Thoughts again

[solarbird]

I was asked elsewhere to go over my Grand Unification Theory of Battlestar Galactica again. Here's how it ties into Crossroads, Part I. So much of this will be recap.

My theory based on two key concepts: 1) All this has happened before, and all this will happen again, and 2) The Colonials have their history wrong in a couple of key ways.

First, I don't think it's Kobol to Colonies and Earth. I think it's Earth to Kobol to Colonies. This was based originally on the map room, which requires having been to Earth to create. That would imply that someone went to Earth and then came back to point the way to it - but the evacuation - whatever its nature was - involved flight from Kobol. That implies a lack of returning. It's certainly not conclusive, but it's what got me started on the idea.

Secondly, I think that when the Cylons left the Colonies after the first Cylon war, they found something. Or, more correctly, I think something found them. I think this something is where they got religion. I further think that what they found was in some way related to old Earth. It could be whatever the people who left to Kobol were fleeing. I think that there are more than one such entities, and that ethereal!Baltar is a representative of a different such entity - possibly the other side.

Thirdly - and this part is something I've gone back and forth on, but I'm becoming more convinced of it rather than less - all this has happened before, and it will all happen again. I think that the Colonial humans are - or, more appropriately, were - the Cylons of Kobol. I think the Gods or Lords of Kobol may have been the humans of Kobol. And in turn, I think the humans of Kobol were the Cylons of Earth. (It is also possible that there was an intermediate step between Earth and Kobol. That is, as they say, just a guess.) I think the "human"/"cylon" creation/destruction cycle has been repeating itself for some unknown about of time.

Given all this, which I call the Grand Unification Theory of Battlestar Galactica, here's how I think it applies to what we saw in 3.19:

I think that the nebula they're approaching may host defenses intended to keep the Cylons of Earth (that became the Humans of Kobol) from trying to go home. I think as species-generation descendants of the Cylons of Earth/Humans of Kobol, they may be affected by those defenses. I think that's where the "music" is coming from; I think that's where the general crankiness (and incompetence) is coming from; I think it's actively interfering with the ability of people to think. I take some of this idea from the "slow space" in A Fire Upon the Deep, if you're wondering; hopefully the writers have read it and stolen the thought. I think that the closer the Colonials get to that nebula, the crazier things are going to get.

I think it's possible that the reason the Cylon Base Star hybrids are crazy full-time is related to being able to more easily detect such things and being more directly affected by whatever it is in space.

One much less likely thought is that the nebula may also be the home of the whatever it was that found the Cylons - but I don't really think so. I just think it's possible. If it is, however, then these (the Cylon god; the anti-Earth's-Cylons defenses - may be the same thing.

ETA: For some reason, I forgot to mention: one of the things I think that may be happening here that makes this cycle different (and possibly more interesting) is that the goal of one or more of the greater agents may be specifically to break the cycle, so that all this won't necessarily happen again. The competing factions may in fact both want to do that, but may have very different ideas about how.

Comments

[wrog]

The only problem with this is, if you're right, then all of the stuff with Dr. Z and the Kent McCord character goes right out window, and I was really looking forward to seeing how they were going to do that.

[solarbird]

Google informs me that all this is Galactica 1980 crap, to which I can only say PLEASE GOD CONTROL-ALT-DELETE.

What is it with you and the ubercrap versions of otherwise interesting shows, anyway? "The Rules of Luton," Galactica 1980... what the hell? ^_^

[wrog]

It's always important to remember just how far down the bottom actually is.

Also, the original Galactica was interesting for maybe the pilot and 2 episodes, if that. That I watched the whole damned thing is a testament to how the entire 1970s in SF-TV (if not other things), from Spock's Brain to The Return of Starbuck was otherwise one continuous, steaming, foetid pit of ubercrap.

I also had to walk to school two miles in the snow uphill in both directions.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

_Spock's Brain_ was Sixties TV SF. :-)

[solarbird]

I will argue with you over the first series of Space: 1999. I can pull episodes from that to show to people and they go, "...oh!" When it was good, it was actually good. But yeah, orders of magnitude more potential than realisiation. The original Battlestar Galactica was, of course, always far more interesting in its potential than its actualisation. I could tell that even when I was gluing my eyes to it in after-school reruns.

Also, I am told that the animated Star Trek had several actually-good episodes, along with a bunch of crap.

Other than that, tho'... um... yeah. I have seen this thing you call Earth II and this other thing you call Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and so on and oh my there needed to be lots and lots and lots of hitting.

[wrog]

I will give the first season of Space: 1999 its due. The pilot was not bad and there were a few really good episodes. They did the Haunting Mood thing really well and Gerry Anderson's cynicism was always a refreshing change from Gene Roddenbury's annoying optimism.

