Time Immortal

Spoiler Warning: this entire article is pretty much one big act of musing about the direction the series is going to go in the second half of its fourth and final season, which is set to begin airing episodes on January 16th. As such, pretty much everything I’m about to write should be considered to be a potential spoiler.

You’ve been warned, good Reader. If spoilers aren’t your bag, it’s best to skip to the next article and be done with it.

As I noted previously, series creator Ron Moore has said that he is committed to telling a story from within the framework of naturalistic science fiction, which means that the show more or less conforms to the scientific realities that we, the viewers, should know and be familiar with (apart from a set of core assumptions concerning Macguffin-esque technology that is necessary to drive the plot forward).

In other words: jump drives and artificial gravity are in. Aliens, transporters, replicators, phasers, and all the rest are out.

Because the show is built around a naturalistic sci-fi framework, its purpose won’t be to tell an “origins story” — the Colonial fleet will not be the “latest new Ark,” and its people will not be the “latest new Adam and Eve.” The emergence of humanity as a product of millions of years of evolution is reasonably well-documented, and it would defy Ron Moore’s stated commitment to that naturalistic framework were he to suddenly pull back the curtain and reveal, say, William Adama and Laura Roslin, or Lee Adama and Starbuck, to be the real Adam and Eve.

If anything, I think it will be revealed that humanity initially came from Earth and that BSG is set many thousands of years in the future. I think it will be revealed that at some point, pace Firefly, humanity fled Earth and found Kobol, and that centuries or millennia later they were forced to flee Kobol as well. I’m not sure if, or how, the Lords of Kobol will play into the story as the season progresses, and whether or not any revelations will be made about who, exactly, these beings were (if indeed they existed).

The arrival at Earth, then, will not be a discovery so much as it will be a return.

In the main, looking again at the above-linked reflection some months after having written it, and especially in light of the last episode of BSG that aired (in which what was apparently Earth was discovered), it seems that my basic assumptions were correct. What’s been interesting to observe, as the series has progressed, is that as the Colonial fleet has drawn steadily closer to Earth and discovered artifacts of either their ancestors or the Thirteenth Tribe, the age of those artifacts has been steadily increasing. The ruins on Kobol were about 2,000 years old. The beacon found in the nebula was about 3,000 years old. The Temple of Five, on the algae planet, was about 4,000 years old.

This suggests one of two things: it could, on one hand, be taken as tacit confirmation of the fact that humans originated on Earth, and subsequently took to the stars…or it could be confirmation of the fact that the Thirteenth Tribe left Kobol well in advance of the other tribes, went to Earth, and then voyaged back to Kobol at some later point in time.

This latter theory would, at least, explain why the Pythian scrolls that are so often quoted in the series would seem to chronicle a journey to Earth. At the same time, this theory is contradicted by the fact that in at least one episode, it is suggested that all thirteen tribes departed Kobol at roughly the same time. On the other hand, it is supported by the observation that the Zodiac signs that represent (and give name to) the Twelve Colonies are all constellations which are visible from Earth. Then again, that could just as easily be indicative of the fact that humanity originated on Earth, and that even though Earth itself became myth as the centuries rolled on, aspects of that history were nevertheless preserved.

I find, more and more, that I’m tending toward the theory that the Pythian prophecy speaks of a cyclical history that has now fulfilled its event arc three times: human habitation of Earth ended in catastrophe, so humanity fled to Kobol. That colonization in turn ended in catastrophe, so humanity fled in turn to the Twelve Colonies. Now those colonies have ended in catastrophe, and humanity has once again fled to the stars. But rather than flee to someplace new, they are fleeing to someplace old: Earth, much as the Thirteenth Tribe fled to Earth after the Exodus from Kobol.

And I think — still think, really — that BSG is shaping up to be an “eschatological myth” for our times. It’s not a story about humanity’s beginning, but about humanity’s end. The cyclical nature of history has been a recurring theme in the show; I think, before the end of the show, the cycle will be broken, and history “as it is known” will come to an end — and then, quite possibly a fiery, sudden end. The show is not so much a re-working of the Book of Genesis as it is a re-working of the Book of Revelation.

