FROM THE ADAMA JOURNALS:

Communication is impossible. Communication is improbable. Communication is implausible.

I’ve often considered having a sampler made of those nine words, with each embroidered splendidly in gilt threads. I’d then hang it behind the desk in my official quarters.

When I’m particularly frustrated, I believe people can never reach an understanding. At best they attain a level of verbal exchange which they invest with the illusion of an understanding. In my particularly bleak moods I even believe that people cannot even reach a point of communication, much less understanding, especially one in which something that is really meaningful to both is exchanged at the same moment. So many things—factors, aspects, character traits, tics, timing, temporary obsessions, all the words we cloak intentions under—interfere frustratingly with human contact. For some people distinctions of class, race, and personality cannot really be overcome, except for the trading off of ordinary banalities, themselves substitutes for communication.

In military life, I’ve often found the obligations of rank to be obstacles in moments when I’ve vitally needed sufficient trust for a subordinate to speak openly. Aboard the Galactica, I have tried to establish the custom that the commander is open to all points of view. But I’m still the commander, and that interferes even when I’m dealing with outspoken crew members like Tigh and Starbuck. Even Apollo and Athena, who rankle at the formalities they have to employ to speak to me officially, seem to choke up a bit when expressing their ideas on the command bridge. At least they speak openly to me in private. No matter how much I try to put my officers and crew at their ease, there always seems to be a formality in the order of presentation that affects my response to the message. I have to allow that formality as part of the necessary discipline required to keep our fleet continuing on its desperate quest. And always the point of real understanding, the bridge to genuine communication, seems to hang between us, invoked but not traveled. Sometimes I wish I could hear the message in the manner—be it angry, pleading, arrogant, or obscene—that would be most comfortable to the speaker expressing it.

I showed the above part of this entry to Tigh, to get his thoughts on the subject. He smiled and said not to sweat it, all the communication Galactica can handle is going on regularly. Any more, and he’d apply for transfer to the Colonial Movers transport ship.