Author Topic: Galactica Series Finale?  (Read 548 times)

chrono eric

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Galactica Series Finale?
« on: March 24, 2009, 03:52:48 pm »
*******WARNING!!! NERD SPOILERS AHEAD*******


So I just now watched the series finale for Battlestar Galactica. I've heard a lot of people complaining about it, and although it did disappoint me - it didn't disappoint me nearly as much as it did others. For one of the best sci-fi shows I've ever seen, and definitely one of the best dramas on television right now, I thought the finale was somewhat disappointing. Actually I thought that the entire last season was haphazardly thrown together in an attempt to tie up miscellaneous plots and loose ends. The first couple episodes of this last season were horribly anticlimactic. It sped up greatly during the mutiny plot but then trailed off again.

I suppose one of my main complaints with the final episode would be that politics played such a huge role in the series, with a prevailing theme being the differences between the colonial ships and the political climate of the fleet. But then once they find Earth II or whatever they just abandon all of their technology and their entire fleet to live like cavemen upon the decision of the two Adamas? Really? No one in the 30,000 some odd survivors stood up and said "screw you man, I like technology?". Granted, it was technology that completely screwed them over and nearly caused their extinction, but you'd think there would be a bit of political discontent involving that decision right?

And the Kara Thrace thing, that irritated the fuck out of me. They built it up so much during the last two seasons. Who the hell is Kara Thrace? Is she a cylon or not? How did she return from the dead? Why did her father teach her the cylon song as a child? Despite the heavy religious theme throughout the series, I really did not think they would boil it down to "Kara's an angel, God dunnit yuh-huh". Especially not after Gaius Baltar's crazy ass told her he thought she was. Then, as if it was a giant "uhhh.....we really don't know how to wrap this story up" she just straight up disappears mid-sentence while talking to Lee Adama? And Lee is not at all shocked by this, and just goes "Oh well I guess she was an angel after all that's pretty fucked up yuh-huh". God works in mysteeeerious ways.

That said I did think it was pretty cool in the final episode how all the religious prophecy came together and the cylon song was the coordinates that led to the new earth. And the battle scenes were pretty kickass too. Hugely entertaining.


But I think it would have been better had they spent a couple more episodes tying up loose ends instead of killing off the less-important characters one by one. After they found Earth for the first time it just began to seriously lag. Granted, it makes sense that everyone would have been all "uhh...wtf do we do now?" but it really felt as if they were stretching for new plot instead of tying up old ones.

But who knows, maybe I'm just a little biased. What did everyone else think?
« Last Edit: March 24, 2009, 03:55:34 pm by chrono eric »

Daniel Krispin

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Re: Galactica Series Finale?
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2009, 09:10:19 pm »
I thought it was perfectly handled. They could have gone and made it all super dramatic and intense, or highly emotional... but none of that. They ended with a mood that I would describe as a sigh. That, I think, is perfect. After all the drama of all these seasons, to end it as they did winds it down perfectly.

SPOILERS











Personally, I think they handled the vast majority of things perfectly. Baltar for one... is one of the most impressive endings to a character I've ever seen. There's so much they could have done to be 'cool', that what they did is just... incredible. Moreso how it ties into the main theme of cyclical time inherent in the series. For all that he's learned and done and suffered, in the end, with a tear, he just says 'well, I do know something about farming...' For everything that happened, in the end, he's going to farm, just like his father did. Time repeats. How wonderfully that sums it up! And what a touching moment without useless melodrama. It was so simple and powerful it overawed me. As for the rest, I have no complaints. Yes, Kara's departure was surprising (not least because I was certain that she was the daughter of one of the 7's - the Daniels - that had escaped Cavil's destruction of them... it seemed evident that her father, the musician/artist, was the artist that was the model 7.) As for the song, though, recall it's not the Cylon song, per say, but part of the larger picture and divine plan, and always has been, just like the maelstrom was. The Five knew the song because Anders wrote it (as he says), but Anders... seems always to have been a bit more in touch with the universal plan. That was always his goal, you see? He talks about that a few times. So he wrote the song, and it was, in a way, a prophecy itself. So we can't call it the 'Cylon' song, per say.

