11: The Man With Nine Lives

[Eric Paddon]

This thread will be for discussion on changes etc. on adapting episode #11 "The Man With Nine Lives" and conforming the story to a continuous season arc storyline.

[Senmut]

Not much to say about this ep, it's nearly perfect. Except, would a Nomen actually fit into a Viper cockpit?

[Spike The Cylon]

If I was to redo this episode, i'f go more into the back story of the nomen. They seemed not quite human, and I'd like to know more about how they ended up in the fleet.

[Darrell Lawrence]

They just seemed like nomadic desert folks to me

Their features, such as the large brows, are no different than how different races of people here on Kobol...whoops! I mean Terra.... errr Earth even, look.

[kingfish]

I remember they mentioned Borallis in the pilot. If the Nomen hailed from there was never explained. The Hatch books gave them greater depth. The Nomen hate technology and are doomed to die because there are no females for them to mate with. I guess a human female couldn't take the stress.

[Eric Paddon]

I did this story by combining both "Man With Nine Lives" and "Murder On The Rising Star" into a single story. That way I could keep Chameleon around for when Starbuck gets charged with murder and put him in the dilemma of whether he should tell him the truth.

As for the Nomen, I too hold to the "Borallus" theory and that Nomen are what might be called the hard-core Fundamentalist militant types who inhabit the planet. Their presence in the Fleet is best explained by the fact that (1) there were Borellians living in the Colonies either as ambassadors or working (you can picture Nomen hired by rich colonists as henchmen) (2) they were rounded up among the survivors and were not able to return to their home planet beacuse as the pilot established, Borallus was too dangerous a place to stop at and (3) this would naturally produce some resentment among some Borellians who are never going to see their home planet again.

[Darrell Lawrence]

BORALLUS "Saga of a Star World" - Sire Uri and Adama argued over Borallus as a stopping point for fuel and supplies.

BORELLA "Baltar’s Escape" - Borella is evidently the home planet of the nomen. It's impossible to say from the information given if Borallus might possibly be the same planet.

[Eric Paddon]

The beauty of doing the stories as adaptations is that you don't have to hold yourself to those slight differences in name and can just go with the simpler solution if it creates a tighter, more effective story overall.

[BST]

That's true. As long as the link is made to the original storyline, how you run with it is up to the imagination.

[Darrell Lawrence]

I prefer to think of them as two names for the same planet, ala in our REAL world, Earth and Terra.

[Eric Paddon]

Okay, starting with this episode (where I was helped in a couple scenes by Sanna Guerin, co-moderator of the Galactica fanfic mailing list), I decided to do some major overhauling for the sake of creating a bigger, more ambitious story. This meant combining both TMWNL and MOTRS into a single story which gave me the ability to keep Chameleon around during the events of MOTRS where he should be concerned about his son being up on a murder charge, and also it gave me a better chance to set the stage for why Charybdis decides he has to murder Ortega, and how he goes about planning this (I had already introduced Charybdis and Ortega in the Saga adaptation and this gave me a chance to bring an old subplot to completion, in keeping with the idea that the episodes should be reimagined in a way that allows for this greater sense of continuity and epic sweep).

Some alterations of note:
-Chella, the Pyramid dealer who plays a big role in MOTRS is introduced in TMWNL as the Pyramid dealer at the table where Chameleon introduces himself to Starbuck.

-I expanded on the nature of how do the Borellians live in the Fleet? The freighter Borella is where they live, and I decided that the Nomen are not the only group of people from that planet who live there. That in fact they are a minority sect much like Shiite Muslims are the minority sect of that faith in contrast to more secular Sunni Muslims. Thus, the leadership of the Borellians in general is headed by someone from this more secular class, who is more open to cooperating among the Colonials in friendship (for his backstory, I made him the Borellian Ambassador to the Colonies at the time of the destruction) and this is something that displeases hardcore Borellian Nomen who favor separatism and the desire to start a culture of their own based on the principles of their Code (just like the Iranian Fundamenalists wanted to set up an ideal state in 1979). Thus, the Borellian Nomen conspiracy that Chameleon got caught up in involved a plot to assassinate the Ambassador, seize control of the ship and take it to a planet to start a culture based on Borellian principles (much the same as what we heard in the episode but given some greater clarity and needed background detail).

