch from hell doesn't quite work. Forbes's Cain needs the Beast as a backdrop.
I think the Pegasus showing up damaged would make it interesting and very believable to it actually fighting a guerilla warfare with mounting battle damage as attrition stacks up with losses and foundries starting to run low on supplies or the amount of damages being sustained in consecutive battles and skirmishes. By that last bit I mean like what is been pushed with the Cylons realizing the danger the Pegasus represents. A ship with its own foundries to repair, resupply, rebuild, and possibly refuel if it could fabricate the facilities to refine the ore the use for fuel. The Cylons probably send repeated waves after this Pegasus, tracking it down in asteroid belts and planetary bodies with rich mineral ores. Destroying mining equipment and Raptors from flying supplies to the Pegasus during an ambush with the Pegasus having to either fight or run. Though while it could fight, the amount of damage the use of ammo is going to be unsustainable that even Cain would have to concede break the engagement to retreat via FTL jump. Eventually finding the first civilian fleet and stripping it of parts, fuel, food, and personnel as the amount of damage sustain and the lack of ability to conduct long term mining operations to use the foundries to the fullest. While this doesn't exonerate Cain, it makes it more believable for her to pull something like this as she wants to continue the fight. It's just the Pegasus is unable to in its current state, and even with the stripping of supplies the ship is still heavily damaged and unable to affect repairs fully. Even after meeting with the Galactica and the fleet, Roslin and Adama both agree that they can't stop and have to keep moving. Preventing Pegasus from being able to fully repair the damages. This also continues to New Caprica as most of the crew is down planet side and only skeleton crew remains. Some repairs are being done, but extremely slowly and the Pegasus isn't up for a full-on fight when the Cylons arrive and during the rescue operation. Using what's left of the foundries to ramp up ammo for both ships with Galactica getting more than Pegasus due the accumulative damage.
Though in all honesty, the Galactica could and would kick the teeth in of the Pegasus even in her current state in the show when the Pegasus first showed up. This has more to do with Adama's experience and understanding the limitations of the Pegasus and the Galactica. While the Pegasus would be formidable, Cain is anything but formidable. It's even highlighted in lore that during combat simulations the Pegasus was generally outperformed by the Valkyrie and even older battlestars due to maneuverability and targeting profile in straight up fights. The Pegasus would have excelled in the kind of guerilla-based warfare that Cain should have been engaging in, but she preferred to take on the toasters with her forehead and instead of using her head. Had Adama given the Pegasus to Starbuck and told her to go nuts with it guaranteed toasters would be screaming for a cease fire as she would have driven them insane to the point of circuits literally catching fire. As she once stated, "Outside of the box is where I live sir," and the Pegasus by its very design is built around that concept. Cain doesn't have this mentality; however, she also is smart to know when something useful to her shows itself. For example, the Blackbird, the stealth viper that Tyrol built. Starbuck used it to on an unsanctioned recon mission to get eyes on the resurrection ship and to get even closer than the Raptor could have. Cain understood the tactical viability of this particular viper after seeing the photos it took on and how close it got, however that is where her intelligence stops. She cares more for destroying as many toasters as she can with whatever she can without considering the consequences of those decisions. Adama would understand this by then, and even probably find ways to exploit it during a fight between the Galactica and the Pegasus.
As for the final battle, I think something like this should have happened. The decoy squadron jumps in and launches the drones to produce the signatures of a pair of battlestars coming in hot, another pair of Raptors that are running silent send a short, coded message that the Cylons are moving in on the "battlestars" Hidden with the drones are nuclear radiation emitters given the Cylons impression the battlestars are preparing to launch a strike on a target, however let them catch the drones and think it was a bluff before remote activation of actual tactical nukes being activated and screaming to engage the nearest group of raiders and/or basestars. During that explosion, the Galactica pulls the Adama maneuver, and the Pegasus jumps low orbit to maintain the position and cover the fleet. Have the engagement play out as SC.I has described, except with the damages sustained not everyone is able to escape Pegasus. A Cain loyalist is left behind because the hangars have suffered too much damage and there is no escape as the last Raptor was crushed be debris or something. They run back to the CIC and take over the helm buy more time to inflict as much damage as they can before being forced to ram the Pegasus into the first basestar. Having it crumple it, but not sever it as they continue to ram a second in line and use the doorknockers to disintegrate the first basestar and blow the second in half. Damaging some of the forward batteries as the Pegasus runs for the planet to sling shot around, making the basestars chase it down hoping to pincer it with the loyalist laughing as it played into their hands as they launch last of Pegasus's nuclear ordinances at the incoming raider wings. Annihilating them before using the door knockers and pummel the nearest basestar with two others flying closer together and letting the Pegasus roll over to catch clip both flanking basestars with its hangar pods and ripping the basestars arms off with just the sheer mass and velocity. With a basestar trying to get out of the way seeing that the beast is on rampage with a shot the loyalist basically saying, "Frak these toasters..." or "This one is for the admiral..." or something about their home world and/or loved ones. And obliterating with the final volley of the door knockers at close range and damage causes loss of life support to the CIC and Pegasus drifts off with its engines finally giving out and shutting down as the core would have scrammed and the beast falls silent. Getting caught in a nearby moon's gravity and pulled down to the surface with the Cylons staying clear of it out genuine fear that it might somehow mystically wake up and go on another rampage.
As a 40k fan, your welcome to look into the lore, pray it doesn't look beck.
Dear God, I hope it doesn't look beck, the beckoning, I can't take it :b
@@redtsar you mean by the god emperor surly. You haven't seen gatekeepers like 40k gatekeepers.
@@sir-meatsheildThe last decade has clearly shown all the Chaos gods are looking.
Another thing about a crippled Pegasus joining the fleet, nothing much with the human drama could change. We know Pegasus had a civilian fleet that got cannibalized. You could make it so Cain wants to get back to full power because of how insanely powerful those ships are at full strength. And to do that she wants to destroy the fleet and even eyeballs galactica, because Cain has gone insane.
And the idea that all those base stars couldn’t kill the beast and it swan dives the planet in a fuck you move would have been badass to see on screen!
Also, it is miraculous that given how suicidally vindictive Cain is that the Beast survived to meet Galactica at all or be in remotely pristine condition. I don't think Starbuck gets that or what problems she poses in the long run, and that she also kind of earned her Viper detonation for that entire defense paragraph.
