BSG Finale
To no particular surprise, we got a mix of the wondrous and the unfortunate. I choose to celebrate the wondrous: Laura Roslin at every point; Saul and Helen then and now; Bill Adama finally having the option of tenderness and taking it; and more than anything else, Baltar and Six. The series that really was a series, a coherent whole working out and fulfilling a theme, was their series. Even last week when some people were complaining about the distraction of the flashbacks, the relevance of the Baltar-Six flashbacks was clear enough. In the present, you had Lee Adama challenging Baltar about whether he’d ever done a single unselfish thing. In the past, you had Caprica Six performing an act of spectacularly successful generosity. And yet, with the malign purpose of genocide. And yet, we knew that soon enough, she would give her life to save Baltar’s (did it, though?), and in the present, since the holocaust, no character has done more to try to atone for committing evil than she.
Do we not in the end have to wonder if Baltar survived the attack on Caprica in the ordinary sense? I think there’s a case that he was as much a ghost as Kara Thrace. Gene Wolfe borrowed Paracelsus’s term, “aquastor,†for his solid yet nonetheless ghostly protagonists of certain novels. That seems to characterize the Starbuck of the last season. It may well describe the Baltar of the entire series. Perhaps after that last scene on the Veldt, Six and Baltar walk back into the ether, as much phantoms as the doppelgangers who haunted and sustained them. I’d never try to convince you that BSG was as good, in toto, as the best of Wolfe’s works – it’s far too late for that. But in the way Baltar and Six and Leoben and Starbuck argued and embodied the relationships of God and gods; hallucinations and experience; human and machine; sin and submission; the series called the spirit of his works down by accident or design.
And the work done by James Callis and Tricia Helfer as actors was what made their part of it work. The show’s creators had the sense throughout the series to shoot them as a pair rather than cutting between closeups, so we got great reaction sequences, particularly as their relationship evolved. It feels like whole years of the show went by when we got far too little of the two of them together and their long romance by disputation. So when Baltar drags God’s plan back into things on the Bridge during the assault it’s – let’s call it under-prepared. But if you remember the two of them on Colonial One, on Kobol, in Downloaded, it makes a story. I’ll always cherish the recognition scene before the assault, where the corporeal Six and Baltar understand not just that they are seeing each other as doppelgangers, but that they are seeing each other too, for the first time with justified mutual respect. Things like that are going to stick with me long after the frustrations and shortcomings have faded.
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 21, 2009 @ 12:03 am
I thought it frakking rooled, but you knew I would.
Comment by Jennifer —
March 21, 2009 @ 12:14 am
I found the last episode boring, actually. The whole rescue-of-Hera thing didn’t have to take nearly as long as it did, and the series ended with loose threads left untied. The whole “You will lead humanity to its death, Kara Thrace” thing turned out to be another red herring too. I’d also like an explanation of what the doppelgangers actually are, or at least how they managed to have a lifespan of 150,000 years and counting.
Bah humbug.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
March 21, 2009 @ 12:20 am
I suppose even as the series crashed and burned there were still things to admire about it. But you’ve said all there is to say about that.
A few of my many complaints
I have trouble believing 38,000 people would all voluntarily decide to give up technology. Though, to be fair, since they were going to practice agriculture they were still going to be 140,000 years ahead of their contemporaries. Plus they had that whole language thing going, something their H. sapiens counterparts hadn’t evolved/invented yet. But still, I’d expect most of the 38,000 to be dead in a few years.
I originally expected BSG refugees to end up in the eastern Mediterranean region around 1000 B.C., because the Greek mythology and the monotheism of the Cylons would have fit in nicely with religious developments around then. But I gave the writers too much credit. What was the point of all that Greek mythology if there wasn’t going to be an Earthly connection?
Kara being a ghost was just a cheat. They apparently couldn’t think of a logical way out, or even a logical supernatural way out, so they picked that. At least with angel Baltar and angel Six, we were told all along just what they were, but there was nothing in the show that indicated that ordinary flesh and blood people could come back as solid ghosts and then vanish when their job was done. Or was she supposed to have been an angel all along? She had a real mother, I thought.
