Once upon a time there was an ancient text, an interim President and a doomed angel...
Interested to see what others thought of Revelations I've Google noticed a minor problem. There's exponentially growing confusion over the teaser act scene featuring Lee, Kara and the Book of Pythia from the mid-season finale Revelations. For years an informal understanding has existed between Battlestar and its audience; establishing details are not belabored but dispensed with quickly. So for years, viewers who've seen an episode only once, raid the fridge, heed calls of nature, (watch television, like, normally) are prone to miss or misremember such split second details. However when prominent dot com journalists all overlook the same detail, inevitably the error goes viral in fandom. pop critics , Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan , tvfodder , and even TelevisionWithoutPity's Jacob are talking about bridges and temples seen in Pythia's illustration... of a city on Earth? The illustration they refer to is of Kobol, not Earth. Uhoh.In the first season episode, Kobol's Last Gleaming Part 1, Roslin gazes at an overhead recon photo of ruins on a just discovered blue marble planet. A verdant planet still scarred by an ancient catastrophe that we'll soon be told has a name, The Blaze. But she doesn't see ancient ruins, instead Roslin's ChamallaVision reveals a majestic city in its prime. Elosha insists Roslin tell what she saw.
Roslin breaks television convention and refreshingly confesses immediately, "A dome like structure with six roads leading out of it like spokes. With something around it like columns, like a forum... like the forum on Caprica, actually."
Elosha whips out her book of the Colonial sacred scrolls to show Roslin a double page color illustration from the Book of Pythia.
Elosha, "The forum and the opera house in the City of the Gods on Kobol. This planet is Kobol. Birthplace of mankind. Where the gods and men lived in paradise until the exodus of the thirteen tribes."
Several important looking Romanesque buildings in the hand drawn illustration are highlighted in red. Points of interest are labelled in the script of a dead Kobol language. Many outlying buildings look much more modern, some are plainly skyscrapers. It as if buildings in the center of the circular city plan are preserved in historic reverance and while as the generations pass more modern buildings arise at the periphery. There's a river crossed by two bridges and mountains in the distance. Billy and Elosha conspire expositionally to tell us this tableau is of Kobol as it existed two thousand years ago (anno domini).
We aren't told what is what in the drawing except that the freshly nuked modern forum on Caprica resembles the ancient forum occupying the center of this ancient Kobol capital, the City of the Gods. A paradise lost, fled from in exodus, cursed by Zeus and lost to myth.
This is a critical moment in Battlestar. If some of it is true, isn't all of it true? If there really is a Kobol, there might be a real Earth. Roslin annoints herself as the Dying Leader foretold by prophecy. No matter the cost, she'll lead them all down the road to salvation. And don't dare stand in her way. Whoosh.
Three groups from Galactica eventually make planet fall at various locations in this landscape depicted in the drawing. The first Raptor crash lands within walking distance of the ruined archway and fallen columns of the Kobol Opera House, fronted by a lake or the remains of an ancient river. Roslin's party lands in Galleon Meadow, below the rocky ridge home to the Tomb of Athena. That ridge atop one of the mountains seen surrounding the valley in the drawing.
Several seasons, more than several years and too many long hiatuses that only The Sopranos would dare inflict, at last comes the end of exodus; the mid-season cliffhanger Revelations.
Roslin is missing. Lee idly peruses Roslin's personal copy of the sacred scrolls. He flips through the pages stopping at that same double page illustration depicting the City of the Gods on Kobol. The page is bookmarked.
As he flips to this page, on the next page underneath, glimpsed for an instant and half hidden, is a never before seen black and white drawing. Lee thumbs forward to this next page as Kara enters Adama's quarters. Lee and Kara stand side by side to look at this page together. Upside down and at a distance, we can't see the page clearly but enough to determine this is the very same half hidden page after the two page color illustration of the Kobol City of the Gods. The bookmark is now buried one page deep. Kara and Lee precede to identify what this new drawing is (that we can't see clearly.) It is now all but tradition to tantalize some minority of vigilant obsessive fans with teasing shots of hidden things. With most every episode, there are flurries of freeze framing and photoshopping of this or that CG creation of space, imaginary landscapes and ancient ruins, this or that latest art department offering; paintings, drawings, maps, books, hardcopy printouts from Viper and Raptor cameras.
Interested to see what others thought of Revelations I've Google noticed a minor problem. There's exponentially growing confusion over the teaser act scene featuring Lee, Kara and the Book of Pythia from the mid-season finale Revelations. For years an informal understanding has existed between Battlestar and its audience; establishing details are not belabored but dispensed with quickly. So for years, viewers who've seen an episode only once, raid the fridge, heed calls of nature, (watch television, like, normally) are prone to miss or misremember such split second details. However when prominent dot com journalists all overlook the same detail, inevitably the error goes viral in fandom. pop critics , Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan , tvfodder , and even TelevisionWithoutPity's Jacob are talking about bridges and temples seen in Pythia's illustration... of a city on Earth? The illustration they refer to is of Kobol, not Earth. Uhoh.In the first season episode, Kobol's Last Gleaming Part 1, Roslin gazes at an overhead recon photo of ruins on a just discovered blue marble planet. A verdant planet still scarred by an ancient catastrophe that we'll soon be told has a name, The Blaze. But she doesn't see ancient ruins, instead Roslin's ChamallaVision reveals a majestic city in its prime. Elosha insists Roslin tell what she saw.
