Battlestar Galactica Finale
So, if I understand the ending of the show correctly, Bob Dylan is a Cylon?
36 Responses to “Battlestar Galactica Finale”
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March 21st, 2009 at 11:21 am
That would explain Dylan’s singing voice…
March 21st, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Hmmmm.
Don’t mind me. Frankly by the end of the series I was rooting for the Cylons to wipe out humanity.
IMO the writing was utter garbage.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Why do people show up in threads like this just piss in the cornflakes of the fans of the show?
Anyway, I think the whole “song” thing is that it’s ingrained in our subconscious or some damn thing. Also, that was actually a pretty good ending to a good series. I was pleased that they didn’t fuck us over ala the ending of “Angel”.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I, for one, am happy you all have managed to keep spoilers out of this thread so far. I DVR’d it and the wife and I will likely watch it tomorrow.
March 21st, 2009 at 4:12 pm
ya, that was a great ending to the show. . . still gonna miss it though. . . . = (
You don’t get a good sci fi show like this too often. . .
March 21st, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I’m a Cylon you’re a Cylon, we’re all frakin Cylons
March 21st, 2009 at 4:40 pm
It was a great ending to a great story. I frakin’ loved it.
March 21st, 2009 at 5:55 pm
What could (should?) have been:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=46223959
March 21st, 2009 at 7:26 pm
While internally consistent with previous plot lines, the final episode went so far off the rails regarding rational thought by the human survivors that I found the last half hour a real bummer.
I did enjoy the Cylon eating his pistol for no apparent reason during the climactic battle scene. Apparently there was a “don’t be taken prisoner” subprogram for that model.
March 21st, 2009 at 10:17 pm
His only chance at getting resurrection back was now gone, and he was second or two from getting blown away from the colonials anyways. The only thing left was to do himself in so that at least they don’t get the satisfaction of killing him.
It wasn’t for no reason; it was a final spiteful act by a character entirely driven by spite.
March 21st, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Bob is just as much a Cylon as we all are, he just tapped into the genetic memory when he came up with that song. It was actually on Kobol’s Hot 100 for 11 straight weeks about 160,000 years ago.
March 21st, 2009 at 11:51 pm
I loved the series finale also, wrapped up all the plot threads nicely, etc.
Even still, the bar was pretty low—as long as they avoided another GALACTICA 1980, they were pretty much in the clear…
March 22nd, 2009 at 12:29 am
Every time I see kara hold a gun, I want to scream in anger.
March 22nd, 2009 at 12:35 am
BTW, BSG was the most overrated sci fi series ever. Horrible writing and directing. Way too much internal inconsistency, way too much passing around of the idiot ball to keep major characters alive, way too much passing around of the idiot ball to make the plot happen at all. People just plain didn’t behave rationally at least 90 percent of the time.
The “lets return to nature and breed with cavemen” ending was complete rubbish. Do the writers understand just how shitty life is without proper clothing, purified water, antibiotics or even stuff as basic as steel tools? Who would willing throw such things away? Aren’t the characters who made this decision the same ones who have been griping for 4 years about how they miss stuff like real toothpaste or real booze? Say goodbye to that stuff, cause the cavemen sure don’t have knowledge of fermentation or distillation, let alone stuff like biotech and chemistry.
March 22nd, 2009 at 12:55 am
Thanks for explaining the suicide, StormyD. You make sense, although I think shooting Adama (again) would have been even more spiteful if I was in a no-win situation.
I was not enough of a fan to know my Cylon roster. I was drawn in by the red dressed Six, who killed the human ambassador in the first episode, and stayed for the Asian one(s) and the space/soap opera.
Towards the end, I was left trying to differentiate that spiteful one from Darin McGavin, the Night Stalker.
March 22nd, 2009 at 1:40 am
The show was good until the after the episode where Starbuck crash lands on the planet and then bootstraps the Cylon fighter. That’s when the cracks first appear. She manages to do all this with a banged up knee and no hesitation. Then, when they’ve fixed her knee and the only thing that needs to be done is minor physical therapy, she turns into a complete wimp. Now, that plausible, if quite out of character. What isn’t plausible is that when she first starts this not one of her companions goes up and slaps her and yells at her about how she’s being a whiny little bitch about pain which she clearly has the ability to shrug off.
March 22nd, 2009 at 2:06 am
OK – no spoilers for those who haven’t seen it.
First hour good.
2nd hour bad.
Starbuck’s part in all of this not adequately explained in my opinion.
Hara over-rated.
Deux ex Machina.
Blah.
March 22nd, 2009 at 3:01 am
Jim W was watching the wrong show. All of his descriptions are more accurate for seinfeld or coronation street than Battlestar Galactica.
I loved the optimistic ending. Giving up the technology was hard to understand but I can believe that some people would do it under certain circumstances. Besides, they arrived long after cavemen dude. Did you even watch it?
