Battlestar Wiki:Official Communiques/Archive5

Rank Insignia

This is a minor question but one that I've had in the back of my mind for awhile, especially while working on the uniform and rank pages here. In the Miniseries, Boomer's Raptor is labeled "JRLIEUTENANT" for her rank. Assuming this is the Lieutenant Junior Grade rank, that would corespond with the rank insignia she had on, a diamond with a chevron in it that did not extend past the lower edge of the diamond. Later, in "33", Helo gives his rank as Lieutenant Junior Grade when he is captured. His insignia has the chevron extended so it goes beyond the edge of the diamond. The insignia is identical to the one that Starbuck, a definate Lieutenant wears (except for most of Hand of God, a gaffe, I assume). Gaeta has been seen wearing both. The reason I ask this is that in the new promotional shots for Season 3, Dualla wears this rank insignia on her blue uniform. I basically want to know, which insignia corresponds to which rank? Thank you in advance for the answer and keep up the good work on the show. --Talos 22:37, 31 August 2006 (CDT)

From a picture Glenne Campbell showed me -

Jr Lt - one short chevron

Sr Lt - one long cheveron

Captain - two long chevrons

Major - three long chevrons

Lt Colonel - gold star, white background

Colonel - gold star with some gizmo I can't recognize on gold BG, gold lower triangle

Commander - gold star with the same gizmo on gold BG, gold upper & lower triangles and some white thing behind the whole shebang.

Senior pilot-officer wings are outspread. Junior pilot officer wings are swept back. - Ngarenn 20:34, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

Thanks a whole lot, one question though, what is the insignia for Ensign? We've seen some in Scar but they had LTJG rank on IIRC. --Talos 20:37, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

We're a bit behind in the documentation of this -- the sketches I've seen don't yet carry the ensign rank designator. Or that of Admiral. - Ngarenn 20:44, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

Okay, that makes sense, since Mr Moore's blog entry on ranks didn't mention a Lt. Col. --Talos 20:46, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

Thanks. And that gizmo you're speaking off is the Colonial Phoenix. The bird symbol that's on the Colonial seal.

As for the wings. I assume Lee is wearing junior wings in Season 3 because he dones't have that much flight experience yet. A lot of people think, that everyone just gets senior wings when becoming Colonel, but that's somewhat silly IMO. --Serenity 23:39, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

Heh. I just wanted to make a comment about this. By intuition one would probably say "longer chevron = higher rank". But I think there is enough evidence to reverse that case here. I think Helo started as jay-gee and Sharon as a full Lieutenant. Helo calls her "sir" once or twice. That makes her Raptor markings an error. Later Helo got promoted and is wearing the "short chevron" insignia. The same one worn by most other Lieutenants like Starbuck and Gaeta. Now and then especially Starbuck can be seen with the "long chevron" insignia. Those are costuming errors. Often they :happen when characters switch between the green and blue uniforms.

Dualla also wears a completely new insignia in "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2" but is called Lieutenant. Is there any meaning behind that? Maybe a brevet rank?

I don't want to be presumptous, but maybe the actors could check their rank pins when they receive a new uniform. That shouldn't take too long. The errors are no big deal, but interesting --Serenity 22:15 CET, September 1st 2006

The reason I bring this up is that I'm a military history buff, an ROTC cadet, and a DA Civilian so this is very interesting to me. From watching the show, this is what I've been able to gather.

Sharon's Raptor is still marked like that all the way through Season 1.
Dee had an unusual insignia in LDYB PII but is refered to as a Lieutenant and in the promotional shots for Season 3, wears a short-chevron insignia as seen in this pic.(Warning-big pic)
Starbuck consistantly wears the long-chevron rank, except for the majority of Hand of God (she wore the long rank in the celebration scene in the hanger.
Helo is now a full Lieutenant according to some things Penikett has said. In the promo shots for Season 3, he still wears the long insignia, as seen here. (Big pic again)
Gaeta goes back and forth between the two.

--Talos 19:19, 1 September 2006 (CDT)

Going through screencaps I think you're right and Starbuck usually has "long chevron". Especially in the first season. I checked "Act of Contrition", "Flesh and Bone" and "Kobol's Last Gleaming" for example. I didn't notice any inconsistences with Sharon yet

About Helo: I thought he had "short chevron" in Season 2...However I just checked my DVDs and he's still wearing "long chevron" in 'Flight of the Phoenix', 'Epiphanies' and probably 'Scar'! I couldn't see it very clearly in the latter one. So that promotion thing might not be true. Or at least it wasn't reflected in the costuming yet

What that argument gone, I guess one could just as easily say that Helo stating his rank was a gaffe and thus conclude that "long chevron = Lt. SG" and "short chevron = Lt. JG" which also makes Sharon's Raptor right. Very confusing... --Serenity 10:17, 2 September 2006 (CDT)

My point exactly, and the reason for me asking. He also has long chevrons rank in Season 1, especially visible in the restaurant scenes in, I think, Hand of God. His promotion and postition on Galactica circa LDYB PII was from an interview. It said that he was promoted to full Lieutenant sometime after returning to the ship. Also, even if he outranked her (which can be implied in the Miniseries {First you're flying with rooks and now you're betting against Starbuck} or something like that), he sould still call her sir since she would be in command of the Raptor. --Talos 10:25, 2 September 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, I already thought that maybe she outranked him because of position and not rank.

