Daybreak, Deus Ex Machina, and Deconstructing Your Entire Narrative In One Fell Swoop
More and more I find that people are just militantly pro-Daybreak on Tumblr and insisting that I explain why I find "Daybreak" so repulsive, insulting, and just all around bad. I'm not sure where the hell this sudden flood of militant love is coming from (as opposed to the apparently now cliched old flood of Daybreak-hate.) But I just want to address this out in public somewhere, and LJ is better suited to long essays than Tumblr. This will be old-hat for most of you. But I needed to get this off my chest.
I'm the first person to admit that I cry like a wounded baby over that finale. It's incredibly emotionally affective--even subversively so. And I think that people keep focusing on the emotion and the shock value of the plot to say "but it's amazing, how can anyone hate it!?" And the first time I watched it? I loved it too. There were things that I wasn't sure about and things that made me a bit unhappy, but I was ok with it. I needed time to think it out. I needed to parse through everything that they threw at me at the last possible moment because, if nothing else, Daybreak is a barrage of previously unknown knowledge. I was relieved that the show was over because I had spent five days on the verge of nervous collapse marathoning the entire thing. And so I went off, had my depression, cried for a few days, and started to think.
And now? I'm not ok with Daybreak at all. It was pretty terrible writing. Over the course of the series, the writers had no idea where they were going with any of the mysteries and so they piled them on top of each other with no answers. If it came to a twist in the plot they went for the most shock value possible whether it made narrative sense or not. By the time they got around to the finale, they were too lazy to think of a narratively plausible legitimate ending that fit with the course of the show or in any way resolved the mysteries. So we got "Daybreak."
The first thing that bothered me intensely about Daybreak was that in that tiny little 150,000 Years Later epilogue, Head!Six and Head!Baltar are discussing "god" as an omniscient omni-potent being who actually exists. This made me go "........?" I love the people who say "I don't understand why everyone hates that Head!Six is an Angel. I mean, she said she was! It's not like it comes out of nowhere!" Because that's the point. It does come out of nowhere. Are you going to trust the things that a power-hungry homicidal robot that only you can see tells you? When I rewatch the show I have to block the finale out of my mind because taking Head!Six at her word makes me despise the entire show. BSG becomes nothing but an obnoxious and essentially Christian tract about the divine right and will of the mostly-white-people who come down from outer space and bring culture to the heathens. As a crazed hallucination, as some kind of space-virus, as an alien of some kind, as anything other than an actual Angel of The One True God, I love Head!Six. She's fascinating, ambiguous, creepy, terrifying, and a wonderful study of the excesses of zealotry and the human desire for escapism. Not only that, but there are numerous instances in the series where the polytheistic Colonial religion is shown to be just as, if not more true and prescient than the Cylon religion. The point of the show had been to explore that. The point of the show was to explore the thought processes of humanity through their beliefs. The point of the show was not ever that technology was bad and that we needed to give it up entirely. That was only the point of the show for the last 20 minutes of the whole run. In the end, saying that one religion was legitimate and one was false (or even in any way confirming that one religion was in any way true) just deconstructs everything that the show had tried to do up to that point.
I understand that religion is and always was a huge part of Battlestar Galactica. I'm not saying that science fiction should have no religion or that this somehow invalidates it within the genre. I'm not saying that there was no religion in BSG before the finale. What I'm saying is that there was no answer one way or the other about religion, and to decide in the end that there is an answer pretty fundamentally violates every tenant of good story-telling in any genre except religious fiction. I understand that, for some people, they don't have a problem swallowing the most poorly executed deus ex machina in the history of deus ex machinas. If they're happy to believe that there was a god (and only one god) all along watching out for the Fleet and guiding it to its true home so that we could all be descendants of Cylons and humans, more power to them. I'm happy for those people. I'm glad that they can get such joy out of the finale.
But when I watch "Daybreak" I feel like I'm being willfully manipulated. I feel like the writers are repeatedly slapping me in the face and yelling demeaning things at me. I feel like they expect me to be much stupider than I really am and swallow everything that they say with no resistance. I feel like they're insisting that I believe that everything that was said or done on the show up until the finale was false and pointless, and that the finale is all that matters to the story. And I take offense to that. I take extreme offense to that, particularly because this show was so good. It had so much potential. It said so many things. It made you think. I honestly would rather that it have no end at all than to have the nonsensical, ham fisted, shoe-horned ending that it does.
