nBSG ep 4.15: "No Exit" Talkback (SPOILERS)

[Galvatron]

I suppose it's possible, but that really seems to be stretching things considering there were cities that resembled ones we have in the real world.

There were Earthlike cities on Caprica too.

If the original humans had left, what reason would they have had to abandon their planet if it were still habitable?

Why did they abandon Kobol? It seemed perfectly habitable too.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

IIRC, the Lords of Kobol exiled the Twelve Tribes and forbade them from coming back.

[Galvatron]

IIRC, the Lords of Kobol exiled the Twelve Tribes and forbade them from coming back.

I don't see anything of the sort on the BSG wiki. For whatever that's worth, of course.

http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Kobol_%28RDM%29

[General Zod]

I suppose it's possible, but that really seems to be stretching things considering there were cities that resembled ones we have in the real world.

There were Earthlike cities on Caprica too.

None of the cities on Caprica had landscapes that matched up with real cities exactly, though (I believe it was either San Francisco or New York that someone else matched up a picture to several threads ago).

Why did they abandon Kobol? It seemed perfectly habitable too.

If Wikipedia is to be believed. . .

According to Colonial scriptures, humans lived on Kobol with their gods, the Lords of Kobol. An unspecified conflict between the gods, referred to as "one jealous god" that turned on his brethren, spurred the humans of the time to flee Kobol onboard the Galleon, a spaceship of unknown construction, in the face of "The Blaze" (assumed to be some sort of nuclear warfare). It was said that, for any who return, Kobol would exact a price paid in blood.

I'd assume they were told to GTFO or they'd be nuked. Perhaps by Cylons who didn't like the idea of coexisting peacefully with humanity and wanted it all to themselves?

[Galvatron]

And maybe the same thing happened on Earth eons before, which forced humanity to abandon the planet en masse and settle on Kobol, leaving Earth intact. Remember, "all this has happened before..."

[Skylon]

If the original humans had left, what reason would they have had to abandon their planet if it were still habitable?

Why did they abandon Kobol? It seemed perfectly habitable too.

Back when they ran into Kobol there was a throwaway line that the initial surveys indicated it had undergone some sort of "calamity" it was now recovered from. What that "calamity" was...dunno...could range to nuclear war...asteroid hit...climate change...never specified.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

And maybe the same thing happened on Earth eons before, which forced humanity to abandon the planet en masse and settle on Kobol, leaving Earth intact. Remember, "all this has happened before..."

Although nothing seen in the show so far really implies that explicit line of thought; the new series seems to be following the whole "life here began out there" premise of the original series pretty much to the letter.

[Galvatron]

Right, but it's now a quote from the in-universe sacred scrolls. Where's "here" in that context? Kobol? The colonies? Wherever it is, I doubt a case can be made that "here" is supposed to mean Earth from the perspective of the colonials.

[Anguirus]

RDM mentioned in the podcast that in the BSG-verse, he considers Anders to be the writer of "All Along the Watchtower." So there is a hint that BSG-verse may not be our own...though set in a galaxy with many astronomical similarities to our own.

However, since Anders is not definitively a Bob Dylan replacement in canon (and even if he were...he could have obtained the lyrics from an older song), I think it's still a possibility that BSG is set in our far future, and that human life evolved on Earth before moving en masse to Kobol, creating the first Cylons, and setting it all into motion.

[tim31]

Sounds like RDM's just trolling, he has a penchant for it.

[Gil Hamilton]

Although nothing seen in the show so far really implies that explicit line of thought; the new series seems to be following the whole "life here began out there" premise of the original series pretty much to the letter.

It's implicit that Earth was the origin of humanity, even in nBSG. That hologram they found on Kobol doesn't make much sense, otherwise, where they specifically state that the Twelve Colonies are named for the Earth Zodiac constellations. Those constellations are meaningless except with respect to Earth, both physically in space and to Greek mythology, so it implies that OUR history is in a small way baked distantly into theirs, many thousands of years into the future (which, of course, should be self-evident since everyone except the Cylons are Greek Neo-Pagans).

[Mayabird]

But then again, if it was in the far future, the wouldn't the constellations have shifted as the stars go in the orbits around the central black hole of the galaxy? Far enough in the future and they wouldn't have been able to figure out where Earth was based on the constellations.

But then again again, those Sacred Scrolls of theirs said "Life here began out there," and if they were written on Kobol that would imply that humans were not from Kobol originally at all.

Bah, if that cycle of "create artificial life, treat it like crap, and get kicked off your world" has been going on for long enough, the evidence might be buried deep under layers of nuked civilizations and strata. And if it's another parallel universe, maybe the original people of way back got technologically started earlier than us.

