BSG - the end

[shapinglight]

Well, that's that, then. It's no longer possible for anyone to spoiler me for BSG. :breathes a sigh of relief:

Brief (because of ongoing pain in hands) thoughts behind cut. Spoilers for BSG season 4.2 (or season 5, as it's known this side of the Pond) behind cut.



Okay, so I've managed to avoid most spoilers, but seen enough to take on board that a lot of people weren't happy with this ending. Can't say I really understand why, though.

Okay, so I'm not saying it was perfect. In fact, I can see some big, stonking problems with it myself as far as logic goes, plus some troubling undercurrents which I suspect the writers weren't even aware of, which applies to the whole season/half-season, not just the finale. I can also see why, if a person was, say, a huge Starbuck/Apollo 'shipper, they might feel a bit cheated by what happened at the end. However, for the most part, I found the finale very satisfying emotionally. There were characters I would have liked to see more of over the course of the season- Leoben, for instance, though it's cool that ultimately he was right about Kara - and some plot lines seemed a bit pointless - the stuff with Tigh and Caprica 6 and their stillborn baby, especially as Caprica ended up back with Baltar anyway, and it was clear that Tigh's feelings for Ellen had never really wavered. I also hated what happened to Dee. I wanted her to be there right at the end. I think the character deserved that after all she'd been through. Wasn't too keen on the Tori subplot either.

Those things aside, though, there was an awful lot of stuff I liked, including the reappearance of Ghost!Caprica 6 and Ghost!Baltar as rather supercilious 'angels', and the fact that though some beloved characters died and others got a happy ending, there was hanging over everything the sense of a vicious cycle going around and around over millennia on one planet after another. Good old BSG. It can always find the black cloud outside the silver lining.

I also liked that some of the deepest and most enduring romances in the show were between older characters. Whatever you may think of Ellen, it was clear she and Tigh really had something, as did Adama and Roslin (and her death was the only time in the finale when I teared up) and really what can you say about the bromance between Tigh and Adama except, damn that was well done!

Have to admit that I also adored the fact that my favourite version of All Along the Watchtower ended up being the theme song of the series. I don't think there's a better song to evoke the sense of scary desolation eating at the edges of civilisation than that.

So, anyway, thoughts? Opinions? Or if you're all talked out about it now, can you point me towards anything the show writers had to say when the dust had settled? Also, those of you who've seen Caprica, what did you think of it (no spoilers please)? And when is the final BSG movie coming out - the one from the cylons' POV?

Comments

[vampirefever.livejournal.com]

I'm not an Apollo/Starbuck shipper in a fandom sense, but they were my go-to couple of the series. However, I didn't feel cheated; I absolutely loved how they finished Starbuck's story. In fact when she disappeared I cried like a baby (and on every viewing since) - I think it was a perfect ending for her.

I actually continued crying from that point on in that final episode to when the credits rolled; Sam, Starbuck and Roslin - all were dealt with wonderfully. I even teared up when the Centurians were given their freedom - I'm such a sap.

I had no little niggles with the final series; it somehow all worked out for me. I could understand why they had to have a major character suicide at the start of S5, as it needed something like that to show the complete lack of hope that they were all suffering from and how those feelings could lead to mutiny and the eventual do-or-die mission to save Hera.

I also loved that Baltar, my favourite character, got the last word with All Along the Watchtower plaving in the background.

Supreme telly :-)

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you liked but I'm still mad at them for the finale. The personal stuff was all nice and dandy and very moving (especially Roslin and Adama)but the plot blew to hell.

The whole complicated net of clues, prophesis and plans (or not plans) for a cheap deus ex machina ending. God did it. It just annoyed me. I saw it coming when they spontaniously decided on the final five, but the extend of it still annoyed me. Everybody mysterious is angel of the lord.

I'm not sure if I can ever get past the ruined plot. I loved the characters, but in the later seasons some of them got just to crazy/angsty for my liking and I was mainly invested in finding out what it was all about.

I'll wait for "the plan" and for the DVDs to cheapen to find out if I can bring myself to buy them.