I think the Pegasus being so shiny is really macabre. It was kept in good shape by cannibalizing civilian ships.
I think they wired 6 Million civilian brains into the computer.
The natural way of getting rid of it is the same way they do it in actual navies: the bigger they are the unproportionally more resources they need. And if you lose your support infrastructure by, say, nuclear bombardment, the big bois get in trouble very quickly by becoming unsustainable.
40 years of peace is plenty of time for the colonial military-industrial complex to convince a few politicians that Battlestars don't need to be 'completely' self-sustaining and that a complex supply chain for ammo and spare parts is just a good way to create jobs and graft.
@@Grizabeebles that hasn't ever worked that way in the last 300years on earth, just saying
@@phonepoies -- You need to make your sarcasm more overt. Please consider using the tag "/s" or an emoji in future 🙄 Just saying.
Inverted in this case however, because these aren't blue water naval vessels. Imagine an aircraft carrier with a factory onboard, that is the Pegasus
The Mercury class was actually intended to be a fleet support and command ship, not a brawler. They had sophisticated automated manufacturing equipment onboard, in fact that was what took up most of the space midship. So these _beasts_ could process raw materials from mining ships and then fabricate components from them, everything up to at least Viper scale (see the episode "Scar") and probably larger. In theory, so long as the blueprints were available, you could even fabricate a small gunship piece by piece while building it outside the ship
Anyway, while they were expensive to build they were designed to not only be self-sufficient while underway, they could support an entire fleet logistically instead of impose a drain on that fleet
The issue with that, is that mercury class ships are self sustaining. They have factories that can produce pretty much everything aside from water, so it doesn’t exactly *need* a supply line when it can harvest materials from asteroids or planets it passes by
New way to introduce Pegasus: The fleet finally gets caught with its pants down, a la battle of the nebulae, its grim, Galactica loses the flak array, volley of nukes incoming. Pegasus jumps in, in that signature BSG style, face tanking the nukes meant for Galactica. Ports side belching atmosphere, vipers flood from the starboard pods, directly into the melee, no formations, spending themselves like water in a desperate bid to cover the fleet. By the time it’s over and the fleet is saved, Pegasus is a bleeding wreck. Her squadrons are ravaged, her armor broken, and the audience is forever in love with the ship that gave so much. The rest of the season progresses as you slowly see Pegasus rebuild herself. It took so long to return to rescue New Caprica, not because Lee got fat, but because it took that much time to restore Pegasus to a true fighting force.
I liked it. A few minor tweaks to your rewrite from professional writers that don’t exist anymore and we got something.
I’d also love a deadlock dlc featuring a what if the decapitation didn’t work so well so I could feed cylons their teeth with a mercury. Not a fan of instant battle
Much like Galactica and, in another franchise, Enterprise, Pegasus is a character all her own. And you don't kill a character with a wet fart of a scene. You make the scene the _single most important and impactful thing the character has ever done._ "Dying Moment of Awesome" is a trope for a reason: it is the best way to kill a character.
Kirk's sacrifice of the Enterprise in The Search for Spock was impactful for many reasons. I can't even name them all, I'm not good enough at analyzing literature. But the biggest reasons are: 1) The Enterprise was as much a character as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. 2) It was necessary. A Bird of Prey, a ship that could be generously called a frigate, should not have posed a threat to a top of the line heavy cruiser, outclassed in any of the three navies by _only_ the Excelsior. She no-sold the torpedo, remember! Yet her previous battle damage and crew of five allowed nothing else. The rudimentary automation Scott had hacked together couldn't handle combat tasks and crashed. 3+4) It was in character and fit the previous rule. She died doing what she does best... protecting those who depend on her. A warrior's death, a glorious, honorable death any Klingon would want, taking her enemies with her.
5) Kirk had already sacrificed his career to steal the Enterprise and retrieve his friend's body. With the loss of the Enterprise, Kirk has finally sacrificed everything he held dear. He has lost his son, his closest friend... and now, in his attempt to bring back his friend, he has had to sacrifice the true love of his life... his ship. There is now, truly, no going back. He must succeed... or he has sacrificed everything he held dear, including his nakama, for nothing. The Enterprise's best scene, her most impactful moment, brings Kirk to the lowest point of his entire life. As he watches his ship explode, he asks his other best friend a single question that brings all of this bitterness home to roost.
"My God, Bones, what have I done?"
And McCoy's reply brings the sweetness. That one bright spot of hope. That what he had done, as painful as it was, was no different from any of the other crises he had clawed his way out of.
"What you had to do. What you always do. Turn death into a fighting chance to live."
The Enterprise, one of the most beloved characters in the history of science fiction, was dead. But now, the main characters had a chance.
THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is how you kill a character. And that is how Pegasus should have died: in a necessary and inevitable blaze of glory, taking her enemies with her. Protecting those who depend on her, providing them one last chance to survive. Not suicidal, overconfident idiocy.
I can't remember if it was your previous video on the Pegasus or a video by someone else on RUclips, but the idea that the Pegasus should have had visible damage still present and/or obvious repairs/patches is something that I remember from another video and is something that I definitely agree with.
0:18 "Either they needed to up the stakes dramatically with it around to the point it would have reached anime levels of silly--a million base stars on screen please-"
THAT SOUNDS AMAZING.
"How many base stars you want ?"
"YES"
I like the idea of the Pegasus getting nuked in a flight pod, You could also add some radioactivity to the area around the now exploded flight pod, so there are areas of the ship the crew simply don't go.
In a similar vein, the writers could have had the Pegasus suffer critical damage post joining up with the fleet. Either in the battle with the resurrection ship, the initial invasion of New Caprica, or some new battle in between.
Agreed on all points, but lets not lie to each other.....
The first time you watched it, when the drums start, and the missiles fly by, it was total fist pump, fuck yeah nerdgasm.
Granted, by the end we were frothing. But for that one moment.....
I know why they had to kill the ship, but how they did it... Was just dirty. But, it is what it is. Still one of the best shows ever made.
I heard somewhere they needed to make room for the Cylon Base Star sets.
@@Hartzilla2007
Funding is always a problem.
