BSG "The Final"

[Megasteve]

I dunno,

First hour was fucking amazing. Second was like ....okay?

[rursusferre]

overall i was pretty happy, my first post maybe sounded like i hated it. The opera house thing actually makes more sense if you think about it, atleast to me. The opera house wasn't really a vision in the real sense i guess. It was more like, an analogy i think. The opera house was the galactica, ie, the stage for the show. Some people call shows like this "space operas". I think there wasn't some giant hidden message with the opera house thing as much as just a way to forshadow the ending. Dunno if that makes sense.

The hera thing was a little loose. One thing you have to remember in the series, they talk about it the a few times; the Humans of BSG don't have a universal blood donor. It's not really epic, but it is something i guess.

The Kara thing was also left a little unfinished. I was hoping they might shed some more light. I am ok with them leaving things unfinished, sometimes that makes a better ending. Except they pretty much promised there would be no loose ends. But i can live with it.

[Gogan]

"I don't really care about the stats, or the cup or the trophy or anything like that. What matters to me is the perfect throw, making the perfect catch, the perfect step and block. It's perfection. That's what it's about. It's about those moments when you can feel the perfection of creation. The beauty of physics. The wonder of mathematics. The elation of action and reaction, and that's the kind of perfection I wanna be connected to."

[Isogi]

Frak

I posted a rather longish post using the quick reply feature but i am not sure it got approved by whoever mods. anyway i forgot what i said, but the plain bottom line is that i loved it.

Asano thank you for quoting that, that was freaken amazing, the lines that sold me to Battlestar Galactica like 110% was season 3 finale, by lee

Did the defendant make mistakes? Sure, he did. Serious mistakes. But did he actually commit any crimes? Did he commit treason? No. I mean, it was an impossible situation. When the Cylons arrived, what could he possibly do? What could anyone have done? I mean, ask yourself, what would you have done? What would you have done? If he had refused to surrender, the Cylons would've probably nuked the planet right then and there. So did he appear to cooperate with the Cylons? Sure. So did hundreds of others. What's the difference between him and them? The President issued a blanket pardon. They were all forgiven. No questions asked. Colonel Tigh. Colonel Tigh used suicide bombers, killed dozens of people. Forgiven. Lieutenant Agathon and Chief Tyrol. They murdered an officer o*n the Pegasus. Forgiven. The Admiral? The Admiral instituted a military coup d'etat against the President. Forgiven. And me? Well, where do I begin? I shot down a civilian passenger ship, the Olympic Carrier. Over a thousand people o*n board. Forgiven. I raised my weapon to a superior officer, committed an act of mutiny. Forgiven. And then o*n the very day when Baltar surrendered to those Cylons, I, as Commander of Pegasus, jumped away. I left everybody o*n that planet alone, undefended, for months! I even tried to persuade the Admiral never to return. To abandon you all there for good. If I'd had my way, nobody would've made it off that planet. I'm the coward. I'm the traitor. I'm forgiven. I'd say we're very forgiving of mistakes. We make our own laws now, our own justice. We've been pretty creative at finding ways to let people off the hook for everything from theft to murder. And we've had to be. Because... Because we're not a civilization anymore. We are a gang. And we're o*n the run. And we have to fight to survive. We have to break rules. We have to bend laws. We have to improvise. But not this time, no. Not this time. Not for Gaius Baltar. No. You, you have to die. You have to die, because... Well, because we don't like you very much. Because you're arrogant. Because you're weak. Because you're a coward. And we the mob, we want to throw you out the airlock because you didn't stand up to the Cylons, and get yourself killed in the process. That's justice now. You should've been killed back o*n New Caprica, but since you had the temerity to live, we're gonna execute you now. That's justice!

In an age where too much television tries to spoon-feed morality and lessons to us, Battlestar Galactica takes it above all that by trying to get viewers to think. While that sort of television rarely has high initial ratings, it's the sort of thing that can live forever in re-runs as people watch it again to determine its lessons.

The easy way out would have been the fairytale ending that in some ways we all want. The idea that they found a beautiful world, created a city, Kara and Lee live together happily, the fresh air or something like it heals Rosyln and she can build the cabin with Adama, and Hera becomes the leader of this place.

