Battlestar Galactica Finale Thoughts
Cut for spoilers
It's not that I didn't like it. I loved the first half, as I loved Daybreak part one last week. But once they got to earth, it all seemed too unreal. I sort of liked the way they dealt with Laura and Adama, except that I wasn't really sure what the point of those scenes of Laura in the hospital was, other than Laura covered in blood thinking 'I'm going to die' which has been exactly what she's been thinking since the miniseries so? I thought there would be more of a payoff or something. And I completely assumed Adama was going to crash the raptor into the cabin site and go down with her. That would have made sense in a sad, twisted way. But if he's going to go on (talking to her) why leave Lee and Kara and do it all alone? Going off alone to die makes sense; going off alone to live just doesn't. So I guess I didn't really like it, except that EJO and MM's acting was completely brilliant and made it wonderful to watch, even when it didn't make sense.
And surprisingly, I really liked Gaius' story arc and how he ended up happy with Caprica, and returning to his farming roots. That had a lot of emotional resonance.
I liked the way they wrapped up Kara's goodbye to Sam. It fit; it was beautiful and emotional. And I really have no words for Kara's disapearing act with Lee. On the one hand, the shippy, I want happily ever after hand, it totally sucked. On the they are cosmic soulmates who have a love that transcends time and space and life and death and right and wrong hand, it sort of worked. And the flashback scenes were absolutely perfect.
Ultimately, what drives me nuts is the whole, 'lets abandon technology and go native' thing. Seriously, who the frak would do that? And I understand why the writers wrote it that way. I understand the 'ooo, neat' factor of jumping 150,000 years into the future and Hera is mitochondrial Eve. As a myth, as a morality tale, it makes a certain sense.
But only as a myth as a morality tale. And what Galactica has always been about is wrapping a myth in a story about real people making real choices and situating morality in the ethical complexities of the real world. The whole idea of giving up creature comforts and starting over sounds nice--until the crops fail because very few of these people have any idea how to grow a thing and people start dying of starvation. And then they're really going to be wishing they had parked the algae ship on the surface and had something to eat while they figured out the farming business.
I just don't buy that somebody wouldn't have said, 'blowing up the only technology we have is stupid' but even if the appeal of the beautiful grassy hills dulled their senses initially, the ships aren't the sum total of their technology . Technology is simply the application of knowledge and all 39,406 of the Colonials know a whole lot more than the cro-magnon men out there--a lot more than just language! At it takes is one little village of the survivors to say "Hey, we built our village on a river and if we chop down some of these nice trees we could built a waterwheel and a little mill to grind the grain for us. And sure we all agreed with that Adama guy that we should give up the fancy technology, but he's off climbing a mountain or something while our children are hungry and besides, it's just one little water wheel. We don't even have electricity." And with a lot of tree-chopping and some basic engineering they jump 149,800 years ahead into the early industrial revolution. Oops!
I know I'm biased on this because I am a scientist, but I just can't buy that science and technology is inherently bad, or more bad than good, or that struggling to maintaining subsistence farming is in some way more noble and purer than having medicine and clean water and not dying of basic infections that go septic. Sure modern life can be a technology-crazed rat race, but there are better ways to find meaning in life than choosing an existence where you cling to survival one day at a time.
And to the extent that technology is bad, to the extent that we will use it to destroy instead of create and to hurt instead of to heal, it will always be bad. Because human nature will always be flawed. And resetting the clock 150,000 years to start over is no guarantee of change because we're still human. If anything the thousands of years of Hobbseian existence will have only reinforced the survive at any cost mentality that led the 12 colonies to build cylons in the first place. So while the scene with head-Six and head-Gaius in Times Square was cute, it read less like an intelligent commentary on the human condition and more like an 'only you can prevent forest fires' PSA.
The rest of my thoughts are all sort of Edge-related, because when you start writing massive AU fanfic it tends to take over your entire viewing experience. And the weird thing about Edge has always been they whole "they've been floating around in space for 15 years thing." And really, the point wasn't to tell a story about people who floated around in space for fifteen years, it was to have Petra be old enough to be believable as a full fledged protagonist with agency and meaningful choices and all that. And jumping into the future was just a side effect of that I've had to write around--at least at first. Then I started to have fun with it and had to reign in the 'this is the chemical reaction sequence for the algae processing' technobabble. But the more I think about it, the more I think that's the heart of the AU universe. Part of the reason I'm stalling (and I'll admit it, I'm stalling) on editing and posting Edge is that Edge sets up the sequel and the sequel is really my AU version of S4. And I couldn't quite bring myself to commit to my ideas for the story overall, anything beyond the character and relationship arcs that I have very detailed plans of, until I'd seen the 'real ending' and was sure I wasn't missing something.
And now that I've seen the end, I've realized that isn't the story I'm telling. I'm not telling a story about how technology is bad and we're in danger of destroying ourselves with it. I'm not telling the story of a people who find a planet and start over. I'm telling the story of what happens to people when they live in space--for a very long time. And I think that's something worth exploring, at least for fun.