To my thinking, this theory was given strong support indeed by the last episode to air, Revelations, which dealt with the theme of breaking out of history’s brutal cycle. But now the question becomes: if history is indeed cyclical, within the framework of the show, then what does breaking the cycle mean? Does it perhaps signal the end of history.

Consider, for example, Edward James Olmos comments concerning the end of the series:

Edward James Olmos has said that audiences will not be prepared for the upcoming finale of Battlestar Galactica, in a panel at London’s MCM Expo and an exclusive interview with SciFiNow.

“It’s not a happy ending, we end up with almost nothing,” the 61-year-old actor told journalists from the magazine over the weekend,

Meanwhile, rumours swirl that the show’s finalé will feature a full-scale conflict and “gigantic, never before seen effects.” Coupled with Jamie Bamber’s revelation that the last scenes he shot for the series invovled Lee Adama “running around ’shooting at stuff’ with extras,” this suggests that massive battles and destruction may be the order of the day for the closing moments of the show. Numerous other hints of just such a battle have also emerged.

The series finalé seems to be shaping up to also incorporate a number of flashback-type sequences. In particular, several scenes featuring Laura Roslin were shot at Simon Fraser University’s Academic Quadrangle, which was used as the backdrop for the “Riverwalk” district in Caprica City earlier on in the series.

And then there’s Tahmoh Penikett’s statement to consider:

Everybody dies. We have a dark ending…Obviously you know, those last couple of episodes, they’re going to blow your mind. They are going to go down in history as the best television ever done.

Flashbacks, dark endings, and people left with almost nothing…yet at the same time, a satisfying, organic ending which signs everything off really well? That sort of mixture of hardship and hope is the same sort that would seem to accompany eschatological tales of virtually every sort, including (and perhaps especially) Christian eschatology. Great suffering, followed by hope and the promise of a future beyond all imagining, a future beyond the brutal confines of history and sin.

Update: One potential wrinkle in all of this could be if Ron Moore takes the story in a different cyclical direction, escaping humans and Cylons from their cycle of violence and exodus only to reveal that they represent a kind of evolutionary cycle in terms of species development. There are scattered rumours emerging that Cylon remains will be found on Earth, suggesting that the extant humans of the BSG universe are, in fact, descendants of the Cylons that the original people of Earth, or possibly Kobol, developed.

This would also tie in to the plot threads surrounding Cylon reproduction that have swirled through the show’s four seasons.

At the end of Revelations, the mid-season cliffhanger of Battlestar Galactica’s fourth and final season, the Colonial fleet and their renegade Cylon allies find and land on a planet that all involved believe to be Earth, the legendary home of the 13th Tribe of Kobol.

The planet itself appears blue from space, but is quickly discovered to be a nuclear wasteland, devoid of life and marked only by decimated buildings and burnt-out ruins. The immediate conclusion that the producers of the show likely wanted us to jump to was that yes, this was Earth, and that the 13th colony had somehow destroyed itself. As a lesson in human concupiscence, that wouldn’t be a bad ending in and of itself, but there are a few questions left unanswered if one simply assumes that one can take the show at face value as to the identity of this ruined planet.

First off, there’s the issue of how vague and masked the shots of the planet from orbit are. I mentioned this before, but I just found a handy comparison image (as well as a reasonable theory about who the final Cylon might just be) on another blog that tells the tale better than before:

Now, there’s been a fair bit of argument that the ruins themselves tell the tale. In particular, a number of people have made the association between the ruined bridge seen at the end of Revelations and the Brooklyn Bridge. Personally, I’m not convinced; this show has been marked by repeated examples that what the characters think they see is not necessarily what is (e.g. Starbuck’s seeing a gas giant that was thought to be Jupiter, but turned out not to be, or her seeing a comet that turned out to be the damaged rebel basestar). I certainly think that the ending scene was composed so as to make us think of New York, but I won’t say for certain whether that’s what was being depicted.

At the end of the third season, the CGI was unambiguous: Earth was easily recognized, and the shape of the North American continent was distinct. As the comparison photos above tell, in this discovery of Earth there is nothing about the planet itself which obviously suggests that it is Earth. No continents are visible, and much of the world is dark. Ron Moore et. al. are far too “tricksy” (apologies to Smeagol) for this to be a mere coincidence, or simple artistic license. There is some meaning to the sudden lack of clarity.

