Battlestar Galactica

[Ideologue]

The single worst finale I've ever seen, to anything. Quite literally on par with Highlander 2 in its overwhelmingly horrible stupidity, trite moralizing, and general laughable idiocy. Neil's been right all along, I renounce the show after that.

I'm pissed that I bought the DVDs.  This isn't just a bad ending--it's a undermining of the entire show.  It is the worst possible thing they could have done.  There is no ending I can conceive worse than the one they gave us.

I managed to resist buying the DVD's for fear of something like this, and I'm incredibly glad I did. Still, it's depressing as hell, this thing started SO well.

When S4.5 started so strongly, I got caught up, and had to go out and get them.  So now I have everything but 4.5...

You know what I'm going to do?  I'm going to pretend Revelations is the last episode.  There was a real danger of that, and in retrospect it would have been a far superior finale than what we have, for all the threads it hangs loose in the wind.

Things are left very ambiguous, and some plot elements aren't explained at all (Starbuck's repaired Viper is prominent), but you can sort of logic out a satsfactory explanation there.

Yup, anything you make up is going to be better than what we got. The problem, as you say, is that "Daybreak" is always going to be there at the back of your head, telling you that the writers didn't have a fucking clue what any of it meant.

This kind of shit is the reason I've yet to watch Lost, by the way.

You know what's really head-shakingly awful, Vin?  A lot of people, the vast majority of people it appears, like the finale.  Like this poll I voted in, about 85% have rated it above average or excellent.  All but 15% of a statistically significant sample believe this to be better than mediocre.  I don't believe it's better than the smell of my cat's shit.

Wanna see something funny from a Ron Moore interview about the finale?

Oh yeah, it'll [Starbuck] be controversial. There will be people who will absolutely hate it and think that we failed in our mission. We debated it in the [writers] room, I thought about it a long time, and I had sort of the same answer. And the more I struggled to give definition to it, the less satisfying it became.  There various avenues we went down, discussions, saying she's specifically this or that. And every time it felt uninteresting and kind of pedestrian.

Yeah, this feeling is your brain telling you it's a bad idea.

[Ideologue]

I didn't watch much of season 4, so perhaps this was explained in detail - why didn't Baltar or Six age at all after 150,000 years?

GODDIDIT?  :-X

Those were the Head or Virtual Six and Baltar.

They really always were... fucking hell... angels.

Or agents of a higher, alien power which is functionally identical to God--so yeah, Goddidit.

[vinraith]

You know what's really head-shakingly awful, Vin?  A lot of people, the vast majority of people it appears, like the finale.  Like this poll I voted in, about 85% have rated it above average or excellent.  All but 15% of a statistically significant sample believe this to be better than mediocre.  I don't believe it's better than the smell of my cat's shit.

The responses I've seen online have been decidedly mixed, with a bent towards the negative. I think any positive response you're seeing right now is the fanboy brigade out in force to defend their sinking ship. I simply can't believe that this one isn't going down in television history as one of the worst cop-outs/laughable trainwrecks in TV history. It's the Highlander 2 of the small screen.

[Fate]

I think many people are content with the ending because it's relative to the sheer volume of shit that the Sci-Fi channel produces. What more could you really expect from that network?

HBO really needs to produce their own NC-17 space opera.  8)

[Josquius]

Thinking further...This is old Africa....what a kick in the nuts when the climate changes.
Idiots. Idiots. Idiots.
Good finale until that choice though.

[DisturbedPervert]

I think many people are content with the ending because it's relative to the sheer volume of shit that the Sci-Fi channel produces. What more could you really expect from that network?

HBO really needs to produce their own NC-17 space opera.  8)

It'd probably end up canceled, like Rome. 

Rome and BSG are basically the only two TV shows I've seriously watched that have come out in the past decade.  I don't know if I'm gonna bother with another series for a while, Rome was canceled, and BSG turned out to be a disappointment, although there were some truly great episodes along the way.

[Fate]

A series called "Syns" is currently being developed by Showtime. From what I've read, it looks to be a reimagining of Bladerunner.

[grumbler]

It'd probably end up canceled, like Rome. 

Rome and BSG are basically the only two TV shows I've seriously watched that have come out in the past decade.  I don't know if I'm gonna bother with another series for a while, Rome was canceled, and BSG turned out to be a disappointment, although there were some truly great episodes along the way.

I would recommend Deadwood except that it was executed by HBO, in favor of John from Cincinnati, which barely lasted ten episodes.  Had Deadwood been allowed to finish, even in three seasons (and these were the twelve-ep HBO seasons), it would be one of the top-ten shows of all time in my book.  As it is, the frustration of the show just... stopping... is more than the excellent writing and acting makes up for.

[Grallon]

...

Actually, where's Grallon?  He was kind of depressive already.

Oh look, another languishite wishing for my early demise  : 


-----


As for this finale...  I guess the one word I could use to describe it is 'bitter-sweet'.  I'm left ambivalent.  If Berkut hasn't come angrily blaring about cop out yet, he no doubt will; and I'll even agree with him.  But I suppose this is the best possible ending considering the corners they painted themselves into.  When Moore said 'it's the characters stupid !"  we now know what he meant.  I wonder if things would have ended differently if there hadn't been the writer's strike last year ?