My problems with the final religious decree of the finale are what made me start to hate it. After that, it all unravels. The whole finale comes apart. In fact, the whole narrative arc comes apart. I find my enjoyment of the show unraveling backward like pulling a loose thread in a sweater. This unraveling stops when it gets to Gaeta's mutiny. Anything after that, to me, is just absurd, self-indulgent, and insulting to my intelligence. Every plot thread, mystery, or relationship is distorted. Every character becomes a mouth piece for ideas that have never been theirs, but read painfully as the writers needing trite and melodramatic messages to morally jam down the audience's collective throat. Or not having enough room to do justice to the vibrant and highly developed characters and relationships they had created, so everyone becomes a one-dimensional representation of themselves. That's not the way to give closure to anything. That's the way to make people pretty angry.
Admittedly, I've discovered a distinct break amongst the fandom. People who's favorite character got a decent end, whose 'ship set sail off into the sunset, or whose favorite storyline was reasonably concluded are the ones who fawn over this finale and apparently think it's the cool new thing to do so. Hating it is so lame. Who could possibly hate such a wonderful message of hope and optimism!? I'm sorry. Were we watching the same show? No, yeah, I didn't think so. My favorite character was Kara Thrace (poof! You had no will of your own, no choice of your own, and were manipulated your entire life. But it's ok, because God did it!), my favorite ship was Kara/Lee ("I'm going to go climb a mountain!! And... promptly jump off the highest peak because everyone I've ever loved is gone"), and my favorite storyline? That was also Kara Thrace and Lee Adama--together and separate. And both of their characters got mauled by the entire episode.
So do I hate Daybreak? Yes. Do I have legitimate reasons to hate Daybreak? Yes. Was it piss-poorly written, made no sense narratively or logistically, and pretty much destroyed everything that the show had been up until that point? Yes. If you want to love it, be my guest. Have fun in Daybreak-Loving-Land. But don't speak of this to me. Ever. Unless you want a tirade.
Here are a few of my favorite Daybreak rants, essays, deconstructions, etc. What I've written is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how dissatisfied I am with "Daybreak" and how much I've come to hate it. These should help fill in a lot of the gaps. This finale has been picked to pieces many times before me by people who are much better equipped to do so:
The Art of Episode Divorce by workerbee73
Strange Horizons "Daybreak" Review by Roz Kaveney
Battlestar's "Daybreak:" The worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction by Brad Templeton
I'm the first person to admit that I cry like a wounded baby over that finale. It's incredibly emotionally affective--even subversively so. And I think that people keep focusing on the emotion and the shock value of the plot to say "but it's amazing, how can anyone hate it!?" And the first time I watched it? I loved it too. There were things that I wasn't sure about and things that made me a bit unhappy, but I was ok with it. I needed time to think it out. I needed to parse through everything that they threw at me at the last possible moment because, if nothing else, Daybreak is a barrage of previously unknown knowledge. I was relieved that the show was over because I had spent five days on the verge of nervous collapse marathoning the entire thing. And so I went off, had my depression, cried for a few days, and started to think.
And now? I'm not ok with Daybreak at all. It was pretty terrible writing. Over the course of the series, the writers had no idea where they were going with any of the mysteries and so they piled them on top of each other with no answers. If it came to a twist in the plot they went for the most shock value possible whether it made narrative sense or not. By the time they got around to the finale, they were too lazy to think of a narratively plausible legitimate ending that fit with the course of the show or in any way resolved the mysteries. So we got "Daybreak."
The first thing that bothered me intensely about Daybreak was that in that tiny little 150,000 Years Later epilogue, Head!Six and Head!Baltar are discussing "god" as an omniscient omni-potent being who actually exists. This made me go "........?" I love the people who say "I don't understand why everyone hates that Head!Six is an Angel. I mean, she said she was! It's not like it comes out of nowhere!" Because that's the point. It does come out of nowhere. Are you going to trust the things that a power-hungry homicidal robot that only you can see tells you? When I rewatch the show I have to block the finale out of my mind because taking Head!Six at her word makes me despise the entire show. BSG becomes nothing but an obnoxious and essentially Christian tract about the divine right and will of the mostly-white-people who come down from outer space and bring culture to the heathens. As a crazed hallucination, as some kind of space-virus, as an alien of some kind, as anything other than an actual Angel of The One True God, I love Head!Six. She's fascinating, ambiguous, creepy, terrifying, and a wonderful study of the excesses of zealotry and the human desire for escapism. Not only that, but there are numerous instances in the series where the polytheistic Colonial religion is shown to be just as, if not more true and prescient than the Cylon religion. The point of the show had been to explore that. The point of the show was to explore the thought processes of humanity through their beliefs. The point of the show was not ever that technology was bad and that we needed to give it up entirely. That was only the point of the show for the last 20 minutes of the whole run. In the end, saying that one religion was legitimate and one was false (or even in any way confirming that one religion was in any way true) just deconstructs everything that the show had tried to do up to that point.
