"Right, then, so now the Cylons are gone and, true to their word after forty years of fighting in which they were almost wiped out, the Colonials said good riddance to bad garbage and didn’t bother to go looking for them to see where the horde of psychotic killer robots had gone . . . except for when they did, but only after that became a convenient plot point and an almost unbearable act of dramatic tension and conflict at its finest. After all, the very same horde of psychotic killer robots that had almost succeeded in driving the Colonials into extinction over what really amounted to a fit of pique had also promised never to bother them again, so why would anyone doubt such a promise? I mean, if you can’t trust the person - or thing, of course - that almost killed you, who can you trust? Understanding has to begin somewhere, and if you can’t forgive the folks, synthetic or otherwise, who rather seemed to enjoy lining up all your friends and relatives and slaughtering them like a herd of cows, well, then, you’re just a terrible human being and really just should pack it in, move to an isolated cabin out in the deep woods somewhere, and leave us civilized folk alone. I mean, psychotic, homocidal killers have feelings too, and how would you like it if the shoe were on the other foot? Not much, I bet.
"Not that the remaining Colonials left themselves totally unprepared, of course. After all, they may have been incredibly dim but, here and there and against all the odds stacked up against it, a random thought did manage to struggle into existence, if only to die a lonely, forlorn death shortly thereafter. So the twelve Colonies maintained a rather large standing fleet that pretty much didn’t do anything useful except orbit around the twelve planets, because nothing quite says ’military preparedness’ like creating a huge standing force and then doing absolutely nothing with it. No matter what they did, the Colonials kept running up against that pesky promise the Cylons made, so every time some particularly inquisitive Colonial asked just where the robots went, he (or she, to be fair and completely politically correct) was met with the answer that it didn’t matter, since the robots had promised they wouldn’t come back. Of course, if that particularly inquisitive Colonial just couldn’t grasp that that was the way the world worked and kept asking embarrassing questions, well, there was nothing for it but to stone him (or her, you know, because women can be stoned just as easily as men) to death. After all, nobody likes a party-pooper, especially a party-pooper who hoards tasty pudding and corn chips, thus once again proving the wisdom of that old saw about not asking questions you really don’t want the answer to.
"Oh, and the Colonials also outlawed the development of any technology that could result in super-smart, somewhat cranky robots that would then go off on a murderous rampage, killing every human being in sight, a prohibition that was greeted with much dismay by telemarketers and brothel owners, among others.
"So the twelve Colonies were finally united and at peace . . . of a sort. Old habits die hard, of course, and they couldn’t help whacking each other around from time to time. Besides which, those prissy little Aerilons were just asking for it, and what are you going to do with Sagittarons? Sometimes the only way to get their attention is to crack a few heads and blow up a government building or two. It happens. But by and large, they managed to refrain from killing each other off in great numbers and, with no Cylons around to kill off either, life in the twelve Colonies settled into something of an uneventful rut. The fact that as the years went by and the Cylons did, indeed, never show up at Armistice Station - which was actually kind of rude, since the Colonials went to great expense to build it and, in an act of ultimate political correctness, make it robot-friendly - seemed to prove that the horde of killer robots was really sincere in their promise never to return. Which, in turn, made all of the Colonials really happy, except for the poor officer who had to schlep himself out to the station every year, wondering just who he had pissed off to draw that assignment and if it were possible to blame whatever he did on someone else. But otherwise, all that free time allowed the Colonials to ponder where they were going as a race, and why natural selection seemed to be so very, very cruel. I mean, what was so very wrong with wanting to have pizza-on-a-stick, cooked to a mouth-watering deliciousness in a blast furnace? And why couldn’t a man have an electrical outlet mounted in his bathtub, in the freedom of his own home?
"Anyway, there was a man who lived in the Colonies named William Adama. He was a veteran of the war with the Cylons, a pilot who had won fame and distinction because he had flown one mission and managed to somehow survive it. Being a war hero, he was of course immediately kicked out of the military at the end of the war and could only find work as a deckhand on a freighter, where he met lots of other war heroes. But he had a plan, which a lot of people connected with this story claim to have but really don’t, and after a marriage or two, he managed to claw his way back into the military and was given command of one of the oldest ships in the fleet, as a reward for his being a complete pain in the ass.
