For me, the two best aspects of the finale were the battle between the two main camps (one composed of humans, human-looking Cylons, and traditional Cylons, while the other was the same minus the humans) and the definitive revelation that all of the events in the BSG series had taken place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." There had been suspicions about that latter point throughout the history of both BSG TV series, but the writing staff delivered a very effective misdirection when they introduced a post-apocalyptic Earth (the original one, we now know) at the midpoint of the final season. I give them a lot of credit for pulling off that trick.
As for the big space confrontation, it was entertaining but also a bit confusing. Vicki pointed out that the human forces had painted red slashes across the front of the allied Centurion Cylon models, so as to make it easier to tell friend from foe, but then I kept seeing ones that didn't have the slash and yet were fighting for the good guys. Plus, at one point, the group that rescued Hera implied that they had "a plan" to get off the colony base ship which they didn't want Boomer to hear, and yet - as far as I could tell - that master stroke involved simply walking back to the Galactica (rammed, as it was, into the other ship) and then... jumping out of there, with no destination pre-programmed into the guidance system?! Yeah, nice plan, gang!
The more I thought about the episode after it was over, the more dissatisfied I became with how it all turned out. Among the items that weren't paid off for those fans who'd stuck with the show through a miniseries and four seasons:
- Starbuck's "two body" situation was never explained, nor was the fact that she'd been seeing visions (and hearing music) ever since she was a child
- we never really learned what plan the Cylons had had all along that apparently involved killing off 99.99% of the human population in an unprovoked display of genocide, despite it being referenced in dozens of episode openings
- how was it that Caprica (# 6) and Gaius were still alive 150,000 years later?
- with 38,000 "futurists" living among our primitive ancestors, how is that we still took so long to advance science and yet still ended up at virtually the same point as the original futurists (minus the jump technology)?
- or, put another way: we're supposed to believe that these remnants of one human race ultimately met up with, and cross-bred with, another, unrelated strain of humanity, and 150,000 years later had somehow retained - or perhaps, reinvented - almost all of the same artifacts (right down to cigarettes and lighters), with the only major difference being that the 2nd incarnation decided not to chop off the corners of their papers?
- while I thought that the explanation of the "opera house" dreams was kind of cool as it played out in the final episode , the more I pondered it, the less sense I could make of it based on how little meaning it actually held in the end (it was all undone by the Chief learning what Tori had done to Callie)
- what does Hera being a Cylon/human hybrid mean to us, if she's our original ancestor? if we're all descended from her, how are we any different than the pure humans that we watched in the show?
I can't help but compare BSG to Babylon 5 - the benchmark for that sort of thing - and it came up quite short of that bar, in my estimation. Seeing the Cylon colony ship in the finale, looking so much like a B5 Shadow ship, reminded me of how it feels when a science fiction series promises big things early on and then delivers on them all. That was the B5 experience - and even a weak and watered down final season couldn't undo all the greatness of Seasons Three and Four because everything had been wrapped up by the time it arrived - whereas Battlestar Galactica under-delivered significantly on many of its promises. It could've been an outstanding series, but I think that in the end it was just a pretty good one. But then again, I'm notoriously hard on science fiction series!
What do the rest of the BSG fans out there think?
2 comments:
Not that I disagree that the finale was less of a "bang" than I was hoping for, but a few comments:
>>and then... jumping out of there, with no destination pre-programmed into the guidance system?!
--They didn't pre-program the Jump System because if the Galactica were captured, the Cyclons could have followed the jump co-ordinates to the remaining survivors. Plus Since Galactica wasn't expected to be able to do more than 1 more jump, they couldn't plan to jump to an intermediate area before going to the rest of the fleet.
>we never really learned what plan the Cylons had had all along that apparently involved killing off 99.99% of the human population in.
--There are plans for a TV Movie called "The Plan" which is the early part(s) of the series told from the Cylon point of view which should address this.
>how was it that Caprica (# 6) and Gaius were still alive 150,000 years later?
--The ones alive after 150K years were the "angel" versions that appear in Gaius and Caprica's visions that no-one else can see.
Regarding your 3rd point: I totally didn't pick up on that! Yes, that makes sense, even down to how they were dressed. I could quibble slightly with the show's execution of that scene - if you watch it again, as I just did, keep an eye out for the people on the street who move around Caprica and Gaius, rather than through them - but now I can see that's exactly what they were going for. I should've realized that myself.
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