There is also the matter of pretty much every main character, including Laura Roslin (supposedly the “dying leader” who will not live to see the proper end of the journey of humanity across the stars), being on the surface of the planet. Unless the producers are setting us up for some kind of “actually, it was this dead character all along” sort of letdown, it seems that a second objection to the probability that this devastated planet is actually Earth must be raised¹.

On the other hand, there is the matter that Felix Gaeta did match the various constellations when the fleet first arrived into orbit of this ruined planet. Initially, I remarked that “it would be very nearly impossible to find another point in the galaxy in which all those stars appeared to align in just that way.” However, in making that statement, I forgot to take three things into account, which I was reminded of when I read this article at The Science of Battlestar Galactica:

1. How accurate were the images of the constellations that Gaeta was working from?
2. How many of the constellations were visible to Gaeta when he made his checks (e.g. were any of them occluded by the planet or the system’s Sun)?
3. Is it actually impossible that the stars might not line up in more or less the same manner from some other point?

The answer to the third question has actually already been given to us in a subtle way by BSG’s producers: the constellation Orion appears, more or less properly configured, in the episode The Ties that Bind, in the backdrop of the ambush on the rebel basestars by the pro-Raider-lobotomy Cylon faction. Surely the Cylons would have noticed whether or not there was a habitable world in reasonably close proximity to the location of said fracas?

Of course, one constellation lining up could just be a coincidence — in theory, so long as the Cylons were on a more or less straight-line path between Earth and the approximate middle of Orion’s shape, the alignment of the stars would remain the same — one would expect to see the constellation get “larger” in one’s view, perhaps, and one might also reasonably expect to note changes in the apparent brightness of the various stars themselves. The shape of the constellation, though, would be essentially unchanged.

That by no means implies that the shape of eleven other constellations visible from Earth would likewise remain constant. This illustration demonstrates how different Orion would look to us were we viewing it from a position situated roughly 90 degrees counter-clockwise from Earth’s present location.

However, the distances we are talking about in such a hypothetical situation are immense; were we fairly close to Earth, would the constellations look drastically different, or would they appear somewhat similar?

It turns out that “similar” is the correct answer (and it further turns out that this brings us to the second question):

If Gaeta was checking the position of the zodiacal constellations with a sketch made from the Temple of Athena data, he’s out of luck. As seen from Alpha Centauri, those constellations would be virtually identical to those seen from Earth, the chief difference being that Castor and Pollux, the Heads of the Gemini Twins, don’t quite line up with their bodies. If Gaeta had incomplete data, or if the constellation Gemini was not visible for some reason (being occulted by Alpha Centauri, for example), he’d be absolutely correct in reporting that all “visible” constellations are a match, even though the fleet would be in the wrong place.

In the same way, the fleet could have arrived at Tai Ceti or Epsilon Eridani, two other type G sunlike stars in our local neighborhood. The zodiacal constellations as seen from those systems would be more distorted, especially around the cancer-Leo and Aries-Taurus regions. But again, if Gaeta’s data are sketchy and the local star is blocking out the appropriate regions of the zodiac, the rest of the constellations should pass muster.

This issue of distorted constellations leads us back to the first question. The data set Gaeta would be working from would be some manner of representation of the constellations seen by those few who entered into the Tomb of Athena and saw the holographic projection therein. As far as we, the viewer, know, nobody took any kind of recording of the images displayed therein, and it is reasonable to assume that any reproduction of the positions of the stars would be hand-drawn sketches made while the memory of what was seen was reasonably fresh. That’s all well and good, but it is by no means an assurance of accuracy.

Lt. Gaeta, when checking to see whether the fleet had jumped to the right spot, said that the visible constellations are a match. But a match with what set of data? Lee said that they had “projected a course to the signal” and that it would probably take some revising. That tells me the Colonial beacon signal did not include a 3-d starmap. Is Gaeta checking the constellations with what the jump calculations predicted the resulting constellations should look like? That would only prove that they jumped to where they expected to jump — it wouldn’t prove that they had jumped to Earth.

