Battlestar Galactica Apocalypse

It’s a closely guarded secret that I’m a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica (the new one. You can keep the original!) Now there’s a frightening apocalyptic nightmare. Machines that humans created in order to make their lives easier become sentient and turn on their maker. While this premise is basically the same as Terminator (which incidentally I love with a passion—Kyle is the ultimate romantic hero) when it comes to BSG I just love the entire, complex universe building around it.

Twelve planets are wiped out, the human race decimated. Their only hope for a future rests with a few thousand survivors in orbit. They take off across the galaxy, searching for a new home and pursued by the relentless Cylons.

But BSG isn’t just an action fuelled chase with space fights and sparkly special effects. One of the Cylons, Leoben, has a favourite quote:

All this has happened before and all of it will happen again.

I almost went into raptures the first time he said this. It completely hooked my warped writer’s soul and at the same time terrified the shit out of me.

As the series progresses we learn that this devastation has, indeed, happened before in the distant past. Even writing that gives me the shivers. Because I find that such a powerful image and yet it’s also ultimately horrific.

Can humans ever learn from the mistakes of their past?

Or are we destined to reach a certain point and then, no matter what, everything falls?

One of my favourite theories on a recurring apocalypse is we’re locked into a celestial cycle of birth and rebirth. I’m convinced that thousands of years ago there was a highly advanced civilization on Earth that was wiped out, leaving only the bare traces of its existence behind. Really, what does it matter how big our guns are or how deadly our biological weapons when we’re pitched against the furious might of Mother Nature?

Of course following this I should believe one hundred percent that come December and according to the prophecies of the Mayans, the poles are going to shift and we’re all going to perish in fire and flood. But despite my love of weaving apocalyptic elements into the backstory of my books I also have a wildly optimistic side. And that’s why I’m perfectly happy to reinterpret prophecies of doom to suit myself and come December the Earth will not shift on its crust but will welcome, once again, the return of the goddess.

Which come to think of it might amount to the same thing :-)

Writing as Christina Phillips  I have a short erotic romance, Touch of the Demon, that has a few of my favourite things. A madly vindictive goddess, a hot as hell dark angel, an assassin heroine and the threat of universal devastation—which may or may not have happened before and will happen again.

Christina Ashcroft writes about sinfully wicked Archangels who survived an apocalypse, long long ago…