Brad Ideas - One Earth or Two -- more data, more astronomy - Comments

yeah, ok

Anonymous — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:33:00 -0800

It's all nice theorizing, and I might even buy it, if not for the fact that RDM has admitted to making stuff up as the series has gone a long... No offense, but I have serious doubts that he and his team went out of their ways to add or modify the stars in the sky, because they knew there would be insanely anal internet scifi geeks examining the stars for clues.

Temple of Aurora

Lisa — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:29:01 -0800

And there's really never been a Temple of Aurora on our Earth -- there was a temple to Mater Matuta in the Roman Forum Boarium, but it wasn't until later that she became associated with Aurora. For me this jives with all the other evidence that that cinder planet isn't our Earth, just a planet the Cylons called Earth.

Great Forgetting

Lisa — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:01:29 -0800

Zach-- I like this idea. I'm also drawn to the idea of the Lords of Kobol being AI navcomputers like hybrids, but next to that I like your idea too.

Red Dwarf: Back to Earth

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:10:18 -0800

Red Dwarf is returning to the screens and even that bunch of clowns look like they'll < href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/27/red-dwarf-cast-reunited">find Earth. Unless, some stray god has sneaked into our universe, stolen it, and replaced it with an exact duplicate. But, hey. That's showbiz.

faith and reason

Josiah — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:53:37 -0800

I imagine that when the show is finally over, we'll look back to last Friday's episode, Disquiet that Follows My Soul or whatever it was, and say that this was the weakest of the final 10.

Or at least -- I hope so.

Not a lot of smarts shown by just about anyone, except when Adama essentially blackmailed Tom Zarek and his 1970s haircut with laundry reports at the very end.

And of course, not that I wasn't totally psyched to see Bill and Laura finally get it on... I've always had a thing for Stands with a Fist.

But this episode only confirmed that the focus of the final episodes will be about character, not story or plot or plan, and that whatever truth or history we might get will be for the sole purpose of advancing character development and resolution.

We won't necessarily know everything we'd like to about the Final Five and etc., but by the end we'll know where each character is and how they're handling everything.

And yet -- this kind of exploration isn't entirely worthless. For example, because everyone seems to believe that there is no "earth", we are left to see what happens to a society that doesn't believe they'll end up okay. Not to get all metaphysical, but essentially what we are seeing is a total collapse of faith. No one appears to think that the "Gods" will save them. And even Baltar and his born-agains aren't too confident that their "God" is going to see them through as well.

What's left is pure reason. And pure reason ain't pretty -- they're out in space, there don't appear to be too many human-friendly planets out there, they're surrounded by cylons and possibly being chased by even more cylons, and the whole 13th tribe and earth turned out to be a bunch of bunk. Supplies aren't likely to last long enough to find an alternative to earth. Dee's suicide last week only punctuated what everyone was thinking: Dead Fleet Walking.

No wonder Nobel economist Daniel Kahnemann once said that the only people who have a realistic appraisal of the world are the clinically depressed.

The absence of faith, and the irrational belief in a better tomorrow, we're seeing two mindsets emerge -- one is reckless, hedonistic abandon, and the other is totalitarianism.

Laura Roslin is an example of the first mindset. Fairly simple here. She's in full Eat, Drink, and Be Merry mode. Surprised there aren't more like her out there.

The Adama's cylon alliance idea and Gaeta's mutiny are examples of a totalitarian mindset. Death is so certain, they feel, that every option should be on the table if it offers a chance of survival. As Isiah Berlin wrote: in a totalitarian society, one goal is elevated to a height where anything, anything at all, can be done in the name of achieving it.

It would seem to me that even for the most rational human beings, once faith in a better tomorrow is abandoned, pure reason becomes unstable, and results in increasingly irrational behavior that leads to bad decisions, however "logical" they appear.

