Revelations, but not enough
Jun 21st, 2008 by Butter
It’s unfortunate that Waffles and I got this blog online right as the Sci-Fi Network’s superb Battlestar Galactica series was heading into a mid-season hiatus. Speculation about where exactly this series is going and about what little clues the writers are giving us regarding how the major story arcs will tie together is a pretty common and fun part of being a fan of the show. So let’s take a look at what we’ve been given in the mid-season finale, and at what we’re likely to see when it (finally) comes back. (Spoilers, obviously, will follow.)
Most of the speculation, of course, springs from the final few seconds of the episode, when they finally land on what they have been led to believe is Earth. As the befuddled crew stand in the remains of what looks like a temple, we see the camera pan across a ruined cityscape that stands beyond a wide gulf or river. The abandoned city seems to be on an island, and in the last second or so we see the ruins of a bridge tower standing on the right. The popular interpretation, of course, is that we’re standing in Brooklyn looking across at lower Manhattan, and the bridge tower is a ruin of the Brooklyn Bridge.
(Panorama compiled by user OM on alt.battlestar-galactica.)
But the director has intentionally kept the geography ambiguous. He’s being coy about whether they’re even on Earth at all: Unlike in the spectacular galactic zoom-in to an Earth with North America clearly visible that ended season three, here there were absolutely no recognizable oceans, continents, or coastlines to be seen in any of the orbital views of the planet. Neither in the establishing shot when the fleet first jumps in nor in the much lower atmospheric-entry sequence do we see anything that reveals the identity of this planet. Nor was Earth’s moon visible in any shot, even though the director made a big show of revealing it in the pictures from Starbuck’s camera taken earlier. There’s only two possibilities that I can see: Either this is Earth, but Ron Moore is being a dick to keep us in manufactured, artificial suspense for the next six months; or this isn’t really Earth at all, and it’s just another red herring thrown to the poor Colonials by whatever power is pulling strings.
If it isn’t Earth, it could be a terraformed Mars or Venus, or another planet in a system near enough that the constellations look basically the same. Mars, really, should be tossed out as a possibility, since all the terraforming in the world won’t make its gravity earthlike, which is what it certainly seemed to be in the sequence we saw. Unless, of course, Caprica and the other Colonial worlds all had Mars-like gravity, and adjusting to one g, instead of 0.38g, will actually be the problem, if they ever get here. (This could lead to some comical anti-Super Scouts scenarios.) But since realistic gravity has always been tossed in casually as a suspension-of-disbelief issue in BSG, it’s probably best not to read too much into this.
Some support for the not-on-Earth idea can be gleaned from the latter parts of the original series, in which the Colonials stumble upon a planet bizarrely named Terra that’s populated by humans and that the Colonials mistake for Earth. But it isn’t Earth (it’s run by Nazis, if I remember right), and after some wacky adventures the fleet continues on its way. (How this other human society came to be, and how it fits in with the thirteen-tribes premise, is awkwardly left unaddressed.)
But I don’t buy the notion that Moore is nicking this particular idea from TOS. I think he’s dangling it out there as a red herring. He’s done this before, with the Ships-of-Light fake-out from the beginning of this season. When Starbuck was painting her vision of the “comet” on the walls of her cabin on the Demetrius, the fans (including me) were abuzz with speculation that Moore was bringing back the Ships of Light—crystal ships flown by angels (no, really)—from TOS; it was frequently mentioned over on alt.battlestar-galactica on Usenet. (Yes, Usenet still exists.) Later, of course, it was revealed that the mystery ship was just Natalie’s basestar in distress. The idea that some analogue of the Ships might still show up shouldn’t be entirely abandoned, though, since in TOS it was the Ships-of-Light people who abducted and resurrected Starbuck, and in the new series her abduction and seeming resurrection are so far unexplained.
