Earth
the irradiated home of the Thirteenth Tribe
Earth was a world settled by the Thirteenth Tribe roughly four thousand years before the fall of the Twelve Colonies. Once home to a flourishing Cylon civilization, it was reduced to a radioactive ruin by a nuclear holocaust, and the Colonial fleet abandoned it days after at last reaching it.
Earth was a planet settled by the Thirteenth Tribe some four thousand years before the fall of the Twelve Colonies. The world was eventually reached by the Colonial ragtag fleet after years of flight from the Cyrannus Star System. (Battlestar Galactica (miniseries); Battlestar Galactica, "Revelations"; Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion")
Settlement by the Thirteenth Tribe#
Earth was settled at least four thousand years before the fall by the Thirteenth Tribe, a Cylon race that left Kobol to create a colony of its own where it could flourish apart from the other peoples of Kobol, after an unspecified period of strife. Over the following two thousand years or so, the Thirteenth Tribe built large cities across the planet and began constructing increasingly sophisticated machine servitors using artificial intelligence. (Battlestar Galactica, "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I"; Battlestar Galactica, "No Exit")
The slave revolt and the holocaust#
The machine servants eventually achieved sentience and began a slave revolt. The uprising ended in a nuclear holocaust and the apparent mutual destruction of both peoples, with the exception of five survivors of the Thirteenth Tribe, who had by then reinvented the long lost technology of resurrection. (Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion"; Battlestar Galactica, "No Exit")
Discovery and abandonment#
In the two thousand years that followed the conflict, a radioactive trace remained detectable throughout the planet's ecosystem. Earth was at last reached by the ragtag fleet that had survived the fall of the Twelve Colonies and the exodus from New Caprica, a fleet by then made up of humans, humanoid Cylons, and four of the five Thirteenth Tribe survivors. The soil and water contaminants were judged unsafe for colonization, and after only a few days the fleet abandoned Earth, leaving behind a lone Number Three who asked to remain. (Battlestar Galactica, "Revelations"; Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion")
Frequently asked questions
- What was Earth in Battlestar Galactica?
- Earth was a planet settled by the Thirteenth Tribe some four thousand years before the fall of the Twelve Colonies. It was eventually reached by the Colonial ragtag fleet after years of flight from the Cyrannus Star System.
- Who settled Earth?
- Earth was settled approximately four thousand years before the fall by the Thirteenth Tribe, a Cylon race that left Kobol to create a colony of its own where it could flourish apart from the other peoples of Kobol, after an unspecified period of strife. In the two thousand years that followed, the tribe built large cities across the planet and constructed increasingly sophisticated machine servitors.
- What destroyed Earth?
- The machine servants built by the Thirteenth Tribe eventually achieved sentience and began a slave revolt. The uprising ended in a nuclear holocaust and the apparent mutual destruction of both peoples, with the exception of five survivors of the Thirteenth Tribe who had reinvented the long lost technology of resurrection.
- Why did the Colonial fleet abandon Earth?
- When the ragtag fleet reached Earth, the soil and water contaminants were judged unsafe for colonization. After only a few days the fleet abandoned Earth, leaving behind a lone Number Three who asked to remain.
- Who reached Earth at the end of the fleet's journey?
- Earth was reached by the ragtag fleet that had survived the fall of the Twelve Colonies and the exodus from New Caprica. By then it was made up of humans, humanoid Cylons, and four of the five Thirteenth Tribe survivors.
Gallery
Images via Battlestar Wiki
Sources
- EpisodeBattlestar Galactica (miniseries), Miniseries (2003)
- EpisodeBattlestar Galactica, "Revelations", Season 4, Episode 10 (2008)
- EpisodeBattlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion", Season 4, Episode 11 (2009)
- EpisodeBattlestar Galactica, "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I", Season 1, Episode 12 (2005)
- EpisodeBattlestar Galactica, "No Exit", Season 4, Episode 15 (2009)
Spotted a factual error or a primary source we missed? Email a correction. Every flagged claim gets reviewed.
Followed from this entry
Kobol: humanity's lost homeworld
Kobol was the ancestral home of the Twelve Tribes, abandoned for two thousand years. The fleet found the Tomb of Athena there, and with it the way to Earth.
New Caprica: Baltar's colony
Baltar campaigned for settling New Caprica, a barely habitable world hidden in a DRADIS-blocking cloud. A Cylon patrol found it, and the Occupation began.
Cylon
The Cylons were a race of sentient machines created as military robots by Graystone Industries on Caprica. Built from research into artificial consciousness, they rebelled against their human masters, fought a long war, and forty years later returned to annihilate humanity.
Cyrannus: the Colonies' four suns
Four stars in a double binary, Helios Alpha through Delta, holding all Twelve Colonies. Refugees from Kobol settled them two thousand years back.
Fall of the Twelve Colonies
A single day of Cylon attack killed billions of people across Colonial space. Barely fifty thousand escaped in a refugee fleet.
Number Three
Number Three, known by the alias D'Anna Biers, was a humanoid Cylon model marked by a forbidden curiosity about the Final Five. That defiance led to the entire line being boxed, and the last surviving Three chose to die on the ruins of Earth.
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