Finally, finally, by the grace of Sci-Fi, watched the Battlestar Galactica finale. My thoughts (and, duh, spoilers below) …
- Shots and drunkeness and vomit. Not a bad metaphor for the show, as so many people strive to fight against reality both in action and in drink-based reaction.
- I was first introduced to Mary McDonnell in Sneakers. To think this is where she’s taken me.
- I was first introduced to Edward James Olmos in Miami Vice. To think this is where he’s taken me.
- I will never. Ever. Ever. Eat “Hamburger Helper” again. The SciFi online version of the BSG finale had The Most Insipid Hamburger Helper Advert inserted at each commercial break. It was so wildly inappropriate that, no matter how much I appreciate Fred the Ad Exec saying, “Hey, this would be a great online show to advertise in,” the massive cognitive dissonance between the show and the commercial is such that HH is something I will never again willingly buy. This was not helped at all by the SciFi insertion of the commercials two seconds after the actual commercial break. (I.e., big pre-commercial climactic cliff-hanger … second-long fade to black … two seconds of next act … HH commercial … resume next act.)
- Adama and Tigh. Talk about reincarnated souls haunting each otr.
- Admiral Hoshi and President Irish-Guy. Yeah. There’s a new series for you.
- Gaius Baltar. Even when clearly, utterly self-sacrificing, you always have to wonder how altruistic he really is, and for how long.
- APOCALYPSE! RAGNAROK! WILD BUNCH! TO-YO-YO-HO!
- Gaius and Caprica 6 scene, with internal counterparts. Funniest. Scene. Ever.
- The music on this show (99% Bear McReary) has been just incredible.
- I loved the Boomer flashback. End of Line.
- LAST STAND! Desperation!
- Classic Centurions. All they were missing was “By your command.” I remember how people used to laugh at those guys. Who’s laughing now?
- Crucibles of flame and blood and flashes of light. Even if it wasn’t already known, it would be obvious that this was The Big Episode.
- Visions and reality and shattered hopes and prophecy. This series has had one foot firmly grounded in bloody gutsy realism and the other in bloody gutsy symbolism.
- The Hera Vision. Nice to see it brought to fruition, even if it turns out to be nearly incidental to the conclusion.
- The confrontation on at C&C. OMG, Baltar, the goddamned weakest human in the world, is suddenly the person who brokers the final peace. Maybe.
- And, in the end, people are their word. “And the Word was God.”
- “I don’t mean to rush you, but you are keeping two civilizations waiting.” Best line in the series.
- Past sins always catch up with you. That’s one of the lessons of this particular show.
- Is it my imagination, or does the colony-ship bear a striking resemblance to a B5 Shadow Ship
- That damned Cylon music. I’m being minor-keyed to death!
- ZOMG EARTH AFRICA EARTH!
- Again, I will never eat Hamburger Helper again.
- Flying over fields. This is the point that Doyce said, “Yeah, you could end the series here and everyone would be happy.”
- Yeah. Okay. Right. And abandoning your tech base sounds like an excellent idea until the first person dies of typhus or dysentery.
- Okay. We’re at Earth long in the past (150K years ago, we learn anon). Okay. And, at 38K, it’s not likely we’re going to make a dent in the global population or timeline. But. Just. Doesn’t. Make. Sense.
- While it’s cool to think of Galactica genes within us all, the ker-plunk of individual tales into the millennial lost history of mankind makes it all seem nihilistic and meaningless.
- Hera as the mitochondrial Eve. Nice. Though that makes everyone else seem pretty darned insignificant, save, I suppose, for how they helped Hera survive. In some ways, then, it’s all about the story of Hera.
- Okay, big, heaping, steaming, fireworky kudos for riffing off the original Stu Phillips music.
- Or, rather than Hera, is the series all about (a la Star Wars being all about Anakin / Vader) Saul Tigh?
- Bill and Laura. Flying off into the sunset.