Or is he comparing the visible constellations with the constellations they saw in the planetarium show back at the Temple of Athena on Kobol? It’s hardly likely — the display in the temple focused on the twelve constellations of our Zodiac. Lee spotted the Lagoon Nebula, and his father backed him up by calling it “M8” — but did we see either of them record those constellations? (If it was a shared hallucination, was it even possible to have recorded the constellations? ) And if they did record the constellations, to what level of precision did they do so? I think it’s much more likely that the pilots come out of the planetarium and, at best, drew the stick figures from memory. And if that’s that happened, then Gaeta’s comparison data are going to be literally sketchy.

To this point in the series, we’ve seen or heard of over a dozen human-habitable worlds: the Twelve Colonies, New Caprica, the algae planet, Kobol, and now this newly-discovered ruined world. That’s a fairly substantial chunk of real estate that the humans have discovered simply by jumping from place to place.

In the original series, there was an instance of an Earth-like planet being found, and for which several hints were dropped suggesting that it might be Earth. That planet was Terra, home of two warring factions that nearly wiped each other out in a nuclear confrontation. Indeed, they were saved only by Galactica’s timely arrival.

It’s possible, then, that in this iteration of BSG, Galactica has arrived too late, and has discovered a wiped-out Terra. But perhaps, in the ruins somewhere, will be found the final pointers toward Earth. This would certainly be a good reason for the show’s producers to make the planet so ambiguous when viewed from orbit as in Revelations — an unfamiliar continental form would give things away far too quickly².

At any rate, we know this show must go on from here³, and a big part of where it goes come 2009 is likely going to be caught up in the exact identity of this ruined world that the Colonials and Cylons have now come to. There’s plenty of good reason, based both in fact and in the idea of dramatic, message-driven storytelling, to think that the planet that was found was, in fact, Earth. But there’s also plenty of room for doubt. This season especially, BSG’s writers have pulled off one act of sleight-of-hand after another, and it’s entirely possible that they’re doing it to us again.

In fact, I think it’s probably likely.

Notes — mind the spoilers:

1. Admittedly, in the case that this planet is actually Earth, and the “promised land” which the dying leader shall not see is another planet (e.g. Terra or its equivalent), this objection is pretty much null and void.

2. Edward James Olmos asserted that there would be a dark end to the series, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this blogger’s counter-theory regarding Earth/Terra: perhaps this really is Earth, and the Fleet moves on to find the Thirteenth Tribe on Terra (or some analogous world).

3. Scenes for the final episodes of the series were shot in and around Kamloops, British Columbia, and involved lots of physically fit extras with crop-cut hair or dreadlocks. Scenes were also evidently shot in the city of Kamloops proper, which would imply that the series ends on some manner of inhabited world. Whether this is the Colonials realizing that they are the 13th tribe — itself perhaps a product of the twelve tribes united into one — and accepting that it is their bitter fate to be the ones to re-settle the Earth, or whether this is the Colonials finding their bretheren on another planet is yet to be seen.

Also, it should be noted that other scenes of the series finale were shot at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, in the area that had previously been used for the Riverwalk district on Caprica. The scenes apparently involved Laura Roslin. This would suggest either a return to Caprica (now that would be dark!) by the remnants of the Fleet, or perhaps various persistent visions/hallucinations on the part of some of the characters (William Adama, perhaps, pining for Roslin?).

Then too, perhaps my theory that BSG is an eschatological tale for our time will pan out, and the closing scenes of the series will be like those in Roslin and Emily’s dreams in the episode Faith. Certainly, there is a religious metaphor (and possibly more than just a metaphor — one would not be surprised to see humanity come into a confrontation with the divine in this show) at work within the plot of the series, and it has more or less been confirmed that God is an active, present force within the BSG universe.

More than a few people have suggested that there is a “creation myth” element to the series, and while many of these appeal to the significance of Hera Agathon, I think they miss something. Assuming I am wrong — that is, assuming that Karl Agathon — Helo — is not the final Cylon, and assuming that Hera is the humano-Cylon child who is exclusively significant (in keeping with everything we’ve seen on the series to date), then in her and Nicholas Tyrol there is not to be found a parallel in Adam and Eve.

There is, however, a parallel to be found in Joseph and Mary, in the Blessed Virgin and her carpenter husband.