Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.
1) So to me, the series as a whole seems to be a “Noah’s Ark” scenario. God creates humanity and (through humanity) God creates the Cylons. Then, when God decides that things aren’t working out well, God decides to wipe everyone out and start fresh. He decides to do this with a human/cylon hybred. So the entire series is just showing us how God manipulates events so that virtually everyone is killed except for God’s chosen Eve, who is put in the right place to start things over.
Presumably, God has done this many times before. And will probably do it again.
2) Charles pointed out to me that, looked at this way, three of the flashback scenes make more sense.
We saw Baltar act out of character (putting himself at grave risk to do a favor for a friend) — and if he hadn’t done that, humanity wouldn’t have been wiped out. We saw Adama suddenly change his life course from his planned cushy retirement — and if he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have been the commander of the Galactica, which he had to be for many reasons. And we saw Roslin suddenly reject her new lover and leap into politics, which she loathes.
In three cases, the characters made a snap decision that put them into place to fufill their part in God’s plan. In two of the cases, the decision made was out of character. It seems likely that the flashbacks showed critical moments when God intervened to put his pieces where they needed to be for the Plan.
3) Baltar says that God is not good, God is not evil. God just has a plan. And knowing that the universe is so morally arbitrary makes the series much more satisfying to me.
So Tory’s secret comes out and is the end of her (and also the end of peace). Baltar’s far worse secret, in contrast, never really brings any harm to him, or to the genocidist he shacks up happily with. All is forgiven! Because there is no good, there is no evil; there’s only God’s plan, and wiping out humanity was the plan.
4) We were told, for the first few seasons, that the Cylons had a plan. But they didn’t. But God did. Conclusion: God is a cylon.
5) It was cool to see all the opera house imagery; i gasped and laughed at the final five reveal. Kinda a bummer that it was completely frakkin’ meaningless, because the peace agreement was all a red herring. (Thanks Elkins!)
6) It was necessary for the plot, but this:
LEE ADAMA: Gosh, everyone should dump all tech and go back to the soil.
(Cut to a few weeks later.)
PRESIDENT LAMPKIN: Gosh, it was handy everyone agrees we should dump all tech and go back to the soil.
…Was bad, clumsy writing, and I Did Not Buy It.
7) Space battles are dull.
8) They’re even duller if writers aren’t willing to let main characters die. Sure, Boomer died, but that was it. It was the final episode; I would have liked to see some real stakes in the battle scenes.
9) I really enjoyed this episode. I have complaints — I always have complaints. But it was a satisfying, flawed, and complicated ending to a satisfying, flawed, complicated show.
I liked the last episode too. But I”m disappointed that we never found out why Cara Thrace was (specifically) a “harbinger of doom”. I wanted to know what that meant.
I’ve heard the idea that humanity ends because the next generation was all human-Cylon hybrids. But that would imply that the humans who settled Earth only bred with Cylons. How does that even make sense?
And regardless – that’s hardly the definition of “doom”.
Just posted this on another community:
“I liked the characterization. All the things that happened dramatically fit my desires, and the acting was stellar.
I liked the action sequences. Hell, I loved the first hour and fifteen minutes or so.
Beyond that, though… I hated hated HATED that the great “plan” we’ve been working up to for 4 years, and all the mysteries we’ve been waiting to see revealed, turned out to be just “God made me do it.” That’s lazy writing on the part of Moore and the writing team. It’s a disappointment after all the buildup we’ve seen. And it wasn’t necessary. They’d actually done a good-enough job of laying down plot coupons that they could’ve come up with a dozen more clever explanations for whatever they chose to do. Spoilery bit:
Starbuck, for example. They’d laid the groundwork for her to be the hidden daughter of the Daniel prototype, the only Daniel who escaped Cavil’s jealousy. Instead, she’s… nothing. An angel, maybe. Air. It was disrespectful to her character, IMO. I’m pissed about it. And Hera — her only purpose was to breed enough offspring to become “mitochondrial Eve” and die? WTF?!
