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Battlestar Galactica: Daybreak Part II (Series Finale)
I haven't done more than skipping through the tons of reviews accumulated during the last week, and on my flist alone the reaction goes from complete hate to utter delight, with some indifference thrown in. BSG business as usual, in a word. As for me: if you're looking for a rant, this won't be it, but if you're looking for a complete rave, this won' be it, either. So, here it is, last review on a show I found in varying degrees captivating and frustrating over the years, which I'm glad I watched till the end but which I also think made some serious creative mistakes. So: BSG, the last chapter.
BSG, and that was one of the key differences to DS9 which whom it shared several traits otherwise, and DS9 usually excelled at those shared traits, BSG was a post-apocalyptic show. This meant, from the beginning, there were only three types of endings available.
A) They just keep on searching (not very satisfying; the Enterprise can continue flying to new adventures because of the nature of the show, but here we're talking about the remains of a civilisation after a genocidal war, and the logic of this particular story demands they need to arrive somewhere at some point.
B) They all die, or all die with the exception of one, two or three at the utmost, thus completing the apocalypse for good. Because BSG was such a very bleak series, especially in its last season, this was the ending more and more people predicted; call it the "Blake" ending in honour of Blake's 7.
C') They finally arrive somewhere and get a new start. I'd like to call this the Aeneid ending; indeed the story of Aeneas and the other Trojans, last survivors of the fall of Troy after a brutal war, has more than one parallel to the overall BSG storyline, down to and including a false haven in between which they have to leave again, and the fact their new world isn't empty but has already people in it. The story of the Trojans ends with Juno - or, to use her Greek name, Hera - who has been persecuting the Trojans througout being mollified at last when told that what is going to come into being in Italy isn't going to be a second Troy, but that on the contrary the Trojans are going to be absorbed by the people of Latinia, adopt their customs and names. (Aeneas makes a start of this when changing his older son's name from Askanius to Iulus.)
(Aeneas still gets to be king. Of course, the Romans who created thisfanfic based on the Ilias and the Odyssey particular myth were blithely unconcerned about implications about colonialism anyway. It comes with the whole "go forth, Romans, and rule the world" attitude.)
So, before I get into particulars, let me say that I found BSG going for option c) more satisfying than I would have found A or B. Partly because the show was so bleak, and to end on a (troubled) note of hope and new chances was a welcome emotional counterpart for me, whereas all the previous tragedies would have made me feel an "everyone, or almost everyone dies" type of ending with nothing more than numbed acceptance. Partly because I am an optimist at heart, despite occasional professions of cynicism. And partly because I really dig creation myths, and BSG turns out to be one in addition to everything else.
Now for the details, god and bad. I usually start with the things that ticked me off so I can conclude my reviews with the ones I was happy with, on a positive note, but not this time; I'll open with all things Gaius Baltar and Six instead. Now that the show has been completed, I think theirs has been the most satisfying storyline for me. Not invariably so; I'm thinking in particular of Caprica Six spending many an episode in later s3 in the Galactica brig, with the one good scene between her and Roslin being only available online and on dvds as it was cut from the broadcasts, and the viewer otherwise left to wonder why neither Roslin nor anyone else trying to do something with the fact their new Cylon prisoner isn't just anyone but one of the key figures to the end of the colonies. And then there was the mystifying Caprica Six/Tigh affair, which only ever worked for me from Tigh's pov (due to his guilt about Ellen and general frakked-upness) but was utterly bewildering from Six', as the show did not give us any reasons why she should feel drawn to Tigh or fall in love with him. I'm not saying it couldn't have been pulled off in a believable manner, btw. For example, let Six figure out Tigh is a Cylon, and she has a reason to be intrigued, to try to help him adjust to being a Cylon, maybe mixed with the hope to use this for her own advantage. But we didn't get any of that. Still. What we did get was enough so that when the finale cross cut between a scene before the pilot we hadn't seen before but which we knew happened, the very moment Gaius Baltar agrees to let Six in to the defense grid - and thus dooms his world - to Baltar and Six on Earth starting their new life - I felt emotionally satisfied. Because here's the thing about Baltar, and about Six, and about both: the show never asked the audience to forget what they did. It kept reminding us. Within the story, Baltar with his talent for survival escaped from a number of situations (and didn't from others - see his long stint in the brig, complete with torture, in s3 - ), but from an audience point, he never escaped. And from the moment Roslin first tore into him in Six Degrees of Separation in season 1, there were always other characters around who even before they knew the complete truth were ready to name his flaws and take him to charge. And when we finally saw Caprica Six again in season 2's Downloaded - earlier to which the Six the audience was most familiar with was the one in Baltar's head - we found out she carried her own eternal reminder of what she had done with her as well.