I felt Apollo was too passive when Starbuck got irate over learning about the background check on Chameleon and walked away with his "end of a friendship" declaration. I had Apollo lose his cool and give a few choice retorts to Starbuck for overreacting and being so overly trusting of Chameleon.

Also, I set the stage for Starbuck's clash with Ortega by having scenes of Ortega at the Chancery and words being exchanged between them. Then, when a drunken Ortega nearly starts a brawl with Starbuck in the Officer's Club, Boomer has to step in and then makes Ortega take his deep patrol as punishment where in his not completely sober state he lets slip the name "Charybdis" to Barton who will remember it in MOTRS.

End of this part of the story after the final scene of the episode as we know it has Charybdis confronting Ortega and telling him that he won't pay him any more blackmail money unless he agrees to throw his upcoming triad match with Apollo and Starbuck and get himself thrown out of the game. Then, Charybdis will meet him in the locker room area and give him an extra payoff. What Charybdis is really doing is setting up Ortega for his murder. To me, this was important because unless Ortega deliberately got himself thrown out of the game there would have been no reason for Charybdis to have known ahead of time that Ortega would be down there and have been able to have hatched any kind of coherent murder scheme to begin with.

[SpyOne]

I like your stuff.
But, ...

Originally Posted by Eric Paddon

To me, this was important because unless Ortega deliberately got himself thrown out of the game there would have been no reason for Charybdis to have known ahead of time that Ortega would be down there and have been able to have hatched any kind of coherent murder scheme to begin with.

Whereas I think that Charybdis didn't have any kind of coherant scheme. He hated Ortega, and saw his Window of Opportunity when he realized Ortega would be alone while everyone was watching the game.
In fact, my only question is why take the gun of the one guy who's likely to miss it? I mean, Apollo was still in the game, so he wouldn't notice his gun was gone, whereas if Starbuck showered quickly, ...

[Eric Paddon]

Originally Posted by SpyOne

In fact, my only question is why take the gun of the one guy who's likely to miss it? I mean, Apollo was still in the game, so he wouldn't notice his gun was gone, whereas if Starbuck showered quickly, ...

For the answer to that question, stay tune for my summary under MOTRS. I actually make the argument that framing Starbuck was the one part of Charybdis's plan that ended up being improvised, since he couldn't anticipate that Starbuck was going to get thrown out of the game and disrupt the way he first planned it.

[Senmut]

Okay, EP...where's the summary????????????????????

[Eric Paddon]

It takes me more than three months to tell you at last, Senmut, that the summary you asked for was posted a month before in the MOTRS thread on May 18.

[Senmut]

Ah.
Only three months? Shouldn't that be sectars?

[Eric Paddon]

Five sectans for me to say, yeah three sectars.

[Senmut]

Better late than never, EP.

[Jubal]

This episode was simply awesome.

(wracks brain).

Perhaps a counsel meeting of the Nomen on whatever corner of whatever ship they happen to inhabit and how they have made theirselves at home there amoungst all the technology. (Did they manage to import dirt from some planet along the way to give the floor a more on world feel? Etc.)

How could that have worked? Well if there is one thing I like about Galactica it was the fleet. Marvel comics even touched on life on the other ships, and this episode with the fleet TV network, and other aspects of life on and travel between the ships showed a lot already. I think the Noman's environment within the fleet was all that I found missing.

[Punisher454]

I think they had their own ship, "Freighter Borrella" IIRC.
The Nomen were my favorite secondary characters in the series by far. I really wanted to hear Maga go on a bit more about the "land of the Mega Sun and endless sands".
Richard Hatch's novels dealt with a Nomen character that Apollo saves , and this Nomen swears a an oath to protect Apollo.
I also think that finding out what becomes of the three Nomen when they reach Terra with commandant Leighter would be very interesting.

[Senmut]

EP did something with them in his re-do/write up of the ep.

[LZaza]

Didn't he throw them out the air lock?

[Senmut]

I believe so. With all that extra weight, the Enforcers needed to make their ship Leiter.

[Jubal]

Brutal.

So has anyone read the book "Die Chameleon, Die!" in the classic BSG books that Glen Larson had a hand writing. I picked that up but have yet to read it. Just wondering what some of the thoughts were here of it?