technology - Why is there a lot of low-tech in Battlestar Galactica?

On one hand, residents of the Twelve colonies perfected travel in spaceships and FTL jumps, but on the other hand, they have some really low-tech technologies, such as disconnecting a network by pulling at a lot of cables [1], or having no better way of checking for weapons other than the x-ray machines [2]. Can that be explained by something other than flawed writing?

Answer

The disconnection of networks is explained in the miniseries that starts the reboot - the Galactica was one of the only remaining warships that was not networked - and this is what saved it from the malware portion of the Cylon attack. The newer ships, connected using some sort of advanced networking, were infected by the Cylons, and so destroyed.

Some humans knew that technology could - maybe must - lead to the destruction of their race, e.g. by creating the Cylons (workers who later devastatingly rebelled). As such, there was distrust of advanced technology - Adama, in particular, expresses this a lot early in the series (he had a lot of experience with the Cylons from the earlier war). The Galactica was his command (for around three years prior to the start of the series), so the lack of the most recent technology makes sense.

In addition, the Galactica was 50 years old - it was about to be decommissioned as the series began. As a result, the technology on board was not as recent as that on the colonies - and this was supplemented by what survivors of a genocidal attack happened to have. They didn't have time to develop or build new technology during the events of the series, or foreknowledge to pack every high-tech device they might need aboard these ships.

Comments

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