So I'm going to bed now. Because I have to get up tomorrow and write!
It's not that I didn't like it. I loved the first half, as I loved Daybreak part one last week. But once they got to earth, it all seemed too unreal. I sort of liked the way they dealt with Laura and Adama, except that I wasn't really sure what the point of those scenes of Laura in the hospital was, other than Laura covered in blood thinking 'I'm going to die' which has been exactly what she's been thinking since the miniseries so? I thought there would be more of a payoff or something. And I completely assumed Adama was going to crash the raptor into the cabin site and go down with her. That would have made sense in a sad, twisted way. But if he's going to go on (talking to her) why leave Lee and Kara and do it all alone? Going off alone to die makes sense; going off alone to live just doesn't. So I guess I didn't really like it, except that EJO and MM's acting was completely brilliant and made it wonderful to watch, even when it didn't make sense.
And surprisingly, I really liked Gaius' story arc and how he ended up happy with Caprica, and returning to his farming roots. That had a lot of emotional resonance.
I liked the way they wrapped up Kara's goodbye to Sam. It fit; it was beautiful and emotional. And I really have no words for Kara's disapearing act with Lee. On the one hand, the shippy, I want happily ever after hand, it totally sucked. On the they are cosmic soulmates who have a love that transcends time and space and life and death and right and wrong hand, it sort of worked. And the flashback scenes were absolutely perfect.
Ultimately, what drives me nuts is the whole, 'lets abandon technology and go native' thing. Seriously, who the frak would do that? And I understand why the writers wrote it that way. I understand the 'ooo, neat' factor of jumping 150,000 years into the future and Hera is mitochondrial Eve. As a myth, as a morality tale, it makes a certain sense.
But only as a myth as a morality tale. And what Galactica has always been about is wrapping a myth in a story about real people making real choices and situating morality in the ethical complexities of the real world. The whole idea of giving up creature comforts and starting over sounds nice--until the crops fail because very few of these people have any idea how to grow a thing and people start dying of starvation. And then they're really going to be wishing they had parked the algae ship on the surface and had something to eat while they figured out the farming business.
I just don't buy that somebody wouldn't have said, 'blowing up the only technology we have is stupid' but even if the appeal of the beautiful grassy hills dulled their senses initially, the ships aren't the sum total of their technology . Technology is simply the application of knowledge and all 39,406 of the Colonials know a whole lot more than the cro-magnon men out there--a lot more than just language! At it takes is one little village of the survivors to say "Hey, we built our village on a river and if we chop down some of these nice trees we could built a waterwheel and a little mill to grind the grain for us. And sure we all agreed with that Adama guy that we should give up the fancy technology, but he's off climbing a mountain or something while our children are hungry and besides, it's just one little water wheel. We don't even have electricity." And with a lot of tree-chopping and some basic engineering they jump 149,800 years ahead into the early industrial revolution. Oops!
I know I'm biased on this because I am a scientist, but I just can't buy that science and technology is inherently bad, or more bad than good, or that struggling to maintaining subsistence farming is in some way more noble and purer than having medicine and clean water and not dying of basic infections that go septic. Sure modern life can be a technology-crazed rat race, but there are better ways to find meaning in life than choosing an existence where you cling to survival one day at a time.
And to the extent that technology is bad, to the extent that we will use it to destroy instead of create and to hurt instead of to heal, it will always be bad. Because human nature will always be flawed. And resetting the clock 150,000 years to start over is no guarantee of change because we're still human. If anything the thousands of years of Hobbseian existence will have only reinforced the survive at any cost mentality that led the 12 colonies to build cylons in the first place. So while the scene with head-Six and head-Gaius in Times Square was cute, it read less like an intelligent commentary on the human condition and more like an 'only you can prevent forest fires' PSA.
The rest of my thoughts are all sort of Edge-related, because when you start writing massive AU fanfic it tends to take over your entire viewing experience. And the weird thing about Edge has always been they whole "they've been floating around in space for 15 years thing." And really, the point wasn't to tell a story about people who floated around in space for fifteen years, it was to have Petra be old enough to be believable as a full fledged protagonist with agency and meaningful choices and all that. And jumping into the future was just a side effect of that I've had to write around--at least at first. Then I started to have fun with it and had to reign in the 'this is the chemical reaction sequence for the algae processing' technobabble. But the more I think about it, the more I think that's the heart of the AU universe. Part of the reason I'm stalling (and I'll admit it, I'm stalling) on editing and posting Edge is that Edge sets up the sequel and the sequel is really my AU version of S4. And I couldn't quite bring myself to commit to my ideas for the story overall, anything beyond the character and relationship arcs that I have very detailed plans of, until I'd seen the 'real ending' and was sure I wasn't missing something.
And now that I've seen the end, I've realized that isn't the story I'm telling. I'm not telling a story about how technology is bad and we're in danger of destroying ourselves with it. I'm not telling the story of a people who find a planet and start over. I'm telling the story of what happens to people when they live in space--for a very long time. And I think that's something worth exploring, at least for fun.
So I'm going to bed now. Because I have to get up tomorrow and write!