- Apollo and Starbuck. And … wtf? So Apollo / Lee’s big dream is to kick back and relax. And instead he’s left alone on a planet where he will have to freaking fight to survive every step of the rest of his life. Nice.
- And Starbuck’s greatest fear is not death, but being forgotten. Another dream left unfulfilled.
- God’s plan. And we wrap back around to Gaius and Caprica 6 back on, um, Caprica. “The things we do for love.” Another theme for the series?
- 150,000 years later. “All of this has happened before.” And Gaius and Six, Chaos and Law, wander off into a rather heavy-handed and unsatisfying sunset.
So … aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
If the message is that, while we must stand and deliver (cf. Edward James Olmos) in our lives, over the context of eons our individual tales are on the one hand meaningless and forgotten, and on the other hand crucial to how things turn out, and on the gripping hand simply part of the endless Cycle of Things … well, I guess that’s the story.
I don’t understand about Kara.
I don’t think the population of the colonies would simply disperse amidst the Cro-Magnons.
I don’t think the Centurions will simply vanish into the 150K-year ether.
I … am, ultimately, disappointed. A great tale, an amazing and gripping and tremendous sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I don’t regret having followed it. And I want to watch the mini-series again something awful. And I’m not going to be one of those folks who accuses Ron Moore of betraying me or something stupid like that. Nor do I necessarily have a better ending than all of this.
That doesn’t mean I like it.
End of Line.
Responding to Doyce’s post (which mostly focused on objections to the finale):
—–
Robots are BAD. BSG warned us! Of course not. Robots are an extension of ourselves. That’s what the show is telling us. If we are bad (flawed, prone to self-destruction), robots will reflect and/or enable that.
I’m pissed that Starbuck just disappeared. I’m not pissed, I just think it’s poorly plotted, all your observations notwithstanding. Because there is no *meaning* to Starbuck coming back (and not just being a vision, but actually *doing things* like piloting BSG to Earth). It’s all just metaphysical masturbation.
I’ll buy the Head Six and Gaius being angels, but I don’t love it. That actualy doesn’t bother me. The “this has all happened before” multi-millennnial message bothers me.
I never wanted BSG to end in OUR world. What bothers me more is that their appearance in our world is, Smithsonian Magazine article aside, utterly drop-in-the-genetic-bucket meaningless.
They couldn’t even kill off the ship in a satisfactory way I simply don’t buy that everyone’s willing to become a back-to-nature hunter-gathererer. Yeah, living on a ship stinks. So does dying of malaria.
Cavil’s death was useless Really, didn’t play into things. Perhaps because we’ve seen too many Cylon deaths (though this one is, ostensibly, permanent).
Too unbelievable to me how everyone so easily disavows technology once they find Earth. Actually, upon consideration, it’s completely believable. For six months. Then everyone curses Adama for destroying the fleet and its technology, and he becomes the basis for “Adam” myths of being tossed out of the Garden of Eden.
It pissed me off that they abandoned the Daniel storyline; Model #7. Okay, I admit, this particular story line completely failed to lodge itself in my memory.
NOBODY died, except for those already dying a couple bad guys. it’s okay. They all die of old age. And disease. And malnutrition. And predators. And all the things that, well, a civilized society can actually do a lot to avoid. Feh.
Adama never wants to see his son again? After all that, he’ll just leave Lee? Actually, yes. Sadly, pathetically, Bill Adama is a broken man at the end of the series, crippled by the death of his ship and his love, and so letting the civilization of the Colonies (and, incidentally, his son) die while he sits on a hilltop and gets eaten by a lion.
Everything is just… God’s plan? Actually, this was kind of cool, insofar as God’s plan is wildly disparately interpreted by everyone. The mixture of bloody gusty realism with ooky-spooky visions and metaphysics in the series didn’t bother me all that much. But, to be fair, that may be me.
We saw what happened to the characters, but it felt like nothing was left to ponder about their personal journeys. Um, yeah, what Doyce says.
