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Post by michaelpaciocco on Mar 21, 2009 9:11:26 GMT -8
I suppose it was an appropriate ending, since like the rest of the series it was equal parts Epic Win and Epic Fail. Yay for nail-biting action and heartbreaking human drama, boo for religious mumbo-jumbo and "it's magic, we don't have to explain it". So, ultimately, what was the message of the series? 1. Technology is evil, so everyone should just be farmers. 2. God will go to great lengths to jack people around. That's a bit of an oversimplification. It's more like 1) When our technological growth overtakes our ability to emotionally, socially, and intellectually deal with it in a responsible manner, bad shit happens - which, come to think of it, has been one of the main threads in Science-fiction since H.G. Wells. 2) There are forces in the universe we do not understand and may not understand - which, while a religious message of sorts, has other interpretations. What I find interesting about the ending of BSG is how dovetails with a couple of other recent bits of fiction; A) WALL-E - The endings and messages are so similar, even in execution, about the nature of humanity, that I can't help but wonder if WALL-E had an influence on this. Nevermind that both pieces had strong and similar observations on technology, the environment, consumerism, and both ended with a recolonization/rebirth of sorts. Which leads to what I think maybe a controversial (for this board) comparison... B) Final Crisis - Kirk, before you fly off the handle for me injecting this in here, I just want to point out that, like BSG, had the following -Strange watcher beings that guided and manipulated the actions of the main 'actors' -the day was saved by a piece of music (Superman singing Darkseid out vs. "All Along the Watchtower" - granted the later was more developed and better used, but hey, give credit where it's due) -recolonization of an newly made habitable planet I'm not saying Final Crisis was good (I thought it was, but I know that's not an opinion everyone shares), but I do note a common thread here. Rebirth, Retaking and reconnecting with what makes us human. Now, that said.. I'll add a bit of continuation of this, but in the Oddsmaking thread, because it's more appropriate there. Also, my pet theory on the identity of "GOD": OK, so we know that the Cylons "evolved" from silver toasters to humanoid in ~3-5000 years. Now, the freed Centurions at the end, what do you think they could do with 150,000 years of evolution, assuming a geometric progression? My theory is that the Centurions effectively became godhead, and manipulated humanity into creating the conditions for their own creation/evolution. Ok, that's it from me. Michael |
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Post by K-Box on Mar 21, 2009 11:54:43 GMT -8
God will go to great lengths to jack people around. I know you're being a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but God being a dick IS canon for this show. Not only did he choose Baltar as his Space Jesus, but Baltar himself correctly pointed out, at the end, that the way God has behaved throughout the show CANNOT be reconciled with either good or evil. In other words, God does it for the lulz, which is a refreshingly critical message for a show that features religion so heavily, to acknowledge that God is not necessarily good. |
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Post by K-Box on Mar 21, 2009 11:57:07 GMT -8
My main problems were a) so, wait, there's ANOTHER Earth, with the exact same continents, and nobody even REMARKS on this? (since we already saw that the first Earth has an American continent, and the second Earth has an African continent), and b) intermingling with the native humans, when they're that far down the evolutionary ladder, strikes me as either bestiality or rape (or both).
Also, it would have been better if part of the fleet had decided to leave for the stars again, thus giving humanity its distant cousins in the cosmos, while the rest stayed on Earth, since it would at least acknowledge that not everyone would be comfortable with voluntarily going back to the stone age.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Mar 21, 2009 12:43:55 GMT -8
I don't remember seeing the american continent on Cylon-earth.
Actually, give the timeline, the native humans would be Homo Sapiens. Of course, when we are talking about a genre that regularly uses the Hybrid/Halfbreed concept, you do raise a fair point, and maybe it's a subtle innuendo that the writers deliberately snuck in there for the next time science-fiction wants to dig up that trope for some more serious examination. Of course, to me, what's far more likely is that Colonial humanity would wipe out Earth Humanity with their thousands of years of collected germs, "War of the Worlds"-style.
This is a fair point, and a difficult one to argue, as I myself would tend to oppose the choice. To me, the explanation for why this wouldn't work;
1) Without enough people, particularly the kind of people who can build/maintain/repair/rebuild certain technologies, the fleet would be doomed to basically falling apart and dying off in the void because...
2) It's pretty well established in BSG canon has made clear that the fleet needs non-renewable resources to keep going (Fuel and foodstuffs), and without the numbers they had (after all, even at 39,500-some, they were just barely able to feed themselves), it might not even be viable. And finally,
3) If they ever found another life-sustaining planet (or several) was a big gamble to take, after two heartbreaking failures (New Caprica and Cylon-Earth) and a lucky chance at the third (Earth).
Ultimately, it came down to "the writers needed an excuse for how the Colonials could live on earth without radically altering the timeline" and fit their actions to that.
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Post by K-Box on Mar 21, 2009 13:09:28 GMT -8
I don't remember seeing the american continent on Cylon-earth. So, in the season finale where Kara came back, the Earth that they showed in the final shot was actually the Earth of the series finale, then? Because they DID show the North American contintent (O HAI FLORIDA) there. But if it was merely misdirection, to make us think that Cylon-Earth was our Earth, I can accept this handwave. |
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Mar 21, 2009 13:10:46 GMT -8
Best explanation I can think of, as I didn't see any continents on Cylon-earth.