And it did surprise me a bit viewing it the second time around. Part of the problem, I think, is that WPIX-NY showed them out of order; they did the pilot and then the very best episodes (Dragon's Domain,Death's Other Dominion,Another Time, Another Place...) and then it was downhill from there -- I'm guessing there was a conscious decision that it was the best way to hook people in, but ouch... and there was still a lot of Bad in there.

Animated Trek had its moments. Their problem was that animation back then was so expensive, it fell into the (then) standard Saturday morning paradigm where you make very few episodes and then show them over and over and over and over and over and over again, which is enough to kill anything.

Earth II, Buck Rogers ... need lots of hitting

the last couple seasons of the original Mission: Impossible where they got completely wacky, The Starlost, The Name of the Game, Probe/Search, The Questor Tapes, The Man From Atlantis, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Planet of the Apes (not the movie but the TV series), Logan's Run (not the movie but the TV series -- yes, goddammit there was a Logan's Run TV series and this is taking up space in my brain),... the Wo-Fat episodes of Hawaii Five-O ("Methylene Para-THYROID", "Methylene Para-THYROID")...

"Oh my god, it's full of STUPID..."

[solarbird]

I haven't even ever heard of some of these (The Name of the Game? Probe/Search?) but your anguish makes me giggle. ^_^

[wrog]

I haven't even ever heard of some of these

with reason. Probe (later renamed to Search) was early 70s. starred Hugh O'Brien as a sort of James Bond type wired up with all sorts of high-tech monitoring devices with Burgess Meredith back in the control center watching his every move in real time as he wandered across Europe doing Bondshit. Figure we take Mission: Impossible to the next stage (whatever that is) but without any of the clever writing. Didn't last long, even with the rename.

Questor Tapes was the whole AI/Spock-learning-about-emotions theme that Roddenbury decided he hadn't gotten enough of in the original Trek (and continued to beat to death in TNG), this time with a mysterious scientist who might actually have been an alien building a humaniform robot and then disappearing with all of the plans, and then it's all Mike Farrell the human guy teaching the robot about life as they search for clues or something. Buh.

[solarbird]

...and then they fight crime.

Gotta be. Right?

[wrog]

actually... a bit more of it is coming back to me (the horror, the horror), and... I think it was more like big evil secret government agencies and international criminal conspiracies, but yeah.

ow, more brain cells lost,...

[rmd.livejournal.com]

QUARK, DAMMIT!

[wrog]

Yeah but Quark was comedy.

And, like, actually funny.

I don't have Mork and Mindy up there either (though arguably I should)

[solarbird]

ohwaitohwaitohwait I forgot! If you're of a Doctor Who mindset, then the 1970s Doctor Who was often quite good, in that Doctor Who kind of way.

[wrog]

WNET (NY's PBS station) was uber-snooty and wouldn't touch that stuff, meaning the only place to see Doctor Who was on some random UHF channels that we couldn't get. Thus I never saw any of it until the mid 80s.

Similar story for Blakes 7.

[wrog]

so when you say "Cylons of Kobol", there's "Cylon" in the sense of something that rebelled from and destroyed the Humans of Kobol, but there's also "Cylon" in the sense of something that was created by the Humans of Kobol. Do you mean both senses?

I guess where I'm having a bit of trouble with this is that what the colony!humans created were essentially the centurions, i.e., the Very Clunky Cylons, which then went to work on improving the model themselves. And it seems to me that if kobol!human and kobol!cylon=colonial!human history had gone this way as well, there'd at least be some memory of the original kobol!cylon centurions (i.e., that the kobol!humans actually made) and that these were quite different from modern colonial!humans.

(though I suppose next episode they could be finding remains of these kobol!cylon centurions, so ... buh)

I think as species-generation descendants of the Cylons of Earth/Humans of Kobol, they may be affected by those defenses

Seems to me the further removed a species gets from earth!human, the less affected they should be by the earth defenses. That is, the earth folks presumably know what they created and therefore how to defend against it; about what their creations might have created? not so much.

In any case, I rather like the whole idea that this is in our future rather than our past. The one reason I can forgive Galactica: 1980 is that at least they didn't do a stupid Adam & Eve story (which, back in 1978, I was initially worried they were going to do, given that the commander's name was Adama).

[solarbird]

so when you say "Cylons of Kobol", there's "Cylon" in the sense of something that rebelled from and destroyed the Humans of Kobol, but there's also "Cylon" in the sense of something that was created by the Humans of Kobol. Do you mean both senses?
Specifically both.

And it seems to me that if kobol!human and kobol!cylon=colonial!human history had gone this way as well, there'd at least be some memory of the original kobol!cylon centurions (i.e., that the kobol!humans actually made) and that these were quite different from modern colonial!humans.
A slight variation would imply that whoever saw the Colonial Humans off would be one of those earlier models, sending off the 2.0 to the new worlds before falling off the cliff/dying. This is fully compatible.

