Battlestar Galactica: The Beginning of the End

[michaelpaciocco]

Yeah, that's definitely the fly in the ointment there, I'll cop to that.

[jarddavis]

Kara was one of the Beings Of Light so often asked for throughout the run of the series. Hence the pristine Viper.

I liked the end.

[paulpogue]

Ron Moore answers oodles of questions at the SciFi forums: forums.scifi.com/index.php?showtopic=2329378&st=0

Warning: Don't go in if you want any illusions spoiled; this whole thing was made up on the fly a whole lot more than even the cynical among us suspected. Biggest example: Head Six really WAS supposed to be a hallucination for quite a while.

[K-Box]

LAURA YOU SEXY BITCH, FANDOM ISN'T READY TO QUIT YOU JUST YET

BOTH of these were posted today (NOT by me) on Fandom Secrets:



In honor of all you fellow obsessive Roslin fans out there, I once again present my personally commissioned ROSLIN PORN:

She's obviously not opposed to ALL machines ...

For close to six years, you were MY president too, Laura. I'll miss you.

[Paul Pogue]

So I was doing some research into robot history for an article I'm working on, which involved reading up on Rossum's Universal Robots (R.U.R.), the 1921 play which introduced the term "robot", and HOLY FRAK, are there ever parallels between it and BSG -- so much so it almost has to be intentional. It doesn't rise to the level of "ripoff", but certainly "spirited homage."

Just as an example: The latter half is the aftermath of a robot uprising against their human masters, which results in nearly the entire human race being wiped out. But the robots, unable to reproduce, go to the last surviving human, their "father", and beg him for the secret of reproduction. Much talk about "what does it mean to deserve to continue to live?" ensues. In the end, he teaches them to reproduce and they go on to be the parents of a new human race, revealing -- OH NOES SHOCK -- that they're Adam and Eve and this all took place in earth's distant past.

[Anders]

I'm resurrecting this thread since I just watched the end of season five.

I hadn't watched more than the odd episode before season five. I checked out the first half a dozen or so from season one but couldn't stand the way they made incredibly moronic decisions without explanation, so I dumpted it after that. From then on, reports were conflicted so I never bothered getting into the show; however, my flatmate borrowed season five from a friend and I happened to start watching at a point when it seemed interesting so I stayed with it. (We've been watching it over the past couple of days.)

From a story perspective it's an acceptable ending, considering how much was made up as they went. They tied up endings for all the important characters and didn't leave too big holes in the plot.

However, I found the execution horribly excrutiating. From the moment Baltar started talking religion on the bridge (with a short respite when they started shooting again) it was the single most horribly drawn-out, contrived drama, ret-con "meaningful", Hollywood-saccharine crapfest of an ending I have ever seen in any medium, bar NONE. Compared to this the ending of Return of the King was succinct and to the point. And it just. Didn't. End. There was scene after scene after scene after SCENE of wistful strings and goobyes that were so outdrawn and nausea-inducingly sweet that I was literally (yes, truly literally) begging for the Centurions to come back and just nuke everything all to hell. And then, when we've finally seen three different goobyes for each and every character and the music abandons the strings for an actual honest-to-god crescendo... there's the cute little kid again! No! No! Please, God, let it end! And we're swooping all over the landscape and I'm just dreading a narrator to show up and start telling us how lucky we are to have such a nice planet to live on. Yes, yes, yes, it's finally over... nooooo! Now we're in the present and the not-hallucination Six and Baltar are being flippant about all the horror and suffering and how it's all part of how God (only it doesn't like being called that) likes things and maybe, just maybe it won't be as bad this time, and they walk away and maybe it's finally over... NOOOOOOOO! We've got to suffer through a bunch of DANCING FUCKING ROBOTS!

And THEN! THEN it's finally, finally, oh blissfully over. The pain ends.

(And no, I couldn't just stand up and walk away. Sometimes when you see something truly horrible you just can't look away. It also became a contest: I refused to let the suckiness defeat me. Now I'll forever be able to say, "Yes, I watched the final episode of Battlestar Galactica all the way to the end". No one can take that from me now.)

I must conclude that the only reason the rest of you didn't have the same reaction is that you've been brainwashed by Hollywood into thinking this is an appropriate way to end any kind of franchise.

[michaelpaciocco]

You know? I think I agree. I mean, when I first saw it, I thought it was sad, but a fitting end (and really the only one they could have gone with). At the same time, the message is laced with a lot of neo-Luddism and sort of a faux-spirituality that is a bit disconcerting on multiple viewings.

[Anders]

There are a lot of things in the message that would have bothered me if I hadn't been in constant pain from the presentation.