[Admiral Valdemar]

That depends on what "far future" is. In terms of galactic scale, multiples of millennia are nothing. If the original humans were touring the Milky Way (or whatever galaxy this is if not ours) at relativistic speeds, they could go around the entire place in hundreds of thousands of years with practically no time passing for them. I doubt they went that far in exploring, though.

[Steel]

But then again, if it was in the far future, the wouldn't the constellations have shifted as the stars go in the orbits around the central black hole of the galaxy? Far enough in the future and they wouldn't have been able to figure out where Earth was based on the constellations.

Galatic dynamical timescales are quite a bit larger than that. The galaxy has only rotated a couple of times since the formation of the universe. Dont expect the stars to shift noticeably in less than a billion years.

[RedImperator]

But then again, if it was in the far future, the wouldn't the constellations have shifted as the stars go in the orbits around the central black hole of the galaxy? Far enough in the future and they wouldn't have been able to figure out where Earth was based on the constellations.

Galatic dynamical timescales are quite a bit larger than that. The galaxy has only rotated a couple of times since the formation of the universe. Dont expect the stars to shift noticeably in less than a billion years.

Constellations can visibly distort on the scale of tens of thousands of years. The galaxy's overall rate of rotation isn't relevant; only the velocity of the stars that make up the constellations relative to the Sun matters. Point in fact, the galaxy doesn't really rotate at all; individual stars do, all at their own rates. The spiral arms are dynamic, gaining and losing stars all the time (think of them as being more like stellar traffic jams than structures).

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I was under the impression that stellar drift only caused significant distortion in constellations on a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years, rather than just the few thousand years covered in the show.

(or whatever galaxy this is if not ours)

Oh man could we avoid going down this train of thought if at all possible? The Earth depicted in the series is geographically identical to our own and nothing at all seems to indicate anything like some sort of weirdo duplicate planet in another galaxy.

[RedImperator]

I was under the impression that stellar drift only caused significant distortion in constellations on a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years, rather than just the few thousand years covered in the show.

In the ~3000 year timespan of the show, the constellations would be near-identical. But people in this thread are talking about an even more ancient civilization that settled Kobol from Earth, and stellar drift puts a cap on how ancient that civilization could have been, and it's not a billion years.

[Jade Owl]

If it were supposed to be representative of our Earth, then there would have been human remains found along with cylons. All the bodies that were tested that were brought up to the ship turned out to be skinjobs.

Even if humanity abandoned Earth long ago? I mean, there might be real human remains scattered in ancient cemetaries, but not in the nuked cities of skinjob-settled future Earth.

I suppose it's possible, but that really seems to be stretching things considering there were cities that resembled ones we have in the real world. If the original humans had left, what reason would they have had to abandon their planet if it were still habitable? Seems to be opening up a huge can of worms when a simpler explanation does the trick.

It's not only the cities that are similar. The shape of the continents as seen from space is the same, and the constellations visible from it are the same that can be seen from real life Earth. There can be no doubt that it's supposed to be the same planet.

I find it far more likely that the Cylons only conducted their little survey on the most recent layer of archeological remains, were all the bodies corresponded to the period of 13th Tribe ocuppation of the planet. If they had conducted a proper archeological dig, going deeper across several ocuppation layers, they may have found non-Cylon remains. Just look at the example of the real life city of Troy: There are 13 sudbdivisions corresponding to different periods of settlement.

The chronology of the series past implies that there's still something we don't know about the origin of Humanity. The numbers just don't add up:

- The Twelve Tribes left Kobol 2,000 years ago.
- The 13th Tribe suffered a nuclear Holocaust on Earth 2,000 years ago.

- The 13th Tribe left Kobol for Earth 3,000 years ago.

- But the Temple of Five / Temple of Hopes was built 4,000 years ago.

The Temple, located on the route between Kobol and Earth was built at least a millenium before the 13th Tribe left Kobol. Who built it? And for that matter, how did the Cylons of the 13th Tribe knew were to go?

I still think there's something we don't know. And I'm sure the Virtual Beings who keep popping up in people's heads have something to do with it.

[Gil Hamilton]

Constellations can visibly distort on the scale of tens of thousands of years. The galaxy's overall rate of rotation isn't relevant; only the velocity of the stars that make up the constellations relative to the Sun matters. Point in fact, the galaxy doesn't really rotate at all; individual stars do, all at their own rates. The spiral arms are dynamic, gaining and losing stars all the time (think of them as being more like stellar traffic jams than structures).

