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shallownessSat down to watch the final triple bill, and it was bittersweet. There were some things they almost pulled off (the opera house dream coming true, some moments of vengeance among reconciliations and goodbyes and in outline, I’d say it worked, but it couldn’t erase the last two seasons or the unconvincing machinations to get here. The very ending felt like one for the mundanes who didn’t watch science fiction, but made an exception for BSG. The big point didn’t feel that fresh to me (although it made me think of the title sequence of Robot and Frank, which came after the BSG reboot.) And I was still going, ‘Well, I might have watched the Six and Baltar version of Good Omens, but that wasn’t the show until the last couple of episodes and this version of Baltar seems more like human!Baltar because we barely saw messenger!Baltar.’ So, I felt slightly more kindly inclined toward it than toward much of season 4, but not entirely won over.
Also, I’ve thought I’d been spoiled for Lee’s death for a few months…which never happened.
Part 1 was mainly about flashbacks of Laura losing her family (cut to Laura dying to cancer now), Bill dithering over retiring, Lee and Kara’s first meeting, randomly, Sam the sport star doing an interview, and Caprica and Gaius Baltar on Caprica. I’m not sure what accent Gaius’s father was meant to be doing, but it wasn’t the accent we heard James Callis doing that time. There were some arty, ‘this is significant’ shots, but it felt like hard work to try to pad out characters we already knew fairly well, because the action in the present day was mainly people packing up the Galactica (and men like Lee being sentimental about it,) while I thought Adama should be aware of how fortunate he was to have so much to pack. Helo was still stuck feeling aggrieved that a wrecked Athena wouldn’t see what had happened his way, and his conversation with whoever was in the cell just confused me. Gaius wanted ‘his people’ to be politically represented, Lee wasn’t having any of it because, as he rightly said, Gaius was self-serving, which Gaius had grown enough to acknowledge. Besides, I thought, if they could just get organised/take over a ship, they could get represented on the Quorum in due course.
Because he was still standing - although I personally appreciated seeing him take care of Mickey, because the show had made me invested in the poor motherless kid and then annoyingly stopped mentioning him, so I was pleased to know he was still alive – newish daddy Hotdog pointed Adama to the memorial wall of photos, where, among the pictures of people who nobody remembered (sad enough) Adama saw a picture of Hera and Athena (well played, Athena, because I bet it was her) and…did what he should have done days before and ordered a rescue.
As he should have done this ages ago, I was less than moved over the big show of the line and people choosing to be on The Side of Adama’s Heroes, although I liked the moments with Doc – first, Laura thanking him for keeping her going, but then Adama refusing to let him come too. There was zero tension about whether Gaius would join them, given his interactions with Six in his head and Lee now, and with Caprica in the past, plus it was fairly clear the action would all be in the rescue. I enjoyed Lambkin being appointed de facto President (setting democracy aside AGAIN), but I was mainly registering who Hoshi was for possibly the first time.
As the dream came into play, Laura being there made more sense, and at least she tried to help others.
There were quite a few bits I found confusing among all the big action, like what was happening with Tyrol and Tory. Actually, I found the big action confusing.
In the bad Cylons’ lair, Boomer was feeling increasingly bad (AS SHE SHOULD) about the treatment of Hera like a thing (thank goodness they didn’t linger, the implications were rough enough.)
Did Sam give informed consent to any of this? Anyway, cool moment as he shut off the other hybrids.
Was it at this point that Caprica and Baltar saw the Six and Baltar who had been in their heads? This was both cool and annoying, because Caprica’s arc has been so spottily written and we’ve seen so little of Six recently. Caprica and Baltar were armed fighers now (sure, why not?) and then Helo got shot (and we had to wait so long to find out what had happened to him, I really begrudged some of the scenes that weren’t telling us much that was new) and Athena went off to try to rescue Hera without him or knowing if he’d make it. Boomer made it all about Adama, I totally didn’t mind Athena shooting her (Athena’s psychotic break of shooting Natalie still nags at me). As the dream became a reality, you couldn’t fault Hera for running off when she was in the middle of a gun battle and it was crazy-making for a traumatised child, her going with Caprica and Gaius no longer seemed so dreadful, and I will give them a hat-tip for the pay off of the the vision melding with reality, with CIC as the opera house and the Five being there. Even though it was torturous to get there.
