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Battlestar Galactica Comes To an End
On Friday evening, Battlestar Galactica ended its four-season run as one of the most popular science fiction shows in recent history. 2.4 million people tuned in for the finale, and reactions to the ending — positive, negative, and often a mix of both — are springing up all over the internet, as are tributes and retrospectives. Producers Ron Moore and David Eick held a Q&A session after the finale to discuss certain aspects of the story and spell out the final status of several plot lines. Fans of the show will have a chance to see the Cylon side of the story this fall in a two-hour TV movie titled "The Plan," and we've previously discussed the spin-off prequel series, Caprica, the pilot for which will come out on April 21st. Be warned: these links and the following discussion will contain spoilers.
The finale was reasonably good, but I would have preferred the last scene to have been Adama on top of the hill next to Laura's grave. What follows after that, although necessary to explain the existence of the "imaginary" Gaius/Six characters, seemed awfully cheesy to me. I'm talking "Galactica 1980" cheesy. I also didn't find the universal acceptance of the "hey, let's discard every scrap of technology and be cavemen!" idea to be realistic or practical in the least.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
The god explanation is such a cop out. It doesn't explain Kara or why it doesn't just try and influence or outright stop the genocide in the first place. I thought up to the Opera house scene, it was great and when Galen went nuts (he couldn't control his emotion when the fate of two civilization are in stake ?), there was just more questions raised than answers from that point on.
Snape Kills Adama
The finale was a decent episode. But I think that ever since the destruction of the HUB, the show was rudderless.
I think that this is one of the problems when the central premise of a show is a "mystery." It always ends up that the big reveal is a huge disappointment.
Also, what happened to all of the basestars that Cavil had under control? Not to mention, the "millions" of cylons on the colonies. Wouldn't they lay out to search for the final five to rebuild resurrection?
I think the finale needed a 20-30 year jump forward to show aging skinjobs scanning earth, and not detecting technology, continue searching for the final five. It would have given closure to the show's overall theme. Instead we just get a "spiritual" explanation. The reason I feel this way is back when they found the temple of jupiter, Cavil advocated nuking the planet and spending an infinite amount of time searching for earth. Even without resurrection, I think that the remaining cylons would have the same sentiment.
The other thing that had not been really discussed, and will hopefully come out in the next few entries, is what happened to the artificial intelligence that was the original cylon race? Maybe "the plan" will give us more insight to cylon society.
--WooooHoooo--
Honestly,
I thought it was weak. If you watched "BSG The Last Frakkin Special" that aired last Monday, there was a key comment in there. Ron Moore said that they were at a loss on how to end the series, and then they walked in and decided that it's about the characters.
That told me that they didn't know how to end everything, and decided to fumble through it and fill up time with these character things.
There were so many big stories that needed more elaboration, what was Starbuck, how does the one true god fit in? There was mention that he was a jealous god of the other Lords of Kobol. No mention of them? Starbuck, the one who believed in the polytheistic Lords of Kobol so much that she went back against orders for Athena's Arrow was instead an agent of the monotheistic Cylon God? That's it, head six and baltar, their story just ends so quickly? Things didn't really jive, and that disappointed me. After the whole Tigh and Caprica-6 love each other so much that they had a baby, and Ellen was jealous, that just ended? All of a sudden, we find out Baltar, the womanizer, loved Caprica-6?
It was not thought out, and by the end, they had no idea what to do. I'm really disapointed in BSG. And this ending makes me appreciate Babylon 5 even more. The value of a well thought out, planned and executed story arc where all the pieces fit together because they've been planned that way is AWESOME.
For about 4 and a half years, BSG was the best show I'd ever seen. However, ever since they came back with this last batch of 10 episodes, it's been weak. The big issues, the analysis of humanity in dire straits, the realistic depiction of events, I felt that all fell apart. BSG was still a good show, and the ending sentimental and did provide closure. It wasn't bad, but I had so much more high expectations of the ending, for it all to tie in rather than what we got. I mean that's why us SciFi fans are such continuity freaks, we want it all to fit, that's what makes it more real for us.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
1. Less talk and more subtlety. This means very little or no explicit dialog, no in-your-face pictures of dancing robots (but maybe Baltar and Six in front of an electronics store), and Jimi Hendrix's version of All Along The Watchtower playing on some radio in the background of some guy on the street. As it stands, it was too overt and tried too hard to make its point for viewers already accustomed to needing to think a bit more.
2. What probably would've happened after Lee recommended all technology go away is a split between those who still wanted it and those who didn't. The two sides would create a pact to keep separate from each other, the small minority of technology-loving people going to live on a small continent off the west coast of Africa... Said continent, of course, to have been destroyed at some future point in time by natural disaster and essentially all technology along with it. This would solve what would be an obvious dilemma and split in viewpoints of the remaining people while reasonably explaining what would've happened to their technology.
Originally posted this over on Bear McCreary's blog, but I think I'll use it here too...