…And while we’re at it, don’t get me started about the whole mostly-white people saying, “We’ll give them the best part of ourselves,” re the African origins of humanity.
::seethe::
…I think I’m going to just pretend the series ended at the 1:15 mark.
Barbara – Starbuck was the harbinger of death – to the Cylons. She brought about the destruction of the resurrection Hub, which brings permanant death to the Cylons, and the total destruction of the there models on the Colony.
The only parts I liked were the opera house thing, the Final Five/Avenging of Callie (yes!) and the “mitochondrial Eve” touch at the end.
The rest? Mediocre. And it pains me to say it, too. :(
Part of me liked it, because these characters have worked too long and hard to die lonely and miserable in space and I thought that was a serious possibility for a while. But actually, when Baltar and Caprica Six were stepping into the CIC I was ready for something totally miserable to happen because it was destined, but that didn’t pan out. Approaching that moment I feared for Roslin and Athena being locked out, but I liked that I can see that it was probably for the best. Athena wouldn’t have been willing to gamble or be reasonable with regards to Hera (and who could blame her? I thought bad shit was going to happen too!) and Roslin would have not trusted Cavil for a second, and that second was critical. In my mind, Cavil was going to kill them all anyway right after they got the data, so the truce could still happen and not take him out of character.
That said, I feel like this would have been a good ending…. a couple of seasons ago. I felt beyond such a simple conclusion by now.
I did not appreciate all the remaining mysteries being solved with “god did it”. I’m with nojojojo: Starbuck deserved better. We deserved something more complicated and interesting. I expected more from Anders and the hybrids’ warnings too, and why did they even mention Daniel? Are we just supposed to assume that he was, in fact Starbuck’s dad, because they hinted at it but never confirmed.
More main characters should have died in the fray. Tori and Boomer had it coming and Roslin has been dying for the entire series, so as sad as it was, we were ready.
The time frame of the time of Earth was confusing. I thought Roslin had two days? Are we supposed to believe that all of humanity agreed on how to split up in a couple of hours? And yeah, the “back to the soil” idea was not too plausible.
I wish that the flash forward at the end had not been our civilization, just a similar one. I thought that the first Earth was supposed to be our New York?
Are we really supposed to believe that Adama left to build a house and be a hermit or whatever and never come back to see his son ever again? Why? And leave Tigh too? As damaged as he was with the war and losing Roslin, I can’t see him just give up on other people. I buy that Chief would want solitude. He’s been through so much *and* he’s got a murder to atone for.
As for people dying in the finale, well, the women of the show fared rather poorly. Mostly it was the men who ended up on Earth to live.
The NY Times reveals the true meaning of the flashbacks:
What a great end to the best sci-fi series ever broadcast on TV.
nojojojo – Yeah, I literally smacked my own head at Lee’s “We will civilize the savages” bit. The thing that drove me so nuts is that they could have kept the overall plotpoint without the condescending racism angle: a mutual exchange of information, a union of two groups that benefitted both, instead of “aww… look at the cute little savages… we will give them language, and woven cloth!”
I’m really bothered by the approval the show gives to the chief’s murder of Tori. The only person who comments on it at all is Tigh, who tells the chief that he’d have done the same thing. (Which, doesn’t that mean he should commit suicide? Seeing as he killed Helen and all himself.) I’m not surprised by his actions, but given that the man is single-handedly responsible for the breaking the final peace with the cylons, getting a solid additional chunk of people and cylons killed, in addition to the murder of Tori, a little bit of outrage from *someone* would have been nice. I don’t expect a strong moral center from Tigh; would it really have been so hard for someone else on the show to address this?