Comment by Doctor Memory —
March 21, 2009 @ 12:49 am
I’m willing to spot them pretty much all of the plot problems, even including whatever-it-was they were trying to do with Kara. But really… the human/cylon war (almost) ends because… Baltar makes a heartfelt plea for understanding?
In the show I fell in love with, Cavil and Adama would have happily taken a 10-second timeout to fill him full of lead, and then gone back to their standoff.
Comment by Eric Scharf —
March 21, 2009 @ 2:06 am
’ll always cherish the recognition scene before the assault, where the corporeal Six and Baltar understand not just that they are seeing each other as doppelgangers, but that they are seeing each other too, for the first time with justified mutual respect.
Exactly this. Butch and Sundance.
Comment by Justin Slotman —
March 21, 2009 @ 3:21 am
Various thoughts: Humanity is fairly pasty white, I’ve noticed. I hope a couple Simons stowed away somewhere.
Yeah, I can overlook a lot but the whole idea of all of humanity agreeing to give up their gadgets to start anew was not good. They’ve already got a ship full of Centurions cruising the void, I don’t see how it would have made a difference to have another lost tribe out there.
Boomer talking about life being full of choices, and she’s the character with the least amount of choice with her actions–it was an attempt at giving her a bit of thematic heft at the end, but mostly made me think about how much they didn’t do with Boomer.
Also: what Jim said about Baltar and Six, and Callis and Helfer being awesome.
Comment by Bill Kaminsky —
March 21, 2009 @ 9:40 am
My hat’s off to you, Jim. I think the opening of your post:
is a damn fine eulogy for BSG.
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 21, 2009 @ 1:51 pm
“At least with angel Baltar and angel Six, we were told all along just what they were, but there was nothing in the show that indicated that ordinary flesh and blood people could come back as solid ghosts and then vanish when their job was done.”
This is a reflection from the original series, Donald. The whole “glowing white mysterious” spots/ship/entities that brought Apollo back from the dead.
They’re some kind of far advanced aliens, a la 2001, or, if you prefer, something akin to gods. (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.)
This is clearly who they’ve been all along. Either you accept it, or you don’t, but it’s been written into the genes of the series since day one, with Head Six, and the religious dialogue over the nature of divinity.
“Or was she supposed to have been an angel all along?”
No, of course not. She was brought back to lead humanity to earth.
I have to agree that everyone deciding to give up technology is a hell of a large gimme to swallow. But that’s prose, and this is poetry.
Comment by Jennifer —
March 21, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
I have to agree that everyone deciding to give up technology is a hell of a large gimme to swallow.
Not to mention the idea that a bunch of people who are just as dependent on technology as we are can successfully give up that technology, scatter to the four winds and become successful Neolithic farmers.
If Hera is the Mitochondrial Eve, that means she will die in her very early 20s, after having spent the majority of her physical adulthood pregnant. Oooh, there’s a happy destiny for a cute little girl.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 21, 2009 @ 2:37 pm
But Jennifer, you’re tripping over your own complaints now. You wrote, ‘The whole “You will lead humanity to its death, Kara Thrace†thing turned out to be another red herring too.’ The relation of this to the fate of the colonists on our Earth seems pretty clear.
Comment by Jennifer —
March 21, 2009 @ 2:43 pm
You wrote, ‘The whole “You will lead humanity to its death, Kara Thrace†thing turned out to be another red herring too.’ The relation of this to the fate of the colonists on our Earth seems pretty clear.
How so? I’m not following you.
Comment by Doctor Memory —
March 21, 2009 @ 2:48 pm
Jennifer: if Hera was Lucy/Mitochondrial Eve, then ipso facto pretty much all of the other colonists died within the first generation, and none of their descendants made it past 2-3 generations.
Comment by Jennifer —
March 21, 2009 @ 3:03 pm
if Hera was Lucy/Mitochondrial Eve, then ipso facto pretty much all of the other colonists died within the first generation, and none of their descendants made it past 2-3 generations.
That’s not how Mitochondrial Eve works (and I just re-read some articles about it last night, to refresh my memory). The ME doesn’t imply a population bottleneck, nor is the ME the only woman alive at her time. She would have lived within a community of people, and she wouldn’t have been the only woman bearing children, either.
