Right!
My friends kept bugging me to watch the final season of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA after I ragequit when the final five were revealed on the improvisational dartboard the writers used to write their show. So, I just got a hard drive full of season 4 and decided to watch it whilst I did other things.
Here's a good rule of thumb: if you have a new television show or film on and it's playing in the background while you do something else, and your attention wavers and you stop doing that other, more important thing, and sit there and watch the show, it's probably a very good show.
This did not happen.
Well... for the most part.
A lot of the show pissed me off. A lot of it. I hate Boomer and Athena and Hera. It's all a big load of nonsensical crap that any of them are even alive. I got bored of Roslin's plot-convenient illness. Baltar's transofmration into Jesus. Callie and the Whatshername cylon who killed her. Felix Gaeta being killed for trying not to have everyone die, even though Baltar, who did far worse, was given a big trial and equitted, even though Boomer who shot Adama, wasn't shot on sight, even though... blah blah blah.
In the finale, Adama gives Hoshi the Admiralty. I DO NOT KNOW WHO THIS GUY IS. When he was giving the speech, the shot is done in a way that the new Admiral is a big reveal. I laughed when it was this guy, because I DO NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. I only remember his name because I listened intently to know who it was. Y'know who would've been better? FELIX GAETA. But no, he got shot, without a trial, by a firing squad, even though one of the people present killed humanity twice and they're all friends with Cylons who exterminated their race. No one even seems remotely upset about him dying, except for Baltar. It's as if he crossed a line, even though everyone else had danced the macarena around it several times before.
I guess it's because he had one leg.
And how the hell did the Cylons, masters of technology, not.. oh, I dunno, in the forty years they had before the nuking, work out how to recreate the resurrection hub? Blurg.
Oh, and the show is built on a foundation of crap. The plan, "God", angels and divine prophecy... it's all a lot of contrived nonsense that no one ever even thought out or set up. The original final five cylons have resurrection but not FTL. It happened 2000 years ago but it's never even been hinted at in any meaningful way. When they revealed that the final five were from 2000 years ago and that they predate the current Cylons and that it's just coincidence that two seperate cultures invented the exact same artificial intelligence and named it the same damn thing I just couldn't bang my head on the wall hard enough. That's the kind of thing you build to a boil, not just ass pull by a guy who gets visions after being shot in the head.
And you know what pissed me off even more? All this build up and prophecy and blah-blah-blah, and the end had them go on our Earth, which they hadn't heard of before, and they just live in peace.
This pissed me off because the whole point of Earth as the lost colony was that the constellations we see in the sky, that we named the Zodiac after, is why the twelve colonies are named what they are. The whole idea is that these guys had to come from our Earth and yet, it turns out that the Earth they came from isn't ours at all, and there they are on our one. And what pisses me off more is that they already did this. I can't stand repetition in stories. Variance of repeating themes, sure. But not outright repetition. To understand what I mean... them settling on Earth? They already did that. It was called New Caprica. They lived there for a YEAR. They built a city and kept their spaceships in orbit and were happy. Then the Cylons showed up and enslaved them. So, why is it different this time? Not all the Cylons are dead (it's preposterous that they would be - there's dozens of basestars out there). What's to stop them from finding this place, especially since there are Cylons all over the planet, and a roaming basestar knows where they jumped to? (Yes, they're good guys, but what if they share information with another Caville?)
One of the principle reasons I hate season finales is this: the plot of the finale only ends the show because it is the last episode. This 'finale' episode has been done a dozen times before in the show, and they've never been the 'last one'. It's just because the producers ran out of time and ideas, not because it's planned. ALLY MCBEAL was the first time I noticed it, but you just have to look at a show's finale to see what I mean. Could this episode have been done anywhere in the show? Yes. DAYBREAK is exactly the same as the season finale of season two. THE SOPRANOS finale was the same as every other one. It just happened to be the last one. And so, it always feels forced, contrived, and repetitive, instead of the final creative leap.
So, there's really only three good ways to finish a show, as far as I can tell:
The Never-Ending Story
This is perfect for a serial. The finale isn't actually a finale. The show continues just as it always has been, we just won't see the newer adventures. For example, JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED ended with a strong sense of, "Next week: More fights". Nothing changes. It's just a wrap up of anything left dangling, and off we go, into the imagination of the audience. FATHER TED ended this way, with Father Ted being stuck on Craggy Island in his status quo.
