Battlestar Galactica

[Lum]

And why was Hera so important again? Nothing was explained about how her DNA was anymore important than any other surviving human.

She was, as the final scene explicitly stated, fairly important. In other words, humanity of today is a cylon-human hybrid.

No, I saw that part. I kept asking "Why are the old skool Cylons even here?" No explanation.

Other then that it was the Cylon homeworld for the original Cylons, who were featured in Razor, you mean. They didn't beat you over the head with it but it was fairly obvious, they were the pre-Final Five ones.

[KallDrexx]

I'm going with Haemish on this one.

The ending (as in the whole episode) was a giant fucking cop-out and ridiculous.

[Lum]

Given that Ron Moore is on the record as absolutely HATING Star Trek: Voyager episodes that did that, and how in many ways BSG is very consciously the anti-Voyager, I'd say the chances are nil.

My call:

* huge battle which ends with the Cylons boarding Galactica (no idea why, maybe they are threatening to suicide detonate nukes or something). (This is all in the previews.) Lots of people die, including probably Baltar doing something selfless while carrying Hera with Caprica-Six (the Opera House scene).
* the Cavil-cylons mutiny when they discover they are essentially fighting the Final Five and Cavil's various escapades come to light.
* The battle is finally won win Galactica rams the hell out of the Colony, with only Adama and Roslin on the bridge.
* Starbuck is visited by Head-Daniel who decodes the Song as a star chart to a new planet.
* After Starbuck gives the coordinates to the fleet, Head-Daniel takes the now-knows-she-is-Head-Starbuck home, with some mumbojumbo mystical explanation of who the Head-people are that pisses everyone off.
* The new planet is revealed to be our Earth.
* Fast forward to modern day New York, with a reveal of first Earth and then New York identical to the reveal of Caprica and then Caprica City at the start of the finale, with a Six wandering Manhattan and the text scroll "All this has happened before..."

Oh, hai there!  I missed some details but essentially it was as I called (and where it divulged from what I put was awesome - Cavil's exit was brilliant and who would have thought the most emotionally honest reaction at the end would come from Gaius frakkin' Baltar?)

As for it being a "cop out"... come on. It's based on Mormon mythology, it's not like it was some kind of secret where the show was going. I would have been more disappointed if they had some technobabble explanation for the Head-people and Starbuck. The amount of explanation given for what Starbuck was was fine - she was there because she had to be, when she didn't, she wasn't. Anything else would either have been too mystical-preachy for the character or too technobabbly ridiculous.

Plus, come on, the entire first hour was The Blasters of Navarone. If you hated the mystical-preachy stuff, just pretend the series ended when Racetrack killed all the Cylons and Starbuck jumped them home.

[Ratman_tf]

If you dig the metaphysical shit, Hera and the Colonists were a second chance for humanity on Earth. The science and technology and stuff were just window dressing.
If you're not into the metaphysical... and had an issue with angels and whatnot, why the fuck were you still watching the show after the opera house? I could see the writing on the wall, and I'm not the sharpest crayon in the box.

[Fordel]

If you're not into the metaphysical... and had an issue with angels and whatnot, why the fuck were you still watching the show after the opera house? I could see the writing on the wall, and I'm not the sharpest crayon in the box.

To see Centurions kicking ass and watch the Galactica make things go Boom.

That's, about, it. 

[Tale]

I have faith in them pulling off a good two-hour finale.

They exceeded my already high expectations. It was a work of art.

It will work much better as a collection. People who watch the whole series together in the future will be wondering WTF we were moaning about, because for them it will be a matter of a few hours' patience followed by an awesome ending.

Thanks to the people who inhabited this thread for the quality BSG discussion.

[Surlyboi]

Cried at the end. But then I'm a big pussy at heart. 

I'm gonna miss the writing on this show.

[Merusk]

I was less than happy with the whole wrap-up taking over 45 mins, but the first hour and 15 was awesome.  Overall I think I enjoyed it, but I stopped caring about the characters long enough ago I didn't care what happened to them, and just wanted to see where it was going to end-up. 

Calling the dead pilot's nukes a "Deus Ex" in a story about machines where God is central is pretty damned amusing.  Of course it's a Deus Ex Machina.  It's a joke!

  Seeing the oldschool cylons. 

