Did anyone actually like the ending to nBSG?

[Balrog]

What mistakes? Giving up technology doesn't mean you find a cure to greed, jealousy, fear, and all those other happy human emotions which are the root cause of theirs and everyone else's troubles. It's not like the fact that they had starships, or that they had opera, made them any more susceptible to being dicks than going without all that stuff. Sure if you don't have an atom bomb it's a lot harder to wipe out your neighbor because God told you to, but you don't solve that problem by throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The only thing more incredulous than that is the fact that everyone collectively agreed to this. Not a single person spoke up and told the rest to shove it, they're keeping their ship rather than drive it into a star.

[Dominus Atheos]

I have no idea what any of you people are talking about. Battlestar Galactica ended when the fleet used all their fuel for the last jump and ended up in the radioactive bombed-out remains of New York City, then presumably all died of starvation off-camera.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Battlestar Galactica ended when the fleet found New Caprica and settled there and they all lived happily ever after.

[Skylon]

Okay....I'm just going to through this out there as I have yet to see any answers beyond the suggestion from some corners here that have just Galactica make it to Earth, but not the rest of the fleet.

How SHOULD it have ended?

The constraints are as follows:
1) Galactica is to end up at Earth in the distant past.
2) No trace can remain of Colonial technology, as we clearly know nothing of our ancestors being on the run from homicidal death machines of their own creation.

[Vympel]

The constraints are as follows:
1) Galactica is to end up at Earth in the distant past.
2) No trace can remain of Colonial technology, as we clearly know nothing of our ancestors being on the run from homicidal death machines of their own creation.

No, that's a hijack. Do it elsewhere. Also those constraints are BS.

What episode did this happen in?

Are you serious? Its the inevitable consequence of their decisions. You're talking 39,000 people who have no idea whatsoever of how to live like hunter-gatherers, living like hunter-gatherers. Their lives would be shit, the length of their survival dictated solely by how long it takes for their supplies to run out. Which wouldn't take long.

I guess I missed this episode too.

No, it was in Daybreak. Pretty clearly and explicitly, given that Earth knows nothing of the Twelve Colonies or the Cylons.

And what you call doomed, some may view as a fresh start and a chance to create their own way and civilization without the repeated 'sins' of the past influencing them.

Which is utter bullshit. All the lessons they learned, they discarded, by definition, by destroying their civilization and scattering themselves about the Earth. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. The idea that technology is inherently sinful is utter bunk, and Apollo's a fucking idiot. I really can't believe that anyone was taken in by his bullshit luddite argument.

Did you miss the complete cluster fuck of characters that represented what was left of their society?

They were normal people in extreme circumstances, and all had redeeming features dude.

Really? Who did they kill?

Everyone who was lining up to die an early death due to their giving up modern medical facilities, power, organised agriculture, etc, obviously.

And no, the people in the fleet was not their civilization. The technology and history and culture was the civilization.

The remnants of of which are carried by the collective memory (not to mention the actual hardware of the fleet) of the people.

[adam_grif]

All the lessons they learned, they discarded, by definition, by destroying their civilization and scattering themselves about the Earth.

I can't believe the people here didn't grasp that straight away. It's pretty damn easy to see that the Colonials had already learned their important lesson, which was "tread carefully when dealing with AI" or if you want to take a more reactionary approach, "don't mess with AI". They already knew all that, and now that the Cylons weren't an existential threat anymore, it's immensely stupid to think that everybody would think that the correct course of action was to say fuck it and start from zero again, losing all of their knowledge over a few generations at best.

Even the ending of the fucking episode where it shows the robots and kids and shit seems to point towards it being a moronic decision.

[Havok]

You know what I can't believe that people here didn't grasp straight away? It's pretty damn easy to see that the Colonials had already learned the important lesson which was "tread carefully when dealing with AI" or if you want to take a more reactionary approach, "don't mess with AI". AND THEY KEPT DOING IT ANYWAY.

At least three times that we know of, they kept making the same fucking mistake. Hey lets make and enslave robots with AI, what could possibly go wrong THIS TIME?

And what was the catalyst for it each time? Oh right, rebuilding the civilization they had just escaped from that just annihilated itself with all the same exact information, tech, language, mythology etc... They totally should have done it again right? Fourth times a charm right? What could possibly go wrong this time right?

[Skylon]

The constraints are as follows:
1) Galactica is to end up at Earth in the distant past.
2) No trace can remain of Colonial technology, as we clearly know nothing of our ancestors being on the run from homicidal death machines of their own creation.

No, that's a hijack. Do it elsewhere. Also those constraints are BS.

As the topic is the finale and being pissed about the ending, I'm not sure its a hijack of the discussion.

