Battlestar Galactica: Final Season (SPOILERS)

Lets face facts peeps, overall this series was FANTASTIC!!! To let a few things like "What is Kara?" get to us isn't gonna change the fact that they did a excellent job remaking this series into, in my opinion, the best show television has seen in the last 10 years. I'm disappointed in a few things too, but if I keep lingering on that stuff then I feel I'm missing the big picture. I think it would've been much worse if they blew-off, say, the whole "Hera is the key to our survival" thing and just made that an after thought. See? It could have been worse!

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Fair enough. But bear in mind that this thread about the final season is now 14 pages long. We have discussed each episode as it aired. That's really all I'm doing here. Discussing it because it's the current episode to discuss.

What I come away with from the entire series will be far different (and better) than what I came away with initially on Friday night from that one episode. And I'm not lingering on it so much as I'm working through it. I'm glad to have different opinions and explanations because that keeps me from feeling gripey for too long over what is probably my favorite TV series of all time.

That's my overall impression of the series. The finale itself ... as I said, still working through some issues. But, better to work them through now than to just brush the show off because my initial reactions about a few things weren't so hot.

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Fair enough

By the by, when one watches the original pilot/movie for the original series, the very first line of the VO at the start of the pilot is:

"Some say life here began out there..."

Indeed.

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Oooh, see! I knew I wanted to start rewatching it sooner rather than later! I think I'll love rewatching it and "getting" so much more than I did the first time through.

The only alternative that has occurred to me to the ending we got is that either Daniel lived and helped Kara, or the Lords of Kobol did. There always had to be some other entity that helped her - she didn't replace herself and then forget she did that. Choosing either of those, IMO, is more obvious and less meaningful than it being a higher power, given the weight of the point about Personal Choice and it's import in how the human (and other?) race evolves. The concept of a higher power has been with us in the landscape of this fiction from the start, and in a beautiful, inclusive, unifying stroke of genius, Moore and company never picked ONE higher power to be the higher power in this universe. Therefore they also never chose one set of definitions of religious terminology, forms of prayer, sets of taboo, etc. Keeping it vague is the only way to appropriately handle the notion of a higher power, since none of us knows exactly what that power is. To attempt to specify that concept would alienate anyone who doesn't share the chosen dogma, thereby undermining the very concept of our all being in this together.

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I'm not sure I agree with your concept that choosing the concepts they did wouldn't alienate anyone (in theory). You imply that they chose nothing, and yet they did. They chose some sort of higher power that does not like to be called God, one that was called the force of nature (which is more like pantheism than deism). So, they did make choices on that score.

Ehhh, not buying this one either. Since I believe they did choose a dogma (albeit a rather slippery one), then there will be tons of people who don't agree with them on that front. I'm one of them. I don't agree with almost anything they posited religiously. BUT, I think your assertion that they would alienate people who didn't agree with a chosen set of beliefs is wrong anyway. Even not agreeing with the belief set put forth, I thoroughly enjoyed the series and have never once griped that it wasn't, well, "Christian" enough or "monotheistic" enough or anything like that.

They've been telling a story -- a story they chose, including the mythologies and god(s) -- and that's been fine with me entirely, since it's been a marvelous, beautifully told story, even if I don't believe in the Lords of Kobol.

Yeah, I think they did make some choices that could certainly irk some. But regardless, most of the problems I and some scattered others have aren't really related to the vagueness of the deity.

For all the talk of this show having a history of metaphysical explanations, they sure felt the need to explain just about everything else. They could have said the Final Five were just different, and left it at that. But they gave them a backstory, explained where they came from, explained why they could reproduce, why they were so old, etc. They felt the need to explain all sorts of things throughout the series. I don't think expecting this to continue is somehow at odds with what the series has been building towards. It's hadd metaphysical themes and influences from the beginning, but it also placed a lot of importance on our discovering (and the show explaining) the history of these beings. Only at the end did it decide to stop. I might bug me more than some others, but I honestly don't see the argument that says they've been doing it this way the whole time.

Anyway, the podcast mentioned earlier came out a few days ago. It's massive; 2 hours and 20 minutes, as it covers all three hours of Daybreak (sans commercials, naturally). I'm about halfway into it. Nothing terribly insightful so far; just a lot of talk about how important characters are, and a bunch of instances where RDM says a certain image just "came to him" and that it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Not terribly reassuring for anyone who didn't love the finale, to say the least.

But, there's another hour or so to go, so we'll see if any insights or explanations crop up. Not holding my breath, though.

All that said, he did discuss some alternate (but ultimately scrapped) plotlines, which are always fun to hear. They were considering having the Final Five split ideologically, with Tigh on the "good" side and Ellen on the "bad," setting up a confrontation between the two. Interesting, no?