I absolutely LOVED the final episode of Battlestar Galactica! It all makes such wonderful and confusing sense. I didnt quite buy into the angels or god scenario but after consideration, were’nt Starbuck and the duplicate Baltar and Six a much more evolved species of Cylons? Existing as merely matter, seen as only they wish too and by whom they wish too? Perhaps there existance giving human kind it’s belief in Angels and Gods? Baltars last words were ” You know it does’nt like to be called that”[God] A higher still, order of Cylon? Their mission to guide all in their quest, time and again until successful? Thats my reading of it and it makes sense to me.
I wasn’t bothered by the “soothe the savages bit.” I just took that as a sign that, you know… all of this has happened before….
It’s all about the characters. That’s what made it such a cool story from a non-scifi fan point of view. Of course there are so called loose ends in this story. These episodes were discussed and written by very clever and creative people. My wife and I were hooked for the last 4 years talking about what about this and what about that. I think the creaters of this story tried to appeal to all kinds people and try to balance God and reality (oops I mean perception). In reading all of the comments on as many blogs and webites I could find, it seems that we all have been “entertained” and made to think about a lot of things. I wish I had a dad like Billy Adama. I would have been fun to have a family with Kara, Lee, Carl, and the rest of them. That’s what I got out of it. Of course someone on the writing team could have said “look guys, let’s go with the… they land somewhere on earth around the region that is now Greece or mythical Atlantis and tie the rest as history or something”. That would be easy. But this story was about tragity, struggle, loss, hope, and triumph. By the way, I think these writers were on a tight time line, schedule, and had a lot of other things to consider to make it go on schedule. So I’m gonna say Great Job you guys. It was a GREAT ride accross the stars. I look forward to “Caprica” and “The Plan”. I bought all of the available DVD’s and can’t wait to party with fans, actors, and producers at the next convention if they have one. To all who made BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, thanks for a GREAT 4 years.
So Say We All !
Ken & Penny
I have been reading, hopefully, good quality written Science Fiction for years. The gap between the great SF writers of the past and the present and the usual junk that passes for TV scripts, is well known.
I did find BG interesting and entertaining. The series ending, however, was disappointing to the say the least. To coin a phrase it was “not logical”. The fate for the main characters and the survivors of the colonies was clearly naive and had more to do with the Producers ideological and philosophical leaning against technology and science than a realistic rendering of could have happened had the situation been real.
I found it ridiculous that the script had Adama deciding to deliberately scatter his remaining population all over their new virgin world like so many petri dishes, cut off from help and support, to supposedly better their chances of survival.
When a character suggested an ideal site, next to a flowing river, for their new city, it was “decided” that they would not simply repeat their past. Really? And do what? As it turned out they began to fragment.
The new President of the Colonies leading a line of people clearing carrying only what they could carry; Gaius Baltar, despite his many flaws, an irreplaceable source of science and technology, wonders toward the horizon with his #6 girl friend, literally crying that he’s a Physicist , not a farmer. They’re not equipped for a camping trip, let alone surviving. It might have been poetic to imagine them all scattering across their new Eden, but it was childish for the scripts writers to even consider how their beloved characters could possibly survive.
Although it was lovely to see the child Herra frolicking in the grass. It was later revealed that our present world discovered that she was a key genetic source for humanity. Did they also find teeth marks where the nearest hungry predator bit into her neck? After all the script mentioned they discovered her remains in Tanzania.
These increasing scattering bands were in the middle of a Savanna, for Chirst’s sake. Were they armed? Assuming they survived their descendants would have no knowledge of modern weapons or how to build them; no history to guide them in farming and animal husbandry; many would perish due to their ignorance of the simplest elements of medical science.
No, common sense dictates that such a group would stay together, build their city, build schools for their children and industries for their sheer survival, and more importantly, remember their history so they would not make the same mistakes.
Instead the script had the “Angels of a Higher Power” lamenting our modern society looking painfully familiar, finally hoping that the “chaos of modern complex systems” might somehow prevent everything from happening again.
The script, no matter how artfully done only showed that the writers had no feel for real people who only wanted to live, to love, and to survive and prosper.
