Nicholas says: I’m writing my own end to BSG so I can sleep at night
So, the BSG finale was last friday. It’s taken me this long to say anything… because I am SO HORRIBLY DISAPPOINTED THERE ARE ALMOST NO WORDS.
But that wouldn’t be very me. I ALWAYS have words, right?
Anyway: Spoilers, watch out.
I didn’t get into watching Battlestar Galactica until a few months ago. I liked the miniseries, and there were enough twists & mysteries to get me quite into it. I really liked the character development, for the most part, although my interest in various characters waxed and waned… for the most part, aside from a few filler episodes in season 2 and most of season 3, I really, really enjoyed the show.
Until the finale.
I had MAJOR high hopes for a good wrap-up to the majority of the mysteries. Nothing TOO crazy — don’t over-science it, no midichlorians required. The level of how much you need to explain, and how much just doesn’t matter was something that I thought BSG had done quite well. Case in point: Episode one, season 1 (right after the miniseries.) The fleet is being pursued by cylons… every 33 minutes. And it didn’t matter WHY every 33 minutes. Maybe it took 22 minutes to find the beacon, 10 minutes to restart their FTL drives, and 1 minute to hit the button and jump. Who knows? Didn’t matter. That wasn’t the point of the episode. The point of the episode was to show the sheer exhaustion and the toll on ones health & sanity of the stress of being awake for days on end, having to go through something traumatic and scary and stressful… every 33 minutes.
It was pretty awesome.
Anyway. By the end of the fourth season, I was reasonably hooked. I was looking forward to GOOD explanations: What’s with Starbuck and her pristine viper? How did Gaius know so many crazy things he simply couldn’t have known, even WITHOUT Virtual Six’s help? And what ARE Virtual Six & Virtual Baltar and all the other Virtual beings? Why were the specific changes made to the Last Supper promo? WTF was the point of throwing in a Quantum Singularity in the second to last episode? What’s the deal with the “dead” Cylon, Daniel? [note: according to creators, Daniel was a retcon because the writers couldn't count.] What’s with Starbuck’s father? (If Starbuck is a virtual being herself, how does a virtual being have her own virtual being?) What was the significance of the music — to Starbuck, the final five, AND Hera? Why the flashbacks to pre-war colonies? WHY DID YOU MAKE ME WATCH ADAMA VOMIT IN HIMSELF? What’s with the opera house vision? What’s Adama been pill popping for? … and so on and so forth.
The only answer we really got? “God did it.”
Fuck you, BSG. Yes, I get that religion has been a long running theme of the show, but seriously? That’s it? “God did it”?
Nick & I keep having frustrated conversations. “What about…” “Because of God.” “Oh. But, how did…” “God did it.” “Huh. And…” “God.” “Oh.” “God.” “OKAY!”
About the only way this could possibly have disappointed more is if there was an autistic kid with a snowglobe containing BSG. Or perhaps if they’d simply cut to black in the middle of an otherwise mundane scene full of anticipation.
Although, to be honest, I’m not 100% sure those options WOULD be worse.
I really, really feel like the writers backed themselves into a corner, and had no idea on how to get out… and so they invoked a rather literal deus ex machina, then congratulated each other for being so witty. At the beginning of the show, it really felt like they had a PLAN, and that everything was leading up to this. Somewhere around the third season, it started to really meander and I felt like the plan had vanished… but in the 4th season, I felt like they had a NEW plan, and it was gonna be great.
Now? I feel cheated. There was no plan. They were flying by the seat of their pants. And y’know, that works for a sitcom. It works for a show like Star Trek, where each episode is basically unconnected to the last. It doesn’t work for a character drama with a long-running storyline with so much setup. They threw in a bunch of really awesome mysteries… and the ONLY explanation for any of those mysteries (the ones that they bothered to explain, at least) was “God did it.”
There were good moments. The firefight in the beginning? Awesome. Galactica RAMMING the cylon ship? Fucking COOL. Toaster-on-Toaster action? Hot. Cavil’s last minute Hitler-reenactment? Huh. Odd, but okay. Hera as Mitochondrial Eve: Interesting wrap-up, although so predictable as to be overdone by the time they got to that point.
Important things they didn’t wrap up: There was only one Cavil left? One Simon? Really? So once Cavil ate his gun, that was it? Funny, there are apparently hundreds of Six’s & Eights on the rebel basestar, they’re all over the damn place. I would have expected there to be a bunch of Cavil’s & Simons. That colony must have been awfully lonely with only one Cavil, Boomer, Simon, …er, that guy who’s name I can’t remember, & a lot of toasters.
