So Battlestar Galactica is over. Again.
It is unlikely that many a fan of science fiction, or intelligent story-telling of any genre, over the age of 11 mourned the end of the original series. But the resurrected version that drew its final breath a week ago was transcendent television, by any measure. Those unfamiliar with the program should read no further. Bookmark this post, rent the DVDs and return when you're done.
After four years of ambiguous exploration of the battle between science and faith, the writers chose to end on a decidedly spiritual note. Starbuck is an angel. Boomer and Roslyn's shared dream turn out to be prescient visions that permit the founding of a new civilization. "All Along the Watchtower" is, well, I'll let creator Ron Moore explain it: "The music, the lyrics, the composition, is divine, eternal, it's something that lives in the collective unconsciousness of everyone in the show and all of us today."
Hmmm. That's going to make a lot of fans unhappy. Religion wins?
I admit that I was expecting something different, something less ethereal, although exactly what I can't say. I would have preferred more rational explanations for how Kara Thrace rose from the dead, and for the voices inside the heads of Baltar and Caprica 6. I know there's more a few ScienceBlogger types who are disappointed with those particular revelations.
But I also understand that whatever outcome the Moore and his partner David Eick chose, a good many fans would be less than pleased. So they came down on the side of the angels, more or less. And they did it with style.
They could have tried to tie up every loose end, but they didn't, leaving a variety of minor plot lines unresolved. That was wise. If there's one explanation for the popularity of this incarnation of BSG, it was the show's refusal to moralize and provide easy answers to its treatment of political and social dilemmas. So why should the finale be any different?
Like any respectable work of art, there remains plenty to think about. Is Caprica 6 correct when she suggests that the cycle is broken? After all, the humans who settled on the new Earth vowed to abandon their love affair with technology and get back to what matters. But 150,000 years later, we end up with New York. Again.
As the credits role, the essential question of just what it is to be human goes unanswered. It was never made clear what the difference between Cylons and humans comes down to. How much technology can a species absorb and retain its identity? What are the ethics of creating life? They're serious questions, evocative of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep/Blade Runner, the Borg of Star Trek, and countless other sci-fi works going right back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I'm sure they will be front and center when the prequel series Caprica airs. But don't expect any pat answers then, either.
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My issue with the end is that the writers didn't treat the religion issue seriously. They just used it as a literal deus ex machina. And this after some really, really good writing earlier on in the series about the nature of religion and how it motivates people. If they wanted to address religion seriously in the series they can't just say "oh, the Cylon's religion wins", and not address how people/Cylons learn about the divine. Bleah.
"Transcendent television"? I never could stand it. I'm glad for the people that liked it that they had it to like, but I really did get tired of people telling me how wonderful it was. I never did like it, from the very beginning.
I'm ok with the tack they took to end it. Starbuck's an angel?Oh well. Is what I hoped for no, but whatever.
The problem I have with the ending is the total lazy cop out feel to the whole thing. It wasn't good writing and this show had great writing for years. A dead person's hand falls and launches the missles? Really? 39k people, who 3 episodes ago would have argued over the color of the sky, just decide to give up all their tech? Lazy writing...
Babylon 5 is still the best...
I am sticking to my theory that Kara was real and not an "angel". When Lee turned his back, Kara was quietly killed and dragged away by a leopard.
I agree with Alex. I really started losing interest because I saw the "spiritual" signs on the wall and felt let down. I like the "good vs. evil" "light vs. dark" of B5 and how you saw the third edge of the truth. B5 showed you that good and evil are relative and eventually you had to decide and leave the gods behind. The BSG writers took the easy way out and really ended up making the show with so much promise end up like the original, shallow and corny. Very disappointing IMHO.
The existence of head 6, head Baltar and Kara is less spiritual and more scifi if you consider these direct parallels from the original BSG. Google or look up in wikipedia "Galactica seraphs".
Having said BSG for me was about the characters. Adama and Roslyn's last scene was as powerful and moving a scene as any other I've seen in movies or TV.
You expected something different?
Sorry, but I stopped watching late in the first season, when the stage became so unbelievable that the great storytelling was enjoyable only in reading episode synopses. Hello? We have people at least temporarily healed from cancer on the brink of death. We have people punching holes into the universe, but stuck in the 80s or 90s with the rest of their technology.
It's one thing that Galactica was "outdated" for its time. But FTL is so far ahead of anything we can build (i.e. impossible as we know technology) that their "outdated" would still be far ahead of us. The sheer necessities of the energy requirements for their explanation mean that a whole lot of other issues need to have been resolved. But to avoid technology ruining a great story idea, they simply produced a background that ruined suspension of disbelief.
James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina
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Isn't science illegal in NC?
I find it very odd that people who are ostensibly science fiction fans, when confronted with something unexplained, default to "it's religion"
First consider the possibility of a being or beings guiding human/cylon destiny, but they're not "God[s]" - they're just scientists, or watchers, or something. Check out "Calculating God" for an example of a "God" that isn't Laurence Olivier.
A dead person's hand falling and launching missiles? Are you saying it's impossible? It seemed perfectly plausible to me, and a universe where nothing unlikely ever happens is harder to believe than this was. (Consider the string of implausibilities that led to the sinking of the Titanic)
As for Starbuck, go check out Odyssey 5 and tell me if you immediately assume The Watcher is God. Why couldn't the same thing happen here? Some more advanced being or group snag Starbuck out of her Viper right before it explodes and send her back to the fleet. At the end, when she finishes talking to Lee, they put her back.
BSG's finale could be spiritual; it could be SF. I would venture to suggest what you see in it might say something about you more than it does about Moore... ;)
I haven't watched the original Battlestar since I was a kid... but didn't the original Starbuck die and come back as an angel as well? In a white suit and everything?
Bless you "The Ridger". I though I was all alone in the world!
Battlestar Galactica left me cold from day one. I even did a rant about it, so I'll spare you a second one.
What I don't get is how so many people of taste can like a show that I though was really, um, dumb. I was beginning to feel like Donald Sutherland amongst the pod posters.
At least they didn't bring back the daggett.
Sorry to differ. Well not really as I could never stomach BSG. The premise was tripe of the first order and what served as plot amounted to a rather thin soap opera. pffffft
I'm still slogging through the DVDs of Season 3. But I have to say, the personal interactions of the characters are becoming a little tedious. I like well-developed characters, but I like the development to flow from plot, not to substitute for plot. But that's what the fast-forward button is for when there are no commercials.
As to the "spiritual" aspects, they are quite evident in the third season, and do feel like a copout. They seem like the spiritualism that sometimes shows up on the series "The Mentalist" which is otherwise a good show.
The technological dissonance sometimes bothers me, too. But maybe they really are a middle-transistor-age technology that just happened to stumble on FTL. And computer intelligence. Maybe it's that weird mix of technological eras that causes sound to be transmitted in space.
Thankyouu:9