Comment by Jennifer —
March 21, 2009 @ 3:06 pm
Bit of clarification: the ME is simply the most recent common matrilineal ancestor. Mitochondrial DNA is only passed from mother to daughter: if I have 30 sons and no daughters, I might one day be the common ancestor of every person on Earth, but I will NOT be a Mitochondrial Eve due to my lack of female-line descendants. That doesn’t mean I was an evolutionary “failure” in terms of a lack of descendants.
Comment by Doctor Memory —
March 21, 2009 @ 3:09 pm
Ah, thank you for the clarification.
Comment by bryan —
March 21, 2009 @ 3:17 pm
“The whole “You will lead humanity to its death, Kara Thrace†thing turned out to be another red herring too. ”
Except for the part where it actually said you are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. Which could be argued as being pretty spot on in an oracular manner.
Comment by Jennifer —
March 21, 2009 @ 3:21 pm
In that scenario, the future Mitochondrial Eve would have been the most recent female-line descendant shared by all 30 of my daughters-in-law.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
March 21, 2009 @ 3:21 pm
“They’re some kind of far advanced aliens, a la 2001, or, if you prefer, something akin to gods. (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.)”
They seemed to be supernatural in the show, but admittedly, depending on what assumptions one makes about how long technology advances at its current rate, Clarke might be right and the distinction becomes blurry.
And off topic, but I was always amused by Carl Sagan, who when wearing his science popularizer hat would speculate on how there might be large numbers of advanced civilizations even just in our galaxy, some perhaps millions or billions of years ahead of us, but when talking about UFO’s or the paranormal would say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and seemed generally embarrassed to have his optimistic views about the reality of ET’s linked to all this UFO nonsense. But if you believe Clarke’s adage and also believe there might be large numbers of superadvanced aliens in the neighborhood, you’re really not in a position to rule out anything–science becomes helpless. Sagan seemed to go back and forth about the future of technology–he’d speculate with his Russian co-author in an early book about Type II and III civilizations (capable of controlling the energetic output of a star or a galaxy respectively), which sounds godlike to me, but when asking Fermi’s question he’d retreat to a more pessimistic view–oh, nobody is here because the stars are so far apart and interstellar travel is so difficult.
Comment by Jennifer —
March 21, 2009 @ 3:30 pm
“The whole “You will lead humanity to its death, Kara Thrace†thing turned out to be another red herring too. †Except for the part where it actually said you are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. Which could be argued as being pretty spot on in an oracular manner.
A half-assed web search for the hybrid’s exact words in “Razor” reveals this: “Kara Thrace will lead the human race to its end. She is the herald of the apocalypse, the harbinger of death. They must not follow her.”
But it doesn’t matter. Any grand plan the writers had fell apart after the first season or two, and everything after that was “Let’s take this shit we pulled out of our ass and do our best to market it as chocolate.” So forget what we made the hybrid say, let’s make Kara a ghost, let’s make Hera the Mitochondrial Eve because it sounds cool if you don’t consider what it actually means, and by all means let’s stick a token anti-technology message into it because technology isn’t nearly as nice as a world of primitive hunter-gatherers who die by age 30.
Comment by Jennifer —
March 21, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
In that scenario, the future Mitochondrial Eve would have been the most recent female-line descendant shared by all 30 of my daughters-in-law.
Comment by Jennifer —
March 21, 2009 @ 3:41 pm
Fucking HTML! Cut off the rest of my comment: I was going to say that it is, in fact, theoretically possible, if I were the most recent common ancestor of all humans on Earth, that the ME actually lived long after I did, not necessarily before. I seem to recall reading that the male-ancestor equivalent of the Mitochondrial Eve — the Common Adam or something like that — actually lived 60 to 80,000 years AFTER Mitochondrial Eve.
Comment by Seward —
March 21, 2009 @ 4:32 pm
What I thought about when they first encountered the new Earth humans was the disease issue. Namely that both groups of people would have come from disease environments which were foreign to each other and that this could lead to dramatic die offs.
I also found it odd that on the new Earth that they showed no predators. I was thinking as they were watching that group of herbivores feeding that they ought to be keeping an eye out for something looking to have them for lunch.
