Movies - The Destruction of the Twelve Colonies

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	Movies - The Destruction of the Twelve Colonies

The Destruction of the Twelve Colonies was a fictitious intergalactic holocaust first depicted in the 1978 motion picture Battlestar Galactica, which set the stage for the subsequent original television series. It was also the main premise for the 2003 miniseries remake (it too led to a television series).

1978 Original

Introduction

After a thousand years of endless war, the Cylon Alliance surprisingly offered to make peace through their agent, Count Baltar. The leaders of the Twelve Colonies and the Cylons agreed to meet on a ship named Star Kobol to discuss the terms. The location of this ship is unknown, but it appears to have been on the edge of Colonial territory. The Colonials sent a fleet of 5 battlestars to escort the Quorum of the Twelve to the historic Peace Conference. The Cylons promised to send their Imperious Leader.

Prelude

The Colonial fleet dispatched to escort the Quorum consisted of the President's battlestar, Atlantia, and four others: Galactica, Pacifica, Acropolis, and Triton. Each battlestar had a compliment of 32 fighters, bringing their fighter escort total to 160 Vipers. The ships were under the command of President Adar, who made several precautions so that the fleet would be as unaggressive as possible. There was no fighter screen and the ships travelled under the loosest of precautions. No communications were received from the Cylons while they were in transit.

Cimtar

A Viper probe, led by Captain Apollo and his brother Lieutenant Zac, was sent out to patrol the flanks of the fleet. Near the moon Cimtar, a small planetoid inside a dense field of interstellar gas, they discovered two Cylon tankers. This aroused their suspicion and they continued to investigate further. Deeper in the cloud they found roughly 1000 Cylon raiders without any basestars. They were spotted and jammed, so Apollo decided to rush back to the fleet. In a small skirmish with a Cylon patrol, Zac's Viper was damaged and he began to lag behind Apollo. His fighter was destroyed just short of the fleet.

Meanwhile, on the battlestar Galactica, long range sensors began to detect the patrol was encountering trouble. When Commander Adama informed the President, Baltar used his influence to lull Adar into a sense of false security. Adama's request to launch his fighters in response was refused, so he instead held a weapons drill to keep his fighters prepared to launch in case of an emergency. Later, when a wall of fightercraft was detected rapidly approaching the fleet at attack speed, Adar was again fooled by Baltar into thinking it was a welcoming committee and again refused to allow Adama to order a scramble. However, when it became obvious that the fighter preceding the wall, Zac's Viper, was being fired upon, Baltar immediately disappeared and Adama, whose ship was the only one ready to fight immediately, ordered a general fighter launch.

The battle

The Cylon fighters descended on the fleet from their left flank. Their primary targets were the launch tubes on the hanger bays and the propulsion systems in the stern. Their attacks were effective, knocking out virtually all of the battlestars' ability to launch a fighter screen. The Galactica was an exception; she managed to launch roughly all of her fighters. During the battle, the other four managed to launch a small amount.

The Destruction of the Atlantia

The first target of the Cylon fighter horde was the flagship Atlantia, President Adar's ship and the central command for the fleet. Waves of fighters began a merciless assault, including suicide runs into the hanger bays and direct hits on the bridge. The battlestar succumbed to the constant attacks and exploded in a massive fireball. With the momentous loss of a battlestar, the Colonial fleet was doomed.

The Flight of the Galactica

Commander Adama, concerned by the lack of basestars, decided to leave the fleet and retreat to Caprica to mount a defence against possible attacks. He abandoned his fighter screen, which continued to fight Cylon fighters until the last three battlestars in the fleet were destroyed. The Vipers then fought their way to the Colonies only to find the Galactica as the last surviving ship in the Colonial Navy.

Assault on the Colonies

While the Colonial fleet was engaged with the Raider horde, the Imperious Leader attacked the Twelve Colonies with three basestars. The attack began with strafing runs by fighters on planetary defences and civilian targets followed up by assaults by basestars deep in each planet's atmosphere. Cylon centurions disembarked and rounded up surviving humans for extermination. However, the small task force assigned to subjugate the Colonies failed to prevent about 220 civilian ships from escaping unoccupied spaceports.

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