Anyway, I think the whole of it was perfectly handled. Why were there no dissenters? They were too tired. Even in the 30,000. There have been too many rebellions, too much dissent. I don't think anyone had the energy anymore.

The main thing, I think, is just how pefectly they handled their main themes, and didn't shirk from them. The way that they made use of the cycle (the 'all this has been done before...') was nearer a work of literature than any show or even movie tends to be able. It can be seen not just in the overall theme, but in individual characters, such as Baltar, as I mentioned. It was a sublime ending, in no way a disappointment. What more could have been done? Anything more... would have tainted the subtlety.

But I'd like to say that this ending, the general idea of it, was my first thought on first seeing the series. With their use of both mono and polytheism, references to the Greek and Roman gods... I was thinking it might well end in the past, and set the stage for all future human development.

chrono eric

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Re: Galactica Series Finale?
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2009, 10:37:24 pm »
Ah yeah Baltar's character was handled perfectly. I was extremely pleased about that. However:

It was a sublime ending, in no way a disappointment. What more could have been done? Anything more... would have tainted the subtlety.

Gonna have to disagree with you here. I was only a little disappointed, and I was mainly disappointed with the way they handled Kara's character to tell you the truth. It definitely could have been done better. I thought for all the buildup of "now you will finally find out the truth" and how pretty much the last few seasons completely revolved around her and how she was leading them to earth or leading them to their doom, to just *poof* her out of existence was a little bit too much of a "sigh" to use your words. And I too figured she had some relation to the 7 cyclon. That would have been a much better plotline than touched by an angel, heh. Of course, that wouldn't have explained how the hell she came back to life after all since she wouldn't have been able to resurrect. I guess I had convinced myself that she was half-cylon or a model that none of the others knew about for some reason.

Lord J Esq

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Re: Galactica Series Finale?
« Reply #3 on: March 25, 2009, 09:02:28 am »
Spoilers. But that's obvious.





The best thing about the finale is that they tied up the plot completely. I don't like it at all when writers try to play it cool by leaving entire parts of their plotlines unfinished at the end, for the sake of “unanswered questions.” That's not how that works. Plotlines should always be finished, and in this regard BSG did very well.

The worst thing about the finale is that they got Starbuck's ending all wrong. In the context of her character arc, it didn't make a lot of sense. Dubious direction storywise, terrible execution dramatically. For what we ended up getting out of her, I think Ron Moore's focus was much too Starbuck-heavy these four years.

Baltar's ending was the best of all the characters'. It was an excellent conclusion to everything his character had been though.

However: It is either a credit to Moore's courage or (more likely) a sign of his negligence that Baltar and Caprica Six, the two people most directly responsible for destroying civilization (human and cylon alike) end up getting to live in paradise together on Earth. I never forgot how Six casually broke the baby's neck in the miniseries, and I never forgot how unconcerned she seemed throughout the run of the series about what she had done (not to the baby but to humanity). She was clearly repainted as a sympathetic character in the third and fourth seasons, but I never could sympathize with her. To a lesser extent, Baltar also got off too easily. He was slime; he finally did redeem himself in the end, but I found it hard to accept that people could be so blasé about his past wrongdoings. It's not that I don't accept that people can't be rehabilitated, or that they shouldn't be able to have a fresh start. I simply think these two never did the legwork to earn it. I know that life isn't fair, so I'm not complaining that they got away with their wrongs...just that it seems unrealistic.

Adama's ending was goofy. It makes no sense that he would permanently leave his son behind. Everyone else was okay. I'm glad they didn't kill off Helo; when it looked like he was done for, I was thinking that not only would it be such a cliché, but also that killing off him or Athena would have meant that the series had ended with not a single intact family remaining.

Given that half the episode was a denouement, I also would have liked to see what became of the few remaining bit characters that hadn't been killed off. Moore made a big mistake by killing off most of the supporting cast this season, and he blew it again by leaving the rest of them hanging with this finale.