It's not unlike the trouble with highly sophisticated machines... Witness the Terminator and Matrix stories, where a sufficiently advanced AI eventually turns on its human masters, even if its been programmed to protect them, because it reaches a purely logical conclusion that the humans are going to destroy themselves. (Or something like that...)

I think all these ideas -- man vs. machine, faith and reason, Gods v. God are all playing out in the characters of BSG, even if some of the fascinating technical detail needed to support it remains, at least for now, less than compelling.

Ummm, planets do spin ya

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:31:53 -0800

Ummm, planets do spin ya know!

The writing on the wall at the produce stand is clearly SUPPOSED to be English. The written language of the colonies is nothing like that, and RDM didn't NEED to show the words "Fresh Produce" in English convey to the viewer what it was, it was clearly a fresh produce stand, it's not like scribbling "Frak Earth" on the walls of Galactica being in English, which was done to show the mood of the fleet, if it was written in the colonial lettering it would have been pointless, because no one would have known what it said.

If you believe Michael Hall

brad — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:29:25 -0800

Who has noticed the true Earth star patterns appearing behind

The Demetrius when Loeben comes to it
The Cylon Civil War
The Tylium Ship

The true Earth is very close to the fleet.

It is odd that the true sky appears in these shots, and nowhere else.

Earth being the start and the end of it all

zach — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:20:44 -0800

Brad wrote: "Aside from real-Earth being ruined, another interesting plot would be to find it an advanced planet, but a planet that expelled the Kobolians long ago. The sign at the door says “Get out, and stay out.” So when they approach, Earth attacks, and destroys a lot of the fleet, which has to flee. Now that’s a dark ending for you!"

That's the ending I would like to see. :)

Humans on Earth (our Earth) created Cylons.
Cylons rebelled. Warred with humans. Humans banished them or defeated them or they decided to leave.
They evolved. They settled on Kobol.
Longing to be like their creators, they programmed themselves to forget their true nature.
So Kobolians - i.e. all 13 colonies, not just the 13th - are Cylon.

Maybe the Exodus from Kobol is when they reprogrammed themselves to forget who they really are.
The 13th tribe is the only tribe that didn't wish to go through the "great forgetting". So they leave and settle on Earth2.

Having been programmed to forget their true nature many generations ago, Capricans eventually create machines of their own.
And blah blah blah... (it's all been said so many times before so I won't repeat it).

When the fleet and the rebel Cylons find Earth, it is understandable that Earth attacks them, knowing they are all Cylon.

Cylons Found Earth!!

JerseyCHUD — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:18:09 -0800

Yes, the fleet is pretty far away from the Cylon homeworld right now, but we really do not know where the Cylon civil war took place or where that solar system is located. I do admit that the uncertainty of that location is the greatest weakness of the view that the Cylon homeworld is really OUR Earth, the human homeworld. (Just like New Caprica was necessary to delay the fleet and cylons for the right time at the algae planet to have the star go nova, maybe the trip to "Earth" was necessary for the final 5 cylons to regain their memories.) As we know, according to the hybrid prophecy there is a "promised land" out there where the humans and cylons will settle. So either another "Earth" is found which seems unlikely OR the Cylon homeworld will be the promised land. To me, that's the simplest explanation, although it conflicts with what RDM has everyone thinking so far.

The scene where Leoben mentions the "blue planet" is in "The Road Less Traveled" when he is trying to get Starbuck's attention, right after he boards the Demetrius. Leoben shouts to Starbuck "A blue planet! Surrounded by clouds...The Hybrid, when she first described it to me, how beautiful it was, I cried." Needless to say, that got Starbucks attention!!

Blue planet

brad — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:30:32 -0800

Where’s the scene where Leoben cries about a hybrid talking about a blue planet?

The section of space they are in is 15,000 light years away from Kobol and Caprica now. A little far to be the homeworld of the new Cylons.

