DAYBREAK Review - Part II
(Click here for Part I)
HOME/EARTH
Technically speaking, “Daybreak” begins not with people, but with a giant nod to the Original Series, as well as an indication of where we’ll end up at the end (and that’s not just the physical destination). This beautiful little pre-credit mini-montage, their last, sets the tone for the entire piece. (It also has no opening teaser, and the theme music has a curious reverb to it as the logo fades in and out)
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Seeing this image, I immediately thought of Loren Green intoning, “Life here began out there...” and by the end of the show, damned if that wasn’t the truth.
We see next a bird trapped against a skylight,
a 2001-esque shot of sun rising behind a planet,
water,
and the planet again
Thinking back, this world could be anything. It’s Earth (what I immediately thought, and more likely than not the correct celestial body). It’s the real Earth, the one the Final Five came from. It’s Kobol. It’s Caprica, or what watching Part I on its own leads you to believe. The montage fades into this jaw dropping establishing shot (and now we know with the special effect artists will be working on for CAPRICA)
as Bear’s score plays the last new theme of the series: the Flashback / Earth Theme. The point and implications of this montage are brilliant in that ever since “Revelations”, the same opening title cards used since Season One have finished with this statement:
and dropped the “Called Earth” phrase afterwards. “Home”, after all is, a state of mind and one that has become even more abstract since the discovery of Earth in “Revelations”. The metaphorical cabin (ok, it’s literally his cabin) that Roslin and Adama built in during 4.5 was the best example of this mindset. “Home” to these people is now only each other, the Galactica, and the fleeting and unlikely dream of finding a habitable island in an stream of stars before their luck / supplies run out. Home is the people, the life they lost back on Caprica, or Tauron or Sagittarian or whatever Colony they came from. And as “Daybreak” began drawing to a close, we could see that these flashbacks were always meant to demonstrate how far or how little they’d come since then, how fate or the Gods destined them to end at their final home, where or whatever that might be.
WILLIAM ADAMA
This is how we met the man who led them to Earth 2.0:
Practicing his speech for the decommissioning ceremony, praising LSO Aaron Kelly, asking his surrogate daughter if she heard the rain. “The Cylon War is long since over, yet we must not forget the reasons why…” Commander Adama had had a long and distinguished career in the military, and now it was coming to an end, for the second and final time. The flashbacks of “Daybreak” revealed that he had another choice in his life post-Galactica: a civilian job with a big paycheck and little respect. It tortured him to think that he could be sentenced to a life of such mediocrity, ‘cause once you’ve battled a Cylon in hand-to-hand-combat while in complete free fall, there’s nowhere else to go but down.
William’s best friend Saul and his crazy, uninhibited wife Ellen took him one of their favorite hangouts to get him to lighten up, to see this as an opportunity, instead of a setback; but it only made him feel worse, as cheap and fake as the women who worked at that club, so he got real drunk, puked up his dinner disgustingly, and looked back up at the stars where he always felt his true calling was. But William was a man of his word, and went to the interview anyway like he promised he would.
They made him take a lie detector test to see if he was a Cylon (it was the same method they screened out those pesky Replicants with, too) and questioned his word, and it was in that moment, when Bill had had enough with these untrusting automatons, that all humanity now and in the future was saved, all because of the honesty of a good man, his unremitting stubbornness and the love he had for an old broken down, sub-contracted war relic.
Looking back now at the completed 4.5 half-season, we can clearly see the imminent death of Galactica herself was one of the strongest, and most logical storylines, given the punishment the ship endured during her entire lifespan. The union of Cylon and human society was inevitable, but to see it extended to Galactica herself was just so unexpected and downright intriguing. Beginning with the cracks Tyrol found after the mutiny and finishing when the grand old lady flew to the fiery death she so richly deserved, the ship served both plot and theme to the end, as the very human machine that just wouldn’t fail us just so long as we believed in her. After all, the show was named for her courage, her perseverance and her myth. Even the smartest man in the universe knew that.
Gaius: “Galactica has been more than our guardian. She's literally a vessel into which we've poured all of our hopes and dreams. And when she's gone -- when we can no longer derive the security from looking out her window and seeing her massive bulk floating by -- then this life will be over.”
“Daybreak” starts with the crew abandoning ship (and it looks as if they intend to just cast her off like an old beer can when they’re done stripping her for parts; how rude), and the dreams of “The Hub” seem almost prophetic as we see emptied and abandoned spaces of places we’ve come to know and love over the years: Adama’s quarters, Gaius’ lair, the Hallway of Remberances. Visually, these sequences were a sobering and subtle reminder that the show too is at its end, and lent the proceedings an even greater gravitas.
