Last night a special era of television came to an end. The last episode of the groundbreaking series Battlestar Galactica hit the airwaves, with many anxious fans waiting to find out the answers to many questions that have been asked during its 4 season run. There was little disappointment, as many answers were given, many loose threads were completed, all while leaving some of these answers up to personal interpretation.
Battlestar Galactica was more than just a sci-fi TV show. It often used sci-fi as a vehicle to talk about issues that affect us, events that we see on the front pages of newspapers. War on terrorism, suicide bombers, revolutions, rape, genocide, religious fundamentalism, and many other themes were tackled throughout the series’ existence, never shying away from controversy. Not since the original Star Trek series in the 60s has a sci-fi show tackled taboo subjects, and I’m sad to think that we won’t see such another show for many years to come.
Spoiler alert! If you haven’t seen the last episode, don’t keep on reading unless you don’t mind finding out story details from a blog.
I’ll first admit that I’m a big fan of the show, so I’m probably a little biased of my thoughts of the series finale. I thought it was a pretty strong finale, with a lot of loose ends being tied up, multiple storylines ended and many answers given, all while asking some new ones. The first 90 minutes or so was purely amazing. The fight scenes between the humans and the cylons was the best fighting scenes we’ve seen on TV since the Federation-Dominion space battle. We finally were shown what the Opera house was all about. We were given a lot of information as to what the Caprica Six vision that Baltar kept on seeing was all about (I personally think it meant that they were angels, and that also meant some Cylons had souls). The fleet finally found Earth, the human civilization will continue to thrive, and all was good.
My only beef with the episode was how they handled the whole “what is Starbuck” storyline. They pretty much made her out to be an angel as well. What I don’t understand, however, is throughout the entire series, when Baltar saw the Caprica Six angel, no one else saw her. Same in a couple of episodes where it was shown that the real Caprica Six saw a Baltar angel. Now all of a sudden, we’re expected to believe that Starbuck was an angel? An angel that everyone saw, that everyone interacted with, one that was made of flesh and bone, was seen bleeding after fights, was often drunk and other corporeal things that shown her to be just human? I think that this particular ending for that character was just a copout. I was also disappointed that there wasn’t a big goodbye scene between Admiral Adama and Tigh. Their friendship was one of the backbones of the show, and yet they didn’t even get a scene for their goodbye.
Regardless on my little beefs with the final episode, I thought it was great. BSG easily scores in my top 3 favorite TV shows of all time. We haven’t seen the last of BSG however. This fall we’ll be treated to a 2 hour TV movie called Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Directed by Bill Adama himself, this 2 hour movie, which takes place just before, during and just after the attack on the colonies, will show events we are familiar with, but from the viewpoint of the Cylons. In 2010, a prequel show entitled Caprica will hit the airwaves. That show will take place roughly 50 years before BSG, and will touch on the creation of the Cylons and the first Cylon war. As interesting as that show sounds, I don’t think that it will equal or surpass the series that its based on. Now I’m just hoping that they release a series DVD boxset so that I can enjoy this show again and again.