Any comment? If so, write to Vincent L. Diaz @ vldiaz@san.rr.com
This person on LJ has captured a lot of my feelings about the BSG finale, including the fact that I get angrier the more I think about it. Quoting heavily here, because her points are brilliant and I agree SO HARD:
And, of course, they were brought there by God through Starbuck’s magic coordinates – a very literal version of manifest destiny. Overall I thought the episode was a great finale, but this critique is spot on.
I was particularly annoyed at the profound reversal of the Colonists’ goals at the end. They wanted a place to settle, to build their civilization, or maybe a new human/Cylon civilization, something with hybrid cultural vigor. This was the whole reason that the humans were continuing onward… and that’s exactly what they give up in the last few minutes. They decide to go live as hunter-gatherers, consigning their descendents to endless millennia of nasty-brutish-and-short, on what looks like a whim.
And in this view of things, Starbuck really does bring them to “their end”–the end of the human civilization, and the end of the (non-Centurion) Cylon civilization as well. They throw everything away, and hope that their distant, distant descendants will do better. Which really wasn’t what the humans set out to do.
But all that isn’t as important as the ridiculous hand-wavey appeals to Higher Powers. As I said in reference to something else, of course characters in stories refer to Higher Powers imbuing their actions with meaning. It’s because there is a Higher Power making sense of everything; they’re called the author.
Head Baltar remarks that “You know he doesn’t like to be called [God].” Yeah, he likes to be called Ronald D. Moore.
nojojojo: That blog entry you quote is wrong. It misses the *CRITICAL* statement at the end where it is said that the human heart and soul doesn’t keep up with all the other advances. It’s silly to say that it suggests it would be better if the Cylons were never created. The answer is simply obvious and gets back to Athena commenting on Adama’s first speech. Do we deserve to survive? The tale is simply saying that humanity was not responsible enough to handle creating new life.
DarthSnuggles,
You miss the point. It isn’t necessary to create artificial life in order to enslave people. Making the story about the human heart not keeping up with technology, deciding that giving up technology is some sort of solution, means that the story wasn’t about revenge for injustice or guilt for injustice, or cycles of cruelty and violence. It strips the metaphoric value of the cylons and makes them representatives of technology, Othering them utterly, and trivializing the entire series in the process.
I think they implied that Jimi Hendrix is G/god…
I was happy that the writers remembered that Tory killed Callie, because that was important to me. But I wasn’t into the Chief’s justified vengence killing, because when it comes to Callie’s death he’s not exactly able to cast the first stone.
I thought most of the rest of the episode was monumentally stupid. I agree entirely with what Nojojo is saying and quoting. And “everyone gives up technology because Lee Adama says so?” There’s not one person there who wants to keep penicillain? I loathed the depiction of technology as creature comforts.
Also how did Six and Balthar save Hera? From her on running off? She is a very running kind of a child.
All the mumbo-jumbo about the human soul’s failings is the same tired “Man was Not Meant To Know!” crap we’ve been sold since “Frankenstein”. Here, I’ll quote the Divine Presence himself, from an interview given after the finale:
He apparently couldn’t help himself, and elected to throw in his bizarre ideas about robots literally taking over the world. Because, y’know, in a show which made its bones by allowing us to see our own world through a different set of eyes, what struck him as the most important was killer robots from Japan.
I’d say I was disappointed, but after having the characters essentially invoke Moore’s great plan for them all–yes, God’s not good or evil; he’s there to make you entertaining!–I’d already had my expectations adjusted to the proper level.
No, they implied that Bob Dylan is Ronald D. Moore. Or something like that; I’m clearly not spiritual enough to get it.
Yeah the finale wasn’t airtight perfect but it was good.
Hera being Mitochondrial Eve confuses me a bit. Mitochondrial Eve as I understand it is supposed to be the woman that all mitochondrial DNA can be traced back to. There were 39k other survivors besides Hera and her parents. Didn’t they have decendants as well?