I think most people who complain about the finale not meeting their expectations are the people whose expectations included a cereberal explanation for everything that happened on the show. And I'll admit, I was hoping for a little more in that arena. But in terms of emotional wrap-up and as a fitting send-off to the show, I thought it couldn't have done better.
To people who wanted every mystery tied up nice and neat, I hate to break it to you but it was never that kind of show. Moore has said from the beginning that certain supernatural aspects wouldn't be explained.
Go watch Lost or something.
IMNSHO, science fiction is not about spaceships, space battles, people killing each other in spaces, monsters killing people, and most variations thereof. Science fiction is about exploring possible technical advances and their implications, as well as human nature in extreme situations and the like. In that, BSG has become really intriguing at times - just think of the suicide bombing at the beginning of the third season. Without the spiritual part of BSG it would have been just another space opera, probably fun to watch, to entertain, but certainly no to make you think.
PS: You are right about Firefly, though.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Harbinger of death to the Cylons. Remember it was always the hybrids that called her that.
I liked how the end of the new BSG came back around to the opening line of the intro from the old BSG:
"There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans..."
No, Deus Ex Machina requires the resolution to drop in that moment, without story support. God suddenly appears, and fixes things.
That's not at all what BSG did. BSG pre-seeded their resolutions a year or more in advance. Sure, they were miracles, but they were miracles we'd been told a year ago would happen, all the finale did was show us exactly how they happened.
You can not like the way it was resolved, but that doesn't mean it was Deus Ex Machina.
I couldn't help but see the parallels to the "B" Ark. Heck, there was even a bathtub on the bridge!
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
The god explanation is such a cop out.
Choices to tie together a rambling, make it up as you go jumble of story bits:
1. God did it.
2. It was all a dream.
3. To be continued... in a new series!
IMNSHO, science fiction is not about spaceships, space battles, people killing each other in spaces, monsters killing people, and most variations thereof. Science fiction is about exploring possible technical advances and their implications, as well as human nature in extreme situations and the like.
Oh I did not mean to imply that Science Fiction can't be both. I also enjoy lots of science fiction literature that involves no, or only marginally, killing of any variation what so ever. For me Science Fiction means any narrative or story set in a world at a higher technological stage than us. I was just naming the battles and killing parts specifically since it tied into my thoughts about Battlestar Galactica.
As for the making you think part I like when stories makes me think new things. Unfortunately in this case I have read, watched and pondered about a lot of interesting or outright weird things for what begins to seem like a long time now; so BG didn't introduce me to anything new in that regard. However, if it did for others that is indeed great. A broadening of ones horizons is always a good thing in my opinion.
P.S. 2 min of furious shouting for Firefly.
The Long Now Foundation
Seemed fairly obvious to me:Jesus.
Died, resurrected, then ascended once the job was done.
My interpretation is that Kara Thrace was an angel or a guide sent by God. The foreshadowing for this was provided a few episodes back, when Kara gave Adama an angel figurine for the prow of the model ship he was building in his quarters.
2.4 million people tuned in for the finale.
And probably five times that figure downloaded the torrent outside the USA. I wish a system to pay for the chapters outside USA, at a reasonable price and with good subtitules were in place; I would use it.
We were mislead at the end of Season 3. After Starbuck reappears, we're taken on a tour of the galaxies and shown Earth, implying that this is what Starbuck found:
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/File:Earth_(RDM).jpg
You can clearly make out the United States of America.
I don't know if we saw continents once Galactica actually made it to Earth. Haven't found a screenshot of that.
***SPOILER***
The Cylons reach their kill limit and shut down.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
I dislike using god and a hokey religion as an explanation for anything. I couldn't stand the last few episodes with Baltar babbling on about his angels. The show has always had a religious theme but I held out for a reasonable rational explanation of the head characters (something to do with cylon projection) and Kara.
Instead pooft she magically disappears into thin air, after magically entering the coordinates of a single magic planet in all of space from a magic song that her magically disappearing dad taught her when she was young and that Hera magically happens to know as well. How? What? Why?
I disliked the get rid of all our technology and live like the natives bit. Both the god explanation and the luddite attitude seem to me to be a diservice to many science fiction fans who overwhelmingly like science and technology and reject hokey explanations for things like flying spaghetti monsters. Seriously, what happens the next time someone needs to get a tooth pulled now that all their technology is gone.
I disliked the Cavil suicide bit because it seemed out of character along with actually listening to Baltar's stupid little speech on coexistence and angels. I'd like Boomer's redemption to not have been followed with her getting shot in the gut again. I didn't need to see Adama puking.
And finally, Tyrol is an idiot for not realizing that killing Cally was the nicest thing Tory or anyone else in the entire fleet did for him.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Serious question: what the hell for? What do you gain from subtlety? A bit of smugness that you "worked out" the oh-so-subtle meaning? The right to ignore the show's message, and still claim to enjoy the show because you "didn't see it that way"?
It's popular lately for all messages in media to be subtle, but that's just a cop-out so it can be mass-sold to everyone, and the many will buy it. It doesn't actually add value. If anything, it dilutes it.
The last two episodes wasted two much time on flashbacks.
