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It seems that in general, the suvivors of the Twelve Colonies don't care much for history. If they did, then they'd go out of their way to make sure that evidence of their existence remains. Imagine that if the events of BSG really did happen, there would be no evidence that any of it happened since they destroyed all their ships and other technology. Sure, maybe there's nothing wrong with erasing evidence that you existed if that's what you want. But some of us believe it would be better to preserve as much evidence of our existence as possible.
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Michigan
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Re: Don't care much about history
Fri, August 21, 2009 - 10:56 AMI've always linked that to a fear of death. People think that by preserving our society or something of themselves (like literature), they'll become incorporated into the next generation and thus become "immortal" like achilles, saphos, pythagorus, etc.
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Re: Don't care much about history
Fri, August 21, 2009 - 3:02 PMI think the intention of the writers was to say "this is the reason there would be no real evidence"
There were a couple of things that impacted as I watched the end take place, that didn't say "this could be the way it was"
The first was the coastlines. They were similar to what they are today, but those similarities if the Earth of then and the Earth of now were placed side by side, would be like siblings, i.e. Britain would be attached to Europe, The Meditearanean would be narrower etc. There are legends of the battles of the Gods before they settled on Earth and those spots would have been in places like Atlantis ( half way between Costa Rica and Gibraltar) Just off the coast of Irac at the then mouth of the Euphratese, Florida Quays, A cliff face city off the coast of Japan among others.
There were clearly many different types of hominid living on Earth at that time and the evidence is scarce to say the least of anything they achieved. A fine example is the Hobbits of Indonesia.
That large group of beings we call dinosaurs had an amazing reign, who's to say that for a hundred centuries they didn't evolve into a space faring society and leave to become the greys we know of today. If their world returned naturally to the earth without major intervention like meteor or volcanic intervention, then several million years later there would be no evidence.
As it stands, even if their ships had landed, being exposed to the environment would mean there would be nothing left by today. And as far as looking for cities are concerned, well there are always those sites I mentioned earlier. -
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Re: Don't care much about history
Fri, August 21, 2009 - 3:55 PM
Gerard wrote: "who's to say that for a hundred centuries they didn't evolve into a space faring society and leave to become the greys we know of today"
Could'nt be the greys as everyone knows they evolved to become the saurian species known as the Voth. ;) -
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Re: Don't care much about history
Sat, August 22, 2009 - 3:29 PMI must admit Pax I've not heard of the Voth, although as a crusty old one, my memory is not what it used to be.
On the issue of ETs in the abduction senario, There are the reptilians (Saurians) The Zeta reticuli (Greys) and the humanoids (can't remember the name they go by) who just can't get the fashions right.
The Greys are the ones who are very much into checking us out in the same way that a scientist checks out his/her fruit fly collection. The scoop marks are to see how the atmosphere is affecting us and the anal probing is the most effective way to see what we're eating and how we're coping with all the chemicals.
My belief is that this has been going on for a VERY long time. The BSG Senario of introducing a compatible DNA into the mix is a possibility if the ET intervention had already beed in play for a few million years.
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Re: Don't care much about history
Wed, August 26, 2009 - 12:21 PMIf we have to insert our own fan-fiction (i.e. stories of the Greys or the Voth) into BSG in order to make the ending make sense, then the writers have failed at their job.
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Re: Don't care much about history
Mon, August 24, 2009 - 5:16 PMI don't feel like rationalizing a poorly plotted ending.
The ending itself contradicted major plot points presented in the first three seasons, it required that most of the main and supporting cast act completely out of character, and the "twist" was scientifically and logically implausible (even within the science-fiction universe that was created earlier in the program.) -
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Re: Don't care much about history
Wed, August 26, 2009 - 12:12 AMI don't get what you are saying, how is it implausable?
Considering the Star Trek universe, the one in Babylon 5 and don't forget the day the earth stood still.
Buffy
Doctor Who and the genesis of the Daleks -
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Re: Don't care much about history
Wed, August 26, 2009 - 12:13 PMRon Moore made the point during the pilot and the first couple of seasons that Battlestar Galactica would present "naturalistic" science fiction that stay within the limits of scientific and narrative plausibility and thus avoid the clichés of other popular space operas-- so citing conventions from Star Trek, et al. is just not the way to go.
