No Reason To Get Excited: Looking At The Series Finale Of "Battlestar Galactica"
[For the forgetful or learning impaired, be warned again that there are of course spoilers ahead.]
Bad TV shows air all the time. Most TV is bad, and there's only so much that can be really gained from wasting ink, pixels, or breath complaining about how much "Two and a Half Men" sucks. There's no surprise there, and the arguments are almost too easy to make. But when a good show — indeed, when a great one — tumbles from its former glory and spends its last few moments gasping in a gutter unimaginably far from the heights from which it launched, then it's necessary and imperative to talk about what happened, and why. That's how "Battlestar Galactica" ended the other night, with a sputtering fall across the finish line, and I greet its resolution not with applause or joy but with the sad commitment of watching a family member finally succumb to a terminal disease. Things used to be so bright and almost transcendent, but this last season has bludgeoned the joy from the series and turned it into an exercise in how to take a fascinating fictional universe and leave it in ruins.
The entire season was one example after another of aborted storytelling and cheated narratives, but things really began to take a turn for the worse in "The Ties That Bind," which shoehorned too many subplots into one episode, one of which followed Cally from her discovery that Tyrol was a Cylon to her attempted escape with Nicky to her murder by Tory. The whole thing occupies maybe 20 minutes of screen time, and though it's an interesting idea that plays on the mercurial loyalties of the crew to each other, it's a horribly botched execution that mangles what should have taken multiple episodes to unwind. The writers and producers could have mined Cally's fear of and prejudice toward the Cylons and how she struggled to reconcile that with her unwavering love for Tyrol, which would have deepened Cally's character and put a specific face on the general atmosphere of paranoia between humans and Cylons. But none of that happened. She was killed and mourned in a cheap memorial that betrayed everything that had come before.
That's pretty much how the series finale played out, too: as a series of solid ideas ruined by execution, with creator/writer Ronald Moore clumsily swinging a wrecking ball at something that had once towered over the rest of the television landscape. The series began as a sharp, well-rendered examination of what it means to live in a just and free society; what it means to live morally when there are so few people left that laws can barely be enforced; the role of religion in government and vice versa; the slippery slope of the military-industrial complex; etc. But it ended with a suicide mission to save Hera, a human-Cylon hybrid whose importance is never fully explained or sold to the viewers. Cavil believes her genetic code contains the keys to Cylon salvation, now that they've had their resurrection hub destroyed, and her blood did beat back President Roslin's cancer for a while. But Adama never managed to make his decision to save Hera convincing, mostly because her value was never firmly established. Yes, the theory of her relevance was constantly pushed, like when her abstract doodles turned out to be the sheet music to the "Galactica" universe's version of "All Along the Watchtower," whose notes can be turned into mathematical equations that plot the course to Earth. (As embarrassed as you are to read that, I felt even worse typing it.) But Hera was always a thing, never a person; she never said a word, just sat there looking beatific and trying to look like she wasn't a randomly invented plot point that suddenly had to become meaningful.
What's more, the flip side to Hera's existence as a narrative place-holder is that the Galactica's final mission wasn't one to save Earth (or New Earth), or defeat the Cylons once and for all, or to rescue their own society. It was to do something that just didn't carry as much emotional weight. The effects and presentation were still fantastic, despite the fact that the Cylon Colony existed on the edge of a black hole that was mentioned and then dropped. (Regular readers will now how much I hate it when movies or TV series break the Chekhov's gun rule.) But the sequence couldn't hold a candle to Adama's decision to ride to the rescue at the beginning of Season Three, when he jumped Galactica into atmosphere above New Caprica and launched a Viper barrage to save the imprisoned colonists. That earlier scene had better action and suspense precisely because it was anchored to a greater emotional outcome, namely, the survival of humanity. How would that have changed if Hera had been left behind? Starbuck already knew the jump coordinates, or arrived at them without again consulting the child. What purpose did she serve?
Similarly, almost nothing was gained by the flashbacks to Caprica before the fall, unless someone out there really wanted to see Adama puke on himself again. The characters' personalities weren't advanced in any way — Tigh still likes booze and strippers! No shit! — and whatever sense of destiny or fate for which Moore may very well have been striving was smothered under the weight of a bad soap opera. The only revelation about those scenes was Gaius Baltar's shame in his blue-collar father and how that pushed him to change himself, a moment that actually came home with tender resonance when he was striking out for a homestead on New Earth and broke into tears when confessing to Caprica Six that he did indeed know a little about farming. (I'm still too frustrated to begin to address the way Starbuck up and disappeared, having apparently been a corporeal projection of her own consciousness created after her death on Earth and whose sole purpose was not, as had been foretold many times, to lead humanity to its destruction but instead to guide them to a new home. Gah.) It's accurate moments like that one that made the finale so disappointing, and have soured me on the ending. The show got close to greatness, but wound up breaking my heart and making me actively upset about its resolution. Only love could inspire such displeasure.
