Battlestar Galactica Comes To an End 852
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.
Re:Five minutes too long (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Agreed. I wish that they would have kept the suspended disbelief unexplained, much like the force was before metacloriates (blame firefox for not having a star-wars enabled spell checker). The god thing was a major cop-out for those of us that don't believe in magic.
BBH
Two changes that could've been made (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Disappointed in the ending? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Battlestar Galactica (Score:5, Insightful)
PS: You are right about Firefly, though.
Re:Five minutes too long (Score:2, Insightful)
This has all happened before... (Score:3, Insightful)
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..."
Re:it rocked (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The ending in a nutshell... (Score:1, Insightful)
God did it
Re:it rocked (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Five minutes too long (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. The scene with Adama on the hill was such a lovely coda to a series that had been playing with concepts of death, rebirth, and change for all four of its seasons. But then came those tacky five minutes which were made even worse with the inclusion of stock footage of those oh-so-threatening Japanese robots.
So, the moral of BSG is that I'm supposed to be afraid of my Roomba?
The hokey spiritualism also irritated me, but it seems like said hokey spiritualism is now a prerequisite for most televised SF (cf. Lost, Heroes). The networks seem to think the masses need a healthy serving of God with their spaceships and time travel or else they might change the channel.
Still, the first hour of the was as good as anything the series has ever done. And I liked how the original series' theme music was incorporated into the scene of the fleet heading for the sun. And Olmos should get an Emmy nod for breathing life into a character that could easily have turned into self-parody in the hands of a lesser actor.
Re:Battlestar Galactica (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
More than 2.4 million people (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Great 4.5 Year Show, Weak Ending (Score:4, Insightful)
"about the characters"
I found it rather frustrating sitting through all the backstory stuff, like the drunk driving accident and boy toy one nighter causing Laura to join a campaign -- rather dull and not really that important at this stage of the game.
Re:Battlestar Galactica (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Clarke's Third Law (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
No tech? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:it rocked (Score:5, Insightful)
excellent ending
No, it was a mess. Deus ex machina is the easy way out.
Re:Five minutes too long (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, and I got the impression that the show's God (since "it doesn't like to be called that" as Angel Six said) falls into that sufficiently advanced category. Perhaps an ascended survivor of a much earlier cycle of death and rebirth, who still takes interest in the process.
Re:Two changes that could've been made (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Less talk and more subtlety. This means very little or no explicit dialog, no in-your-face pictures of dancing robots
The extreme spoon feeding of the plot was annoying and insulting. It was also beneath the show.
When Starbuck was dialing the jump address, we really did not need all the flashes. I would have been fine with one flash to remind some where the music notes came from, but not a minutes worth.
Also, the Boomer flashback was even more unnecessary.
Not always (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Dissenting opinion: Jumped the shark then drowned (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Dartboard Plot Development (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:Clarke's Third Law (Score:3, Insightful)
Bleah (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Re:Two changes that could've been made (Score:5, Insightful)
I hated the ending. The unilateral decision to get rid of all technology for everybody was both absurd, short-sighted, and just plain stupid. Why not give people a choice at least? And why the hell would the humans decide to live like cavemen on a strange planet without at least medical technology? There are probably viruses, bacteria, and parasites that would wipe out the colonials. So are we to believe that simple non-life threatening infections now all of a sudden become deadly because of the basic lack of antibiotics?
And what about food? With farming and all what happens during a drought? Hell, what about simple things like books to read, pencils and pens to write with? The whole premise that the colonials all, all off a sudden decide to become essentially Amish after living with technology all their lives is just catastrophically asinine. Fuck, why not at least not destroy the ships in orbit, leave one Raptor on Earth so that the different settlements can be checked in on from time-to-time. Hell, what happened to the sense of wonder and awe of the colonials in that why wouldn't they at least search for other inhabitable planets just in case Earth like gets hit by a comet or asteroid or some other natural disaster befalls Earth and the Colonials need to get the hell outta there.
Ug, what an unbelievably crappy ass implausible ending to an otherwise awesome series... Am I the only one that feels like this???
Yes, always. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I would think that some would go back to Caprica (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Disappointed in the ending? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Battlestar Galactica (Score:1, Insightful)
.. huh?
The flashbacks were what made everything else in the finale resonate. Sure, we've watched these characters for four years, but you can forget a large part of who they are in that long a time. The flashbacks remind you of their personalities and history and relationships and how they've changed (or not changed) since then, as they go their separate ways.
