In which I reach new heights of BSG + classics geekery
I'm still typing up my reactions to the first episode of season 4 (more on that later), but something about one of the ships in the fleet caught my eye and my brain just WOULDN'T LET IT GO. This is craaaazy so I might as well post it separately. But gosh darn it, after "Razor," I feel like I am entitled to go as nuts as I want to with Greek and Latin roots.
Season 4 spec about Kara below!
The name of the ship that gets destroyed in the battle at the Nebula is the Pyxis. This is Greek for "small container" or more specifically, "compass"; it's also the name of part of the constellation of the Argo. (The Argo is the name of a famous ship in Greek mythology that went on an epic quest to the end of the world and back -- you can read about it here.)
I was thinking about this when I remembered where I'd seen Pyxis mentioned before -- in "The Passage," Kat loses the ship called Carina (which also caught my attention because it's Latin for "ship's keel"). After it aired I did a search and found that that was part of the Argo constellation too. Apparently there's also another ship in the fleet named Argo Navis, Latin for "The Ship Argo," which is the formal name of the constellation itself.
According to BattlestarWiki a list of the ships in the fleet is visible in the elections tally that goes on in “Lay Down Your Burdens II” (yay geeks for typing that whole damn thing up). Other notable ship names on this list are the Odysseus (hurrah for epic journeys in search of home!), the Cassandra (the unheeded prophet, wisteria_!), and the Persephone (she who descends to the underworld and returns). But guess what else is there? The Aurora!
Now, I don’t want to take this too far. I hardly think that each and every ship name is vastly important or that the master ship list is somehow the key to everything. Names like Persephone and Aurora etc. are interesting but likely just coincidental. But gosh darn it I’m a classics major, not even a lapsed one like Kendra Shaw, and I think the loss of the ‘guiding compass’ in that battle is significant.
Here's where I go out on a limb: The compass ship is destroyed and that could be symbolic of the fleet losing their way. And as they make their jumps away from the Nebula, this is exactly what Kara is telling them.
Combining Pythia with some astronomical calculations and the nova by the Algae planet, Roslin, Gaeta, and Adama concluded that at the Ionian nebula they were supposed to receive a sign to guide them on their path to Earth. But a lot of things happened once they got there. Kara’s return, the activation of the sleeper Four, Laura’s near-faint, the fleetwide power outage, the appearance of the Cylon fleet, and Caprica’s operahouse vision of the Five all happened nearly simultaneously. (I wonder if multiple agents set all of those events at the Nebula in motion, or if there is one guiding force that ‘flipped a switch’--but that's probably going to remain a puzzle until the end of the series.)
Roslin and Adama think that Kara's intuition will take them off-course. But Lee points something out to Roslin: what if Kara was the clue that they're supposed to meet?
Kara says the Earth she saw fits with Pythia, and her own visions connect her to the symbol of the Eye. But Adama angrily asks her if her gut feelings are supposed to count more than Pythia and the Eye in Laura Roslin’s mind, so he apparently sees some conflict between them.
What I’m really puzzled about is that I thought the Eye of Jupiter pointed them to the Nebula but not beyond. I thought they were supposed to receive a clue there that would tell them which way to go next. So if it’s not Kara, then what sign ARE they following? Apparently the fleet is determining its current (Roslin-advocated) course of jumps according to the old calculations Baltar made prior to New Caprica, the ones which Gaeta has also been working on. I’m not so sure why that should be given any more credence, to tell the truth. Right now, I’m tempted to go with Lee’s interpretation; but then, I am hopelessly in love with Kara, too. (The ur-hybrid’s warning in "Razor" that “they must not follow her” was precisely calculated to freak us out, so to be perverse I’m trying to resist it.)
But back to Aurora. "Maelstrom" clearly linked Kara's special destiny with that figure. As she tells Adama, it would be a great figurehead for his model ship (which symbolizes the Fleet as whole, in my mind). Just before this Adama had said: "We're almost to the finish line, then we can jump the hell out of this system."
The oracle told Kara she would know what to do with the Aurora figurine when the time was right. She's about to keep walking away when she spins and calls after him again. As she gives it to Adama she explains that the goddess of the dawn "Brings the morning star and a fair wind. A fresh start." (At daybreak Aurora is sighted first; she leads the way for the path of the sun.) He thanks her and they part ways.
Now I don't know if Kara is a real goddess or anything, but I think that despite that Razor hybrid's scary warnings, there have been a lot of clues that Kara's role is to lead the way and that the symbolism around that has suggested her role will be a positive one. Dawn, the growing light: it's always been a sign of hope.
This is why I cling to the idea that Kara is not the harbinger of doom. If Kara brings about the end of the human race, well, I think it might mean something different from annihilation. It might be the unification of human and Cylon.
