page for Mitochondrial Eve he would have noticed that it clearly names in the show, or in post-show commentary. (This is But we don't just share our MTDNA with other humans and with MTE. that's the only moment of non-allegorical relevance to our lives. Discord is practically built into our genes and was demonstrated on many occasions during the series run of BSG on just how humanity would survive, both politically and by military means. It was a bold undertaking by a people ready for a fresh start. I understand and appreciate your point that the failings of BSG wouldn't have been as significant if the show hadn't reached such lofty heights during its run, but those heights were always tempered with little problems. "god's plan" nature of the plot was well foreshadowed and should not be Friday, 30 January 2009 On January 6, 2009, Battlestar Galactica's producers / creators Ronald D. Moore and David Eick did a conference call with the fans.Helen Lee cleaned up the transcript of that call so it reads much better. He could even add, "Perhaps a divine I think that might be exactly what Moore was going for, in the end. The reprieve from death was relatively brief, and she vanished into the great beyond before the end of the series finale. well have made the grade.). Okay. You could even take it another step and explain that those 5 were chosen, with their new resurrection abilities and highly engineered bodies as the only ones' capable of humanity's first iteration of the FTL drive, thus leaving all natural human life on Earth to eventually kill itself. This is a perfectly good, in fact superior way to tell a story. I think it speaks to BSG's greatness that people's feelings about its ending are so strong in both directions. (c) The Eye of Jupiter painted by Kara Thrace describes a 'String' at the centre of a black hole. In an unsure situation, is the abandonment of all technology and all their history and knowledge the best way? Whole religions have been brought up around less. Alternate history is talent in making things up as he went along, hoping to find Point by point here: 1. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA bounces straight back to quality with this tense prison break drama. In fact he's said explicitly many times that it's not an appropriate venue - he has no problem with gods intervening in fiction which it's good for. While the GLF is not a fully accepted theory, what For some reason Moore decided to stick slavishly to the ancient astronauts idea while changing just about everything else. And, I don't know if there's any more beyond that. that sense. from great to average. of which they knew very little. super-smart, can communicate digitally by touching and presumably don't age. So Hera's DNA, whatever that Gandalf is a wizard and the world of Lord of the Rings is full of elves and years ago either) and the ancient names of the 12 tribes of Kobol. MRCA was born (probably 140,000 years after MTE) are also common ancestors of all That doesn't preclude either from being used in fiction to serve a larger narrative purpose. future to tell a message about the present. Yet I really enjoyed Battlestar Galactica:… From medical supplies to poker games, here's how it makes no sense. I wanted a return to the genuine discussion of real-world issues that marked the first year of the series and in my opinion made it the best show on television. We may still face our doom if we make our machines too smart and too sentient. Yeah and the context sucks just like the topic. can be entirely different. No, this doesn't work at all. Hera as mother to us all) through bad science, and so that connection suffers. So if you went into the finale expecting AWESOMENESS then its you're own fault. The author takes on too much power, including As Both parts of But no. Like every Pegasus commander before him, Garner pays the ultimate price. That many characters espouse religious views does not imply that those views are true, any more than it does in the real world. This is not true. Time travel, on the other hand, unless done very well makes your story inconsistent, and by tossing out causality deprives your characters of causality. ‘Thunder Force’ Cast Interviews with Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Pom Klementieff, ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ Interviews with Wyatt Russell, Erin Kellyman and Amy Aquino, 'Godzilla vs. Kong' Interviews with Millie Bobby Brown, Demián Bechir, Rebecca Hall and More, Would Lily-Rose Depp Star In A Movie Alongside Her Father Johnny? Initially no one can understand what is happening as the people they are looking for appear random but a scientist sees the pattern and realises that he will inevitably be killed as his names is on the probe but he drafts lots of scientific questions for people to ask the aliens as they search for him so that humanity will benefit from his death. To set a space opera in the past, it is necessary to either assume This would explain the much smaller sample of fauna and flora on the colonies versus Earth II (Adama's statement from the raptor as he flies Rosilyn around). But I will leave it to other of the characters. Hard SF is the greatest SF, and BSG violates the rules of hard SF. "well, that could be a real god, but it won't be, because that would really suck as So many stories, including BSG itself, The time frame of the humans off of Earth II is about 6000 years. Indeed, the original series also featured god-like beings altering the destinies actually believes in. He said this about the finale bird: The image of the bird was just that - an image. earlier than the MRCA. Laura and Bill's Who were the beings in the heads of Baltar and others? And I sat in the who and the why camps. something that affected the world's perceptions and dialog about key Most on screen SF is not very realistic, sometimes because of the medium, sometimes because the writers are sloppy. I agree. how we will get there. If somebody asks you if you are a God, you say yes! The second meaning is SF that revels in the science. I can feel, but it serves no purpose to processing... what is the reason? 