Cylons and Earth

JerseyCHUD — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:51:20 -0800

OK, let me rephrase. Maybe the Cylons home planet is really OUR (human) homeworld. Let's throw out Ron Moore's definition of "Earth" because its confusing the issue. To my understanding of the show, the cylons only wanted Earth because the Colonials did anyway. They were under the same "misinformation" that the Colonials were about "Earth" being a habitable planet and a desirable one.

Ron Moore has fraked with our heads for a while, making us think our human homeworld is "out there" when, in reality, it may have been much closer than we expected to the 12 Colonies the entire time. He's used our expectations from the original BSG against us to deliver the ultimate "suprise" at the end. Think about it, but understand you're going to have to really question a lot from the show so far.

For example(s)...I cannot help but wonder why we've NEVER seen the cylon homeworld so far. Nothing about it! And, we KNOW that there's another "blue planet" out there because we saw it in "Crossroads Pt. 2". Maybe that's why Leoben "cried" (or whatever) when the hybrid mentioned the "blue planet" to him, as he and the other rebel cylons were exiled from their own "blue planet" and thought he had a chance at another one. I have also heard descriptions from the cast that the finale takes us "back to the beginning of the show" which also aligns with the humans going back to where they began their journey. Once you re-think the show a bit, it DOES make sense that the cylon homeworld is the human homeworld.

C'mon, wouldn't Ron Moore do this to the audience?!?!

Yup

Eric — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:48:36 -0800

It does depend on how people define machines. From where I sit as a quasi-omnisicent viewer, the Colonials' habitual denigration of the Cylons as "machines" seems preposterously hypocritical, because even if the Colonials are indeed naturally-evolved organisms, they themselves are simply another kind of machine. The difference is only a matter of perspective -- which tribe of machines is doing the judging.

Does not explain

brad — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:17:43 -0800

The Cylons going on a quest for Earth, demanding the Eye of Jupiter as the only clue to Earth etc.

Buddhism comments that

Anonymous — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:15:36 -0800

Buddhism comments that conciousness is a matter of degree. It's hard to find a form of words that carry the point briefly but if one assumes that conciousness is a property of the universe than the rest flows naturally. It also has the nifty by-product of redering all the Catholic versus medicene style arguments over abortion as so much puff. Who we are and what we do is more important than trivialities like that. This leads us to the final point. I don't have any hang up either way over evolved organic versus designed inorganic life. Life, intelligence, and love are currency. The wagon that carries the gold is irrelevant.

Depends how people define machines

brad — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:08:55 -0800

The cylons are not mechanical, so for those who define machines so literally, they are not.

Some define man vs. machine supernaturally — humans work by ordinary physics, but have a supernatural boost like a soul. They won’t be convinced of anything here.

We are all machines, in the sense that our bodies and minds work from natural, mechanistic principles — I use mechanics in the scientfic sense. The only question is which machines evolved naturally, and which are artificial. This is the difference the colonials may believe distinguishes them from Cylons.

My theory is that we learn the colonials are artificial too, but kept closer to human original. Man/machine is not important, it’s did you have a designer or not, and did the designer install a purpose. Of course, the religious think even the naturals had a supernatural designer.

One Earth or Two -- more data, more astronomy

brad — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:17:24 -0800

The biggest raging debate is whether the Earth shown in Sometimes a Great Notion is the only Earth we will see in the show, or if there is another Earth out there, which is the real Earth.

Now the planet they land on is almost certainly the Earth of the colonial sacred scrolls. Ron Moore confirms this much in interviews, and the podcast. It is certainly the planet Starbuck was taken to, and photographed, for her viper is crashed there and the star patterns match, even after a double check. I presume this match is against Starbuck’s photos, but more on that below. There was a 13th tribe, it was made up of Cylons, and they found and named a planet Earth, and this story is told in the book of Pythia. The Final Five come from the home of the 13th, and we learn they did indeed live (and die) there. This is that world, and all sources confirm it.

This world is also certainly not our Earth. Our Earth, after all, was not colonized by Cylons and destroyed in a nuclear war. Our world was not named Earth by alien colonists. So it’s the Earth of the scrolls and the 13th colony but not the Earth we live on.

