Wednesday, November 12, 2003
It's a human universe
A common feature of most other space adventures, both in movies and on TV, are the diversity of alien species in the universe. This is a common feature not found very often in Battlestar Galactica. In the very first episode, “Saga of a Starworld”, we are introduced to both the insectoid Ovions and the Tucan singers with two mouths. Other than that, alien races are seldom seen. In “The Magnicent Warriors”, “Adama and his gang have to fight off the Borays, who seem to be a sub-human race that’s not intelligent enough to ever fly around in starships. And finally, in “The Man With Nine Lives” we are introduced to the Nomen, but it’s not clear if the Nomen are actually a different race, of if they are just savage looking humans. If they aren’t human, then it doesn’t make sense for them to be aboard the fleet.
If we assume that the Nomen are human, and the Borays aren’t fully evolved, then that leaves us with only two intelligent races besides humans, the Ovions and the Tucans, and they were both seen only in the first episode. When they wrote the script for the first episode, Glen Larson and the other writers obviously didn’t see where the show would eventually be headed. At that early phase of Battlestar Galactica, they were still trying to copy Star Wars and didn’t yet find Galactica’s unique vision.
And what is the unique vision? That would be that Battlestar Galactica is strictly a story about man struggling against the Cylon machines (whose original creation may have been influenced by the Devil). Adama leads the fleet into deep space in search of the lost tribe of men. He’s not expecting to find other alien races out there who might help him. The only people who can help him are other humans.
This human-centric philosophy is an outgrowth of the show’s religious overtones. In the Bible, it says that God created man. Not that He created man and a whole bunch of other intelligent alien races living on other planets. The Mormon religion, which has heavily influenced Battlestar Galactica, acknowledges that there is life on other planets, but it is human life, not alien life. The Gods (and that’s a plural) have a special role for humans that is not shared by any other intelligent races that might exist in the universe.