And oh, that resolution. Having the surviving members of the human race wind up in our collective past was a nice touch that underscored the cyclical nature of the series' mythology, but though that also meant that the cycle of war they tried to break had pretty obviously failed, Moore rammed the point home by skipping forward 150,000 years to modern-day New York. Head Six and Head Baltar, who are apparently angels working on behalf of God (who doesn't like His name), are roaming the streets and casually commenting on our decadence and (over-)dependence on technology. Moore seems to be setting the series up to continue in perpetuity, as Baltar and Six say that the planet looks just like Kobol and Caprica before their falls, but he's also delivering a horribly simplistic indictment of current tech, whether he means to or not. As Baltar and Six walk away in slow-motion like, I don't know, Neo and Trinity, the camera pans to take in the neon indulgences of Times Square before transitioning to — and this was jaw-dropping — a montage of our own robots dancing and smiling as they become ever more "humanized." I could barely believe what I was seeing. The structural parallel between society's entanglement with technology and the blurred line between human and human-like has always been a fantastic and well-explored theme for "Battlestar Galactica," but to reduce it to a clip of a dancing robot set to Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" was laughable and pitiable and just damn embarrassing. (I'm guessing the song's presence is meant to convey that in every permutation of human society, someone writes a vaguely trippy song whose notes can be converted into three-dimensional coordinates leading to a new home world, which is kind of a disappointing way to explain the song's use in the series.) Everything epic about the show had been rendered flat and unmoving, and everything complex had been pitifully reduced. The only glimmer of hope is The Plan, a forthcoming "Battlestar" TV-movie that will purportedly reveal the Cylons' plan and shed new light on the events of the series. I pray and plead that the movie will do what it can to restore the show and its characters to their former heights; I can't let them go out like this. So say we all.
[For reflections of happier times, or at any rate more interesting ones, I've got a piece about the series' first season, a look at the third season finale, reflections on the current season before it sank into the abyss, and one of my all-time favorite online transcripts.]
Comments: 7
I'm bummed you're so bummed, Dan. I can't say I blame you even though I found far more enjoyment in the finale than you.
I agree whole heartedly that the majority of this season was total and complete hackitude. They spent copious amounts of time on shit no one cared about and squandered potential for character driven drama that could have propelled the final episodes. On balance, this season was a massive disappointment. This is what happens when you don't have a plan. Moore has proudly proclaimed that he refused to establish an end when he started. I get not wanting to be locked into something years down the line but there are questions they should have answered for themselves in season one. Specifically - What's Kara's destiny? Who are all the Cylons and what are their roles? I think answering those two (three?) simple questions would have gone a long way to cleaning up some of this mess. Picking a point on the horizon doesn't mean you can't change direction along the way but wandering aimlessly guarantees the ending won't satisfactorily speak to the journey.
Moore's got a hubris issue. As if his podcasts weren't proof enough, he had the gall to stick himself in that final scene. To his credit, he's acknowledged that was a mistake. Being that I do this for a living - I know how insanely hard it is to write satisfying television. I have deep empathy for the BSG writers. There's was a near impossible task but Moore's belief that they could muddle through on divine inspiration alone was folly. Someone has to make a choice. He stated this outright in the finale. Shame he didn't take his own advice.
All that being said, I thought the final hours were a solid uptick in quality. I disagree that the flashbacks to Caprica offered nothing (though I was singing that tune after the first of the three hours, the finale made them work). They offered us a look at the defining choices that sent these characters on the journey we've been watching. Do I think they were as artfully done as they could have been? No. Especially Kara and Lee's - I suspect this was meant to establish her guilt, which explained why she passed BabyBrother in flight school - but it was clunky as hell. But the notion that we are where we are because of a confluence of choice and divine providence is not only a compelling one and completely in keeping with the arc and tone of the show but it's really all the answer I needed. AGain - had they had a better idea of where they were heading when they started out, I think this answer or "truth" could have been far more artfully illustrated. I also think they would have gotten away with Kara vanishing and Hera being a Red Herring - or rather the metaphorical carrot leading everyone forward. But since there was so much hurkyjerky and loose threads, folks such as yourself, who love the show madly, were bound to be heartbroken.
Side note - I disagree that they broke the gun rule. The colony was sucked into the black hole after the nukes hit it though I'll admit that was visually unclear.
I agree that any number of plot points in the finale suffered from an embarrassing lack of any logical necessity; as you pointed out, Adama’s decision to mount a suicide mission and the number of volunteers he got was nothing short of inexplicable. And yet the worst offender in my eyes was the notion that all 45,000-plus humans and cylons would agree to simply discard all of their technology and plans for a new civilization and just literally walk off into the wilderness and genetic oblivion. Even though I agree with beckylooo that I found much to enjoy in the finale, that one laughably unbelievable plot point made me cringe on the spot.
(And as long as you brought up the flashbacks, I thought most of them did add meaningfully to the character’s motivations, but I still can’t make peace with the attempted rehabilitation of Ellen Tigh. Blech. As Adama pointed out somewhere in season two: “That woman is toxic.” No kidding.)