So very important.
Re:Two changes that could've been made (Score:5, Insightful)
There are probably viruses, bacteria, and parasites that would wipe out the colonials.
Totally agree, moving beyond the silliness of the colonials abandoning the technology that kept them alive for all those years... This was a perfect opportunity for the writers to let us know this is why settling on earth without Hera would have ended in disaster. It's like they forgot the episode where her blood cured cancer? It could have been subtle too:
Whoever:"Will we adapt to this planets diseases?"
(Pan to Hera on the field)
The Doctor:"I think we'll be allright"
Ok, I suck at writing, but you get my drift.
Re:Great 4.5 Year Show, Weak Ending (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and also, the role that Hera plays that makes her so important is a little bit strange to me. To have her be the genetic Eve of our race kind of puts a strange importance on her. What does it mean-- being half cylon gives her the superpower of having lots of sex with various different men, having diverse offspring, I guess.
I guess I'm really asking, what does her being half-cylon half-human have to do with anything? Couldn't you make the argument that Athena is the actual genetic Eve? Is Hera actually important?
Re:Harbinger of Death? (Score:4, Insightful)
'Death' doesn't always mean the end of life, but sometimes it means a new beginning. The hybrids never spoke literally to begin with.
Re:Two changes that could've been made (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it rocked (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re:it rocked (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The end of the human race (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Disappointed in the ending? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, in this case, "those who don't remember a TV show are doomed to re-enact it?"
The same anti-technology crap that Ron Moore changed BSG into in the last couple seasons is the same old stuff sf has been giving us since the original Star Trek, or Forbidden Planet. As a theme, it's completely, utterly washed out-- not interesting. The worst of the cliches.
People like you for some reason suck it up like a Hoover, when it's all based on 1950s-esque atom bomb fear. You've seen it a million times before. Can we move on to something else in sf, please!?
Re:Wonder if it got any better (Score:2, Insightful)
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'll never understand people like you (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:it rocked (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:No tech? (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't opt to become cavemen, they opted to become pastoralists, akin to Quakers. With their knowledge they could easily recreate a relatively stable and safe pre-industrial civilization--they kept maps and a few raptors, and things like binoculars. They weren't planning on abandoning language, they were planning on teaching the locals to speak.
Keep in mind that their technological civilization was at its ragged end. The ships were falling apart--they planned to cannibalize Galactica to keep other ships running. And after five years living a cramped, always-near-death-from-technology life, I imagine a quiet, pastoral life seemed a lot more appealing to them than it would to you or I.
And at bottom was the awareness that their technologically empowered lifestyle kept leading to the same cycle of destructive war that catapulted them back there anyway. The idea was to give themselves another chance at the cycle, to hopefully mature spiritually this time.
The Cylons Had a Plan ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... Too bad Ron Moore didn't. And it shows!
Re:Okay, but very inconsistent and unsatisfying (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No tech? (Score:4, Insightful)
With no technological infrastructure to maintain them, those ships would have fallen apart and become useless within a decade or so. I think a lot of people don't realize how much of the technological infrastructure that was "thrown away" required a large technological civilization to maintain it.
Re:subtlety schmutlety (Score:4, Insightful)
Serious question: what the hell for? What do you gain from subtlety?
The world around us is subtle, shades of grey, not black and white. Lack of subtlety implies lack of understanding or, worse, wilful ignorance. Never good when you're trying to suspend disbelief as a viewer.
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
Please, I'd like an example so that we know what you're talking about, because this sounds like bullshit demagogy otherwise - 'a cop-out so it can be mass-sold', WTF? Since when has subtlety made things more mainstream? How is it more prevalent than the manichaeism so popular over the last decade in 'the civilised world' as our politicians like to call it?
Art and entertainment are not solely there to 'add value' (whatever that means), they are a mode of communication, and a method of provoking emotions and thoughts in the viewer. Adding subtlety makes characters and situations portrayed more convincing, engaging and involving.
Battlestar Galactica had some promising starting assumptions and some poetic and moving moments, but having watched the first few series, it rarely rose above the level of soap opera (set in space), precisely because the script-writers felt it necessary to telegraph lots of the plot again and again, to introduce meaningless sub-plots (note needless complication is not subtlety) that were never tied up, and generally to beat the viewer around the head with what was happening, rather than leaving some things mysterious, and allowing ideas and characters room to breathe.