The last flashback dealing with Gaius and Six before we cut back to the present doesn't just offer the moment he betrays the human race, though. It also offers something else, because when Baltar makes his offhand, awkward "the things men do for love" remark, without at this point meaning it, we see something changing for Six, as she replies, interested and intrigued: "Love, Gaius?" Six at this point has just accomplished her mission to doom the human race, and then has the misfortune, or maybe, retrospectively, not such a misfortune after all, to fall in love with her target. It's the first thing that starts to change her from single-minded Cylon into something more complicated. She doesn't fall in love blindly. At this point, as the flasbhacks also remind us, she has seen Baltar's promiscuity, his ego, she's been witness to just how hollow and artificial his Gaius Baltar Superstar persona is in that intensely personal argument with his father. There are any number of "worthier" humans to fall in love with. For that matter, most of the other Cylon models are less flawed than Gaius Baltar. But there it is. In his blog, composer Bear McCreary draws a parallel between Baltar telling Felix Gaeta at the end of their last conversation, several episodes earlier that season, "I know who you are" , and Six kissing Gaius, when in the finale we cut to the present after that flashback and Baltar says "I know about farming, you know", and breaks, both sentence and gesture saying the same thing, and it's mutual. He knows her as well, not just as a seductress in a red dress but in her reality. I don't think the show suggests they atoned for what they did with one particular gesture, be it participating in the Hera rescue or something else, and honestly, it would have annoyed me if, say, Baltar had died heroically to save Hera (or Adama, or anyone else on Galactica), or Caprica Six, with the implication that this was how you make up for genocide. There isn't a one kind of thing gesture you can perform that makes up for something like this. But what the show does suggest for these two is that you can keep going, you can adapt without ignoring what you were, and you can have your new start with open eyes, both with each other and with a new world. The past is never just past. (Witness Baltar coming full circle with the background he always ran away from.) But it doesn't have to be all of the future. Another thing, too: one thing these two have never done was to make themselves the judge over others. This in flawed characters isn't self evident. Witness Tory's fate and Boomer's in the finale, both executed in a demonstration of unforgiveness by people as guilty as themselves. If Gaius Baltar in his selfish ways throughout four seasons had one consistently attractive trait was that he never participated in the vengeance cycle that gripped nearly everyone else; if Caprica Six has one amazingly unexpected trait from the pilot onwards, whether she was dealing out death or making that first very misguided attempt at human-Cylon coexistence on New Caprica, then that she was capable of loving, eyes wide open instead closed. That's why I can believe they finally have a genuine shot at happiness (and happiness which isn't damaging to anyone else).
Now, back in the days in the miniseries I was interested in Baltar and Six, but the first character I truly fell in love with was Laura Roslin. And the biggest failure of second half of season 4 to me is how the show chose to end her story post-Revelations. Oh, not the actual ending. Roslin's death is the one I always hoped for, if you want to know - really dying of cancer, no miracle cure, because Roslin from the get go has been defined as mortal, which is one of the reasons why I would have HATED it if she had been revealed as a Cylon - and, like Moses, in sight of the new land, knowing her people are there at last, but not living on it. I love that her last words are "so full of life". I'm fine with the last flashback as it showcases the cold ruthless side of Roslin in the way she dismisses her bedazzled ex-student out of her bed and decides to start a life in politics. And her scene with Cottle is very touching. No, what grieves me aren't any of the actual Roslin-related events in the finale but the overall context they're in. Because this point, she isn't Moses anymore. She's just Bill Adama's girlfriend, and has been since half a season. So when in the flashback we hear her make her choice for politics and hear her say she'll be there "all the way, till the end", I had to think: But you weren't. You gave up. You gave up on your people. It's not that there aren't other characters on this show who were shown to give up. But none of the others were defined by a leadership arc. And it's not that I would have demanded Laura Roslin to be portrayed as infallible. She never has been. She's been shown to make wrong decisions, not just right ones, she's been shown - and deliberately, not inadvertently - to have some chilling character traits along with admirable ones. Also, yes, a death via cancer means you can do less and less if depicted with any claim to emotional realism. But the show in season 2 when Laura was once already near death by cancer gave us a direct contrast to what they did with her near the end. During the Pegasus arc and in Epiphanies, when Laura Roslin was first very very sick and then dying of cancer before Baltar came up with his temporary miracle for her, she was nonetheless simultanously portrayed as a masterful politician and manipulator who nearly made Adama assassinate Cain for her because she didn't want to leave the fleet in Cain's charge after her death. With this evidence the show knew very well to portray her as sick, even dying, and still as working till the end at the same time, the reduction to Adama's love interest is even more galling than it would be in any case.
