Battlestar Galactica's Final Hour: Love it or Hate it? (spoilers)

[Ouroboros]

Would you do me a big favor and elaborate on this? There have been a few posts in other threads similar to this, and I have asked others to respond with how they are getting this interpretation, but no luck so far...I don't see it myself, but I'm curious about this interpretation.

For me it's in reference to the starbuck thing. Basically the only reason they found Earth at all is because Starbuck somehow came back from the dead with a brand new ship and through a series of complicated events, eventually got them there thanks to a song she remembered from her childhood.

-How was she brought back to life?

-Where did the new viper come from?

-How did she find them again in a ship with no jump drive

-Why was she able to "sense" the way to Earth?

-What does the song have to do with this?

-Where does the song really come from originally

The answer to all of these questions is apparently "god did it".

It's basically the literal definition of a deus ex machina. Create a lot of complicated problems that will theoretically require a lot of complicated answers but instead of providing those answers just handwave everything away with "god did it".

Maybe the people realized that staying on the ships was a dead end and they'd have to adopt a simpler lifestyle sooner rather than later. They were running out of supplies (including meds and TP I'm sure ), fuel to power the ships or any equipment they moved down to the planet was probably pretty close to exhausted. Existence on New Caprica was damn primative and yet the majority of the people in the fleet chose that over remaining cooped up on the ships. Bear in mind that for the majority of the people, the ships were overcrowded, the amenities were limited or non-existent and food supplies were limited (witness the food riots in Dogsville on the Galactica herself). Primative live in the fresh air might not look that bad....

So land the ships then. My main problem isn't with the idea that they decided to settle Earth and live there. That part makes complete and perfect sense. My problem is with the idea that they for some reason decided to destroy all of their ships rather than land them, basically just making things massively more difficult for themselves for no good reason. Another problem is the way they just handwaved 30,000 people into agreeing with this on the spot. A few episodes prior to this people couldn't even agree on who gets the oxygen scrubbers from the Galactica and now we're expected to believe that they're all going to agree that burning their entire fleet and every possible thing that have that will make survival more possible in their new unknown and untamed home planet in the best idea of the day.

It's like being forced to go live in the wildnerness and deliberately deciding that you're going to throw your Jeep, GPS, flashlight, rifle, lighter and MREs you had with you into a lake because having those things to make it less likely that you'll die is somehow immoral or wrong because advanced science created them.

Yeah right... I certainly believe that anyone short of an outright lunatic would do something like that. This is asking us to accept 30,000 lunatics at once to.

We know Lee's reasoning, and that the skin jobs, Final Three of Five and other people "in the know" shared this reasoning. We have no idea what the majority of the population was told beyond something obvious like "You're being moved to the planet". Maybe they weren't told much beyond that at all. As soon as I heard Adama's reply of "Don't underestimate the power of a clean slate", I immediately thought of his response to Tigh after he'd blackmailed Zarek - "I appealed to his intellect" - and wondered what spin had been put on what the people had been told.

If Lee and the other higher ups really did destroy the entire fleet and all of their resources while lying to the average people about it and essentially forcing them all to go along with this warped luddite technophobia of theirs then that just makes it even worse.

[STC]

I have to admit I agree with most of this thread. I loved the first hour, but the second hour?? Here in Canada we saw a one hour prequel of how the show was made, interviews with the actors etc, then the two hour finale and another hour after that of TV fan forum discussion with some local hosts. One specifically said the first hour was great but RDM has forgotten how to write happy. She did not like the ending at all.

I have to agree; it started out great but so much of that last hour was filler.

Ask yourself, would you really give up the level of technology you have to retreat to a level of primitiveness you've only seen in museums?? Or better yet, forget how to make or use it?

At first I thought RDM did it to forestall the question: since they landed on what is clearly the Earth we live on, why have no traces survived? Clothing? Writing? Any relics? and the I remembered the viper that Adama flew Roslin in and that theory went out the window!!

It should have ended with the camera moving away from Adama sitting on the cliff with Laura's grave off to the side. Far more powerful. The way the camera drew back, I was holding my breath expecting it to cut to black. That would have resonated better. Imagine my surprise when it kept going on and on and on............

The NY stuff and the RDM cameo, and the robotics clips, the answer that God did it.........well, it really really weakened everything. Frankly I think they wrote themselves into a corner with a lot of things (ie the opera house? what is Kara? who sent her back? )n and used the easy way to get out of it.

Truth is, now that I've seen the ending, I'm finding it very difficult to watch episodes I've taped. Seems all lot of energy expended for an ending that wasn't very satisfying.