Another way i can think of for a pegasus implementation is that the ship while intact is partially knocked out by cyber warfare. While the initial problem is fixed the techs are fighting isolated battles with individual systems. In the final one we see the Pegasus evacuate all but the Skeleton crew and move to the middle of the Cylon fleet but instead of fighting it jumps one last time and drags chunks of the cylon fleet with it, pushing it's drive beyond what it was rated. And while the ship was there the Galactiga would be fixed partially and upgraded but not to an over powered degree. Give the pegasus a similar end that the original had but show it fighting all the way.
Haveing one of the landing bay pods ejected and recovered by the Galactica would allow for a boost in capabilities and some crew surviveing for later episodes. Upgrade problems are fun at the worst time in story telling.
Salvaging the Pegasus wreck? Upgrading the Galactica ?
I heard what you had to say about Pegasus & yes very true indeed it was written as a doomed ship Admiral Caine saw to that , but if we go back to the start Galactica was written as a museum ship old & retired seen to already done her fair share of trials , wouldn't they have built a replacement a Mercury Class Galactica this gives food for thought as in real life this happens often with navy's through out the world . Remember in razor we saw how the docks were destroyed while Battlestars were being replenished these were not construction docks or asteroids leaving a possibility that a new series could be written ??.
Pegasus:I'm Ready! How About You?!
You are forgetting that the Hybrid Child, Hera, is still on the planet, and all these ships falling from orbit could kill her!!!!!
We could get a shot from a Cylon rescuing Hera of the falling ships and a falling Pegasus; Engines still at full burn, crashing into the New Caprica colony as they escape in a Heavy Raider as Pegasus destroys the colony in explosive fashion
You’ve got a pretty good idea, however my big change would be that the Pegasus survives S3E4 but comes out absolutely battered hulk.
We’ll take your notes of it being a battered to hell beast when it comes to this battle, but it’s still one hell of a fighting ship that definitely is a keep sake no matter what… however diving back into this battle, we change it up slightly with Galatica actually having its wings semi clipped for a bit and unlike in the original where Lee just launches it, he puts it in between Galactica and the Cylon Bases.
We have Pegasus absolutely guy all 4 and it’s only when Galactica is good do they jump out hearing/seeing several reinforcing Cylon Baseships jump into the system.
Galatica gets out battered but saved. However, the already beaten Pegasus suffered quite a hell of a few punches and we can even say its drives went down in its last jump with a few lucky hits from the cylons crippling engines. So while it can jump, it’s also more of just a sitting facility block now that needs towed. It has the firepower of a few of its good remaining point defence batteries and those side guns are still up and running like a heavy hitting bunker… but it’s that… a heavy hitting bunker that needs towed by large amounts of the fleet outside jumping.
We get discussions if they should leave it but several demand it be kept for its resources - the facilities, the training pod/rooms the extra hanger space and such.
However, across the start of the season while we see that it’s still got its use, it’s also a slow towing weight and while it still has its use as a defence… we see more discussion as to if the loss in speed and resources just keeping it “in the fight” are worth having it around and spreading across the rest of the fleet.
And while in this one it’s not going out fighting, it’s agreed that it’s a dead hulk… but one that can still be useful in small ways and in its act of valour it’s stripped for weapons and parts, with the crews of the fleet taking anything that can be used from it and strapping it into and onto their ships.
Those colonial ships with no defence abilities now have taken small and modular point defence turrets from it that now help them defend.
The replicator facilities are taken as best and possible and while they can’t go producing more air wings they can atleast help with some of the small time stuff that’s needed.
Essentially, we see Pegasus stripped and used for parts across the fleet in many ways what it did to many civilian fleets under Cains legacy. And now, it’s left with a simple faulty beacon to help attract in any suspicious cylons and a nice and waiting cargo ready to give them one final goodbye message.
Pegasus was an assets! She have a simulator to train new viper pilots and a facility onboard that can build replacement vipers
100% agree that bringing in Pegasus in perfect condition was a mistake
I don’t think you understand what the captain of the Pegasus was doing to keep it in that shape.
When I was watching the series in the mid 2000s, I was a bit disappointed for the lack of battles, but understood they would be very expensive. But damn, after playing Battlestar Galactica Deadlock, I wish we had at leats a few battles with the full force of the Colonial Fleet. At least a brave last stand of some Admiral that weaken the Clyons so Adama's fleet had better chances, maybe shown as the Fleet finding the wrecks of the battle and recovering some type of recording
Would have been such a cool scene or maybe a a mini series like blood and chrome. Last stand of the colonials. A single task force figures out how to counter the virus, we get to watch them relearn how to fight cylons without computers on the fly. Why did so few basestars peruse Galactica, why didn’t the cylons have the resources to crush the resistance. Because these guys were playing merry hell with they’re supply lines all across the colonial home system.
They left that open, and there could be another series so who knows. CF had 120 Battlestars, and communications were disrupted so it's possible some significant fraction of the fleet did survive.
We hear about the big losses in the miniseries, but it's reasonable to think perhaps a few other commanders were uneasy with the idiotic decision to network their entire navy, and dragged their feet on the "upgrades"
"This is bad fanfic"...so basically the same as the rest of NeoBSG in general, with the ribbed for their pleasure ship designs, and the robots searching for 'their maker'...
To no surprise, I'd love to have your five minutes of icecream-fueled writing over what they did on the actual show. Same tragedy as with Mass Effect. Amazing skeleton, amazing groundwork, great start into the world. Then it gets too good for the respective creators and the entire greatness is reduced to a jumbled mess of unraveled and torn strings by the end.
Honestly this is my favorite re writing of the New Caprica battle so far
Another idea is to make Cain older than Adama. Like in original series, a legendary Commander that fought in First Cylon War. Make Pegasus older ship also from war, that always went unscathed while other ships get decimated. It could be revealed that Pegasus was in such fine condition at hte beginning because she used other ships as shield to hide behind and outlive others, but when faced against Cylons alone she is usless leader. Getting her crew killed on left and right with ship bearly holding together untill she stumbles upon civilian fleet ith construction and fabrication ships. She orders to breake them apart and re-integrate those modules into Pegasus, while leaving civilians on death.
It would show that she indeed made Pegasus better than she was before war but at great cost.
