BSG

[hils]

I was going to try and write for a bit but BSG has broken my brain (in a good way). Might as well try and get this down while it's all still fresh in my mind


I think this is the only show that I have watched from the beginning all the way through to its natural conclusion (rather than getting cancelled I mean) What I loved most about it was the way it so nicely and perfectly tied everything up. I don't know if this ending had been planned from the beginning or not but it felt like it and that's all that matters. I can't actually imagine any other way of ending it.

Amazingly my favourite character in this episode was Gaius. I mean I've always loved him but he really surprised me here. Again, it's one of those things that really makes sense. He was the one to start the war (ignoring Adama crossing the treaty line for a moment) so of course he should be the one to end it. I love that he came full circle and settled down with Caprica to become a farmer.

I loved that the opera house visions were tied up too. It made me all tingly when Caprica and Gaius went into CIC and saw the final five up top. Perfect.

The other thing I really liked was Tyrol and Tory. I've been waiting and waiting for him to find out what Tory did to Cally and I was starting to think it had been forgotten (which is the sort of thing that happens on Smallville on a weekly basis) but then it came at the perfect moment.

I actually cried over Kara and Sam, which is weird as I hated them for being a block to Lee/Kara. LOL! This show really isn't about shipping for me any more. I just love it for what it is.

Cried for Adama and Roslin too, which I never thought would happen either. It just broke me when he took off his wedding ring and put it on her finger.

I love that we never did find out what Kara really was. I suspect Ron will have answers later but I don't think we need them really. I don't anyway. I think she's with Sam again now, hence his 'see you on the other side'. I was half hoping she and Lee were going to settle down and have babies but I guess it was never meant to be.

I loved the inner-Caprica and inner-Gaius were angels, or messengers at least. I bet most people hated the flash forward but I loved it. Gaius's 'it doesn't like to be called that' comment was fascinating.

Will it all happen again? Who knows. I like Caprica's feeling that something will be different this time.

Comments

[the-dala.livejournal.com]

Word to all of this. I cried pretty much the whole way through, but an especially wonderful emotional moment was Gaius getting choked up about farming. When this show started I only knew James Callis as Bridget Jones' sassy gay friend. Who knew he'd turn out to be such a brilliant actor, being given probably the most difficult role in the whole show?

I'm a fan of Kara/Sam and Kara/Lee (and totally wanted fat happy babies), for entirely different reasons. I did like how the flashbacks showed that their love was completely real and completely destructive from minute one.

It just broke me when he took off his wedding ring and put it on her finger.

That was lovely. It was exactly what he did in her visions from "The Hub," but reflected a chance she had taken rather than one she'd missed out on.

Okay, I have to stop now before I start sobbing again!

[hils.livejournal.com]

*huggles*

[caersidi.livejournal.com]

I was also thinking a lot about this. The creator of BSG, Glen A. Larsen, incorporated many themes from the Mormon Church into the original series and those have also carried over to the new one.

The messenger element really got to me even though it had been pre-figured.

Overall a very emotional episode on many levels.

[hils.livejournal.com]

It was brilliant! I had no idea about the morman church stuff though. How interesting!

[caersidi.livejournal.com]

Well the Council of 12 and the concept of the 13th Tribe and a bunch of other stuff. Angels and prophecy also figure into it.

I just ordered a book via amazon on the philosophy of BSG that includes the essay "Why your Mormon neighbour knows more about this show than you do".

I'm sure some viewers would be foaming at the mouth over some of the religious content. You know those who consider SF needs to be divorced from religion.

[hils.livejournal.com]

OOH! Let me know if the book is any good. I might get hold of a copy

Personally I liked all the religious stuff.

[littlehollyleaf.livejournal.com]

This show really isn't about shipping for me any more.

I never managed to ship anyone in this show - the relationships were all too fluid and I appreciated all of them (with the poss exception of Chief/Cally cos Cally annoyed me :p). I always thought it was an impressive feat for a show to be so respectful/faithful to ALL its characters like that.