I see no way that in the end the writers of Battlestar Galactica could have written a truly satisfying ending because the themes of their show are themes that we as a race have not yet solved and if they had the answers to all of the questions of battlestar galactica’s moral ambaguities and decided to wait four years to put them out so they would have a great end to a series that would seem a little wrong.

I really enjoyed the ending but i must admit the Kara Thrace thing was uuuum okay. Found an interesting interview about that.

What exactly was Kara, and were people chasing down a rabbit hole when they assumed her father was Daniel, the missing 8th model cylon?

Ron Moore: Daniel is definitely a rabbit hole. It was an unintentional rabbit hole, to be honest. I was kind of surprised when I started picking up [that] speculation online.

For those of you who don’t know, there was a deep part of the cylon backstory that had to do with one of the cylons that was created by the final five [called Daniel. Daniel] was later sort of aborted by Cavill… it was always intended just to be sort of an interesting bit of backstory about Cavill and his jealously. A Cain and Abel sort of allegory. Then people really started grabbing on to it and seizing on it as some major part of the mythology. In couple of interviews and in the last podcast I tried to go out of my way to say “look, don’t spend too much time and energy on this particular theory,” because it was never intended to be that major a piece of the mythology.

David Eick: It’s like Boxey in that way!

Moore: Kara is what you want her to be. It’s easy to put the label on her of “angel” or “messenger of God” or something like that. Kara Thrace died and was resurrected and came back and took the people to their final end. That was her role, her destiny in the show… We debated back and forth in the writers’ room about giving it more clarity and saying definitively what she is. We decided that the more you try to put a name on it, the less interesting it became, and we just decided this was the most interesting way for her to go out, with her just disappearing and [leave people wondering exactly what she was].

Source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sc...e-got-answers/

[Gogan]

The reader comments in the interview you linked are pretty interesting...

I could not have been more disappointed with the cowardly ambiguity of this finale. You built Kara up to be something, but without even your own idea as to what. That’s not writing. That’s daydreaming. You built Hera up to be something, but she turned out to be nothing more than a little girl. She affected nothing. You turned Adama into a simpering goat, who dealt with death on a daily basis but abandoned his son and everyone else because Rosslyn was dying. Apollo had lost a wife. Kara had lost a husband. Adama can’t suck it up and accept death? Hard to take.

The head six and head Baltar were “angels” all along. No scientific explanation even attempted. Not for them. Not for Kara. Not for everyone’s various visions. All the work of some higher power. All along, we’re watching a show about a chaotic God who sometimes wants to do good, sometimes wants to do evil, and only plays with a few selected characters. No further explanation given. There’s a fine line between clever and stupid, but this is just disrespectful to your fans.

You abandoned your prophecies - the dying leader DID live to see the new world. Kara Thrace was NOT the harbinger of anyone’s death.

And her body was found on the old dead Earth. Yet the song led her to the new Earth. Yet the Viper was built to go to the old Earth. Yet the planet you showed when she returned was the new Earth. All it means is that you didn’t know what the heck you were doing. It meant nothing.

The song woke up the cylons, but she heard it too. Her father taught it to her. And you can say it was a “music is universal” meme, but that’s garbage. THAT song was the coordinates to Earth. Hera drew it. Kara typed it. But if it was God, why did it wake up the Cylons? Did God do that? If it was a cylon trigger, why did Kara know it in her youth? She wasn’t any part Cylon, according to you.

That’s writing of convenience. It’s lazy, undeserving of the build up you gave it, of the accolades you once received, and of your viewer’s intelligence. Deus Ex Machina is the simplest, tackiest “get out of jail free” card in writing, and you used it like carnival tickets, basically saying “God did it” for every one of your plot holes. Angels. Demons. Toy Robot montages. Hackery.

It’s like saying, “Well, we wanted to leave it up to the viewer’s imagination weather or not Frodo made it to Mordor. Or weather Gollum was a hero or a villain.” Garbage. A writer makes decisions and tells a tale. If you intend on being ambiguous to encourage thought or posit the unknowable, then you do it with strong writing, and you tell your viewer that’s what it’s going to be. We didn’t need to see what Roy’s life was going to be like at the end of Close Encounters, we were artfully delivered to a place where our imagination could take over, and every promise made leading up to that point had been fulfilled. We know we’re not meant to understand the end of 2001. We were clearly told that whatever was happening was beyond understanding, but, like David Bowman, we had to know anyway.