Of tens of thousands of years, the constellations shouldn't be TOO distorted and interstellar starships would no doubt have computer software that can track and predict stellar drift for any number of years forward or backward (since stars move in predictable orbits around the galaxy), such that they can easily predict what a constellation should look like at any point in time and thus detect them by looking for patterns of stars with the correct apparent magnitudes.

However, the point is that the constellations, featured on the 12 Colonies flags, are a direct reference to Earth constellations, which only had meaning with respect to Earth. Which means Kobol must have some Earth history to it. Given that the human's religion in nBSG and their use of the zodiac, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Kobol was originally settled by neo-pagans of the Greek persuasion.

[Galvatron]

If RDM ends up making Kobol the cradle of humanity, I don't think I can overlook it. It's just one of those things that'll eat at me and taint my perception of the entire series. Like the one-big-star-system in Serenity.

And I fear that's exactly what's going to happen...

[Uraniun235]

If RDM ends up making Kobol the cradle of humanity, I don't think I can overlook it. It's just one of those things that'll eat at me and taint my perception of the entire series. Like the one-big-star-system in Serenity.

And I fear that's exactly what's going to happen...

In one of the early blogs, RDM specifically spelled out that the "life here began out there" concept was one he brought to neoBSG, because he thought it was one of the big things that made BSG what it was.

Now, it's possible he's changed his mind in the last four or five years, but until we hear otherwise I think it's safe to assume that it is just as explicit as his "they found Earth, this is Earth, for reals, no fakes, they found Earth, there isn't some other planet that's actually Earth, they fucking found Earth do not even try to handwave this away" [may not be a direct quote] statement a little while back.


EDIT: Also, oh no! A space opera that deviates from reality to tell the story it wants to? Scandalous!

[apocolypse]

If RDM ends up making Kobol the cradle of humanity, I don't think I can overlook it. It's just one of those things that'll eat at me and taint my perception of the entire series. Like the one-big-star-system in Serenity.

And I fear that's exactly what's going to happen...

In one of the early blogs, RDM specifically spelled out that the "life here began out there" concept was one he brought to neoBSG, because he thought it was one of the big things that made BSG what it was.

Now, it's possible he's changed his mind in the last four or five years, but until we hear otherwise I think it's safe to assume that it is just as explicit as his "they found Earth, this is Earth, for reals, no fakes, they found Earth, there isn't some other planet that's actually Earth, they fucking found Earth do not even try to handwave this away" [may not be a direct quote] statement a little while back.

That was one of the things that struck me as odd about BSG though. We have proof of man's evolution here on Earth, so are they implying that Earth was "seeded" or something along the lines? I never did quite fully get it.

[Galvatron]

EDIT: Also, oh no! A space opera that deviates from reality to tell the story it wants to? Scandalous!

For a series that seems to pride itself on being grimdark and grounded in reality, yeah, this deviation sucks.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

That was one of the things that struck me as odd about BSG though. We have proof of man's evolution here on Earth, so are they implying that Earth was "seeded" or something along the lines? I never did quite fully get it.

As an answer you're probably not going to like it, but it's possible that nBSG takes place in a "reality" where humans didn't evolve on Earth. It's something that fits in exactly with the original series (as well as a bunch of ancient astronaut/UFO religion stuff from the 70s).

It's also possible that both happened, and the knowledge of moving from Earth to Kobol was forgotten completely.

[Uraniun235]

EDIT: Also, oh no! A space opera that deviates from reality to tell the story it wants to? Scandalous!

For a series that seems to pride itself on being grimdark and grounded in reality, yeah, this deviation sucks.

Bah. It's been wacky since the first season. I mean, someone somehow jimmy-rigging a Cylon fighter into not only flying, but flying out of a gravity well, managing to navigate to Galactica, and even out-manuevering a fully-operational Viper piloted by a veteran pilot - all without any instruments at all - that was pretty out there.

The issue isn't that it deviated from reality, the real issue is that the shadow of the writer's hand has become ever clearer as the series has progressed. To a degree it doesn't matter how far the premise deviates from reality - hell, without it, we wouldn't have space fighter planes, or gravity plating, or FTL - what matters is that the consequences are consistent.

This is why, for example, I really absolutely hated the episode where they were about to infect the Cylons with the magic resurrection disease, but in the nick of time Helo saved the fleet from committing terrible sins by killing the Cylons before the execution party got there, all while space fighters are out in space shooting shit up. You'd think that, given what we know of their technology, they'd have set themselves up with a party in the brig ready to shoot the prisoners in the head the moment they spotted (again - why would they bring the resurrection ship to the battle?!) the resurrection ship, and then jumped out almost immediately rather than go out and fight a battle. But no, the Galactica crew had to be incompetent so that we could have some cheap suspense and some flashy CGI.