And of course, Brother Psychopath was there too. I spent Gaius’s speech hoping someone was inching closer to get a better shot of the Brother, but wrong genre. However, Saul (after Ellen had been bossing the Five and he was reluctant to be one of them) arranged a negotiation, and it all went so well until Tyrol found out who’d murdered his wife. CALLY WAS AVENGED (and that’s about it for Tyrol.) So that was messed up and it all came down to daddy’s girl Kara remembering the divinely ordained music because her space daddy believed in her and jumping them…to our Earth.
Blink and you’d miss it, but the Brother killed himself because he’d failed to get the resurrection tech (denying Athena the chance to gut him, which she was possibly owed.) And most of them were all right – Laura was still dying, and the guest starring Cylon men (Deeanna? We hardly knew ya,) were littered around the floor, though it did feel like a very male resolution as CKR’s Cylon talked for the sixes and the eights. As five men watched the natives and talked about the propagation of the human race, as Lee…just decided no more cities, but instead everyone would go a-wandering, and everyone was okay with that, including Sam being okay with flying into the sun. And I was supposed to believe that Kara really loved Sam (well, that was quite a toxic love, compared to Adama/Roslin, or even Helo/Athena, and he was able to talk as himself which felt unearned. I mean, they put a lot of emphasis on one teeny flashback to handwave a lot of issues.)
I didn’t mind the Kara/Lee flashbacks and the last goodbye emphasising that it was never the right time for them and they were both too screwed up for it to work, though I imagine some shippers were ragey, especially as Gaius got some kind of redemption with his lady love (as I’ve long said, Caprica has just really poor taste) and, I dunno, running around with guns and rescuing Hera was a bonding experience for them.
I mainly snarked about Kara’s ego – not wanting to be forgotten. Her final disappearance felt like the writers couldn’t think of a way out of that hole (and were too busy trying to convince us that the old Earth was a fake and could we just accept that the divine being(s) had sent themto our Earth, kthxbi, and beware robots?) So much must have been written about deus ex machinas and this show after this finale.
Laura’s death felt more grounded and sad – Adama’s gesture with the ring was bitterwseet, because he could have made it earlier, if he hadn’t spent so much time getting drunk with Saul, and I hated most of the Bill-and-Saul get drunk on the Galactica scenes, so I was extremely irritated ragey that they got drunk in a strip bar in flashback. His and Laura’s big decisions in the past felt less forceful than seeing Gaius’s terrible decision, and apart from Baltar and Roslin family details, they were redundant, while the show had held out on showing us Lee, Kara and Zach.
But still, Helo was all right and he and Athena were all right, and Hera was mitochondrial Eve (don’t think too much about who she had kids with or whether there were any more human/Cylon babies or if it was all newcomers/pre-verbal peeps reproducing.)
I’ll just say that there have been certain pitfalls that whoever reboots Battlestar Galactica again should be aware of and avoid.
Also, I’ve thought I’d been spoiled for Lee’s death for a few months…which never happened.
Part 1 was mainly about flashbacks of Laura losing her family (cut to Laura dying to cancer now), Bill dithering over retiring, Lee and Kara’s first meeting, randomly, Sam the sport star doing an interview, and Caprica and Gaius Baltar on Caprica. I’m not sure what accent Gaius’s father was meant to be doing, but it wasn’t the accent we heard James Callis doing that time. There were some arty, ‘this is significant’ shots, but it felt like hard work to try to pad out characters we already knew fairly well, because the action in the present day was mainly people packing up the Galactica (and men like Lee being sentimental about it,) while I thought Adama should be aware of how fortunate he was to have so much to pack. Helo was still stuck feeling aggrieved that a wrecked Athena wouldn’t see what had happened his way, and his conversation with whoever was in the cell just confused me. Gaius wanted ‘his people’ to be politically represented, Lee wasn’t having any of it because, as he rightly said, Gaius was self-serving, which Gaius had grown enough to acknowledge. Besides, I thought, if they could just get organised/take over a ship, they could get represented on the Quorum in due course.
Because he was still standing - although I personally appreciated seeing him take care of Mickey, because the show had made me invested in the poor motherless kid and then annoyingly stopped mentioning him, so I was pleased to know he was still alive – newish daddy Hotdog pointed Adama to the memorial wall of photos, where, among the pictures of people who nobody remembered (sad enough) Adama saw a picture of Hera and Athena (well played, Athena, because I bet it was her) and…did what he should have done days before and ordered a rescue.
As he should have done this ages ago, I was less than moved over the big show of the line and people choosing to be on The Side of Adama’s Heroes, although I liked the moments with Doc – first, Laura thanking him for keeping her going, but then Adama refusing to let him come too. There was zero tension about whether Gaius would join them, given his interactions with Six in his head and Lee now, and with Caprica in the past, plus it was fairly clear the action would all be in the rescue. I enjoyed Lambkin being appointed de facto President (setting democracy aside AGAIN), but I was mainly registering who Hoshi was for possibly the first time.
