Exeunt Omnes, Battlestar Galactica
We finally got around to watching the final twelve episodes (a.k.a., Season 4.5) of Battlestar Galactica recently. On DVD, of course; it's the only way to watch the thing. Is this to say we bought the boxed set? Don't make me laugh. Rented it? Not a chance.
No, we borrowed it from the library, which is why it took us so long to get around to reviewing it; there was a waiting list. And now, having watched it, we are quite content to return it to the library and let it pass it on to the next person on the waiting list. This is not a series that bears being enshrined and preserved in the permanent collection. I don't expect I'll ever feel the desire to watch it again.
This comment is not quite the slam it may appear to be. There have been plenty of other series like BSG that I've very much enjoyed watching in their time, but having watched, have never felt the desire to watch again: 24, Heroes, and Babylon 5 come immediately to mind. I guess this is what happens when the primary hook of the series is, "What happens next? And then next? AND THEN NEXT?"
Okay, so we now know what happens next all the way to the end of time, and then some. Therefore at this point I will begin slinging around spoilers galore, and if you plan on watching the show yourself and want to preserve some of the mystery, this is perhaps the point at which you should stop reading.
(Whisper: Are they gone yet?)
Right. Okay, first off, I want to say that I am decently pleased with the way they wrapped up the series. At the end of Season 4 they had a heckuva cliffhanger: Starbuck inexplicably back from the dead, civil war amongst the Cylons, a tentative alliance between the humans and the Cylon rebels, and Planet Earth found but turned out to be a millennia-dead radioactive cinder. They had a lot of questions to settle and long-simmering sidebar plots to wrap up in the final episodes, and for the most part, they did so quite well.
The festering mutiny in the fleet? Brought to a boil and lanced. Zarek's political machinations? The coup episodes are worth watching if only because they make it so gratifying to see Richard Hatch's character take his final bow in front of a firing squad. The big Götterdämmerung final battle with the Cylons that we've been waiting for since—well, ever since the series started? Okay, the setup was a little cheap and rushed, and I was really disappointed that Dean Stockwell got as short shrift in the end as did Boba Fett, but on the whole it was fun to see all those CGI techno-toys finally in all-out action. My deep inner geek was somewhat disappointed that Stockwell didn't turn out in the end to answer to some sort of ultimate giant Cylon supercomputer named "Ziggy," but that's probably too much of an inside joke.
(Speaking of inside jokes: as a longtime proponent of the mystical significance of "All Along the Watchtowers" [see "Jimi Plays Dead," Amazing Stories, October 1993], I was greatly relieved to see that that bit of business was not just some stupid throwaway joke.)
But I understand that there are some things in the final wrap-up that others have objected to. That in the final, final, final end, after the final battle, they wind up limping into the nearest star system and having the good luck to find a habitable planet already populated by genetically compatible primitive hominids, which turns out to be our Earth, 150,000 years ago? If you didn't know that BSG was saturated in "Chariots of the Gods" stuff from the very beginning, you weren't paying attention. After all, the very first lines of the original series were:
"There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis..."Personally I was a little disappointed to see that the final scene was not of Baltar sitting in a meadow, trying to teach the cavemen to play Scrabble while the five hundred and seventy-third meeting of the colonization committee of Fintlewoodlewix met in the background, but as I say so often, that's just me.
Speaking of Baltar, I also understand some were upset that Baltar, Number Six, and Kara Thrace turned out to be confused and benighted angels serving the will of a somewhat obtuse and uncommunicative God. Again, if you didn't know that this was in-store, you weren't paying attention, as this was a significant story element in the original series. And speaking of the original series, to prepare for writing this, I went back and watched...
Oh, never mind, I've gone on for far too long already. It's over; good show, but I'm glad it's over. They survived the Cylons, made it to a habitable planet, named it "Earth" in honor of their long-lost homeworld, uplifted the primitive hominids, and here we all are, 150,000 years later, still listening to "All Along the Watchtowers."
So could there possibly be anything less interesting than a spinoff series set on Caprica before the Cylon War?
Let the arguments begin.
ULTIMAGE GEEK FU runs every Wednesday. Have a question that's just bugging the heck out of you about Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Gallactica, Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Heroes, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Smallville, The X-Files, X-Men, The Man From Atlantis, or pretty much any other SF-flavored media property? Send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com with the subject line, "Geek Fu," and we'll stuff it in the queue.
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