As for Adama himself: I was faintly surprised he didn't go out in a blaze of glory, and shruggingly amused that in Lee's flashback we get a dead-on Adama character analysis (self-involved bubble, either you're in with him or you're out in the cold, etc.), but the show still tries to evoke affection for Adama from the audience. Take Boomer's flashback. The problem here is that Adama doesn't come across as a benevolent patriarch, crusty old man who gives a rookie an chance and some tough loving, which presumably was the intention, he and Tigh both come across as sniggering jerks. What's more, the flashback wasn't necessary to explain Boomer's "tell the old man I owe him one" - the audience otherwise would have taken this to refer to her shooting Adama and been content. (Doesn't mean I don't think a Boomer flashback as she was dying per se was unjustified - but I would have chosen another content for the Boomer-as-she-was flashback, maybe Boomer with Helo and Kara talking about their hopes for the future.) Speaking of the shooting: another problem with the treatment of Adama overall, especially this season, is that compared with basically every other character on this show, Adama actually has had a pretty good life. The only really traumatic thing that happened to him was that shooting back in the season 1 finale. Otherwise, he didn't have to endure prison, torture, mutilation, sickness, rape or threatened rape, as opposed to many another character, his children, literal or metaphorical, were so dependent on their approval that they kept coming back to him after disagreements, he had his best friend with him whenever he needed him and finally managed to strike up an enduring relationship with an adult woman. And yet, the show kept asking us to feel sorry for him throughout the last season and kept giving him the breakdown scenes. Sorry for what? This just did not compute.
On to the youngsters. I take it that Lee/Kara fans are upset at the end of the flashback showing them nearly having sex near a passed-out Zak before coming back to their senses, as well as the implication that Zak's waking up words "something is broken" are a meta comment re: their relationship. I'll freely admit to bias here, since I never could stand Lee/Kara as a romance and basically saw the flashback confirming the opinion I already had, to wit, that Lee and Kara work wonderfully well as friends, but whenever sexual attraction gets the upper hand, they bring out each other's worst sides, from the argument in Kobol's Last Gleaming onwards, and spectacularly showcased in the tedious quadrangle of doom storyline in season 3. Seriously, what is the difference betweeen Kara and Lee having drunken sex in Unfinished Business with their passed-out significant others a hundred metres away, and Kara and Lee almost having drunken sex with a passed out Zak nearby? Did Sam and Dee deserve to be cheated on any more than Zak did? It's consistent behaviour, and juxtaposed to their present day interaction in Daybreak where they aren't lovers but friends and support each other emotionally, the contrast is especially glaring. To reiterate for the last time: Kara/Lee = poison. Kara & Lee = excellent team.
Which brings me to Kara. Honestly, it didn't surprise me that much that she got the ending she did, not when her entire 4.5 storyline was about her coming to terms - with herself and her relationships, yes, but also and prominently with the fact she was dead. She had accomplished her most important mission - found Earth (twice); she was at peace with herself. Given this show has first introduced evidence of a supernatural force and miracles all the way back in its first season (think of Shelley Godfrey, the Six model outing Baltar and then disappearing into thin air once he is brought to heel and for the first time attempts to pray, and the visions of Laura (from the moment she sees Leoben before ever meeting him in Flesh and Bone) and Baltar (discounting all Six sightings, the very first Opera House vision during which he's informed of Hera's existence before anyone on Galactica knows Helo and a Sharon model are alive on Caprica and have conceived) both which prove to be accurate and for which there is no scientific explanation, and put more and more weight on the mystical side of things during the later seasons, basically pulling a Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense (or a Cordelia Chase in You're Welcome, if you like) on Kara is narratively justified. Now you can argue with the general decision not to leave it ambiguous whether the god(s) people believe in on BSG actually exist, but this is by no means something only just introduced at the end; if you didn't know something not human or Cylon created existed and interfered in the BSG verse after season 1, you weren't paying attention. In conclusion, Kara Thrace, dead woman walking and then dissappearing into thin air once she had accomplished her task, understood herself and found peace? Works for me. I like to think she does meet Sam on the other side, too, as like all the season, I found their scenes in the finale very moving. Back in s2 when Kara left her dog tags with Sam Anders on Caprica, I thought it was a cheap ploy on the show's part; by the time she left her dog tags again with Hybrid!Sam in the finale, telling him she loved him, I definitely felt something like tears prickling. Perhaps because I had come to appreciate and feel for Sam as a character in the later seasons, and perhaps I also believed in the tie between him and Kara.
If Kara's ending, and Sam's, struck me as emotionally satisfying and tragic respectively, this was not the case with Boomer and Tory. Not that I was surprised re: Boomer. As I said before regarding Baltar and Six, I'm not fond of the sacrificial death as a solution to someone's arc (though in a very few exceptions, it works for me), but I didn't expect the show to do something different with Boomer at this point, not after previous events. Nor do I think Athena's reaction was ooc; Athena is the original "you make your choice and you stick with it" woman and one of the most black and white minded characters on the show. If she wasn't ready to comfort and touch the dying Eight who had not done anything to her, and had shot Natalie on a mere suspicion of Natalie taking Hera from her without ever repenting this, how did you think she was going to respond to Boomer kidnapping Hera and having sex with Helo in front of her? I also can see Boomer being at a point where she was ready to die. I still wish the show had chosen differently, but then I wish poor Boomer had gotten better writing post-Downloaded onwards, and at this point was resigned to the consequences of all the earlier decisions.