As the dream came into play, Laura being there made more sense, and at least she tried to help others.
There were quite a few bits I found confusing among all the big action, like what was happening with Tyrol and Tory. Actually, I found the big action confusing.
In the bad Cylons’ lair, Boomer was feeling increasingly bad (AS SHE SHOULD) about the treatment of Hera like a thing (thank goodness they didn’t linger, the implications were rough enough.)
Did Sam give informed consent to any of this? Anyway, cool moment as he shut off the other hybrids.
Was it at this point that Caprica and Baltar saw the Six and Baltar who had been in their heads? This was both cool and annoying, because Caprica’s arc has been so spottily written and we’ve seen so little of Six recently. Caprica and Baltar were armed fighers now (sure, why not?) and then Helo got shot (and we had to wait so long to find out what had happened to him, I really begrudged some of the scenes that weren’t telling us much that was new) and Athena went off to try to rescue Hera without him or knowing if he’d make it. Boomer made it all about Adama, I totally didn’t mind Athena shooting her (Athena’s psychotic break of shooting Natalie still nags at me). As the dream became a reality, you couldn’t fault Hera for running off when she was in the middle of a gun battle and it was crazy-making for a traumatised child, her going with Caprica and Gaius no longer seemed so dreadful, and I will give them a hat-tip for the pay off of the the vision melding with reality, with CIC as the opera house and the Five being there. Even though it was torturous to get there.
And of course, Brother Psychopath was there too. I spent Gaius’s speech hoping someone was inching closer to get a better shot of the Brother, but wrong genre. However, Saul (after Ellen had been bossing the Five and he was reluctant to be one of them) arranged a negotiation, and it all went so well until Tyrol found out who’d murdered his wife. CALLY WAS AVENGED (and that’s about it for Tyrol.) So that was messed up and it all came down to daddy’s girl Kara remembering the divinely ordained music because her space daddy believed in her and jumping them…to our Earth.
Blink and you’d miss it, but the Brother killed himself because he’d failed to get the resurrection tech (denying Athena the chance to gut him, which she was possibly owed.) And most of them were all right – Laura was still dying, and the guest starring Cylon men (Deeanna? We hardly knew ya,) were littered around the floor, though it did feel like a very male resolution as CKR’s Cylon talked for the sixes and the eights. As five men watched the natives and talked about the propagation of the human race, as Lee…just decided no more cities, but instead everyone would go a-wandering, and everyone was okay with that, including Sam being okay with flying into the sun. And I was supposed to believe that Kara really loved Sam (well, that was quite a toxic love, compared to Adama/Roslin, or even Helo/Athena, and he was able to talk as himself which felt unearned. I mean, they put a lot of emphasis on one teeny flashback to handwave a lot of issues.)
I didn’t mind the Kara/Lee flashbacks and the last goodbye emphasising that it was never the right time for them and they were both too screwed up for it to work, though I imagine some shippers were ragey, especially as Gaius got some kind of redemption with his lady love (as I’ve long said, Caprica has just really poor taste) and, I dunno, running around with guns and rescuing Hera was a bonding experience for them.
I mainly snarked about Kara’s ego – not wanting to be forgotten. Her final disappearance felt like the writers couldn’t think of a way out of that hole (and were too busy trying to convince us that the old Earth was a fake and could we just accept that the divine being(s) had sent themto our Earth, kthxbi, and beware robots?) So much must have been written about deus ex machinas and this show after this finale.
Laura’s death felt more grounded and sad – Adama’s gesture with the ring was bitterwseet, because he could have made it earlier, if he hadn’t spent so much time getting drunk with Saul, and I hated most of the Bill-and-Saul get drunk on the Galactica scenes, so I was extremely irritated ragey that they got drunk in a strip bar in flashback. His and Laura’s big decisions in the past felt less forceful than seeing Gaius’s terrible decision, and apart from Baltar and Roslin family details, they were redundant, while the show had held out on showing us Lee, Kara and Zach.
But still, Helo was all right and he and Athena were all right, and Hera was mitochondrial Eve (don’t think too much about who she had kids with or whether there were any more human/Cylon babies or if it was all newcomers/pre-verbal peeps reproducing.)
I’ll just say that there have been certain pitfalls that whoever reboots Battlestar Galactica again should be aware of and avoid.