And I cried at Laura and Adama too! I had to do it very quietly and hidden because my boyfriend HATES Laura Roslin with a passion, he thinks she should never have become president and that Giaus should have been running things from the beginning :p But I thought it was a very lovely, very bittersweet ending for the both of them.

I didn't love the 'angels' idea, but virtual!Giaus' comment about 'it' sorted that for me because it suggests maybe a larger computer or something is controlling things, which is more fun I think :)

Personally though, I didn't like what they did with Starbuck. It seemed a rather Smallvillian 'we don't know what to do cos we haven't planned anything so we're just gonna do nothing' ending for her. Her being an 'angel' didn't fit great cos she was not like Giaus and Caprica's 'angels' because everyone could see her and she could physically touch people and just, blah, I didn't like it. It felt wishy-washy and I thought Starbuck deserved something more concrete.

But it still was excellant as a show wasn't it? :D If SV managed even half of what BSG achieved it would already be 10x better than it is at the moment :p

[hils.livejournal.com]

Hehe! If SV achieved what BSG did in the first episode it would be a vast improvement ;)

I'm still undecided about Kara. At the time it seemed to make sense but I dunno.

[littlehollyleaf.livejournal.com]

At the time it seemed to make sense but I dunno.

Lol. This used to be my TV watching motto :p My squee was so strong when I first starting getting into fandom it would often take over and they could have had the main character saving the world by eating half a ton of cheese and I would have been bouncing up and down saying how amazing it was!

I was even like this with SV for quite some time, but that show has really put a damper on squee like that lately - now I'm crying foul at the slightest sign of a plot hole. I still don't know whether this is a good or bad thing...

[hils.livejournal.com]

Hehe! I'd rather live in a euphoric squee I think

[notsowise-sage.livejournal.com]

It was an amazing achievement, a testimony to the fact that remakes can work, and that television can push boundaries, even if means taking a cult show, and mixing it up with the ideals of other cult shows.

This show for me was the original Battlestar Galactica, but blended with a healthy dose of far thinking that epitomised Babylon 5, I think in many ways, the characters became a bit merged in parts too. I definately see Kara as Mr Garibaldi - she drifted in and out of favour, screwed up relationships, but in the end when it was her time to stand up, to shake off the betrayals, and her own neurosis, she did. Plus, they were both hard arsed pain in the butts that wouldn't back down from fights.

Adama was Sheridan, older, but no wiser, and no less pivotal to the future of mankind, and the other races in the galaxy. Also, he fell in love with a leader of the other side, not the Cylon side, but an allied side - but as Sheridan stood against Delenn in the Earth-Membari war, only to come to love her later, Adama and Roslin followed.

Of course the show isn't shared exclusively with Babylon 5, as someone noted, it carried some of it's Mormon roots from the original incarnation of the show - however it is fairly obvious, maybe in an effort to be more politically correct, or just to delve into deep mysteries than what Joseph Smith Jr presented, so through the show there was the heavy ladening of Judaism, and even proto-Christianity (which the mysterious angel/messenger Caprica and Gaius seemed to be pushing their respective hosts towards). Also other shows include a bit of Space Above and Beyond, Star Trek TNG, even some Good Vs Evil (as scary as that might sound).

I'm really glad they've said this time, it might be different - A) because it's bloody depressing, B) if we were competent enough to build Cylons in the future, we'd be competent enough not to end up in yet another recession, and C) because it's bloody annoying, it renders the four years we've invested in this show entirely pointless, and the characters ultimately benign.

Along the way the show has given us so much - there was the basic psychology of an apocalyptic society, the politics between politicians and the military, the military conquest, and defeats, the strategies, hard wrought nerve reactions to a string of often catastrophic events, the full on politics that evolved, trade unionism, crime and the criminal underworld, hope and faith, love and devotion, hate and revenge, moments of great triumphs and the little things in life, moments of complete desolation and the minor troubles that affect just one person.

