Forgotten Villains: The Ovions Battlestar Galactica

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

opyright ABC

I was recently made aware of just how many movies and television shows the younger generation have never heard of, never mind seen. So to that end, we look back at some characters you really need to see before you kick the bucket.

Like the Daleks in Doctor Who, the Cylons are synonymous with Battlestar Galactica but what many have forgotten is that there was another deadly enemy facing the Galacticans in the original series back in the seventies. It’s a real pity nothing more was done with them because they really are creatures straight out of a nightmare.

The Ovions were an insectoid race who had been conquered and absorbed into the Cylon Empire. While humans were to be exterminated completely, the Ovions became willing servants of the Empire. They settled on Carillon where they mined tylium for the Empire. They built a resort of casinos and hotel to lure humans to Carillon for the purpose of consuming them.

When the Galactica led by Adama (Lorne Green), arrives at Carillon in the aftermath of the Cylon destruction of the 12 colonies, they find respite as they try to recover. However, the resort carries a deadly secret. It is a trap. In the catacombs below there are Ovion hives in which their young are hatching. Human guests are vanishing without a trace under the noses of the others. When Cassiopeia (Laurette Sprang) disappears, Starbuck (Dirk Benedict, Face from the A-Team) and Apollo (Richard hatch) follow to the lower levels and make a terrifying discovery.

All the vanished guests are placed inside honeycomb feeding chambers where they are absorbed by the young. They are alive as their bodies slowly dissolve to feed the new generation of Ovion babies. As they are placed in the chambers on their backs, they are aware of it all as their bodies and brains slowly dissolve. Such a horrible death is graphic for Galactica. Rescuing Cassiopeia from one of these chambers, they find the Cylons have been there all along and they must flee and not everyone makes it back to the ragtag fleet on a quest to find the lost tribe of Earth. The planet is destroyed in a massive explosion allowing the humans to escape and gain some ground from their Cylon pursuers.

But alas this was the last time we would meet the Ovions. Humans are instinctively afraid of insects so to see a man-size one trying to kill you would trigger a primeval fight or flight. This was the concept behind the Mentara in the Time Warriors books as arachnids can have a paralysing effect on an individual. Losing the Ovions was a shame as another alien race sworn to the destruction of humanity would have had a different edge. To see the insectoids working alongside the robotic Cylons would have been great; allowing expansion of the Ovion culture. Who’s to say all the Ovions were happy under Cylon control? What if some rebel faction saw the humans as a chance to overthrow the Cylons and free the Ovions once more. After all, why else were the Cylons so set on the genocide of the human race? What was it about them that scared the Imperious Leader so much? To the Ovions that could have been a side they had seen of the Cylons; fear.

Even when the series was rebooted the Ovions did not even feature as the Cylons took another direction with the introduction of the human Cylons firmly established as sleepers in the Galactica fleet. This in itself wasn’t a new idea as human Cylons were introduced in Galactica 1980 in the two part episode Night of the Cylons. Personally I thought it was a lazy approach as it squandered the opportunity to explore Cylon culture. What other alien members of their Empire could they use in their attempt to eradicate humanity? I was never a fan of the reboot, despite watching it, as I felt there was so much more that could be done with the story than simply Cylons versus humans.