I probably made some wrong conclusions, because I had a false memory of Starbuck's rank pins. Sorry.

In Season 2, hers are harder to track because she's often out of uniform until she returns from Caprica. But in "Pegasus" and "RS, I" it's "long chevron". And then she's promoted to Captain by Admiral Cain.

And if Helo is already a Lt. SG, then Tahmoh's story about a promotion would be false--Serenity 10:43, 2 September 2006 (CDT)

Thus the dilemma. My thoughts are as follows: Boomer is a junior LTJG, still a rookie. Helo is a LTJG also, but with much more experience and more tours of duty. Except for the insignia problems, as well as Boomer's bag in "Water" that was marked "Lieutenant Sharon Valerii," this fits with what we have seen. --Talos 10:58, 2 September 2006 (CDT)

Sharon's rankpin is always LT.JG (short chevron). I didn't notice an error there yet. Maybe they just leave the SG/JG stuff from clothing. And Helo's is very consistently LT.SG (long chevron). So how about Helo is indeed a LT.SG - and considering his comment to Six a writing error - but Sharon is still in charge of missions because she's the pilot and he's just the ECO?

I'd prefer to go with one error in dialogue over considering his rankpin in ALL episodes an error.

I would, too. But a mission commander is not necessarily the senior officer present. And, "The pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for and is the final authority as to the operation of that aircraft." Unless mission requirements supercede that requirement. - Ngarenn 20:34, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

My main question remaining now is Dualla's rankpin in LDYB. Though in one released S3 pic she's wearing a regular Lt. pin I think. Maybe Mr. Thompson can shed some light on that --Serenity 11:21, 2 September 2006 (CDT)

The problem is that we don't know if the which pin belongs to which rank, thus my question. In the promo shot of Dualla I linked to above, she wears the short chevron insignia. --Talos 12:25, 2 September 2006 (CDT)

We're a bit behind in the documentation of this -- the sketches I've seen don't yet carry the ensign rank designator - but Dualla has moved beyond that to a Junior Lt by the time Season Two closes, which is consistent with the short chevron insignia. (Long Chevron is Sr. Lt) Also consider that promotions (and demotions) do happen on Galactica that we don't get to see. - Ngarenn 20:34, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

The thing with Dualla is that she is wearing previously unknown insignia in LDYB II as seen here but Apollo calls her Lieutenant. Is there any deeper meaning behind this? --Serenity 15:47, 15 September 2006 (CDT)

Blackbird: Efficient Construction Crew?

Hey, I would like to refer you to this article[[1]]. Just looking for clarification, I suppose- was this just a VFX gaff, or is there something you lot haven't told us yet? :P --Madbrood 11:55, 8 September 2006 (CDT)

The Blackbird shouldn't be mixing it up out there. Looks as if the VFX guys are trying to keep us on our toes. Even if it were in service at that time, the Blackbird has no guns and doesn't turn well enough to be a survivable dogfighter. - Ngarenn 17:57, 12 September 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, that's what we thought. Damn those artists, huh? ;) Thanks for the reply --Madbrood 14:11, 19 September 2006 (CDT)

The international webisode question

Hi Bradley - I haven't been able to find any rationale for why the webisodes aren't available outside the US, as mentioned above. Can you shed any light on the thinking behind this decision? Thanks! - Mr. Random 10:00, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

I asked SciFi.com. Their answer: "We'd like to make them available to viewers outside the US but for various legal reasons we're unable to." International broadcast agreements are complicated and these decisions/reasons are way above my pay grade. You may remember that Sky One got to air the first season in the UK before it showed up in the US. I'd bet that something similar is going on here. - Ngarenn 20:06, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

I don't even understand how they can make them unavailable to some people (technically, not legally). I thought URLs take everyone to the same place, no matter where they are located. battlestarwiki.org is still battlestarwiki.org in Korea, right? Or is it a porn site there? ;) --Mateo 20:40, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

That's a question better answered by a web designer. Got one handy? - Ngarenn 20:47, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

(/me waves hand) Checking out the "code" and watching my internet packets be sent out to the internet, it does it a werid way. For simpleicy reasons what it does is downloads the whole movie first, then checks your "GEO" area (as explained by CA below). If your GEO is not correctthen it unloads the movie is shows the error. There is a twist. They embed proxy checking. So if you are running behind a proxy, it disables it all together. This is just a quick overview. Going to be doing a more through look later. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 22:54, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

I think it has to do with SAG and other guild laws than it has to do with the technical aspect of it. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 20:59, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

I believe the technicalities involve the allocation of IP address ranges. It's public information which blocks (starting numbers) correspond to which countries (or other entities, down to reasonably small chunks). See http://www.ip2location.com/free.asp for a demonstration. Then one simply makes the server return different responses to requests from different ranges. --CalculatinAvatar^(C-T) 22:22, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

Yes, that too. ;-) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 22:32, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

Ohh, by the way, just go to youtube and they are there. --Mateo 20:41, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

FYI, NBC-Universal has been proactively pulling down anything on youtube that pertains to the webisodes. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 20:59, 13 September 2006 (CDT)

Mercifully, there's a lag between the time a clip goes up, the time NBC finds it, and the time YouTube actually gets around to it. It's usually enough of a gap to get 2.5 minutes of webisode viewing in. Thanks for asking into it, Bradley! - Mr. Random 23:40, 13 September 2006 (CDT)