Anyway, it was presented almost as an unspoiled, idyllic eden, which is just odd. I then tie that in with Adama’s first episode speech about “sin” (is that the word that he used?) … and well, you can run from there.
Comment by Justin Slotman —
March 21, 2009 @ 4:53 pm
The more I think about that coda the more I hate it. What it supposed to be a joke? “You like your technobabble and easy parables, science fiction fans? Well here’s mitochondrial Eve–and by the way, Asimo’s coming to kill you. Suck on that!” If it was supposed to be a little tweaking of sci-fi tropes it was either too obvious or subtle to the point of not actually being there.
Comment by TJ —
March 21, 2009 @ 5:07 pm
The first hour was awesome, but I kind of lost interest when “Highway to Heaven” pre-empted the second.
Comment by Seward —
March 21, 2009 @ 6:01 pm
Anyway, with “The Plan,” “Capirca,” and perhaps more after that, there will be plenty of time for more information to be revealed.
Comment by cleek —
March 21, 2009 @ 6:21 pm
the hybrid, at the end of Razor, says this directly to Kara:
“You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end.”
she leads the cylon skinjobs to their death. she leads humanity to its journey’s end.
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 21, 2009 @ 8:13 pm
“But if you believe Clarke’s adage and also believe there might be large numbers of superadvanced aliens in the neighborhood, you’re really not in a position to rule out anything–science becomes helpless.”
Sure, but super-advanced aliens would be unlikely to be bobbing and weaving around where people could catch blurry photos, and random views, of them, let alone be visiting people in their sleep, kidnapping them for the night, and sticking probes up their ass.
And FTL travel still seems extremely unlikely, to put it conservatively. Just because there are most likely advanced civilizations out there somewhere doesn’t mean they have the magical capability — or desire — to travel here.
Meanwhile, Ockham’s Razor is a fairly safe bet: in the absence of any actual evidence of alien visitation, there’s no reason whatever to believe in such a thing.
(Keep in mind that you’re talking to someone who was the assistant to the editor who bought Whitley Streiber’s Communion, so you really don’t want to get me started here.)
“he’d speculate with his Russian co-author in an early book about Type II and III civilizations (capable of controlling the energetic output of a star or a galaxy respectively), which sounds godlike to me”
I don’t see anything godlike at all about it; it would just require extremely advanced engineering, and power generation vastly beyond ours. The principles are, for the most part, perfectly clear. Nothing supernatural required. Just a greater understanding of nature.
“…but when asking Fermi’s question he’d retreat to a more pessimistic view–oh, nobody is here because the stars are so far apart and interstellar travel is so difficult.”
I don’t see the problem here.
“Any grand plan the writers had fell apart after the first season or two, and everything after that was “Let’s take this shit we pulled out of our ass and do our best to market it as chocolate.—
This is clearly nonsense. I mean, I’ve been pointing out the storyline of the series, and where it was going to end, since the first season, and that was simply from watching the show, and understanding story structure. You don’t like it, fine, but insisting they had no idea where they were going is demonstrably completely in contradiction of reality. (See Jim’s last thread on BSG for more explication on how tv, and novels, and fiction in general, is written.)
I do agree that the decision to go all non-tech and, the resulting outcome, is rather implausible, and questionable, though. But, hey, it’s not my story, and it is a conclusion, even if it’s one I find somewhat questionable.
But I don’t confuse my personal choice of preferred story elements, and conclusions, with objective Wrongness.
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 21, 2009 @ 8:22 pm
“Namely that both groups of people would have come from disease environments which were foreign to each other and that this could lead to dramatic die offs.”
I think that if we’re accepting that the two groups have inter-breedable DNA, that not bringing new diseases along with them goes along naturally with that as gimmes. The Higher Powers would hardly make for the one, and fall down on the other.
“she leads the cylon skinjobs to their death.”
Maybe I missed it, but I’d assume that the 6s and other two models who were allies would also be able to procreate where there was “love,” just as was the case with Hera. There was only mention of the Centurions flying away, after all. (Although one does wonder a bit about what happens to the Raiders: do they find a non-weaponized destiny? Become explorers? Get further modified by the Centurions as they evolve themselves, as earlier Cylons first created hybrids, etc? I guess so.)