Character development was never a strong point in BG and to have that be the focus on the last episodes was a waste.
On the plus side, at least the president died.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
The 'higher power' in Battlestar is probably not a divine entity, but a remnant of the ancient society of Kobal that wants to see humanity survive. This chessmaster knew what it was doing though, so it's origin and motives are never explicitly stated.
Lee's conclusion made no sense. The situation was already good for another try. I mean, Cylons and Humans were at peace, so rebuilding a Human-Cylon civilization was a possibility. The rebel cylons and the humans were truly allied, and even the Centurions weren't enemies anymore. They had first-hand knowledge of what happens when they don't treat artificial lifeforms as equals AND a chance at rebuilding a hybrid civilization from scratch, therefore breaking the cycle of death. (Honestly, with this shiny advanced Cylon tech and the sturdy, tough Colonial tech, that would have been one hell of a civilization.)
Instead, they threw it all away, and opted to become cavemen. This is the equivalent of running away from the problem. The final minutes demonstrated this. With all Colonial and Cylon knowledge lost, WE are now doomed to repeat these mistakes, since the problem still is unresolved. The only true way of breaking the cycle is for society to acknowledge that artificial lifeforms are not of lesser status.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
All those alcoholics gave up liquor? I DON'T THINK SO!!!
As much as that crew drank. I seriously doubt that "let's live as caveman" would have been seen as a solution. The epic DT's, Adama alone, would have to endure could be a spinoff show.
excellent ending
No, it was a mess. Deus ex machina is the easy way out.
Such a lovely idea, integrating with the native peoples. Surely they will welcome the strange newcomers with open arms, rather than with spears through their intestines.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
The god explanation is such a cop out.
A lot of times when you see something like that, it is a cop out. But not in this case.
The story - in its entirety - was about something divine moving mankind/cylonkind like pawns. People have destinies in this show, real ones. All throughout.
So it's not like they just slapped a Deity into the ending to tie things up. Nothing else at that point would have sufficed.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
We re-watched the original miniseries recently; what a good, gripping story. At the time, I liked the show because it was more "Fi" than "Sci": Good characters, interesting plot, sophisticated issues (esp. the political issues). They took advantage of the flexibility of 'Sci' not to provide gee-whiz gizmos and superpowers that are no more meaningful than special effects, but to provide a unique setting that was not possible in real-world setting.
Re-watch the original mini-series yourself and you can't miss how far the show has come, but in a completely different (and in my mind, wrong) direction. The characters and acting have become extreme and overdramatc. The political issues hang around, but in often they are absurd (how about the politics of ditching all your technology? It was handled by one sentence: 'It's surprising there was no dissension' -- it sure is!). And the show is dominated by the Sci -- mysticism, cylon projections, the final 5, etc etc etc. Booooring. Anyone can make that stuff up as they go along; what does it mean?
And the conclusion was so poorly thought out that the writers are guilty of dereliction of duty. Returning to the decision to abandon all technology: Perhaps they should recall that our ancestors lived short, brutal lives, and they grew up with the skills to survive in that environment; our heroes have no idea how to hunt a buffalo with a spear, clean it, skin it, and preserve the meat for the winter. Just think of this little inconvenience: No salt, no pepper, no spices; no vitamins! When the first drought -- or the locusts, or neighboring tribe or a pack of baboons -- comes and they run out of food, and half of them die off, it won't seem like such a good idea. When people start dying from simple infections because there are no antibiotics, when women start dying in childbirth, when most children don't survive to adulthood, when the leading killer becomes starvation instead of obesity, they may remember the benefits of technology. Sure, we can close our eyes to all these problems, but couldn't the writers have made an effort to tell a story with some plausibility?
Like many movies and shows, it seems like the writers ran out of time or funding, and just whipped something together to fulfill their obligation to finish the story. Their audience should demand more.
Seasons one and two were great, but things rapidly started to go down hill after that. It became rapidly apparent that there was no overall plan (like Straczynski had with Babylon 5). They had set up lots of mysteries without first knowing what the resolution would be. If the mysteries were ever solved at all, they were solved in random ways, and they have pretty much admitted as much. A good example of this was the "final 5". By their own admission they picked them randomly, so what was the point of the audience trying to guess who they might be, based on possible clues?
I find it difficult to watch a show knowing that the writers have no more idea of how things will be resolved than I do. Mysteries can be very compelling, but the fun of a mystery is trying to unravel it yourself, and you clearly can't unravel it if the writers are going to use a dartboard to resolve it. What's the point of getting caught up in a mystery when you know it's a complete mystery to the writers as well?
Another problem with Galactica has been the masses of pointless filler. A good recent example of that is Baltar's religious Harem. They spent absolutely ages on that plot-line, then dumped it at the last minute. What was the point of it all? How exactly did it advance the plot? A lot of fans I know dumped the series somewhere in Season 3, complaining that it had turned into a soap opera. I know exactly what they mean.