In any case, the point I was headed towards the series finale wrote itself into a corner, by clinging to oBSG's concept of "Life here, began out there." It flies in the face of science, even for today, as much of the 1970's (unless you're going into the idea of comets bringing the building blocks of life to early Earth). However, if you're going to take that concept, there's really only so many ways that can go.

1) They arrive at early Earth in which case you need to eventually ditch the sci-fi tech.
2) They end up in the present day (done already with Galactica: 1980).
3) They arrive at Earth of the future, opening the door for super cool sci-fi shit as they are on the same level as the Colonials, or an apocalyptic ending (used as a feint by the writers in the mid-season 4 finale).
4) Everybody dies, Earth's a silly place anyway (hey, its an ending).

[Johonebesus]

I can understand your objection, but I think you're going a bit far with it. Remember that it cuts to hundreds of thousands of years later. Colonial civilization obviously survived long enough to perpetuate the "Greek" mythology, monotheism, Mithraism, etc in later civilizations. It's totally out of this world to consider a civilization a failure and a waste because it doesn't survive for hundreds of thousands of years, because such a thing has never happened before in real life
....
And what we discover when we learn that the Colonials are the past is that their efforts are why we exist.

So scientifically and logically, the finale is shite, but thematically it's acceptable. All of the characters we cared about got to live happy lives in paradise, and earned it. (Except for that weird line about Hera having died as a young woman, which I admit does ruin the effect and this may be why I missed it on my first viewing. )

One thing I do think that gets glossed over is what an utterly shit life they were having in those ships. They didn't trade in the ability to make food, water, medicine...they didn't have that ability in the first place. They exchanged tin cans for (to them) an endless resource bounty.

I assume you don't think that they also somehow preserved pianos, guitars, neck-ties, and the Roman and Greek alphabets. If there wasn't some very heavy handed translating going on, then we can only assume "God" has caused modern Western civilization to evolve into a copy of Colonial civilization, just as he caused life on both Kobol and Earth to mimic one another.

Moore placed them in our past. In our past, there was no civilization 150,000 years ago. There was no great leap in human evolution or technology. If it had been set 12,000 years ago, or 40,000 years ago, or even 70,000 years ago, then maybe they could have some effect on our evolution, but the archeological record shows no significant change 150,000 years ago. It would be tens of millennia before our ancestors would even begin innovating and improving their toolset. In fact I think the Neanderthals were at that time the most technologically advanced hominids on Earth. So yes, the Colonials destroyed themselves. They left no technological or cultural remains. At best, they added a bit to the gene pool, but their descendants would be running around Africa using the same simple stone tools inherited from H. ergaster for another fifty thousand years. Never mind griping about logic or morality, the fact that their culture went extinct, that they left no traces on history, is just plain depressing. After all their struggles, a thousand years later whatever descendants they had left would be completely assimilated into the native populations and barely recognizable as fully modern humans anatomically, much less technologically or culturally.

[Vympel]

You know what I can't believe that people here didn't grasp straight away? It's pretty damn easy to see that the Colonials had already learned the important lesson which was "tread carefully when dealing with AI" or if you want to take a more reactionary approach, "don't mess with AI". AND THEY KEPT DOING IT ANYWAY.

Except for the fact that no one in present day nBSG remembered that they had created Cylons (the Thirteenth Tribe) on Kobol. So no, they hadn't learned any lessons from that.

And as far as we know, in none of the previous circumstances did anything occur remotely similar to what happened in the latest cycle - i.e. a half-human half Cylon child - an alliance with the Cylons - giving freedom to the Centurions, who even assisted in the final battle. All of these things showed that the Humans and Cylons had come together through adversity to be one joined people, symbolised by Hera.

It is basically total BS to appeal to previous events as justification for their luddism.

[Crossroads Inc.]

You know what I can't believe that people here didn't grasp straight away? It's pretty damn easy to see that the Colonials had already learned the important lesson which was "tread carefully when dealing with AI" or if you want to take a more reactionary approach, "don't mess with AI". AND THEY KEPT DOING IT ANYWAY.

At least three times that we know of, they kept making the same fucking mistake. Hey lets make and enslave robots with AI, what could possibly go wrong THIS TIME?

And what was the catalyst for it each time? Oh right, rebuilding the civilization they had just escaped from that just annihilated itself with all the same exact information, tech, language, mythology etc... They totally should have done it again right? Fourth times a charm right? What could possibly go wrong this time right?

AH this tired old argument again.. thats right.. It didn't work, it failed so LETS BANG ROCKS TOGETHER...

The fact that Skinjobs, Cylons and Humans now seem to be living together? gee I guess that doesn't count.
The fact that Each of the previous times NO ONE actually remembered or bothered to put down what CAUSED the previous collapse? gee I guess that doesn't count.