I knew for a long time Tyrol was going to snap (in fact I think I said on a thread here a while back) and wow was that a big snap. Maybe this was supposed to be someway to compensate him for all the stuff he’d been through, who knows
Is it me or did Lee just get left hanging? Kara became one with the Force. His dad went Yoda. Oh. Wrong lore. But anyway it seems that all the surviving characters (which were way too many) had someone to go off into the sunset with (be human, cylon, living, or dead) except for Lee.
Did Anders actually volunteer to take all the ships into the sun?
Oh two more things. I’m not a hardcore fan of the show and therefore missed quite a few episodes. Why did Duala commit suicide and what happened to the D’iana that had been revived (I assumed she was killed but under what circumstances)?
Barbera,
Starbuck was the harbinger of death for the human race. At the end of the show it said in the magazine that the mitochondrial ever was found. Meaning that all of the other humans and their descendants eventually died off.
No, no, no, no. The existence of mitochondrial eve doesn’t mean anything like “everyone else’s descendants eventually died off,” and it doesn’t mean that the other survivors didn’t have descendants. It means that no other woman living at that time has an unbroken line of female descendants down to the modern day. Other colonists, and the earth humans already living there, have descendants, they just don’t have continuous lines of same-sexed descendants.
My maternal grandmother had three daughters, who had 2 sons and 1 daughter among them. If my female cousin never has a daughter, then my grandmothers mitochondrial line will end, even though my brother has a daughter. My maternal grandparents’ genetic line continues, but my grandmother’s mitochondrial line does not.
The y-chromosome Adam (from whom all men are descended in a direct line of men) is only about 70,000 years ago, and the last common ancestor (which the show incorrectly equated with mitochondrial Eve) is even more recent (although less datable). But none of that means that we are only descended from mitochondrial Eve.
Thanks for the explaination Charles.
You’re welcome. Sorry for the aggravated tone. Sloppy fictional science references that lead to misunderstanding of the science drive me crazy. I entirely blame the writers.
And the idea that you could identify mitochondrial Eve from a fossil is just idiotic. You couldn’t even identify mitochondrial Eve from a tissue sample. I suppose it isn’t too idiotic for a popular press hype headline though.
My take on Duala is that she had just had too much, what with Lee loving Kara, and then the whole (1st) Earth being a wasteland and their dream, as far as they were concerned, being destroyed.
D’anna elected to stay behind on the destoyed (1st) Earth with some of the rebel Eights (Sharons).
I thought the ending was okay, but I was sad that Adama was alone, Lee was alone, and Kara was gone. I think Kara was an “angel” but didn’t know it until the end. I think Anders “volunteered” as best he could…and I think he knew Kara was an “angel” because he told her “I’ll see you on the other side.”
Someone else was confused about the time frame, but I think it had been a couple days since they arrived before Bill took Roslin on her last ride. There was no talk about how long it had been, but they had to have time to construct a shelter and plan what they were going to do. There was also no indication that the conversation between Lee and Kara was not days after that even.
I do think it was weird that the survivors left with so little in the way of supplies…but here’s how I see it: They probably used their remaining ships to transport what they needed where they wanted it. Then, to prevent most of the technologically advanced stuff from being found, I bet they sunk the ships and things in the oceans, then swam/rowed back to shore. The few survivors we see at the end are probably on their way to wherever everyone else is waiting for them. At least that’s how I like to imagine it.
I was a little disappointed with the very end, I did not like the modern day image with 6 and Baltar. I don’t think it was necessary, but I suppose they wanted something better than Adama sitting alone on a hill top.
Mitochondrial Eve isn’t a particular person; it’s a sort of moving title, like “your oldest living ancestor”. If you trace currently-living humanity’s family tree back matrilinearly, it eventually converges on one person. If a branch of the family tree has no women who have daughters, that matrilineal line will end, and the “Mitochondrial Eve” title will move down to the next branch point.