Whereas in Season 1 and 2 you tended to have strong plots in each episode (blowing up a Cylon fuel depot, or Finding a missing pilot etc) in later seasons things started to become very drawn out. Instead there was more and more focus on relationships and peoples petty problems. That sort of thing is fine in an Alan Bennett play, but this show was fundamentally about people fleeing from killer robots in outer space. When you watch science fiction you expect some degree of excitement. It doesn't necessarily have to be low-brow "laser gun battle" excitement, but endless drawn out episodes with nothing happening are a pretty sorry excuse for science fiction (if not fiction in general).
A wizard did it.
Thought the first 90 minutes were fine.
And then they dropped the ball. The end was a little to "Restaurant at the End of the Universe", with populating Earth. I guess the fleet was the 'B' Ark. The supernatural bits with Starbuck and the two "observing" versions of Baltar and Caprica were a little too "Touched By an Angel". Leaving the pair as potential projections / hallucinations would have been better without us seeing them WITHOUT Baltar and Caprica. We've only ever seen them with one of the two as the POV. Seeing them without the actual characters there blows it. And WTF with Starbuck? So she was an "angel"? Or somehow wasn't real but could interact with solid objects? What? Seriously, her as a clone, or the daughter of the "Daniel" model that got resurrected on Earth the first due to some left-over equipment would have been better. Having her new Viper provided by some of the Cylons to try to force the outcome would have been better.
And who gets their faith vindicated like that? You don't really need faith once that happens. The whole point of faith is sustaining / motivating someone to believe in something they can't prove. It doesn't even have to be religion. Simply believing that the feelings you have for loved ones and friends are reciprocated is an act of faith on your part. For the story, it didn't matter if the supernatural agency existed - if the faith in it drove Baltar, Caprica, Roslin, etc. to do something important at the end, then it's THEM doing it. That really says something more profound than having some actual intervention. Even if you believe in God, belief in the absence of doubt is hardly ennobling. Nor is doing good without the knowledge of evil.
Ugh, and the very end? Besides blowing the whole POV thing, it was a subtle as a brick to the head. Argh! Horn-playing Japanese robots will come to kill you!
Ron Moore doesn't like being called that...
(Honestly, the "guiding force" being the dude reading National Geographic in the last scene explains a lot)
Given that God is all powerful and all knowing, it is ALWAYS a cop out to write him into a script.
Which is nothing more than a cop out saying that the bad script is not really a bad script. It's a good script about God.
Why would God have NEEDED or WANTED to have the characters act like that? Particularly when there must be a near infinite number of options available to an all knowing and all powerful God.
It's a cop out. That's all.
If all the bad Cylons got wiped out on the colony, I am surprised that some of the Colonials did not opt to go back to the Colonies. The indications that we have from the show is that the nuclear attack did not render the planet uninhabitable like the Cylon Earth.
There should be a good amount workable technology left and inhabitable structures. Supposedly you only need about 1000 to 5000 humans to repopulate.
The other thought I had was whether anybody went back to pick up the Number Three D'Anna Biers.
1. Baltar takes down the Cylon mothership by uploading a virus using his Macbook. "Giving it a cold" indeed! Well played Dr. Baltar!
2. All the sixes move to what later becomes modern day Sweden.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
Also, at the very end, there were still plenty of skinjobs.
I've decided that "skinjob" is going to be my new non-PC term for an unusually attractive woman. EG: "Wow, check out that skinjob!"
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I was expecting a Terminator to pop up at the end to replace the Cylons. As the angelic Number Six said (paraphrase), "If a complex system is run long enough, something different is bound to happen."
'Death' doesn't always mean the end of life, but sometimes it means a new beginning. The hybrids never spoke literally to begin with.
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
The god explanation is such a cop out.
I thought the "You know it doesn't like that name." was a nice touch and opened it up quite a bit more than just "God did it".
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
The god explanation is such a cop out. It doesn't explain Kara or why it doesn't just try and influence or outright stop the genocide in the first place.
You're trying to hard to dislike the finale. Why not accept that the other participant in this cycle isn't actually all-powerful. It can influence, prod, and manipulate. It can pull of events that appear miraculous, but perhaps there's a scale concern.
Better yet, doesn't it make artistic sense that this is about free will? The other influenced the colonials and Cylons to choose differently. It didn't force them, or deny them choice. It educated them. Powerful message there.
I thought up to the Opera house scene, it was great and when Galen went nuts (he couldn't control his emotion when the fate of two civilization are in stake ?), there was just more questions raised than answers from that point on.
One of the strongest themes of the BSG series has been that "people are people". The writers have never shied away from an opportunity to show characters behaving in very human ways. Vengeful, spiteful, angry Tyrol being overwhelmed by the moment? Very much in character. This is the guy who (while half-awake) beat Cally's face in because of a few bad dreams. This is the guy who killed an Eight to help Boomer escape. This is the guy who lost his rank and the respect of Adama because he couldn't keep it together after Cally's murder. Tori's action has repercussions for that man, and he's never been one with lots of self control.
Again, you're trying to dislike the ending.
"Oh no... he found the
I think it's similar to how Kara Thrace is supposed to lead them to their end as well - it's end as in end of the journey, rather than the wiping out of all existence.
