Battlestar Galactica Resurrection Novel By Richard Hatch and Stan Timmons (The page numbers come from the 1st printing, hardcover edition, published July 2001)

Using a newly-discovered aspect of the QSE drive, Apollo orders the fleet to jump from Cylon forces at their latest stop...and they end up back at the planet Kobol!

Notes from the BSG chronology

References in the book seem to place it as taking place 3 weeks after Warhawk (Starbuck has been in a coma in the Life Center for 3 weeks since his Viper was struck by enemy fire during the battle against the Chitain at the end of Warhawk.)

Didja Notice?

Page 7 describes the fact that there are very few whole family units in the fleet due to parental deaths in the Cylon attack on the Colonies. The description seems rather male-centric in stating: "...so many fathers died yahren ago, during the first Cylon raid, leaving behind women and children--children grown now to young manhood and the age of their fathers when they perished..." What about the mothers and girls who grew to young womanhood?

Page 7 also describes these children that grew up without parents "...grew up wrong, and hard, and fast, and without much respect for anything or anyone." Many wound up in the prison barge for crimes ranging from theft to assault. Some became Warriors or disappeared into the hidden world of the poor and neglected.

On page 8, Apollo muses on the injured Starbuck sleeping in his med-berth "like a character from some long-ago children's fairy tale, neither dead nor alive in his glass coffin..." There are many fairy tales here on Earth which feature a sleeping character in a glass case such as "The Glass Coffin" from the collected tales of the Brothers Grimm, and "Sleeping Beauty".

The book seems to confuse the roles of Doctors Salik and Wilker. Salik is presented as the electronics specialist and Wilker as the medical practitioner when, in fact, they had the opposite roles in the TV series! This confusion continues in the following novels as well.

On page 11, Cassie seems to know about Apollo's mental powers. In Warhawk, it was stated that the only people outside of he and Athena who knew about them were Starbuck and Boomer.

On page 24, sitting in the sanctuary of his, formerly Adama's, quarters, Apollo holds the Star of Kobol in his hands and it is mentioned throughout the book, even becoming a protective talisman against Count Iblis later on. This does not seem to be the same Star of Kobol award which Commander Adama was to be given by the Council in "Baltar's Escape" and which Commander Kronus of the Celestra also received in "Take the Celestra". The novel seems to imply that the Star of Kobol referred to here is either the amulet worn by both Adama and Baltar in "A Death in the Family" (and which allows them to enter the pyramid tomb of the Ninth Lord of Kobol) or is the medallion worn at the neck by Commander Adama throughout the series (and now presumably worn by Apollo as Commander of the fleet).

As Apollo meditates in the sanctuary, he is said to refer to a certain level of expansion of consciousness achievable in this state as "dreamwalking".

On page 31, Apollo grimly muses on his threatened position as Commander of the fleet, with both Cain and Baltar pulling at him to make different decisions and how it might be easier to just go back to his chambers, pull his sidearm and put the barrel to his temple and pull the trigger. This is similar to a scene that is later published in issue #1 of the Galactica 1980 comic book reimagining published by Dynamite Entertainment in 2009 of Commander Adama doing the same thing for real (except he doesn't quite pull the trigger!).

Page 37 describes the recently awakened Starbuck as looking like he had taken a few too many brain crystals, as if the term refers to a recreational drug. But the glossaries of the previous two books in the series, Armageddon and Warhawk, suggest that brain crystals are an outlawed chemical weapon which causes portions of the brain to harden and wither as if frozen. Of course, there could also be a recreational drug nicknamed "brain crystal" after the chemical weapon.

On page 40, Cassie muses on having remarked to Apollo not long ago that "it's the hardest thing in the world to watch someone you love fall in love with someone else." She said this in Warhawk.