I understand that religion is and always was a huge part of Battlestar Galactica. I'm not saying that science fiction should have no religion or that this somehow invalidates it within the genre. I'm not saying that there was no religion in BSG before the finale. What I'm saying is that there was no answer one way or the other about religion, and to decide in the end that there is an answer pretty fundamentally violates every tenant of good story-telling in any genre except religious fiction. I understand that, for some people, they don't have a problem swallowing the most poorly executed deus ex machina in the history of deus ex machinas. If they're happy to believe that there was a god (and only one god) all along watching out for the Fleet and guiding it to its true home so that we could all be descendants of Cylons and humans, more power to them. I'm happy for those people. I'm glad that they can get such joy out of the finale.
But when I watch "Daybreak" I feel like I'm being willfully manipulated. I feel like the writers are repeatedly slapping me in the face and yelling demeaning things at me. I feel like they expect me to be much stupider than I really am and swallow everything that they say with no resistance. I feel like they're insisting that I believe that everything that was said or done on the show up until the finale was false and pointless, and that the finale is all that matters to the story. And I take offense to that. I take extreme offense to that, particularly because this show was so good. It had so much potential. It said so many things. It made you think. I honestly would rather that it have no end at all than to have the nonsensical, ham fisted, shoe-horned ending that it does.
My problems with the final religious decree of the finale are what made me start to hate it. After that, it all unravels. The whole finale comes apart. In fact, the whole narrative arc comes apart. I find my enjoyment of the show unraveling backward like pulling a loose thread in a sweater. This unraveling stops when it gets to Gaeta's mutiny. Anything after that, to me, is just absurd, self-indulgent, and insulting to my intelligence. Every plot thread, mystery, or relationship is distorted. Every character becomes a mouth piece for ideas that have never been theirs, but read painfully as the writers needing trite and melodramatic messages to morally jam down the audience's collective throat. Or not having enough room to do justice to the vibrant and highly developed characters and relationships they had created, so everyone becomes a one-dimensional representation of themselves. That's not the way to give closure to anything. That's the way to make people pretty angry.
Admittedly, I've discovered a distinct break amongst the fandom. People who's favorite character got a decent end, whose 'ship set sail off into the sunset, or whose favorite storyline was reasonably concluded are the ones who fawn over this finale and apparently think it's the cool new thing to do so. Hating it is so lame. Who could possibly hate such a wonderful message of hope and optimism!? I'm sorry. Were we watching the same show? No, yeah, I didn't think so. My favorite character was Kara Thrace (poof! You had no will of your own, no choice of your own, and were manipulated your entire life. But it's ok, because God did it!), my favorite ship was Kara/Lee ("I'm going to go climb a mountain!! And... promptly jump off the highest peak because everyone I've ever loved is gone"), and my favorite storyline? That was also Kara Thrace and Lee Adama--together and separate. And both of their characters got mauled by the entire episode.
So do I hate Daybreak? Yes. Do I have legitimate reasons to hate Daybreak? Yes. Was it piss-poorly written, made no sense narratively or logistically, and pretty much destroyed everything that the show had been up until that point? Yes. If you want to love it, be my guest. Have fun in Daybreak-Loving-Land. But don't speak of this to me. Ever. Unless you want a tirade.
Here are a few of my favorite Daybreak rants, essays, deconstructions, etc. What I've written is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how dissatisfied I am with "Daybreak" and how much I've come to hate it. These should help fill in a lot of the gaps. This finale has been picked to pieces many times before me by people who are much better equipped to do so:
The Art of Episode Divorce by workerbee73
Strange Horizons "Daybreak" Review by Roz Kaveney
Battlestar's "Daybreak:" The worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction by Brad Templeton