I liked it more in the beginning also. I think they ran out of stuff to write as soon as they landed on New Caprica. There is a shortage of good scifi these days. Oops, I meant syfy. No, I meant syphilis.
I heard a story once about a dog that liked collard greens. The owner was asked how he got the dog to eat them. His reply: "Well, they're all I ever fed him. He didn't eat them at all for the first week. By the end of the month, he finally took to them." My thought is that if there were *any* other decent space-based show, Battlestar would have been canceled some time ago.
The final episode was okay though. I think the series would have been better if every episode had been more like it instead of the pointless drama that it turned into.
I hated practically every inch of it from the get-go
I hate to post the obvious, but I'll do it anyways.
Why watch it in the first place then?
Holy crap, man. Do you eat at restaurants you hate? "Man. Every time I come here I hate it. Disgusting food. See you next Thursday."
If anyone should be embarrassed, it's you. Four seasons worth of hour long shows and you watched them all, hating almost every single moment. Imagine what else you could have done with that time.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
No no no, it wasn't that God did it, but God led them to the New Earth by using Kara and reincarnating her and bringing her back to life after each time she died.
God created the 12 colonies, the 13th colony was Cylons, but they killed themselves 2000 years ago as their on creations turned on them. Just like the Cylons on Caprica turned on the humans there.
What BSG showed was that while God was not all powerful and could not stop the genocide, he was able to lead a part of the Cylons to be good and lead Caprica Six and Baltar with "Angels" that only they could see, and sent Kara to lead them all to Earth.
That when Humans or Cylons tried to play God and create new life, that life turned on them just as Humans and Cylons turned on God in the first place.
After they reached "New Earth" which I guess was our Earth 150,000 years ago, their lives were less eventful and they mated with the natives on New Earth to create what we have now.
This ends racism, as it creates one race, the Human race, the best of Humans and Cylons merged into one, and speaks out against violence and trying to play God and creating new life, which might turn on us and try to kill us all.
That everything has happened before and will happen again, unless we are careful.
It is a story on morality, really. We shouldn't abuse technology and create Cylons.
Caprica is going to show how they first created the Cylons. It is going to be a Frankenstein type story where a scientist's daughter died in a terrorist suicide bombing attack but he had backed up her mind on computer and created the first Cylon in an attempt to play God and bring his daughter back to life. But his partner wants nothing to do with it and leaves. But then a greedy corporation steals the technology to create Cylons as servants for the Twelve colonies.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
So in other words they killed a total of 65535 Humans?
The god explanation is such a cop out.
I thought the "You know it doesn't like that name." was a nice touch and opened it up quite a bit more than just "God did it".
Or a fellow writer suggested that to avoid being completely panned by critics.
Ok, I suck at writing, but you get my drift.
That's alright, so do the BSG writers.
After some of the major plotholes left and advertising that 'everything will be answered' they didn't live up to the promise. I didn't want everything gift wrapped and handed to me. I'm alright with Starbuck being an angel / ascended being/ whichever. While overall I think BSG was probably the best sci fi show I've seen there were enough plotlines hanging that I wasn't satisfied. Here's some of them, major and minor.
Then again I'm also the type to wonder why the idiots stranded on the island in Lost didn't put up a wooden palisade around their camp the first time a boar ran through it or someone was abducted. Advancing the plot is one thing, being stupid is another.
... Too bad Ron Moore didn't. And it shows!
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
My belief is that they ran out of good ideas at the end of the second season. First part of the third season was good too, but what followed later (couple of final 3rd season and whole season 4) was a completely different show in my opinion. The problem was they were just inventing stuff on the fly (even by their own admission!) and that recoiled of course because the show now was full of inconsistencies and pretty much had no decent storyline. When you compare the first 2.5 seasons to the remaining 1.5 seasons you are pretty much looking at the different series, just with the same actors. The first 2.5 seasons were absolutely the best series I have ever watched; good storyline, action packed, spectacular space battles, extremely exciting, good cliffhangers, cylon mistique etc. But compare that to the rest of the show (the last 1.5 seasons) and you get complete bullshit like that final five mysticism (well it started somewhat acceptable, but turned out completely unplausible), starbuck resurrection, moon sized plot holes (ressurection ships/hubs, hera child which is just blah, starbuck music, coordinates...), stupid later opera house sequences, baltar's stupid and useless cult, apollo turn into a lawyer/politician, no action, melodrama, life and death pseudophilosophy, presiden't who just won't die etc. After disappointing last few season 3 series I was hoping that they realized what mistakes they made and amend them in season 4. But first part of season 4 was barely watchable then there was a huge pause and the second part of the season 4 arrived. They introduced that mutiny but that was it. The show was dead anyway. I just knew two days ago that the finale would be unsatisfactory and I was somewhat right. I won't go into it, many other posters explained anyway.
It is just such a shame that this show wasted the last season even though it could have been the greatest.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
BSG was by far the best thing on television, but did anyone else notice the undercurrent of violence particularly towards women? That, and the tendency for strong male figures to break down into emotional Jello? By the end of the series, NONE of the remaining principal characters were human females. Laura Roslin, Starbuck, Dualla and Callie were all dead.