I can’t believe Baltar and Six got away with being (wholly or partly, knowingly or unknowingly) responsible for genocide on Old Caprica. Shit happens. And, honestly, in the crucible of crisis, people get away with it. Baltar getting away with what he’s done (or let be done) has been utterly plausible every step of the way. And that’s why people believe in karma and post-life divine retribution, because reality shows that people do, in fact, get away with all sorts of awful decision in their lives.
I will echo what Doyce says (in far less poetic terms): I don’t care for how the story ended, but I don’t feel any Great Personal Betrayal or Aesthetic Abomination in what was done. It is what it is. It’s not what I would have done — but, by God, it is in as many aspects far better than I would have done as far worse.
And, to be brutally honest, it is far better than the original BSG — and multiple orders of magnitude better than the original sequel’s “Here’s what happens when they reach Earth.”
It may not be what I would have chosen, but I can appreciate it nonethelesss.
And, btw, profound thanks to Doyce, who refrained from posting while I had not seen the finale. “Greater love hath no man than that he not blog about something a friend has not yet seen.”
A couple of comments that echo my less positive feelings, via SciFi:
“So the final end of all this, after fighting for their lives for several years across the galaxy, is the colonialists commit mass suicide by wandering off into the wilderness to explore a new and bountiful world until they die alone of exposure and starvation. That is just fracked up stupid.”
Ace of Spades HQ
“I’m pissed that Starbuck was an ‘angel.’ Yeah, it would have been tough to explain the dying and not dying thing, but having her just disappear is a cop-out on the scale of St. Elsewhere.”
Liberal Values
And this:
http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=18499
Y’know, I think that’s the part that bothers me most. Really. Angels and visions and bad choices and Final Five … whatever. People giving up the knowledge that can keep them and their children alive … that’s just mind-fuckingly evil.
Which isn’t to say it couldn’t be realistic. I just find it unconscionably reprehensible from characters I want to actually root for.
Overall, I enjoyed it. I agree that the on-earth scenes just shouldn’t have happened at all.
If Starbuck was just to disappear, I’d rather it have happened less obviously, like she’s in her viper which suddenly disappears.
I’d have also like Roslin to have died on Galactica gazing at the ‘new earth.’
Bill Adama should have also died with his ship. Preferably pinned by a beam during the battle and saving everyone else in the process.
I could live with the 150,000 years later bit, if we hadn’t seen the great colonial diaspora first.
And would creating a low impact, eco-friendly city with advanced medical knowledge been so bad? I’m thinking Mu, Lemuria or Atlantis . . . . As you point out, Dave, the BSG stragglers wouldn’t significatly affect the total population, but they COULD have significantly increased the survival rate and perhaps their genes provide immunity to other diseases that would have wiped out primal man.
I think it would have been ultimately cool that Cylon proba after cylon probe ignored Earth because the inhabitants were already ‘cylon,’ so that’s how Hera saved humanity.
It should have ended at the flying over the grassy field. Like I told Doyce off in the other room, I was having Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy flashbacks for the rest of it…which was crap. Well, at least the Cylons let the Useless Third of the population live. ;>
Ron Moore owes Douglas Adams estate many millions of dollars.
Do we need to uncover a Cylon in a cave bemoaning, “The first 75,000 years were the worst. The second 75,000 years were the worst, also.”
Why yes, yes we do. =D
Now think about this, who would be better an Ellen or a Tigh in the cave? =P
BD, you and I, we see things the same sometimes, don’t we?
Also, Dave: The captcha for today is “mother wants.”
“The first frakin’ 75,000 years were the most frakked …”
vs.
“The first 75,000 years were the — do you have a little something you could pour me?”
~snorts…reads and snorts again~
Yes, yes we do De.
But, watched it again tonight and yep…it is a far better ending if you just stop the show at the grassy plains fly over.
Better only insofar as it doesn’t answer a lot of badly dangling plot lines *badly*.
BTW…
“The first frakin’ 75,000 years were the most frakked …”
Has to be the funniest thing I have read in weeks….so much great imagery there.