I saw Caprica and I liked it. But it's already starting with a mystery plot again and after feeling so cheated by BSG I'm not sure if I want to watch it if they haven't thought it through anyway.

Sorry to be so negative, mystery for mystery's sake is just a big nono for me.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much this. There's some excellent character stuff in it, but the plot, the way they essentially just ignored most of the previous 4 years to get to the same ending as vol 2 of The Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy except voluntarily, the epilogue, the "everything is preordained" message... jeez.

This article (summarized here), while pretty harsh, does a fine job of outlining the problems, and I agree with much (if not all) of it.

But yes, yay for at least getting to hear one good cover of "Watchtower" before it was over. :-)

[ringthebells]

Dave and I both loved the ending (with reservations and what-the-hell? moments, sure, but overall: love). So I was a bit perplexed to go online afterwards and find out that most of the internet had hated it with a passion.

I have vague ambitions of writing a long post about why I didn't hate it, but probably that'll never happen (considering my lack of writing time!).

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

I found it a bit too religious.
Also, I was kind-of hoping the humans and cylons could all get along, but I can also appreciate how easy it is for something to get cocked-up at the last minute. Neither loved nor hated it - it felt a bit anti-climactic.

[shapinglight]

However, I didn't feel cheated; I absolutely loved how they finished Starbuck's story.

I didn't cry, but I felt the same. I thought the ending of her story was pretty much perfect. Would just have liked one more bit of interaction between herself and Leoben.

I also loved that Baltar, my favourite character, got the last word with All Along the Watchtower plaving in the background.

I liked that too, actually. The cynicism of the ending - at least as I saw it - was rather refreshing. That said, I did like that Real Baltar came good.

I could understand why they had to have a major character suicide at the start of S5, as it needed something like that to show the complete lack of hope that they were all suffering from and how those feelings could lead to mutiny and the eventual do-or-die mission to save Hera

Yes, I understand that. I just wish it hadn't been Dee (though I can't think who else it could have been).

[shapinglight]

God did it. It just annoyed me. I saw it coming when they spontaniously decided on the final five, but the extend of it still annoyed me. Everybody mysterious is angel of the lord.

I really don't think it was as simple as that, but even if it was, it's not like there wasn't enough stuff about God and angels during the course of the story to point to such an ending being possible. I actually thought the final scene between Ghost!Baltar and Ghost!Caprica (or Angel!Baltar and Angel!Caprica, if you like) came across as rather downbeat and cynical. God didn't really save everyone. Most of them died, and those that remained sank away into the landscape and were forgotten forever. I liked that. But then I've enjoyed the dream sequences/mystical stuff all along and am glad that side of it ended on an ambiguous note rather than an endorsement of religion!yay!

So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really see the solution to the mystery as being out of left field or a disappointment.

Not saying it was perfect either.

[shapinglight]

Hmm, can't say I agree with you or with that article. One of things mentioned as being wrong with the finale is that 150,000 years later the colonists have left nothing of themselves behind, which is one of the things I liked best. Firstly, it refutes the whole 'all our civilisations were founded by spacemen because our primitive ancestors were too stupid to think it up for themselves' idea. The colonists may have interbred with the natives but all trace of them sank away into the gene pool before the first Earth civilisations arose. I like that. They just sank into the landscape and disappeared.

I also think that objecting to the mystical turn things took is rather odd considering the mystical element has been there right from the start, with Caprica 6 and all the stuff about God.

As for the preordained thing, I can deal with that too because of the sheer darkness of the ending. Well, I thought it was dark, the two 'angels', if that's what they were, running through a list of humanity's previous failures and wondering what'll happen this time, only for the TV news to show that history is once again repeating itself.

But yes, yay for at least getting to hear one good cover of "Watchtower" before it was over. :-)

I do love that song. S has it as his ringtone on his phone. So, coincidentally, does Comic Shop Bloke. Men of a certain age, perhaps? (Not meaning you, as I don't know how old you are, and having said which, the Hendrix version of that song always gives me the shivers).