I'm not talking about the Starbuck character's sex change. That, taken by itself was a great decision. Women in action/sf movies are almost exclusively portrayed as tough-as-nails, drink the guys under the table, A-type overachievers, and in that regard BSG was no different. But what disturbed me was the repetitive and gruesome nature of the violence that seemed to be more focused on women.
Sharon/Athena's frequent facial beatings, complete with long-lasting bandages and bloody scars. Many instances of Sixes being beaten, tortured and raped, usually with lurid shots of bloody wounds and scars to the body and face. Countless beatings taken and given by Starbuck, usually accompanied with much blood. Callie gets tossed out of an airlock, but not before she gets beaten to a pulp by Tory, who in the end gets strangled to death with Ty's bare hands. Pilots killed in space battles seem to be disproportionately women, and they die not so much in a ball of flame as usual, but in a way where we can view the lifeless corpse. There's Dualla's pointless suicide, ironically just after the character drops the "killer chick" facade. For years we witnessed the slow and painful deterioration of Laura Roslyn, with plenty of humiliating shots in a hospital bed, and years of moaning and grunting in pain. It was such a relief just to see her die peacefully. Ellen Tigh gets poisoned by her husband, and then barely escapes being dissected alive. A similar fate awaited the innocent child Hera, who only had to face days of terror, starvation and isolation. D'Anna dares to speak out against authority and in return she and her clone sisters are "boxed" and ultimately all destroyed save her. Sure, Baltar got his ass kicked a lot, but he deserved it. The only gruesome and painful injury to a male that I recall is to Felix, with his nagging amputation. Of course, the ancillary BSG episodes show him to be gay...
So in typical BSG ambiguity, it leaves us with a question. In the eyes of the producers, are these women truly "liberated", or do they have to pay a price for living in a man's world? Similarly (even congruently), are men weakened when surrounded by strong women?
I predicted the ending... and I was totally wrong. But mine was better. They totally set it up, they went another direction.
First of all, Baltar has to be a Cylon. The fact that he is not can be nothing other than the writers making a mistake. That would explain how he:
- Shared visions with a Cylon
- Survived the nuclear blast on Caprica
- Why Caprica 6 told him something like "How can you pretend so well?"
- Knew intricacies of Cylon technology (Ex: Recognizing Cylon structures in the attack on the cylon base on the Asteroid - season 1 or 2 I think)
- Was inherently monotheistic
My ending would have involved time travel. They should have jumped into Earth, of the past, before the 12 colonies separated. I know, time travel is sorely overused, but it would totally have fit:
- Explains why this has happened before and will happen again
- How the 12 colonies were able to leave a marker about a Sun going supernova.
- The "earth" in the end is the same Earth they found, only in the past. That is why Kara's body was found while she was still alive: She time traveled back to Earth of the past
- The last episode involved a singularity and some magical coordinates - total time travel setup. She should have jumped them straight into the singularity and thus back in time.
That's how I'll try to remember the series. It ties things up quite well.
No, Deus Ex Machina requires the resolution to drop in that moment, without story support. God suddenly appears, and fixes things.
Foreshadowing doesn't automatically qualify as sufficient story support.
"Given that God is all powerful and all knowing, it is ALWAYS a cop out to write him into a script."
I'm sorry but is that the judo christian God, or the god that BSG actually used?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I was thinking just the opposite.
Instead of all mankind deriving from some African tribe somewhere around the Olduvai and all men being derived from a common black eve, I though the series reconfirmed a more eurocentric view point that inferior backwards Africans were lifted up through the combination of a superior more advanced people.
Throughout the show they only ever conversed with real-Six and real-Baltar. The concept of 'God' was something that the real counterparts they were influencing could easily understand and latch onto; portraying themselves as guardian angels in a way. It made them more malleable.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I'm an agnostic and that didn't prevent me from understanding the religious/spiritual theme in the show, which I enjoyed immensely.
Just because I don't believe in God doesn't mean I don't understand why religious people do or that I think they're wrong to do so.
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
You're right, there has been religion in the show for a long time. Since day one even. But it's always been presented in a deliberately ambiguous way so that it could be interpreted either scientifically and rationally or spiritually by the audience or the characters.
But this time, there is absolutely no rational or scientific explanation for the events of the show other than a supernatural god or gods and angels. The show crossed a line here it's never crossed before.
The aesthetic of the narrative up until this point promised us we'd have rational explanations for Kara and Baltar's head people, but we didn't get it because the writers wrote themselves into a corner and literally had no other explanation.
So the suddenness component you require is the unexpected lack of an explanation alternative to god, something the show has never done before. There's always been an alternative possible explanation since the day Roslin gave the order to destroy the Olympic Carrier.
You can choose to like the way it was resolved, but let's be honest here. It absolutely was deus ex machina.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Remember... "it' doesn't like to be called God.
I only kept watching the show because I'd already invested two years following it. When they made that final push away from science fiction and toward religious soap opera, it was a real struggle to watch.