Tory's death just felt like gratitious fanservice, in an unfortunate resemblance of how Cally's felt. Both Cally and Tory were unpopular female characters, and I can't help but assume that the major reasoning behind Cally's death was "fans don't like her, we don't have any idea of what to do with her at this point anyway, let's just kill her off", and the major reasoning behind Tory's was "oh, yeah, we still haven't dealt with Tory killing Cally, let's wrap that up". Admittedly Tory's death also had the purpose of making sure Cavil & Co. don't get resurrection technology after all, thus wrapping them up as well, but this could have been done another way. And speaking of sloppy wrap-ups, I know Cavil shooting himself was Dean Stockwell's suggestion (the script had Tigh kill him), but that didn't make it more believable.
Helo surviving: was a surprise, especially since I had expected both him and Athena to die. I was glad they didn't, though. Much as I like Six and Gaius Baltar, Hera has been through a dizzying array of foster parents in recent years anyway.
Ellen and Saul Tigh: are dearly loved by me, and while I have no doubt they'll argue again in no time, being the Albee-esque couple they are, I also do not doubt they'll love each other as fiercely for whatever remains of their natural lives as they have done for the last millennium. Especially now that Bill Adama has gone to brood elsewhere, for which I don't doubt Ellen is profoundly grateful. And thus I bid my favourite married couple on this show adieu and am sublimely happy they were with each other in the last shot I saw of them.
Everyone deciding to abandon technology, aka Lee Adama's Grand Hippie Plan: ironically enough, I think one major reason for this narrative choice was to avoid the very implication of colonialism which Lee's speech promptly evoked. (As without tech the surviving, err, colonials, have no way of ruling the locals but have to live with them on their terms.) The other was that this is a creation myth, and the image of the nuclear-war-devastated original Earth mid-season 4 wouldn't exactly contrast with stoneage Earth if the colonials started to built cities again immediately. Which is why the whole thing didn't raise hackles with me. As for "we'll give them our language" - that was actually more of an explanation as to why "our" Earth shares myths and concepts with the colonials than I was expecting BSG to provide. Though yes, chances are the next time I pass the rather beautiful Neanderthal near Düsseldorf where certain remains were found and became world-famous, I'll wonder whether in BSGverse, the homo sapiens by whom homo neanderthalensis got screwed over came from the stars. Still, given that there really were no cities around and found I would say the Aeneid model seems to have prevailed, i.e. the colonials got integrated into the Earth population, not the other way around. Language-giving not withstanding.
And now for the epilogue: aka, whimsy rules. The robot montage has been done way better in that late s1 Sarah Connor Chronicles episode when we see Cameron standing between a number of early robot models at an exhibition - if we're meant to take the scene on a serious note, which the music rather argues against, instead of as a wink. As for Head!Six and Head!Baltar still being around as Aziraphale and Crowley, still snarking and observing humanity, sorry, guys, how could I not love this? Being a Gaiman and Prattchet fan? As well as being as fond of the characters as I am? I had a wide grin on my face, and not a contemptuous one but a delighted one. (As for the Ron Moore cameo, since when is this a new thing? JMS gave himself one in Sleeping in Light as well.) I was so busy being amused as hell at the prospect of these two still being around and imagining crossovers and characters from other shows they could encounter that I didn't pay that much attention to what was actually said out loud, though I got that we're all related to Hera, which, you know, fits the pattern. She was the shape of things to come.
All in all: not my favourite finale nor the best BSG episode. But a good one, partly a mess, partly inspired. Just like the show.
BSG, and that was one of the key differences to DS9 which whom it shared several traits otherwise, and DS9 usually excelled at those shared traits, BSG was a post-apocalyptic show. This meant, from the beginning, there were only three types of endings available.
A) They just keep on searching (not very satisfying; the Enterprise can continue flying to new adventures because of the nature of the show, but here we're talking about the remains of a civilisation after a genocidal war, and the logic of this particular story demands they need to arrive somewhere at some point.
B) They all die, or all die with the exception of one, two or three at the utmost, thus completing the apocalypse for good. Because BSG was such a very bleak series, especially in its last season, this was the ending more and more people predicted; call it the "Blake" ending in honour of Blake's 7.
C') They finally arrive somewhere and get a new start. I'd like to call this the Aeneid ending; indeed the story of Aeneas and the other Trojans, last survivors of the fall of Troy after a brutal war, has more than one parallel to the overall BSG storyline, down to and including a false haven in between which they have to leave again, and the fact their new world isn't empty but has already people in it. The story of the Trojans ends with Juno - or, to use her Greek name, Hera - who has been persecuting the Trojans througout being mollified at last when told that what is going to come into being in Italy isn't going to be a second Troy, but that on the contrary the Trojans are going to be absorbed by the people of Latinia, adopt their customs and names. (Aeneas makes a start of this when changing his older son's name from Askanius to Iulus.)