It’s at the Wall where Adama makes his fateful decision to risk it all for one last mission, to be worthy of survival even if it means death in return, and this is the very human part of the plot coming into play, the hook I will remember about this episode and this show in general. Bill Adama never gave a frak about prophecy, about Gods or miracles, not even when he was resting belly down in the green grass of the world they called him home to. Bill Adama loves people, and I loved this PULP FICTION-eqsue moment, where the camera stayed rooted in its position as it waited for Adama to do what he knew he would have to all along. They were all there to haunt him in that sequence, to remind him that he’s made that kind of insane decision before, and what would happen if he didn’t this time. All the pictures of dead pilots Hotdog rescued from obscurity. Nicky, the bastard orphan who once belonged to a Cylon and a “suicide.” The many abandoned pictures on the wall, mere memories whose only flamebearers were now gone too. And Athena and Hera. Once just an Eight, then rechristened Athena by the man Bill just passed in the hallway. Athena, the Cylon who gave up everything to save humanity time and time again, the woman whose helped him cure his own biases and demons, the mother he saw as a daughter, now torn apart and lost in grief without her own.
Tigh: Any other last orders?
Adama: Just one. Give Athena back her daughter. She needs her family.
We all need our family.
--- Mark Verheiden, 4x09 “Sine Qua Non”
And so Adama, like another William who would do the same thing many thousands of years later in a dusty Texas mission, drew a line down the middle of his hangar deck in the series’ final and most stirring call to arms. In doing so, he challenged his crew, his family, to make a stand, to believe not in the Gods, but that the needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many, and it was in that moment that I truly believed that they weren’t coming back at all. That’s because I had read an interview beforehand with Donnelly Rhodes, the actor who plays Dr. Sherman(!) Cottle, in which he stated his character survived to the end. So when Adama told Cottle to go back, that they couldn’t risk losing the only doctor (guess Hodgeman’s brain doc doesn’t count), I said to myself “they really are all going die.”
Now not that I didn’t appreciate and love every second of it, but it was a pretty much foregone conclusion that the series would end with some sort of epic final confrontation between Humans and Cylons, a theory made even more apparent in “Someone To Watch Over Me” / “Islanded In a Sea of Stars” as Boomer kidnapped Hera and took her to the seemingly impregnable H.R. Geiger colony. (Well, what else would you call it?)
Furthermore, I think it’s safe to say at this point, especially after listening to RDM’s “Daybreak” podcast, that the Writer’s Strike was quite possibly greatest thing that ever happened to the show. Not only did it result in 4.5’s single best episode (“Sometimes A Great Notion”), a show so manically fueled by the threat of imminent finality that it raised the A-game of everyone involved to astronomical heights, but the Strike allowed RDM to rethink the concluding arcs that would be shot after its resolution, arcs revealed on the podcast to be so horrendously unworkable that they would have tanked the entire series. Yeah, they were that bad, and one of the undeniable strengths of the show was the creators’ willingness not only to take extreme chances, but to recognize when something wasn’t working, and take the appropriate methods to fix / jettison it. It happened before (the Sagittarian massacre arc that was dropped in Season 3) and it happened again.
Perhaps this is why people reacted poorly to the finale, as some of its details simply didn’t have time to be more fully fleshed out due to its redevelopment so late in the game. Once again, such is the nature of episode television. The planned journey only gets you so far. After that, it’s all just a matter of luck, skill and fate.
It was those three attributes, along with the hand of God itself, that allowed Bill Adama and his brave volunteers to survive the narratively inevitable battle of The Colony, which was quite simply, the biggest, ballsiest action sequence I’ve ever seen on television, network and cable combined...
From the moment they jumped into that hellish barrage of defensive gunfire to the last second escape that Kara’s spectral piano lessons enabled, my jaw went slack from the sheer audacity of it all; this nonstop 35 minute assault on the senses was feature-film quality in its intensity and contained a seemingly inexhaustible series of “Holy Shit” moment after another, each one topping the last. No wonder they were banking all the money for this episode. Needless to say, (a) they’ve got their third consecutive Best Visual Effects Emmy all sewn up, and (b) this is going to be the bomb-diggity on Blu Ray! What’s really fascinating (and scary to note) is the fact that the glue that held it (and the rest of the show/series) together almost didn’t happen.
(counterclockwise from top) Bear McCreary conducts the orchestra; Eric Reiger and the Great Highland Pipes; M.B Gordy on the taiko drums, Chris Beelth on duduk.