And as for Starbuck, I’d argue that Kara’s fate was actually very tidy; it made sense that after her death she was a corporeal projection (or angel, if you must) just as were Baltar and Caprica Six’s other selves. Moreover, since it appears that Hera is our “mitochondrial eve,” meaning that we’re all actually hybrids, Kara really did lead Humanity to it’s end, didn’t she?
Anyway, I know that we all probably still have some digesting to do. Cheers.
I agree with maybe half of this, and I think Evan is right about Starbuck. If humanity is doomed to repeat its mistakes -- all has happened before and will happen again -- then didn't Starbuck keep that cycle moving by leading the remaining humans to Earth Jr. so they could start the whole process over, where they will undoubtedly repeat the problems that come with advancing technology out of laziness? So I can see how she could still be considered the one who led humanity to its destruction.
And yes, some of the gimmicks were weird, but part of me thinks you wouldn't mind the "Watchtower" plot if they had used a completely new song, not one that everyone knows and has a favorite cover version of.
A lot of this season required us to suspend belief, something that shows like "Lost" force us to do all the time. Ben literally went down a hole under a greenhouse and turned a freaking wheel that MOVED the island. Moved it by turning a wheel. And Christian Shepard is still running around the island and he freaking died. You buy that, but not the music notes bit? The "Watchtower" bit is weaker than those, yes, but it's easier if you just go with it.
You're right, they should have explained Hera more. She turned out to be the mitochondrial Eve, but they didn't know she would be. So why run after her? Well, she's a freaking kid who didn't deserve to be captured by Cylons, so perhaps they went after her out of compassion. But having more a stake would have made a big difference, such as in season three, you're right.
And I thought the flashbacks worked -- just bits to show us how the main characters got where they are.
OK, I'm done. Grab your gun and bring the cat in.
I agree with everything.
And the 'grab your gun and get the cat' line - geez - how many times have they trotted that tearjerker out? Is this number 3??
The first time, when Starbuck comes back in season one on the raider (I think) made me cry like a baby. But in repeating it, it has cheapened it, and the line has lost its effectiveness. No?
@Eric: There were some good relationship moments, though admittedly few and far between for a finale. Lee and Bill's goodbye at the Raptor probably tops it. That one was nice.
@Beckylooo: We're on pretty much the same page. I think the finale was weak not just because it wasn't as artfully done as it could be, but also because it fell short of the series' own standard. And yeah, I think this was the season where Moore finally painted himself into a corner. But thanks for the tip about the Colony getting knocked into the black hole. I'd completely missed that, and assumed they just got wiped out with the nukes.
@evan: Exactly. I think it was explained away with a line about never underestimating the value of a clean slate, but the notion that humans would forfeit electricity (and space travel!) out of a weird sense of caution didn't ring true. I also totally agree with you about the poor choice of Ellen's "rehabilitation." I thought she was used well and given an interesting end already. (I also grimaced when Tigh told Tyrol he'd have killed Tory if Ellen had been hurt, when Tigh himself had in fact already killed Ellen once. Yeesh.)
@Sis: Eh, I'm iffy on giving Moore that much credit when it comes to Starbuck. It's a neat assumption, though. I also think that "suspension of disbelief" is an important aspect of fiction but can be dangerously overused. For instance, I never actually thought I was watching a man named Jimmy McNulty arrest dope dealers, you know? Every show asks for an acceptance of a fictional narrative in exchange for an adherence to its own structure. What works for "Lost" doesn't necessarily work for "BSG," and "Lost" has made no secret of the way the island is part of a connected series of electromagnetic pockets that manifest themselves in some wacky temporal ways. It's nuts, but it gels with the show. That's why "BSG" jumped the shark; it had established its own world, then deepened that with a mythology, then abandoned it for faux-epic overtones that don't make sense, story-wise. Then again, evan made a good point saying we've all got some digesting to do. Maybe when I revisit the episode in the future (after The Plan?) it won't seem so hollow. I hope.
@Josh: Yeah, the line worked, but not as much as it had in the past. It only clicked this time out of a sense of symmetry, calling back to the miniseries, rather than any kind of emotional connection.
I agree with part of this. But there was one element that turned the tide for the whole finale in my mind: the rescue of Hera. I don't think there was any need to go to great length explaining her utility to future humanity. Although this last season sort drunkenly faltered step by step on several levels, the one thing that seemed to develop well was the slow uncomfortable embrace between cylons and humans. Hera is the central example of that and also the climactic affirmation of it. Her rescue is not out of utility but out of a finally realized need to affirm human life in all its forms, including that which has been literally combined with the cylons. They rescue here because they realize that she's one of us and she's innocent. And I think that bolstered the whole finale; the decision to go to the cylon base, the attack, the song, the path to earth, almost all of it was sort of vaguely brought together in that one mix of cylon and human. It wasn't perfect, but it was a good ending overall.
I thought the deus ex machina nature of many of our pressing questions was really annoying. Starting with Starbuck and Head Baltar and Head Six. I'm glad it was at least somewhat left open, but all the religious tendencies of the show seemed, for the first time in the series, preachy. That said, all the personal relationships coming to a close created some genuinely moving moments, didn't you think?
Mar 24, 2009 12:37 PM