The other survivors could have had descendants, but if none of their daughters had daughters, or none of their daughters’ daughters’ daughters did (and so on), modern humans would only be able to trace their lineage back through some mixture of fathers and mothers, not through a direct matrilineal descent. Of course, the title can’t be verified without sampling mtDNA from every living human on the planet. It’s handwavery. Just go with it.
The Wikipedia article tries to explain it. (Oh, look, another useless “in popular culture…” section.) See also Y-chromosomal Adam.
It seems to be despair over finding out that Earth was a bombed-out wasteland, but she didn’t leave a note, and never said anything to anyone. Suicide is like that sometimes.
She decided to stay behind on the first (ruined) Earth that they found; having given up hope, she decided to stop running and die there.
Grendelkhan has the spirit !!! Let your imagination go and run with it. A great 4 years ! Way to go !!!
What I found myself asking after the credits rolled, was, wait, didn’t the final five live for over 5000 years without aging? Cylons don’t die of old age, right? So, is Galen still hanging around Scotland? What about the myriad copies of 2, 6 and 8 that also joined the colonists on Earth, are they just wandering about in modern times, too?
heavy-handed, sentimental, shallow, one-dimensional, disappointing, racist, overwrought, preachy…
but not entirely without its moments and not totally legacy-tarnishing.
Hey, I can be just as critical as everyone else, darn it. I was invoking Bellisario’s Maxim out of exasperation, primarily. I wouldn’t have watched it if I didn’t enjoy the series, but some people do enjoy things a little bit extra by using their critical faculties.
Galen drinks in my local in the west coast of Scotland, he say’s the finale was spot on, so there.
In 150,000 BP, Scotland was under an ice sheet, so despite the creepy essentialism that the show desired to imply, the highlands of an island in the Northern Hemisphere that Tyrol was dropped off in to freeze to death by himself was NOT Scotland. Furthermore, even if Scotland wasn’t glaciated at that point, it still had two periods of glaciation to go through before the modern age. Maybe he was dropped off somewhere in Japan, as Japan wasn’t heavily glaciated during the ice ages.
And even though the cylons seemed to be relatively unaging, the only reason they were able to survive for 2 millenia in transit was because they were traveling at relativistic speeds, so it was a much shorter period of time from their perspective.
Using “Angels” in this sci fi story was both deus ex machina and machina ex deus.
To explain – God lets Starbuck die. Oops, he/she needs Starbuck. No only does he have to make a new Starbuck, but he has to make her a shiny new ship.
Mark Twain made fun of this type of story-telling a long time ago.
If an All Powerful god goes around tinkering in history (which we assume is really “his story”), he/she messed up with his story, and isn’t so powerful.
If what he/she does (eg using angels to make things come out like originally planned) was all to teach us something, such heavy-handed teaching would rob god’s creatures of free will.
In this case, using “angels” was lame, self-indulgent story-telling.
I’m telling people to stop at the end of season 4.
This last season needed more than angels to save it.
For more on deus ex machina: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina
I can understand how some of you fans can be disappointed in the wrap up, I say Too Bad for you. I loved the final episode, i prefer that all questions weren’t completely answered leaving it up to our imagination.
It’s typical of the writing in this show that they don’t follow up on every thread, this is ok, really, if they were going to spoon feed explanations of every little titbit of info it would be ten seasons latter and a bucket of questionable episodes.
Some of you need to see the show again, I think you just didn’t get it.
Some points:-
Noah’s Ark is interesting but the basic plot is really exodus. The president is Moses, her death scene was pretty much the only thing i predicted correctly, dying while looking out over the promised land, as Moses did.
This was also overstated in the original series by the decor and designs.
The use of the words ‘God’ and ‘Angels’ is just that, words, words to discribe inconceivable beings, entity/ies, power, energy or whatever. Its incomprehensible so they/we use those words to objectify or make sense what we can’t and will never have an understanding of, anything else is just semantics and lack of imagination,
use yours and don’t take it so literally.