   Dr. Wilker shows Apollo the results of DNA tests he and Dr. Salik have run on the primitive biological brains found in the destroyed Cylons they've had in storage for some yahrens. Could these be the same Cylons that were Baltar's pilots in "War of the Gods" Part 1 and which were deactivated by the Colonials but briefly returned to life as part of a plan to foil Baltar's escape in "Baltar's Escape"?
   Wilker and Apollo seem surprised to learn that the Cylons had mixed human DNA into their own. But this was already discovered in the records found by Starbuck in Armageddon.

On page 61, Apollo reads the report regarding the planet Kirasolia, stating that it has no life. But on just the previous page of the book, Troy scans flora from his Viper which is surviving the harsh temperatures of the planet. As in the TV series (e.g. "War of the Gods" Part 1), the Colonials here only seem to consider intelligent life to be "life".

The Galactica has holographic communication technology projected by a device called an S-cube. What the "S" stands for is not revealed.

Page 68 reintroduces Bojay (called Bo Jay here), not seen in a published story since The Nightmare Machine. It is explained that he was lost on a reconnaissance mission with another pilot called Jinx at some point in the past. Bojay tells Apollo that he crashed on some God-forsaken planet and suffered a head injury that caused him to lose his memory. He was later found by one of the Pegasus' patrols and had been living on Poseidon with them ever since.

On page 73, discussing women with his friend, Apollo only half-jokingly remarks to Starbuck, "...let's be honest--I wouldn't want you dating my sister." But Starbuck has recently been seeing Athena again as told in Warhawk! This book seems to have forgotten that and introduces a subplot in which both Starbuck and Athena are interested in getting together again. Similarly, this book has forgotten that Apollo and Sheba became engaged in Warhawk, yet on page 74, Sheba remarks, "I know things haven't worked out for us, Apollo, but at the end of the day, I'm still your friend and I always will be." Did they break up in the span of weeks since the end of Warhawk?

This book has Dr. Salik (should be Wilker) in charge of researching the QSE generators. What happened to the young scientist Plutarch who was in charge of same in Warhawk?

Page 81 describes the two basestars encountered by the fleet at Kirasolia as class-four basestars. Page 77 describes the ships as larger than the typical basestar. One of them seems to be the Imperious Leader's ship.

The space/time warping capabilities of the QSE generators used as drives seem to be similar to the temporal engines given to the fleet by the Beings of Light in the War of Eden BSG comic book mini-series published by Maximum Press, which takes place a bit later in the chronology.

Page 89 reveals that a SYSOP in the Galactica's landing bay is capable of remotely taking control of a Viper in space in order to guide it in for a landing. SYSOP is an abbreviation of Systems Operator.

On page 90, after the battle with the Cylons, a support team shuttles out from the Galactica to rescue pilots from damaged and drifting Vipers. They also attach fiberline cables originating on the battlestar to reel in damaged Vipers for repair or salvage.

Page 99 describes the pedestal of the Imperious Leader on his basestar as being nine steps high. In Warhawk, on the planet Cylon, the chair of stone and metal used by the Imperious Leader is said to sit upon a dais sixteen steps above the floor.

Page 100 describes the Imperious Leader's High Seat as being studded with hundreds of sharp points. This sounds somewhat like the look of the Leader's chambers as he seems to be undergoing a transformation in "Search for Sanctuary" Part 2.

Page 100 also describes the functions of the three levels of Cylon brain acquisition. The first brain is a guidance system for the body and assures efficiency of task. The second brain of Cylon officers provides the skills of analyzing and interpreting facts. The third brain, awarded only to a single being at any one time upon its elevation to the position of Imperious Leader, allows the Leader to deal with matters beyond mere facts, but with abstract concepts. It is implied here that Lucifer has two brains and hungers for the third that will make him Imperious Leader; in the novelization of "The Living Legend" it is stated that IL-series Cylons are entirely inorganic, implying that they have only an electronic brain, not an organic Cylon one.

