"The old moon, Cimtar"

[Hope It Is The Grog]

Okay, just exactly how does a moon manage to merit the description "old"? It's not like referring to "the old water tower" or "the old First National Bank building." People don't build new moons to replace old ones. And compared to the people viewing them, all moons are immeasurably old.

I guess it's possible that Cimtar was the stuff of ancient legends because the survivors of Kobol spotted it on their way to found the Colonies, and then maybe it was too far away from the Colonies to be seen from the ground, so it was a big deal when they finally redeveloped spaceflight and discovered "the old moon" there. But then what about the planet it belonged to? Why wouldn't the planet be the legendary heavenly body, and also be Zac and Apollo's point of reference?

Maybe it was a moon that used to belong to one of the Colonies and somehow got knocked out of its orbit, in a Space: 1999-like scenario.

What do all you Cylons think?

("It's just a show. I should really just relax.")

[Cylon-Knight]

Another excellent topic!

Hummmm... my Centurion programming guesstimates perhaps he was referring to the phase of the moon? New, Crescent, etc. Perhaps the Colonials had an old phase?

Or it was the first of two. You have England and New England. Could Apollo be trying to drive home it was "this" moon and not "that" moon... which that would have been around another planet, and so, no where near. Unless their are multiple moons and two had same name. ... I wouldn't put it past the lowly humans

[Hope It Is The Grog]

Hmmm... but don't forget the old moon was practically a whole Raider tank of fuel away from the Colonies. If they had given one of two moons that name first, it would more likely be the one closer to home.

And if "old" was merely a phase of the moon he identified for visual purposes, it wouldn't make sense for Apollo to describe it that way again to Adama and Tigh, who weren't looking at it at the time. (That scene also weakens my hypothesis that it could have been just a passing affectionate reference, as in "th' ol' moon.")

[137th Gebirg]

Sadly, I think this was one of the great short-falls of TOS BSG and is very nearly impossible to rationally explain in-universe. The writers really had no idea about the scientific concepts behind the science fiction they were producing and were almost sloppy and apathetic with regard to accuracy and precision. Not the least of which was the frustrating confusion in nomenclature and terminology between solar systems and galaxies, the concepts of super-luminal travel, "fires in space" and Z-axis navigation. It's not like these things weren't understood back then - hell, Lost in Space and Star Trek back in the 60's managed to get it right most of the time with some descent writers and scientific advisors.

Don't get me wrong, I love this show to the end of my days (TOS is my favorite over all others), but I think employing a greater attention to detail would have earned it a place of respect among the mundanes and profanes slightly higher than that of "70's cheese" and "Star Wars rip-off".

That being said, the only thing I can think of to explain the "old moon" reference, is that maybe it's their way of saying "rogue moon". There were no other references to planets star systems (or galaxies) or other moons. Just "the old moon" - a single solitary object in the middle of a dense nebula, big enough to hide a fleet of multi-planet-killing Cylons. I'm thinking that maybe it used to belong to a long-destroyed/disbanded solar system, or got knocked out of its orbit by some other large planetary body or asteroid billions of years in the past and it wound up drifting into the nebula that was hiding the Cylon fleet. Or perhaps maybe that cloudy region was a failed stellar nursery (which are very old on a cosmic scale) and Cimtar was the only thing that actually coalesced out of the muck and nothing else did, leaving the rest of the dust inert and disused. Either way, I doubt any of the writers that came up with the wording of that sentence put this much thought into it. If they had, they would have bogged down the story and mired it in technobabble minutia. Their best bet was to simply leave out the "old" as, yes, it really doesn't make sense in a planetary (or lunar) context.

[johnnybear]

It does seem strange now you mention it, not that I've ever given it much thought myself! But why would you call a moon old? But the Space 1999 rogue moon theory doesn't come into it as Cimtar seems to be a fixed point in space, maybe a barrier area between The colonies and Cylon space perhaps? A Neutral Zone of sorts?
JB

[GoldCylon]

The moon became part of a planetary shift, and no longer was in range of the rays of light cast my the sun. A new appeared and replaced it thus the old moon.

[Hope It Is The Grog]

Pleased that everything had gone so smoothly, Shukhov nudged the captain in the ribs and said:

"Listen, captain, where does this science of yours say the old moon goes afterward?"

"Where does it go? What do you mean? What stupidity! It's simply not visible."

Shukhov shook his head and laughed. "Well, if it's not visible, how do you know it's there?"

"So, according to you," said the captain, unable to believe his ears, "it's another moon every month."

"What's strange about that? People are born every day. Why not a moon every four weeks?"

"Phaugh!" said the captain, and spat. "I've never met a sailor as stupid as you in my life. So where do you think the old moon goes?"

"That's what I'm asking you. Where does it go?" Shukhov showed his teeth in a smile.

"Well, tell me, where does it go?"

Shukhov sighed and said with a slight lisp: "In our village, folk say God crumbles up the old moon into stars."


-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

[Croft2014]

I agree with 137th Gebirg, it's just lackadaisical writing typical of the series approach to science. BG is very much space opera taken from an old adventure fiction mold, in that beyond the Von Daniken concepts it's inspirations were espionage, war films and westerns. Classics like The Guns of Navarone (1961) inspired The Gun on Ice Planet Zero for instance. At this point very few folks who made films nd TV sci-fi were concerned with scientific accuracy and logic. For instance, if there was a big frack-off gun turret on Arcta (awful, awful name!) then the Colonial Fleet would just have to divert in a totally different direction and the Viper crews could fly up behind it and blow the felgercarb out of it.