The point here wasn’t that “god made me do it”, rather the behavioural patterns of Human/Cylon nature, it doesn’t matter how much we want to change or strive to change reoccurring historical patterns the cycle will keep coming back in one form or another. This was evident throughout the series ending with the Adama decision to “start again” banking on not repeating history. So this decision not to make the same mistakes is in fact doing just that, its Kobal establishing the 12/13 colonies all over again only this time its different land masses all on one planet they decided to dub ‘Earth’, leading to our current existence today.
The idea of the “Mitochondrial Eve” being Hera is just an idea left for the viewers imagination. To me, simply she was important because she bridged the Human/Cylon the gap where the people (Humans and Cylons) Kobal failed. she was the face of the change to come, us.
It doesn’t have to more complicated than that.
Leah:-
My take on this is that the final five are an evolved Cylon that live normal life spans No the final five didn’t consciously live for thousands of years, they were born, yes born on earth (the shows fictional earth not our earth) two thousand years before the fall, they reinvented resurrection for their Cylon DNA and then were asleep for the 2000 year journey from their earth to the twelve colonies. and the final five will die on earth (ours) of old age as any other human would, if not eaten by predators.
this is all mentioned briefly in the Ellen resurrection episode.
Bob Dylan not Jimmy Hendrix
Hardly racist, didn’t you hear, the word race doesn’t exist any more other than the human race, Lee talks about breeding and teaching language, to me thats what humans have always done and always will.
Anyone of us would do the same thing in their position.
I’m sorry if you think that’s an outrageous infringement of human rights , but if not for actions like that most of us wouldn’t exist today. sad to say but true.
Good people do bad things because they see no other way, that doesn’t make it right. The writers aren’t saying this is good they are saying this is how it is.
I was so glad when Tyrol killed Tory (never liked that one)
and My imagination says to me, when Tigh said for “what its worth”, that’s an indication that Tyrol got an ear full from the others. we don’t have to see that happen.
It also reinforces the point that regardless of the stakes at hand good people do bad things forcing change and repartition all at the same time.
It was stated that Kara Thrace will lead “Them” to their end, not the human race,
and from that you can fill in the gaps. Them as in all of them, and she did lead them to their end, many ends, the end of the journey, and thus the end of the human/cylone separatists pattern and the end of this particular cycle.
The Kara, God the 6/Baltar apparitions, i have my ideas on those too, I could go on but would be here longer than i care to imagine, and probably by this stage your care factor too.
1st and foremost, its a tv show, i understand the need to discuss and debate the story but i wonder how many people are aware of the conceptual processes alone (let alone logistics) involved in getting such a great show to the screen.
It’s all too easy to sit back with superior intellects and blog-out critiques on the writing with such descriptive adjectives like flawed, heavy-handed, sentimental, shallow, one-dimensional, disappointing, racist, overwrought, preachy… what on earth are they preaching about?
Some of you are obviously all screenplay masters and have written and produced many productions, you should all get together and re-write it, I’m sure you could do much much better.
-and all this will happen again
sswa
RIGHT ON MICHEAL !!! For folks like us, the story lives on with all the possiblities included to what happend next. To each his/her own. Geez guys, this was really a cool show ! How about that “Caprica” and “The Plan” ? Can’t wait.
I enjoyed the finale very much but I hated that the producer didn’t offered an explanation for Starbuck. What is she? However, I am looking forward to “Caprica” this fall; maybe it will at least answer my question.
A quick note to Michael- we are all blogging here, critiques or praises, which is, you know, the purpose of this thing.
Religious language and allegories have conotations and meaning; I think the show would have been better served to, as you say, leave it to our imaginations more. The angel thing and the religious theme is problematic on a few levels, in my opinion. Ultimately, the problem I see with the episode is that it is somewhat didactic at heart, and that is not what the show was about or what made it a great show. In that sense, many viewers feel unsatisfied.
