1921

What the hell? Why didn’t he do that stuff instead of The Battle Hitch-hiker’s Guide To Galactica?

1922

I must agree this sounds awesomer than what we got.

1923

And why did we get B-Ark instead?

1924

Writers block? Lack of money for CGI? Playing it safe?

1925

Helen would have remembered the layout of the Colony. Besides, Boomer made it easier by bringing Hera to them.

All five of the final five lived on the colony for years during the armistice, so they would all know the layout quite well. During the briefing, Adama says that the Five are pretty certain that they know where Cavil will be keeping Hera. So the strike teams knew exactly where they were going ahead of time.

Right. They even alluded to that directly, a few episodes back (when Kara was outed as an angel, maybe?) when someone explains that if angels were to appear, they would appear to be someone you know, someone close to you who you knew that you could trust.

See, here’s why I don’t have a problem with the mystical aspects of the story. I know a lot of people are chafing about Starbuck coming back from the dead like Gandalf or whatever, and about Head Six and Head Baltar being angels, and just basically bitching about the show getting its mysticism in your sci-fi like some sort of philosophical Reeses Peanut Butter Cup. But the funny thing is that the show has actually established rational precedents for all of these events. Baltar having visions of Head Six and Roslin having visions of the Opera House is not really much different than, say, Cylon projection. And Starbuck returning from the dead? Well, the Cylons had resurrection technology, right?

As much as the show has always been hammering home the theme of recurring cycles (“All this has happened before”), I’ve long felt that an underlying implication in the story is that humans were themselves the creation of some other race, perhaps much in the same way that the humanoid Cylons were created by humans, and then went on to create their own mechanical Cylons on Earth, and then later created the new humanoid Cylons for the Centurions at the colonies. Some of those humanoid Cylons saw the Final Five almost as gods living among them (like that scene where a dying Sharon thanks Tigh for creating her), which sounds a lot like Kobol, where humans supposedly lived alongside the Lords of Kobol.

Perhaps that was true–literally. I think a lot of things in the show point towards it–especially that throwaway line by Head Baltar at the end–“You know that it doesn’t like to be called [God],” which reminded me a lot of Tigh’s scene with the dying Sharon from just an episode or two prior to that, and the way that the Sharon’s reverence made Tigh uncomfortable.

So the whole god aspect needn’t have any sort of magical component–especially since most of the stuff that we see “god” do isn’t even beyond the scope of other technologies we see in the show. God may simply be a member (or multiple members) of a previous advanced creator race, trying to guide the fortunes of its children. So while I wasn’t disappointed that Starbuck and Head Baltar and Six were actually agents of a higher power, I was disappointed that they never explained any more than that. Maybe they wanted to keep that implication subtle, I dunno.

1926

I listened to Moore’s explanation of the original plan for the last season and thought it sounded terrible – it basically boiled the reasoning behind the final battle down to a marital spat between Tigh and Ellen.

1927

Herman Melville remembered her, and she has an entire coffee chain dedicated to her. I think she’s done pretty well for herself.

1928

Kinda like there should occasionally be a shot of Jack Bauer stepping from behind a rock zipping up his fly ;p

1929

Grace Park answers some questions.

1930

I watched the finale last night. I agree with some of the criticisms here but overall I enjoyed it and it was a fairly good way to end the series on the whole.

Things what were great:

– The first hour or so, where it was mostly space battle and assault teams exchanging gun fire was great and the bit where Grace Park killed Grace Park was brilliant.

– The acting was spot on for the most part, particularly Roslin; I loved the way her flashbacks emphasised how frail she was in the present and it actually seemed as though Mary McDonnell was somehow thinner in the present than she was in the past.

– Baltar’s little moment at the end where he remembers his father was lovely. It was like the magnitude of what he had helped to perpetrate on the 12 colonies finally hit him on an emotional level and not just on a self-preservation level.

– Foxy Roslin was Foxy.

Things that were sort of a bit crap but didn’t really ruin it:

– The idea of reverting to a rural society was fine in concept but awful in execution, especially the way you could almost see the little lightbulb go on in Lee’s head when it occurred to him. It really wouldn’t have killed them to show a brief scene wherein they debate the merits of the idea with the ship captains and dilute it from ‘no tech’ to ‘some tech’.

– The robot montage at the end was goofy and really didn’t fit the tone of the program. I’m actually flabbergasted that they did the whole ‘150,000’ years later thing. I mean, the audience isn’t dumb, we could have guessed that that was more or less where things where going and with some minor work the exchange between Head-Six and -Baltar could have taken place in the primordial era.

– I know it seems kinda stupid to say this but I could totally see the CGI. Obviously you’ve always been able to see the CGI but there were points in the finale where it just jumped out at you. I’m thinking mainly about the abuse of specular highlights on the Colony and on almost all of the tight shots of cannons. I think it was the first time that I’ve ever thought that the CGI in BSG was bad - most of the time I’m aware that I’m watching CGI but I amn’t consciously thinking ‘ooh look, CGI’.

– Starbuck saying ‘there must be some kinda way out of here’ sort of annoyed me because it was obviously meant to be referencing ‘All Along the Watchtower’ but I’m pretty sure that the actual lyric is simply ‘there must be some way out of here’. Unfortunately the only version I have is the Fratelli’s cover so I’m not sure whether or not they got it wrong or Starbuck did. It’s a (really) minor nitpick anyway.