(Aeneas still gets to be king. Of course, the Romans who created this
So, before I get into particulars, let me say that I found BSG going for option c) more satisfying than I would have found A or B. Partly because the show was so bleak, and to end on a (troubled) note of hope and new chances was a welcome emotional counterpart for me, whereas all the previous tragedies would have made me feel an "everyone, or almost everyone dies" type of ending with nothing more than numbed acceptance. Partly because I am an optimist at heart, despite occasional professions of cynicism. And partly because I really dig creation myths, and BSG turns out to be one in addition to everything else.
Now for the details, god and bad. I usually start with the things that ticked me off so I can conclude my reviews with the ones I was happy with, on a positive note, but not this time; I'll open with all things Gaius Baltar and Six instead. Now that the show has been completed, I think theirs has been the most satisfying storyline for me. Not invariably so; I'm thinking in particular of Caprica Six spending many an episode in later s3 in the Galactica brig, with the one good scene between her and Roslin being only available online and on dvds as it was cut from the broadcasts, and the viewer otherwise left to wonder why neither Roslin nor anyone else trying to do something with the fact their new Cylon prisoner isn't just anyone but one of the key figures to the end of the colonies. And then there was the mystifying Caprica Six/Tigh affair, which only ever worked for me from Tigh's pov (due to his guilt about Ellen and general frakked-upness) but was utterly bewildering from Six', as the show did not give us any reasons why she should feel drawn to Tigh or fall in love with him. I'm not saying it couldn't have been pulled off in a believable manner, btw. For example, let Six figure out Tigh is a Cylon, and she has a reason to be intrigued, to try to help him adjust to being a Cylon, maybe mixed with the hope to use this for her own advantage. But we didn't get any of that. Still. What we did get was enough so that when the finale cross cut between a scene before the pilot we hadn't seen before but which we knew happened, the very moment Gaius Baltar agrees to let Six in to the defense grid - and thus dooms his world - to Baltar and Six on Earth starting their new life - I felt emotionally satisfied. Because here's the thing about Baltar, and about Six, and about both: the show never asked the audience to forget what they did. It kept reminding us. Within the story, Baltar with his talent for survival escaped from a number of situations (and didn't from others - see his long stint in the brig, complete with torture, in s3 - ), but from an audience point, he never escaped. And from the moment Roslin first tore into him in Six Degrees of Separation in season 1, there were always other characters around who even before they knew the complete truth were ready to name his flaws and take him to charge. And when we finally saw Caprica Six again in season 2's Downloaded - earlier to which the Six the audience was most familiar with was the one in Baltar's head - we found out she carried her own eternal reminder of what she had done with her as well.
The last flashback dealing with Gaius and Six before we cut back to the present doesn't just offer the moment he betrays the human race, though. It also offers something else, because when Baltar makes his offhand, awkward "the things men do for love" remark, without at this point meaning it, we see something changing for Six, as she replies, interested and intrigued: "Love, Gaius?" Six at this point has just accomplished her mission to doom the human race, and then has the misfortune, or maybe, retrospectively, not such a misfortune after all, to fall in love with her target. It's the first thing that starts to change her from single-minded Cylon into something more complicated. She doesn't fall in love blindly. At this point, as the flasbhacks also remind us, she has seen Baltar's promiscuity, his ego, she's been witness to just how hollow and artificial his Gaius Baltar Superstar persona is in that intensely personal argument with his father. There are any number of "worthier" humans to fall in love with. For that matter, most of the other Cylon models are less flawed than Gaius Baltar. But there it is. In his blog, composer Bear McCreary draws a parallel between Baltar telling Felix Gaeta at the end of their last conversation, several episodes earlier that season, "I know who you are" , and Six kissing Gaius, when in the finale we cut to the present after that flashback and Baltar says "I know about farming, you know", and breaks, both sentence and gesture saying the same thing, and it's mutual. He knows her as well, not just as a seductress in a red dress but in her reality. I don't think the show suggests they atoned for what they did with one particular gesture, be it participating in the Hera rescue or something else, and honestly, it would have annoyed me if, say, Baltar had died heroically to save Hera (or Adama, or anyone else on Galactica), or Caprica Six, with the implication that this was how you make up for genocide. There isn't a one kind of thing gesture you can perform that makes up for something like this. But what the show does suggest for these two is that you can keep going, you can adapt without ignoring what you were, and you can have your new start with open eyes, both with each other and with a new world. The past is never just past. (Witness Baltar coming full circle with the background he always ran away from.) But it doesn't have to be all of the future. Another thing, too: one thing these two have never done was to make themselves the judge over others. This in flawed characters isn't self evident. Witness Tory's fate and Boomer's in the finale, both executed in a demonstration of unforgiveness by people as guilty as themselves. If Gaius Baltar in his selfish ways throughout four seasons had one consistently attractive trait was that he never participated in the vengeance cycle that gripped nearly everyone else; if Caprica Six has one amazingly unexpected trait from the pilot onwards, whether she was dealing out death or making that first very misguided attempt at human-Cylon coexistence on New Caprica, then that she was capable of loving, eyes wide open instead closed. That's why I can believe they finally have a genuine shot at happiness (and happiness which isn't damaging to anyone else).