A number of things keep nagging at viewers:

When they talk about this world, they keep saying that the 13th tribe “called it Earth.” It’s as though they are careful to avoid saying that it’s Earth in the context of “our Earth.” They are too careful about this.
In spite of many shots of the planet from space, none show recognizable landscapes. At the end of Crossroads, Part II they made a big deal of showing a zoom to Earth, showing North America (in the 21st century too, but that’s another matter.) If they didn’t want to leave the question open, why not just show it.
They leave #3 on the planet, and we don’t see her again. Suggests we never return to this planet. So there is surely another planet in their future, be it for a dark ending or happy one.
They were very much led to this planet by the string pullers, with Starbuck’s photos and the beacon from her viper, which took them to the very place the Final Five would recover memories.

Only four of the photos match?

Now I’ve always assumed that the stars over this planet match Starbuck’s photos and also match the star patterns shown in the Tomb of Athena, because we are told the latter two match when Starbuck returns. But a deleted scene on the DVD shows more of that scene. In it, Starbuck says that the photos match. Then we see two lines that were deleted, and they are very telling lines indeed!

Starbuck: …The star patterns match what we saw in the Tomb of Athena.

Roslin: Four of them. What about the other eight?

Kara: What more do you want? A flashing neon sign that says “Earth”?!

This is a huge deletion. Why delete it and, then why show it to the fans later? Some will argue deleted material isn’t canon, but the writers wrote this for a reason. They presumably deleted it because they did not want to bring up a debate about whether Tomb-of-Athena Earth is the same as Nuked/Starbuck’s Earth — at least when they were worried the strike might cause the series to end somewhat abruptly.

(Note that Roslin’s line could also be interpreted to mean that Starbuck only took 4 photos. Which is odd, but possible.)

I didn’t imagine a debate because the show provided us these two things in a row:

Starbuck: I’ve been to Earth, and I’m going to take us there
Camera: Zoom out of galaxy, zoom back in at similar spot, show the real Earth we all know.

That’s a strange fake-out to have Starbuck say she’s been to Earth and then zoom us to a different Earth than she’s been to. Not even a fair fake-out I would say, but let’s leave that for a moment.

It has been pointed out by Micheal Hall, another blogger that the constellations in the Tomb of Athena are very similar to ours, but not a full match. That blogger also points out that our exact Sky is shown at the scene of the Cylon battle, the one with the red giant that Starbuck paints a vision of.

The problem is this. Constellations either match or they don’t. Even a move to our closest star, Alpha Centauri, changes Leo, Capricorn, Saggitarius and most of all Gemini in very noticeable ways. No stellar navigator would look at the sky at Alpha C and say it matched photos of the sky from Earth. Hall even ran some proper motion models to take the sky forward in time 20,000 years and it didn’t match the Tomb. Move your viewpoint further out than Alpha C — even 20 light years, and the Zodiac becomes hard to recognize, certainly not something that anybody would declare as a match. But some constellations distort more than others.

Now if BSG’s crew got their astronomy right, there is no question that the battle site of the Cylon civil war is the location of our Earth. That’s not just any ringed gas giant, that’s Jupiter, our Jupiter. No other place in the galaxy has that star pattern. Star patterns are quite exact if examined photographically. The odds of the same pattern appearing at random somewhere else are — well, literally astronomical.

Can it be just an accident? The graphics crew has used random stars everywhere else. Why do they show us real stars all of a sudden at that battle scene. They show us Orion in a few other scenes. Orion is one of the few constellations that stays somewhat similar at a number of the local stars, especially if you go in the opposite direction.

Can there be such a mismatch?

It’s possible, though unlikely, that if you consider the maps on the colonial flags (and in the Tomb) to be more drawings than real stellar cartography, and you consider that only 4 of them match, and not all 12, then indeed the star map in the Tomb of Athena could be for a different planet than the 13th colony. One would have to do a bit of playing around to see what stars it could be. Kevin Grazier, BSG’s science advisor from JPL, could definitely have worked this out.