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:06 am
SPOILER ALERT DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED IT – Ever since the fleet set out for Earth four years ago, I was hoping it wouldn’t end with them becoming our ancestors, because I thought that would be a stupid twist. Now here we are…and it’s a stupid twist. It’s utterly implausible given what we know of history, anthropology, and population genetics. And it’s utterly implausible from a character perspective – absolutely no way would every, or even most, members of the fleet decide to give up all their ships and technology. They’re losing modern medicine, they’re losing thousands of years of culture and knowledge (if you had to colonize a planet would you abandon most of the music, philosophy, mathematics, etc. that humanity has achieved?), and they’re losing means to defend themselves. After all, the bad cylons are still out there, with who knows how many baseships.
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:14 am
I have to agree with Murray, I loved the closure given to the very real and fallible characters we have come to love or at least respect over the last five years. The choice to abandon technology is not a new concept in the sci-fi genre. In reality the are various groups around the world today, consciously rejecting technology and embracing a more basic lifestyle, so it’s not really so far fetched. I was expecting a dark ending with humanity heading towards a destructive future, and was pleasantly surprised by the uplifting ending. Great show, one of the best “in space” sci-fi series ever.
March 22nd, 2009 at 12:50 pm
One thing to remember is that the writers were stuck with a problematic premise. The whole “Earth as colony of Kobol” bit just can’t be reconciled. The writing team did OK…not great, but OK.
March 22nd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Dylan is half cylon, actually. And Bryan, that theory was around IRL long before the old BSG, much less the new one. Read up on some of Zecharia Sitchin’s theories on Sumeria, the Anunaki and Nibiru.
March 22nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
> One thing to remember is that the writers were stuck with a problematic premise.
If you know this before the project even begins (wasn’t BSG 1980 proof enough of this?), shouldn’t you abandon the problematic premise?
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Hey…
I enjoyed the ending. Could it have been better? Given the state of filmed sci-fi, I would say “no”. Given the field of television sci-fi, I would say “frak no”.
And beyond comparative evaluations: hey, who, in recent memory, has the guts to tackle religion and politics in sci-fi in anything as dark and unpleasant as BSG did?
But mostly, its sci-fi. Willing suspension of disbelief comes to mind as a pre-requisite here – the responsibility of the viewer.
Yes, its hard to swallow the idea of giving up technology, but you jump to conclusions when you assume they didn’t keep antibiotics (which wouldn’t show up in archeological digs 150,000 years later). Plus, remember, Galactica was a ship, not the whole colonial civilization. Remember that they had already been reduced to eating algae. And Adama told the gun batteries to “keep shooting until you’re out of ammo and then start throwing rocks.” The point: the sense I got was that they were at the end of their rope anyway. I imagine a fleet full of starving people with very few resources left, anyway. I doubt they were giving up much.
Also, its not hard to imagine that, after setting up their living arrangements, getting folks to the various parts of Earth they were going to settle, that they pushed a button on the control panel of those raptors which then, also, rode off into the sunset with everything else that might have shown up in an archaeological dig 150,000 years later.
Would I have made the same decision? I don’t know. Would it be possible that some of the remaining fleet folk would choose to take their chances in space? Who knows. But…willing suspension of disbelief is not even a huge leap here.
Another thing: remember the pyramid/egyptian/greek mythological connections from the colonies? And notice that those exist in “our” history. So it would seem that the colonials who “went native” didn’t leave all their culture behind…their culture wound up getting embedded in “ours”.
Finally…I thought the way they did this was beautiful because it somewhat redeemed the “Erik von Daniken” schlock of the first series voice over: “There are those who believe that life here began out there…”
Now we have a more poetic and plausible sci-fi explanation than the “Chariots of the Gods” nonsense of the 70’s. Not that any of its real, but BSG last Friday did a way better job of crafting a great story with a similar point…and managed to be true to the ideas behind the original series at the same time.
What I find most intriguing is thinking about how elegantly the BSG story arc has now set us up for the Terminator story arc – skynet becomes conscious, war between humans and machines, terminators that at first look like toasters and then suddenly start looking like human beings….fascinating overlap in the sci-fi multiverse.
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Well, it’s what I would have done.
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Allow me to expand…
I would have set up the colonies in the Pleaides star-cluster, 200 light years from Earth. They are colonies of Earth, but it’s a 4-5 year trip each way (slow FTL, 1 week/light-year). Nobody’s been to Earth. The Cylons, a hostile alien species, attack to get the prime real estate. Colonial survivors run for it. They face problems of survival, supply, and a squadron sent in pursuit.
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
“BSG was the most overrated sci fi series ever.”
What he said. But apparently you can go pretty far on bad lighting, overacting, and pretentious plots. The trick seems to be to sprinkle bits of cultural debris into a basic soap opera, add some technological/mystical/pseudo-religious babble, and then coyly pretend that all of the debris is or will be significant at some point, and aren’t you a clever viewer for catching it. The viewers are then invested in validating their keen observations by convincing everyone the show is deep and meaningful. The show will run as long as you can keep it from collasping under the ever growing weight of the plot points. Credit to BSG for being smart enough and deciding to end it before it became too evident that the plot was never going to come to a totally coherent end. They closed off the major points and called it a night.
