DPP: The Hard Fall

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Hey kids!

Today's discussion topic was submitted by caprican_dame and it's a doozy. Get your thinking caps on:

What if Lee couldn't pull away from the gas planet?

He was close enough to the "hard deck" that he saw Kara hit it. How was he able to pull away from its gravity when he was that close? What if he hadn't been able to?

If Lee hits the hard deck and comes out the other side in the New Earth's atmosphere...
If he walks away from his landing and goes about solo survival while he waits for the fleet to find him...
If Kara returns to Galactica to discover that Lee is "dead..."

How does Adama react to losing both Kara and Lee?
What effect does Lee not taking the stand have on Baltar's trial?
What happens when Kara comes back, but not Lee?
Who's there to take over the presidency when Roslin's on the Basestar?
Who picks up the pieces when Adama finds out about Tigh's cylonity?
How does Kara react when her showroom-perfect Viper starts picking up a second transponder signal, knowing what she found on the nuked Earth?
What is Lee's opinion of chucking all technology now, having actually lived for months with nothing but whatever he could use from his Viper?

Comments

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

Mind: Blown.

So, he crashes on the same planet, but survives. Does he find Kara's burnt-up Viper? Is there even anything edible on the irradiated planet?

More questions than answers? Oh noes!

[wand3rlust.livejournal.com]

Oh, double angst thinking she's dead too! O_o

[wand3rlust.livejournal.com]

haha I was about to come say *brain explosion* but I guess ninjamonkey73 took care of that for me. Very awesome scenario, will have to think on it and come back.

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

This requires the creation of many works of fanfiction. Great questions!

[ecstaticdance.livejournal.com]

AND I DON'T HAVE TIME TO WRITE THEM! Curses.

[poppypickle.livejournal.com]

I second this!

[bellaaurora.livejournal.com]

THIRDED!!! I would read so much of this hard core!

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Here's my question:
Would Kara actually return to Galactica if Lee were on the planet?

(In my head, I remain firmly convinced that she returns TO LEE.)

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

If she knew Lee was on the planet, she would NOT return to Galactica. If Lee knew the Maelstrom led to Earth, he might have gone in. Problem is, no one knew what would happen when Kara went into the storm - she just died to everyone. Why wouldn't Kara just think the same thing?

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Excuse the pigeon metaphor (LOL), but in my head Kara totally has a Lee-centric homing device. She goes to where he is.

[ecstaticdance.livejournal.com]

L.O.L. But also agreed.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Well you're just letting canon--poor misguided canon--get in the way of the REAL story, there. ;)

Lol.

[thegreenkitty.livejournal.com]

You have to learn to forget the rest. ;) It makes life much better. As Tara points out, canon should not interfere with the *real* story. #trufax

Also, I love your thinky!thoughts and am not sure why we aren't friends yet. Do you mind if I friend you?

[thegreenkitty.livejournal.com]

Porn peddling?

YAY!! We will get along just fine. ;)

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

Wow, this kind of breaks my head to think about. I like the idea that Kara wouldn't return to the Fleet but go back to Lee, but that up ends S4 now doesn't it? Hmm, going to have to do some thinking on this one.

Not that I didn't plot out a nice reunion on Earth scene on the way home from the bus stop. ;)

[ecstaticdance.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure upending S4 would necessarily be a bad thing...

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

Up ending S4 might, in fact, be a very good thing. ;)

[thegreenkitty.livejournal.com]

Heh. This plan fits perfectly for me. I've already rejected most, if not all, of S4/4.5 in the bsg that exists in my head.

[ecstaticdance.livejournal.com]

What effect does Lee not taking the stand have on Baltar's trial?

Without Lee, I'm convinced that Gaius ends up getting airlocked. And the alliance with the Cylons does not happen and they don't find Hera and they just struggle along in space until either the ships fall apart or the species dies out from inter-breeding and lack of breeding, whichever happens first.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

And...I still like this more than what we got! ;)

[wand3rlust.livejournal.com]

Hmmm crazy "what if" scenario... What if Helo was the one helping Romo? I can't remember him expressing his feelings on Baltar ever, but he seems the type that might pull off that kind of storyline.

Problems with that though would be he didn't have the personal relationship with Laura to discredit her and I don't think he'd have much sway over Adama either. Then again, would Adama have been selected if he was in a very depressed state as we would expect him to be? Also, Helo unfortunately doesn't have much respect from the fleet considering he was married to a cylon. So... *shrug* maybe, but maybe not. That's a hard one to call, it would've required a different approach than the one they took with Lee, but I think they could've found a way to keep Baltar innocent in order to keep that storyline going.

[ecstaticdance.livejournal.com]

Helo has the right ethics, but the wrong personality. And yes, the wrong connections.

I don't know if Adama would have been excluded from the name drawing or would have asked for an exemption if his name had been pulled anyways. He should have, but I kind of expect he wouldn't have, and then he'd have been looking to blame his son's death on someone (this is Bill we're talking about), which would have made him a million times harder to sway, and a million times more unwilling to see the difference between "innocent" and "not guilty" (because Baltar was never declared innocent, only not guilty of the crime with which he'd been charged).

Though you're right. They certainly could have contrived something to keep Baltar alive if that was their goal.

