Battlestar Galactica |
Time and Chronology in Galactica's world |
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Battlestar Galactica |
Time and Chronology in Galactica's world |
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The World of Battlestar Galactica |
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Glen Larson and John Dykstra may have had a Bible for their show which explained all the concepts, but they never bothered to share it with the news media of the 1970s. Science Fiction fans found themselves groaning at the obvious paucity of intellectual comprehension among the general media writers of the day who struggled to cope with terms such as centar, ycentar, centon, and centon. Those of us who paid attention to what the characters were doing and saying were able to decipher things fairly easily. A centon was 1/100th of an centar, and there were apparently 24 centars in a day, since the Galactica's crew used standard military time ("Starbuck, we're going on patrol at oh-four-hundred hours -- be there!").
The concept of the ycentar was more interesting, though. While many of us understood that it represented some sort of year-value, it wasn't immediately clear whose year-value. Common sense dictated that the twelve colonies, each apparently orbiting its own star (except for a reference to twin worlds in one system), must have had their own orbitational and rotational periods. Hence, the military must be using a standardized system which was close to Earth's system. In the end, we had to conclude that the standardized days and years (and centons) probably related to Kobol. Heck, maybe some character even said as much in a bit of dialogue which was buried in a storyline. In Ronald Moore's Battlestar Galactica, standard time is measured in minutes, hours, days, and years. It leaves nothing to the imagination. So, apparently, deciphering the culture is not part of the fun. Moore's universe is more about the people and less about the culture. That is an important point to remember when we compare these two shows. The original Battlestar Galactica came raging out of development with a very sophisticated backstory and pseudo-culture. They had just about everything we have, but stage props, models, mockups, matte paintings, and good cinematography made it all look both realistic and chessily fake. For example, the land vehicles looked unlike anything roaming around the Earth in the 1970s, but they resembled Earth vehicles in general. Whole cities looked and felt familiar yet alien. And the spaceships looked like -- well, one looked like three film reels strapped together with a piece of pipe. The Vipers looked pretty cool, like advanced descendants of the F-16s that the American military (who served as a model for the Galactica's crew) were flying. The shuttle craft looked like cigar boxes with bad indigestion, but they were more efficient and less bulky than our own shuttle craft (which were in development at the time). Ronald Moore has preserved many of the classic spaceship designs used by Larson and Dykstra. And why not? But his backstory and chronology are actually less realistic (on first glance) than Larson and Dykstra's. The original chronology projected a similar but divergent cultural and technological development for the Twelve Colonies from that of Earth. Moore's Twelve Colonies look like Canada. It is not yet clear (to us -- fans in the United Kingdom may know better) whether Moore's Twelve Colonies have six thousand years of space-faring history behind them. The Cylons of the original series were not built by humans. Instead, they were built by an alien race more than 1,000 years prior to the final war in which the Twelve Colonies were overwhelmed. The Cylons, used as slaves by the alien species, destroyed their masters and established an independent civilization. Their goal appeared to be the subjugation or destruction of all biological civilizations. Why? That was never explained, although the mysterious Count Iblis (Mephistopheles) seems to have been their nihlistic inspiration. Ronald Moore's Cylons were built by the humans of the Twelve Colonies, and they appear to have been a recent development. Maybe less than 200 years of Cylon history have passed. Perhaps less than 100 years. Their purpose appears to be to replace the human race with their own civilization. So far, there is no indication of any other intelligent species, so the Cylons' ambitions may have to undergo a maturing process at some point. To spice things up, or perhaps to delay bringing the Galactica to Earth, Larson and Dykstra introduced the enigmatic Ship of Lights. Eventually, we learned that they were equivalent to angels, and that Count Iblis, corruptor of races, was a fallen angel. If not immortal, the beings who inhabited the Ship of Lights (and Count Iblis) were at least extremely long-lived. Iblis was apparently the originator of the voice print for the Imperious Leader of the Cylons. Ronald Moore has taken the religious angle in a different direction. His Cylons are, apparently, more religious than the humans of the Twelve Colonies. In a sort of "What goes around comes around" concept, the Cylons are bringing God back to Mankind, who seem to have apostasized in favor of technological evolution (thus producing the Cylons). However, this different approach to the religious/mythical roots of human culture obviates the need for dealing with long lifespans. The Twelve Colonies don't seem to have stretched human life out very far. In the original series, Adama mentioned that people were living about 200 years. That Ronald Moore's Adama (played by Edward James Olmos) knows of the existence of Earth implies one of two things: either Moore is retaining the concept of a thirteenth colony which went in a different direction, or else the Twelve Colonies (and Kobol itself) are descended from Earth colonists. So, whereas the original series was set in an indeterminate timeframe which could have been our past, our present, or our future, Ronald Moore's series is set in an indeterminate timeframe...which could be our past, our present, or our future. Well, we don't know for sure, but it certainly seems as though Kobol itself may be in our future. After all, why are the people in the new series dressing in clothing styles that are popular today, unless they are extremely conservative and retro in their outlook, preserving traditions from an ancient past?
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