Roslin breaks television convention and refreshingly confesses immediately, "A dome like structure with six roads leading out of it like spokes. With something around it like columns, like a forum... like the forum on Caprica, actually."
Elosha whips out her book of the Colonial sacred scrolls to show Roslin a double page color illustration from the Book of Pythia.
Elosha, "The forum and the opera house in the City of the Gods on Kobol. This planet is Kobol. Birthplace of mankind. Where the gods and men lived in paradise until the exodus of the thirteen tribes."
Several important looking Romanesque buildings in the hand drawn illustration are highlighted in red. Points of interest are labelled in the script of a dead Kobol language. Many outlying buildings look much more modern, some are plainly skyscrapers. It as if buildings in the center of the circular city plan are preserved in historic reverance and while as the generations pass more modern buildings arise at the periphery. There's a river crossed by two bridges and mountains in the distance. Billy and Elosha conspire expositionally to tell us this tableau is of Kobol as it existed two thousand years ago (anno domini).
We aren't told what is what in the drawing except that the freshly nuked modern forum on Caprica resembles the ancient forum occupying the center of this ancient Kobol capital, the City of the Gods. A paradise lost, fled from in exodus, cursed by Zeus and lost to myth.
This is a critical moment in Battlestar. If some of it is true, isn't all of it true? If there really is a Kobol, there might be a real Earth. Roslin annoints herself as the Dying Leader foretold by prophecy. No matter the cost, she'll lead them all down the road to salvation. And don't dare stand in her way. Whoosh.
Three groups from Galactica eventually make planet fall at various locations in this landscape depicted in the drawing. The first Raptor crash lands within walking distance of the ruined archway and fallen columns of the Kobol Opera House, fronted by a lake or the remains of an ancient river. Roslin's party lands in Galleon Meadow, below the rocky ridge home to the Tomb of Athena. That ridge atop one of the mountains seen surrounding the valley in the drawing.
Several seasons, more than several years and too many long hiatuses that only The Sopranos would dare inflict, at last comes the end of exodus; the mid-season cliffhanger Revelations.
Roslin is missing. Lee idly peruses Roslin's personal copy of the sacred scrolls. He flips through the pages stopping at that same double page illustration depicting the City of the Gods on Kobol. The page is bookmarked.
As he flips to this page, on the next page underneath, glimpsed for an instant and half hidden, is a never before seen black and white drawing. Lee thumbs forward to this next page as Kara enters Adama's quarters. Lee and Kara stand side by side to look at this page together. Upside down and at a distance, we can't see the page clearly but enough to determine this is the very same half hidden page after the two page color illustration of the Kobol City of the Gods. The bookmark is now buried one page deep. Kara and Lee precede to identify what this new drawing is (that we can't see clearly.) It is now all but tradition to tantalize some minority of vigilant obsessive fans with teasing shots of hidden things. With most every episode, there are flurries of freeze framing and photoshopping of this or that CG creation of space, imaginary landscapes and ancient ruins, this or that latest art department offering; paintings, drawings, maps, books, hardcopy printouts from Viper and Raptor cameras.
Kara, "Temple of Aurora."
Lee, "On Earth. Least the way Pythia described it."
Turns out, the Book of Pythia has two illustrations on two different pages. Who knew. Not only that, the second is a drawing of a temple on Earth, that mythical place they go tearing half way across the galaxy for, fueled by tylium and mostly hope. Many are confusing the close up shot of the Kobol illustration with the next page Lee and Kara are actually talking about. Which includes me, I didn't notice on the first viewing that Lee had turned the page.
Stopping on the few frames for which only a portion of this page is seen in close up, before Kara even walks in, reveals that Pythia's Temple of Aurora drawing strongly resembles the collapsed ruins seen surrounding the characters at the landing site on Earth. The ruins resemble less the massive circular forum dominating the center of the City of the Gods. Of course, Pythia's illustration reminds me of those foldout maps at Disneyworld, where the attractions are not drawn to scale.
The sweeping vista of a ruined Earth in Revelations ends on a partially collapsed bridge seen in the distance that once crossed the water to a coastline of fallen skyscrapers. Many comparisons are being made to the Brooklyn bridge, Manhattan island and other actual places on Earth as the possible location for the landing site.
Me, I'm more interested in the CG contrived building in front of the bridge. This building has not collapsed but is still standing. Its scale is difficult to determine. Even in the distance though it looms noticeably larger than the broken ruins surrounding the stunned onlookers. This distant intact building is circular, with two tiers or stories, ringed with supporting columns at its base. The building's roof is a covered dome topped by a small tower cupola. We only see half of this intriguing building an instant before the credits. But since it is circular, we can use simple symmetry to see what the complete building most probably looks like.
Did the tribes build three similar forums on three planets; Kobol, Caprica, Earth? What does it mean? What does it mean!
End of line,
ThP
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