Battlestar Galactica

Worlds of Classic Battlestar Galactica

Attila the...
world

One of the best worlds in the original Battlestar Galactica series was Attila, a primitive, feudal world overrun by the Cylons. Its people, or at least their leaders, lived in castles and rode Unicorn-like creatures. They were nonetheless aware of the space-faring civilizations and must have been descended from reactionary ex-patriots of the Twelve Colonies.

Obviously intended to evoke images of fairy-tales and northern epics of heroics and derring-do, Attila proved that the Cylons were only effective when they got the drop on their enemies. Had it not been for Count Baltar's treachery (and the gullibility of the Council of Twelve), the Galactica and one other Battlestar could probably have cleaned up the entire ambush force. Attila's people were mostly wiped out, but at least one family survived, and that was pretty much all it took.

Sectar...

The original Battlestar Galactica writing team ran into a notorious plotting rut which led them to adapt several popular movie scripts to episodic format. "The Magnificent Warriors" was an obvious knockoff of "The Magnificent Seven" (itself a knockoff of the Japanese Samurai classic, "Seven Samurai", which served as one of Lucas' original inspirations for "Star Wars").

Sectar, a remote farming world on the distant outskirts of the farflung Colonial Civilization, must have brought Lorne Greene (Commander Adama) a strong feeling of Deja Vu. This world looked like every western town ever featured on Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and a host of other shows from the 1960s and 1970s.

Sectar was the second farming world encountered by Adama's rag-tag fleet. People had to wonder why Adama would just leave these secondary colonies behind to be destroyed by the Cylons. Maybe it was cheap revenge for involving his crew in dumb adventures.

The Planets of Classic Battlestar Galactica

The original series was developed with an open-ended approach to the universe. The series' pilot, "Saga of a Star World", introduced a non-human species inhabiting the world Carillon. These ant-like creatures (called Ovions) fed on human beings, but were also enslaved by the Cylons. Even though Carillon was destroyed, the viewing audience was immediately engaged by the idea that inhuman characters (other than the Cylons) would be a mainstay of the series. Alas! It was not to be.

The Twelve Colonies themselves were intriguing. Apparently named for the twelve signs of the Zodiac, their nomenclature were derived from an unlikely mix of Greek and Latin roots (Greek and Latin are both Indo-European languages, but they come from different branches of the family). Caprica was the most well-developed world, but we learned a little bit about the ultra-conservative Gemonese people, the Borellian Nomen, and the Sagitarans. The Zodiac connection was never fully explored, but it implied that the twelve colonies might be distributed in a circular group.

Coming out of the pilot episode, the viewing audience was left with the impression that the Twelve Colonies represented the extent of human civilization in that distant region of space. After all, they were called the "Twelve Colonies", which implied they were not the "Twelve Homeworlds". But in reality, or at least as the series evolved, the Twelve Colonies had themselves sent out colonists to settle other worlds. Logically extrapolating what is implied by the various episodes, there must have been hundreds of little colony worlds scattered across the galaxy. When Adama decided to set out for Earth, he abandoned all those colony worlds to an uncertain fate.

In "The Lost Planet of the Gods", the Galactica's fleet passed through a magnetic void, at the center of which, or on the far side of which, they discovered the lost world of Kobol. Once hospitable to human life, it was apparently unsuitable for recolonization. And, besides, the Cylons tracked the rag-tag fleet to Kobol and presumably destroyed whatever remnants of the ancient human civilization still existed.

In "The Lost Warrior", Apollo crash-landed on a distant farming world which had been the scene of an earlier battle between Cylons and Colonial Warriors many years before. The world is never named, but it is the last plausible colony world visited by the Galactica.

Next comes the ice moon or planet (they seemed to use "moon" and "planet" interchangeably) Arcta, where an immense laser gun threatens the fleet. The story was taken from the movies "The Guns of Navarone" and "The Dirty Dozen" ("The Devil's Brigade" might have influenced it, too) and it has been lambasted and criticized by fans for years. The ice world served as the remote outpost of a reclusive scientist, Dr. Ravashol, who found time to breed clones as well as design horrific weapons of mass destruction.

In "The Magnificent Warriors", the Galactica bartered for food with non-human aliens (!) on the planet Sectar (supposedly located in a region with numerous farming worlds -- see Sidebar). The aliens were goofy, the local humans were goofy, the planet was goofy, and one can only hope the Cylons stumbled across it and blew it out of the sky by accident if not by intent.

The planet Attila (see Sidebar) is probably the best imagined of all the secondary colonies portrayed in the original series. That is because it leaves a great deal to the imagination. The only real sign of civilization is the family's castle. But one has to wonder why so many farming worlds and reclusive planets exist. Was life in the Twelve Colonies as bad as all that?

Well, "The Long Patrol" introduced us to the prison colony on Proteus, an asteroid or small moon or world in the Frodian Galaxy (apparently distinct from the Kobol galaxy). Some or all of the prisoners were descended from Colonials from the planet Aries.

Gamorray, like Carillon, was home to another race of beings; in this case, the Delphians. The Cylons are said to have wiped them out as soon as they achieved space travel. In the two-part episode "The Living Legend", Commander Cain of the Battlestar Pegasus has been conducting raids on the Cylon base at Gamorray for at least two years. He persuades a reluctant Adama to try to take out the base for strategic reasons. The Cylons are using it as a sectar capitol, which implies that the Cylon Alliance must have controlled an immense amount of territory before it destroyed the Twelve Colonies.

Paradeen marks the outer boundary of the region of influence of Terra (not to be confused with Earth, even though Terra -- the Latin name for Earth -- is often used as a name for Earth in science fiction). Paradeen is a small moon which has been colonized by Terra's western coalition, a peaceful, democratic society. But the Eastern Alliance has wiped out Terra's population and the populations of other colonies (many of which are called Lunar One, Lunar Seven, etc.).

Terra is an interesting world. While it has a space-faring civilization capable of traveling between the stars (and thus is far more advanced than Earth), its technology is not comparable to that of the Twelve Colonies. The audience is left with the impression that Terra was founded by the Thirteenth Tribe, but is not the primary home (because Earth is the primary home) of the Thirteenth Tribe.

Terra is the last civilized world encountered by the Galactica and her fleet in the original series. The audience is not told whether the Cylons know about Terra or will destroy it. Presumably, the Ship of Lights will look out for Terra, since they went to the trouble to use Apollo to persuade the Terrans to calm down and discuss peace with each other.

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