"If you made it to the end of the video you're clearly the intended audience"
Im not in this case. But hearing you ramble about other scifi while i wait for the next battletech video is still fun 😁
I think you basically hit the nail on the head for how to radically improve the Pegasus as a story telling device. Her being whole, fully crewed and ready for a fight broke the show's tension, and her death hurt characters that the show really wanted us to think were competent and capable. Her loss being able to be rationalized as inevitable, and her arrival being something more akin to a hardware upgrade and an inherited headache more than the end of all problems is a huge step up. I like another person's idea where she has her back broken, but survives the fight for the Galactica crew and the Pegasus survivors to scavenge her hulk for bits to improve the Galactica, taking her up a few notches from mobile museum ship, to re-activated warship.
And I don't think fixing the Galactica breaks her as a story telling device, because this isn't really "fixing" her. After a certain point she's fought through two wars, been horrifically abused by the Colonials flying her, and the Cylons trying to kill her. New armor and more guns salvaged off of her dead big sister will not shake the fact that structurally, the old girl is running on borrowed time.
Sure it's fan fiction... but that's awesome. It's solved all the problems and still allows for the interpersonal drama to grow from it.
I think if Cain had escaped with 2 or 3 ships and the others got destroye during her guerilla campaign, thay would've 1) shown more colonial tactics on screen and 2) shown just how unhinged she had gotten in her campaign in losing other ships along with the damage to the Pegasus.
She hadn't just thrown away the lives of her pilots, but the lives of entire other vessels, and her gutting of the civilian fleet that she found along the way.
Probably should have just sent it off on a mission of some description, like Kain's war. Alternatively it could have survived New Caprica, barely and been totally trashed by the engagement, just another fleet member.
I feel like it's one of those things where the themes of the show meant it had to go, more then any in-universe reason. The Pegasus just kicking arse and moving onwards might well have had the colonials fuckin WIN the war considering how few Cylon basestars actually showed up over the show.
I started this video in disagreement with you and wanted to stay there but by the end, you had me convinced. Great job and thanks for putting the effort in.
just a thought , why not sacrifice Galactica while its remaining crew escape and rechristen Pegasus after to the new Galactica in honor of its sacrifice. To give colonists something to hold on to as Galactica was always there. Becoming more a title than 1 particular ship .
Pegasus the Algorithm!
Okay hear me out, pegasus survives until the cylon civil war and becomes the sacrificial hero of the resurrection hub arc....
In real life, unfortunately, the studio could only have enough room for either a Pegasus set OR a basestar set. :/
Worn down would have been the right way to do it, but if they wanted to change as little as possible they probably could have gotten away with:
Possibly more base stars,
Lee being overconfident, but not so suicidally stupid as to leave his battle-carrier's entire fighter compliment else ware,
Pegasus moving too aggressively and getting too close to a base-star while blowing it to bits,
The base star explodes, throwing a prong toward Pegasus too quickly for it to evade,
Pegasus almost evades anyways, but is ultimately crippled by the impact,
Realization that the damage from the collision is too extensive to allow victory or escape-jump,
Order evacuation, set guns to automatic and autopilot to YOLO.
You could even recover most of Pegasus' fighters on Galactica once she is disabled in battle. You could have them crash landing on the unused flight pod, and needing rescue in the next episode since it is unpressurized. Overloaded Galactica would be more inline with the TOS.
......you still owe 1 bagpipes.
The Northwind Highlanders would like a word with you...
You made this way more complicated than it needs to be. We saw that Pegasus struggled to fight 3 Cylon Baseships when it lost its FTL engines. It was on the verge of losing. Pegasus isn't THAT strong.
However I do agree with 2 points you made:
1. Have Pegasus meet the fleet with more damage.
2. Have Pegasus FTL engines be destroyed during the Battle of New Caprica. That way it's justified in why they had to abandon it.
In a perfect world we would have had a Pegasus spin off series. At least the writers didn't just have it driven into a star for no fucking reason. That would have been INFURIATING. Who would do such a thing?
I enjoy all of SCIENCE INSANITY videos 🎉🎉😂
They should have pushed an internal conflict and allow the Pegasus and here crew to go back for the fleet Kane abandoned.
Great video.
Also you're the second person I've heard say "backflash" instead of "flashback."
I definitely like this story idea better than what we got. Here's my idea. Keep Cain alive longer. She wanted to go back to the colonies and retake them. The Cylons allegedly gave up their occupation of the colonies after her death. Tweak the timeline so Starbuck comes back from Caprica earlier and/or Cain lives longer. Against the advice of the president, and Adama, Cain goes to a colonial world and is ambushed. Pegasus makes it's way back to the fleet heavily damaged. President Roslin has her stripped of her command and she lives to see New Caprica and even becomes an insurgent until she is killed by Caprica six. The Pegasus is destroyed covering the evacuation but many of it's crew survive. A few episodes later we (as well as Adama and Roslin) learn of Cain's war crimes for the first time. Moral is fragile and Cain is considered a hero. Adama chooses to bury Cain's actions for the sake of moral. This could add more drama when the Colonials meet the rebel Cylons.
Just a thought I developed after watching this
This is pretty good as well. The amount of alternative writing for this show after so long that is as good as it is, is astounding.
The Pegasus was like the military arriving in a zombie apocalypse. If they stay around, have good supply lines, and remain benevolent, why should we worry about what will happen to the battered survivors? So one of the three has to change to return tension. Thanks for the video.
You can even basically keep the whole thing the same if the writing isn't terrible.
Jumping into a crowded combat zone makes accidental collision pretty likely, and we're ignoring the much more logical idea that one or multiple base-stars recognise the titanic threat she is and THEY decide to ram HER.
From that point she can be alive but neutered beyond usefulness with a hit to her computer core, supporting Galactica for the rest of the series
She can shrug off losing an entire flightpod and half teh hull and keep fighting like you suggested... there's just so many ways this could have worked without being so dissapointing...
Correct: the better way to kill the Pegasus was to tear it down slowly over multiple series of engagements. Take for example when Galactica was out of food and Athena went off through a nebula to scout if then the Pegasus either was used as a hammer to brutally bludgeon their way through a base star to get to the algae planet or if once processing the algae the Pegasus job was to pounce on any threat with viscous speed to prevent their opponents from escaping to relay Intel and as such the priority were to kill the targets as quickly as possible sacrificing armor or hull integrity if need be because of the dire situation FOOD.
