Hello Everybody Here

[Dave Wallace]

So, I just watched the finale last night, and have very mixed feelings about it. I'm going to discuss it here, so consider this a spoiler warning for those that haven't seen it!

I thought that the first half was very good, a well-executed extended action sequence with some great special effects, and a strong sense of pressure and tension throughout.

The payoff for the Opera House dreams was also well handled (even if it did seem a little contrived to get all of those characters in the same place at that point in the story).

I didn't really buy the idea that the Cylons would agree to hand Hera back to the humans and the Final Five just because they were offered resurrection (especially given Calvin's speech a few episodes back about how much he hated being trapped in his humanoid body), but I could accept it in order for the story to work.

The second half of the finale was more problematic for me, though. Whilst I thought that the broad strokes of the story worked well - the founding of a new settlement (with the obvious parallels with the founding of USA), and the idea that the human/Cylon story is a cyclical, repeating one - a lot of the details didn't ring true for me, and a lot of the mysteries that had been set up by earlier episodes were really badly handled.

I don't buy the idea that all of the humans would happily give up their technology and their homes in order to start a new life with a "clean slate" - especially after what happened on New Caprica.

I didn't like the fact that Kara's true nature is never revealed, as it had been one of my favourite mysteries, and I was looking forward to seeing how her dead doppelganger was going to be explained (I was expecting a time-travel plot, or a reveal that she was some kind of female version of Daniel, the eighth Cylon): instead she just disappears, and I guess we're expected to believe she was an Angel, or an avatar of God (like imaginary-Baltar and imaginary-Caprica-Six).

The way that the religious elements were handled was also a big drawback, for me. The show has always been very careful to walk the line between acknowledging the possibility that higher powers exist, and making it clear that God(s) and religion are man-made (or Cylon-made) concepts - so for the show to suddenly come down on the side of God being real felt like a big letdown.

I also didn't like the fact that there was no reference to Daniel, the eighth Cylon that we never saw, and who apparently wasn't important enough to the plot to ever be mentioned again after his existence was revealed.

Also, I thought that the way that the "All Along the Watchtower" plot point was handled was very disappointing: it's some kind of cryptic cosmic code that God gave to the Cylons in order to help them find a new Earth with the humans. But if Kara and imaginary-Baltar and imaginary-Caprica-Six are his angels, why would they need an extra code to help them? And how did Kara's father learn it?

Whilst some of the character sendoffs worked well on an emotional level, there were too many problems with the way that the series' big plot points were resolved for it to stand as a great ending. A shame, as the series up to that point had been as good as BSG has ever been, so it was unfortunate that they dropped the ball a bit at the last minute.

[Thom Young]

Exactly!

Though I think "All along the Watchtower" bothered me even more than it bothered you.

[Dave Wallace]

Originally Posted by Thom Young

Exactly!

Though I think "All along the Watchtower" bothered me even more than it bothered you.

Probably.