A potential inspiration for BSG?
Mind the spoilers.
I was going through some lists of post-apocalyptic literature (don’t ask) when I stumbled over one of the classics of the genre, On the Beach by Nevil Shute. Very much a dystopian tale, it chronicles the slow, creeping extinction of humanity as radiation creeps southward from the devastated northern hemisphere in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
So how does this relate to BSG?
Well, in the last episode, No Exit, beaches were significant. In fact, the idea of beaches has been rather significant in several episodes of this, the final half of the show’s final season, as others have noted:
Beaches are so far seeming to be important — the Five’s memories started to return on a beach on the cinder planet, that same beach sent Dualla over the edge, there were photos of a beach in Dualla’s locker, John Cavil and Ellen used to walk on a beach with Daniel…
Now, take a look at the cover of the first printing of On the Beach:
Five people — three men, two women — standing on a beach, on a world devastated by nuclear war.
Now, to be fair, the plot of On the Beach isn’t strictly a parallel to the plot of Battlestar Galactica, but there are a few general similarities:
- both stories take place in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust
- both stories deal with the plight of a dwindling number of survivors
- both stories involve a warship setting out in pursuit of an unidentified signal
- both stories involve that signal turning out to be nothing at all, a let-down
Now, assuming any correlation at all between the book and BSG, this could potentially mean that the series will not, for many people, have a happy ending. Not that this should really come as a surprise — Edward James Olmos, in particular, has talked often and at some length about the increasingly dark turns that we can expect the series to take, and has stated matter-of-factly that “we” (which I take to mean “the Colonials”) will be left with almost nothing by the show’s end.
So, what happens in On the Beach past the signal’s discovery?
- One crew member stays behind to live out his last few hours in his hometown
- the remaining characters attempt to make the most of what little time they have left
- one character, in particular, organizes a dangerous event (a race in the book) that claims the lives of many people
- many of the characters opt to commit suicide rather than succumb to radiation sickness; the captain of the submarine opts to scuttle his boat in international waters, rather than allowing her to languish in a foreign port
I might point out that in two podcasts now (for the last two episodes), Ron Moore has said that the significant damage now evident in the Galactica’s structure and frame will be a significant plot point in the episodes to come. Given William Adama‘s love of his ship and devotion to his duty, and given that he probably wouldn’t want to see the “old girl” decay and degrade in orbit of any world, only to one day burn up on re-entry, it’s not entirely inconceivable that he might opt to scuttle the ship…and to go down with her, so to speak.
Especially if Laura Roslin does actually die at some point before the show’s end.
Now, the above is all just speculation on my part…although, admittedly, I actually hadn’t realized that events which transpired after the discovery of the meaningless signal, in the novel, also matched events in the series to date; I had only thought through the similarities before and leading up to the discovery of the signal’s origin. The fact that there are additional correlations beyond that point worry me, ever so slightly.
There have been a lot of rumours floating around that the series ends with many character deaths. Edward James Olmos’ thoughts on the matter have already been noted; we also know that there’s apparently a number of other cataclysmic things which take place. James Callis, who plays Gaius Baltar, likened the series’ ending to that of Apocalypse Now. Tahmoh Penikett, who plays Helo, stated that “[e]verybody dies. We have a dark ending.”
(Mind you, he also said that he’s “happy with the end of [his] storyline and it will surprise people,” so make of that what you will.)
So I turn it over to you, good reader: could On the Beach be serving as some kind of stylistic influence for the final episodes of BSG? Is the show headed toward a dark and dystopian ending? Or will the writers find a way to infuse hope back in to the narrative?
Also, don’t miss Michael Hall’s promised article on time dilation and dates in the BSG backstory. If nothing else, it does argue a compelling case for the existence of discontinuities in the reported dates for e.g. the age of the Temple of Hopes/Temple of Five.
The similarities to On The Beach are eerie. Kudos on uncovering that. I think the ending of BSG will be dark, but with a ray of hope. I won’t be surprised if they take the Galactica down onto the planet they eventually settle on (um, our Earth that they showed in Crossroads). It may turn out to be a kind of New Kobol where the Cylons and humans are living together peacefully.
I just read Hall’s article right before coming over to you blog, so I actually have some thoughts that cropped up as I read his post. I commented over there, but will paste the same questions I asked him here:
What if the Temple is some kind of jump-gate that either causes or coincides with the nova? Could this temple jump-gate be using the nova as a power source? Does the nova occur every 2,000 years? What if the temple jump-gate firing up happens on a regular cycle, like every 2,000 years when the nova occurs?
If the 13th Tribe/F5 didn’t know how such a gate worked, it could be easily misunderstood as “God showing them the way.”** They might not even realize what was happening. Also, this could be how Starbuck traveled to Earth. Maybe whatever programming she’s got compelled her to fly into the maelstrom because deep down she knew it was a jump-gate.
**Ken: Perhaps the writers will leave it vague enough that, like DS9, we’ll each be able to interpret it as supernatural or mundane as we wish.
I think that last point, especially, is where things are going…I suppose the only question to ask is how much suffering both sides will yet have to endure in order to realize that it’s the only way forward.