[Hetshepsu]

It should have ended with the camera moving away from Adama sitting on the cliff with Laura's grave off to the side. Far more powerful. The way the camera drew back, I was holding my breath expecting it to cut to black. That would have resonated better. Imagine my surprise when it kept going on and on and on............

Totally agree with you there. was ready to burst out in tears but then it carried on... an anti climax to the show.

On the whole i did enjoy it, especially since the last few episodes of season 4 were beginning to bore me, but Starbucks 'exit' totally peed me off and yeah, the clips of robotiocs at the end was totally pointless, we're not that stupid that we didn't 'get it'.

[Beckmen]

Ouroboros has pretty much summed up my own personal feelings on the matter, as I had published on the IMDb forums. It's unbelievable how much of a cop-out that final hour was.

I mean, even the stuff preceding it...putting so many lives at risk for one child, it didn't sit right with me, but I accepted it as a kind of dramatic necessity. Then the 'Opera House' revelation being so weak, and then Tigh offering to give resurrection to John (Uhhh...didn't work out too good last time, Tigh!). But none of it actually made me furious or massively depressed. Everything that happened on Earth 2 did.

I actually liked season 4 for the most part. There were some missteps, but most of it I really dug. Until that ending.

BTW, seriously...can somebody make this a poll? It's the reason I posted this in the first place. I want numbers and a graph.

[Mongoletsi]

"Angels did it" = MASSIVE LOSE.

Fin.

(what an insult after 2 excellent seasons, 1 decent season, and 1 "hrm, okay" season of otherwise gripping TV)

[Crazy Tom]

Bad, bad, dissapointing ending.

Not only did all the previous emotions and storilines all dissolve ispontaniously. But it seems to me that they purposly restarted the cycle they just fraking broke!

[Descent]

Mostly loved it. Couple things:
1. Wasn't too impressed with the last battle. I liked it but also felt like they could've done it better in some ways.

2. I loved Starbuck's disappearance and Lee just saying to himself that she wouldn't be forgotten. I don't get the people who didn't feel satisfied with that.

3. The Opera House revelation was kinda weak but I guess it worked out okay in the end.

4. Some of the flashbacks were great, others maybe not so great? Mixed feelings about those.

5. Romo as President of the Twelve Colonies. Enough said.

Overall, it was a good series finale (much better than other series finales that I've seen over the years).

Unlike some people, I didn't need answers to every single little thing. That was never what the show was about to me. It was about the characters, the situations they were in and how they reacted to them.

[Mongoletsi]

To Descent,

I understand what you're saying about not needing answers, that's fair enough. But I think the issue is that we've gone from suggestions of the supernatural, to kind of "ex deus machina" supernatural in the space of a few episodes.

The whole Starbuck dying, returning, finding earth, finding her dead self, etc... that really did require explaining. Or is the blanket "angels" explanation to be applied here too?

There were certain things I did like, really. But overall it just seemed a weak way of wrapping everything up.

I could even handle the idea that they arrived in Earth's past. But the "150,000 Years Ago" thing sucked and made no sense (there's no way advanced colonials would have wanted to breed with proto-hominids who presumably didn't even have language). I also thought the "message" about us not making the same mistakes was misguided and pithy - just a rehashing (and not terribly well done) of a SciFi staple spanning from Asimov through Blade Runner to Terminator. No need for the "now" shots either.

I personally thought the flashbacks added another welcome dimension that perhaps could/should have been addressed already, but certainly did add to the overall story. Kind of recapping where it all started. The Apollo/Starbuck angle was given even greater depth.

Plenty of funny bits too... "don't tell her the plan!" (regarding Boomer's repentance). The bar scenes with Adama and the Tighs = good fun. Cavil "FRAK!" and just giving up (boom!) was hilarious (and didn't make any sense given the context but frak it!)

All in all, excluding the settling-on-ancient-earth-breeding-with-proto-humans and the it-was-angels-all-along, it was a decent piece of TV to watch. Sadly, these two issues really took the gloss off, and were actually contrary to the "well maybe there's something bigger than this but maybe not" theme that had run through the show.

Without the ********, I'd give it a genuine 8 or 9 out of ten. As it is, a solid 6/10. Which is the disappointing bit - I'd have expected pure quality, 10/10 for the last EVER BSG.

[Mongoletsi]

******** = "testicles" btw

[Sp!der]

loved it, later on i agree with you guys that it could have ended with adama on the hill and switch to present day.

[Espeon1962]

For me the second hour had nice individual characterization (as RDM said in the Last Frakking Special; it is all about the characters) but the writers lost the story in the grander context. And as I said in another thread, and as many others have remarked here and elswhere, there were too many aspects that just seemed unlikely in respect of how the survivors gave up their tech, broke up from each other, and so on.