That said, I already miss BSG. It was a helluva show.
John, I do understand the issues viewers might have with the god/angel thing, and i recognize my tendency to be easy with acceptance too.
Although, I’d like to hear more on why you think it was didactic at heart.
I don’t see that way, at present.
sswa
I really didn’t intend to write anything about the last episode. Mostly my interest was observation from fellow fans as to the impact it had on all of us who have been following this MYTHOLOGY for the last four years. And that’s what it is supposed to be. Mythology. And mythology can be nothing without characters that you are invested in and care about. Sometimes you like the ending and sometimes you don’t. And yes it’s the latter if you’re disappointed or it’s not how you would have written it. But it isn’t your vision; you are the viewer, however invested in the storyline or the characters (and come on, we all have had our wish list for both…so did R.M., and he’s the one who brought it to life for us to be pleasured by so thank him for that). The fact is it makes us talk about it and question and debate bigger issues, and also the smallest ones. Look, just some points to contemplate…
1. Mythology doesn’t have to make sense. It just gives us a story we can learn some life lessons from, make us think, and/or re-examine our world. Whether you like the writer’s point or not. I hate the ending of Romeo and Juliet but at least I get what W.S. was trying to do in that play. And it’s not real. Take a breath and step back. The fact that so many people are commenting on the last episode is because this ride has made us care, and it speaks to who we are. Whoa! That”s mythology…
2. Read Joseph Campbell
3. Yes, I am VERY unhappy with the Starbuck resolution (or non). I believe it’s implied that she was Daniel’s daughter and therefore…
3. What happened to the other over 1000 fleet members who didn’t stay and go native? Over 39,000 were at the beginning of the episode, and only 38,000 trekked across Earth to start afresh. They didn’t say ALL the fleet’s ships sailed out under Anders into the Sun, just “the fleet.” What if some hung around up there with technology and influence what was to come (“They may have been the ancestors of the Egyptians, the Maya,”…et al from the intro to the oringinal series)
4. Read Joseph Campbell (yes, I realize I’ve said it twice)
5. Go back and watch the original series and you might just find a ton of inspiration and connections to this incarnation way beyond “Hey, Cain and the Pegasus are in both!” / “Boy, those Vipers look just the same!” Here’s a start: Ship of Lights. But that’s just the teaser if you look close enough at lots of the episodes… And oh yeah, that only GOOD episode of Galactica 1980 about the Fate of Starbuck, well, check it out and see what you come up with as an inspiration
6. It was a fantastic rollercoaster ride. It meant something to all of us. It was timely. It made us care about people we’ve never met. It may not have ended as we would have scripted it. Hey, you know what? That’s sorta how life is, huh?
I liked all the comments on BSG and I really enjoyed the finale. BSG was the best Sci-Fi series in television history and it will take a long time to match it. Most of all thanks to Archangel Michael for talking about the original series. I have been following Battlestar Galactic since the original in the 70’s. Even though looking back, its rather cheesy compared to the new series. Without the foundation of the 70’s series and its ships, characters and plots, there would not be a BSG today. Thanks to Richard Hatch for tying the tradition of the whole franchise together by appearing as the original “Apollo” in the 70’s series and “Tom” Zarek” in new one. Thanks for the same look for the “Galactica” and the “Vipers”. Thanks for keeping the work “Frack” it really helped the dialogue by letting the producers write a rated “R” script with out actually dropping the “F” bomb, even though we know they were really saying. Also, thank the writers for putting in the original theme music for Battlestar Galactica in the scene when “Adama” does a final fly around the “Old Girl” before he leaves for the last time. (Tears in my eyes) I loved the whole Battlestar Galactica series from the original in the 70’s to the new series. Hey they made it to Earth.
Just a note: have you ever wondered why the Pyramids in Egypt and in Mexico look the same??? Hum? It was the spreading of the colonists on the New Earth. :)