The major problem coming down the pike was the writers strike incoming at the time and they didn't want to get caught in that and let their show suffer.
A good way to nerf the Pegasus would be a subtle shift in Colonial fleet doctrine. Make it so Pegasus was designed around having an escort fleet, a smattering of smaller vessels bristling with flak batteries and ECM to handle defense while the Beast focuses on vaporizing whatever it's sick of looking at. Its fabrication bays could replace Vipers and worn out components for it and its escorts, but only at a certain rate. This would tie into Cain's going bananas arc as she keeps getting it into situations where its lacking defenses means it slowly but surely keeps racking up damage that can't get fixed before she goes and picks another fight.
This would also play into Cain's downfall, as once the Pegasus has Galactica on hand to be its escort, it finally has the chance to catch its breath and repair vital systems on both ships despite Cain's best efforts. This all comes to a head where both ships are in something approaching combat ready condition and Cain recklessly takes them both on a Yamato-esque forced pitched battle, resulting in the Pegasus' FTL being crippled by a gorillion basestars and 'heroically' covers Galactica's retreat.
Not perfect, but better than what we got.
Pegasus' fabrication facilities would be easily nerfed by lack of raw materials. More drama could have been introduced, and Cain made even vile-r, by having her repeat over several episodes what she did in Razor: systematically stripping civilian ships for parts. Eventually, Adama would have had to take Cain out before she left the fleet unable to continue at all.
I think it would make Adama less redeemable for her to still be around as she's doing this, which is why its fortunate any problems she causes humanity as a whole were resolved (albeit in a really dumb fashion that requires teleportation akin to a Minecraft server) with Baltar handing Gina a gun.
Or she could've been kept a consistent bitch who went ahead with Order 66, only for her own CIC officers to say "screw it" and gun her down.
I never understood why no one told the President she could have simply promoted Adama past Cain. 1 star, 2,3,4 Admiral? I'm the 5 star Admiral of the fleet. Might not have solved the problem, but would have made their decision to terminate her more rational.
I think the problem would be that Cain would not acknowledge President Roslin's promotion of Adama. IIRC Cain didn't seem receptive to Roslin's authority as President in the first place. If Roslin tried to promote Adama over Cain, Cain would call it blatant favoritism and refuse to obey any orders from Adama.
She did exactly that. I always found it interesting that Cain stripped the jump drives from civilian ships. For what purpose? They wouldn't be useable on a Battlestar, and Vipers don't have FTL... But the materials used to build them could possibly be used to build military-spec models in the onboard factories
I think she was resource raiding with the intent to build up a small fleet long term. We are never told exactly what a Mercury's factories can build at the upper end, but they're essentially very advanced 3D printers. It's possible she could've built up a support fleet over time. If you count the game as canon, there are a few ships from the first war that could probably be built this way and would be pretty useful to her plans
I think a way to make the Pegasus be vulnerable is to have a back story as to why the Pegasus was at the Scorpio shipyard. Perhaps the Pegasus was there for a refit of it's power plant . The Pegasus power plant could have been heavily damaged during the refit during the cylon assault. Or a new power plant was sabotaged by a sleeper cylon agent. And successfully caused the failure of the fusion reactors. Without proper maintenance it is just a matter of time until the Pegasus explodes.
I like the New Caprica fight.
Also, not the first time I saw Shattered Pegasus to make it more 'even.'
And as for why they can't fix everything, the production bays can only do Ammo, Vipers, Raptors, and small panels. You won't be able to replace a turret or massive parts of the armor with that setup.
Alternatively, damage to the defense grid is significant enough that they can't repair it just by replacing parts: they need shipyard machinery and to take substatial subsystems offline for extended periods of time. All stuff they could potentially do, but that means they can't use the fabricators for more urgent, short-term tasks, the ship would be vulnerable, ect ect
Fair point. But If you were a little creative, and maybe have a engineer on board. ( Mr Lard I believe his name was) You can use your small tools, to make bigger tools, and then those tools to make BIGGER tools. At witch point, you spread them out around the fleet, getting a series of "factory ships," specializing in specific parts. Engins, Armor, Guns, ext...
You can then have the battle of New Caprica as shown or more exciting way, .. but the Pegasus survives, though crippled. You'd then have an ongoing subplot of Pegasus being stripped with the rearming and rearmoring of Galactica back to peek condition, with the rest of the bits being used or recycled to upgrade the fleet.
Or.. if you feeling froggy, Using the lage ,now spare, Pegasus jump drive and recycled metal, to build a new Valkyrie class Battlestar. "Phoenix," would be the obvious new name.
You get the protection of having a second, though less powerful ship, to use as a scout or rearguard actions with Galactica as the central ship.
One of the key reasons they cut Pegasus, was the extra cost of having the 2nd set of stage sets. SO, with the Phoenix, you can redress the Galactica sets to do double duty. Lots of white lights and shiny tables Vs the darker beige and gray of Galactica, and you can explain that it away by saying it makes it easier to cross train crews, using the same layout, parts, exetra..
Wooo.. sorry about the rant. =D
The Pegasus was akin to the Mothership in the game Homeworld. It being destroyed was 100% a writing decision rooted in financial concerns for the studio, because that damn ship is exactly what you'd want leading a refugee fleet. Sure, Galactica was better tactically but Pegasus was a mobile factory AND a heavily-armed BattleCarrier that was designed for situations like this
Good points. Just commenting because it's nice to see Homeworld mentioned.
@@TheGoddamnBacon Homeworld is what made me into the hardcore sci-fi nerd I am today, way back in 1999. Indirectly, it actually brought me to BSG (I was looking for other media similar to Homeworld and found the RDM series). It's great to see the exchange between the franchises as well, subtle though it may be.