That said, I've always found it curious that a spacefaring civilisation, as the Colonials were from the start (or, at least, from the start of the flight from Kobol) would lose so much of its early history. So much that in all cases we know about, it has degraded to religious mythos on sacred scrolls.

Seems to me the further removed a species gets from earth!human, the less affected they should be by the earth defenses.
I agree. I would suggest that this is why they're still alive.

(I am also assuming that the cycle we see here - that the Colonial Cylons became more over iterations like their parent species, not less, to the point where you have to do metagenetic stuff to figure out who is what - is also a repeated meme.)

In any case, I rather like the whole idea that this is in our future rather than our past.
Yeah. The whole Kobol to Earth and Colonies things just doesn't make sense in the real world. I mean, even moreso than most. ^_^

The one reason I can forgive Galactica: 1980 is that at least they didn't do a stupid Adam & Eve story (which, back in 1978, I was initially worried they were going to do, given that the commander's name was Adama).
buh... Wow.

I've never even thought of that. Man, that would have been some brutal suckcology.

[wrog]

Seems to me the further removed a species gets from earth!human, the less affected they should be by the earth defenses.

I agree. I would suggest that this is why they're still alive.

Except that the whole business where that virus from the spaceprobe wipes out the cylons but leaves the humans unscathed seems like it should be the other way around.
That is, if that virus was indeed something engineered by the earth!humans, they would be engineering it against stuff that they knew about (kobol!humans); having it affect colony!humans would be a stretch; and just forget having colony!cylons even notice it's there.

Of course the biology on this show (as on most shows) is all kind of messed up anyway. In particular, it makes absolutely no sense to me that the humanoid-cylon models can be significantly physically stronger, able to endure much higher levels of radiation, able to interface with electronic equipment the way Sharon does. etc., and at the same time have it be any kind of Hard Problem to be able to tell them apart from genuine humans.

[solarbird]

I don't think the probe with the virus is related. I'm talking about the nebula they're three hops away from as of the end of this broadcast, which, iirc, is the nebula Commander (now Admiral) Adama recognised in the map room. I think we have a reasonably straight story on that, and that it was accidental.

I agree with your commentary that the difficulty of detection combined with the enhansed abilities seems rather nonsensical, but we kind of just have to live with it.

[millari.livejournal.com]

That said, I've always found it curious that a spacefaring civilisation, as the Colonials were from the start (or, at least, from the start of the flight from Kobol) would lose so much of its early history. So much that in all cases we know about, it has degraded to religious mythos on sacred scrolls.

Interestingly, there are whole real-life government agencies devoted to the task of trying to come up with ways to label dangerous things on Earth that will continue to be dangerous for millions of years (mostly nuclear waste). The challenge they face is to label these things in ways that are hopefully universal, running on the assumption that we will have lost the knowledge of all our current languages and all understanding of our cultural history before nuclear waste is safe. The belief of these labeling projects is that when we start to get into such "deep time," measurements, we as a species won't have the cultural information or heritage to accurately interpret currently internationally-known pictorial symbols for ideas like "nuclear waste" or for "danger".

[solarbird]

Yeah, but we aren't talking tens of thousands of years - just a few thousand, and a continuity of civilisation. It'd be more like technological China than the Mesopotamia/Egypt/Greece/Rome/Dark Ages/Reboot history of the West.

I dunno, it always just seemed fishy to me. ^_^

[alonglongtime.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of this being a recurring series of events. Your suggestion of an entity that the Cylons ran into as well as the existence of other Kobol/Earth/Colonial entities make some sense too. Perhaps one of them is responsible for taking Kara to Earth and back?

Of course, I'm concerned that the writers will pull a "Prisoner" type ending and leave everything unclear. It would seem so much like their style.

[solarbird]

There would be a serious, serious need for some smacking-down were they to pull that kind of crap.

[alonglongtime.livejournal.com]

Immensely so. Have you seen The Prisoner?

[solarbird]

I have! I like it very much. Except that last episode to which I can only go YEAH I GOTCHER METAPHOR RIGHT HERE, PAL.

Somebody told me at a convention that after the last episode aired the crew had to go into hiding. I suspect strongly that is bullshit but I like to think it's not. ^_^

[alonglongtime.livejournal.com]

I do know that the studio's phone lines jammed out of the calls asking, "WTF?"

[alonglongtime.livejournal.com]

Hey, mind if I friend you? I'm looking at your blog and BSG+ Politics+ The Prisoner inevitably equals someone with much awesome. *g*

[solarbird]

Sure, I don't mind, anybody can friend me. (Check my profile for commentary on that.)

[solarbird]

And also WHO DO WE HAVE TO KILL TO GET SOME KILLING AROUND HERE ^_^

[alonglongtime.livejournal.com]

YAAARGH!!!! ;)

Patrick McGowan wrote all the episodes, so I suppose he's to blame. I'm guessing he was tired of all the Secret Agent Man plots and wanted something more "symbolic" (read: confusing).