On page 103, the rib cage of a human skeleton seen on Kobol is said to provide a home to a murder of avions. "Avions" is the Colonial word for "bird". "Murder" is a reference to the Earth term for a flock of crows.

The book seems to imply that the humans of Kobol faced the Cylon threat themselves 1,000 yahrens ago. This is not what has been described in previous stories, most recently Armageddon, in which Adama's recorded message for Apollo tells a different story of humans warring against each other on Kobol, as humanity is wont to do. Normally, 1,000 yahrens ago is said to be when the Cylons began the war against the Twelve Colonies.

On page 112, the archive ship is referred to as the Cerberus, which is incorrect. It is properly called the Cerebus elsewhere in the book however, as first established in Armageddon. (Cerberus was the name of the battlestar Adama and Cain were assigned to as lieutenants in "Baptism of Fire".)

Page 117 describes the Quorum chambers as being decorated only with pictographs of the Twelve Colonies.

Page 123 reveals that a massive asteroid orbits Kobol, itself pockmarked from countless astralon strikes. The term "astralon" refers to meteoroids and micro-meteoroids and is borrowed from the Encyclopedia Galactica, a non-canonical reference source to BSG published in 1979, and was also used in "The Infidel Basestar".

On page 127, Apollo pays a return visit to the same pyramid on Kobol he and his father had entered in "A Death in the Family", to find the tomb of the Ninth Lord of Kobol. Here, Apollo opens the secret door to gain entry by touching a certain sequence of sigils carved into the stone of the temple, but in the aforementioned episode, entry was gained by Adama placing his Kobolian medallion against an identical indentation in the stone, acting as a key to open the door. Apollo picks up and lights a pitch-soaked torch to illuminate his way through the tunnels; but in the episode, there were electric torches set in sconces in the entryway for use by those entering.

On page 128, Apollo meditates inside the pyramid, musing that his role in the fleet's journey, despite Commander Cain's attempts to usurp authority, does not feel complete, "...as if it were a seventh note introduced into a passage of music to let the listener know things were not yet resolved." The seventh note is an actual musical term (often called the seventh chord); the seventh note introduces a dissonance that requires resolution.

On page 134, Muffit is briefly mentioned as Apollo recalls the time when Troy went by the nickname of Boxey and kept company with his pet mechanical daggit.

On page 136, Starbuck dies.

Starbuck's friends gather for his funeral aboard the Galactica. No mention is made of Chameleon, so he must be dead or was never reunited with the fleet after the events of Surrender the Galactica.

During Starbuck's funeral inside the pyramid on page 140, Apollo sees a light "from nowhere and everywhere at once" fill the temple chamber, but no one else seems to notice it. Apollo muses that it's like what he saw in this chamber with Adama twenty yahrens earlier. This is a reference to "A Death in the Family", but a number of people saw that light and it was obviously coming from a slot in the ceiling, the star of Kobol shining through.

Page 141 reveals that Starbuck's coffin has been placed inside the hollowed-out cockpit of his favorite Scarlet Viper. But in Armageddon, it is stated that Starbuck had stuck with using his old-time Viper, preferring it over the new models. True, that Viper was lost when he was shot down over the planet Ochoa, so he must have moved on to the latest Scarlet-class, but it doesn't seem like he would have a "favorite" in such a short time, he's probably just been using the first one they gave him.

During the feast on Kobol, one of the foods served is coneth stew with mushies.  Coneth stew is listed in the glossaries of most of the Hatch novels as being made from bova meat, a bova being a livestock animal kept in herds. Mushies have previously been seen in the episodes "The Long Patrol" and "Fire in Space". The writer's guide of the original series describes mushies as a "very tasty health food." Boxey almost seems to consider them a dessert-like item in "Fire in Space".

In Chapter 11, Apollo and Cassiopeia almost make love to each other, but Apollo passes out from too much drink. But the end of the book implies that there is a fully-blossoming relationship beginning.

