Last night, we geeks ended a collective four-year adventure through the stars. Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica ended its run. And what a journey it has been.
There is a lot to be said about Daybreak, the final episode, and, as a hardcore, old-school fan of BSG since the Dirk Benedict days, I am still unsure how I feel about it.
Let’s try anyway, shall we?
MAJOR SPOILERS AT 12 O’CLOCK
What Pete Liked
I liked the attack on the Cylon Colony and the prep before. Notice I said “liked” not “really liked” or “OMG I think I had a nerdgasm!” Hoshi getting the Admiral pins made me smile. The battle itself was well done, although I really expected something more akin to the epic space battles we got in the first season’s episodes. We barely got to see the Vipers in action and the whole thing felt too short, too easy. And, once again, we are left asking why the frak does the best Colonial pilot they’ve got, Starbuck, go in with the Marines, something we’d seen before in Razor and Sacrifice (and also left me scratching my head that time.)
The Cylon on Cylon action was epic. I loved to see the old Centurions get in the action as well. The combined human/Centurion army gave me goosebumps. There is a fantastic shot of an all out melee between old school Centurions and the newer models that made me giggle like a schoolgirl. I am getting the giggles just thinking about it.
I also really enjoyed most of the “sendoff scenes.” Most of them were very well done, and very emotional. I understood why Tyrol wanted to be left alone. I undestood why Lee wanted to go back to basics, even though I still don’t get his godaweful hairdo. I’d like to imagine that Adama lived out his days (be them a few or a lot) content and alone with all the memories of the ones he loved the most. The sendoff that stands out for me, being a fan of the original series, was the scene where Adama does the final flyby and sends his beloved Galactica, literally, into the sunset. The use of the original series main theme, with a slow, sad tempo, made my geek eyes all watery and my nose started to sniffle and everything. It was a beautifully done scene.
You can stop laughing now.
And that Moore cameo right at the end? Instant classic!
I saw the whole “our Earth is a different Earth” thing coming a mile away. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. In fact, I loved that it all connected to the original series premise that “life here began out there.” I loved the idea that those heroes we saw for four years were our heroes, our ancestors. The concept that it’s their religion that we copied, and not the other way around, is fascinating to me.
Overall, I think Moore and his troupe of writers did a good job in bringing an end to most of the loose threads. The whole Opera House mystery, for example, was, writingwise, well tied up, even though the Final Five standing there looking like a space version of the Mod Squad while the ship was being blown to bits was a bit silly. But kudos to Moore for making a real effort to live up to what he’d set up before. There was no cheap “Oh, yeah, Yoda didn’t actually train Obi-Wan” crap pulled on us here. All in all, I enjoyed the episode…
What Pete Has Issues With
…but that doesn’t mean I won’t whine about stuff that bothered me. Let’s start with the little stuff and move slowly to the big stuff, ok? First, the episode was uneven. It began with a bang, but it was continually interrupted by flashback scenes that seemed out of place. Who cares that Lee almost boinked Kara with Zac innocently snoozing in front of them? I want to see more Cylon on Cylon action dammit!
The battle, which we were all expecting to be the most epic battle ever, was somewhat underwhelming and short, which is ok and I didn’t really mind. What did bother me was that then Moore went all Return of the King on us and gave us twelve hundred different endings. To be fair, there was a lot to wrap up and I am not sure if the pacing could have been speeded up while still doing justice to all the characters we needed to say goodbye too.
Speaking of goodbyes, wasn’t Cavil’s final hoorah really sucky? I loved Cavil, he was a really good bad guy (especially since Dean Stockwell is suck a fantastic actor.) I think he deserved more than to be shot like a dog. He deserved to, at least, go down with his ship and get sucked into the black hole in a dramatic scene. I wanted him to have his own Khan moment, if you will.
And on the topic of villians, I fully expected Baltar to either go out in a blaze of glory or do something really heroic to redeem himself. After all, the guy almost made humanity go kaput twice. I really don’t think saving a kid and picking up a gun redeems a guy whose hands are drenched in the blood of billions. But I guess that’s just me.
Now that we got the minor things out of the way, let’s get into what I have big issues with: the deux ex machina. The whole “god” thing bothered the crap out of me. One of the things that sucked me into the BSG universe was Moore’s own concept of naturalistic science fiction. That is, a science fiction that strives to become more realistic by jettisoning some of the typical conventions of the genre like the technobabble and the seemlingly-out-of-nowhere-last-minute miracles. Moore himself once said, “We will eschew the usual stories about parallel universes, time-travel, mind-control, evil twins, God-like powers and all the other clichés of the genre.”
Then, what is the whole “angel” thing but the biggest piece of technobbable and God powers you’ve seen in science fiction since Roddenberry gave us Q? And don’t get me started on Kara pulling a Batman on Lee. Through it’s four-year run, BSG morphed from a hard science fiction show to a show that embraced philosophy and metaphysics. It was done so slowly, most of us didn’t realize it until the end. And I don’t really mind the change, but I really wanted a logical explanation to everything we’d experienced. I really wanted us to understand why Kara was already dead, why Baltar was always seeing Head Six, why did they all seem to project themselves into the Opera House and why were there humans on Earth already. Instead we got a “yeah, God did it,” got shown the door, and were expected to swallow it whole. I think that was the only thing that left me unsatisfied.
In Conclusion
Moore did a good job wrapping the show up in a mostly satisfying manner. If I had to rank it with my favorite science fiction television endings, I’d place it in the top five, somewhere after Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s All Good Things…, the first half of Deep Space Nine‘s What You Leave Behind (didn’t much care for the second half…) and the fantastic Quantum Leap finale.
The episode had its problems, mostly with pacing, but it was a solid sendoff. Even though I some issues with the introduction of “God did it!” at the end, I fully understand that it was Moore’s story to tell and it was the way he wanted to tell it, so I respect the ending and him as a writer for that. BSG deserved a satisfying ending, and in all, Moore delivered. It might have not been what I expected and wanted, but I walk away from the show content and satisfied.
Well done, Mr. Moore. Thank you for one of the best science fiction shows ever made and for sharing with us this spectacular adventure for four years. We geeks salute you.
Being the resident Battlestar Galactica fanboys here at GeekFeed, Rick, Rafa and I have decided to compile a list of some of our favorite BSG moments as our final BSG post. Even though the whole series was full of fantastic scenes, awesome plots and incredible surprises, these moments stand out to us for many different reasons. These are, in no particular order: