Wednesday, April 01, 2009

BSG: Thoughts on a Series

When the show came out, I really liked it, a lot. Seasons 1 and 2 were really good.  Season 3 was okay but seemed to tread water.  Season 4 was split in two with a year in between the halves.  That hiatus was long and becuase I don't have the syfy channel, I was not inundated with constant reruns.  I had almost forgotten about the show.  Second half of season 4 was okay.  It was obvious that they were doing some serious retconning because they finally figured out who they wanted to be cylons.  Didn't really care for that. 

The finale was a disappointment.  Problem 1: Galactica is breaking apart on her own and they jump her directly into a fire fight where she takes a barrage of enemy fire and not only holds up but is able to ram a basestar and still jump out again later.  Problem 2: they killed Boomer.  Sure she was flawed, but she was trying to do the right thing in the end and, besides, she was hot.  Problem 3:  Lets not even try and explain Starbuck.  Sure you could say that she is the Harbinger of Death because she ended both cylon and human civilizations by joining them, but that is a cop out.  Harbinger of Death means one thing to most people; that she will be the instrument of mass destruction and destroy all cylons or at least the bad ones.  Problem 4:  Earth 2 was a copout.  They showed us a destroyed earth as a shocking plot twist, now we find new Earth.  What was a matter with Kobol?  Why did we need them to be our ancestors, I was fine with being a cylon.  Problem 5:  The opera scene was stupid and didn't mean anything.  This could have all been explained by saying that each character had a connection to her and maybe a seperate plan for her, but they go and make it a premonition.  Why is she even important other than giving a reason to have the final battle?  Problem 6:  According to national geographic, hera doesn't even live that long. Again, why was she so important; just to be rescued?  Problem 7:  So every cylon ever was just hanging around the black hole waiting to get attacked.  There are no more on Caprica or the other colonies?  Problem 8:  The attempt to explain everything as God's will.  I mean that in itself is not so bad, but they don't even try to explain why it is God's will or how their contradictory actions have brought on this will.  Free Will is not present in the BSG universe.  It just looked like lazy writing and Deus Ex Machina to me.  Which is kind of ironic as the show is basically about machines with souls. 

I really don't think any ending to the show could have been satisfactory.  There wasn't an end and as they stretched out the story, they added more and more that they pushed off as being explained later.  I am a fan of a show ending on its own terms and this series has had some excellent individual episodes.  The finale, however, was not one of them.  The show ended not with a bang but with a wimper.

Recently watching the entire run of Buffy may have set my expectations too high for series finale.  Buffy had some rough seasons too, but was able to pull it back together and man that final episode was awesome. 

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3 comments:

grrrace said...

who cares if boomer dies? they let athena live. hehe.
i liked it, but there were lots of flaws.
also, helo survived? really? i think they wussed out at the finale.

Budd said...

I like boomer more than Athena. Boomer is a tragic character. Athena is okay but she always new she was a cylon and that made her character less complex. But, yeah. Any random 8 is pretty cool.
Way too many people survived. The battle was very unrealistic. I know, I have fought in countless space battles.

Princesskasren said...

I didn't read the middle bit because I haven't seen it yet but I agree with the Buffy thing...I so wanted to see the last fght and yet you didn't really NEED to.