Anyway, she leads Cavil, and the other two bad guy models to their death, not all “skin jobs.” (A term first used in Blade Runner, so far as I know, btw.)
I thought it was a nice touch that instead of a simple “we’ll all find peace together” ending, Galen murders Torie in a fit of passion, thus igniting more killing, and a more complicated, less simplified, conclusion. And thus showing that even though wiser Cylon and human may have found a way to break the immediate cycle of violence, that passion and violence weren’t magically eliminated from the human condition (as, of course, they couldn’t be, to wind up with us as the result).
So that’s, you know, plausible.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
March 21, 2009 @ 10:59 pm
That’s reasonable, Gary, though I think that a civilization advanced enough to create Dyson spheres might know a few things that would seem magical to us. For that matter, some of our technology would seem magical to people just two centuries ago–though maybe not quite that to people one century ago.
And no argument about FTL from me. Like any SF fan, I hope current physics is wrong about that, but there’s no indication of it, beyond some odd speculation I don’t understand about wormholes and warping space.
The stuff which strikes me as godlike would be the kind of thing Vernor Vinge and the other singularity people talk about. Nanotechnology combined with superhuman AI’s, posthumanism, etc…. It might all be crap, but that’s what I’m thinking of when someone quotes Clarke about magic and technology.
And no, I’m not eager to defend the UFO contact reports, but if I were really sure that there were thousands or millions of superadvanced alien civilizations in our galaxy I’d still live my life as though there weren’t, but I’d half wonder if we weren’t surrounded by alien artifacts we’re all too stupid to recognize as such. It’s a great recipe for paranoia.
Comment by JC —
March 21, 2009 @ 11:46 pm
I liked the dancing robots ending. I’ve felt all along that the one taboo the show never had the courage to hit was the underlying possibility that life is a pointless joke being directed by a god too retarded to be vengeful.
The ending felt like a wink to that possibility.
Also, Cavil sort of hints at it during his dialog with Baltar.
Also, what is a cavil? Anyone? Anyone? A pointless point raised in an argument.
I give Moore and Co points for making what they knew was an unsatisfying ending for many viewers. Screw it. To many fanboys try too hard for too long to sort out the continuity of too many shows anyhow.
Besides, it could have been worse. It could have been the Newhart ending!
Comment by Rarely Posts —
March 22, 2009 @ 12:20 am
I actually liked it. I think Jim does a good job explaining why, though I have more mixed feelings about Baltar. Also, I’d point out, Baltar didn’t reach Cavil. Baltar reached Saul, and Saul reached Cavil by offering resurrection.
Also, the discussion of mitochondrial eve is basically correct, with one flaw. Mitochondrial DNA is passed on by mothers to BOTH sons and daughters — whatever your gender, you have mitochondrial DNA coming from your mother. So it’s not quite true to say “Mitochondrial DNA is only passed from mother to daughter.” However, it is true that any mitochondrial DNA passed on to a boy hits a dead end. He has it, but he will not pass it on.
Comment by Eric Scharf —
March 22, 2009 @ 1:46 am
Even though it was the start of the dreaded Hera (meta-)arc, for me the episode most evoked by Baltar and Six last night was “Fragged.” You didn’t know where the writers were going, but you wanted to watch Callis and Helfer get there.
The other grace note (sorry) was the respective fates of Boomer and Galen. I’m sure Moore regards Athena’s sororicide as a leavening dose of loss in his happily-ever-after finale, and it was inarguably the proper move for Athena, but I regard it as symbolic of the writers’ timidness, their failure to embrace the complexities they were oh-so-pleased to introduce. The flashback to Boomer’s rookie mast said it all: Bill and Saul going through the motions and getting sloshed, having no clue who they were accepting into their company or what would ultimately happen as a result of their ill-considered actions. You weren’t worthy of her, boys.
Galen, well, that’s us (or at least me). Proud to be on board from the start, tirelessly willing to do his part as far as he understood it, generous with his faith in his leaders, but ultimately nagged by suspicions that he was smarter and had better judgment. Epistemologically forced to accept that he was a cylon, Galen never stopped regarding it as absurd. Finally presented with a shit sandwich and told to take a bite, he said “Frak this” and walked away.