Throughout the whole show we keep getting told that the past failed, "All Cylons" failed "Humans oppressing Cylons" failed, we kept being told we needed something new. So at the very end what do we have? Humans and cylons living TOGETHER< able to interbreeed and live together.

But hey.. i guess tHAT doesn't count? Lets chuck everything into the rocks and live in CAVES!

[Johonebesus]

Okay....I'm just going to through this out there as I have yet to see any answers beyond the suggestion from some corners here that have just Galactica make it to Earth, but not the rest of the fleet.

How SHOULD it have ended?

The constraints are as follows:
1) Galactica is to end up at Earth in the distant past.
2) No trace can remain of Colonial technology, as we clearly know nothing of our ancestors being on the run from homicidal death machines of their own creation.

Let them arrive about seventy thousand years ago, to find a world where Homo sapiens had gone extinct. We aren't the descendants of Homo ergaster, but of the Colonials. This could even explain he genetic bottleneck. It is something of an illusion, caused by the fact that a large number of our ancestors were just clones of the same three bodies.

Alternatively, the Colonials arrived about twelve thousand years ago. They decided to give up their technology because they knew they couldn't preserve it, but they did succeed in preserving some level of social organization. They were responsible for the development of agriculture and metallurgy, so basically gave us civilization.

[Uraniun235]

So, first, I thought the article posted in the OP had some flaws - I would not have written that. But it's good to be remembered, Havok.


Second, the notion that "we never learn, we keep repeating the cycle and killing each other again and again, let's 'break' it by renouncing civilization" reminds me of the disillusionment people felt after the first world war. We've invented terrible technologies that have slaughtered millions of people, by our own hands, so why shouldn't we renounce technology ourselves? How do we differ so greatly from the Colonial people?


I guess the alternate question is, if we're going to keep killing each other anyway, (whether human-on-human or human-on-Cylon), does it really matter if it's with sticks and stones or with atomic weapons?

[Vympel]

So, first, I thought the article posted in the OP had some flaws - I would not have written that. But it's good to be remembered, Havok.

Yeah as I said there's many, many thoughtful takedowns of the finale (most often the ending of the finale) but I just liked that one for how angry it was

Case in point:- Why you do not want God in your fiction

[Havok]

So, first, I thought the article posted in the OP had some flaws - I would not have written that. But it's good to be remembered, Havok.

Aww buddy, I couldn't forget you.

Anyway, I'm bowing out of this argument, because quit frankly, I like the way it ended. And since I am smarter than all of you, I know that I am right.

Actually, I can't fight a war on two fronts, (i.e. I type slow) and have to go back to 'defending' TPM from heathens, so... conceded.


Until next time!

[Stofsk]

The article in the OP clearly has an axe to grind. That said, I agree with most of what he says. Galactica going out in one last blaze of glory was terrific, I didn't have a problem with the reasons or the motivations for doing so (here is where the OP article's axe grinding blinds him: saving one little girl may have been the impetus for the mission, but practically, the Cylon colony was one big fat target that if it could be taken out, would pretty much finish off the Cylon threat for good). However, why weren't Apollo and Starbuck in cockpits leading the Vipers? We could have had some final, real cool dogfights in the finale episode of the series, and instead they're leading the groundpounders?

The luddite message at the end was terrible. Not to mention the whole 'lol humans evolved on two different worlds in the galaxy' thing because of, y'know, god.

[Vympel]

The Worst Ending in the History of On Screen Science Fiction is the best I've read on the subject. He most certainly doesn't have an axe to grind.

However, why weren't Apollo and Starbuck in cockpits leading the Vipers? We could have had some final, real cool dogfights in the finale episode of the series, and instead they're leading the groundpounders?

Who the hell knows, eh? You'd think in the finale they would remember the start of nBSG where Apollo and Starbuck were fellow Viper pilots first and foremost. But instead they put them on the Colony. Why not give them something cool to do in space? Instead Hot Dog is in carge? Eh? Pfah.

[Stofsk]

It's just so incongruous. Every soldier should have basic training in firearms handling, for nothing if not self-defence or discipline. Even pilots. But I'm to believe Apollo is not only a viper ace and squadron commander but also an infantry leader? To say nothing of Starbuck (even though they established her as being a sniper back in season one).

And it being the finale, it would be the last hurrah of the Galactica and the Colonials in their struggle. RDM and co owed it to us to show us Vipers fighting Raiders. Instead, we get tortured metaphors, Baltar's speech that 'everyone should just be nice lol' and luddism. Pfah indeed.