In addition, as the Tomb of Athena mappings were more drawings than photographs or maps, it is possible the crew drew them in only roughly. This could account for the fact that, as Hall points out, Aldeberan is missing. Aldeberan sticks out like a red thumb, it’s very bright.

Want to be anal about it? Download Celstia a free star mapping program. Put it into multiview mode to see both the Earth sky and a remote location, and turn on constellation lines and names. Then use the “Celestial Browser” to move among the nearby stars. Forget the tiny dwarf stars, only check out the ones with bright stars, Visible from Earth. See if there are some where 4 of the Zodiac stay the same, but 8 are different.

The Cylon battle site

Could the Cylon battle site be the site of the real Earth? If we take their star patterns as realistic, it has to be, it can’t be anywhere else. Could the Cylons have had a war there and not noticed the amazing planet sitting there? Does the war account for how the colonials miss this important fact too? If they took photos, perhaps they have not yet gone over them. Everybody was perhaps too busy.

All Along the Watchtower

I would very much like it to be the case that there’s a real Earth out there, still to be found, in our far future. It makes the show a lot better, a lot more satisfying. But one thing sticks in the way. Moore tells us in the podcast that his intention for the script was that Anders wrote “All along the Watchtower.”

Which means Bob Dylan didn’t. That there is no Dylan, really. That means that even if we find another Earth, a real Earth, it’s not precisely our Earth. Some argue that we should just accept this, that the song has been taken for a dramatic use in the show. That’s what we are told by Bear McCreary, the musician. I don’t like it though. The song is famous. It’s like the statue of Liberty. When you see the Statue of Liberty on the shore in “Planet of the Apes” you would not accept the explanation that “Oh, the apes built that, the shape came from the collective unconscious.” You would cry “bullshit.” And if this Earth is just an allegory of the real one, well, it might as well be the Cylon 13th colony.

But I’ll forgive this if it turns out I get a realistic plot with relevance to our Earth. If so, they have a lot of ground to cover in 9 episodes. A lot of history to reveal. And I know they want the story to be about character, so they don’t want to spend all the time revealing the secret history.

What is Earth like?

When I thought that the 13th Colony Earth was the real Earth, I predicted it would likely be vacant. I was correct, but my prediction was really for the real Earth. So I predict that real Earth, should they find it, will also be ruined or vacant. We are told the ending is dark, with lots of death. We are also told in Razor that it all ends like this:

And in the midst of confusion, he will find her. Enemies brought together by impossible longing. Enemies now joined as one. The way forward at once unthinkable, yet inevitable. And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering. I can see them all. The seven, now six, self-described machines who believe themselves without sin. But in time, it is sin that will consume them. They will know enmity, bitterness, the wrenching agony of one splintering into many. And then, they will join the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.

This sounds like a less dark ending. This is the ending predicted by a First Hybrid who is very big on the “all this will happen again” cycle. This is how it has gone down many times in the past, we can assume. Aurora is a winged goddess, associated with Starbuck. We have already seen the 7 turn into six. We’ve seen the 4 awaken, and the 5th will hunger for redemption. In the confusion he (Saul) did find her (Ellen.) The machines have splintered in agony. And Roslin isn’t dead so they have not joined the promised land yet.

Aside from real-Earth being ruined, another interesting plot would be to find it an advanced planet, but a planet that expelled the Kobolians long ago. The sign at the door says “Get out, and stay out.” So when they approach, Earth attacks, and destroys a lot of the fleet, which has to flee. Now that’s a dark ending for you!

Earth, I believe, was the site of the first man-machine war. That war may have ruined it, or soured it on the machines (or humans) trying to come back. What it might think about Hera is another question. Of course I still suspect all the colonials are all artificial already, making Hera a bit less special.