Page 165 describes the class-four basestars as the size of small moons and capable of ripping apart a planet. This may be a nod to the Death Star of the Star Wars movies, capable of destroying a planet and which Luke Skywalker once mistakenly refers to as "a small moon."

Page 166, in the underground city, references the "indecipherable writings and runes and sigils and mimms and japps" on the wall of a temple. "Mimms and japps" are unknown words in either English or Colonial languages. Presumably they are related to writings and symbols as are the previous terms.

On page 191, Baltar claims that he never saw anything in his time with the Cylons to suggest that they were experimenting with human DNA to augment themselves. The narrative seems to suggest that he's telling the truth, but we saw in Armageddon that he was aware of a new type of centurion that had some of his own DNA spliced into them, to give their brains a greater ability to think like a human.

On page 197, Iblis tells his own story of his past. He states that he and his followers were cast out of the House of Kobol and exiled to the most hostile and uninhabitable planet in the galaxy, Cylon, and left to die. They instead nurtured the planet's dominant life form along the evolutionary path, intentionally instilling an insatiable hatred for humanity. Pages 201-202 reveal additional details of Iblis' past, including that he had a brother with whom he was raised. Iblis was a scientific genius and his brother held great wisdom, charisma, and strength of character, but Iblis felt that their parents had always favored the brother. The final blow for Iblis was when his brother was awarded the position of Council Head of the House of Kobol over himself. Iblis had plotted to murder his brother, but was found out and punished. Later, Iblis experimented with creating a master race on Kobol and when this was discovered, he and his followers were banished to the harsh world of Cylon.

Also on page 197, Iblis states that Apollo and Athena are the last direct descendants of the House of Kobol and he is on Kobol now to kill them.

Page 203 reveals that life and hope are anathema to Iblis "as sunlight is to a vampire." Is the vampire reference merely a descriptive term for the understanding of the reader, or do the Colonials have their own vampire mythology?

On page 212, the Cylons deploy a small, flying attack droid to help track down and attack the humans in the Kobolian city. The description of the droid sounds much like the Cylon Raiders of BSG2000: "The attack droid resembled a Raider, with its disquieting curves and arc-like, forward-swept wings, and, in lieu of a canopy window, it had the same long, narrow aperture as the Cylons themselves had, from which emitted fine, concentrated beams of ruby light."

Page 225 reveals that the Being of Light called Talen whom Apollo meets on Kobol is actually the light-body form of Serina.

On page 227, Apollo tells Cain they have less than 30 microns to clear space before Kobol explodes. But the normal definition of micron in the TV series (and even in the Hatch glossaries) is a fraction of a second! Here, Apollo clearly means "minutes", which should be "centaris" in the Hatch books.

A couple of times, characters use the epithet "gull-mongering" to describe the Cylons. In the TV series, the term used was "galmonging."

The Viper Duet, first seen in Warhawk, returns, with Troy and Dalton again piloting. But the Duet is described as being two Vipers joined in a side-by-side configuration, instead of belly-to-belly as originally presented.

Page 233 reveals that Lucifer finds the Chitain repugnant, but less so than humans.

Page 234 reveals that the new class-four basestars are a combination of Cylon and Chitain technology.

Page 234 also has the Imperious Leader wondering why Count Iblis has not contacted him about the attack on the humans on Kobol. But the end of Warhawk seemed to suggest that Imperious Leader and Count Iblis were one and the same!

Page 235 reveals that Cylons reproduce through cloning, which has made females redundant and unnecessary.

On page 235, Imperious Leader muses on how the Cylons once turned against Iblis ages ago due to his own breeding of the hatred of humans into them, destroying his body and taking his brain under their control. But his mind evolved until he could project his consciousness and a solid energy body throughout space and time.

As his pilots prepare to fly into battle on page 236, Apollo remarks, "This is where the felgercarb hits the numo." In Colonial parlance, "felgercarb" is "bullshit" and "numo" is a type of air-powered rifle (seen in "The Lost Warrior"). Page 265 describes the debris from the collision of the Pegasus with Lucifer's basestar as falling down to the planet Kobol "like anchor spikes fired from a numon." So "numon" may be another type of air-powered gun.