Scientifically:
1.) we're dealing with the improbability of two planet Earths that have the same geographical features, that are surrounded by similar astronomical features.
2.) Stars are in motion. Constellations do not stay constant for 150 thousand years.
3.) Homo sapiens independently evolve on more than one planet in the same galaxy, have compatable DNA, and develop a North-American style culture?
4.) Somehow Cylon mitochondrial DNA by strange coincidence fits in with the evolutionary family tree of Earth (2?) hominids?
Narratively:
1.) Lee is always presented as dedicated to preserving or built new institutions in order to maintain civilization and hold back barbarism. So the very idea that he would be proposing abandoning all semblance of social structure, technology, and cultural continuity is completely out of character for him.
2.) So, in the previous seasons, we saw people trying to maintain the rituals of their religions, playing music, reading books, trying to maintain a working systems of justice and governance, pass their skills and knowledge along-- and suddenly they get to stone age Earth and they give all that up without argument? Yeah, right.
3.) It just broke with everything that had been clearly established in prior seasons: evidence had always indicated that BSG took place in our future, not our past. Humans and Cylons would have to to establish a merged culture in order to survive, et cetera.
That's right, I said it all before, and I will say it all again. -
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Re: Don't care much about history
Wed, August 26, 2009 - 12:48 PMAddendum
They depend very much on the Pythian prophesy at the beginning and to formulate the explanation for the end, but the leader who was "dying from a wasting disease and would not live to see the end of the journey" somehow lived to see the end of the journey. Either the prophesy is true, there is a god, and all the signs and portents are true, or they are not. Since Laura lived to see Both Earths, the original Pythian prophesy was wrong.
The concept of the mitochondrial mother was taken completely out of context. First of all the mitochondrial Eve is NOT the mitochondrial mother, which is how it was presented in the show. The mitochondrial mother was the original bacterium that enclosed, but did not absorb the first mitochondrial cell. ALL mitochondria come from this first successful union and can be linked to all fauna on the planet. Every creature that breathes oxygen is her descendant. The mitochondrial Eve is the fictitious person that, if traced back far enough, every family line would at some point meet. It's like playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with genetic inheritance. There could, in fact, be several mitochondrial eves that fit the definition who would all, also, have a link to a common ancestor (or more) that also fit the definition. It's not certain that the asian races didn't parallel evolve. If they did, the ME date gets pushed much farther back.
Also, RDM in that naturalistic statement declared there would be no super aliens, other occupied planets, etc. So the introduction of angels, god, etc go specifically against that declaration.
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Re: Don't care much about history
Wed, August 26, 2009 - 11:39 PMI see both points of view and there are discrepencies throughout the storyline. Even at the very beginning, the concept of having to have a battle fleet in the first place when the only real enemy has to be designed and built. I can't believe that these ships were built to keep the colonies in order?
From the moment the starfield senario was put up on Cobol, it didn't make sense and anyway Earth as a name has only been used for a very short period of time.
The decision to burn the fleet at the end didn't make sense to me either and as I pointed out earlier, any cities built 150,000 years ago would have turned to dust anyway, so why exclude them after all the effort. As far as colonisation of other worlds is concerned, long before space travel became a reality, the concept was shown the boot in the story War of the Worlds. Ninety eight percent of the survivors would perish within the first year on civilisation free Earth by simply being there.
All these and other errors in storyline didn't stop me from enjoying it.
As far as it having happened once, then twice and yet again, well look at our history over the last two thousand years. Like a roller coaster going up and down and around and around. Same story, different players. Makes prophesy pretty damned easy. -
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Re: Don't care much about history
Thu, August 27, 2009 - 10:39 AM> Even at the very beginning, the concept of having to have a battle fleet in the
> first place when the only real enemy has to be designed and built.
It's established early on that the Colonies were not a unified political entity and often warred with one another. Cylons were used as weapons in inter-Colonial fighting until they rebelled-- causing the Colonies to have to unite.
> Earth as a name has only been used for a very short period of time.
No. "Earth" was mentioned in the pilot. The temple observatory on Kobol shows modern-day constellations, which imply that BSG takes place in our future.