Homeworld was supposed to be a BSG game originally but they couldn't secure the license, and ended up creating one of the most compelling and original sci-fi stories in history. Then, in the Re-imagined series, we can see subtle Homeworld influences such as the hybrids (especially the 1st hybrid, voiced by the guy who also voiced the Bentusi in Homeworld) and the episode that is pretty much a copy of mission 10, Supernova Station
Anyway, enough of my rambling; I love the shit out of both IPs and I get the impression Pegasus (and the Mercury class in general) drew quite a bit of influence from the Motherships and Carriers of the Homeworld universe
I love the Pegasus, she’s got a good hull and plenty of squadrons and limited ECM ability. My gripe has always been her lack of firepower and its terrible arrangement. Good thing Moebius Models (for a time) made the scale model kits of her and Galactica, I’ve got 8 of her and every one has guns for days mounted on the ventral AND dorsal sides of the ship. Full 360 spherical coverage with exception to the stern, you know because there’s a hug engine block there.
Otherwise this episode on Peggy is the best yet. Hope you do more and show us your take on the other classes from the BSG universe
Honestly, Pegasus never struck me as near invincible. She had trouble battling 3 Basestars and only survived by the quick thinking of her crew. Add another Basestar to the Nebula battle, maybe 2 and that would have done it. She was powerful but not insurmountable.
Don't forget how the FTL went offline in multiple instances because someone looked at it the wrong way...
17:22 "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!!"
The Pegasus was infamously misused because the show was "Battlestar Galactica" 2004. She was the answer to all of he flaws of a now ancient Battlestar of a war 40 years ago. She had factories to produce more Vipers, and ammo, and everything the civilian fleet needed.
Lee Adama using her as a suicide ship to save a ancient bucket 40 year old battlestar was almost as bad as Gaius Baltar's actions.
My idea was similar, the crippled PEGASUS would be the reason for the stop at New Caprica, with Cain wanting to strip Galactica bare Vs Adama's desire to create a force of two more equal strength battlestars, the better to defend the fleet. This would "re-balancing" of forces would also allow Galactica to be reinvigorated by replacing the "museum" hanger with the an-new-super Pegasus hanger**, (with fabricators?) leaving both ships with two hangers (In my universe Peggy has lost one on one side). If a lot of non-engineering crew are planet-side to allow the engineering madmen to work on the refits Galactica and Pegasus would have a reason to be skeleton Crewed. This could also allow far better use on screen of the repair ships.
Due to the crew-level and still opened up state of the ships when the Cylons arrive, they have to jump, they are just too vulnerable. This also allows for a reason for the delay in returning, Tyrell needs some time to get one ship, Galactica, upto spec. They then slip a Raptor down to NC and contact the resistance, who, have discovered a Cylon rotation is about to happen, reducing the orbiting fleet from four to two Basestars for a short period of time.
However, after the Galactica jumps, the Pegasus (under Tigh, lets give him this one) receives last minute intel via the stealthy blackbird, the Cylons have tricked the colonials, The number of base-stars is not halving but doubling, "Its a trap".
Thus Lee charges the Pegasus in, Galactica cant fight at 8:1, and if she is lost, Pegasus cannot continue, the damage is too great. But the jump in overstresses the frame and Peggy breaks her back, but by bulldozing into the fight Tigh creates the opening for the Galactica to get out, and perhaps some "brilliance" by Tigh (you dont get to be XO of a Capital ship just by being drinking buddies) or Adama also gives the colonial fleet time to get into space.
I might even allow the beast to suicide into the star, as the fleet has to go NOW, or maybe crash into a new city that the Cylons have built for themselves.
**this would have required the new hangers to be the same size just mirrored, but that's doable, and tactically sound for a fleet.
But yeah she was never gonna work as presented. and it would allow Tigh to get a battlestar at least temporarily.
I will State one thing that Sci Said at the Beginning No 40k is not the Final Boss of Sci.Fi. that Honor Goes to Warframe just by Sheer MINDNUMBING Stuff that Happens just in the Main Timeline but also the Way Lore gest Presented and Distributed but I wouldn't mind seeing ur Take on EITHER
I like everything you said here. Would have made for a great battle, great episode. Hmm, if only there were a skilled animator who could make this a reality, maybe edit some character scenes (maybe even redub them?) to make a full episode from this idea...
Nah… I like the way they left Pegasus Exit in the OG… maybe she got away on her own, or maybe she didn’t make it… I always thought that crazy Bastard Kane jumped the Pegasus away and made it…
Is kind of hinted at in the count iblis storyline that Pegasus got away but then Kane ran into Iblis and Sheba see’s her fathers remains when she follows Apollo back to the planet they ran into him on, which is what free’s her from Iblis influence.
Sets it up when they talk about the crater and would need to be size of a battlestar.
This is an excellent plot. It would also have given us much more and better battle scenes. Laking those is, in my eyes the major, sore problem with the series.
And if they had made a jump to the Pegasus for just a few minutes every other episode...
I love your idea for a different end of the Pegasus. I agree that the one shown on TV lacked the gravitas the Beast so deserved! Now, all we have to do is get the entire cast and crew back together. The sets, I think, could be digitally reassembled. And let’s put your ideas on film! We can release it as a Saturday Night Special!
I'm surprised we didn't see more kamikaze attacks from the Cylons, at least on a large scale anyway. If anyone here has played Halo Wars 2 and you remember that scene where the sentinels cut the Banished ship in half by smashing into it then please tell me if you think that would of been a cool way to get around the Battlestar flak fields or just a cool scene to see in BSG in general.
The Pegasus became poison the moment they decided to make it a newer, more modern, more powerful Battlestar. In OG BSG the Pegasus and the Galactica were the same class of ship with the same capabilities. It should have been the same in nuBSG. Or even better make it one of the smaller, stripped down Battlestars like the Valkyrie.
Should have also made Cain less of a mad woman and instead kept her closer to OG Cain who was a brilliant, if somewhat insane, tactician. It would've had more of an interesting by-play with the Galactica technically being the better ship, but the Pegasus being almost on par with it due to having been kept in good working order by Cain where the Galactica was a patchwork of field repairs/refits to bring her back into fighting shape after having been decommissioned and turned into a museum.
Good idea. Galactica was built during wartime to fight the enemy of its day. Pegasus was built after decades of peace to fight an enemy with unknown numbers and capabilities.
It wouldn't be surprising at all if Pegasus was actually just the largest bucket of graft wrapped in committee-designed trash ever invented by the humam mind. The entire ship could have been riddled with bad design choices and utterly useless sub-systems that sounded cool to some politician or office bean-counter on Caprica during the procurement phase a decade prior.