[Kirth]

I'm happy with how this wrapped up. some unanswered questions but that's ok, some mystery isn't a bad thing. I wonder if we will get to find out how they wanted to end it originally, from what I understand during or after the writers strike RDM changed how things were going to end.

[Numtini]

FWIW I don't buy any of the angel stuff. That's Baltar's spin on it. The only thing that the episode really said was that yes, chip 6 and chip baltar were really real, not that they were really angels.

This is not the men in white from the first series. Yes, they could be angels and Baltar thinks so. They could also be three people laying on couches in the Nebuchadnezzar.

[Jayce]

This is not the men in white from the first series. Yes, they could be angels and Baltar thinks so. They could also be three people laying on couches in the Nebuchadnezzar.

That's one thing I liked about the ending.  If you want to believe something besides Baltar's take, there's room for that.

[KallDrexx]

Ok so I guess I"m the only one who didn't see the religious backend of the whole series or didn't care (I don't even know mormon mythology). 

Taking the show as a fun sci-fi the ending was crap and a last minute cop-out, and 4.5 was a waste.  Guess that show's me for enjoying a show for face value.

[Lum]

I'm happy with how this wrapped up. some unanswered questions but that's ok, some mystery isn't a bad thing. I wonder if we will get to find out how they wanted to end it originally, from what I understand during or after the writers strike RDM changed how things were going to end.

This was the intended ending (well, as intended as they intended - they did a lot of seat-of-the-pants writing). They had as a contingency during the writer's strike ending the series when Galactica found nuked Earth.

[Quinton]

You know, I liked it.  It was a lot better than I was expecting and it worked for me well enough.  I think they could have tightened stuff up in the middle more (season 3 in particular had some terrible crap, bookended by some of the best episodes of the series), and having re-watched the first season, I wish they had kept that kind of pacing going.

But over all, I don't feel cheated.  I like that they had some kind of closure that wasn't exactly "they lived happily ever after" and that they didn't actually try to explain *everything* in some crazy last minute exposition overload. 

[Jayce]

Taking the show as a fun sci-fi the ending was crap and a last minute cop-out, and 4.5 was a waste.  Guess that show's me for enjoying a show for face value.

The way I see it, if big ship explosions pew pew pew is what you want, there are lots of other crap on TV you can watch.  For example, everything else on SciFi.

BSG was always a character drama.  In one podcast RDM said that the network was pushing him for less character development, more shooty stuff.  He consistently pushed back and kept the vision of it being primarily the story of the characters.  Lots of people like that.  If you don't, I have no idea why you even watched it outside of the few action-based episodes (Scar, 33 and a few others).

In the interest of not being a total obnoxious fanboi (just mostly), I think there were a lot of missteps.  I am not at all satisfied with where Apollo's story went.  I think he was primarily an action guy and putting him in a suit was a disservice.  Romo Lampkin's story should have been done after the Baltar trial.  His only good role was as a foil for the regular characters, but I think they like the actor enough to keep bringing him back randomly.  Making him president was just indulgence.

There are others, but I think the broad strokes hang together well enough to call it a success.  If you like that sort of thing.

[Tannhauser]

Post-series interview with Ron Moore.  http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/03/battlestar_galactica_ronald_d.html

[KallDrexx]

The way I see it, if big ship explosions pew pew pew is what you want, there are lots of other crap on TV you can watch.  For example, everything else on SciFi.

BSG was always a character drama. 

That's why I have loved the series up until the last episode of 4.0, because of the drama not because of the pew pew.  Honestly I didn't like the pew pew in the final episode because it felt rushed and I didn't feel like it was paced well.

The fact is that even with ending how they ended it, I think they could have led up to it a lot better and the way it appeared to me was "shit we need a way to end this" with 2 episodes to go.   Even 3-4 episodes they kept upping the mystery about Kara and asking more questions, and to me making her disappear all of a sudden to allude that she was an angel frankly just seems like a copout because the writers did not want to form a real reason for everything that has happened to her.

Furthermore, the giving up technology crap annoys me.  All throughout the series they protrayed the whole fleet as humans with real thoughts.  I can see the military people giving up all technology figuring what they had been through, but you take 35 thousand people and say "we're taking all of our tech and destroying it in the sun" and there's no way you are going to get them all to agree with that without mutiny, especially with the cylon centurions being able to keep their base star.  It doesn't make sense from a character point of view and how they set everyone up throughout the whole series. 