Okay, well, that's about as geeked out as I've ever gone over BSG. Whew! Let me know what you think!
Season 4 spec about Kara below!
The name of the ship that gets destroyed in the battle at the Nebula is the Pyxis. This is Greek for "small container" or more specifically, "compass"; it's also the name of part of the constellation of the Argo. (The Argo is the name of a famous ship in Greek mythology that went on an epic quest to the end of the world and back -- you can read about it here.)
I was thinking about this when I remembered where I'd seen Pyxis mentioned before -- in "The Passage," Kat loses the ship called Carina (which also caught my attention because it's Latin for "ship's keel"). After it aired I did a search and found that that was part of the Argo constellation too. Apparently there's also another ship in the fleet named Argo Navis, Latin for "The Ship Argo," which is the formal name of the constellation itself.
According to BattlestarWiki a list of the ships in the fleet is visible in the elections tally that goes on in “Lay Down Your Burdens II” (yay geeks for typing that whole damn thing up). Other notable ship names on this list are the Odysseus (hurrah for epic journeys in search of home!), the Cassandra (the unheeded prophet, wisteria_!), and the Persephone (she who descends to the underworld and returns). But guess what else is there? The Aurora!
Now, I don’t want to take this too far. I hardly think that each and every ship name is vastly important or that the master ship list is somehow the key to everything. Names like Persephone and Aurora etc. are interesting but likely just coincidental. But gosh darn it I’m a classics major, not even a lapsed one like Kendra Shaw, and I think the loss of the ‘guiding compass’ in that battle is significant.
Here's where I go out on a limb: The compass ship is destroyed and that could be symbolic of the fleet losing their way. And as they make their jumps away from the Nebula, this is exactly what Kara is telling them.
Combining Pythia with some astronomical calculations and the nova by the Algae planet, Roslin, Gaeta, and Adama concluded that at the Ionian nebula they were supposed to receive a sign to guide them on their path to Earth. But a lot of things happened once they got there. Kara’s return, the activation of the sleeper Four, Laura’s near-faint, the fleetwide power outage, the appearance of the Cylon fleet, and Caprica’s operahouse vision of the Five all happened nearly simultaneously. (I wonder if multiple agents set all of those events at the Nebula in motion, or if there is one guiding force that ‘flipped a switch’--but that's probably going to remain a puzzle until the end of the series.)
Roslin and Adama think that Kara's intuition will take them off-course. But Lee points something out to Roslin: what if Kara was the clue that they're supposed to meet?
Kara says the Earth she saw fits with Pythia, and her own visions connect her to the symbol of the Eye. But Adama angrily asks her if her gut feelings are supposed to count more than Pythia and the Eye in Laura Roslin’s mind, so he apparently sees some conflict between them.
What I’m really puzzled about is that I thought the Eye of Jupiter pointed them to the Nebula but not beyond. I thought they were supposed to receive a clue there that would tell them which way to go next. So if it’s not Kara, then what sign ARE they following? Apparently the fleet is determining its current (Roslin-advocated) course of jumps according to the old calculations Baltar made prior to New Caprica, the ones which Gaeta has also been working on. I’m not so sure why that should be given any more credence, to tell the truth. Right now, I’m tempted to go with Lee’s interpretation; but then, I am hopelessly in love with Kara, too. (The ur-hybrid’s warning in "Razor" that “they must not follow her” was precisely calculated to freak us out, so to be perverse I’m trying to resist it.)
But back to Aurora. "Maelstrom" clearly linked Kara's special destiny with that figure. As she tells Adama, it would be a great figurehead for his model ship (which symbolizes the Fleet as whole, in my mind). Just before this Adama had said: "We're almost to the finish line, then we can jump the hell out of this system."
The oracle told Kara she would know what to do with the Aurora figurine when the time was right. She's about to keep walking away when she spins and calls after him again. As she gives it to Adama she explains that the goddess of the dawn "Brings the morning star and a fair wind. A fresh start." (At daybreak Aurora is sighted first; she leads the way for the path of the sun.) He thanks her and they part ways.
Now I don't know if Kara is a real goddess or anything, but I think that despite that Razor hybrid's scary warnings, there have been a lot of clues that Kara's role is to lead the way and that the symbolism around that has suggested her role will be a positive one. Dawn, the growing light: it's always been a sign of hope.
This is why I cling to the idea that Kara is not the harbinger of doom. If Kara brings about the end of the human race, well, I think it might mean something different from annihilation. It might be the unification of human and Cylon.
Okay, well, that's about as geeked out as I've ever gone over BSG. Whew! Let me know what you think!