Now, back in the days in the miniseries I was interested in Baltar and Six, but the first character I truly fell in love with was Laura Roslin. And the biggest failure of second half of season 4 to me is how the show chose to end her story post-Revelations. Oh, not the actual ending. Roslin's death is the one I always hoped for, if you want to know - really dying of cancer, no miracle cure, because Roslin from the get go has been defined as mortal, which is one of the reasons why I would have HATED it if she had been revealed as a Cylon - and, like Moses, in sight of the new land, knowing her people are there at last, but not living on it. I love that her last words are "so full of life". I'm fine with the last flashback as it showcases the cold ruthless side of Roslin in the way she dismisses her bedazzled ex-student out of her bed and decides to start a life in politics. And her scene with Cottle is very touching. No, what grieves me aren't any of the actual Roslin-related events in the finale but the overall context they're in. Because this point, she isn't Moses anymore. She's just Bill Adama's girlfriend, and has been since half a season. So when in the flashback we hear her make her choice for politics and hear her say she'll be there "all the way, till the end", I had to think: But you weren't. You gave up. You gave up on your people. It's not that there aren't other characters on this show who were shown to give up. But none of the others were defined by a leadership arc. And it's not that I would have demanded Laura Roslin to be portrayed as infallible. She never has been. She's been shown to make wrong decisions, not just right ones, she's been shown - and deliberately, not inadvertently - to have some chilling character traits along with admirable ones. Also, yes, a death via cancer means you can do less and less if depicted with any claim to emotional realism. But the show in season 2 when Laura was once already near death by cancer gave us a direct contrast to what they did with her near the end. During the Pegasus arc and in Epiphanies, when Laura Roslin was first very very sick and then dying of cancer before Baltar came up with his temporary miracle for her, she was nonetheless simultanously portrayed as a masterful politician and manipulator who nearly made Adama assassinate Cain for her because she didn't want to leave the fleet in Cain's charge after her death. With this evidence the show knew very well to portray her as sick, even dying, and still as working till the end at the same time, the reduction to Adama's love interest is even more galling than it would be in any case.
As for Adama himself: I was faintly surprised he didn't go out in a blaze of glory, and shruggingly amused that in Lee's flashback we get a dead-on Adama character analysis (self-involved bubble, either you're in with him or you're out in the cold, etc.), but the show still tries to evoke affection for Adama from the audience. Take Boomer's flashback. The problem here is that Adama doesn't come across as a benevolent patriarch, crusty old man who gives a rookie an chance and some tough loving, which presumably was the intention, he and Tigh both come across as sniggering jerks. What's more, the flashback wasn't necessary to explain Boomer's "tell the old man I owe him one" - the audience otherwise would have taken this to refer to her shooting Adama and been content. (Doesn't mean I don't think a Boomer flashback as she was dying per se was unjustified - but I would have chosen another content for the Boomer-as-she-was flashback, maybe Boomer with Helo and Kara talking about their hopes for the future.) Speaking of the shooting: another problem with the treatment of Adama overall, especially this season, is that compared with basically every other character on this show, Adama actually has had a pretty good life. The only really traumatic thing that happened to him was that shooting back in the season 1 finale. Otherwise, he didn't have to endure prison, torture, mutilation, sickness, rape or threatened rape, as opposed to many another character, his children, literal or metaphorical, were so dependent on their approval that they kept coming back to him after disagreements, he had his best friend with him whenever he needed him and finally managed to strike up an enduring relationship with an adult woman. And yet, the show kept asking us to feel sorry for him throughout the last season and kept giving him the breakdown scenes. Sorry for what? This just did not compute.
On to the youngsters. I take it that Lee/Kara fans are upset at the end of the flashback showing them nearly having sex near a passed-out Zak before coming back to their senses, as well as the implication that Zak's waking up words "something is broken" are a meta comment re: their relationship. I'll freely admit to bias here, since I never could stand Lee/Kara as a romance and basically saw the flashback confirming the opinion I already had, to wit, that Lee and Kara work wonderfully well as friends, but whenever sexual attraction gets the upper hand, they bring out each other's worst sides, from the argument in Kobol's Last Gleaming onwards, and spectacularly showcased in the tedious quadrangle of doom storyline in season 3. Seriously, what is the difference betweeen Kara and Lee having drunken sex in Unfinished Business with their passed-out significant others a hundred metres away, and Kara and Lee almost having drunken sex with a passed out Zak nearby? Did Sam and Dee deserve to be cheated on any more than Zak did? It's consistent behaviour, and juxtaposed to their present day interaction in Daybreak where they aren't lovers but friends and support each other emotionally, the contrast is especially glaring. To reiterate for the last time: Kara/Lee = poison. Kara & Lee = excellent team.
