Cosmic Olympians

Oddly enough, artefacts of modern pop-culture resonate with, preserve and help perpetuate elements of some of the oldest traditions concerning the Celestial Olympians.

In the original Star Trek series Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise fought and defeated Apollo, a Star God who was honored by the ancient Greeks. But not before one of his crew members, Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas, became the holy vessel for the god's seed.

And there the plot thread dangled until Peter David wove it into New Frontiers, his innovative offshoot of the Next-Gen Trek mythos.

Mr. David revealed that the USS Excalibur's navigator Mark McHenry was a direct descendant of Apollo and Lieutenant Palamas. A demigod in the classical sense, McHenry had knowledge of his divine roots. Through him the Olympian Pantheon re-entered the Star Trek universe. And mortals once again vied with gods in futuristic tales worthy of ancient myth.

In the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica and its prequel Caprica the Olympians, also known as the Lords of Kobol, are honored as humanity's creators.

Several thousand years before the televised saga begins the gods of Olympus and their mortal children lived together on Kobol, a planet paradise.

A god-war ended the Golden Age and the Thirteen mortal Tribes scattered, abandoning the world of their origin. The Olympians no longer walked among them, but provided guidance through the Sacred Scrolls and sometimes spoke through Oracles.

Twelve tribes remained together and established the Colonies. The Thirteenth, according to the prophetic utterances of Pythia, established itself on far-away Earth.

When the Colonies were destroyed by Cylons, the mechanical children of mankind, the Battlestar Galactica leads a rag tag fleet of the genocide's survivors on a mythic quest to locate lost Earth.

Kronos, Athena and Nereus appeared as Goa'uld in the still expanding Stargate franchise, which currently includes Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe.

Pelops and Ares are mentioned as reptilian System Lords and there are several planetary cultures encountered by SGC teams that have not strayed far from their Minoan, Hellenic or Roman roots.

According to the Stargate mythos the Goa'uld seeded humans throughout the galaxy to serve them as host bodies, slaves and the unknowing subjects of countless nefarious experiments.

Other Greco-Roman gods are hinted to have been Ascended beings with ties to the Ancients from the Pegasus galaxy who inspired our legends of Atlantis and Camelot.

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