Pajiba

Let's think about this now. If there was going to be a Daniel revelation tonight, would Moore discuss that outright?

I think the finale has to acknowledge something about who/what Kara is, and that's going to include where she came from (parents). Daniel or not, the finale has to address Kara's lineage somehow.

I also have no doubt that this is going to be a kick-ass, balls-to-the-wall finale.

I recorded that Battlestar special but haven't watched it yet - but what returnofthesmith says makes some sense. Maybe Kara's father was a god?

Daniel has to be Starbuck's dad. They made it so obvious. What the hell? Well, whatever. The second part of this season has been a let down for me. Most of the episodes have been slow paced and uneventful, so I don't have high expectations for the finale.

Freilich, oh, it’s you. I didn’t see who wrote this column, I was so sure Rowles wrote it. Anyway, just don’t get on my bad side.

LOL!! Good one Jay.

I've been a little let down by this 2nd half-season, but still am SO looking forward to tonight's episode, whenever I get to watch it (early swim lessons for the godkids tomorrow are going to prevent realtime).

< spoiler >
I wish I could agree with you on "The Oath", but I had SUCH a crush on Gaeta that seeing him executed was just too painful for me to be able to appreciate the rest of the episode. Maybe in re-watching later....
< /spoiler >

Well Katee Sackhoff is also on record as saying that Starbuck got no closure in the show and she was kind of bummed about it. Either they're pulling off the mother of all sleight of hands, or there really is nothing to it....

I got the exact same impression reading that. As much as the show seems planned out by the best speculative fiction writers of our generation, every once in awhile Moore opens his mouth and makes me think this has been pure blind luck/messengers from frakking God making this show good.

How can you reveal a cylon AFTER the revelation of the supposed "Final Final" cylon, and not expect me to think you got me again, you're amazing, and Daniel ties in to the end? A sensitive artist, and you don't expect me to tie that into Starbuck's piano playing father, making her the first hybrid, thus explaining everything about her? Good god.

Okay, relax, Doug. It's all right. Maybe they won't contradict what they've obviously set into place against their own will. The Cylons have a Plan. The Cylons have a Plan for all of us.

Katee didn't say that Starbuck's story had no closure, just that she didn't get any closure in the story between her character and that Cylon that she was living with briefly.

BSlim, why are you in such a rush to go down?

well, i'm sure not disappointed...
=D
i felt that it was quite amazing.

I give Pajiba three days to come up with a long, long, long article about how they were wrong and how amazing the series and finale was. Sorry but even how cynical Pajiba is you can not deny how fraking amazing this series was as a whole.

That was 2 hours of some frakkin’ awesome TV.
Good-Bye Galactica!

"And I know it's stupid, but I want to believe that she and Sam ended up together. It makes the end easier to take if I believe that."

Yes, I had a very sad and difficult time with several of the character's endings. So many of them seemed completely alone, even in the face of potential happiness. Lee is left completely alone? Kara is just gone? It made me wish that Dualla had chosen not to kill herself. At least Lee would have had someone. His father left too. It tore me quite apart.

I think Kara was some sort of "seraph" related to the first show's seraphs. There's an interesting wiki about them. Gaius and Six at the end were clearly seraphs/angels. Kara was sent back by "God" (you know it doesn't like to be called that, haha.) She was not a cylon, she was not half cylon. She was a corporeal angel. Once her work was finished, she returned to the ether. I agree with you Genny, I hope she met Sam on the other side, like he said. My feeling is, he would be in a position to know, which is why he said it.

The Roslin/Adama ending tore my heart out. A beautiful evocation of mid-life love and loss, one of the best I've seen by far on any TV series. Really just gorgeously written and acted, and it was very hard to see it end that way. Did Bill just end up living as a hermit, alone? Did he kill himself? I hope not. I do hope that the Emmys recognize Olmos' and Mary's work.

I'm still surprised by how powerfully affected I was.

Wonderful finale, and a satisfying end to the series.

Goodbye, Galactica old girl. It's been a wonderful ride.

I thought that was a very satisfying ending. I had to let myself just go with the angel thing, I felt it was an acceptable answer for Kara and Head Baltar and Six.

The end-war was amazing on so many levels, and the resolution to the opera house visions were breathtaking. Chief killing Tory - the looks on all their faces as the cylons were seeing what she'd done - that whole scene was heart-pounding. And the centurions fighting each other was a riot.

The poignant goodbyes at the end were just right, I thought. The actors were superb all around. When it was over, I felt good and I felt like the important questions had been answered. I'm going to miss this show like no other.

Seriously, BSlim. I recorded because I knew I'd want to watch it again.

This sounds like a wonderful series, it is strange that sometimes you can miss a great series. I loved “The Wire,” I thought it was the best show I’ve ever seen on t.v., but one of my best friends thought it was like, ho hum.