"Now, Bill Adama had two sons, Lee and Zak, both of whom were also pilots in the Colonial military. Zak, however, managed to kill himself off fairly early on in his career, in an unsuccessful attempt to prove that gravity really wasn’t that big a deal. That left Lee, the older brother, who was something of a whiny, overly-emoting sissy boy, and Bill Adama didn’t really like him very much. Which isn’t as bad as it sounds, since Lee didn’t much like his father, either, and blamed him for his brother doing a lawn dart imitation, even though no one could ever prove that Bill had gone anywhere near that particular aircraft. The funny thing was, Lee was rather fond of a woman named Kara Thrace, who was the best, most nuanced and deepest character ever created in a work of fiction and totally believable as well, who was the instructor who taught Zak how to fly and, despite the fact that a blind man could see he was a Class A Mishap just waiting to happen, passed him through training because Zak knew how to use his . . . um . . . er . . . well, let’s just say his ’stick’ . . . on her. The relationship between Kara and Zak, of course, was tolerated by their superior officers because, really, what possible harm could come from a teacher sleeping with a student, especially in a military organization? Besides which, if they tried to stop it, Kara might hit them, and she was very good at hitting superior officers, you know, just sort of her way of saying ’good morning.’ And what’s so wrong with that, either?
"Anyway, Bill and Lee hardly ever saw each other, since Lee was busy pouting and bad-mouthing his father to anyone who would listen, and Bill was busy running his ship as anything but a real warship and more like the Colonial Love Boat. Discipline is such a pesky thing, anyway, and really completely unneeded when your whole profession centres around being able to fight battles that could decide the fate of your entire race. Not very unreasonably, he thought, Bill Adama soon found that it was easier and he was a far more popular comanding officer when he let his crew do what they wanted, didn’t expect them to actually do their jobs or abide by the regulations, and gave them as much pudding and pizza-on-a-stick as they wanted.
"Now, Bill’s Executive Officer was a man named Saul Tigh, who was also a veteran of the war with the Cylons. Except that, unbeknownst to both Bill Adama and, at least for the first three seasons, the creators and writers of the show, Tigh was a veteran of the other side, since he really wasn’t a man but a Cylon who had been created in a tub of goo to look and act just like a real human being, even though that meant that he would have been created before the Cylons had even thought of the idea of making tubs of goo in which they could create robots that looked like Colonials . . . and before the Cylons themselves were created, but I have it on good authority that that is a minor niggle arising out of the fact that I just don’t get it. In any event, Saul Tigh’s major claim to fame was that he could drink more than anyone else in the Colonies and, in a crisis, go to pieces so fast that the people standing around him were killed by the shrapnel.
"There was also a man on the ship named Galen Tyrol, who was in charge of fixing the airplanes and, well, everything else, as there seems to have been a severe shortage of technicians and senior NCOs in the Colonial military, despite its large size. Chief Tyrol, of course, really wasn’t a man either, but another refugee from a tub of goo somewhere, which is just going to raise merry hell with the story later on, but we’ll have to leave that aside for the moment because it’s apparently just me again not getting it. There was also a hot Asian pilot on the ship named Sharon Valerii and, being a hot Asian chick, you just knew that she was going to turn out to be a robot, too. Oh, well, you can’t win them all, I suppose.
"Elsewhere in the Colonies, there lived a woman named Laura Roslin. She had a really important job in the government, as Secretary of Education and 42nd in line of succession to the Presidency. She apparently got that job based on her qualifications, in that she was first in line to have an extra-marital affair with the President, which in itself brings new meaning to the words ’getting ahead.’ But I digress. Now Laura had an assistant named Billy Keikeya, who apparently had no purpose whatsoever and, in a calculated move of daring brilliance, eventually left the story for a failed pilot that was never picked up for a network run. Yes, these are the kind of folks we’re dealing with; remember, I told you at the beginning the Colonials weren’t particularly bright. There also lived, on the capital world of Caprica, a brilliant scientist named Gaius Baltar, who was in fact so smart that though he was a computer scientist, he also knew everything about every other scientific discipline you can think of. Even so, Baltar’s main ambition in life was to apparently find as many female orifices in which to let Little Baltar play as he could. And why not? I mean, once a brilliant computer scientist is told that he can’t build any super-smart, somewhat cranky robots that might go off on a homicidal rampage, killing every human in sight, what is he supposed to do?"
Next time: With the major characters in place, it’s time for a surprise . . .
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