So I guess the lesson is: don’t create intelligent robots? Hard to get terribly worried about that. We have a hard enough time creating intelligent humans. Screw that anyway. I want an anime-inspired, robotic girlfriend. By the way, the robot “girl” from the end was real. I’d link to the story if I could remember where it was. A wee-bit out of my price range for now. Though a cost-analysis between amortized payments for a robot girlfriend compared with that of a real girlfriend may show that . . . Never mind.
It wasn’t Adama shouting out “Noooo!” at the end. Nor was it me. I was saying, “That’s it? Is it over? Is it?” Wingman, D-Mat was there with me and forced to endure the entire two hour and 10 minute ordeal, recording it, while I attended to important matters of state and national security. (God, I loved writing that sentence.) When we were together in the room, it was a steady stream of sarcasm. If you can’t enjoy something, make fun of it. During the last hour, I think we both threw out our necks watching the clock. That needed editing, not an extra 10 minutes. And you know the DVD version is going to be longer.
I will not completely condemn this episode. The only part D-Mat and I both shut up during was that 40 minutes of fanboy-pleasing, sci fi action. Thank you. That was one intense battle, though frankly some of the computer effects looked like they were done with actual models, but badly. The toasters have never looked right in animation. Still, the raptor squadron teleport straight out of the hanger was cool. And if Galactica was never going to open up with her nuclear weapon silos in the series, at least Racetrack got to out with a bang. Sorry, couldn’t resist that. (By the way, whatever happened to Showboat?)
The good times were over all too soon. Nothing smacks of greater originality on this show than a session of gunpoint negotiation. Metatextually speaking, Baltar’s speech was essentially there to explain the producers’ lack of explanation in plotting of the series. “We can’t explain our shoddy story logic. We hope you didn’t notice.” I could live with that, if it had been done better. Nice to see Gaius get a good moment there, anyway.
The opening scene of Adama sitting in an alley wearing his own drunken vomit, seemed like a perfect reflection of the ending of this episode, if not an accurate description of how it was actually written. Class all the way. I could totally see Lorne Greene doing that scene. Kids, don’t do drugs and try to plot a TV show. J. Michael Straczynski didn’t on Babylon 5 and look at how well that turned out. Hell, he lost his main character and virtually had to start the story over, and still made it work. On BSG, they were trying to connect the dots to a picture that wasn’t there.
Where to start? The character flashbacks would have worked, if this were Internet fanfiction, or if they had been doing more of this throughout the series, (like a certain other show does). The character arcs all played out, but did any of the show’s themes? I’m still confused by what this show was trying to say, so I guess not. The biggest failed recurring motif had to be the opera house. On that note, Bear McCreary is a great musican, if only for composing The Shape of Things to Come, but the continual reuse of that theme was only reminding me of times when the show was better.
The ending was rewritten during the writers’ strike. Makes you wonder what the original was. Perhaps some bizarre, psychoanalytical Evangelion-like ending? Something that would cause fan outrage and ensure TV immortality? Instead, we got this rather workman-like functional ending. I was expecting some kind of twist ending. I’m still waiting. By the way, Hera was obviously short for “red herring.” In other words, a distraction that only exists to motivate the characters to action, instead of accomplishing their real objective.
Why was there surprise that everyone in the fleet was okay with going native? The only ones making the decisions were the ones holding all the guns. Now this could actually be a parable for our times. Oh, and thank goodness Helo survived. The poor guy had been nothing but baggage since Season 1. He deserved a happy ending.
Starbuck jumping them to earth should have been the end. Those long good-byes lead to a bunch of clock watching. Some text narrative and still shots would have sufficed. Then go to the present day with that epilogue, if you have to, to make whatever your point was. Ron Moore showing up at the end made me think I was going to be right about my Evangelion ending prediction: that the characters were going to gather around and congratulate him. “I think they already did that during the Frakking Special,” said D-Mat.
Looking back at the series as a whole? I didn’t like the mini-series, except for Richard Gibbs’ spare soundtrack and the CGI. Season 1 was great, tight, well-written, and cool. The opening teaser segment for Kobold’s Last Gleaming Part 1 was the highlight of the whole series for me. After that, it just all went downhill, with maybe a couple of up ticks (The Captain’s Hand [not the abortion subplot] and Downloaded).
When they expanded the number of episodes per season, filler and long, unnecessarily drawn-out storylines consumed the show. Then there was the thinly disguised socio-political statements, that became progressively more cringingly blatant. The mythology, such as it was being created on the fly, destroyed the “reality” they had created for the show and turned the characters into ciphers for advancing the plot. Even Season 1 has been ruined for me in re-watching, knowing what’s in store for them.
Going back to Babylon 5 for a moment, what was that show’s lasting contribution to TV drama? Yeah, not much. What will this version of Battlestar Galactica’s be? That’s unknown for now. The new, upcoming Star Trek film doesn’t seem to take many cues from it. Let’s hope this BSG doesn’t do for sci fi what Watchmen did for superhero comic books. That is, essentially ruin them by making the underlying concept look ridiculous.
Frighteningly, this isn’t the end. The Plan is coming and is going to answer all your dangling questions about the show. Too bad the producers couldn’t pull off that feat during the actual run of the show. Then there’s Caprica. Different enough to not have to worry about direct comparisons. Likely, too different to get most of the current audience to care in the long run. We’ll see.
The best thing about the finale was that I finally got to break out my “Take care of the plants,” line as Adama flew past the agro-ship. Even D-Mat appreciated a little old-school sci fi love for Silent Running.
J.
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