It was best when really pushing conflicts inherent in our society like freedom vs rights, the religious vs the secular in public life and military force vs political force. Sometimes that was let down by poor scripting, and sometimes by slightly hammy plot-lines. The best thing about it in my opinion was the oh-so-camp Gaius Baltar, who knew what the score was and played up to the hammy scripts he was handed. At times it did deal with genuinely interesting ideas in a genuinely challenging manner (terrorism for one), and yet that was betrayed by the insistence on cheap emotional shots (But you're a beautiful woman! But you're a cylon! But you're my father!), torture and sex, just to spice it up a little.
It had the feel of being written by huge teams of writers (i.e. more than two), and that was a shame, as some material was really promising, and I love thoughtful sci-fi.
Re:it rocked (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Two changes that could've been made (Score:3, Insightful)
I think they hit the end of their rope. They have no resources, no fuel, no food. They have no choice but to abandon their ships and live on the surface. On top of that, they're all emotionally devastated.
That's what I got out of the ending. That most characters were so emotionally devastated by the last four years that they wanted to crawl in a hole and die. If I could go live in a quiet cabin in the mountains after that, I probably would.
Re:All will be revealed? (Score:2, Insightful)
Easy, after giving up all their technology they subsequently all died of starvation, infection, disease, territory battle with the stronger, faster more adapted natives within two weeks. Meaning Kara actually was the harbinger of death because she brought everyone to Earth 2.0 where they all got themselves killed. And god didn't just keep calling her that to mess with her.
Although Hera being mitochondrial Eve doesn't actually mean no one else mated, just that her bloodline eventually mated with everyone.
Yes, always-A God by any other name. (Score:3, Insightful)
"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?
Re:Not always (Score:5, Insightful)
I was dissapointed in the ending but this Slashdot discussion has made me understand it completely. And yes, God was completely necessary:
Re:Two changes that could've been made (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree 100% that spoon feeding is beneath the show and insulting. Like when they showed Earth at the end of Season 3, when Starbuck returns.
But I didn't see this as that kind of spoon feeding. I *did* think that the fast forward scene was sloppy though. The robots didn't really move anything forward, and being mostly cutesy, were badly out of place at the end of this show.
Starbuck's jump coordinates flashbacks could have been trimmed down a bit, and I don't think we'd have missed much.
But Boomer's flashback was important. Not for it's content, but for it's context. Boomer has been painted alternatingly (as many characters have) as the villain, and a victim of her circumstances / someone who made some bad choices. In the lead-up to her returning Hera to the Colonials, they paint her almost entirely as a villain. A redeemed villain with her last actions, but a villain none the less. You're probably thinking mostly of her sins - shooting Adama, kidnapping Hera, etc.
Her real feelings for the Chief, her horror at waking up soaking wet in the arms locker before the water tank explodes, those feelings are so long ago, and so far forgotten in the evolution of the character, that the flashback brings you down immediately from the "bitch deserved it" reaction of Athena finally getting her revenge.
Re:it rocked (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:it rocked (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:it rocked (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:it rocked (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Two changes that could've been made (Score:3, Insightful)
You are presuming that their spaceships could magically create everything they needed to survive. The show was making it very clear that their ships were falling apart, they were very short on supplies, and were having difficulties keeping the basics going.
Re:it rocked (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Two changes that could've been made (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the alternative was a short, dirty, uncomfortable, powerless existence inside a tin can where you play jump roulette.
The common civilian spent their lives huddled on cots, and served as slaves to the technology that kept them alive. There would be a great sense of freedom to make your own life apart from the caste of fixing computers, processing fuel, and eating algae all day.
No, Hera is just the only one with a direct maternal linage. Other human/human-cylon bloodlines could exist
Re:Two changes that could've been made (Score:5, Insightful)
Take the smartest most adept computer engineer in the world, put him/her out in the woods with a set of clothes, a tent, and a pocket knife. Call me when he returns with a functioning computer.
Take the smartest most adept metalurgical expert, put him/her out in the woods with a set of clothes, a tent, a pocket knife, and one friend. Call me when they manage to find enough ore, which they can dig out in sufficient quantity with sticks, to blast into metal which they can then work into a simple thing like a spoon.
This could go on and on. The fact is, they needed the remnants to get a start on what they'd need to learn to survive. Throwing it away means most won't survive. In essence, it was a stupid and suicidal ending. It's no different than if they found earth and then decided to commit suicide by staying on the ships and flying into the sun. Either ending is just ridiculous contempt for the viewers. At least most viewers.