The problem is that RDM decided on an ending that didn't fit in with the beginning or the middle.
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Re: Don't care much about history
Thu, August 27, 2009 - 10:51 AMYou are correct, Tedward, just about everything about mitochondria in the final episode makes no bloody sense.
I would have been willing to accept gods or hosts of angels in the storyline if the story actually made sense. I'm not convinced that RDM really had made up his mind what head-Six and head-Baltar were even supposed to be until sometime in the fourth season, so he certainly wasn't able to portray either the angels or "God's plan" with any narrative logic (very much unlike the competing agendas of the Shadows and the Vorlons in "Babylon 5.") And certainly "Starbuck's Destiny" wasn't thought out at all. They just made allusions that she had a destiny, killed her off after neglecting that plot point for some time, and then brought her back in order to evoke "mystery!" But even that made no sense.
One can have divine intervention or alien superbeings in a narratively satisfying manner, but this wasn't what was done.
Hell, they then had to publish a comic book miniseries to make sense of the Final-Five and Starbuck plot line (Spoiler: Kara is a corporeal Avatar of Pythia.) Simply because they were too lazy to make a coherent storyline!
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Re: Don't care much about history
Thu, August 27, 2009 - 11:38 PMAgain sorry, I meant that the name Earth hasn't been used within OUR history for that long.
There is, of course that other anomolie that hasn't been mentioned here yet, the probe that killed off the base star. If the thirteenth colony was actually Cylon then the probe was dumped by the final five on route to the twelve colonies. Or have I got that around the wrong way?
And another thing about the fourth season, what happenened to the flying cylons from the rebel ship? -
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Re: Don't care much about history
Sun, August 30, 2009 - 9:44 AMRight. The probe is just another one of those bits of evidence that pointed to BSG taking place in the far future and not in the distant past, so it is yet another major plot point from season 3 contradicted by everything that was revealed in the second half of season 4.
I think that it was implied that the probe was left by the 13th tribe as they migrated away from Kobol towards the first Earth. But don't worry if it doesn't make sense in the end, because it didn't.
I have no recollection of "flying cylons" though.
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Re: Don't care much about history
Sun, August 30, 2009 - 9:47 AMConsider "Earth" to simply be a translation since the program isn't being broadcast in Capircan. Just as we typically translate "Terra" (land) and "Gaia" (the living surface and goddess in ancient Greek mythology) as "Earth" as well.
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Re: Don't care much about history
Sun, August 30, 2009 - 1:24 PMThe flying cylons are the one s that Kara faught with, degutted and flew back to Gallactica.
And I'm Frackin fascinated to know why they didn't use the island of Atlantis that is still viewable with Google Earth half way between Costa Rica & Gibralter as the city base from which they were to colonise the planet. At that time there would have been plenty of thermal energy at the location and easy access to most landmasses, but still provide security for the new colony. There would of course be no trace of any structures built by man now as they would have been obliterated by the explosion in approx. 9,000BC, but the crater is still there. That way there would be a feasable link with the legendary city of Atlantis with it's advanced technology and a culture so old that no one knew how it all worked anymore.
150,000 years ago, the are that we know now as the Sahara would have been lush grazing lands. Any of you yanks know the guys who wrote the final episodes? -
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Re: Don't care much about history
Sun, August 30, 2009 - 2:39 PMThe "raiders" were the whole point of contention in the fourth season. Once they stopped the attack after recognizing anders, the Cavils started neutering them by reming their free will. It's possible that they simply left the rebel ship at the Cavil command.
As for "atlantis", I don't know what you're talking about. The current theory is that Antarctica was Atlantis and the Plutonian allusion to being "swallowed by the ocean" was the weather shift that caused it to freeze over. 13th century Ottoman maps show the continent as only partially covered in ice. The coastline on those maps conforms to modern radar topographical map of what the coastline would look like without the ice.
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Don't care much about history
Mon, August 31, 2009 - 9:46 PMGerard-
If you don't use the terminology established on the show, we won't always know what you are talking about. The Raiders are a major plot point but that element of the story is then resolved.
As far as Atlantis goes: the supposed sighting on Google Earth has been debunked as a digital artifact of how the application assembles images. Without confirmed evidence in reality or an actual appearance on the show, it's just fanfic.
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