FROM THE ADAMA JOURNALS:

I used to imagine paradise when I was a kid. While I don’t remember very many details of my image of the place, I know there were a lot of toy airplanes and most everything was blue. My more adult visions of paradise put me in the center with all I wished for available on call. Athena says she imagines paradise as her very own battlestar to command. Tigh’s is one where no paper exists. Our paradises tend to be solipsistic dreams in which there is either more of everything we think we love and need, or we are awarded gifts of all that’s usually denied us. Seems to me the point is that, in all our paradises, we don’t pay heed to the slaves who are the rest of the population in our ideal imaginary lands. A paradise, which should suggest expansion of human potential, is usually a reduction, generally to the state of inertia. People lounge in paradise a lot more than they do in life, or even want to do. The Carillon paradise was in reality a trap, as false as the peace offer of the Cylons or the pleasant words of Count Baltar. We humans have an unfortunate tendency to welcome traps if we can find some way to call them paradises. Be content, the Ovion queen Lotay said. And we can be content if we don’t have to think of the slaves or the inertia, so long as there are plenty of toy airplanes and everything is blue.