When they were tackling issues like torture, ethics, and the "us or them" mentality the show remained interesting. And then they ruined it by introducing God as an off-set character.
A lot more than a year..."Head Six" was talking about "God's Plan" from the very beginning and Baltar had a "pick randomly and it turns out to work perfectly" miracles in the first season.
The cake is a pie
Those are the Seraphs (I prefer the old show term rather than Angels) that looked like Gaius and 6, not the actual people.
She was Kara, who had transcended and become a Seraph. She went back to show the people the way and once done, rejoined them. Again this is parallel to the old series as there really is no reason to even have Kara disappear in the new series except to mimic the disappearance in the old series. In the old series the Seraphs were people who had transcended or evolved to that form. Starbuck joined them and then sent aid to the fleet to show them where Earth was in the form of a child. In the new series, Starbuck joined the Seraphs and then just went back herself to show them the way and then left to rejoin the Seraphs once her job was done.
Two lines of thought on this besides the short sighted "abandon tech" answer so many people are whining about. First, the fleet was all that much of an advantage. They'd been living on it for four years and steadily losing about 10% of their population each year. Life on the fleet was no fun ride. They had already run out of most supplies like toothpaste and almost starved once. Probably all the ships were damaged near as much as Galactica. They may have taken less damage but they were also built to take less damage. They stripped them and there simply really wasn't anything left of value, especially since most things of value for starting a colony has been used on New Caprica and left there. They were probably even running out of fuel and didn't have the means to mount another successful operation since they couldn't even mine it IIRC. Two, a large fleet in orbit, on the planet or even in the system would have been a large sign to any basestars that came into the system that they were there and defencless. Since the cylons didn't really seem all that intent on killing all life just that of the 12 colonies, chances are that basestars will jump into the system, scan and find no ships, just some primitives, and then jump away if they are looking for the fleet.
Also, as somebody else pointed out, the 12 colonies apparently also destroyed their ships upon founding the twelve colonies after leaving Kobol, so there is a heritage of such.
I imagine it did along with the initial ramming and the nukes. They were in such an hurry to jump out that I felt everything was in danger of falling into the black hole (which is pretty much only a plot device for stuff to fall into as the rest of the safe jump location stuff could have easily been explained as the asteroid feild to begin with).
Oh come on, that quip was obviously to create ambiguity so they wouldn't isolate all the fans, particularly the more secular ones.
I'm sorry, after somewhere around the second season, Battlestar just bored the living crap out of me. My wife time-shifts a collection of daytime soaps and watches them in the evening -- which is why she has her own TV in her own room where the rest of us can stay away. But I can't help noticing, as I pass through the room or bring her drinks or occasionally have to, you know, talk to her, that what was going on in her soaps was amazingly similar to the final season of Battlestar, minus the air-conditioning rumble and the occasional fleeting space shots. Arguably the acting in Battlestar was better. But what it shared with daytime soaps, as far as I could see, was the constant, relentless, inescapable sense of tragedy and depression, with scene after scene of people emoting at each other, invariably choosing to misunderstand what was right under their noses if it would carry the conflict on a little further. I mean, I get you, science fiction isn't only about spaceships. But when it became obvious that the show became only about maintaining a mood, and the story arch became completely unhinged, and even the writers admitted that they didn't really "have a plan" after all, the phrase just sounded cool, the show just wandered in whatever direction would maximize lugubrious drama.
But I'm one of those people who just don't understand the appeal of soap operas, who can't fathom why housewives love to cry into their hankies every weekday at 2:30, so your mileage may vary.
I am *not* suggesting that they needed a Boxy and Dagnabbit to lighten the mood. God, no. That would have made it unbearable. More unbearable.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You're trying to hard to dislike the finale. Why not accept that the other participant in this cycle isn't actually all-powerful. It can influence, prod, and manipulate. It can pull of events that appear miraculous, but perhaps there's a scale concern.
If this entity can teleport a fully functional Kara Thrace and a fully functional like-new Viper into space, there is no consequcnce to anything the characters do. Everything is pointless because the magical being behind the curtain can fiat anything it wants to happen. This makes following the story and the drama pointless.
Also, as mentioned many times, Ron Moore admited that he was just making shit up as he went along. Which is basically how religion came about, so I guess I can see why religious people liked it.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Remember the lives they lived aboard the ships. Almost half of the original survivors were dead. Civilians lived in castes tied to their ship and essentially powerless about their destiny. They lived as prisoners of technology. After a few years of that existence, many average people would like to return to a simpler life. To be truly free and farm, fish, feel the grass on their feet and warmth of the sun.
Such rejection of technology is not unprecedented.
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Without the spiritual part of BSG it would have been just another space opera, probably fun to watch, to entertain, but certainly no to make you think.
But the spiritual part of it is what makes you NOT think. The episodes about torture of cylons, that made you think. The episodes about maintaining government, that made you think. The episodes about their despair and how they coped with it, that made you think. The questions of what you do with a person in charge forced to betray their people, that made you think. All the bad decisions people made because of their human emotions, that made you think.