You made promise after promise, blatantly advertising, “They have a plan” and “You will know the truth”. But you did either. There was NO plan revealed, and not one single truth resolved in the finale. If you need ANOTHER two hours to wrap things up, unable to fit the narrative into a season of virtually hollow episodes, then all you’re doing is explaining yourself after the reading of the tale is complete. That means the tale itself was incomplete.

There are spans of Galactica that are brilliant. But you brought it home in a mess that left no threads tied, no questions answered (apparently even in your own mind), and little satisfaction. What’s worse, is that in failing to resolve these threads, you’ve damaged the watchability of some previous great hours of television. Going back, I’ll know the prophesies meant NOTHING. The Opera House was no more than Baltar and Six taking a scared child to safety - the same exact place that Athena or Rosslyn themselves would have taken her. And that there was no outcome she affected, other than as a hostage that both sides cared for. It could have been Kara or Apollo or anyone that had been taken, rescued, and then held at gunpoint. Anyone. I’ll know that when Kara returns, there is no payoff. Just a wandering random two-planet confusion. Hours of foreshadowing and build up and prophecy that you DID NOT EVEN ATTEMPT to resolve. Just end.

An ending is not a resolution. Galactica may have ended tonight, but you robbed your fans of a resolution.

And a pretty good reply:

Here’s the deal people (mainly a reply to JEFF).

1) Kara is the Harbinger of Death because she leads both the Cylons (minus Cavils extra base ships out there which will die out naturally because of lack of resurrection) and the humans to the Dream-Earth. On this planet, the remaining Cylons and Humans are separated up into groups, and will mate together. Even if the Humans only mate with the Humans, eventually over 150,000 years all the purebred Humans will have mated with a Cylon-Human mix, whether from the children of Helo and Athena, Baltar and Six, Hera herself, or what have you. This completely kills off purebred Humans, and Cylons, all because Kara lead them to a place where this could happen.

2) The dying leader who is meant to lead people to earth. I cannot remember (I may be wrong, please let me know) if the prophecies said ANYWHERE that she would die before arriving there. Again, Jeff if I’m wrong let me know and I will simply give this more thought.

3) Kara’s Viper having the wrong coordinates was absolutely essential to breaking the cycle. That was the idea, you’re looking into it too narrowly. If she did not lead them to nuked earth and instead to dream earth there would have been problems at the time. First thought that comes to mind is the issue with the final Cylons. Where did they come from? Who are they? Who were they before? All of that is answered with the nuked planet. Along with that, we have the problem of Cavil still being out there in full force searching for them, with far superior fire power, are they to settle on earth and await their demise from Cavil one day? The prophecy only makes sense if Cavil is able to be defeated, had that been dream earth that could not have happened. Dream earth would have fallen to Cavil at that point, and the Cylon Colony was still alive and thriving whereas strengthening the fleet not only would have been a disaster with everyone wanting to live on dream earth, but simply because there would have been no way to magically increase their numbers or build another Battlestar to better fight Cavil.

4) Adama not being able to “suck it up”. Yes, a lot of people had to go through horrible things and people dying, however this was Adamas final evolution back into a regular human being. Along the course of the show Adama lets go ever so slowly of the hardened military man he is, and becomes a younger and more soft person instead. It was perfectly fitting that he was finally able to embrace this loving side of himself once and for all, as this persona is within all of us. He was not a “simpering goat”, he was human. Think 300, when Leonidas leaves his Queen to go fight the Persians, he wants to tell his wife he loves her, but he can’t, for that wouldn’t be Spartan-like. In Adama’s case, the end of the world and humankind has been thrust upon him, he has no need for looking tough anymore, he wants to not merely exist, he wants to LIVE. Just so happens true love is living.

5) Hera “just a little girl”. Who also happened to plot the coordinates for dream earth, become the first ever Cylon-Human, who will carry on the races of both the Cylons and the Humans together, and in the end drew everyone together to finish off Cavil who would have surely hunted them down. She was a half-foil character too, bringing out a lot of interesting things in other characters. Emotions, plot lines, many many things came to be because of Hera. She was HUGE, not just some little girl. Open your eyes, she’s not some super-mutant if that’s the idea you had in mind.