The series kicked off asking, “Does humanity deserve to survive?” Yet despite conclusively eluding their enemies and discovering a habitable planet, we are asked to believe that the Colonials decided that while their genes might endure, they would deliberately extinguish their own civilization. As the would-be hunter-gatherers filed off to the Happy Hunting Grounds, I kept hearing this song in my head:
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
Comment by fred —
March 22, 2009 @ 3:11 am
The series as a whole: disappointing. I was hoping for science fiction, but the final assessment has to be in the neighborhood of 20% science, 80% woo. Fortunately, alcohol was available.
Comment by Hesiod —
March 22, 2009 @ 8:54 am
Ron Moore in post mortem interviews explained that they left the Starbuck reincarnation issue deliberately vague. He said that no matter how they tried to explain it, the explanation took away from the story.
I am more surprised by the lack of discussion about what exactly was meant by head 6 and head baltar’s final exchange (”you know he hates that name”).
Comment by Elio M. GarcÃa, Jr. —
March 22, 2009 @ 10:13 am
Actually, it’s, “You know it hates that name,” or very close. I thought that was quite interesting.
Comment by Hesiod —
March 22, 2009 @ 10:26 am
It was “he,” not “it.” A function of James Callis’ accent and delivery.
So, it may be the “joke” is that God is a “she.” Thus explaining 6’s reaction.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 22, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
Strictly though, Angel-Baltar says that “God” hates the name “God.” Which is indeed a heck of a thing to say.
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 22, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
“I am more surprised by the lack of discussion about what exactly was meant by head 6 and head baltar’s final exchange (â€you know he hates that nameâ€). ”
What’s to discuss? It was left 100% explicit that they were extensions/messengers of the Higher Civilization. what’s left to say about that, given how little we know about them?
Comment by Garth KATNER —
March 22, 2009 @ 3:14 pm
I’ve been following the “Why would the colonists abandon their technology for farming?” debate here and on other blogs. My thoughts are:
1. Why not? They spent nearly years cooped up in increasingly claustrophobic spaceships pursued by the most advanced technology of their own making. I’d certainly give a thought to rejecting it especially if I took seriously the show’s basic injunction to break the Cylon-Human cycle of violence.
2. During their time on New Caprica, many or at least some must’ve taken up farming or at least gardening. And remember how enthusiastic they were to establish NC even though the conditions there were much tougher than their final destination. Besides, haven’t they proven by everything they have survived that will continue to do so?
3. Their dispersal across the Earth reminds me of the early European colonizations of North America, Africa, and Australia/New Zealand. Some communities thrived while others failed but the colonies survived in the long-run.
4. Greek mythology runs through the entire series highlighting a profound appreciation for nature and agrarian life. The zodiac signs used to distinguish each colony, for example, were originally based on constellations, initially observed to determine planting/harvesting seasons.
Finally, in a way, the series is an oral epic tale stretching back to the beginnings of humanity. This is the way the Greeks (and others) passed on their ideas and beliefs about the human experience. And such tales fully allowed for further elaboration, exaggeration, and re-interpretation each generation passed them along to the next.
So in this sense, we the fans, whether we liked everything or just some bits, are free to elaborate, exaggerate, and re-interpret to our hearts content…
Comment by Elio M. GarcÃa, Jr. —
March 22, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
Hesiod,
I’m listening to that final exchange again, and despite numerous repetitions, it still sounds like “it”, not “he”, to me.
Comment by Jason Plog —
March 22, 2009 @ 6:31 pm
My main criticism with the finale is the immense futility of the entire historic timeline of human culture up to and including the end.
By dumping their technology and records into the sun and dispersing the remaining 35k people broadly over the world with limited supplies, the surviviors are committing slow suicide in a pretty park. They may have been able to spark the gift of language with the local humans, but not much else.
By jumping forward 150,000 years we see that the colonials/cylons have managed to leave only a genetic trace of themselves. None of the cultural or technical achievments of their long historic struggle survive to our present by a long shot. The written word, farming, even monotheism are all lost for something like 130-140 thousand years until they get re-invented during the last 10-20 thousand years.