It’s an interesting theory; the only point I might raise against it is that it’s a bit late in the game to be introducing new technologies on the order of planetary-scale jump gates, don’t you think?
Well, you’d basically need a star’s output to run a jump-gate, so that’s a possibility. Mind you, it’s hard to imagine any structure which could survive the destructive fury of a nova, and certainly it would seem to be the case that the planet was destroyed by the star’s explosion…so, if what you say is true, it’s very much a one-time deal.
While the idea of a recurrent nova is not totally new, and while it is possible for stars to have what are basically akin to recurrent novas — massive, repeating CMEs, basically — that’s really not the sense that this episode gives. The sense one comes away with, in watching it, is that this is a one-time deal; the planet is destroyed in the wake of the nova, and the nova itself is a one-time thing that just happens to be occurring at that precise moment, whether by coincidence (as Adama and Gaeta attempt to interpret it) or by design (as the Threes interpret it).
This is very true…but equally, one notes that this simply wasn’t explored in the episode; the temple was not used to jump away from the planet when the Cylons and Colonials fled the system.
More to the point, the point that’s been made a couple of times is that the temple itself was built by the Thirteenth Tribe; it seems odd to think that they built a jump-gate without realizing it, inadvertently activated said jump-gate because the star just happened to have a massive (nova-esque) CME at the same time, and then subsequently attributed the entire thing to be the handiwork of God (singular) even though they were apparently polytheists.
It is a good hypothesis, but one notes that there’s absolutely no exploration of the possibility in e.g. Rapture, the relevant episode. The Temple appears to be a “Well of Souls” (think: Indiana Jones), a place of worship with a hidden message meant to be imparted once, and once only, to someone with faith enough to stand fast even in the face of an approaching nova shock front.
Maybe. At least it’s possible that a mechanism existed, hidden in the vortex of the gas giant (and possibly causing same), that jumped Kara from there to Earth.
If so: who built it? And why?
The somewhat bigger question is what programming “original Kara” could have been following. I’d accept that “new Kara” might be acting out the diktats of algorithms at work within her…but there’s nothing to suggest that “original Kara” (pre-Maelstrom Kara, essentially) was subject to the same sort of thing.
The show has been talking about the Temple for most of the series. It’s not something new being introduced, it’s just it’s true purpose might not have been revealed yet.
Actually, Hall cites this quote from Gaeta in Rapture, which is what got me thinking along these lines:
Gaeta (Rapture): Well, there was another nova. Seen 4,000 years ago, around about when the Temple might have been built. It’s 13,000 light years from our present position. It’s a cloud of gas known as the Ionian Nebula.
However, I do like the Well of Souls idea as well. Ellen says the 13th Tribe built the temple, but Colonial history says that the 13th Tribe built it. What if neither of them built it, but discovered it just like the Colonials did (which would play into the Eternal Return theme). What if whoever built it, programmed it to be something different to everyone?
Ack! Sorry about the sloppy HTML in my last comment.
Fixed it.
I can’t take credit for the “Well of Souls” comment — that’s Ron Moore’s exact comparison, per the podcast for Rapture.
Uhm…can you clarify this point? The way it reads to me, Ellen’s history and Colonial history agree on who built the temple, with the only difference being a question of date (which could be explained away as either the consequence of time dilation or of a continuity gaffe).
This certainly works, leaving open only the question of who the builder(s) actually was (were).
Which, to be fair, is still a legitimate question. We’ve only got five episodes left, but I get the feeling we’re due to be introduced to at least one other “group” — apart from the Cylons, Colonials, and Final Five — before the story ends.
Oops. Sorry about that. I meant that Ellen says the 13th Tribe built the temple, but Colonial history says the Five built the temple.
There is a question about the date though — Colonial history says the temple was built 4,000 years ago, but Ellen says it was built 3,000 years ago.
The Colonials believe it was built, per the Scrolls, by the “five priests” who worshipped [Voldemort*], but that these were still people associated with the Thirteenth Tribe, I thought.
(Certainly, there’s at least one glaring contradiction between the five priests and the Final Five: the nature of their theism.)
As to the dates, Moore concedes in the podcast that, given the volume of information that comes out in the episode, some contradictions in continuity are probably inevitable. I’m thinking that’s probably what happened here, but…hey…who knows? Michael Hall makes a good argument in regard to time dilation, which might also explain things.
* this was just too tempting a shorthand name to NOT use…
There is one way to make a definitive link between Battlestar Galactica and particular literature, and that is to find a quote in Battlestar Galactica that is taken from that literature. For example, the title of an upcoming episode, “Islanded in a Stream of Stars,” comes from the novel The Outermost House. So, you might try searching for odd things that Anders said and seeing if they occur in the novel “On the Beach”. There are some quotes from that book on the net, and maybe you can find the whole book as an etext or something.
There is that; it’ll be fodder for a few Google searches in the coming weeks.
Thanks for the suggestion.
A lot of what Anders said comes from Paradise Lost.
From “Night on the Great Beach” in Henry Beston’s The Outermost House:
“For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars— pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time.”
Well, that certainly describes the basic plot of BSG in a rather poetic way, doesn’t it?
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