[shapinglight]

So I was a bit perplexed to go online afterwards and find out that most of the internet had hated it with a passion.

Yes, must admit, I'm perplexed too, having just seen it. I hope you write your post. I would love to read it.

[shapinglight]

I found it a bit too religious.

Well, it's not like that element hadn't been there from the start. In fact, it was one of the strongest themes in the show.

Also, I was kind-of hoping the humans and cylons could all get along, but I can also appreciate how easy it is for something to get cocked-up at the last minute.

Yes, I was a bit upset about that too, especially as I didn't like the Tori sub plot. Still, at least some of the Cylons got on with the humans - the 2s,6s and 8s. Also, the centurions got their freedom.

[timeofchange.livejournal.com]

Nice commentary. I agree with your thoughts re: the religious element being there right from the start. There was indeed a lot to love about the ending.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

I didn't have a problem with the finale, per se, but the 4 episodes leading up to it felt too much like filler. Perhaps the payoff wasn't enough to erase the maudlin soap opera we got just before, for me. I'm not sure. It's a little fuzzy, all these months later.

And ¡yes! to the mature love (well, older anyway). I told you I've been seeing it everywhere, and BSG was a big part of it, though the last Indiana Jones also had it, as did Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and many other American and British productions. I don't remember there ever being a love story between over-40s before the last few years. Even in the 30s and 40s, the closest you came were the Topper movies. Okay, The African Queen is the exception that proves the rule. Anyway, I like it, and hope to see more, although McDiva is totally grossed out. Heh.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I also think that objecting to the mystical turn things took is rather odd considering the mystical element has been there right from the start, with Caprica 6 and all the stuff about God.

Well, for me it's not the mystical turn as such - that didn't bother me in the Buffyverse either - but the way it's used to explain EVERYTHING. Everything was preordained, everyone's actions were according to plan, none of the difficult choices they made were theirs to make, all the mysteries set up over the last couple of seasons had the same answer: "Because God willed it so and he moves in mysterious ways." It's poor storytelling, IMO. It irks me in the same way Skip's claim that everything in the Buffyverse is preordained (in s4 of Angel) except here we have no counterstory, no comment on it, no window for claiming that he simply lied, no follow-up; just The End, da capo al fine. But if it works for you, great. :-)

Men of a certain age, perhaps?

Mental age, maybe. :-D Except I'm one of those obstinate bastards who still prefer Dylan's version, though Hendrix' version is incredible too...

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not like that element hadn't been there from the start. In fact, it was one of the strongest themes in the show.

True. I just didn't find it very satisfying.
But having said that, it could have been a lot worse.

[next_to_normal]

I liked it a lot. I can see where people have problems with the plot, but hell, if I can overlook Joss Whedon's shitty plotting and continuity foul-ups for the sake of well-written characters, I can overlook this, too. It definitely worked for me on an emotional level, and I felt like the goodbyes for each character were cathartic and appropriate - Starbuck just vanishing, Apollo excited to explore, Roslin and Adama finally getting a chance to rest (I'm tearing up again just thinking about it), the Tighs and the Agathons walking off happily into the future. God, even Baltar's "my father was a farmer" got me.

I don't really get all the complaints about "God did it." Is it really a deus ex machina if the characters have been talking about God's plan since the miniseries? I think if people were expecting anything different, then they probably weren't watching the right show.

I have to say, I was less impressed with Caprica. Again, it's all about the characters. I like Esai Morales, and the girl who plays Zoe, but overall I just didn't connect with them the way I did the BSG characters. It's an interesting situation they're in, but I have to care about what happens to them, not just about what happens next. Then again, I wasn't terribly impressed with the BSG miniseries, either (it was "33" that really made me a fan), so I'll probably give it a few episodes.

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

You can count me in the "hated it" crowd. Hated Adama "marrying" Roslin *after* she was dead; hated Starbuck disappearing into thin air with no explanation; not crazy about Head Six and Head Baltar turning out to be angels, or whatever, either. PASSIONATELY hated the way most of the major characters basically went off to die alone, as if the relationships they'd built over the course of the story meant nothing. Of course, little Hera turning out to be our "mitochondrial Eve," does suggest that all the other settlers died off pretty rapidly. That's what bothered me most about it, I think -- that all their sufferings led to an apparent "happy ending" that was really just a lonely death on an alien planet.