I still don't understand the whole point of Herra, as in the end she was just a bargaining chip used to hold off the cylon fleet, which ultimately was futile.  Furthermore, if the raptors were equipped with some insanely powerful missiles (which are like 500 times more powerful than anything hte cylons were shooting at galactica, wtf?)

They could have done a lot more interesting things with the final cylon colony, and they could have set things up for a much more explained, interesting, and logical ending, even with them keeping the whole finding our earth. 

Most series use the whole (at least) season to lead up to the final ending, but the ending felt so detached even from the last two episodes, let alone 4.5, that I feel extremely disappointed and feel that it was just a cop-out so they could proclaim to have a holier than thou message in it, when the same message could have been conveyed if everything was planned out well.

[cironian]

You know, I actually like a good Deus Ex Machina as part of a story. But just layering miracle over miracle in such a short span of time is not good.

Seriously, this is how you bean an idea into the ground:
 - Head Six and Baltar: Miracle. Okay. Fair enough.
 - Hera's whole mysterious knowledge: Miracle, too. Huh.
 - Opera house scene: Another miracle. And this one didn't even have a point to it. (Maybe I missed something)
 - Dead pilot shooting nukes at exactly the right time: Guess what...
 - Starbuck's return: Yay! Another frakking miracle. Not like we hadn't already had enough by then.

That said, the pew-pew was nice enough to compensate for the worst parts. Still, Moore dropping most of those story arcs that I was most interested in seriously turned me off anything he might produce in the future.

[March]

Well, I certainly give them credit for ending the series; so few TV shows/writers respect their audience enough to write the most important part of their series, the ending.

That said, I think it is pretty apparent that TV Writer University should add some classes: Ending Your Series 101.

I'll not nitpick, but revealing the answers to 5-years of mystery building by flipping your cards only to reveal a poorly explained new mystery is weak at best.

Ok, a couple of nits to pick:
With 38 thousand human survivors in what way is Hera remotely like some sort of Eve?  My guess is she died of exposure in the first winter (see #2 below).

I'm indifferent to the luddite ending from an aesthetic perspective... but seriously, having the new tribes walk into the sunset with nothing more than a duffle bag and a change of clothes is beyond stupid.  Launch the technology into space if you want, but at least show them building a village and a forge.  Introducing primitive metallurgy to the stone-men would connect an obvious dot, and provide the bare minimum for surviving the next month, much less starting a new civilization.

Starbuck...making her disappear is cool for about the 1 second it takes to say, uh wut?  That would be a bad ending even if we had some building suspicion that she was... well, what?  What behaves like that?  Chips/angels don't leave behind charred bodies and necrotic blood... I'll hang-up an listen for a tortured sci-theology answer.

edit: had to add necrotic blood 'cause its cool, and was the lynchpin on Baltar's big out-the-starbuck speech.

[Jain Zar]

I really liked it overall, though the angels going POOF and everyone going caveman was a bit iffy. 
I'm just assuming they kept enough books, tools, and medicines to get themselves started in their new slightly better than caveman lives.

[Nevermore]

I liked it.  Yeah, there were some flaws in the story but they explained Kara and the Head Duo, even if exactly what they are is open to a certain amount of interpretation.  Regardless of whether they were angels or super advanced chips/scientists, the point is they were higher forces guiding humanity to a new beginning.  Sure, we pretty much guessed that already but it needed to be addressed at the end, and it was.  So I'm happy.

[Numtini]

I didn't necessarily see them going caveman, at least not immediately. Watching the society assimilate into the earth tribes and later fall would make a great book, but wasn't going to wrap a tv series. Baltar was already talking about starting farming which from a quick Wikipedia search is 130,000 years ahead of the game. Actually, it would make a great series of books.

I don't get the question about Hera, she's the mitochondrial Eve. Gotta be someone, why not her. she's as good a candidate as any other woman on the planet. Moreso if you take into account the chip people watching over the species and wanting the cycle to end. I'm sorry if this is insulting, but you know that while obviously not a human-cylon hybrid, there was such a person?

[Ratman_tf]

They didn't give up their technology. Adama was quite pleased to zip around in his Raptor, and they showed them offloading supplies and shit. What they abandoned was their society.

I give the series a C+. Some really good stuff and some really awful stuff, but in the end it felt like a drunk guy in a bar taking a half hour to tell a joke. You keep wondering when he's going to stop digressing and fucking around and get to the punchline so you can go to the bathroom.