The Mirror
This is the series that has a finale that is pretty much a reflection or echo of the pilot. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT ended in such a fashion, with the last episode being almost a complete redo of the pilot. This has a nice sentiment, much like the Never-Ending Story, that the series is about to start all over again. However, it doesn't just repeat, it creates a variance by subverting the pilot in such a fashion that it seems new. Because this repetition is intentional. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, with its "This has all happened before, and will happen again" should've ended in this way. It almost did. The last scene, 150 000 years in the future echoed this, however, it was more portentous than reflective, and the structure of the episode actually only repeated verbatim (albeit with just more death) the New Caprica settlment. A proper mirror could've been a flashback to the Earth from 2000 years ago and the exodus of the final five (though most of the crew would've been absent and wouldn't've answered what actually happened to Galactica). Another way would've been to have the humans enslaved by the Cylons. Cut to forty years later, and the humans almost exterminate the Cylons with a holocaust.
The Grand Finale
This can be planned or not, but the grand finale tells the absolute last story of the show. Perhaps there will be other stories after it, maybe a spin-off, but it solves the major elements of the show in an irrevocable way. QUANTUM LEAP ends with Sam choosing to become completely unstuck in time. LIFE ON MARS has a similar dilemma. BABYLON 5 ends by jumping 20 years into the future and giving us the fate of the station and it's commander, after finishing virtually all its plot lines in the episodes prior to it. ROME ends the story of all the principle characters and the city of Rome as it was, and THE WIRE does a similar trick with Baltimore. THE SHIELD ends by finally resolving the entire Strike Team's sordid past and dissolving it forever.
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA did none of these. It tried to, but wasn't able to.
However, there was some BRILLIANT stuff in the fourth season, which was without a doubt, far superior to season 3. Far, far superior.
The music by Bear McCreary is just brilliant, especially the Final Five theme that Starbuck plays. I love it. I also really liked how the music were the coordinates to Earth. (Though, it would've made more sense if that music led to the actual, destroyed Earth where the Five came from since... oh, you know, it woke them up. BSG is so poorly thought out.)
Speaking of Earth as a desolate wasteland... that was just genius. After all the searching and crises of faith as to it's existence, they FINALLY FIND IT. And they find it because SOMEONE CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD TO SHOW THEM THE WAY. It's a miracle! Yay! And then... it's a radioactive wasteland just like the one they left behind. This is such a brilliant twist. All through the show, everyone is wondering if Earth is going to be ancient Earth, future Earth, or contemporary Earth... but regardless, it will be habitable. No, these guys went ahead and made it a wasteland, and that is just brilliant. The show only really had two "planets" they could find - the paradise or the hellhole. That was it really. And New Caprica was the paradise, and Earth was the hellhole and they just nailed it. The total loss of hope. Dualla's suicide was brilliant. It's such a terrible downer and I think it was a brilliant idea.
I also loved how Caville ate his gun. It was hysterical.
And I like the "150,000 Years Later" even if it didn't make too much sense. I loved the "new advances in robotics" while Jimi Hendrix sings, "There must be some way out of here" even if it's rather shameless, obvious, and something that doesn't gel with the series as it began.
I think, with the exception of season 3, each season of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA had its moments, but it annoyingly, didn't really gel together as a show.
So here's a little, "how it could've been" taking the principles of BUFFY, BABYLON 5, THE WIRE, THE SOPRANOS and other shows where each season is a clear, thematically different variant of the show. Probably no more than a dozen episodes a season.
Season 1: THE CYLONS
The season opens with the Cylons nuking the twelve Colonies and it results in 50,000 human survivors in a tiny rag-tag fleet on the run. Admiral Adama claims he'll lead them to Earth, but they're hounded by Cylons as they try to get out of Cylon-infested space. This season focuses on an overwhelming sense of denial on the part of the survivors to accept their conditions. They try to continue their traditions and culture and civilisation. They want to have a president and senators, but it just doesn't happen. They can't have meetings, they can't do much of anything. None of the ships are prepared for the continuous jumping, vast numbers of passengers, and incessant use of their facilities 24/7, and while they try to maintain their culture, they actually just spend their time desperately searching for food. At the same time, it's discovered that the Cylons attack succeeded due to infiltration by human-looking Cylons. Unaware of how many types of Cylons there are, the denial spreads into paranoia. Baltar is in denial as to his guilt, and other characters, like Boomer, refuse to accept they're really a Cylon. The season finale is a spiral of events that starts with the leak that Adama has lied to everyone and that he has no idea where Earth is or if it even exists, and ends with him instituting a military dictatorship on the fleet, dissolving the senate, and instituting a policy to detect and uncover Cylon infiltrators.