Which would have set up a neat dichotomy -- Galactica is half scrap on the outside but all warrior on the inside while Pegasus could have been pristine on the outside but one wrong sneeze away from death on the inside.
@Grizabeebles A great Pegasus flaw would be her FTL being finicky and prone to being knocked out by armor hits. Some fancy new long-range FTL drive that she was in dock for that also helped the ship escape the Colonies attack.
OG Cain reminds me of a line from an old fantasy satire. It is along the lines of 'you can only assume a wizard is dead if you have personally seen them die three times."
The only thing that could have made it better would have been if there would have been a pegasus maneuver where the pegasus jumps from orbit onto a base stars head driving it into the ground (BAGPIPES!)
I think Star Trek has shown that though the Enterprise is a character like any other actor/actress on the show, fans understand that any ship by the name Enterprise is loved just the same. The old ship dying and the Pegasus being rechristened would have completely made sense, and if done well, viewers would have been satisfied if she went out with glory. it would have had a negative impact on the desperation in the storyline to find home; but, I am sure the writers could have figured out a way to get to the same end point...
It was mentioned in the comments of your pegasus problem video, that breaking the pegasus would not only fix the problems of bringing in an OP ship but also make Cain a little less shitty and also change the Scyllia fleet plot in Razor just a little.
Imagine the Pegasus making a jump escaping another ambush and things turn red. The FTL is down and they don't really have the resources to make replacement parts in a timely manner. They would have to cannibalize parts of the Pegasus, recycle them into the forges, to make the parts necessary to fix the FTL, and until then the Cylons could jump in and finish them off... then they find the Scyllia fleet... All those replacement parts... all that material you can melt down and reforge.
Now they have a real reason to be picked apart with bits slapped onto the Pegasus. Their FTL cannibalized to fix the damaged Pegasus' FTL drive, the hulls used as makeshift platting, the useful civilians drafted, food, water, and ammunition taken and whatever is left is melted down to fuel the Pegasus' refinery capabilities. She can still make new parts and vipers so long as she has the usable material to do it... and the Scyllia fleet just so happened to be usable material. Now imagine Cain's excitement seeing Galatica and the colonial fleet, or in her mind: Refurbishment. Finally get that crater fixed, take Galatica's flight pods and repair your own if not slap them on, take her guns and replace your ruined guns. Scrap down most of the fleet into usable materials. Of course there is the president in her way... for now.
@dajonaneisnoah8714 had the idea that platting from the Scyllia fleet would be bolted onto Pegasus. In your scenario, bolted on the craters and breach points.
And as @deloreanrc says: "...Imagine Galactica's civilian fleet never knew about what Pegasus did to the Scyllia fleet, but rumors float around ever time they look at Pegasus's hull....they see a section on the Alligator head has Scyllia's name plate on it, the section of plate it was attached to used to patch damage on the wounded giant....and everyone can only wonder "Where DID they get that plating?" "
Sweet. Excellent inspiration for a mission in the FreeSpace campaign I’m planning
Pegasus was never really expected in the fight. Its crew state was not good enough to be of much value in the fight. A well through out fight was not possible for the ship.
I mean, we are talking about writers who think that people making decisions completely and totally contrary to their established character just for the conflict for today's episode is...somehow good writing.
I personally find as quite clever the way they justify weird design of Galactica. It was in fact a Battleship. What has relatively small hangars, mostly for shuttles and they escorts. But because it was museum ship, they removed most of its missiles and armor. So it was a Battleship, what could not fight as Battleship. And mostly relied on its tiny aviation compartment for defense. Though still could survive major direct attacks.
Pegasus was different... Pegasus was actual Battleship. What just happen was on long mission and did not received fatal upgrade what wiped all other Battlestars. So Pegasus was downright comically overpowered! Or at least should be. With full armor, all missiles and from what I remember automatic flight deck. I don't remember if it was more a Battleship of a Carrier. In old show it was more sequel sister ship.
But yes. The way how they could keep it in line, could be that it actually has prolonged battle with Cylons and was on its back foot, when Galactica encounter it. With severe damage, what do not make it better option. Though technically due to automation Galactica in fact did have better facilities.
That was definitely a better way to handle things.
An alternative would be for Pegasus to arrive as barely operational - take you suggestion to the next level - then have a story arc about stripping the
Pegasus and refitting some of its systems into Galactica.
They should use valkyrie instead of pegasus, or multiple smaller military ships that joined galactica(cruisers, frigates, "desytroyers" or reporpused civilan ships, freighters to carry weapons/auxillary cruisers)
Maybe the Pegasus could have turned up in good fighting shape at the start, but very soon afterwards the ship is heavily damaged enough that it is in a state where it is much weaker now and around the strength of Galactica. The Pegasus could get heavily damaged holding off a large Cylon attack while Galactica and the civilian fleet are jumping after a delay or are ambushed and the Pegasus has to hold the line till everyone has jumped. But that heroic action cost Pegasus a lot of it armour and strength which has now has weakened it.
Or maybe the Cylons have a new powerful ship that is built for Gun battles, that along with Basestars can hurt Pegasus.
Big Spaceships exploding in a massive ball of flame is something i always hated. And it makes little sense, considering JUST HOW FUCKING BIG Pegasus is.
So, just plowing face first through the basestar, and then burning up in atmophere? Heck yeah. Thats Metal.
They should have kept the Pegasus because they already had the pilot solution. Make it so both ships were so damaged that you have to merge them. And even as it was the ships did not mean they needed millions of enemies because of the mostly real feel of the series. Espcally with later them having a second ship in the basestar.
I think another option would be to make the Pegasus while powerful, entirely unfit to support the refugee fleet. Maybe it doesn't have near as extensive water tanks, or lacks other systems that are unnecessary as just a warship, but something that are hugely needed for the role Galactica was fulfilling. It would even mirror the roles of Adama vs Cain.
My take was that they should have established like a villain ship, a cylon dreadnought a proper massive battleship one off that haunts galactica several times in the previous season shrugging off nearly everything with minor to no damage. Have the Pegasus arrival be the first time they actually fight it off and have it be the thing that brings the crews together.