For many weeks the orchestral fate of Daybreak was unknown. Thanks to the quick thinking of Todd Sharp at the studio, a small amount of music budget had been set aside early on to cover orchestral costs for the finale. However, when I saw how big this episode was, it became clear it simply wasn’t near enough.
In late January, the producers and I began to track down more money to pay for the orchestra. And it was proving difficult. The episode and the series as a whole were incredibly over-budget and I was unfortunately asking too late. Every other department had already made their requests, and music was going to suffer because it was the last in the chain.
The studio was honest about the situation and was able to provide what they could. However, it only covered the orchestral cues in the last forty minutes, and left no room for important sequences such as the colony battle, Laura’s fountain baptism and many others.
In an unprecedented move, the producers and I each pitched in personally to make this happen. We all pooled our resources together because we knew how important the full orchestra would be to Daybreak. The orchestra you’re hearing in this episode would not be there without the combined contributions and efforts of Ron Moore, David Eick, Jane Espenson, Michael Taylor, Bradley Thompson, David Weddle, Todd Sharp, Paul M. Leonard, myself and several others.
I had no idea if we’d even have an orchestra during the first week of composition. Thankfully, by the time I got to the big battle sequences, the budget issues were resolved and I was ready to tackle the action cues.
-- Bear McCreary’s “Daybreak Parts I & II” blog
Uh, wow. As if I wasn’t already impressed enough, he dropped this bombshell. If you haven’t realized it by now, let me be crystal clear about this issue: I believe Bear McCreary’s world music inspired, taiko drum intensive score is the perhaps the single element of this show - even more than the already brilliant writing, acting, and special effects -- that pushes BATTLESTAR above all others. I can’t even imagine “Daybreak” working with recycled music, even as great as it already was. Thank you Bear, and as I wrote to him on his blog, “we owe YOU one.” If there was one constant about the reaction to the finale, it was that The Battle of the Colony was the most deeply satisfying part of the show viscerally, emotionally, and aesthetically, as was the note perfect score that held the entire episode together. That we all pretty much agree on.
Ironically, the musical moment that most critics pointed out (the ones who don’t really notice or fully appreciate Bear’s score, at least) was the two inclusions of the original Stu Phillips’ Title Theme, a.k.a., the Colonial Theme. Given its scant and specific usage during the new series, it was only fitting that the iconic composition was chosen for the actual death of Galactica herself.
The Grand Old Lady gave it her all, and broke her back getting them home, but she did it nonetheless. That’s all they asked of her, nothing more. Bill had served on this ship since the beginning, back when his own Commander used to ask him, “What do you hear” and he’d reply, “Nothing but the rain.”
When Husker flew into battle for the first time, it was the Colonial Theme flying beside him in a glorious 24 French horn brass statement,
and when the last Viper squad did their flyover during the decommissioning ceremony three years ago, he heard that theme for what he thought would be the last time in his career.
Deleano: Sir, it’s like we’re tearing the old girl’s heart out. A Battlestar’s whole purpose is to launch vipers.
Lee: I know how you feel. Part of my heart’s here, too. Tell you what. Make the accelerators the last thing your men take out. We’ll turn out the lights and let the old girl die in peace.
And so it came to be, that the last man out was indeed its Admiral and its steward, the man who loved it more than he loved his woman, and as he launched, we heard Eric Reigert’s pan whistle solo playing “Wander My Friends” -- once just considered the Adama family theme, but now encompassing his entire extended “family,” which of course included his ship.
Adama launched, and the camera angle was the same as it was in the Original Series.
Once more around the horn, shattered port to broken stern. A final goodbye to his true love. All those scars she got in the line, he felt them all. When she got cancer too, he wept, but still refused to give up on her and did the unthinkable, not only installing a networked computer, but a Cylon one at that, in order to save her. And even that wasn’t enough. See the thing was, she was never perfect, not even from birth, but what did that matter at the end? It was their journey together that counted. Stu’s music played over their final trip together, mournfully, in the same key it did when he was a young man.
“Look. The captain carved that. When he was a mid, no more than your age. He's known this ship man and boy. He says there's enough of his blood in the woodwork for the ship to almost be a relation.”
-- Peter Weir, MASTER AND COMMANDER, 2003
And Sam, who had finally gotten what he wanted all those years ago as a simple Pyramid player resting his weary bones in a hot tub, was at last connected to perfection.
Perfection is imperfection. Perfection is seeing the flaws and accepting them for what they are. Galactica was perfection and it died as it lived, a glorious phoenix.
Stu’s Anthem called her home, to become the living legend she already was.
The man and his ship, their arc was perfection.
(Click here for Part III)