[notsowise-sage.livejournal.com]

The show managed to fit just about everything into it's four year run. It even righted some of the wrongs in the original series - yes they found Earth, but rather than struggle with the whole concept of an intergalactic civilisation trying to interface with a post-nuclear civilisation, they went for the pre-civilisation, and made the characters the missing link, the stage of evolution that no one can find that comes between the great flood, and the human form we know today.

My only flaw with this ending was that too much was tied up in it. Sure they had plenty of time, and it was beautiful to behold - but it would have felt more comfortable, and more natural if they'd tied a few of the things off before coming into this episode. It's only a small desire. One thing specifically though, if I had been writing this, I would have let slip what happened to Cally at some point before, let Tyrell have to struggle to come to terms with it, to have to overcome his anonymosity towards Tory, and then have the shared recollections, the reliving of killing his wife be the tipping point that has him kill Tory, and trigger the end of the ceasefire.

Which brings me to the final thing I didn't like - the killing of Cavil's Cylon faction - that bit was too easy. You could say whatever this mysterious deity, or force that guided the Caprica and Gaius angels to guide the human and Cylon races, pulled the trigger - saving what was left of humanity and allowing them to fulfill their destines - I can live with that. It's that all of those Cylons were in one place, that there were none on other planets, left back in the colonies, that there was no second force, no back up plan. That was it - all the militant Cylons were gone in one move. It was too neat, too easy. If there'd been more of a hint that Cavil was having to consolidate his forces, if there'd been that interaction there, a mission, a battle that forced the turn of play - it would have been more acceptable.

That said, they did get a lot of details just right, the red paint to identify friendly Cylons, the Game Theory plan for rescuing Hera, the near suicidal attack that was the only way to breach a nearly insurmountable position.

Oh and Adama saying the robot Cylons deserved their freedom - even knowing that the robot Cylons could eventually turn psycho. The human Cylons weren't around when the first war between the Cylons and the colonies began. It was a really great moment, and it signalled the end of the animosity between the human allied Cylons and the humans themselves I felt. It was only a few weeks ago that civil war seemed on the agenda over Adama and Roslin's acceptance of aid from the renegade Cylons.

Overall, it was a beautiful thing, mind blowing, epic - but with a few things that I feel could have been done better. Just read about The Plan - I'm wondering if those little bits, the conveniences might get a bit of back story to them? I hope so - then the show would be truly unknockable as the best show on television. This was already the best ending to a series - but with a bit of work it would be tied up so much better.

[hils.livejournal.com]

The main gripe seems to be the lack of explanation about Kara. I think it worked but a lot of people wanted to know what she was. What say you?

[notsowise-sage.livejournal.com]

I never want to know the answer.

Do you know the second and third Matrix films were so crap - it tried to answer questions. Some things should remain a mystery, to be imagined at.

I actually felt they were a bit too candid about what she might have been - but I'm not going to discuss it, because they didn't go too far, and I don't want to spoil it.

[hils.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad we agree :)

[notsowise-sage.livejournal.com]

For my criticisms, I wasn't disagree that this was the best show ever, it pretty much is, and I didn't have Buffy as a pedastal to measure against - just my reservations means there's scope, and hope that something can raise this show up - or at some point in the future, someone's going to be able to make a show that exceeds BSG

Of course I may be dead when that happens, or as soon as it happens - my brain might explode.

BSG beat my wild theories in the end, it didn't play as I expected. Much more, and I'd be dead already.

[hils.livejournal.com]

I love the B5 parallells (how do you spell that word?). I had never even thought of that but you're absolutely right. In a lot of ways I think BSG surpassed B5 but I think that mostly comes down to the whole B5 cancellation/non-cancellation thing which buggered up the pacing.

I think BSG belongs on a pedestal above all other shows, even Buffy, which has been my marker of excellence for many years.