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Post by K-Box on Mar 21, 2009 13:18:29 GMT -8
Actually, give the timeline, the native humans would be Homo Sapiens. Nonetheless, Homo Sapiens who are so unevolved as of yet that they don't even have language (or is it that they've only just developed language?). I mean, there are reasons why it's considered creepy and wrong for adults to have sex with children, and one of them is that children, by virtue of their vastly less developed intellects and emotional maturities (relative to adults) simply cannot be classified as "consenting" to sex. Having sex with a pre-lingual Homo Sapiens ancestor of modern humanity isn't just like having sex with a child - hell, it's even worse than having sex with a child with Down syndrome, because with those early Homo Sapiens, even though they're technically the same species, they're so much more like animals that you might as well be fucking an ape, which is why I say again, it's either bestiality or rape or both. |
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Mar 21, 2009 13:31:46 GMT -8
true, but given how morally ambivalent this show has been, and given other "colonizatons" have had their share of rape, well, not everyone in the fleet was an angel. Nevermind that you could easily speculate that some of the Colonials "brought up" the native humans to close to their levels over a couple generations.
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Post by paulpogue on Mar 21, 2009 16:00:14 GMT -8
I don't remember seeing the american continent on Cylon-earth. So, in the season finale where Kara came back, the Earth that they showed in the final shot was actually the Earth of the series finale, then? Because they DID show the North American contintent (O HAI FLORIDA) there. But if it was merely misdirection, to make us think that Cylon-Earth was our Earth, I can accept this handwave. I would have no problem believing that the Earth we saw in Crossroads was Our Earth and not the one we saw ten episodes ago. Moore's commented in a few places today that when they found "Earth" at the midseason point, they were very careful not to show any continents that would directly correlate with actual continents, but used cloud cover and other misdirections to make it look like it MIGHT be Earth. |
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Post by paulpogue on Mar 21, 2009 16:12:19 GMT -8
God will go to great lengths to jack people around. I know you're being a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but God being a dick IS canon for this show. Not only did he choose Baltar as his Space Jesus, but Baltar himself correctly pointed out, at the end, that the way God has behaved throughout the show CANNOT be reconciled with either good or evil. In other words, God does it for the lulz, which is a refreshingly critical message for a show that features religion so heavily, to acknowledge that God is not necessarily good. I also tend to subscribe to the theory that God's ability to influence events is actually extremely limited; the one and only time God ever did anything besides provide information was bring Starbuck back from the dead. And, as with Shelly Godfrey's mysterious disappearance back in season 1, there is a very strong case to be made that God's phantom projections can be strong enough that people actually interact with them -- the equivalent of a hard-light hologram. Which would explain Starbuck very neatly. The handwave around "why not do it a lot more?" could well be "because it's very hard for God to do it." If you think of God less as the Old Testament God and more like one of Marvel's Elders of the Universe studying a great game, it makes a lot more sense. Maybe he CAN'T do more than he is already, and the reason people keep going in circles is because they fuck up the plan by introducing a random human element into the equation. The whole "all this has happened before" is God hitting the reset button on the experiment. It might even be argued that things actually fell out of God's control entirely at some point; maybe there wasn't even intended to be indigienous life on earth, for instance. That said, your take on it -- God is essentially neutral and a big dick, and that's the POINT -- is also quite valid. |
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Post by jbhelfrich on Mar 21, 2009 23:42:20 GMT -8
OK, more coherent thoughts later as I have just finished watching it an am very tired.
1) I would be much happier with them not explaining Kara if I had any trust that the writers knew what had happened to Kara. I don't, and plan to put that question to Ron at some point in some venue.
2) As soon as they spotted the natives on Earth, I said "Wait, they're really going the Hitchhicker's route here?"
3) I think, ultimately, that "God" may be shorthand for "The Writer" (expressed as Ron Moore in this case) especially since that was a very familiar looking gentleman holding the magazine that Head-Six and Head-Baltar were reading at the end.
4) I can't wait for the "from their point of view" movie.
5) I REALLY can't wait for the shooting scripts/directors cut of the finale that will hopefully come on the DVD.
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Post by jensaltmann on Mar 22, 2009 4:14:04 GMT -8
Qualifier: I haven't watched BSG since sometime early in season 2. I haven't seen the finale, I'm just going by what I have read in this thread.
From this, I gather that the ending isn't really original, it's actually quite biblical. A lot of religions, you can even find mentions in the Bible, believe that the Angels came from the Heavens, had intercourse with Human women, and raised us to civilization.
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Post by K-Box on Mar 22, 2009 4:36:18 GMT -8
Qualifier: I haven't watched BSG since sometime early in season 2. I haven't seen the finale, I'm just going by what I have read in this thread. From this, I gather that the ending isn't really original, it's actually quite biblical. A lot of religions, you can even find mentions in the Bible, believe that the Angels came from the Heavens, had intercourse with Human women, and raised us to civilization. It's a homage to the original Battlestar Galactica in that regard, as well, since Classic!BSG was basically one part Star Wars, another part the Book of Mormon and the final third lifted directly from Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? |
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Mar 22, 2009 11:50:54 GMT -8
Oh, my Starbuck Theory:
Seeing as I'm subscribing to a Time Loop theory of sorts, Starbuck was plucked from a few moments before her death, brought to Our Earth, then sent back to the fleet at the exact moment of her departure, then at the end of the Series finale, she is sent back to die and her body is deposited on Cylon-Earth.
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Post by paulpogue on Mar 22, 2009 15:01:38 GMT -8
It's a good theory, but it still doesn't explain why her Viper was in pristine and flawless condition when it returned.
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