Re:it rocked (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh come on, that quip was obviously to create ambiguity so they wouldn't isolate all the fans, particularly the more secular ones.
Re:Battlestar Galactica (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not always (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
It was a cop out from the beginning.
There is not good reason for a deity who can bring back the dead, and create vipers out of thin air. To have not provided guidance to both sides so as to have avoided killing 20 billion people.
I consider the whole cylons/mankind as divine pawns the worst aspect of the story.
Re:it rocked (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yes, always. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's kind of the point. God gave people the ability to make decisions, and our use of that ability is not under his control. He may have a vision for where he wants us to go, but he absolutely doesn't bring us there, to the contrary he tests/tempts/misleads at every turn. I think he acts only against our total self-annihilation (he did create us), but he never forces anyone. Introduction of God, I don't think it's a cop out in this instance, because:
First, the original BSG pulled the God card way early, and way more deliberately. It's always been part of the story. The cylons used to be led by Lucifer! I have been waiting for the God card to get pulled for quite some time, but it became clear only in the past few episodes that it would be played at the very end. I think the use of the God card in the re-imagined series is better and less preachy than the original. I like this God better, even if it's a blatant rip of the Tolkien God.
Second, it's been alluded to for several seasons that there's something more going on than cylons v. humans. They could have pulled a "God did it" or they could have pulled "Aliens did it", but they had to answer the plot element. I won't lie and say I believe they always had a clear idea of whether this force had any strong motivation, but it's clear that there was something out there, something not subject to the random "humanity" that we saw throughout.
Finally, they made it quite clear that the choices made were entirely in the hands of the humans. God, his agents, etc. were fanning the flames perhaps, but all human elements had free will. This was most blantantly demonstrated with Baltar and his head Six, but it's been there all along with every other character. This is the "humanity" element the show was primarily about. God is out there ensuring that we carry on, reacting, but not forcing.
I think his lack of control is demonstrated in the last 5 minutes of the show very well. Our favorite angels/demons are walking through present day Earth, with a dialog that runs parallel to "All Along the Watchtower", and as the cold wind starts to blow, we see our new Cylons. I think that's a perfect ending to the show and ties most of the themes together nicely.
I personally think that the meta-story ended pretty well. I think the finale was executed poorly though (except as I said above, for the last 5 minutes which I thought was awesome). The opera house scene was especially poorly executed and not, in my opinion, the way they wanted to demonstrate the concept they were aiming for. I think rather than "cop out", many are upset that this particular scene turned out to be so anti-climactic, and so ham-fistedly written. It was supposed to be huge, it came across very awkward and out of character for Baltar, Caprica Six and particularly Cavil.
Re:Shades of mysogeny and role reversal (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but I don't see any bias against any sex in this show. Not even in sex appeal with the way women keep oogling that towel shot of Apollo.
Re:Battlestar Galactica (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
That is "Intelligent Design". (Score:3, Insightful)
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'".
Re:Not always (Score:3, Insightful)
"The story - in its entirety - was about something divine moving mankind/cylonkind like pawns."
It was about, _something_ manipulating humans/cylons like pawns but it didn't have to be "God". There are other ways they could have explained it to the audience even if the characters ended up thinking it was a divine presence. One example would be to go back even further (to the "original" Kobol conflict or before) and say that a small group of people, cylons, or hybrids survived and developed advanced tech like true immortality and quantum tech that allowed them to predict future events. This would allow them to manipulate their decendents in a god-like fation without the nebulous cop-out of telling the audience that it was, in fact, "God".
"People have destinies in this show, real ones. All throughout."
No, not really. Read the interviews with the Producers (like the one linked to above). They were, literally, making it up as they went along. It was an intentional choice. This is the exact opposite of shows like Babylon 5 where the writer had a full story fleshed out before the show started filming.
"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."
That's exactly what they did. Try reading the above linked interview where they even talk about alternate endings they discussed. Those discussions happened toward the end of the series.
Re:All will be revealed? (Score:3, Insightful)
I found myself asking each of these questions. The only one I can answer satisfactorily is that the other cylons just died out. They couldn't resurrect and they can't breed. They didn't keep any Bob Dylan on hand, so they didn't know the phone number for New Earth and even if they happened on it, the lack of technology would make the planet appear uninteresting.
Re:it rocked (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:it rocked (Score:3, Insightful)
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*).