YMMV.

[Ookii]

My first though after seeing the end was that the entire series was just a cautionary tale about our advancement in robotics.

I personally wish they left it a little more open ended in the end, as opposed to wrapping every single little thing up so nicely.

[Arthur_Parker]

Disappointed that the physical form of Starbuck wasn't fully explained, God (or whatever) influencing the players via visions I can buy into, free will and all that, God recreating a pre-programmed dead player including spaceship, not so much, too easy to rig the game.  Overall though, very well done.

[Xuri]

My initial response when the episode ended was just sitting here staring at the screen and feeling.... satisfied. Apart from saying frakking well done concerning the way Gaius Baltar turned out, I'll leave the analyzing to the rest of you, I just know that I enjoyed pretty much every minute of this finale.

[Furiously]

Well between this and the matrix and terminator... We really should stop making robots of any kind....

[Oban]

I thought it was very good.
 

[Quinton]

Thought running through my head at the tail of the episode:  Galactica is the 'B' Ark of the Colonies.

Also, I personally like that there was some ambiguity at the end.  Explaining too much can ruin a story as easily as not explaining anything.

Some of my favorite bits:
"Now I may be mad, but that doesn't mean I'm not right." - Baltar
"I don't mean to rush you but you ARE keeping two civilizations waiting" - Cavill
"Really? You think? Please continue stating the perfectly obvious. it fills me with confidence." - Cavill
"YOU see them?!" - Baltar & Caprica-Six
"Could we *not* tell her the plan?" - Starbuck, about Boomer

[Comstar]

It wasn't the perfect ending, but it was a good ending to a great TV Series, a Very Good SF series and a new benchmark in science-fiction and character drama.  Could have used a full 5th season to give more depth to the end, but I suspect they left some mysteries for further movies (aka, THE PLAN coming later this year!). 

[Soln]

1. it was a show and an ending so much better than anything we normally get from TV
2. it's over
3. I appreciate that they tried and kept it good enough for as along as they did
4. I have very low expectations for TV, so it was fine

[Ratman_tf]

Well between this and the matrix and terminator... We really should stop making robots of any kind....

The Centurions got away and led happy lives until they return in 2007 looking for the allspark...

I stole that from another message board. Don't tell anyone.

[HaemishM]

Character dramas only work if the characters are consistent. Which none of them were... they were always in service to the plot, and the plot was muddled and ridiculous. The fact that it was ripped straight from Mormon mtyhology IS LAZY AS FUCK. It's fine if you use the mythology to actually examine it and see if maybe it's bullshit or if something's there, but to just horribly disguise your story as the story of Joseph fucking Smith is lazy. People complain about Deux Ex Machina endings, and this was ALL THAT. Cavil's ending was a copout. The only part of that scene that made sense was Tyrol choking Tory when he found out she killed his wife.

As for Hera's importance, great, she turned out to be Mitochondrial Eve. But why was SHE in particular important for that? No answer. Beyond the opera house hallucination (which wasn't explained at all - where did this hallucination come from and why an opera house?) and the one time they used her blood to save Roslin, why couldn't it have been any female progeny from the survivors? The best I can come up with is the storyteller needed an excuse to put people in the colony scene - meaning the character herself was unimportant.

I'm just going to look at BSG through the Matrix Filter. The series really ended after the New Caprica rescue episode, because nothing else after that was worth the effort. Unfortunately, it looks like I'll have to actually watch The Plan movie to find out the fucking answers to the shit the writer promised would be revealed.

[HaemishM]

Furthermore, the giving up technology crap annoys me.  All throughout the series they protrayed the whole fleet as humans with real thoughts.  I can see the military people giving up all technology figuring what they had been through, but you take 35 thousand people and say "we're taking all of our tech and destroying it in the sun" and there's no way you are going to get them all to agree with that without mutiny, especially with the cylon centurions being able to keep their base star.  It doesn't make sense from a character point of view and how they set everyone up throughout the whole series. 

Also this. THIS TIMES TEN. We have less than 1000 people on this board, and we can't all agree which fucking browser to use, much less make the collective decision to give up everything about our previous lives that we've ever had to live like a goddamn savage.

[Nevermore]

I imagine a large number of those people didn't really have a choice.