I can't believe that Battlestar Galactica is over . . .sniff, sniff. On one hand, I am very happy that it was able to go out in style and complete it's storyline, but on the other, I really enjoyed watching it and wish it could continue on forever!After watching the finale last Friday, my first thought, was good, but not great. But then I thought about it for a few more days. I realized that most shows lose my interest LONG before the series is able to complete, or the shows I like get cancelled without fulfilling their purpose. In fact, there are only a handful of shows I've actually watched from beginning to end. And out of those shows, I realized that Battlestar had the best finale by far.
What did I like . . . I loved that most of the ends were tied and that we got to see what the future would hold for most of our favorite characters. I also liked that the series did not end on a depressing note. There is hope for our characters to lead a happy life on the new earth . . . although this has all happened before and will happen again the future. I really liked the action sequences. I also liked the present day NYC Six and Baltar reading about how Hera was all of our Mitocondrial DNA mother. I know others thought it was cheesy and wrong, but I liked it. Especially with the music and Ron Moore appearance!
I didn't like how Cavil just shot himself. After everything, his suicide felt like a cop-out. I didn't like how Starbuck's story line was never resolved. Sure she is an angel,but it didn't explain how she got back to the fleet, her father, why did she know the song from childhood, etc. I want to know! I also didn't like how Adama, Lee, and the Chief are going to live solitary lifes forever on Earth. That just seemed depressing.
Overall though, I thought the finale did an excellent job. Battlestar was a great show and had a good run. I only hope we can get another excellent program like this to watch in the future.
The following is all in my humble opinion:
ReplyDeleteI really liked the finale. However, Season Four, at least from my perspective, was the weakest season of the series. I think that it was one of the casualties of the writer's strike. My major problem was that the pacing of Season Four felt completely off. It felt as though the writers were making it up as they went along.
The first half of the season had a lot of filler. They spent too much time focusing on Starbuck without answering any questions regarding her existence (I'll come back to this point in a moment). Furthermore, the episode where Lee becomes acting president of the colonies was awful. The writers knew where they wanted all of the characters to be by the end of the episode (i.e. Lee becomes acting president, Admiral Adama waits in a rapter for Laura, etc.). However, instead of relying on the characterizations that they set up to get them there, the writers simply cut corners and cheated their way to get the endings. For instance, there is absolutely NO WAY that Admiral Adama would give the fleet to Tigh after he impregnated a cylon. And, Lee spent an awful amount of time with Lampkin trying to figure out who would be "worthy" of being acting president, when the writers spent a good part of two seasons setting up the fact that Lee is a creature of ambition. He should've been going for the title from the beginning.
Regarding the second half of the season, the first four episodes are amongst the best episodes of the series. However, episodes five through eight were poorly conceived. It isn't that they were particularly bad, it is more the fact that absolutely NOTHING happens in these episodes. The fifth episode was VERY exposition heavy. You know the one, it's the episode where the final five answer all of the questions from the studio audience. One of the cardinal rules of screenwriting is "show don't tell". The writers completely blew this one. I liked all of the information that I was getting and I LOVED the performances (Dean Stockwell's performance in particular). However, the writers really needed to take this information, decompress it and spread it throughout the last episodes of the series. They had a really good idea in the opening of the second half of the season (which they stole from Lost), where the final five start to have flashbacks to their time on Earth 2000 years prior. This was brilliant and the writers needed to expand on this method.
Finally, we have the series finale. I thought that it was well done. My eyes welled up with tears throughout the three hours. The writers finally realized that they needed to bring everything back to the characters, because that is what we as an audience care about the most. Regarding Cavil, remember that he was, above all else, a nihilist. Once he saw that he was not going to get resurrection technology, he wanted it all to end. I thought that this was effective. I also liked how they answered but yet didn't answer who the "head" Caprica Six and Baltar were. My absolute favourite moment in the episode was how they worked in the opera house dream. BRILLIANT.
Which brings us to Starbuck. They pulled a really great stunt by killing her off in the last half of Season Three and then bringing her back at the end of it. However, I don't believe for one second that the writers had a plan for her when they did it. It's painfully obvious during the first half of Season Four. The Dimitrius story arc took way too long, which is when I started to suspect that the writers didn't know what to do with her and thought that they could write their way out of it. When they killed her off in S3, the writers really needed to know what course they were putting her on. During the second half of S4, the whole business with her father and Daniel felt forced. In my opinion, having Starbuck just disappear in the end was the best outcome that I could've hoped for. If the writers had tried to give us an overt explanation, they would've tipped their hand. They had no explanation. Ron Moore's Monday morning quarterbacking (where he stated that she was an angel) felt like a cop-out to me and I'm glad that it didn't end up as an overt explanation in the finale.
In conclusion, BSG was a great series that suffered from poor pacing/planning during the last season.
Great opinion! Ben and I totally agree with your asessment of season 4.0 and 4.5. I really liked the beginning of season 4.5 and then it REALLY dragged for a few episodes. Overall though a great series!
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