Sign in to follow this  
Marek

Battlestar Galactica Final Season Thread

Recommended Posts

Hehehe, well it is staying true to its Mormon mythological/Chariots of the Gods roots!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

OMG SPOILERS

I thought it was cheesy, but they did good with it. Could have been so, so much worse.

At first the god stuff seemed to be heading toward a very anti-atheist cop out, but I thought they moderated it. "It doesn't like that name" was a good touch in the 150,000 years later ending, as was the footage of robots doing more or less anything except fight.

Also, I really liked that all the "true love" stuff was pretty balanced. Tigh/Six baby miscarriage despite talk about love, and the Six/Baltar flashback pointing to the kind of monstrous consequences it can have. It was good to see something set against the horrific, simplistic positivity that pop culture paints around romance. Six turning out to see a Baltar throughout was neat too :)

As for Hera, I thought that was as good a justification as any for her being so important, even though, IMO, the sequence it was revealed in came over as smug.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Having raged above, the interplay between Kara and Lee was electric again. I'd forgotten just how uncomfortably intimate watching those two rub egos against each other was.

Granted it was all in flashback, which only serves to highlight how stiff and isolated those two characters have become. But that worked in terms of character arc and blah blah blah.

Her vanishing into thin air was far too fucking convenient though. So, what... she was a mass hallucination for the whole human race?

More gaping, ugly holes than Galactica itself.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

But god, or whatever it likes to be called, moves in mysterious ways Wrestle!

Maybe this is why the Greeks ended up with the full on Deus Ex Machina: You can't do it small scale without creating large plot holes. :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

SPOILERVILLE

Yeah, the lack of Starbuck explanation was the biggest cop-out for me.

Other unsolved mysteries:

  • The barest snippet about the whole god thing.
  • Only a tiny bit more for Kobol and previous civilisations (how did the whole 13th tribe thing go down?)
  • The Final Five turned out to be a whole lot less special than they were built up to be in season 3 (incongruence even at the end, between their glowing golden visions and them actually knowing fuck all about anything, besides resurrection). What was their special secret knowledge/purpose, besides inventing the skinjobs? What was their connection to the Watchtower song and all the other mystic stuff?
  • Who built the various temples and things encountered during the series, if not the 13th tribe? Who were the previous pantheon, really?
  • Similarly for all the prophecies and stuff. Where'd that prophet go?
  • What did Caville actually do to the missing cylon model?
  • Probably other things forgotten along the way.

Perhaps if the show hadn't been rushed to conclusion, more of these would have been answered. Still, I think they did a pretty decent job, and I actually kind of like the 'let's name this planet after Earth' conclusion.

I'm looking forward to The Plan feature. The Caprica series not so much, it sounds like a soap opera to me. Perhaps it will turn out to be interesting though.

Edited by DanJW

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf5szwz6Qzc&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf5szwz6Qzc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Yeah, agreed. Starbuck seemed like a bit of a cop out, but only because we know that Ron Moore wrote her return before he had figured out what it meant. In the end, though, the characters (almost) all had great endings, with Baltar & Six and Adama & Rosalyn being particularly well done.

The finale made me dislike the entire show more, precisely for this reason: it feels as though Ron Moore was pulling stuff out of his ass as he went along with no real "plan" to it. The text in almost every BSG intro since season one said "the cylons have a plan" -- and what was it exactly? It seems as though they were making things up as they went just as much as Ron Moore.

And I would no have a problem with that if it were sold as an episodic show rather than a vast, sprawling arc. But it wasn't. All the prophecy and "foreshadowing" all seems haphazard and lazy in hindsight. There was no destination for it and, in the end, it just feels like he was trying to clumsily fit new plots around previous prophecies (the whole Hera running off to C&C/temple dream thing was awkward). It's like he wrote himself into a corner. There've been a lot of issues around it this season (the most obvious of which was the whole HotDog/Chief thing). I'm glad this show's over, because it had already jumped the shark.

:tdown:

Also: yes, the colony is destroyed. But weren't there other baseships around? And in other locations in the galaxy? What happens to them? You'd think given 150,000 years they'd have found their way to Earth to exact revenge. :shifty:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also: yes, the colony is destroyed. But weren't there other baseships around? And in other locations in the galaxy? What happens to them? You'd think given 150,000 years they'd have found their way to Earth to exact revenge. :shifty:

I got the impression that after the battle at the Resurrection Hub, there were only two basestars left - one for Caville and one for the rebels. Any non-rebel centurions and raiders were lobotomised so they can't make decisions for themselves, and the skinjobs were pretty much wiped out. The rebel 'redstripe' centurions had made their peace.

But it is interesting to think that there could be a civilisation out there descended from the redstripes.

As for the rest; yeah it is kinda disappointing that there was no grand plan after all.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ironically, Joss Whedon plans arcs seasons in advance, and yet Dollhouse has, up to now, been relatively unspectacular.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Ironically, Joss Whedon plans arcs seasons in advance, and yet Dollhouse has, up to now, been relatively unspectacular.

For Buffy, I could certainly understand that. But Firefly didn't seem to have too many loose endings to me -- even before you consider Serenity.

Anyway, I hope Caprica and The Other Thing aren't great big narrative hoovers. Or that the reason the ending of BSG was so naff was because closing ideas were cannibalised for the new shows.

Thinking more about the ending, it was so circular as to make the whole thing moot anyway. Like none of it mattered or changed anything at all. I can understand how that happened, from BSG's point of view, but I feel like I've had sand kicked in my face. :finger:

Edited by Wrestlevania
Shitty typing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't know why, but I can't feel that way about it. Sure, the angels thing is really cheesy, but Starbuck disappearing was a good dramatic moment, and the lack of explanation of "god" or whatever is probably a fairly sensible decision. The existence of that higher power creates all kind of plot holes regardless of how powerful or involved it is. The prophecy, etc. always seemed ridiculous to me and I never expected a reasonable explanation for it.

Maybe I just have a much higher tolerance for ambiguity, but I probably would have of hated if they'd peeled back the curtain and gone: "Look, here's what's god in our world! There it is! We're showing it to you!".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think Chuck Jordan over at Spectre Collie summed it up well, saying :

It was a satisfying conclusion, but not a satisfying resolution.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I loved the final scene of Adama on Roslin's burial site, but was rather stumped at the following scene. Did Caprica and Baltar survive 150.000 years, or just Caprica, who'd then date someone looking exactly like him? Who was this 'god' and why doesn't he like to be called that way?

I thought the featuring of robots in the final scene was pretty ominous, almost like a Jon Stewart 'Here we go agai-haiiiin!' credits roll.

Overall, pretty neat, even if I found a few things missing. Besides what has been mentioned above, the Baltar/6 visions turned out to be a huge disappointment. 'You were here to save the child'. No way. Didn't mind the missing link thing much though, but I dislike how it turned out like 'this is our real past!' instead of being totally fantasy.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Judging by the identical costumes they were the "angel" Baltar and Six seen by the flesh and blood ones 150,000 years ago. It really is a hobbled Deus Ex Machina.

The robots didn't seem ominous at all to me, given that we've only seen cylon robots wage war and the ones in the closing scenes were shown doing everything but.

I liked that they got to the earth they wanted to find, then mostly went separate ways. I think that showed a good understanding of people, rather than the hackneyed social ideals we like to assume of them and tend to shove into the end of stories.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this