Season 2: CIVIL WAR
There are no Cylon attacks in this season. The fleet manage to pretty much escape Cylon space, and hide. However, tensions boil as their lives are lived under the threat of a gun. Cylon infiltrators are mercilessly executed, and people are accused of being a Cylon and attacked out of anger. Fleets refuse to trade with each other, yet can't live away from Galactica for fear of being killed by Cylons. When the Battlestar Pegasus arrives, it bolsters Adama's well-intentioned dictatorship by giving him more men. and resources. It also allows Adama to sit back and let the Pegasus commander take over. In the finale, the fleet discovers a habitable planet and some of the fleet, led by Galactica want to settle, while others led by the Pegasus believe they will never be safe and refuse to settle. This boils into a civil war and culminates in the Pegasus refusing to allow survivors to stand still and be captured by Cylons, and refusing the human civilisation to kill itself, so it does the one thing it can do: it bombs New Caprica with nukes. The finale ends with the fleet decimated, the Galactica having won the fight. Pegasus did a lot of damage to the planet, but the planet is still plenty habitable for the 30,000 remaining humans and they settle.
Season 3: SWEET REVENGE
The entire season takes place on New Caprica. Showcasing the trials and tribulations as the humans try to rebuild. Until the Cylons arrive. They've tracked the humans and intend to exterminate them... but they see an opportunity for poetic justice - and enslave the humans, turning them into their maligned servants, asked to do tasks and pointless exercises to their exhaustion. When they arrive, what ships survive the initial onslaught, go into hiding. Galactica and the others try to come up with a way to free the survivors from Cylon rule, and eventually, the commander of the Galatica (who may or may not be Adama, I think he retired onto Caprica) makes a deal with the Gods out of desperation and just prays that it's enough. And during all this, it's being hunted by Cylons. On New Caprica, Gaius Baltar and others continually try to bargain with the Cylons for a peace, try to reason and apologise, and it never really works. Understand, the Cylons in charge are robots, they are not 'skin-jobs'. Once the human colonies were destroyed, there was no longer a need for human-looking Cylons, and since Cylons hate humans, they just deactivated all them. Doesn't make sense they'd be in charge. The season finale ends when the Cylons find and capture Galactica and bring it to New Caprica to totally demoralize the humans. They land it on the planet, and then give the humans a deal. The Cylons have heard of the fabled 'lost thirteenth colony'. The Cylons will return Galactica, their ships and supplies, and will leave them alone provided that they find Earth before the Cylons do. If they do not go, the Cylons will kill them, then find Earth, and kill Earth. If the Cylons find them before they find Earth, they will kill them. If the Cylons find Earth before the humans, they will kill Earth and the humans. Unsure to take the Cylons at their word, they take their only chance for survival and take the head start in the race for Earth.
Season 4: EARTH RACE
The season is harsh. The humans manage to work out and find Earth within the first half of the season, but when they find it, to their dismay, it's already been destroyed and made uninhabitable by nuclear warfare. The Cylons got there first. Aware the Cylons will be looking for them, they go on the run, but suicides decimate the fleet - some ships self-destruct, others wade into suns, and others just leave never to return. The fleet breaks up as they enter regions of space that have no planets and no chance for survival. The season finale is borne when the Cylons find Galactica and open fire. Galactica is beaten back, and almost eradicated, but it comes up in the fight, that the Cylons have never been to Earth. It transpires Earth was destroyed by humans. The Cylons take the humans back to Earth and prove the bombs aren't Cylon nukes. The Cylons feel validated by the human destiny to build weapons that they can't control and ultimately destroy themselves with it. They leave Galactica and the humans and the sector of space.
Season 5: MAGNETIC VOID
Alone, spiritually dead, the remnants of the fleet eek out their lives as best they can. But all the battles, the jumps, and the pain have turned Galactica and the other ships into mausoleums, almost incapable of moving. Accepting that the fleet has at best, a few months left, the remaining humans decide on what their last chapter would be. They choose to find somewhere, anywhere, to settle. The find a planet orbiting a magnetic void. The planet itself, while barely habitable, is dying, with only hundreds of years left. It's too close to its sun, the void is ruining the atmosphere, and so the planet is virtually a barren wasteland. Virtually. Deciding that they can use it, at best, as a refuge to rebuild the fleet and population, or at worst, a tomb, they settle on this planet and call it Kobol. The finale takes place 1000 years later, when the humans leave Kobol as it is now uninhabitable and decide to settle on new worlds. They create twelve colonies on lush planets they find far away. A few centuries later, after they have a wondrous civilisation, an alien race of machines, called Cylons, appear. Seemingly angry just at the very existance of the humans, they attack without provocation and those few remaining humans set out in search of a new home...
I dunno. It's something that just occurred to me. I based the seasons on the five stages of Grief as show in the Kubler-Ross model; Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I fond of the idea of Cylons disappearing for 2000 years and when they return, those humans they thought they killed are back as if nothing ever happened, and that the new humans would think they're aliens. There's probably a smarter way to do it, but I kinda like the ending of the "reimagined series" being the opening of the original show. Turns out it was a prequel all along...
