Now that the excellent remake of Battlestar Galactica is over, there is time to reflect on what we saw, the stereotypes displayed, and on the series ending.

What you may ask, does this have to do with Archaeology?  Actually several things!

In the series, we are lead to believe from the beginning that this is a "parallel" civilization.  This is critical so that we set aside our natural skepticism and disbelief.  There are so many things that defy possibility in their similarity, but a parallel allows for these.

Over the course of the penultimate and final seasons, we learn of an Earth destroyed by nuclear war, that was the "homeland" of the final five Cylons.  We see the cities laid waste.  Yet planets are big things - dynamic and self repairing.  There were even survivable areas on the 12 Colonies after their nuclear holocausts - were it not for the Cylon invaders crawling all over them, Colonial civilization could have rebuilt.  But not on the found Earth - within minutes Earth was written off.  What was odd about this part of the story was the total lack of applied science in attempting to revert the "Earth" or portions into habitation.  Yet they abandoned it without a thought.

Fast forward to the final battle and Starbuck's delivery of Galactica to New New Earth (our Earth?).

We see OUR familiar homeworld, with Neolithic humans traveling across a plain, spears at the ready.  Somehow the Doc does a DNA test without close contact (from what we see) and we are told that the Galacticans and the local humans are compatible.  So 39,000, more or less, Galacticans and Cylons dump themselves on the planet, melt their ships in the Sun (Sol), and reject ALL technology, in the guise of a New Beginning.

They voice their desire to abandon the concept of cities, yet their are practical realities for survival.  Even spread across the planet, several thousand humans together leave quite a foot print.  Plus they must be fed and sheltered.  After all, there were big nasty critters that would eat human sized snacks - Sabertooth Cats, Giant Birds, Huge Crocodiles, Dire Wolves, and more.  The practical necessities of survival demand small cities. 

Additionally, this was too early for the introduction of agriculture to our planet - by at least 100,000 years.  Should we believe that they would not have brought a single Colonial plant or animal with them?  They had green houses in abundance - enough to support a standing population of almost 40,000 Galacticans.

However, the single biggest screw-up in the ending is the mythology.  Their culture was based upon what we know of as Greek Mythology.  Same names for god and goddesses.  Yet, if Galactica arrived 150,000 years in the past - the only way for that mythology to survive to modern Greek civilization times, would be through substantial written records AND an active religion with arrived fully formed in the early formative period of the Greek civilization.  Yet we know that to not be the case.  Simply because we had fully formed, fully complex, and totally unique mythologies develop long before the Greeks.  The Greek mythology was a home grown invention borrowing bits and pieces from Babylon and Egypt, and possibly more.

But ignoring these considerations, we then jump forward to our (Earthy Humans') present.  Two "Angles" wander through New York City and compare the past Colonies & Cylon civilization with the present.  Then we jump to a recent discovery.  The actual, factual, discovery of an ancestral Eve.

But consider: almost 40,000 (so called) modern humans landed on Earth 150,000 years ago - per the story line.  These are technological humans, and regardless of desires, they WOULD have used their knowledge to sustain and improve their lives.  They would have developed villages.  They would have eventually bred with the locals.  If Eve was an ancestor, what about the others?  What about the hundreds of Cylons that came down?  Admiral Adalma even had a flying "Raptor" - now that would make an interesting discovery buried in a midden mound.

The point is that the writers chose a cop-out.  So rarely are consequences thought out in films, so rarely is the probable outcomes considered and presented, and we have become so accepting of dumb ideas, that we rarely challenge them.  Logic is almost never considered.

The new Battlestar Galactica was a wondrous television series.  But they owed their viewers a better ending.  An ending that was plausible, logical, and consistent with our ACTUAL history since they were going to borrow it for their ending.  The irony is that it would have been easy to do this, but they chose not to involve a Paleoanthropologist or an Archaeologist in the final story development.  All the more sad because of it.

If we learn one thing from this remake of Battlestar Galactica it is this:  Strive for the truth, and don't accept easy answers.  Not from our entertainment, not from our media, and not from the politicians that work for us.  And especially not from a President who's only qualification is that he got elected.  We deserve better answers, better people, better science, better history, and better stories. 

We deserve the TRUTH!

Back »