On page 236, author Timmons seems to mistake the Forge as the actual name of the foundry ship, italicizing it as a ship's name. "The Forge" is just a nickname for the foundry ship, currently the Adena since the events of Armageddon.

The novel seems to depict Athena in a lesser position with less experience and authority than the first two novels in the Hatch cycle. She seems surprised when Apollo gives her command of the battlestar Daedalus during the battle of Kobol and one of the bridge officers refers to her as Captain instead of Colonel.

On page 239, Apollo tells Athena, "We've come through tighter spots than this," and Athena thinks, We have? This may be a nod to an exchange between Boomer and Starbuck in "Murder on the Rising Star": we've been in tighter spots.wav

The final couple of chapters of the book seem to suggest that Baltar is genuinely trying to turn over a new leaf.

On page 243, Jolly quips about shooting down Cylon Raiders, "Just like shooting daggits in the pound." Seems like an awfully callous turn of phrase! I suppose it's meant to sound like our own English colloquialism, "Like shooting fish in a barrel."

Also on page 243, a ship of the fleet called the Dawntreader is destroyed by Chitain Stingers. Possibly the authors named the ship after the ship called the Dawn Treader, from the 1952 novel Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of the books of the Chronicles of Narnia. The destruction of the Dawntreader brings the fleet down to 158 from 159 at the end of Warhawk. More civilian vessels are said to have been destroyed on page 244, but a number is not given; in any event, the fleet is now down to something less than 158 ships by the end of this novel.

The second paragraph of page 244 describes Apollo piloting his Viper, but it should be Starbuck, as Apollo is still commanding the fleet from the bridge of the Galactica at this point!

Page 249 implies that Boomer was Apollo's old flight teacher. This seems unlikely since they are about the same age and Warhawk reveals that they attended the Academy together. Author Timmons seems to have confused Boomer's current status as a flight trainer for cadets as his having been one during Apollo's youth.

Page 250 seems to suggest that Apollo flies a different model than the Scarlet Viper. But Armageddon established that he was the first pilot to receive one of the new Scarlet Vipers off the line.

On page 251, Apollo and Starbuck notice one of the Light Ships far above the space battle, observing. Apollo remarks they must not want to miss the show. Starbuck responds they better make it a good one, "Wouldn't want to disappoint the viewing public. I've already been cancelled once, and that's nothing I want to go through again, any time soon." He is referring to his death earlier in the novel, from which he was resurrected by the Beings of Light. But his statement may also be a joke by the authors about the cancellation of the TV series after just one season back in 1979.

Page 253 reveals that the Viper canopies are made of a material called plastiglas. This is probably intended as a science-fictional name for the clear material used on a Viper, but there is an actual Earth company called Plastiglas Industries Ltd. that makes plastic products.

Page 260 implies that Cylon Raiders are piloted in pairs. But most previous stories in the BSG universe have established that Raiders are actually piloted by trios of centurions.

On page 264, Commander Cain uses the crippled Pegasus to ram Lucifer's basestar, killing all aboard both ships.

Page 272 reveals that the fleet was able to replenish its Tylium and food reserves before the destruction of Kobol.

Page 273 reveals that the Thirteenth Tribe used QSE to travel great distances and suggests they spread the seed of humanity throughout the galaxies.

Although the Pegasus has been destroyed by the end of the book, the new battlestar Daedalus remains with the fleet. 

Unanswered Questions

Was Lucifer able to escape the destruction of his basestar by uploading his consciousness into a computer and being reborn in a "clone-tank" elsewhere as he did in Armageddon? He does not appear in any of the following Hatch novels, though he is seen in the earlier-published-but-chronologically-later Maximum Press comic book issues beginning with War of Eden.