6) The song. Here’s the deal with the song, all this has happened once, and all this will happen again. The song is seen as something all the FINAL CYLONS (not all Cylons, for only the final five survived after nuked earth) Cylons had heard before, on nuked earth. It triggered them to remember who they were, wake them up, and draw them together once they started telling each other they were hearing things. The whole part where they all magically get to the same empty room at the end of Season 3 was merely a visual artistic decision, to really “wow” everyone and lay it out in front of them. They were already talking to one another (for instance anders and tyrol), and eventually would have noticed that they were the only ones hearing this song. Eventually they all would have either realized they were Cylons, or gotten themsleves access to Baltars machine and tested themselves. Or hell, maybe D’Anna would have told them who they were secretly when she arrived! Do not look at them all gathering in that one room as some sort of god directing them there, it was nothing like that.

7) The Opera house. I’ll lay it out nice and easy. Baltar and 6 are Angel Baltar and Angel 6, Hera is their daughter because THEY have succeeded in putting the pieces together allowing for her to become the special girl she is (see 5). The Opera house as a symbol is where true and harmony can take place. Cylon (Athena) and Human (Laura) together in one place where both of their species will merge and become harmonious with one another. Laura is merely representing humanity, and Athena is merely representing the ability of kindness and trust that the Cylon’s to indeed possess. I suppose Adama could have been in Lauras place, but Laura is the true leader of humanity. Both of them (Athena and Laura) are chasing the dream of Hera who will unite their peoples in a wonderful way and on a wonderful planet, and Hera is going towards Baltar and 6 who are laying out the pathway for Hera to be able to make that dream happen. Period.

Anyways, there was an ending, there was resolution. It was the symbolism that it is not the ending that truly matters, it is the journey there. All this time they were chasing a dream, wanting to find earth, without realizing how important and life changing the journey was getting there. In the end some parts are depressing, for Adama cannot enjoy Laura, Lee cannot enjoy Kara. They worked hard to achieve an environment (cabin for Adama + Laura, freedom like that night before Kara got married where they yelled out they loved each other for Lee + Kara) where that could happen, but it never did because they carried out their duties instead. Sad, but because of this, other people were given the ability to be happy instead. 6, Baltar, Athena, Helo, the people of the fleet. To just touch on the idea that it’s the journey not the destination that matters idea again, imagine the whole series up to this point and how wonderful it was for you, that’s what matters, not how flawed you think the ending is. Give it some time, and some thought, and maybe one day you’ll see the different meanings the ending brings about, and the symbolism’s it possesses, and then not only will the journey have rocked, but the ending as well.

The two of them go on debating each other for another couple posts, which makes for a pretty good read.

An interesting note, which makes me glad I never saw the original series in the 70's:

The ending of the series was set over 30 years ago, when original series creator Glen Larson set out to tell an alternative origin story for mankind. The idea that humanity was “seeded” on the Earth by more sophisticated ancestors was a commonplace pseudo-scientific theory of the 1970s,popularized by writers like Erich Von Daniken. Whatever the ultimate fate of Colonial Humanity, it was inevitable that they would be portrayed as the ancestors of modern humanity. Don’t blame the producers of BSG 2.0 if you managed to forget that fact over the past three decades. The anti-scientific cultural suicide of humanity and the destruction of the fleet in the sun are all necessary to establishing the “lost” nature of humanity’s true origins.

[Yooxra]

I miss BSG. Fridays will never be the same for me.

[Gogan]

I kept the last two episodes on TiVo and rewatched them the other day. I miss BSG. =(

[Gogan]

Can't believe it's been two years since the BSG finale aired (2 years and 1 week).

I started re-watching the BSG series a couple days ago on DVD. Starting season 2.5 now. Helo and the Chief are about to be executed for treason and murder by saving Sharon from rape, and Adama just launched the alert fighters and is sending a marine squad via raptor against the Pegasus to bring them home. Man that was good tv! I dare say it was the greatest TV show to date. Lost was good, BSG was fracking amazing. I miss those days.

[Kz]

best not sure but BSG was damn good and damn addicting i watched all of it in like 2 weeks if u recall it was damn good.

[Onion]

Respect.

Greatest sci fi show ever made at the very least.