Hello, Ric here with a Battlestar Galactica vid, as it says.
In the title.
Which you probably just read…
With your eyes…
So I love looking into the legends of fictional universes and overanalysing and getting deep
into the lore of a story.
I’ve already done a video on the Lords of Kobol, which can be found in links, and while
researching into the mythos of the real life Greek gods…
I mean the IRL mythology… not like…real, real… anyway.
I started to draw parallels between the characters of the battlestar universe and the deities
or yore.
Now this video is way more speculation and opinion based than the Lords of Kobol video
so I didn’t really want to just talk about these points there, but without further ado,
let’s indulge in some pointless overanalyses of a fiction universe because the real one
kind of sucks.
With the cycle of time being a key theme of Battlestar Galactica it stands to reason that
events and even characters may mirror themselves.
This video also ties into a belief that I’ve held since watching the Reimagined series
that in never supported directly but I believe that Kobol, the supposed origin of humanity
may not even be the original homeworld of the humans and like the colonies and the original
Earth was merely a stop along this repeating cycle of creation, rebellion, destruction
and exodus.
We find naturally evolved humans placed on the second Earth in the series finale with
no explanation, perhaps they too belong to a very distant common ancestor.
Part of this could go some way as to explaining the origin of the Kobol religion as it was
said that on Kobol, humans alongside the Gods.
These Gods apparently did not make the exodus from the great Blaze that the thirteen tribes
did and presumably died on Kobol, or went their own way.
Their mythology is all that is left of them as upon founding the colonies, the humans
lost a lot of technology and resorted to a more primitive existence, building upon prior
knowledge but without the blueprints as it were.
The stories of the gods therefore have already been interpreted and potentially eroded once,
with even the twelve colonies placing different emphasis on different deities, such as the
Taurons having Ares higher in their pantheon than on other planets.
Perhaps these deities, Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite and so on were once real people, key figures
in a much earlier exodus to Kobol?
This erosion of the truth can be seen in our own world, in real life too, but I’m talking
about the Earth that we see in the Galactica universe.
The planet shown 150,000 years later at the end of Galactica is meant to be this planet
and as such, it’s mythology our own.
So it goes with the assumption that the exploits of the Greek Gods are further derived from
the Lords of Kobol.
No doubt tales of the exodus from the twelve colonies was told by the survivors and retold
by the descendants, with the characters and exploits becoming muddied and blurred in an
age before long-lasting recording methods as all the computers ended up in the sun.
So it’s not unreasonable to assume that the tales in our mythology are partly based
on the exploits of the primary characters of the Battlestar story.
Let’s look at some comparisons for fun shall we?
And like I say, this is all about the show’s universe; the real explanation is boring and
either a conscious design choice or coincidence on the writers part.
The obvious examples are the use of callsigsns based on the Lords of Kobol, Apollo being
the first.
As a Lord of Kobol, Apollo was known as a hunter, yet a God of Light.
In real mythology, Apollo was depicted as a youthful, clean-shaven, heroic, moral hero
type and said to cast a watchful eye over colonists and endeavours such as mass exodus.
Here, I like to think that stories of Lee Adama were merged with earlier Kobol legend
to produce the current understanding of Apollo.
I would peg Artemis, Apollo’s sister and fellow God of the Hunt as Starbuck.
I’m not endorsing incest here, there’s enough of that in Scifi already, but like
I say, these are degradations of tales and characters.
So if you look at the profession of both Lee and Kara, they are viper pilots, not much
of a leap to associate that with hunting really.
Artemis in mythology broke the stereotypical mould for women, deliberately defying convention
and wearing practical clothing to hunt in, well, more practical anyway.
Starbuck openly refutes authority several times and definitely fits the role of a rebel.
Another parallel is the hunting accident that led to the death of her lover, Orion, who
in this telling could be based on Zak Adama, whom she cleared for flight despite him failing
his training.
I don’t think this mythical story makes itself known in the series, but it could also
be a nice explanation as to why Kara prays to Artemis in particular.
On a darker note, Artemis was said to aid in relieving the pain of childbirth.
This becomes a much more twisted version when she discovers the breeding farms of Caprica
and acquiesced to Sue-Shaun’s request to kill her.
Zeus, father of the Gods whose domain was the sky and thunder.
Father of Apollo, Artemis and many others.
Well, William Adama is the literal father of Lee and treated Kara as a daughter.
His position aboard Galactica as Commander and later Admiral places him in the role of
the caretaker of humanity, in effect a protective role of fatherhood.
Plus Tom Zarek is fond of calling him out as Zeus, calling the Galactica itself Olympus,
playing off the similarities.
Plus Sky and Thunder?
Makes me think of the battlestar’s high level of artillery, definitely his domain.
Athena, Sharon Agathon, was another who inherited a callsign based on Kobol mythology.
And although she was the Goddess of Victory and Wisdom, I’m interested in how she came
about.
This one does take a bit of a leap, even for such a speculation based video such as this
but what the heck.
Athena was born from the head of Zeus, but not before causing him great pain.
Pain so intense that he actively sought to cut it out.
This level of causing harm to Zeus before being accepted can kind of be seen as a reflection
of Boomer shooting Adama before Athena usurps her place in the crew, eventually earning
her freedom and the trust of her fellows.
Now given that Valerii and Agathon are two different people, they are still both eights
so in some way are based off the same person.
Like I said, bit of a stretch but an interesting parallel nonetheless.
Hera.
Although it was the name given to Sharon Agathon’s child, we have no real idea how she turned
out.
In the series however, I think that Laura Rosilin has many of classical Hera’s traits.
Hera is the patron of women, a trait that Laura Rosilin prides herself on and although
not married, I would definitely describe her as the wife of Zeus.
The strongest resemblances I see however could be in the kind, maternal nature Hera and Rosilin
emanate, but the vengeful spite which they both can bring to bear on people, or toasters,
that have wronged them.
She switches very easily from an understanding, calming presence into an icy cold demeanour.
I can’t count the number of scenes where she demonstrates this dramatic change but
some that spring to mind are the spacing of Leoban after promising him sanctuary
and the numerous times her opinion is challenged.
As for Aphrodite, her role in the pantheon was one of seduction, sexuality and revenge.
She would often brutally punish those who had wronged her while utilising her beauty
to manipulate any who found her attractive.
Sounds like the perfect analogy for the entire line of sixes.
The comparisons can go on and on, but I’m fully aware that with enough twisting and
selective fact picking that any theory can be justified, so I’m going to leave it there.
These are just some similarities, consciously made or not, that I found between the pantheon
of lore and the characters on screen and I like the idea that current day Greek /Roman
mythology has elopements of the stories of the Lords Kobol, blended with the actions
and personalities of the characters of Battlestar Galactica.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter but this is the kind of stuff that runs through
my head while I’m watching a series.
Because…
I don’t know.
Thanks for listening to my ramblings, I’ve been Ric and until the next video, goodbye.