This way you got an antagonist that can take on a battlestar and come out on top 1 on 1 and something distinct as a threat that properly justifies the damage Pegasus takes in its final battle and its sacrifice. The rest you can write in a lot of ways but it solves all the major issues in a simpler way and it would add a cool factor to the Cylons like maybe the dreadnought could have been a previous of their later base being partially organic and being distinctly different from teh regular basestars.
In the OG BSG a Basestar was always hyped as a serious threat that even one Battlestar would have trouble with. They could've kept that concept, maybe even have this (at least one of them) Dreadnought destroyed in the Raid on the Resurrection ship
I actually kinda dig the battle you wrote up in five minutes! 😄
I love your version. Its so much better.
Whereas the Galactica can only shoot from each of its cannon Thomas the Tank Engine projectiles, the Peggy can fire Thomas the Tank Engine and his entire load at them toasters.
Lee decided to drive it into a basestar without even trying to peace out with that second, powerful warship that can produce new Vipers and armor.
I hate its context for elimination, and Lee should've found himself miraculously written out by...something unfortunate, let's just say that.
Lee was an incompetent Capital Ship Commander. He fought it like a fighter until the very end.
I'm going to take a moment at 7 minutes and 44 seconds in to stop and make a note, I've did a bit of a deeper dive into the death of Pegasus at new Caprica, and I've noticed some background details, I have to take you back to Captain's hand though, Pegasus was instantly hit by 2 nuclear detonations in the stern, she lost her FTL and took damage to the hull and cooling systems, during that battle we get to see a pretty extensive view of Pegasus's dradis cluster and more importantly: The damage control screens (Pre-Razor ofc). During the battle of New Caprica, which we know went on for a couple of hours atleast despite the 'rushed' appearance of it on screen, when Lee finally orders abandon ship, we know a few things: Visually Pegasus is hurting, but functionally, she's still all in, her armor plating seems to be pretty beat up, but for 4 raptors worth of crew, all of her guns are still firing and she's still running. Her automated systems are even still functioning "Set main batteries to auto-fire cycle B" Now, take a close look at that scene frame by frame, you'll notice the FTL offline screens from Captains hand are on almost every other screen in CIC, they just never draw attention to it, plus, we see the Raptors jumping away almost immediately, why wouldn't they just Jump the ship out if they were pulling out?
Answer: Captains hand set up Pegasus being easily susceptible to FTL damage, as well as losing her chief engineering officer who was the only competent engineer onboard, and with a full crew and viper coverage she struggled to escape 3 baseships. So it's reasonable to assume with only 4 raptors worth of crew that probably aren't the best of the best (Since we know the best of the best were on the surface at the time on shoreleave) She suffered damage to her FTL, there was no way to fix it in a short amount of time, so they left her there as a distraction on full auto mode. The writers just didn't have the time to highlight the small details. We also know that prior to leaving New Caprica the fleet had a good year or so of disrepair as the crews took shoreleave, Pegasus wasn't exactly an easy ship to upkeep, it's entierly possible the ships systems had degraded over time from lack of repair (We saw this happen to Galactica as well as Adama strolls through the empty corridors to lights failing and systems not functioning properly) I think they could have added an episode or two, one taking place before they jump back to Caprica to rescue Anders showing a fight that further highlights the FTL weakness after Captains hand (No drydock so they probably can't just source big new armor plates to cover the hole from 2 nukes?) And a second episode chronicalling what actually happened to the state of the fleet during the few months at New Caprica to highlight the disrepair, and then they would have been good.
I've also heard rumors, though I'm not sure if they're true, that Pegasus was supposed to make it until the Nebula battle, having survived New Caprica in a similar but slightly better state than Galactica; and that's where she was suppose to be lost, at the Nebula, going down saving the fleet just before Thrace returns and Anders triggers that whole Cylon retreat, but the reason that didn't happen was budget constraints and needing the room for the Cylon Baseship set so they had to take down the Pegasus set or something. I don't know if any of this is true, but its interesting as a what if.
Also in reguards to Cain, I think it would have been very interesting if she had ended up being a Cylon, one of the final five, (Over that one chick who was just shoehorned in there) Imagine the grief of being Cain, someone who was so motivated by her hatred of the Cylons, waking up after being shot by a Six. . . in a ressurection chamber. They could have wrote new caprica as Pegasus is last seen on auto, but not seen destroyed. Cain comes back in a blaze of glory after being so mentally screwed up by all of the events that happened, and takes her ship (That was captured by the Cylons) and goes and blows the ressurection hub after relinking with the Colonial fleet and the Rebel Baseship. Could argue that she rams the hub with Pegasus or something idk, that lets events play out the same way for the most part at New Caprica (Lee abandons ship and we *think* Pegasus is destroyed but we never see it) and then she shows up later beaten and battered for one final blow as Cain goes down in CIC guiding her ship into the hub after allying with the cylon rebels.
I still feel they should have made her split from the fleet, to take a few ships with her, in a bid to try and maximize humanities chances of survival.
This made my blood pressure go up.
This sounds alot like Star Trek Voyager "The Year of Hell" story arc, only without the happy ending :D
Spacedock did a really good vid about the Pegasus sacrifice. The take away was that Lee Adama should have been drawn and quartered.
That would have been truly epic!
As an original series and reimagined series fan, the way that the RDM BSG handled the Pegasus was pretty good, and a lot better than Lloyd Bridges doing a Poochie "my world is calling and I must go" ending that we got after one episode of the original series.
The other way to do it could have been making the Pegasus a Valkyrie class, half the size of the Galactica and less well armed and with fewer vipers. That way it can lend help without overpowering the galactica. And that would make the New Caprica rescue make much more sense. A smaller battlestar couldnt take all the fire for long, and couldnt destroy all four ships, but it covers galactica while it repairs FTL and jumps away, but the smaller battlestar is crippled so it uses its smaller body to ram the base star and destroy it.
Another very simple way to avoid the problem would be to have the fleet sent off on its own, and have both Battlestars attack new Caprica simultaneously, complementing each other. The Pegasus could be sent in first because it is newer and stronger, but as a result, it takes massively more damage than the Galactica. The Galactica tries to save it, but fails.
You could have the Pegasus die in that battle, or it might be more interesting to have it survive the battle and escape alongside the Galactica, but it is so broken from the battle that it is not salvageable. So they simply raid as much stuff from it as they can, and then leave it behind, or scuttle it
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