So, no Sopranos outrage and emptiness then? I'd kinda lost interest, but with reading over the summary the two-parter sounds pretty interesting and enjoyable on its own, so I'll definitely have to give it a look.

Now how much longer must I wait for "Planet of the Dead"?

"I know...I know a bit about farming."

That just absolutely gutted me. And Caprica's bracing him and letting him cry on his shoulder. Fuck man...so simple and so perfect.

O hope.

I really thought humans were going to be gifted resurrection along with all of the rest of the cylons. It's too neat and cheese to have Earth be mitochondrial Earth, even if there have been sophisticated devices found around the globe. No Mark IIs or zippers or anything. With all the God talk throughout the series, I would have liked if the appeal of being Gods themselves could have been enough to make an Evil Cavil (Xenu? haha.) and even a Lee Adama eat that apple.

I had so much more faith in the final 5. I even thought that each of the series models were one of each of the 5's pet projects. That Ellen had been more benevolent at some time before she was programmed and reinserted on Caprica, the Fleet, and as a known Cylon. I even thought that toasters would have like to try downloading into bodies or humans into robots.

I dunno.

Instead, RDM's ending made it into merely a character driven drama for the literal-minded. Forgivable since we love the old man, but not the kind of ending to melt faces and blow minds. The whole marketing campaign leading up to it makes me feel like he at least delivered what he was selling. I do like how Kara's ending is ambiguous. I can dig the Heads Baltar and Caprica Six explication. Tyrol moving to Ireland. Why Sharon makes all Asians look the same. It's all good. It was a superior show that got better with each season.

Kobol's Last Gleaming Part 1, Exodus Part 1 and No Exit were my favorite eps.

I loved it. Bawled nonstop during the second half. Kara's goodbye to Sam was heartbreaking. I too hope they did meet up on the "other side."

Goodbye, BSG, and thanks for the memories.

Leaf-

I'm kind of shocked that you and other people dislike this last episode for the very things that have been prevalent in the show throughout the entire run. I've been seeing criticisms everywhere that have been going like this:

"I didn't like all that god stuff, but I loved those fights!" Then why had you been watching the show for 4 seasons?

This show isn't about what happens when a scientific society falls to its creation; it is a show about a scientific society in which the supernatural also exists falls. How can you object to the fact that Kara is an angel when we've seen her dead body? How can you object to the Opera House visions when prophecy guided the way of the fleet? People are ignoring fundamental aspects of what this show actually was in order to blast the last episode.

Gah. I hate the internet.

It was a great ending. The only problem was the commercials interrupted the emotional beats. Looking forward to re-watching the whole series from the beginning. And of course "The Plan".

First off, the source of the cycle was not technology, but rather AI/Robots. I get the desire to not repeat the same mistakes, but jeez... talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Not to mention the ending plainly revealed the conceit in this approach. A civilization reverted to the stone age will simply advance again and make the same mistakes (woops).

But ignoring that even, my main critcisms are along two lines:
1) Humanity's salvation was reduced to a stroke of divine intervention, nothing more than a happy side effect. One minute they are rescuing a kidnapped girl and the next they've found the Garden of Eden. DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL!?!? You just simply don't pull that kind of BS when you're telling a story. If your characters are making decisions and taking actions that will lead them to point A, you damn well better make sure they end up at point A or some related point. The action taken in the finale was to rescue a girl, not to find a planet. So it makes zero sense for them to find a planet when saving a girl. Catch my drift? When I go to McDonald's, I expect to eat a burger, not get a massage. I don't care how much I tried to get a massage in the past, McDonald's is not to place to find one.

2) All the difficult burning questions, the plot points that dangled out there that we were dying to have answered, were just brushed aside with a vague explanation of part of God's plan. Who/what is Starbuck? Oh, she's some magically resurrected angel who isn't self-aware. How did her father know the song that gave her the coordinations? I guess God put it in his head. How is it in the Final Five heard that song and got switched on? I guess God likes to put on a record every once in a while. How did Hera know the draw the crayon dots that helped Starbuck figure out the song's secret? I guess God put that in her head. How did Starbuck figure out its significance, another magical angel showed up to help her play it on the piano. It's just a load of nonsense.

I can tell you exactly what happened. They made this crap up as they went and then when it came time to tie it all together, they realized there was just no way to do it that made sense so they abandoned the whole idea of giving any real answers to any of it. The lack of planning from the beginning is really quite disgusting.