So my money’s on the scenario that this is in fact Earth, and Moore is just being coy. Tossing us an image or idea from the old series, but not really incorporating the plotline that it represents, seems to be Moore’s MO. (It was a Six’s “By Your Command” that ended the miniseries. And remember the amazing disappearing Boxey.) The landing in New York would fit in with the whole 9/11-Iraq War symbolism and allegory that’s never been far from the surface (for example, remember the night-vision cams and the suicide bombings back on New Caprica). Also, some observant fans have noticed that if the last scene does in fact take place in New York, the location where they’re standing, in the midst, presumably, of the ruins of the temple of Aurora, is where this building is now:
(Photo retrieved from http://www.kelebekler.com/cesnur/txt/sedewts.jpg
This is the Watchtower building, owned by the Jehova’s Witnesses.
So, what do you think? Earth or not Earth?
And remember:
This ain’t your father’s Battlestar Galactica.
“Unless, of course, Caprica and the other Colonial worlds all had Mars-like gravity, and adjusting to one g, instead of 0.38g, will actually be the problem,”
Wait, WUT? Basic science education-FAIL. Speaking of which, I haz a blog…No, won’t.
I’d like to think it’s Earth, but the fact that we have a whole half-season to go doesn’t bode well. We’ll either need a massive Cylon-hooman battle for Earth or a few episodes of massive navigation-fail to get to where we needz to be.
BTW, your use of TOS I understandz. but it does feel a little sacreligious. Should TOS be reserved for its only other, and quite obvious, reference: Star Trek: The Original Series? I’m sure Usenet has already resolved this, but the rest of us are still uneasy.
The strength of a planet’s gravity is commonly measured in g’s, where one g is defined as the gravitational acceleration at Earth’s surface. In metric units, that’s 9.8 m/s². This value is actually very simple to visualize in concrete terms: it means that for every second that an object is in freefall, and neglecting air resistance, it will accelerate by 9.8 m/s. Thus at the end of every second it will be traveling 9.8 m/s faster than it was at the end of the previous second. (Of course, in an atmosphere, an object will eventually stop accelerating when air resistance, or drag, prevents it from accelerating any more; thus kittehs have been known to survive falls from dozens of feet.)
A planet that’s less massive than Earth will have a smaller gravitational acceleration at its surface; one that’s more massive will have a larger gravitational acceleration. Mars is only about 11% as massive as Earth, so its gravitational acceleration is less: about 0.38g, or 3.72 m/s².*
To see how all this relates to what we see on-screen in a sci-fi show, just think of the old Apollo footage of astronauts on the moon from the ’60s and ’70s. People and objects in a weaker gravitational field (lunar surface gravitational acceleration is about 0.17g) movie differently: people’s walks are bouncier and projectiles go farther. A given force causes an object to go up farther and take longer to fall than the same force on Earth. Since the humans and Cylons seemed to be perambulating normally with no distress on the surface of the putative Earth, we can conclude that the gravitational acceleration there is similar to what they’re used to on their homeworlds and onboard ship—assuming, of course, that we’re meant to infer anything from this at all, and we’re not just supposed to ignore it as part of suspension of disbelief. Probably the latter is true, which is disappointing, considering that Newtonian physics have otherwise been portrayed realistically in the show (cf. the Vipers and Raiders rotating on their axes in battle).
The Cylon-human battle for Earth will probably come from Cavil’s faction; remember that they’re still out there somewhere. It’ll be interesting to see if they still have any fight left in them now that they’re mortal.
And yes, TOS is standard among the Galactica fanbase for the original series; it’s ubiquitous on Battlestar Wiki, for example.
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*If you’re wondering why it’s not 0.11g, to match the mass, the answer is that it would be, if we were measuring it at the same radius from the planet’s center. But for practical purposes, we’re measuring it at the surface, and Mars’s radius is less than that of Earth; thus being closer to the center of mass compensates somewhat for the reduction in mass.
If caprica and the other colonies didn’t had lower gravity than earth, the humans would be taller than earth humans.
I think that the planet is Earth. There is a theory that Kara Thrace caused the nuclear war when she found earth and then there was some sort of time flux that sent her back to the nebula. I’m not exactly sure, but that sounds plausible.
Sometimes the steadiest of hands aren’t steady enough.