Glenn Vance

Grab Your Gun and Bring in the Cat

It’s been a cou­ple of weeks now since Bat­tlestar Galac­tica left the air­waves and since it’s been off I’ve thought a lot about that last episode. After all of the buildup and antic­i­pa­tion for some sort of mind-blowing end­ing you’ve got to won­der — Was it good or was it just okay? Did they answer enough ques­tions to the lin­ger­ing plot points that were mys­ter­ies? Was it a good mix of action (which it was) and expo­si­tion (the jury is still out on that one)?

Our rag­tag band of sur­vivors killed off (or had their ene­mies kill them­selves) their ene­mies, specif­i­cally Dean Stockwell’s wily Brother Cavil, who opted, instead of res­ur­rec­tion, to end it all with a bul­let in the head. With his death I’m assum­ing that the Cylon threat is gone, but aren’t there more Cylons out there? And come on, that was a cheap way out. Cavil had a sweep­ing mas­ter plan to bring the Cylons back on top and take res­ur­rec­tion back to his peo­ple and he ended his life with a bul­let? In the mouth? Sure, I know that Tyrol had just killed Torie and that the secret of res­ur­rec­tion would never be his after that, but sui­cide? He had the human race where he wanted it and it’s not like the guy can nat­u­rally die. Sui­cide seems like a lame way out for him.

But there were other things. The Opera House vision was all about the Galac­tica CIC? Really? What writer thought that up and how rushed to dead­line were they before they thought that lame idea up? If Bal­tar and Six were sup­posed to take Hera why would Roslin and Sharon be so scared?

A huge prob­lem with the episode? A lot of the loose ends seemed to get tied up rather loosely.

We never find out why Kara came back or or why or what she was. And you kind of knew she was going to be it but Roslin was the dying leader?¹ Did she really lead them to Earth or did she just lead them in space? What hap­pened to the rela­tion­ship between Tigh and Six? He’d got­ten her preg­nant.² And Head Six and Head Bal­tar? What was that? Are they angels? Cylons? No expla­na­tion given. Or not worth giving.

Another prob­lem is that Ron Moore gives expla­na­tion of many of these hints on his show com­men­tary pod­casts, which is also how you would have found out that every­one who took part in Zarak and Gaeta’s failed coup d’état was put on board the prison ship. You never would have heard a sin­gle char­ac­ter just men­tion in pass­ing, “Every­one who took part in Zarak and Gaeta’s failed coup d’état was put on board the prison ship.” I guess those 3 sec­onds of air­time would have eaten up too much story time.

Prob­a­bly my biggest prob­lem with the show was that way too much time was given to the bat­tle at the Cylon colony and not enough given to the time on Earth. Sev­eral parts of the final bat­tle seemed to drag as Colo­nials would walk through the Cylon hall­ways, guns drawn, star­ing straight ahead like they were…waiting for some­thing to appear…like Bad Sharon. Or Simon. Or that PR guy. Or a bat­tle between CG Cylons.

And too much time spent on the char­ac­ters’ pasts on Caprica. Time was wasted so we could see that Roslin slept with a for­mer stu­dent, Bill had a job inter­view, Anders talk about “per­fec­tion”, Tigh and Ellen drink³ and Lee almost sleeps with his brother’s fiance Kara. Prob­a­bly col­lec­tively 45 min­utes was wasted on flash­backs. Sure, it showed why some of these peo­ple sur­vived the war, but still need­less and pointless.

And because of the time crunch Earth seemed to be hur­ried through. We had a lot of ter­ri­tory to cover there and a lot of sto­ries to wrap up, we couldn’t take a few min­utes out of the point­less Lee/Kara flash­back and show more of what hap­pened to Lee on Earth?

There he was, talk­ing to Kara, then she just upped and “dis­ap­peared” and he was alone. And that was that.

Noth­ing else about Lee? He’s just left alone in Africa? Alone? With­out Kara? What a waste of time that was.

I think of all of the Earth­bound sto­ry­lines that was served the best was the Baltar/Six one. You learned that Bal­tar grew up on a farm and knew how to cul­ti­vate crops, so now that he has no more sci­ence equip­ment he’s at least going to sur­vive. And after all they’ve been through, tall Six is going to be with short Bal­tar. But I don’t get Head Bal­tar and Head Six. I’m guess­ing they’re angels? I don’t know. If they’re Cylons those clothes they’ve been wear­ing for 150,000 years still look good.

And a log­i­cal fal­lacy — If the notes of “All Along the Watch­tower” are given numer­i­cal val­ues, and those numer­i­cal val­ues, when punched into an FTL com­puter, take that ship to Earth, wouldn’t Jimi Hendrix’s ver­sion of the song at the end of the show tech­ni­cally lead who­ever fig­ured out the numer­i­cal code right back to a bombed out nuclear Earth in the future? As I’m assum­ing by the end of the show that the writ­ers are hint­ing that our cur­rent Earth is head­ing down the same path as our “fore­fa­thers” did on Kobol. Maybe the next coor­di­nates could have been put to “Danc­ing Queen” or “How Much is that Doggy in the Win­dow” or “The Bat­tle Hymn of the Republic”.

My last prob­lem with the show was that the series was so great and well writ­ten that it felt like most of the mys­ter­ies from early on were just given short shrift because some sort of answer had to be given as an expla­na­tion for them. The final five plot­line was alright but ulti­mately silly in the end. Kara return­ing from the dead was never ade­quately explained, the con­ceiv­ing of Hera, and lots more. It was great TV but I think that the show cre­ators owed it to their fan base to elab­o­rate bet­ter and fig­ure out bet­ter answers to the mys­ter­ies, even if they were con­ve­nient plot­lines from sea­sons ago that helped pro­pel the story along. A good exam­ple that they could have looked to was “Lost” which just seems to get bet­ter the longer it goes. The cre­ators of it may not know where it’s going to go from sea­son to sea­son, but they think up new and inter­est­ing sit­u­a­tions for the Losties to get involved in, and it’s not like the two shows have lit­tle in com­mon. The Losties are stuck on the island (sort of) and the Colo­nials are stuck on the Galac­tica. Both sets are try­ing to get home and only one so far has suc­ceeded. Let’s hope that “Lost”, with all of the expec­ta­tions it has built up for itself, can pull of an end­ing bet­ter than “Galac­tica” did.

1. She seemed to give up about half way through the sea­son. If any­one led them to Earth it was Bill, or Star­buck, or…somebody else. [↩]
2. Or maybe I’m just a stick­ler for details. [↩]
3. Wait…they drink? Do they ever really stop drink­ing? [↩]

11. April 2009 by Glenn Vance
Categories: Television | Leave a comment