But the episodes and stories about the gods and their plan... how does that make you think at all? You just listen to the story of it and that's it.
And for that matter, in the end, there's a monotheistic Christian-ish god, visions, angels, an afterlife, and a divine plan. Yeah, something to think about all right... basically the whole series turned out to be a really long episode of Touched by an Angel. No thanks.
Congratulations, you've just managed to support Intelligent Design.
It doesn't matter how the characters acted. That's a whole different thread.
In that story, human beings as we know them today are NOT a product of millions of years of evolution. They're the result of some "god" who directly influences events. And who is, apparently, still involved today.
Which is even worse than the age old cliche "and we will call this new planet 'Earth'".
A good computer engineer would come up with something like an abacus, simple enough to make with his tech and useful for the types of problems they would face.
The more I think about what the colonials would have brought in their heads, the more I think early civilization would have made the perfect landing time.
They would have brought the ideas of Farming, writing, math, building houses, organization, etc. all of which occur around the same time period.
It also would have been easier for them to approach and interbreed with earthlings who were at nearly the same stage of technological development.
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On the verge of being wiped out after a terribly harsh winter, our ancestors came across thirty thousand tasty colonists that tried to make friends with them.
Oh right, so a deus ex machina is ok if you mention it earlier on in the plot. Gotcha.
The plot was confused from quite early on, the scripting was good initially and then deteriorated gradually as things lost coherence. The characterisation and dram was better, and at times gripping, but the cod-religion, silly plot-twists and lack of coherence really put me off the show around the end of season 2, so I'm glad to hear that the ending was just as messy as I imagined, basically '$Diety did it'.
I'm amazed to be honest that they managed to stretch it out for so long, and that people are still defending it.
You are making the mistake in thinking that Kara Thrace is the same as everyone else. I don't think she is.
In some mythologies, there are multiple classes of beings besides just god and people. You have angels, demons, spirits, and any other number of creatures that have special treatment. For example, in Judeo-Christian mythology, Angels are special creatures that can do all kinds of things and yet they don't really have free will - that's reserved for humans.
So, in Galactica, I thought they did a pretty good idea of making it clear that Kara Thrace isn't like "people" - she's something else. God can manipulate her in any number of ways that it might not be able to manipulate "real" people. Kara was a tool to accomplish something - it just happens that she didn't know what she was, and happened to have a more complex inner life than other tools. At least, that's what makes sense to me - it lets miraculous things like Kara's return happen, but doesn't invalidate the other characters.
And I agree - Moore making shit up kinda wrecks it, but I think it's actually pretty entertaining to try and figure out how to account for the inconsistencies. I'm not remotely religious, but I enjoyed it as entertainment.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Yeah but if you can create a full human from vaccum, along with attendant viper and the like, then you can definitely create them with whatever knowledge, skills, predispositions, biases, and beliefs that you want. If you create them in such a way that they naturally trend away from what you want them to do, and then punish them for not doing what you want them to, all it means is that you're a sick motherfucker and should probably be put down.
Or you're bored with your Sims and decided to turn the door to the bathroom into a wall.
Either way, the problem is that it doesn't make for an interesting story for anyone other than the player. Thats why you don't see a tv channel dedicated entirely to watching other people play "The Sims" and thats why having a supernatural fiat in your science fiction show (as opposed to events that characters interpret with supernaturalism, which I can accept far more readily) is an epic fail on the story front.
That, ultimately, is the distinction that so many people have failed to make in the discussion of "the God solution" to the BSG mysteries.
On the one hand, you have characters who interpret things that are happening to them with supernatural explanations. Things like the visions that characters experienced, the "coincidences" that were essentially miracles (sun going nova, the fleet losing power, etc), and the various prophecies. You can have this and still have a good story, as long as you explain later that what appeared to be miracles from the perspective of the characters were actually explainable, rational phenomena. This would actually make for a good story.
On the other hand, you have a story filled with drama and tension, except in your story world there is an all powerful (capable of creating people and advanced technology without effort from vaccum, capable of exploding stars on cue, capable of transmitting information instantly across spacetime, etc) and all knowing and who can change events at a whim, but only chooses to do so when dramatically appropriate, but with no sense of internal logic or consistancy. In that case your built in magical dues ex can swoop in at any moment and rescue anyone from anything, or not, and the only real question when the characters are in danger is, "Will God save them or not?"
That, added to the fact that humans existed on Earth2 the whole time, means that the entire "escape" of the ragtag fleet was meaningless. Humanity as a whole was never threatened, and if the crew of the Galactica had never lifted a finger, God would have done all the heavy lifting to allow their "destiny" to come to pass. Either that, or God wouldn't have done anything. Except, there isn't really a God, just the writers, and so what the show boils down to is, "What do the writers feel like randomly fiating this week?" Not very interesting, and it robs the show of all of its tension and mystery.
If I want a 'Wizards did it' plot, I'll just read the old testament. Its like Battlestar, but with less guns and more incest (but not much more *cough*TighandCaprica*cough*).
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.