A few observations

I was rewatching "Panic on Bathyios" recently so I could write about the Bathyiosians for the wiki, and certain things in the episode got me thinking. Gularis's terrorist group is actually quite similar to the Gargantian militants (though a big difference is that Gularis is the leader of the Bathyiosian Council, so his group only count as terrorists because the other Bathyiosians don't seem to support them). Both Gularis and Tremendor don't like the influence outsiders are having on their planet's culture. And when Gularis mentions that "the air breathers' insatiable appetite for our crystals has ravaged our world", you realise that his group (however wrong their methods may be) do have some legitimate complaints against the Galactc Alliance. In fact, it almost makes you wonder if the main reason the GA is interested in Bathyios is because of the crystals (Bathyios is the biggest supplier of them in the galaxy, according to Buzz). If that's the case, then I can see why the Bathyiosians are angry. Also, now they have air breathers moving onto their world, setting up giant domes, and just reshaping their culture in general. So you couple all that with the fact that air breathers are "different" - they have lungs instead of gills - and it becomes easy to understand why Gularis and his group are doing what they're doing, even if you don't agree with them.

Anyway, all this got me thinking about how a lot of the major races seem very suspicious of outsiders. You have the Bathyosians, the Gargantians, the Tangeans, the Valkyrans, the Raenoks - heck, even Zurg with his cooties phobia. So how did something like the Galactic Alliance even get founded? I don't know, but I can only assume it was started by humans, since they seem more outgoing than some of the other races. Whatever the case, I think before the GA's founding, most of the races probably kept to themselves a lot. Perhaps that's why you have a planet like Tradeworld - maybe the various species realised they needed some neutral territory on which to trade, so they turned an unoccupied planet in some sort of gathering place for interstellar traders, and over the years it eventually went downhill and became the seedy place it is today.

But, getting back to my original point, it seems that it's only in recent years that the galaxy is "opening up". There's still a lot of suspicion and mistrust floating around, and some people are understandably worried that all this contact with outsiders is going to negatively impact their culture. Obviously, this hasn't stopped plenty of races from joining the GA (I've counted over twenty members), so perhaps they consider protection from Star Command enough of an incentive to join.

Actually, this all sort of ties in to a recurring theme in BLoSC - teamwork vs. going it alone. TAB, Super Nova, The Starthought, The Torque Armada, and several other episodes all involve this theme, and on a macro scale the situation with the Bathyosians, Gargantians, and Tangeans is similar (most obviously in First Missions, where the Tangeans thinks they can take care of themselves without the GA's help, but then Zurg attacks). The message the GA seems to be sending out is "we need to stick together because there's strength in unity."

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure where I was going with all these ramblings. I'm probably not making sense, so I'll shut up now. These were just some random observations I had. Feel free to add your own opinions and theories.

Interesting observations. Something that has also been eating at me that I felt lie pointing out is that, if you watch 'the adventure begins', when Zurg takes his mind control over bathyos, the inhabitants look more like merpeople than the inhabitants in 'panic on bathyos'. Either its a plotbunny or there are two main species on bathyos? Just felt like pointing that out.

I know, it's something I've always found odd too. There are a lot of different species on Bathyios, but most of them are fish-like. So I'm guessing the merpeople was an error by the animators. It does give us some interesting things to speculate about, though.