The CORRECT way to end this would've been some sort of joint collaboration between humans and Cylons that revealed a solution that did not previously exist. And then they battled intensely together towards the achievement of that solution. They could've even incorporated the whole dumb luck/God's plan aspect by having a Raptor accidentally stumble upon the planet. But whoops... the Raptor pilot is captured on the way back by the Cylons and they have to rescue him. The various visions/angels play the same role they always played (by giving advice that assists in the rescue attempt) and even the Opera House vision could have been a mental guide through the labyrinthine Cylon baseship hallways to find the way out. Simply, direct, logical. And you can't possibly tell me that would've been any less entertaining than a rescue mission that magically happens to use emergency escape coordinates that land them at their dream home.

I will say that some things were handled well:
1) The first hour was actually very, very good. They launched a rescue mission, they had great difficulties, but they achieved their mission.
2) Roslin's end was well done.
3) Kara's goodbye to her husband was good and would've been perfect, if they just could have come up with a *reasonable* excuse for him to commit suicide

I'm lost with the people who disliked the finale. In fact, the more I have thought about the show today, the more I have been happy with it.

I can't imagine a more boring science fiction show than one that wrapped up every plot point in an exact and logical way, with no room for interpretation, a bit of fantasy (or divine intervention in this case), and some imagination. In addition to all that, Moore gave us beautifully developed characters, both cylon and human. He gave us people to cry over and to feel. And while Edward James Olmos wanted the nihilistic ending with the death of all, Moore wanted to end on a note of hope. And, I think, with a slight nod to the classic Planet of the Apes. I think it couldn't have been a much better send-off.

Babylon 5?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVl_Z0cGKGs

So when a show that asks you to accept sentient robots, prescient apparitions, endless resurrection, nuclear holocaust of 50 billion people, faster than light drives, etc employs an omnipotent being as part of it's ultimate resolution, thats going too far?

I too was hoping they could find a more rational answer but wasn't all that surprised nor disppointed when the card fell the other way. It's not like the outside guiding hand didn't play a crucial role at other points of the show- Inner 6 advising Baltar about the Olympic Carrier in the very first episode, correctly predicting the arrival of a pregnant Athena, "guiding Baltar's hand" to the weak spot on the tylium refinery that just happened to get the fleet enough fuel to last two years, etc.

Considering it played a part at crucial points throughout the series, it isn't unreasonable that "god" should play some part in the conclusion. It's nature was at least expanded upon somewhat- the keeper of a system that uses humans & cylons as it's pawns and acts as a law unto itself- not unlike the greek myths the series borrowed so heavily from. The more I think about it, the neater it becomes.

LOVED the finale. I just started watching BSG about a month ago. I bombed through all the episodes and made it here just in time and it was great!

3 Minor Grievances

1) Sending the ships into the sun? Why? Why? Why!

You'd think they would have been practical and used the ships for scrap at least. I could understand not having any desire to maintain space tech (after their years of travel and confrontation with empty space I'm sure more space travel seemed entirely unappealing) but really? Sending the ships in the sun? Whose brainy idea was that? Seemed like a waste

2) Survival Skills

Do these refugees have any outdoor survival skills? Seems like the human worlds left behind were highly populated and civilized. Do these new settlers really have hunter, gatherer, farmer tech? Won't they get lonely for their old culture?

3) Odd Goodbye Scene

Did anyone else get the impression that Adama was going to commit suicide with Roslin? His goodbye was so sudden. It was a weird moment.

SPOILER ALERT

The finale was so hilariously stupid! I started laughing the moment Baltar started speechifying *Cavil* of all people, and Cavil actually listened. I get that he was surrounded by guns, but, still, is faith not the anti-Cavil?

And then the second Earth? What was the POINT of that? Why not just make the first Earth the real one and spare us Adama's 10,000 breakdowns? It's not like they did anything different! Agree with Leaf, I thought the whole point of Nuked!Earth was that Cylon and Human needed to create a solution together in order to survive. And that solution was not "let's throw our tech away" so we DELAY the cycle a couple of thousand years. I mean, how is FORGETTING your past the best way to avoid repeating it, Lee?

But what I really can't forgive is all the lectures! Ooh, tech and commercialism are bad! Let us go run wild in the forest or else we will create AI who will kill us! WHY DID BSG CHOOSE ITS LAST HOUR TO BECOME A PLATFORM FOR DUMBASS MONOLOGUES? I felt like I was watching Bedazzled.

And really, still don't get the point of Hera. What like, no other Cylon-Human match-up happened, to become the "mother of us all?"

*rolls eyes, rolls eyes, rolls eyes*

Genny, Ron Moore has given different explanations for his interpretation of Kara and Heads Six and Baltar were. So it seems the three of them weren't exactly the same.

I also think Sepinwall did a nice review of the finale - it helped me work out some of my own thoughts.

You realize, of course, that they've basically just rewritten Douglas Adams' history of Earth.

Not that that's a bad thing though, it's a good joke.