I would like to start by letting you know that I have a particularly special relationship with Battlestar Galactica. Right after I was introduced to the show I experienced a particularly shocking and life altering medical diagnosis. When I came out of the (robo)hospital, I found myself with lots of recovery time and little to do. Fortunately, I had watched the first episode (I didn’t watch the miniseries ‘til years later), and a friend loaned me the complete first season. And then I got a hold of the 2nd season. This ragtag group of humans kept me sane as the worst days of recovery passed by. The themes of the show sucked me in, and despite some less-than-stellar chunks, it remained consistently smarter and better done than any other show on TV at the time. Battlestar Galactica nursed me back to health. As such, it will always hold a very, very special place next to my heart.
But BSG could never quite overcome its limitations, which grew exponentially as the series went on and reached a head in the post-New Caprica episodes. The show lost its way and never recovered. It got mired in a shoot-first-figure-it-out-later mindset which only grew with time, leading us to the series finale. To here. To now.
The BSG finale was a failure. I’m putting it out there. On the internet, many have argued about what they did and did not like, but on a critical level I have to tell you: Ron Moore let us down. Which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the finale -- I’ll get to that later -- but as a culmination of the themes and characters the show has dealt with for four seasons, it was a let down.
Because at its core, BSG was never really about robots or spaceships or other worlds and galaxies or faster-than-light travel. It was a show about people. About humans and humanity. The decisions we make when there are no good decisions. Just bad and worse. And in that way, BSG let us down.
To begin with, there was a point when BSG decided that whatever logic it was operating on would no longer apply -- that the problems the writers had created were too great, too “out-there” to resolve in a realistic-within-the-BSG-universe way. I will tell you, dear reader, that the episode where we discover that Ellen is the final cylon, and she is rebirthed on Cavill’s Basestar was very nearly the last episode I ever watched. It was clear in this episode that the writers had lost their way, and all attempts to cover this up earlier had succeeded in making them look merely misdirected and confused. In fact, I’d argue that the whole bit with the reveal of the Final Five was when the show really began to come apart. Characters we already know? Who all happened to survive the Cylon Armageddon in the Colonies? Who all happened to be in positions of power in the remaining fleet? I should have known BSG had lost its way then, but I kept on trucking, hoping for a real resolution that made sense, that was cohesive, that felt right.
But the Ellen episode (and the Earth-based Final Five flashbacks) drove a stake straight through that hope by giving us all sorts of crap about the Cylon colony on Earth, about the Final Five’s lives before their own personal hell, before being resurrected again and traveling across the universe and...
This is why people hate science fiction. A disconnect from humanity. BSG stopped being great when it stopped being about humanity and started being about mythology. There’s no emotional connection to mythology -- one of the things LOST has managed to do is keep its characters at the forefront while making the mythology a strong background. BSG lost (excuse me) its way when it put the mythology first and the characters second.
So enough with the grousing, let’s get into the finale.
The action was tight. I enjoyed it, it was a good time, and the Centurion-on-Centurion shit was dope, dawg. I do wish we had seen the battle in the CIC that we missed, but the element of action was great. I wish the moment where Caprica and Baltar both realized they were seeing head people had been less... silly. Generally, I think Baltar was misused, and the big reveal to what the shit the fucking Opera House dreams were about was stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. Because it essentially meant nothing at all -- there was no change of dynamic, no big reveal. It was just “Oh, Caprica and Baltar find Hera and bring her to the CIC. Because Roslin is dumb and should not be in charge of children, and Athena is a bad parent.” What a let down after seasons and seaons for visions.
Then we get into more resurrection shit, and we get the great moment where Tyrol (CHIEF) strangles Tory for being a dumb bitch and killing Cally and all sorts of other terrible crap. This leads Cavill to assume (naturally, of course, what else would you assume when your enemies start killing each other? Oh. Wait...) that he’s been betrayed, Adama and co. cap the rest of the bad cylons, Cavill blows his brains out (“FRAK ME!”) and God intervenes to destroy the Bad-Cylon Colony, Starbuck inputs the corresponding digits from the goddamned Dylan song, and hey, look, they’re on Earth, like, our Earth, not some burnt out crusty Earth. Way to be with that, Ron Moore. That’s like me taking my friend Chase hostage and threatening to shoot him unless I get a ransom. Then I shoot Chase and everyone’s freaking out and I’m like “No, guys, simmer down -- I shot this other Chase who no one knew I was keeping hostage, so the real Chase is still alive. See? See? Look how clever I am.”
What’s especially awesome is that this happens halfway through the episode, meaning that we have another hour to slog through. And what a slog it is. While there are great moments on Earth, it feels rushed, and so many characters are given short shrift so we can watch Adama and Roslin be emo together for an endless series of scenes.
No one protests that giving up all their technology is maybe not such a great idea? Like, you know, their medicine and what not? And, OK, God put them on this planet with these genetically “compatible” because he wanted to and so on and so forth. Listen, Starbuck being an angel sent to guide mankind is more believable to me -- and more thematically resonant -- than having protohumans who can magically interbreed with our Humans and Cylons. Was this really necessary? Having contemporary humanity be descendants of Humans and Cylons without these weird cavemen wasn’t good enough? OK. Whatever. Not going to get hung up on that.
But we watch Roslin die for about two scenes too many, while we get a line from Chief about moving to England, and the rest of the cast is just seen wandering in their separate groups to be divided up amongst the Earth’s continents. Because we spend a whole HOUR on new-Earth and we don’t get resolutions for the majority of the characters. What about Lee? What has ever been up with Lee. Way to let us down, BSG team, because you were building towards something great with him and you either gave up or got bored.
And what was with the flashbacks? Really, were they necessary? Did we learn anything real from them?
I tried watching the finale again and couldn’t do it. I honestly couldn’t get myself to sit down and deal with all these issues again, because ultimately BSG let me down. Ron Moore, you let me down. In great art there is a clear vision, and that was lacking in BSGs final chunk. Maybe this is due to Moore being distracted by the variety of other projects he’s working on. Maybe he deferred too much to other strong writers in the room, like Jane Espenson. Or maybe he was just exhausted from working so hard on the show for so long. But either way, the lack of a clear end game, an unfortunate focus on the mythology instead of characters, and lazy writing lead one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen to become, in its later years, just another mediocre space soap opera.
Considering how many space soaps there are, I should be glad we ever had anything nearing the level of greatness that BSG sometimes reached. I should be glad we had it at all. I just wish it realized how much it meant to some of us.
-RoboNixon
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