Obviously it didn't hit everyone this way -- which is a good thing; I'm glad to know someone was satisfied with it!

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

It wasn't the mystical business in itself that irked me, more that there was alot of stuff that had been promised an answer it didn't get.
I agree it wasn't out of the left field but I had still hoped for so much more. I love it when I rewatch a show and I can spot stuff that I didn't understand then but that makes perfect sense in retrospective. A budding development or a mystery not yet solved. With BSG now everytime I see Gaius fussing about imaginary Six, I'll just think, don't bother, she's your guardian angel, it's not a solveable puzzle and it will never make sense.

I don't need every question answered either, just those that where intented to rise speculations. What use was it to speculate who the final five are, when by the time not even the writers knew yet? It just seemed to me that they made it up as the went along and where they couldn't think of an answer anymore they inserted god.

And all that fuss about Hera for absolutely nothing.

Also I didn't like the irrational behaviour of some characters. First the cylon in chief shots himself for no good reason, then lee goes all amish and everyone agrees, those being the people who never agreed on anything for four seasons and now they agree to renounce probably life saving technology.

For positive things at least the BSG god seems not be a gentle guy in white, but crazy sadistic scientist with a cosmic ant farm.
Also loved Gaius crying at the prospect of becoming a farmer, but then I pretty much loved the personal stuff, I just felt cheated for a plot.

Maybe they are going to rescue at least the part about the cylons having a plan but is this point I'm not very optimistic.

But actually I really don't want to nag on. I'm glad you liked it and I'll suck it up now.

[yourlibrarian]

Can't say I really understand why, though.

I couldn't either, and was rather surprised to hear about the amount of discontent. Then again, while I appreciated BSG a lot as a show I wasn't part of the fandom. so maybe there were issues there I wasn't getting. As for Apollo/Starbuck, I could certainly understand why a shipper might go ballistic but as a non-shipper it seemed to me that they were never going to end up together, no matter what.

some plot lines seemed a bit pointless - the stuff with Tigh and Caprica 6 and their stillborn baby, especially as Caprica ended up back with Baltar anyway, and it was clear that Tigh's feelings for Ellen had never really wavered.

In the long-term sense I could see how this could be seen as pointless, especially as on-air minutes wound down and other things might have been addressed. However, I did see it as important in shedding light on the relationship between Ellen and Tigh which had never been well explained. Plus, given her last minute reappearance as the final Cylon, I thought it helped flesh out Ellen as a character, and her own feelings and motivations as a (re)creator of the Cylon race.

I agree though that Dualla never got the sort of time and development she should have, which led, I suspect, to her seemingly pointless death. Her relationship with Apollo always seemed to come out of the blue to me and I think this was largely because the writers didn't seem to know what to do with her.

Good old BSG. It can always find the black cloud outside the silver lining.

Ha! True. It was a "happy" ending in the context of their verse.

I also liked that some of the deepest and most enduring romances in the show were between older characters.

Hear, hear.

[ringthebells]

I hope you write your post. I would love to read it.

Haha, okay, this comments thread might be the closest I come!

Okay, one of the main criticisms, and one I can totally sympathize, is that a lot of the mysteries were finally resolved with a hand-wavy "Okay, God did it!" And also the cylons' plan was never explained in a way that made sense.

This didn't particularly bother me in the finale because I'd anticipated it from pretty much the beginning of season 3. At that point whenever "They Have A Plan" flashed in the opening credits, my friends and I would call out our correction, "They're making it up as they go along!"

But then even at the end, there were a few bits that made sense of things that had happened long before. Like Ellen's mysterious appearance back in Season 1, for instance -- that always seemed vaguely suspicious but was never explained, up until near the end of the series when we finally find out: Cavil saved her! So that he could watch her suffer!