So, in season 3, the constellations matched the other earth? Funny, I thought those were OUR constellations they were mentioning? Not to mention… 150,000 years ago, those constellations looked pretty different. (Or, how’s this for a convenience factor: What, the constellations from the other earth JUST HAPPENED to match what shows up for us now? Yeah. Sure. Oh look, Romeo killed himself just seconds before Juliet would have woken up on her own. Uh huh.)
Cylons need resurrection technology: Nobody has a damn photocopier? Really? The ONLY place the plans were saved were in the final five? C’mon, they’re machines, you’d think they’d have a better backup program than that.
Sending the ships into the sun to “break the cycle”… and everybody agreed! Yeah. Right. Because humans are SO REASONABLE like that. And explain to me how that was supposed to break the cycle? You’ve got 40,000 people, most of whom don’t have the slightest idea how most of that shit even works. Use it til it breaks down, you’ll still “break the cycle”.
Starbuck. Honestly, I don’t even want to go into how wrong the whole Starbuck wrapup was, but… Harbinger of Death? …how, exactly? Who’s death did she harbinge? They sent the toasters along on their happy way with the last baseship, so it wasn’t the Cylons. Humans & Skinjobs both evolved into us, so it wasn’t them. I’m not sure how any of the major deaths were really traced back to being HER fault, other than the people she shot directly — and she’s not exactly unique in having killed a few people.
Fuck you, BSG. That blew.
I found this comment that summed things up for me: “I finally realized the purpose of the flashback scene where Adama is vomiting on himself in the alley. It was clearly an autobiographical reference to writers and the process they used to develop the plot.”
Naturally I agree with almost everything you said, except the part about how you thought they had a plan.
It was very plain they did not have any plan — or even a seventh-grade mastery of biology — right from episode one:
1. Machines do not evolve.
2. Machines do not successfully interbreed with humans.
3. The Galactica folks had no incentive at all to hunt for Earth.
They (meaning Ron Moore) had simply made storytelling choices designed to create drama, which passed as innovative because of the impressive production and acting. That’s it.
I had to laugh when, in the finale, someone objected to the “astronomical odds” against humans on Earth being able to crossbreed with humans that evolved “over one million light years away” (which btw is at least 900,000 light years outside the Milky Way).
Finally, in the very last episode, they were beginning to get a faint whiff of common sense… and even then they horribly screwed up their math through zero research.
Let us contrast with Star Trek, which was written by people who, whatever their failings, knew how wide the Galaxy is or could at least look it up.
One more thing. Remember the Phantom Edit? The version of Phantom Menace with Jar-Jar edited out, that some fan made and released online?
Phantom Menace : Jar-Jar :: Battlestar Galactica : God
Bring it on, mystery editors of the Net.
Wes, I think you just made my life a little better. :D
I was sort of hoping everybody died. This ending was too sappy.
And yes, disappointing. Starbuck “brought the human race to its end”, but the title doesn’t otherwise make sense. Also, her exit was a big cheesy WTF.
Sigh. Me sad.
BSG had been my favorite show, despite all of the glaring problems with it. As Wes said, the production and acting was the key and it made up for most of the faults.
I started to like it less, however, when it seemed like half of the main cast were now Cylons. The show definitely lost something at that point.
And the finale, while impressive visually, blew pretty hard. It didn’t wrap up anything really, at least not in any satisfying way. You are right that, “God did it” is a pretty lame explanation.
The finale both sucked, AND blowed. for all the reasons you mentioned and more.
My question.. What the fuck was the point? Really…
sooooo disappointed :(
Hey Donna,
My wife directed me to your blog – and, after reading your BSG post – I have to say Thanks. I laughed out loud. I couldn’t agree with you more. Sucked Ass might be a more appropriate phrase to use. Adama vomitting – it was like he was channeling me as I watched the finale.
Cavil’s exit stage left brain – made NO sense at all. His entire raison d’etre was self preservation?
Anyway – thanks for the laughs – I’ll continue to pop in and read your posts.
BTW – I loved your St. Elsewhere Tommy reference – you are a true TV geek.
Cheers
It was good. It just wasn’t perfect and it’s obvious the writers weren’t prepared to end it this soon. Give them a break. One or two plot holes versus the tonnes of tie-ups they did? I’ll take it. All the characters got their end. And that damn prez finally died.