the ill-tempered cavalier ([info]gillen) wrote,
@ 2009-03-22 00:46:00
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the obligatory BSG Finale post
My first thought was that it was a great finale, but really it had just seduced me with wish fulfillment and hat tips to the original series. Half an hour later, I was sitting there thinking, "But... no, waitaminute..."



1. Tory - You stupid bint. Don't you think you maaaaaybe should have told Galen about having killed Cally before y'all stuck your hands in the goo, rather than plea for general understanding and then pop it on him as a surprise? That said...

2. Galen - Tory was supposedly the love of his life back on Earth, yet it seemed kind of easy for him to break her neck over her having snuffed his simpering, cylon-hating ex-gf. That's cold, bro.

3. Cavil - Dude is all cynicism and strategy, but when one of the Five goes a little funny and kills another one he sees that as having been some attempt at betrayal and starts a firefight he can't possibly win? WTF?

4. Starbuck and the other "angels" - So what's the mechanics here? When some people die they become angels of the (Cylon?) god? And can sometimes project themselves back in time? And why doesn't Starbuck know what she is? And why, once she does, does she have to leave? And why doesn't she have the common decency to be a little less cryptic about it - at least to the folks who love her? Or, if she wanted to be nice, I'm sure Roslin would have felt a lot better if she knew that Starbuck was an angel sent back to make sure that everything happened the way it should. I mean, the crazy old biddy is dying. It's not like she'd go telling on you, hon. And what does "All Along the Watchtower" have to do with anything? And what was all that "Harbinger of Death" crap about? Seems to me she was the "Harbinger of Two Species' Survival".

5. Lee - Let's give up technology and live like the savages? Really? That's your plan, to set your own civilization back 150,000 years and hope it all works out? Fuck you, asshole. Also, why bother making sure everyone knows where everyone else is living if you're just going to trash all the tech that might help you get around?

6. Cylons - Speaking of plans... "and they have a plan", remember? So what exactly was it? Kill all the humans? That was your big plan?

7. Angel Baltar and Angel Six - "It" doesn't like being called God? You both spent the entire series calling "It" God.

GAH!

[edit: upon review, it wasn't Cavil who started the firefight - but he didn't do anything to stop it. And since the asteroid would still have hit the bird carrying the nukes, the truce was doomed from the start, whether Tory's secret came out or not.]

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[info]moneda
2009-03-22 07:53 am UTC (link)
Seriously, into the sun? W.T.F?

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[info]gillen
2009-03-22 08:17 am UTC (link)
Besides, if being one with everything was Sam's fondest wish and that's essentially what he'd achieved as a plugged-in hybrid, why didn't he just go with the Cylon centurions? They could even have put him in the same goo tank with the base ship hybrid so they could share a bath and chatter meaningless prophecy at each other.

And as for that, it might have been nice to gift the Centurions the fleet if you were just going to trash it anyway. All they got was a broken down base ship? Gee... lotsa love for centuries of faithful service.

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[info]nom_de_grr
2009-03-23 01:38 pm UTC (link)
I'm sorry, but that does not cut it for me as a final episode. I don't have a problem with them finding another Earth (actually fits in pretty well with Peter Greene's notion of parallel worlds), but the explanation of how they got there, not to mention angels, Starbuck's resurrection, divine intervention in general... well, it just seems like a too-tidy deus ex machina (and I'm not punning here) way to wrap things up.

I would've been totally happy to see the series end with the bleak as hell mid-season finale, which was pretty great, than to find out that Starbuck was a ghost. Come on.

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[info]dwer
2009-03-23 04:42 pm UTC (link)
I thought the lack of Starbuck resolution and/or answers was a HUGE cop-out.

Technically, however, it was said that "she would bring them to their end." Which she did. And "All Along the Watchtower" was written by Hera, and corresponded to coordinates of the "new" Earth.

I was gravely dissapointed in the swan song of this show. :(

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[info]gillen
2009-03-23 04:49 pm UTC (link)
Actually, AATW was written by Starbuck's father. Hera just spontaneously came up with it. But the question is why? What's the point of encoding jump coordinates in a rock song - and why should that song haunt the Final Five?

Edited at 2009-03-23 04:49 pm UTC

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[info]dwer
2009-03-23 04:59 pm UTC (link)
because back when Sam was a big rock star on old-Cylon-Homeworld Earth, HE wrote it too.

Apparently, the song has some kind of hold on RDM, so he decided to make us all subject to it.

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[info]gillen
2009-03-23 05:03 pm UTC (link)
It's a good song, but its use was a tad bizarre - perhaps it was meant to be an early clue to an eventual tie-in to the Earth we know.