Another complaint that seems to be common is the ridiculousness of sending all the technology into the sun. But I can totally buy that the colonists would do it.

I mean, yes, it was sort of a dumb move and it probably did result in early deaths for most of them. But I can absolutely believe that they did it.

Keep in mind that the colonists were probably all suffering from PTSD, and had been hurtling desperately through space in tin cans for the past five years, pursued by killer robots, breathing stinky recycled air and eating reconstituted algae (with a brief, crappy stay on New Caprica in the middle, for some of them). I can totally believe that when a charismatic leader-type said "Hey, let's get rid of all our technology and start fresh!" they would have agreed, at least for long enough to put the plan in motion.

The thing that struck me about Baltar talking about farming was: he must have failed. We have no record of agriculture starting that far back, not even close. (A cloud for every silver lining, indeed!)

[queenofthorns.livejournal.com]

Heh! I'm not going to comment in detail because I loathed the ending, and the more I think about it, the more I loathe it. Part of it was the Kara/Lee stuff, but I had a lot of other issues with many, many other things as well (including the fact that Mitochondrial Eve doesn't actually work the way the show posits that it does!) But I'm glad you enjoyed it, anyway :D

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I was actually fairly satisfied by the finale. However, I was a pretty casual fan who wasn't all that enchanted with BSG in general so I freely admit that I didn't have the investment that hard core fans did, and I think this is why I was more accepting of the finale.

[esmerelda-t.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the BSG finale to an extent that surprised me as I thought series 4.5/5 was on the whole terrible. What redeemed it for me was the character endings were so satisying. Even the characters who died, well Roslin was always going to and it had been obvious for quite a while Kara really was dead. They weren't subtle with the whole 'she's an angel' thing which is why I don't quite get why that came as such a terrible rage inducing shock to some people.

Now the plot, especially once they got to Earth, was nonsense but the plot had been nonsense for quite a while. They'd also lost anything resembling a subtle theme or analogy by that point too. I was over that by the time the finale rolled round and so was happy with the chacacter endings.

I've just seen Caprica over the weekend and thought it was boring. YMMV though.

Oh and I do agree, BSG had it's flaws when it came to portraying women, but there is nothing in popular culture that doesn't and at least it had visible older women.

[shapinglight]

Everything was preordained, everyone's actions were according to plan, none of the difficult choices they made were theirs to make, all the mysteries set up over the last couple of seasons had the same answer: "Because God willed it so and he moves in mysterious ways

I don't think it was nearly as cut and dried as that, considering that all the two 'angels' ever did over the course of the show is provide a sort of running commentary on Baltar's/6's neuroses. As such, I don't think that even at the end, you could say they were 'outside' agents. Those two characters - Baltar in particular, of course - have always had a rather different perspective than other characters.'

I dunno. I'm beginning to think I'm better off not reading anything the disappointed fans had to say. I read one post, didn't recognise anything said in it as being anything like what I watched and crept quietly away.

I'm one of those obstinate bastards who still prefer Dylan's version, though Hendrix' version is incredible too...

I like the Dylan version very much too - and I think we can both agree that both Dylan's and Hendrix's version are way, way better than U2's :).

[shapinglight]

Yeah, I can see there's not a lot of point arguing about this. I've read a couple of fannish posts about the finale, didn't recognise anything I read about as being in what I just watched and have decided it's best to just creep quietly away.

For positive things at least the BSG god seems not be a gentle guy in white, but crazy sadistic scientist with a cosmic ant farm.

Yes, I loved that. It's this that sold the finale to me, in fact.

[shapinglight]

I'd agree with your post. I thought the finale was a bizarre blend of the very personal and deeply affecting (Roslin's death, Baltar's tears, Kara's disappearance) and the nihilistic. God is an indifferent super-scientist in a white coat, endlessly repeating an experiment. In a way, the 'fade away' option seemed rather a good way of giving this God the two fingers. I dunno.

For me, the thing I hated most about the finale was the Tori subplot. I knew her murder of Callie was the other shoe and it had to drop some time, but I just didn't like that at all.