In the end the emotional journey was satisfying; we got closure for the main characters - if not for some plots left dangling. There was no explanations about the head people other than they were angels...  Same with Starbuck... Seeing such a rich character being short changed like that disapoints me.  We never learned what happened to the rest of the cylon fleet either - all the other Cavils on all the other baseships left around the colonies and Kobol...  Finally the whole 'let's happily become cavemen' was beyond sloppy and left a sour aftertaste.

Be that as it may, I still enjoyed it... to a point.  One could say the finale was a mirror image for the show: conflicted.

-----

However if there's one thing that irritates me is the level of ... outrage, veciferously voiced by some fans.  There are people over at SCIFI forum swearing they'll sell their DVDs, never watch anything Moore ever does again...  They judge the show is a failure because their pet theories didn't get air time.  Bah this is so juvenile !

For good or ill, Battlestar Galactica remains one of the best thing ever showed on television.

Farewell to the Admiral, the President, Apollo, Starbuck, and everyone else !




G.

[Syt]

http://www.jackmyers.com/commentary/media-business-bloggers/41363107.html

The most politically engaging, culturally relevant, socially entertaining and spiritually rewarding experience I had this past week was watching the two-hour finale of Battlestar Galactica, at a special press screening hosted by Sci Fi network, which announced yesterday it would soon be called Syfy.

This sentence contains so much fail, including SciFi becoming Syfy that I recommend we get a smilie that pukes bleeding eyes.

[DisturbedPervert]

There are people over at SCIFI forum swearing they'll sell their DVDs, never watch anything Moore ever does again... 

I don't think I'll ever bother to watch anything he does again.  Won't throw out my dvds though, I love the first half of the series.

Farewell to the Admiral, the President, Apollo, Starbuck, and everyone else !

This I will agree with.  They gave me some good times.  Farewell Galactica.

[grumbler]

Why is everyone saying goodbye?  I thought there was yet another 2 hours of TV movie in some sort of reversion to the early plot?  Has this been axed?

[DisturbedPervert]

I would recommend Deadwood except that it was executed by HBO, in favor of John from Cincinnati, which barely lasted ten episodes.  Had Deadwood been allowed to finish, even in three seasons (and these were the twelve-ep HBO seasons), it would be one of the top-ten shows of all time in my book.  As it is, the frustration of the show just... stopping... is more than the excellent writing and acting makes up for.

I didn't bother with that when it came out as I'm not really in to Westerns.  I suppose that's a bad reason to avoid it though, but the early cancellation does make me hesitant to start the series.

[Ideologue]

...

Actually, where's Grallon?  He was kind of depressive already.

Oh look, another languishite wishing for my early demise  : 

Now, G, you know I was kidding. 8)

As for this finale...  I guess the one word I could use to describe it is 'bitter-sweet'.  I'm left ambivalent.  If Berkut hasn't come angrily blaring about cop out yet, he no doubt will; and I'll even agree with him.  But I suppose this is the best possible ending considering the corners they painted themselves into.  When Moore said 'it's the characters stupid !"  we now know what he meant.  I wonder if things would have ended differently if there hadn't been the writer's strike last year ?

In the end the emotional journey was satisfying; we got closure for the main characters - if not for some plots left dangling. There was no explanations about the head people other than they were angels...  Same with Starbuck... Seeing such a rich character being short changed like that disapoints me.  We never learned what happened to the rest of the cylon fleet either - all the other Cavils on all the other baseships left around the colonies and Kobol...  Finally the whole 'let's happily become cavemen' was beyond sloppy and left a sour aftertaste.

Be that as it may, I still enjoyed it... to a point.

Me too--that point was reached one hour and fifteen minutes in.

One could say the finale was a mirror image for the show: conflicted.

However if there's one thing that irritates me is the level of ... outrage, veciferously voiced by some fans.  There are people over at SCIFI forum swearing they'll sell their DVDs, never watch anything Moore ever does again...  They judge the show is a failure because their pet theories didn't get air time.  Bah this is so juvenile !

Not really.  Every fan theory was better than the actual ending.  It is actually the mark of an adult when one can say, justifiably self-confidently, "this is garbage and I could have done better."

For good or ill, Battlestar Galactica remains one of the best thing ever showed on television.

Not anymore.  I probably won't sell my DVDs (I suspect demand's going to bottom out on that), I'll probably even finish through them, and even rewatch them in the future.  I may even watch The Plan and Caprica.  But I am going to be awfully reticent to ever trust Ron Moore with anything ever again.  His credibility is gone.

The responses I've seen online have been decidedly mixed, with a bent towards the negative. I think any positive response you're seeing right now is the fanboy brigade out in force to defend their sinking ship. I simply can't believe that this one isn't going down in television history as one of the worst cop-outs/laughable trainwrecks in TV history. It's the Highlander 2 of the small screen.

It's weird but on the forum where that poll was held, the actual posts seem far less one-sided than the poll.

Was Highlander 2 really all that bad?  Highlander 1 wasn't exactly Shakespeare. :-[

[vinraith]

Why is everyone saying goodbye?  I thought there was yet another 2 hours of TV movie in some sort of reversion to the early plot?  Has this been axed?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I can't imagine watching that after this finale. I sincerely hope Caprica tanks out of the gate, too.