I have two other big gripes about the ending: First of all, it is completely unrealistic that everyone in the fleet would have agreed to go native. I could write a great deal more about that, but that's the bottom line. It was totally illegitimate for Apolla to have to convince no one other than his dad.

Second of all, the finale was way too preachy, especially when Moore pushed his civilization-is-evil theme harder than usual in the last half-hour or so.

One mostly positive aspect of the ending, in stark contrast to the series as a whole, was its focus on interpersonal relationships. BSG always seemed uninterested in interpersonal relationships. The few that were present never got the development they needed. Writers these days seem lost when it comes to telling stories that don't have an urgent external conflict driving them forward. We'd have cared about these characters more if there had been less soap-opera melodrama and more characterization. At least the finale gave some attention to those dynamics.

A side gripe: The “maleness” of BSG's point of view was always hanging in the air, spoiling the view. There were not many females in the main and supporting casts, and most of them were killed by the end of the series. Among those female characters who were important to the story, their importance was primarily in terms of their relationships with males. Worst of all, BSG's paucity of interpersonal relationships hit females disproportionately hard: In the entire four years, there was only one instance of a strong female relationship (Kendra Shaw and Admiral Cain in the sideshow “Razor”). There's something called the “Bechdel test,” named after the person who created it back in the '80s, which serves as a rough measure of the male-centricity of a story. The “test” is that there must be more than two female characters, who talk to each other, about something other than a male. That sounds like it should be a low hurdle, but BSG still failed—and failed hard. The result is that, by the finale, the story felt heavily imbalanced: male writers telling a male story about male characters. BSG was a step forward in creating a setting where females and males were equal, but the creators themselves still had to labor under their own biases, and it spilled into their show. I'm not surprised that they never found that elusive female audience.

I was right about Earth. I noticed during the “Earth” episodes that they never showed a picture of the planet's continental geography. I knew that couldn't be a coincidence, because the shape of the continents is the one—and only—piece of “definitive” proof in a story like that one as to the authenticity of Earth. I hadn't anticipated, however, that BSG took place in our distant past—even though that deduction was more obvious.

I was right about Galactica itself: Moore had always taken care to show the accumulation of damage to Galactica's hull as the series carried on. When those first splits in the hull showed up, I realized that the “dying leader” was the Galactica itself and not President Roslin, and that the Galactica would be destroyed or scuttled once they found Earth. (Alternatively, I was prepared for a cynical ending as well, where humanity was destroyed except possibly for one or two people.)

The drama of the finale was pretty good in spots. For example, the images of Adama and Tigh on the phone with the ship under attack were very effective at conveying the action. The resolution of the opera house mystery, and Baltar's Big Moment thereafter, was also compelling. And the idea that Six and Baltar's entire purpose had been to keep the kid from taking a bullet after four years seems delicious. However, generally speaking, the finale's drama was lukewarm. Here's the worst of it: For Galactica to have won that battle was frankly impossible. Once again, the heroes triumph against overwhelming odds and save the day! Hah. I am very Not Impressed with yet another appearance of that miserable cliché.

All in all, given what we've gotten from BSG over its four seasons, the finale was very good in relative terms, and okay in absolute ones. Considering how much I paid to watch it ($0.00), I'm going to stick my thumb up in the air and smile.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Galactica Series Finale?
« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2009, 03:42:22 pm »
I'm going to stick my thumb up in the air and smile.

Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

Daniel Krispin

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Re: Galactica Series Finale?
« Reply #5 on: March 25, 2009, 05:09:27 pm »
I'm going to stick my thumb up in the air and smile.

Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

Egad! I think he does!

Delta Dragon

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Re: Galactica Series Finale?
« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2009, 06:06:32 pm »
I just finished the first season so if I ever get that far it's gonna be a while. 

Boo the Gentleman Caller

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Re: Galactica Series Finale?
« Reply #7 on: March 25, 2009, 07:46:53 pm »
I've been wanting to see this show for so long... I've heard nothing but good things about it.

Maybe it's time.

Lord J Esq

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Re: Galactica Series Finale?
« Reply #8 on: March 26, 2009, 12:58:43 pm »
That's not quite what I was going for, but hey...