Which brings me to Kara. Honestly, it didn't surprise me that much that she got the ending she did, not when her entire 4.5 storyline was about her coming to terms - with herself and her relationships, yes, but also and prominently with the fact she was dead. She had accomplished her most important mission - found Earth (twice); she was at peace with herself. Given this show has first introduced evidence of a supernatural force and miracles all the way back in its first season (think of Shelley Godfrey, the Six model outing Baltar and then disappearing into thin air once he is brought to heel and for the first time attempts to pray, and the visions of Laura (from the moment she sees Leoben before ever meeting him in Flesh and Bone) and Baltar (discounting all Six sightings, the very first Opera House vision during which he's informed of Hera's existence before anyone on Galactica knows Helo and a Sharon model are alive on Caprica and have conceived) both which prove to be accurate and for which there is no scientific explanation, and put more and more weight on the mystical side of things during the later seasons, basically pulling a Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense (or a Cordelia Chase in You're Welcome, if you like) on Kara is narratively justified. Now you can argue with the general decision not to leave it ambiguous whether the god(s) people believe in on BSG actually exist, but this is by no means something only just introduced at the end; if you didn't know something not human or Cylon created existed and interfered in the BSG verse after season 1, you weren't paying attention. In conclusion, Kara Thrace, dead woman walking and then dissappearing into thin air once she had accomplished her task, understood herself and found peace? Works for me. I like to think she does meet Sam on the other side, too, as like all the season, I found their scenes in the finale very moving. Back in s2 when Kara left her dog tags with Sam Anders on Caprica, I thought it was a cheap ploy on the show's part; by the time she left her dog tags again with Hybrid!Sam in the finale, telling him she loved him, I definitely felt something like tears prickling. Perhaps because I had come to appreciate and feel for Sam as a character in the later seasons, and perhaps I also believed in the tie between him and Kara.
If Kara's ending, and Sam's, struck me as emotionally satisfying and tragic respectively, this was not the case with Boomer and Tory. Not that I was surprised re: Boomer. As I said before regarding Baltar and Six, I'm not fond of the sacrificial death as a solution to someone's arc (though in a very few exceptions, it works for me), but I didn't expect the show to do something different with Boomer at this point, not after previous events. Nor do I think Athena's reaction was ooc; Athena is the original "you make your choice and you stick with it" woman and one of the most black and white minded characters on the show. If she wasn't ready to comfort and touch the dying Eight who had not done anything to her, and had shot Natalie on a mere suspicion of Natalie taking Hera from her without ever repenting this, how did you think she was going to respond to Boomer kidnapping Hera and having sex with Helo in front of her? I also can see Boomer being at a point where she was ready to die. I still wish the show had chosen differently, but then I wish poor Boomer had gotten better writing post-Downloaded onwards, and at this point was resigned to the consequences of all the earlier decisions.
Tory's death just felt like gratitious fanservice, in an unfortunate resemblance of how Cally's felt. Both Cally and Tory were unpopular female characters, and I can't help but assume that the major reasoning behind Cally's death was "fans don't like her, we don't have any idea of what to do with her at this point anyway, let's just kill her off", and the major reasoning behind Tory's was "oh, yeah, we still haven't dealt with Tory killing Cally, let's wrap that up". Admittedly Tory's death also had the purpose of making sure Cavil & Co. don't get resurrection technology after all, thus wrapping them up as well, but this could have been done another way. And speaking of sloppy wrap-ups, I know Cavil shooting himself was Dean Stockwell's suggestion (the script had Tigh kill him), but that didn't make it more believable.
Helo surviving: was a surprise, especially since I had expected both him and Athena to die. I was glad they didn't, though. Much as I like Six and Gaius Baltar, Hera has been through a dizzying array of foster parents in recent years anyway.
Ellen and Saul Tigh: are dearly loved by me, and while I have no doubt they'll argue again in no time, being the Albee-esque couple they are, I also do not doubt they'll love each other as fiercely for whatever remains of their natural lives as they have done for the last millennium. Especially now that Bill Adama has gone to brood elsewhere, for which I don't doubt Ellen is profoundly grateful. And thus I bid my favourite married couple on this show adieu and am sublimely happy they were with each other in the last shot I saw of them.