Tigh and Ellen were always halfway toward a major confrontation anyway, so that could have easily been a full-blown war among the Five. I liked the way they ended their story arc, though -- with the two of them eyeing each other and their upcoming "retirement" together with perhaps more than a little bit of uncomfortable awkwardness. I think it was appropriate ... and kinda funny.


It sounds as if the podcast then is like a running commentary along with the episode itself, no? If so, then please let us know what is said regarding that Kara blipping off the planet stuff. I'm betting it'll be nothing earth-shattering, but I'd still be curious to hear what Moore and Eick have to add about it.

Yeah, he goes along with the episode itself; tricky to keep them lined up, as you have to hear the dialogue in the background of the podcast, but I can usually get it within a few seconds.

Anyway, even though he goes along with it, and various things on-screen will set him off about one topic or another, he'll still digress a lot and talk at length at things unrelated to what's actually happening. But yeah, most of the interesting/insightful stuff (if it's out there) figures to be in the last 40 minutes. I'll letcha know what he says.

I am still totally over the moon about the finale, and plan on watching it again soon. I already miss the show to pieces! Glad I have all the pieces on DVD so I can watch it whenever I want. Well, not quite all the pieces, I still need this last DVD set.

I just caught the re-run of Daybreak II and I think it hit me harder emotionally than the first time! This time, I wasn't having to process the plot developments, or worry about what was going to happen, and the emotional moments got all my attention. The moments that moved me before did again, just as much, and some that hadn't the first time through did, this time. Laura's death, for one. The other was the Opera House flashbacks, which I found very meaningful this time, and noticed the gorgeous music more.

I like that near the start, when the volunteers are getting into formation, Romo and Hoshi are leaving, and a platoon of Centurions march past, they're lead by a Six. It's a great little callback to the appearance of the Six in the miniseries, at the start of the attack.

I was reminded at the end, in a scene where the camera pans down a line of people marching to a new home, of the colony sent to "Virginia" by Sir Walter Raleigh, who also possibly intermingled with the natives and disappeared into the landscape.

Nim sent me a link to the amazing blog of Bear McCreary, on his adventures in scoring BSG. The entry on the finale is testament to the thoughtfulness and skill that went into his work, and mentions taking suggestions from fans from his blog as inspiration. I found it a great read.

He also has an entry about his 30th birthday party, at which he celebrated finishing work on the series, getting engaged and was presented with a painting by his former employees. The painting features McCreary astride what can only be described as a valiant steed, shielded by his accordian and wielding his mighty baton, in front of a depiction of the first cylon war. Yay, nerd power!!

I listen to the BSG music quite a bit here at work. It is simply astonishing.

Favorite podcast moment - R Moore drops thew F-bomb and yells at his cat.

I can definitely relate.

Loved that. The dude seriously seems to hate those cats.

Still haven't listened to the last hour. Hopefully this week.

Did you make it far enough into the podcast to hear about Moore's creative process in constructing the entire show?

To be honest, I don't even know. He talked about those sorts of things all over in a number of digressions, so I'm not sure which part you're referring to. If it's in the last hour or so, I probably haven't heard it yet.

I think it right around that last one hour mark. You will hear it soon.

WTF! Dude is doing bong hits on the podcast. So is his wife... Hilarious.

Errrrr, sounds like a joint, actually... I take it the rest of this podcast is going to be sporadic at best.

Yes, here he comes with lots of "um, uhhhhhh, um" lol

This reminds me about the small scene with Adama and Roslin smoking a blunt. Hilarious.

Awwww, I liked this podcast. Near the end, Moore gets too upset to talk about some of the scenes, as he is caught up in the moments while also considering the show has come to an end. He is very attached to the characters, it seems. He has to have his wife take over.


A bit about Kara, as well, from moore himself:

TVGuide.com: What exactly is Kara at the end of the series? An angel?
Moore: I think Kara remains an ambiguous figure. Kara lived a mortal life, died and was resurrected to get them to their final destiny. Clearly she was a key player in the events that led to [the fleet's] finding a home. And, I don't know if there's any more to it beyond that. I think you could call her an angel, you could call her a demon, the second coming or the first coming, I guess, chronologically speaking. You can say that she had a certain messiah-like quality, in the classic resurrection story. There's a lot of different ways you can look at it, but the more we talked about it, the more we realized there was more in the ambiguity and mystery of it than there was in trying to give it more definition in the end.

Honestly ... Does it seem to you as if they killed off Kara's character not having a clue what they were going to do about it later? And then this resurrection bit gets tacked on once the uproar of Starbuck's death kicks in for the fans?

I guess I'm curious to know at what point they added on bringing Starbuck back....

And as a writer, I'm still stunned with ambiguous treatments of a character. I just don't get how the writers don't know (or even care to know) as much as possible about a character. It seems backwards to have viewers care more than the writers do.

Still not "getting" it from a writer's perspective.... But then again, I don't write for TV.