Alright, I’m sure the geek universe is busy digesting, crying, weeping “tearz of payne,” and gnashing proverbial teeth over the Battlestar Galactica Finale Friday. My better half and I were both glued to the set for the final reveal of all the secrets and here’s my take on how and what went down. Warning: Here there be spoilers. If you were not watching Friday night, shame on you; you should have been!
The show itself, coming in at 2 hours and 11 minutes (WTF? Who came up with this time?) was actually two completely different halves. The two halves can’t really be discussed together, they’re just too different, so we’ll cover each half independently.
First Half: The Climax
The first half was action-filled. This is what I expected the majority of the episode to be. It was fast, violent, and full of big images. In short, the first half of the show was frakin’ awesome. The action was intense, as I’ve come to expect of the show, and the scale of the combat was just what I would expect from a series finale.
Of course, I had to try and imagine how fast-paced the action as it would really have been without 8500 commercials. Sci-Fi commercial schedulers, burn in hell. It seemed like there was a commercial once every 5 seconds. I think there were actually more commercials per hour during the second half, but it seemed much more annoying during the first. When the action is fast-paced and heated it’s pretty jarring to watch Starbuck round the corner with gun raised… her eyes widen with fear and we pan back to … a fucking KFC drive through? Damnit!
This also had the effect of making the show into a series of cliffhangers. I like dramatic tension as well as the next man, but there are ways to do it without leaving us hanging every 10 seconds when you go to commercial. However, since the entire series is one cliffhanger episode after another, I’ve come to expect this with BSG.
The biggest surprise for me during this first half was the fact that the Caprica 6 had been seeing a Gaius hallucination/avatar/whatever just as he had been seeing her. This revelation, while interesting is also, unfortunately, stupid. They’re… angels? Are you kidding me? I expect to see crystals and dramatic discussions about pyramid energy in all the fan-fiction now. Anyway, despite this little bit of silliness, the first half was exactly what I was expecting and I enjoyed virtually every minute of it.
Part 2: The Afterglow
Ok, so after jumping to the numerical equivalent to the music all the Cylons have been hearing we end up… at Earth. No, not the dead Earth from last season’s finale but ours 150,000 years ago; the pre-dawn of human civilization. At this point, the series just sort of… stops. After the frenetic pace of the first hour, the second half is completely without energy; spent. It was actually a bit jarring. I looked at the clock and realized we were only one hour into the finale. I was sure the story wasn’t over yet. After a few minutes (and 15 commercial breaks later), I began to realize that the story really was over.
At first, I wasn’t sure what to think. It was sort of an “umm… okaaaaaay,” moment. Yes, it was an old idea, and one that has been touched on before in countless sci-fi series and short stories, but it was still cool to see it as imagined by the Galactica writers. It tied up a lot of loose ends, as expected. Unfortunately the powers that be apparently decided that didn’t need to include Starbuck, though it seems to point to her being an “angel” everyone can see. This is still just as stupid as it was when it happened in the first half. However, it’s really not very clear, she’s there one moment, gone the next. There’s room for more story there.
At any rate, despite this idiotic angel nonsense, as I write this I’ve found myself understanding what, perhaps, the writers were going for with the second half. Throughout the series, with all the frenetic action of the combat and the jumpy camera and the gritty realism they’ve portrayed, they’ve gone out of their way to try and make us as uncomfortable and as worried as the fleet’s citizens and the crew of the Galactica. Now, at the end, we get to share a different feeling.
If we were in the place of these people, when we finally made our way home, I think the pace we lived at would come to a screeching halt, too. I think we would all be grateful for the lack of urgency that the new world brings. It would be that long contented breath we all take when we’re finally home after a crazy day. Do I think 38,000 people would be so grateful that they would essentially give up on all technology? No, that’s a bit of a stretch. What I can easily see is nearly everyone slowing waaaay the hell down.
I believe this is precisely what the second half is trying to make us all feel and understand. While I don’t think this is the “going out guns blazing” that everyone was likely looking for it is a completely appropriate ending for a show of this caliber. All during the lazy exploration of the Earth and the spreading out of the fleet’s survivors, I found myself waiting for something horrible to happen; for the Cylons to turn into enemies again, for the early hominids to attack… just like the fleet would have been.
Even the passing of Roslin was not the crushing blow it would have been a few weeks ago. There was a palpable sense of relief that a suffering friend was able to rest, finally. We all knew it had to come. Adama’s reaction, while certainly grief-filled, was a subtle tribute it should have been rather than the screaming rage that her passing would have brought in the past. It was a perfect ending for the imperfections her life was filled with; a feeling mirrored by the entire story arc.
The little coda on the end certainly gives rise to possibilities but I have a feeling it will only be for fan fiction. I’d be far more interested to see how the final survivors vanished into proto-human civilization. To be honest, I could have done without the little bit of commentary, but the fact that Mitochondrial Eve was half-Cylon was a pretty cool concept. (Did you all spot Ron Moore?)
The finale will not please everyone. I know that. Some people just don’t dig subtle or nuanced. It was not the perfect ending that the citizens of the fleet would have imagined, either. It was, however, the perfect way to bring an end to these imperfect lives. Great job, BSG. You’ll be missed.
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