See also, Lost, or the last few season of the X Files.
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:14 am
I honestly felt the finale was pitiful at best. All the useless flashbacks, the Starbuck screwup, Abandoning their technology, Cheie Tyrol becoming a Scot Highlander and passing on resurrection to the Klan Macleod…..wished I had wrote this article about why it was aweful, but it is summed here in detail http://www.fmqinc.com
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:59 am
I was a fan of the original series but I have been blown away by the drama, depth of mythology and story arc in the new series. The huge ensemble cast, many playing multiple roles, brilliantly portrayed the multidimensional characters. I loved the idea of cylons being flawed and vulnerable and believing God was on their side.
They tied the two series together well and book ending the first and last episodes with the cylons from the early series was a treat for older fans like myself.
The great thing about sci-fi is, it challenges us to look at humanity and see the things we all have in common, rather than focusing on our differences. World leaders could take a lesson. Battlestar Galactica was masterpiece in every respect.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:54 am
Actually, that was the Hendrix cover of the Dylan song.
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Producer Ron Moore is quoted in an interview saying that he views music as part of the fabric of the universe, unending and always there, and that musicians and songwriters have this ability to tap into that fabric and pull songs from it. So “songs” will be rediscovered across the ages by countless musicians.
There is an argument to be made that every couple thousand years humans and cylons destroy each other and that with the ending of BSG, we got 150,000 years of cooperation and coexistence before things come to a head again. Of course, 149,900 years of that was terrible misery and short, ugly, pain-filled lives for 99.9% of humanity….
BSG always had a weird relationship with technology anyway. The show’s universe (life on the colonies) seems to have stalled in a 1970s-era level of tech, except for the existence of starships that can traverse the stars in days. No laser weapons or EMPs, just nukes and chemical explosive projectiles. They were on the verge of some impressive robot technology when that tech went haywire and rebelled against their human creators. So, they simply stopped their robot and computer tech development completely? Oooookay.
Seen against that background, their decision to go whole hog and completely reject all technology to become primitive humans makes some small sense. Just not a lot of real, human sense.
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I thought it was pretty awesome.
I am always amused by people trying to completely deconstruct sci-fi shows/movies in terms of ‘plausibility’.
You’ll buy “resurrection” and “hyperspace travel”, but NOT that there is cosmogenic source for human origins.
As an atheist and former biologist, as far-fetched as aliens being our ancestors, it is more plausible than resurrection or hyperspace travel.
So…just enjoy the show.
These people were obviously the ancestors of our civilization, the descendents of our civilization, or some quasi-parallel universe entangled civilization. They were clearly constructed to have myths that tied into our myths (Athena, Hera, etc…).
Was a good show and i thought a lot of fun
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:34 pm
This is a mythology updated for the humans on this planet in this current age. There is a lot of stuff hidden in the finale, alot of hints about the true history of this planet. But it’s not something that is put on a plate for you. You have to figure it out yourself. For those of us who were there and experienced these things, it is the memory that counts.
March 27th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Jim W…. i suggest yu re watch the show, yu may have mistaken it with easy going sci fi shows like stargate Atlantis.
As far as the finale goes overall i liked it, although it didn;t explain why kara thrace was not the harbinger of death but indeed the saviour of humanity.
And maybe one or two major characters could’ve died during the battle.
Great show… Great writing.. Great acting.. good job
March 29th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Like Chris, I really enjoyed the finale. I thought the ending did justice to the series. Regarding Kara and the harbinger of death… in a way she was just that. She brought about the death of their old civilization, and a re-birth of a new civilization by leaving behind all their old technologies. I totally believe that someone could give up their technology to start over, considering that the cylons (mankind’s creation) brought nothing but death and destruction in at least two wars and made their life miserable for 4+ years in space. Maybe they are hoping in re-discovering science and technology over again, that they will be spiritually aware of its consequences and uses *which we see 150,000 years into the future it may be happening over again*. Also, to comment about losing everything, all they said is they are giving up their technology… which doesn’t necessarily translate to mathematics, astronomy and language. On a side note, if one looks at the oldest known civilization *sumerians*, they will see that their civilization sprouted almost out of nowhere, with advancements in mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, laws *which we still use many of today*… so the idea is very plausible. Cheers!
March 29th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
I think the only reason they went with the “ancient astronaut” ending (an anthropologic theory in vogue when the original BSG aired) is to tow the line from the original show. For four years the show existed fairly perpendicular to the original late ’70s version, and this was just the writers throwing a bone to the older incarnation of the franchise. I still think this is a better than the SG-1 ending, or the Star trek TNG ending where things are left open for future commercial exploitation.