Right now my favourite TV show is the new Battlestar Galactica. I watched the original as a teen-ager, since it didn’t have much competition at the time, but Ron Moore’s new version is literally and figuratively light-years ahead. Like many great shows, it is not only a drama but a mystery. There’s a hidden backstory for the audience to puzzle out as we watch.
I like figuring out such things. Often I will even imagine much more than the writers have, because I like to find a way to view a show as realistic SF. Moore however has declared this is his goal too, calling it Naturalistic Science Fiction.
Watching the show I’ve clued together a lot of hints I think many other viewers might have missed, and then filled in the gaps with entirely invented material to make the sort of backstory I might want to see. I turned this into a timeline. This timeline answers many questions about the show (some of them incorrectly no doubt) and I will update it as the show airs. (Right now we have to wait for 2008 for new episodes.)
You can see my Invented timeline for Battlestar Galactica here. While it is based only on my own analysis, as well as a few tidbits released from official sources. While to me that doesn’t count as a spoiler, you may view what I write as a spoiler if I’m correct, because I’ll be revealing things that will be a surprise to those not digging as deep. You should also consider the assumptions which underly much of the analysis here.
There are definitely spoilers if you have not seen the first 3 full seasons, and there will be elsewhere in the blog.
Do you have a unique perspective on the show? I’m open to allowing guest-bloggers to also provide analysis here, even with differing opinions.
col tigh
Didn't Col. Tigh serve with adama in the first cylon war?
Not strictly
They met after the war, but Tigh did serve in it. He's a Final Five Cylon. They're thousands of years old. You think the building of the Cylons 50 years prior to the series was the first time somebody managed to make Cylons in the 4 to 5 thousand years humanity in the show has had advanced technology?
I like your analysis of
I like your analysis of BSG--lots of fun. Thanks, Craig
This is all very
This is all very interesting. I agree that BSG must be set in the far future and that human civilization must have started on Earth - if this indeed a show without time travel and aliens. The colonials are using the Zodiac of Ptolemy (late 2nd c. A.D.) and Messier's catalogue (late 18th c.). If space travel had been (re)invented on Kobol the Colonials would surely have come up with astronomical catalogues of their own.
Of course there are many other clues to Earth such as Classical mythology, family names, etc. But I'm not sure how consistent the producers are about their references to Earth. For instance, the Colonials use the Latin alphabet but the sacred scrolls from Kobol are written in a different script. It is also quite obvious that the line "all this has happend before..." refers to periodic wars between man and its own (bio)mechanical creations. From there everything is speculation.
I wonder whether the F5 can download into human bodies. This would explain their great antiquity and their human frailty. As purely virtual beings they could have guided humanity for a long time. But this is also just speculation. A few more months and we'll know for sure.
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