[Vympel]

I thought Baltar's speech was quite touching. What I didn't like is seeing Cavill rewarded for finally putting negotiation and trust before his personal vendettas being rewarded with nothing- couldn't Tyrol have waited for a few moments?

I guess the writers figured he was beyond redemption, but I didn't think he was such a bad person - "The Plan" made him far worse what with the Spoiler

stabbing the little boy

- and his attitude about how he didn't want to be human made him the most interesting Humanoid Cylon of the bunch.

And what about the Number Fours and Number Fives? None of them was worth saving? Even though the story of the Number Four on the fleet was pretty much the most touching part of "The Plan"?

[Stofsk]

Alright, conceded on Baltar's speech. But you just reminded me of Tyrol acting like a gorilla for like, the millionth time in the goddamn show, and nobody batting an eyelash.

For fuck's sake, he snaps Tory's neck in front of... everyone in the CIC, and not one guy goes 'Dude... wtf?'

Haven't seen 'The Plan' so I can't comment on it. Is it worth it?

[DrMckay]

I actually liked parts of it, some parts, the flashbacks showing Adama's decision to go back to the fleet and Tigh following him were well done. It felt good to see the decisions that led to him commanding the Galactica, but others, like the Roslin ones and the one with Lee and Kara almost sleeping with each other added little to the plot and seemed a bit retroactive, like a "Look, everything is relevant! Laura gave herself cancer, and Lee and Kara are even MORE flawed than you originally thought!"

Laura's death scene, and the Agathons exploring the earth were also nice, as were the battle scenes (Though Starbuck and Apollo should have been in vipers.) Bill's final flight from the Galactica launch tube was beautifully done as well.

However, the abandon-all-technology ending really got to me, the main reason being that Lee Adama was the one to decide it.

For all his talk about the importance of the characters and staying true to them, I think Moore really dropped the ball on that one. Lee Adama is a City boy, a military officer who has learned to trust his life to complicated machinery and who believes in the democratic system. Later in the show, he wants to be an attorney, and follow in his grandfather's footsteps.

It's a bit difficult to have an egalitarian democratic system and a court of law when you are living a neo-luddite existence based around subsistence farming.

Not to mention Chief Tyrol, the poor bastard. Also, they are fine with flying all of their spaceships into the sun but for the Basestar, which they leave with the race of machines that killed billions of humans a few short years prior. Now I'm all for breaking the cycle of violence, but you'd think the minds that kept the fleet alive thus far would see some problems with that.

[Vympel]

Haven't seen 'The Plan' so I can't comment on it. Is it worth it?

Its good. Its been deried as a clip show, but thats not really true, IMO - its ovewhelmingly new material. There aren't any huge revelations, you just see the events of the Miniseries and Season 1 to early Season 2 from the Cylon perspective. From a purely eye-candy perspective, we see the destruction of the Colonies that we should have seen in the miniseries - Basestars nuking the cities of man explicitly, Battlestars (Valkryie types) shutting down, the colonies burning, Centurions performing cleanup, etc.

It doesn't deal too much with the mystical stuff that weighed nBSG down (IMO) in the later episodes, so yeah I quite liked it.

It ends with Cavill's monologue from the big expository episode when he's talking to Ellen Tigh, and its during a great shot- its the two Cavill's from the end of Season 2 (prior to New Caprica flash-forward) getting tossed out of the airlock. I said it a while ago when I first saw it (a month or so ago?) that I liked it so much that it was the new ending of the series for me, since I disliked Daybreak Pt 2 so much.

The story of a Number Four on the fleet is great, and really gives Rick Worthy a chance to do something, given that he didn't have much of a presence on the show.

[Vympel]

"Look, everything is relevant! Laura gave herself cancer, and Lee and Kara are even MORE flawed than you originally thought!"

Laura gave herself cancer? Did I miss something?

[DrMckay]

At the end of her flashback after she doesn't sleep with the with the student, she lights up a cigarette from a pack of several, with an ornate lighter, to significant music...

[Vympel]

At the end of her flashback after she doesn't sleep with the with the student, she lights up a cigarette from a pack of several, with an ornate lighter, to significant music...

Yeah but she had breast cancer. Is there a link between smoking and breast cancer?

[DrMckay]

I don't know, but I think they were trying to show a symbolic connection though. That's what all the other flashbacks were about; how the characters got where they were at... Adama went back to the fleet, Lee almost slept with Kara which caused her to feel guilty and pass him in a flight test that later killed him. adn got all three (The Adamas and Kara) to galactica.

Laura calls Adar and tells him she'll work on his campaign for mayor as she lights up a cigarettein a practiced move. Laura developed cancer just before she took a shuttle out to Galactica's decommissioning ceremony as a member of Adar's gov't
So, not sure f it is scientifically correct, but thematically, sure.