{"id":7119,"date":"2009-03-20T21:42:16","date_gmt":"2009-03-21T05:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7119"},"modified":"2009-03-20T21:42:16","modified_gmt":"2009-03-21T05:02:04","slug":"the-other-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7119","title":{"rendered":"The Other Side"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a post about the last episode of Battlestar Galactica<\/em>. It goes without saying that extensive spoilers are contained herein. If you read anything below this video of Bear McCreary’s version of “All Along the Watchtower,” you’re just asking for trouble. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.<\/p>\n

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All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.<\/p>\n

I know that the finale of Battlestar Galactica<\/em> will raise the hackles of those who want every answer spoon-fed to them, who want every loose string pulled, every i <\/em>dotted and t<\/em> crossed.<\/p>\n

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They will be upset because in the end, some of the questions weren’t answered, and some of the speculation will have to continue on into eternity. Who is Kara Thrace? The question is answered obliquely, but not directly. Who did she lead to their end? Hard to say, but my bet is on the bad-guy Cylons. Who’s controlling Head Six and Head Gaius and Head Slick? Dunno. They say it’s “God,” but Head Gaius will be the first to tell you that It doesn’t really like that name.<\/p>\n

What we do know is that the Battlestar Galactica<\/em> made its fateful jump into the accretion disk of a naked singularity. It attacked The Colony with guns a-blazin’, and muted the response by using Sam Anders to turn off the hybrids. They did so knowing that their chances of survival were slim.<\/p>\n

Gaius Baltar made the trip there, but Hoshi did not; he was promoted to Admiral, and given command of the Basestar before the jump. Ironic, given that just last week, Saul Tigh chided him that he’d never make admiral, what with his spilling coffee all over the CIC.<\/p>\n

Gaius almost didn’t come along for the ride; he nearly boarded the last shuttle out with Acting President of the Twelve Colonies Romo Lamkin, which was awesome, because it meant we got to see Romo one last time. No, Gaius stayed behind, he didn’t know why. Maybe it was because he hoped it would allow Caprica Six to be proud of him. More likely, it was because he hoped it would let him be proud of him.<\/p>\n

The President is helping in sickbay; she is going to work triage, the horrible and necessary work of picking the wounded who can be saved, and the wounded who cannot. Doc Cottle has given her 48 hours’ worth of medication, for what will likely be the last 48 hours of her life; she thanks him, effusively. In one of the best moments of the show, Cottle tries not to cry, and the President tells him to go get a cigarette and grumble, so as not to ruin his image.<\/p>\n

What is love? Science tells us that it is just biochemical responses to stimuli, the result of three billion years’ worth of evolution, mutations that resulted in an impulse to pair-bond and mate with members of our species, a feeling we describe as love. But that description, while accurate, seems like too little. Poets might say that love is that which animates the universe, the force that fires a billion suns. But that description, while accurate, seems like too much. Maybe there is no answer: Haddaway responds to the question by brushing it aside, asking his baby not to hurt him, don’t hurt him no more. And maybe that’s all that we ask for: not to be hurt any more.<\/p>\n

But whatever it is, love is a strange force. It puts Caprica and Gaius together, manning their position, Gaius fretting over Caprica’s safety, Caprica saying she’s more battle-tested than he is. Caprica telling him that she’s proud of him, maybe for the first time. Maybe, she admits, that’s all she ever wanted. As they reach out for each other, Head Six and Head Gaius tell them that they are close to their destiny; that they will safeguard the future of mankind.<\/p>\n

Boomer turns traitor one last time, to return Hera to her parents. She does so, not because she’s enamored of Hera, but ultimately, because she owes the Admiral one, from when she was a young raptor jock, struggling with her job. She is killed by Athena for her troubles; she doesn’t flinch.<\/p>\n

During the fight on Galactica<\/em>, Helo is shot; Hera runs away into the meelee. The President and Athena search for her, see her running through the ship, through the Opera House. She runs into Six and Gaius; they take her, take her to safety behind a doorway. They close it as the President and Athena get there.<\/p>\n

They know this place. They bring the child to the Opera House; it is the CIC. There, on the balcony, are the five, staring down at them. This is the place.<\/p>\n

But Cavil has made it to the CIC. And he has a gun on Hera. Threats are exchanged, before a truce: the Five will give the Cylons resurrection back. Cavil will let Hera go, and stop chasing humans. All that is left is for the Five to merge their minds through Sam’s tank, to work together to give the information to the Cylons.<\/p>\n