Everyone deciding to abandon technology, aka Lee Adama's Grand Hippie Plan: ironically enough, I think one major reason for this narrative choice was to avoid the very implication of colonialism which Lee's speech promptly evoked. (As without tech the surviving, err, colonials, have no way of ruling the locals but have to live with them on their terms.) The other was that this is a creation myth, and the image of the nuclear-war-devastated original Earth mid-season 4 wouldn't exactly contrast with stoneage Earth if the colonials started to built cities again immediately. Which is why the whole thing didn't raise hackles with me. As for "we'll give them our language" - that was actually more of an explanation as to why "our" Earth shares myths and concepts with the colonials than I was expecting BSG to provide. Though yes, chances are the next time I pass the rather beautiful Neanderthal near Düsseldorf where certain remains were found and became world-famous, I'll wonder whether in BSGverse, the homo sapiens by whom homo neanderthalensis got screwed over came from the stars. Still, given that there really were no cities around and found I would say the Aeneid model seems to have prevailed, i.e. the colonials got integrated into the Earth population, not the other way around. Language-giving not withstanding.
And now for the epilogue: aka, whimsy rules. The robot montage has been done way better in that late s1 Sarah Connor Chronicles episode when we see Cameron standing between a number of early robot models at an exhibition - if we're meant to take the scene on a serious note, which the music rather argues against, instead of as a wink. As for Head!Six and Head!Baltar still being around as Aziraphale and Crowley, still snarking and observing humanity, sorry, guys, how could I not love this? Being a Gaiman and Prattchet fan? As well as being as fond of the characters as I am? I had a wide grin on my face, and not a contemptuous one but a delighted one. (As for the Ron Moore cameo, since when is this a new thing? JMS gave himself one in Sleeping in Light as well.) I was so busy being amused as hell at the prospect of these two still being around and imagining crossovers and characters from other shows they could encounter that I didn't pay that much attention to what was actually said out loud, though I got that we're all related to Hera, which, you know, fits the pattern. She was the shape of things to come.
All in all: not my favourite finale nor the best BSG episode. But a good one, partly a mess, partly inspired. Just like the show.
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Word on all you said about characters. The religious message was also something I could live with: so in the BSG universe, there's some entity who likes to play god, and whose messengers are gigantic bullies and meddlers (I love the head people, but they make much better devils than angels.) The "angels" have a plan, and I think Gaius and head!Six have demonstrated amply what a bad, bad idea it is to defy this god. The last scene made me think of Crowley and Aziraphale, too, but it also made me think of Q, even though Q would probably scorn both their methods and their intentions. Speaking of crossovers...
What still doesn't sit right with me is the decision to abandon technology. It's not that it doesn't feel right for most characters. They're all broken, almost all of them have done suicidal things before, they've been disappointed and burned too many times to have the energy left for a new beginning. All they want is to die in peace, so they decide on controlled cultural suicide. (They all in a way do what the Chief does: go to die alone.) But why is it Lee Adama who suggests this? And why is there *no* opposition at all? You see, I'm thinking of "Crossroads" here, but also of the flashbacks to Lee/Kara/Zak. Lee the idealist was the only Lee characterisation I liked. I would have liked a Lampkin/Lee Adama faction of humanity to go on with some of the cylons and try a different way of breaking the cycle, one that allows them to preserve not just the DNA, but the cultural heritage of the colonials and cylons. Because technology has never been their problem (it certainly hasn't been the cylons' problem!), imho. It has been their ethical and political decisions. And you don't solve that kind of problem by getting rid of the necessity to make decisions. I would have thought that some characters at least would realise that.
Well. At least the Centurions got an A) ending?
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No opposition to the "let's abandon our technology" decision (that we are shown): one can fanwank this with the New Caprica precedent, where they did keep the ships and the tech around, and it didn't make the settlement a happier one. All the same, I doubt everyone was gung ho to live the simple life after a few months of actually doing so, but they have been settlers before, so it's not like the fleet people have no experience at all in this regard, and Earth definitely looks more hospital than New Caprica. (Still, I image Playa and the other reporters go "you want us to do what?!?") However, after four years of being chased through space and especially with the recent paranoia when the Galactica broke apart around them (and people died trying to repair it), planetary primitive life actually might have looked like a good alternative at this point. (I think regrets settled in at the latest when the first appendicitis operation was due and there was no sick bay.)
Why Lee: Doylist-wise, I suspect so he has something to do in the finale. Lee during the last three episodes has been written to serve the plot over character anyway, given that there was no earthly reason for him to go on the "rescue Hera" trip other than he was a main character. He was de facto President and had accepted this responsibility twice, and so it would have been his duty to take care of the fleet while Adama & Co. went on the rescue mission. Other than that, he only had two big present-day scenes, the one where he chewed Baltar out about Baltar never having done something selfless in his life, and the one where he got the "let's return to mother nature" idea. I really think it was because RDM figured he needed to give Lee something important to do and say.
In one way I approve of this: if it had been Baltar or Six or Leoben or any of the vision-prone characters who suggested this, it would have implied the "return to nature" thing was the idea of god/the gods/THAT ENTITY. Lee throughout has been a secular character and in his big speech doesn't try to justify this religiously, either. Which makes the return to nature thing a human choice, for good or bad.
If you were the Centurions, would you have wanted the humans around or rather suspected they would never treat you as equals if they came along?