[themonkeytwin.livejournal.com]

They certainly could have contrived something pulled something completely nonsensical out of their butt to keep Baltar alive if that was their goal.

Yes, indeed. :p

[anastashial.livejournal.com]

Then the finding of Hera really had no value in the end other than maybe to prove to us that current Earth humanity is a Colonial/humanform Cylon hybrid. That would have happened anyway, and some other body that represented the cross might have even been found.

[ecstaticdance.livejournal.com]

As far as the story of BSG goes, I feel like that's what ended up happening in Canon. Finding her didn't matter at all to the grand scheme of the story. If they hadn't found her, someone else would have been the first Colonial-cylon hybrid and as long as they found Earth, the story wouldn't have effectively changed.

Except that I don't think they'd have found Earth, either, because the alliance with the Cylons (which wouldn't have happened without Lee) was supposed to be crucial to finding Earth, too. I think the Colonials would have gone extinct out there in the black.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

I like this idea. Kudos to caprican_dame for the idea, and to taragel for sharing it with us all. :)

I have no problem running with this idea, cause of all the questions and permutations it would cause in cannon. Kara returning to find Lee dead cause he was trying to save her? Oh my.

Though I'm not so sure it happens that Kara went into the storm in Maelstrom and then popped up on Earth. We saw her ship blow up. They show us the gun camera footage in HTBIM. She blew up, but is back. Still like to know the who, what, how of that all. Still it happened somehow so if the above happened would be interesting.

Adama was in bad shape after Kara's death losing both, he shuts down for awhile like Roslin in SaGN. Tigh would have to take over for awhile.

I think on "Earth 1.0" Lee finds her viper and suffers that grief. Also Lee figures out he's on Earth eventually. How does he handle all of this?

Also I think somehow eventually they slowly come to realize the other is alive. At first they may just think they are crazy, but eventually they just know it's true.

Without Lee, I think Baltar is found guilty. Lee is the one who was able to discredit Roslin. He gave the speech that turned the tables. Despite all that Baltar still barely won. If Baltar was airlocked how does that affect what happens the rest of the way?

Someone needs to take this ball and run with it. :)

[themonkeytwin.livejournal.com]

Kara went into the storm in Maelstrom and then popped up on Earth. We saw her ship blow up. They show us the gun camera footage in HTBIM. She blew up, but is back. Still like to know the who, what, how of that all.

But that's part of the problem of this kind of hypothetical (although I do love this idea quite a lot), in that to be able to speculate what would happen if things happened differently, you have to at least have a pretty good handle on what happened in the first place. And we don't know what happened when Kara –> maelstrom –> Earth, because the show has no idea, either. It Just Happened Okay.

This is one of my issues with all of that (and I don't know why this bothers me and the Kara-is-back doesn't particularly), but if we see her ship blow up upon entering the maelstrom, how come it's a largely intact crash on Earth with enough human remains to even burn? Isn't that, like, TWO reconstructions of her body for the price of one? Why isn't it scattered in a bazillion pieces or burned up on atmo entry? Why...? and so on.

I agree that Baltar would be airlocked. Maybe we'd have angel!Baltar and the pilots just frollick on cinder!Earth until the fleet finds them under his guidance.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

Exactly, they didn't have a good explanation for it. I'm sure in the writer's room they came up with something, but sounded either so contrived or weird or illogical they decided screw it. We can't explain so won't try. :P

Had the nerve on DVD to say if we explained, it would ruin the mystery. Yeah, they didn't know either. :P

[themonkeytwin.livejournal.com]

!

We need little pithy witing tips to stick up retroactively around that writing room. "CLUELESSNESS ≠ MYSTERY" might not be the most urgent thing to begin with, but it would still be a start.

[poppypickle.livejournal.com]

angel!Baltar

OH GOD. LOL.

[themonkeytwin.livejournal.com]

Confession: I wrote that and then immediately fell a little bit in love with the idea. Can you imagine? And would he still have a Head Six? Enquiring minds want to know!

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Also I think somehow eventually they slowly come to realize the other is alive. At first they may just think they are crazy, but eventually they just know it's true.

I love this. Can't stomach the idea of writing another s4/s4.5 superplotty fix-it but this one sentiment I love.

[wand3rlust.livejournal.com]

This would have changed the dynamic of the show so much. Let's say Kara and Lee just disappeared (instead of actually blowing up) into the maelstrom.

I would worry about Lee possibly starving to death on the nuked planet, but my thinking is it wouldn't have taken them as long to find Earth 1.0 had this actually happend. I agree that Kara wouldn't return to the Galactica had she known Lee was behind her, but I'm going to assume she wouldn't remember how she got there/back kinda like on the show so she wouldn't have known Lee got sucked into it to begin with.

So we have Kara who shows up to the Galactica alive and I think that would make Adama be desperate enough to believe Lee possibly survived too. Of course he and Roslin would still be suspicious enough to think it could be a cylon trap, but I think Adama's promise from AOC would have proven true and that he would go look for Lee no matter what the cost. This might have been some excellent conflict between Adama/Roslin as well. Then on top of that we'd have Kara also finding out that Lee disappeared with her and she too would stop at nothing to get back to Earth to see if he was alive.

Damn... now I'm really wishing this would have happened. Maybe I'll make a vid about it if I can. LOL