I finally got around to watch the Battlestar Galactica finale. Yes, I am more than a week behind. I have avoided most of the discussions about it so I am pretty sure I will add nothing to the debate. But here it is anyway.
Look. I enjoy a good religious sci-fi mashup. Honestly. But that's because with sci-fi you can jump into those ideas and make them concrete. They can still be mysterious but you can make more declaritive statements. BSG was great because it was able to tackle big themes: War (especially in this day and age), Identity, Gray Moral Choices, Sins of the "Father," What is Faith. I suppose this last one is what they ended on, pretty much tossing the rest aside. But all of the "mysteries" they tossd out there in the last two seasons were prety muchexplained away by "It is god's plan... and god's plan is unknowable." Fine. Whatever. I like that theme. I understand it.
But they by making it SO unknowable it just came off as sloppy plotting. What was Hera's true purpose? Why was she delivered to Earth (or "Earth")? Drop her and the rest ofthe fleet on Earth to mix with the primtives? To bring us language? Was that the message? That this was how civiltion gets started? Did her having a cylon mother and cylon father have any affect on us as a culture? What was that effect?
I am totally fine with Baltar's visions being an "angle" and I love the Caprica Six had her own Baltar angel. But why? Same thing with Starbuck's whole thing. Her only purpose was to translate All Round the Wachtower into coordinates? Really? I guess that is my big problem with the final message: They were ALL just tools for an unknowable god so that they could be introduced to Earth... but we're not going to explain why it made any difference.
Science fiction is often called "speculative fiction." They left out the speculation in the finale... after exploring it so well up to that point.
Love was the answer to so much of it? Really? That was why cylons could concieve children by themselves? Because ethey needed to be taught love? That idea was the first one speculated on way back when and they never explored it further. And, again, if that is what humans taught the cylons, what did the cylons teach the humans? That technology is bad?
I enjoyed it. It was well down. But saying "All of this happened for a reason... but we're not going to even attempt to ask what that reason is" is not an ending. "To end the cycle?" No, because at the end Angel Caprica say explains that maybe things won't repeat the same way because it has already repeated so many times. The cycle was never broken, never changed, and yet the writers wanted to be optimistic. Sigh.
The most compelling line of the finale was Angel Baltar's "He hates that name." And it was a throw away.
Russia's The Dead Hand
15 years ago