But in that merger, memories are merged too. And Tory’s betrayal of Callie is now revealed to Galen; enraged, he kills her, breaking the stream of data. Guns are drawn, shots are fired, The Colony is hit by a stray nuke. Cavil kills himself. In the chaos, it is left to Kara to jump the ship. Where to? She doesn’t know. But sitting at the keyboard, she plays those notes again. And the ship jumps.<\/p>\n

Galactica <\/em>groans and shakes with the jump; she is broken now, utterly. She hangs together, but barely; she will never jump again. And so they are at their destination, but where?<\/p>\n

Galactica<\/em> skims a rocky world, pockmarked with craters. Above the airless, dead world, about 380,000 kilometers distant, is a blue marble of a world, with a tan continent dead-center. The landmass is instantly recognizable. It is Africa. This world is Earth — our Earth.<\/p>\n

And it is our Earth that is colonized by these people, an Earth that already is home to humanoids, H. sapiens<\/em>, to be precise. They are similar to our heroes, similar enough, notes Dr. Baltar, that interbreeding is possible. The Admiral suggests he has a one-track mind; Gaius is nonplussed.<\/p>\n

There are many goodbyes. It is decided that, to break the cycle, mankind must go back to the beginning. And so the ships are sent into Sol, guided by Anders, who tells Kara that he will see her on the other side. The centurions are given the baseship; they have earned their freedom. Humans are spread throughout the world; Galen goes to Scotland, I think, alone. The Admiral takes the President to her new home, the cabin he will build her, in the hills. She does not live to see the promised land, but she lives long enough to see the beauty that is nature in Africa, 150,000 BCE. Lee wants to become an explorer, while Kara — Kara says she knows her mission is at an end. And as Lee talks of climbing mountains and fording streams, Kara simply disappears, gone to the other side, where Sam waits for her, and maybe Zac, and some day, maybe Lee.<\/p>\n

Gaius and Caprica are told by their Head Counterparts that they have achieved their mission, that they have brought Hera safely home. It is enough. Gaius suggests that there is land in the mountains that could be tilled. To Caprica’s skepticism, he simply says that he knows a thing or two about farming; she knows, she says.<\/p>\n

Bill has buried Laura on a mountaintop; he tells her of the beauty he sees, tells her of the cabin he is building for them both; he may not go among the people again. Like Moses, he is not to enter the promised land — and he certainly won’t if he can’t walk through with his beloved. And so he tells her of the world they live in now, as he will until the day he dies.<\/p>\n

Helo and Athena walk Hera through the grasslands of our species’ first home, arguing over who will teach her to hunt, and who will teach her to farm. Helo looks none the worse for wear; they argue like families do, cheerful that they have reached the promised land. Hera looks around at her home.<\/p>\n

150,000 years later, in New York City, a man who bears a suspicious resemblance to Ron Moore reads a story in National Geographic<\/em> about a startling geologic find — a skeleton that could be Mitochondrial Eve<\/a> herself. Over her shoulder, two angels (for that is as good a name for what they are as any) read along, musing about how she did indeed live 150,000 years ago, with her Cylon mother and Human father.<\/p>\n

Hera is not the only person from that time to have procreated; indeed, it is certain that she is not. But she is the most recent common female ancestor of all of the beings who live on this planet, a planet named “Earth” by Bill Adama, because Earth was the goal, after all. The people who live here are part-human, part-cylon, part-native — perhaps some day, someone will stick her hand into a datastream, only to discover that she can connect to it at will. Perhaps organic replication will be rediscovered, again. Or perhaps not.<\/p>\n

Has the cycle been broken? The series ends, cheekily, by showing us the robots we have created, from QRIO<\/a> to EveR-1<\/a>, while “All Along the Watchtower” — the most recent version — plays. Head Six opines that eventually, the species have to get it right; Head Gaius says that she hasn’t been known as an optimist.<\/p>\n

There are many unanswered questions. Who played The Frakkin’ Music? What, exactly, is Kara (and Slick, and Head Six and Head Gaius)? Who is God, exactly? And what is Its game?<\/p>\n

But I like that the answers aren’t given to me. They are left for us to chew over, to mull, to stew and disagree about. Maybe Caprica<\/em> will answer some of those; maybe The Plan<\/em> will. But I hope not — not all of ’em, anyhow. Like any good work of fiction, Battlestar Galactica <\/em>leaves us will questions; it is for us to find the meaning to them, and to decide for ourselves what the truth is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a post about the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. It goes without saying that extensive spoilers are contained herein. If you read anything below this video of Bear McCreary’s version of “All Along the Watchtower,” you’re just asking … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-and-unpopular-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}