Edited at 2009-03-23 05:03 pm UTC

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[info]dwer
2009-03-23 05:12 pm UTC (link)
apparently, they discussed using other "modern" songs in places like Caprica when Helo and Sharon are running from the cylons early on in Season 1, but felt it would be too confusing. "Music is universal" was part of it, I guess.

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[info]akhlut
2009-03-23 09:07 pm UTC (link)
So, Lee thinks that with no technology that people won't make Cylons.

However, he somehow fails to note that every other time this has happened, the people were reset to the stone age...

So, one would think that, perhaps, if people started out with the technology and the extant knowledge that enslaving robots will end terribly, then, you know, maybe they won't enslave their robots?

So, in conclusion: why are so many sci-fi series so prominently Luddite in their sensibilities?

Also: the spaceships that mined the asteroids (as I recall) would have made things tremendously more easy. No need to smelt copper by hand and have to deal with the attendant arsenic poisoning, for instance.

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[info]crankygirlie
2009-03-26 07:53 am UTC (link)
I had the opposite reaction you did: I had a kneejerk WTF? And then I thought about it, I thought about the series as a whole, I thought about the characters, and I felt very satisfied and at peace and thought it was beautifully done.

1) Yes. RDM gave us all a gift when he ended Tory's story like that. She was an idiot.

2) He had no memories of their relationship on Earth, and even were he to have glimpsed his life with Tory through Ellen's memories of it, it would still not have outweighed the anger over her murdering his wife.

3) Dude took the coward's exit, realizing he really lost. It was actually pretty great, to me. Felt pretty satisfying that he just fucking gave up. We got to see how a lot of other people responded in the moment where they believed all hope was lost. It was nice to see Cavil give the fuck up.

4) It was Baltar, Leoben and a Hybrid that applied the term "angel" but there's no real true definition of what Starbuck was other than a means to an end as used by some higher power of some sort undefined. She did not know who or what she was because she was a tool, a pawn. She served a purpose even she did not know or understand. In the end, she didn't even seem to know exactly where she was going or why. She only had the sense of resolution. And that was enough for her...and enough for me. And apparently Lee.

4.5) All Along the Watchtower was simply a song chosen to be representative of the repetition of a common history that has (and may?) repeat throughout the ages. It is part of our shared organic memories, if you will, something universal to us all. Written, re written and rediscovered, and again used as a tool by whatever undefined Higher Power saw fit to orchestrate (ha ha) the eventual end of that particular cycle.

4.6) Kara brought the humans and Cylons into the 'promised land,' where the end of all civilization and humanity as they knew it was brought about. She brought final extinction to humanity and Cylons alike, really. Neither survived in the form they might originally have defined themselves. But the other part of the prophecy often overlooked: "Not an end, but a beginning."

5) Lee simply recognized the inevitable truth of a society whose civilization had already fallen four years prior. Living in space in broken down spaceships for years, living on New Caprica in a failed attempt at recreating civilization, going back to their miserable little rust buckets, tiny spaces and algae goop. It wasn't Lee taking civilization back 150,000 years; it was everything they had already suffered. You notice they used the phrase, "Before the fall" when referring to Caprica? The fall of civilization. They tried to recreate it over and over and it was a failure every time. There was just too much baggage. Humanity has a very long track record of doing exactly what Lee proposed; throwing away the previous whatever in the hopes that going back to the basics will cure what ails you. You don't think that the various pioneers and explorers over the years brought all the comforts of home with them when they set out for their new lands, did you? And if they did, they were all but gone by the time they reached their destination! I can easily understand how/why this would be so attractive to that group of people.

6) There's a movie coming out called "The Plan" because it was never addressed - their plan got fucked up when Boomer and Caprica went rogue, I think.

7) The HeadSix and HeadBaltar played characters to their counterparts; actually taking on the image and personality of the other's 'beloved'. They used terminology that Six and Baltar could easily understand and accept. Or...eventually understand and accept, in Baltar's case. You'll notice in the end clip, they are no longer playing the Six and Baltar characters, even though they are still in that form. Since they're no longer talking to the actual Six and Baltar, but to one another, whoever they may be, they don't need to call "it" God.

At least, these are the conclusions I have come to and I feel very warm and fuzzy. I like the idea of being part Cylon!! :D

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[info]faithhopetricks
2009-03-29 04:07 pm UTC (link)
Starbuck was DEAD ALL ALONG YOU ARE FUCKING JOKING ME.

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[info]gillen
2009-03-30 08:57 am UTC (link)
Somebody's late to the party. ;)

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[info]faithhopetricks
2009-03-30 09:04 am UTC (link)
Oh I gave up watching this shit when we cut back to lucky-if-we-run-a-line-out-to-your-house cable like in S2, or something, and I don't watch TV, and I skim/filter the BSG crap on my flist, and EVEN I HAVE HEARD OF THIS. WTF.

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