So, if we ultimately manage to avoid repeating the catastrophic cyle with our own home grown robots, what we have to look forward to is a Cylon civilization with a 150,000 year head start out among the stars. Though at least they may have held onto the cultural heritage of the Colonies for humanity to rediscover.
Grumble.
Overall I have loved BSG, but the ending solution tweeks me a bit. I would have been happy with it all if they’d just left a timecapsule to the future. Perhaps Colonial One parked in a dark corner of the moon – filled with records and waiting quietly in monolith style for its discovery.
…
BTW My personal solution for the end of the show was for the human/cylon hybrid civilzation to forsake finding a new homeworld in lieu of making an eternal fleet to break the cycle. The final flashforward could then have been an epic fleet of ships gliding by. Perhaps ships of light ala the original series.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 22, 2009 @ 6:35 pm
Well, there was also the fall of Atlantis, the rise of the Picts, the great Stygian Empire, the flourishing of Aquilonia . . .
Comment by Doctor Memory —
March 22, 2009 @ 6:48 pm
Warren Ellis wins the internets: http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7124
Comment by Derek Copold —
March 23, 2009 @ 10:28 am
I haven’t seen a train wreck this bad since the Matrix sequels. You can spin this anyway you want, but the finale stunk on ice.
The Luddite aspect has been argued over. I find it silly. The desire for “clean slates” is usually shared by fools and monsters. Every totalitarian has used it to justify his deeds. The idea that these people would meekly submit to a paleolithic lifestyle is ludicrous and contemptuous the audience. But, apparently, a lot of that audience deserves that contempt.
Let’s look at the attack. You’ve got all of humanity to look after in a fleet, yet you send all the best people on what the commander admitted is likely a “one way trip”. Who’s left in charge? Hoshi and the guy who carried around a dead cat for weeks? Why am I supposed to admire people this f***ing irresponsible? The final five can now reconstruct resurrection, so they proceed with an attack? How about offering a trade first? They still have radios. The Chief turns into an impulsive killer? Why? He wasn’t exactly all too hot for Callie, who had foisted a cookoo’s egg on him anyway.
Then we get the nihilism from Baltar. There’s some thing living beyond “good and evil”. Jesus. Giving Nietzsche to sci-fi writes is like giving a loaded gun to a monkey. I guess this god (or Gary’s imagined super-civilization) better be “beyond good and evil”, because if they’re not, they’re certified, pure evil. They’ve stood by or been involved with three, count ‘em, THREE near mass extinctions that have killed billions.
Then, as another posted alluded to, there really was no answer given to the principal question raised by Adama in the mini-series: Are human beings worth saving as a species? No answer. I guess the closest we have is that yes, they are, but only to provide amusement for a group of smug meddling “angels.”
Having ended on that sour note, I’ll say the Caprica preview looks interesting. It looks like the sort of show Moore really wanted to do, and probably should have.
Comment by dana —
March 28, 2009 @ 4:53 pm
“. You don’t like it, fine, but insisting they had no idea where they were going is demonstrably completely in contradiction of reality.”
Well, in fairness, they have said ‘We had no idea where we were going.’ They did a reasonable job cobbling together an endpoint that made sense given what they’d established, but it’s pretty clear that their initial plan wasn’t to have Kara turn into an angel, or that Six and Baltar in the Opera House were originally saving Hera.
But I think the writers ended up somewhere okay, somewhere consistent with where they were going. (I am on Hulu, so a week behind.) I thought finding Earth 150,000 years before now was clever, and I (perhaps I’m alone on this) thought that the decision to give up technology made sense, though not quite for the reasons the characters articulate. They’ve been clinging to a government, a way of life, a set of expectations, that simply can’t survive with only 38,000 people. Too small a population base to contain the knowledge to rebuild skyscrapers and machined bullets and ships and refrigerators and textiles and medicines and central heating; they’d be reverting to an agrarian, simpler society eventually anyway. Use the technology long enough for Helo to learn to use the atlatl, so to speak.
Giving Nietzsche to sci-fi writes is like giving a loaded gun to a monkey.
Plus a bit of Kierkegaard. God is beyond good and evil… so you have to take a leap! Back away from the intro phil religion text slowly…..