Kobol
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kobol is the name of a planet in the fictional Battlestar Galactica universe.
Within the context of both Battlestar Galactica stories, Kobol is the birthplace and original home of humanity, from which the civilization departed and formed the "Twelve Colonies of Man" on other worlds. According to legend, there was also a thirteenth "lost" colony, who settled on the planet Earth, the location of which remained a mystery to the populations of the other twelve.
As written fiction, Kobol is an anagram of the Mormon "Kolob", a celestial body named in the Book of Abraham and identified as being near the home or origin of God. Many connections between Mormon beliefs and the story of the original Battlestar Galactica have been pointed out by observant fans. Glen A. Larson, the writer of the original series, is himself a Mormon and articulated some of his religious beliefs through this science fiction metaphor. "Kobol" and its name is part of the mythopoetic fabric of "Battlestar Galactica" that borrows from theology. The Mormon hymn If you could hie to Kolob touches on themes related both to the original and the reimagined series.
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[edit] Original series Kobol
As depicted in the original Battlestar Galactica series (1978-79), particularly the series episode "Lost Planet of the Gods", Kobol orbits an irregular variable star, and its encompassing system of planets lies immediately adjacent to a "magnetic void". The people of Kobol developed space-faring technology, and within the story it is suggested that their population likely reached the limits inherent in occupying a single planet, and, coupled with other disasters or factors (such as Kobol's sun being unstable), motivated humans to leave the planet. Eden was the name of a city on the planet, and, according to Commander Adama (Lorne Greene), was "the first to fall" to some unknown cataclysm.
In scenes that were filmed, but deleted from the final broadcast of the episodes, Captain Apollo explains that in its final days, Kobol was stricken with terrible overpopulation and waste. The surface and atmosphere of the planet were in fact so polluted that only the absolute strongest of creatures could still survive. After the human inhabitants of Kobol fled the planet and founded the colonies, they deliberately destroyed all of their technology and spacecraft; it took several centuries to rebuild even the most primitive ships for exploring the stars.
Also unexplained is the culture of then-Kobolian society and their division into thirteen distinct tribes. Twelve of these groups traveled through the magnetic void and eventually settled a group of inhabitable planets in a common solar system. These settlements became the colonies depicted in the series, known collectively as the Twelve Colonies of Man. For some unexplained reason, the thirteenth tribe presumably traveled a greater distance and in the opposite direction, settling on Earth. At the time the original series began, there had been no contact between the thirteenth tribe and the Twelve Colonies. As the centuries pass, the people of the Twelve Colonies generally considered the existence of Earth and the thirteenth tribe a myth.
Kobol is rediscovered in the aforementioned "Lost Planet of the Gods", which depicts at least part of the planet as being a desert, with ruins similar (or possibly identical) to the Egyptian Pyramids of Giza; parts of the episode were filmed on location at Giza.
The original series included the Earth, or an Earth-like world, in two storylines. The first was as a human planet called Terra, and though it was very similar to Earth, the beings from the "Ship of Light" confirmed that Terra is not in fact Earth. The sequel series Galactica 1980 involved the Galactica finding the real Earth.
[edit] Reimagined series Kobol
As depicted in the "reimagined" Battlestar Galactica television series, Kobol appears to be a lush Earth-like planet with high mountains and dense forests. The details of its solar system however, have not been discussed. In contrast to the original series, Kobol's ruins appear to be more Greco-Roman in their influence than Egyptian.
Kobol has much of the same mythology of the original series. The thirteenth colony is noted to have settled on Earth, and there has been no contact between it and the other colonies, which are known as "The Twelve Colonies of Kobol". The Cylons in the series consider Kobol their birthplace as well, and one predicts that Galactica will discover it and Kobol will lead them to Earth.
Galactica indeed does discover Kobol, but when it sends a survey team to its surface, their Colonial Raptor is shot down by a squadron of Cylon Raiders dispatched by a Basestar orbiting the planet. Galactica manages to destroy the Basestar, but there is evidence of a Cylon presence on the planet surface.
According to Colonial religious scriptures, humans lived on Kobol side-by-side with their Gods, the Lords of Kobol. An unspecified conflict between the Gods, referred to as "one jealous god" that turned on his brethren, spurred the humans of the time to flee Kobol onboard the "Galleon," a spacefaring ship of unknown construction, in the face of "The Blaze" (assumed to be some sort of nuclear warfare). It was said that, for any who return, Kobol would exact a price paid in blood.
In the reimagined series, Kobol is the location of the Tomb of Athena, located near the Gates of Hera. An ancient relic, the Arrow of Apollo, was required to gain entry to the temple ruin in which it is said clues could be found to finding the way to the thirteenth colony, Earth. Within the Tomb were statues representing each of the Twelve Tribes. When the arrow was placed on the statue representing Sagittarius, the location of Earth was revealed. Earth can see the twelve zodiac constellations which are imprinted on the flags of the Twelve Colonies. Also, the Colonials recognized in the map a nebula that is visible to Earth; in reality, the Lagoon Nebula.
[edit] See also
- List of Battlestar Galactica (1978-1980) episodes
- List of Battlestar Galactica (2004 television series) episodes
