They had eluded the Cylons for some time.
The Eastern Alliance was not a real threat.
The planet had cities and farms.
The thinner atmosphere was not really an issue.
They could have settled the planet and improved their defenses long before the Cylons found them.
I'd say because the Cylons would eventually catch up to them.
shareI'd say because the Cylons would eventually catch up to them.
Curiosity? They wanted to know if Terra was Earth- so they had to go there. They also wanted to keep their presence secret. If they set up camp on Paradeen it would be a little unsubtle
The Eastern Alliance actually was a threat -- although the Colonials' technology was more advanced, they were greatly out-numbered by the EA -- they had thousands of destroyers that could've overwhelmed the vipers and Galactica. Apollo and Adama had hinted at this fear in both Greetings From Earth and Baltar's Escape.
shareAdama tells Commandant Leiter they would need a thousand Eastern Alliance destroyers to engage the Galactica. Leiter begins to say, "We have nearly..." and then decides not to reveal the size of their fleet. But, he obviously was going to say they had more than a thousand meaning they could destroy the Galactica.
Not having seen the episode (at least recently enough to remember), but having read about Earth history a bit, there was an incident with primitive canoes and a 'modern ship' (well, contemporarily thinking).
The 'modern ship' had cannons, it was a massive gunship, and the european men had guns, while the primitive canoe-paddling people had stones and slingshots.
Now, hands up, whoever thinks the hundreds of canoes won that battle? Anyone? Fry?
Yeeaah. That didn't go so well for the canoe-people - you don't bring a slingshot to a cannon fight or stones to a gunfight. The more advanced technology OBLITERATED the hundreds of canoes, lots of the primitive-tech people died and got injured, and they fled the scary sound of cannons anyway at one point.
This is basically TNG Enterprise vs. 'laser-equipped cargo vessel from hundreds of years ago'. TNG would eat 1000 ships alive before they could say 'no fair'.
The same would be true here - NUMBERS are not so important when you have SUPERIOR technology vs. INFERIOR technology. The superior tech wins.
Think about 100 people throwing rocks at a battleship. There's only ONE battleship, but it's not gonna care about 10 000 rocks thrown at it, there's not gonna be even a dent. A scratch, maybe.
Spears vs. tanks, same thing. No matter if you have 80 000 warriors furiously throwing their best spears at a tank, it's not gonna matter, they will lose. The tank will shoot a few times with its various weapons (remember that tank is not JUST a cannon), those people will go down very quickly and the conflict will end there, tank will be unharmed.
So unless the tech level is _VERY_ nearly the same (as in WW2 machine guns vs. modern machine guns instead of spears vs. machine guns), numbers aren't going to cut it, you need to level up your tech.
I thought Adama's line was that it would take 100 EA destroyers to overwhelm the Galactica. Something that could come to be under the right circumstances.
shareThey weren't just looking to get away. They were also looking for the missing colony hoping they could be allies and to warn them about the Cylons. If they stayed on Paradeen they would never find them.
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