Delphi

A binocular view of Delphi, with the Telamont Building in center.

Delphi was a large city on the planet Caprica, situated in the same general region as Caprica City.

Urban Center

The heavily-damaged Delphi Museum, repository of an important artifact.

Delphi was encircled by a rolling temperate rain forest and was located fairly close to a mountain range. Before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, the city boasted a large spaceport and a military base. One of the tallest structures in Delphi was the Telamont Building. Another major landmark was the Delphi Museum of the Colonies; among the items at the museum was the Arrow of Apollo, an artifact that held clues to the general whereabouts of Earth, home of the legendary Thirteenth Tribe ^{(TRS: "Colonial Day" and "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I")}.

In the less urbanized outskirts of the city, the Delphi Convalescent Institute served patients suffering from mental illness for more than sixty years prior to the fall of the Colonies ^{(CAP: "The Imperfections of Memory")}. The Delphi Union High School was also located in this more forested area ^{(TRS: "Resistance")}.

Delphi was home to the Delphi Legion pyramid team ^{(CAP: "Apotheosis")}.

Prior to the attack, Kara "Starbuck" Thrace owned a studio apartment in Delphi. Overlooking a parking lot, the apartment was in complete disarray, having inoperative air conditioning, faulty heating, and a broken toilet. The living room was littered with paintings of her own creation, including a particular wall painting accompanied by a poem, and a tiny cache of cigars. Thrace was not very enthusiastic about the apartment ^{(TRS: "Valley of Darkness")}.

After the Fall

Centurions serving as landscaping workers ^{(TRS: "Downloaded")}

A Cylon breeding farm in Delphi ^{(TRS: "The Farm")}.

Following the Cylon attack, Delphi, which was not directly targeted by nuclear weapons and therefore remained mostly intact, was used by the Cylons as a base of operations. The Cylons gradually re-settled Delphi: the humanoid Cylons appropriated apartments, restored the landscaping, and opened a restaurant and other facilities. The Delphi Convalescent Institute was temporarily converted into a farm for reproductive procedures with human women ^{(TRS: "The Farm")}. After being resurrected, Sharon Valerii returned for a time to the apartment she had lived in prior to the fall of the Colonies ^{(TRS: "Downloaded")}.

The Caprica Buccaneers pyramid team survived the Cylon attack while undertaking high-altitude training near Delphi. They relocated to the Delphi Union High School and operated a resistance to the Cylon occupation from that location ^{(TRS: "Resistance" and "The Plan")}.

A Cylon posing as Sharon Valerii and Karl "Helo" Agathon reached Delphi after two months of traveling the surrounding countryside, intending to steal a ship and leave Caprica ^{(TRS: "Flesh and Bone", "The Hand of God" and "Colonial Day")}.

After seeing visions of a city on the planet Kobol, President Laura Roslin overrode Commander William Adama's plans and persuaded Kara Thrace to take a captured Cylon Raider to Delphi in order to recover the Arrow of Apollo. Successfully jumping to Caprica, Thrace landed near the Delphi Museum and managed to retrieve the artifact ^{(TRS: "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I" and "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II")}. Temporarily stranded on Caprica, Thrace returned to her old apartment with Agathon to collect an old jacket, a personal memento, and keys to her old military truck ^{(TRS: "Valley of Darkness")}.

Delphi, as with the rest of the Colonies, was allegedly abandoned as the Cylons left to find the last remnants of humanity in order to find a way to co-exist with them ^{(TRS: "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")}.

Notes

• The location of Delphi is one of many of the series' influences by ancient Greek mythology and history. In antiquity, the Greek city of Delphi was home to the Delphic Oracle, a Sibyl who made predictions, delivered in song or verse, which may have been inspired or influenced by the breathing of vapors emitted from the ground. The Oracle was originally a Pythian priestess (named for the python, killed by Apollo). Over time, she became known as The Pythia.

• Initially, the Oracle was associated with Gaia, who became the foundation of the Olympian Gods. However, with the founding of a temple to the god Apollo, Delphi became more closely associated with him. This relationship between Delphi and Apollo is reflected in Delphi on Caprica being the home of the Arrow of Apollo.

Behind the scenes

Several distinct Vancouver-area locations were used to represent Delphi and its environs across the series.

The exterior of the Delphi Museum of the Colonies in "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I" and "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II" was filmed at the West Mall Centre of Simon Fraser University, at the entrance where Burnaby Mountain Parkway meets Gaglardi Way, Burnaby, British Columbia. The adjacent Transportation Centre — a building whose ground floor features four staircases descending into a pit area — was used for the sequence in which Helo and Sharon make their way through ruined Delphi, dressed with debris. The steps outside the Academic Quadrangle on the Gaglardi Way side of campus were used for additional Delphi street scenes.

Starbuck's Delphi apartment — first seen in "Valley of Darkness" and returning in "Downloaded" — was filmed at the Waterfall Building, 1540 West 2nd Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia. The same room was later redressed as Kara's detention cell in the New Caprica Detention Center during the Cylon occupation in Season 3.

The exterior of the Delphi Convalescent Institute — used as the Cylon farm in "The Farm" — was Riverview Hospital, 2601 Lougheed Highway, Coquitlam, British Columbia. Opened in 1913 as a psychiatric facility and closed in July 2012, Riverview's institutional architecture and grounds made it one of the most frequently used filming locations for genre productions in the Vancouver area.

The Delphi base where the resistance is established by the Caprica Buccaneers in "Colonial Day" was filmed at the Koerner Library, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

References

See also

• Delphi on Wikipedia