Other points:

– Adama going off in the Raptor with Roslin didn’t bother me in the least and I didn’t think it was out of character for him at all. How many times has Adama resigned or retired over the course of the entire four series? He was all but retired at the very start, when the Galactica was being re-outfitted as a museum, he was on the brink of retirement in the finale flashbacks, he handed his commission over to Tigh so he could go looking for Roslin way back in season one IIRC, then he gave it to Lee (I think), Hoshi and so on. And then there was the whole “let’s build a cabin” thing with Roslin on New Caprica. Adama’s entire arc has seen him nearly but not quite retiring on many occasions and he finally did it in the finale. My only complaint is that Adama sitting by Roslin’s grave should have been the final shot of the series.

– I wasn’t bothered that Starbuck didn’t get ‘closure’ on what she was because really it wasn’t her character that didn’t get closure, it was the audience. And you know what? Sometimes ambiguity is fine. Plus, Anders tells her he’ll see her on the other side (although she doesn’t actually hear him, I think) and she seems to know that during her conversation with Lee.

1931

Good grief, that’s long.

1932

I thought it was pretty obvious what Starbuck was. Like Head Six and Head Baltar, she was an “angel.” Basically, all the religious crap that Baltar spouted actually turned out to be true. When she died, she really did die. What came back was somewhat of a super-equivalent to the Head people – except everyone could see her and interact with her. I’m pretty sure she was intended to mimic the messiah and the whole Jesus resurrection legend – and when she had led her people to salvation, she knew her “mission from God,” or whatever" was complete. And then she was gone.

1933

It was a carbon copy of Gandalf the White - fall and return (in white ship!). Except it made no sense because she (and her angelic ship) led them to the dead Earth, but that’s one of the downfalls of the show just constantly winging it and trying to tie the pieces together afterwards.

1934

It surprises me not at all that Starbuck goes for Hendrix over Dylan.

1935

Ambiguity is NOT fine when you consistently lead the audience to believe that an answer is coming. If Moore had no intention of ever revealing WTF was going on with Starbuck, he shouldn’t have put her crashed Viper on Earth, and he shouldn’t have had Starbuck continually screaming “WHAT AM I?!”.

1936

I’m usually fine with ambiguity but the Starbuck resolve did rub me in the wrong way quite a bit. I think it is simply the thing that really pushed the mystical flimflam religious stuff over the edge of the cliff for me. Head people were already pushing it but not quite over the line.

And while I am an agnostic at best, I’m usually not bothered with mystical flimflam in fiction as I was with BSG’s mystical flimflam. I guess this is at least in part because it was so internally inconsistent – unsure if they wanted to go with the greek inspired prophecy shit or what. In the end I’m not sure I could even describe what they decided to go with there, all of the pseudo-religious stuff was a bit of a big blobby mess, IMO, if you consider it over the entire run of the show.

One could argue that it was inconsistent on purpose because they were showing the switch of a people to a monotheistic culture, but I would argue that one should shut the fuck up because that’s too big of a topic to do as a subplot on a 4 season tv show so they should have just plotted things out better to begin with.

I’m not sorry I stuck with BSG (though there were a few stretches where I had to let it backlog on the DVR so I could watch multiple episodes in single sittings). I mean, it never started just straight up sucking donkey ass the way Heroes did, but I do feel the show never lived up to what it could have been, mostly because they, in fact, clearly did not really “have a plan”.

1937

Yeah, this was probably the biggest disappointment for me, over the course of the whole series. The idea that the Cylons “have a plan” was one of the core underpinnings of the story, and they spent all sorts of time in the first few seasons making the Cylons do odd things for mysterious reasons that really got you wondering just how much of the stuff going on was really part of their elaborate head game, orchestrated for reasons that would eventually be revealed. But ultimately you find out that the Cylons motivations are a lot simpler than you expected–basic vengeance, with a side order of wanting to find a way to reproduce genetically. The latter is more interesting than the former, but it doesn’t really qualify as “having a plan.” It’s more like having a goal.

1938

No it wasn’t, it was a marketing schtick, similar to “save the cheerleader, save the world.” I would go rifle through some of the earlier pages of the thread where Moore admits that it was all a creation of the marketing team, but I’m sure you can go back there and look if you want.

1939

I’m aware that Moore has said that line was just something the marketing people added and he never liked it but that doesn’t change the fact that they were very obviously completely winging this series as they went along but writing it as if there were some grand plan. I’m not one of those people that thinks shows like this and Lost and whatever have to be plotted out in full prior to ever airing, but I do think BSG was clearly so unplanned in the large that the story falls apart a bit if you start to think about the entire run of the series as one whole long arc. Lost was in danger of falling into the same trap there in the middle, but I think they’ve done a great job of hunkering down and focusing on a unified overall plot now that it has a specific end date, even though the threads working towards that end will be about 3 seasons worth of airtime. BSG got a similar type of end date situation (though more due to the threat of cancellation than a decision of the creators) and I don’t think they made very good use of it. As one concrete example of what I mean, the whole flap over “Daniel” would never have happened if they didn’t slop their way through all of that final five/cylon models shit to the point where fans had to invent meaning for it to not seem like a rookie mistake.

1940

the whole flap over “Daniel”

That’s actually pretty cruel/awesome.

A few lines of dialog in a show: tens of thousands of posts on message boards throughout the world: “oh my god, what does this mean? This is going to be an incredible reveal, but I’ll tell you: Daniel is… the lawyer’s dog!!1ONE!!”.

I can laugh my ass off reading Televisionwithoutpity. After every episode, you got hundreds of posts in the vein of “oh my frakking god!! That was awwwwwwwwwsomeeeeeee!!!1!!! I can’t think right now! Later, about seven-ish, when I can think again, I’ll post what I think!” “So say we all”. “K, later dudes.” “BTW, Helo is hot!”

I’ll miss that comedy!