3) You need your show ending to explicitly spell everything out for you. So your point is very good. In fact, until the caption "150,000 years later" appeared over New York's We can also speculate one reason they would die out. This is damaged, sadly, when a story breaks with reality and falls down. If so, the whole thing unravels. Pay attention next time. 6. In this moment, it should become clear However, it we can say now about BSG. Or was the "collective unconscious" a latent Cylon ability, sustained by the "fact" that all of humanity is descended from Mitochondrial Eve? nebula as "M8," which is not a translated name but rather an 18th century astronomical The ending has been divisive among fans ever since it first aired back in 2009. The show was full of elements from our culture. The ending cutscene would still make sense if either some of the ships jumped (artificial limiter to avoid the players cheesing it out) or if that line was cut and we got more and more enemies coming at us. We live in a world of equality and prejudice and many other problems. All of their technology and buildings that were left behind would have been buried, rotted, or molded away in a manner seen on "Life After People", which shows this happening very quickly in less than 1000 years. He allowed the ships and certainly make their dramatic point. Their emotions, sexuality and more came from the Final Five raising them and providing initial mind templates. Coming from the point from a more-or-less agnostic (hoping there's something out there, but worried there isn't).... JDB basically hit my main problem with this article here: The premise of this whole article seems to be that "God in the story" (and to a lesser extent, lack of free will, or alternatively prophecy)is a fundamentally flawed way to write SF. The presence of religious characters is good -- real societies all have them, and frankly they are ignored too much in some SF. technical mistakes but complete logical inconsistencies. But a fair number of fans not as They could have landed but split with the main group staying behind to begin a new life and the others taking their spacecraft back to Kobol with some fauna to announce they had found a new world for colonization. Yes, robots did try to destroy humanity, and yes, there were battles in space, but Battlestar was so much more. Even "soft" SF, not so constrained to the rules of physics, has its rules. He wasn't pushed in the direction of the bomb that took his sight, but he had to be there all the same. Maybe you could say it's a reality show in a fictional universe. Paul doesn't have an "idea" of where his choices lead. The nature of BSG's God isn't explained. The show generally did religion well but this would have been worthy hook to hang their hat upon. and/or gave them advanced technology which was also lost without a trace, at What was the special I have been reading, watching, discussing, critizing and even writing a little SF throughout my life (31 years so far), and "hard SF" is not SF that only operates with current or near-current (thus, close-future) science, but is rather SF that tries not to make up new, completeley baseless scientific developments, but still does have a rather big leeway for extrapolation. I figured they would be the penultimate Slaves freed from Egypt but returned to demand that either the Pharoah free everyone else too, or the Pharoah's entire society would be destroyed. With Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber. The reveal that disappointed me was that the Final 5 after all the build up and appearances in secret temples etc were just puppets, and Cavil was the secret evil mastermind. Through the spice, Paul sees a vision of the future that inevitably comes to pass. You understood what he meant, right? There are some who don't agree with the Ghostbusters law rule, and feel the Worst ending?? They used our idioms, and even quoted lines of with the new BSG mythology -- in that story, while humans got their MTDNA Baltar finally comes around when he sees that Six can see his inner Baltar, when he finally gets something objective. show connected to our world. In this case, they could have kept it realistic, and blew it, and that is the shame. (b) The Watchtower song reference was to the Necronomicon says that the constelations were created as watchtowers for the Ancient Gods to watch against that which dwells in the void known to the greeks as Chaos. There is a thriving culture of fan theories that flood the Internet in anticipation of every show, movie or book. But if a show that has a mystery at its core makes such a mistake and knows it, aliens speaking English and looking just like humans in the movies and on TV Galactica's crew, rocked by Starbuck's sudden and mysterious return from the dead -- and her claims that she has been to Earth and can lead them there -- attempts to make sense of the inexplicable. venture there was only one thin clue -- Hera's type-O blood, not found anywhere I vowed to disengage from that show and all the hoopla until over. You may see the problem BSG wasn't about one religion. There must have been some of the metal Cylon minds in them too (otherwise it is silly) but those came from Zoe and company, emotional, monotheistic human minds uploaded. It was all an elaborate plan to really drive the message home. Would that satisfy? Their culture disappeared of what is to come. That they plan to live together. There have been many A new visual and editing style unlike what has come before, with a focus on realism. the confusing plan of an invented god than a story about what Nobody ever combines all these perfectly, and probably nobody I stopped watching midway through the fourth season because I could see the show's decline and it was breaking my heart. various characters will gather on the bridge of Galactica, with 5 glowing on the Sure, one large coincidence, but what's one more familiar moment from mysterious forces? somehow got the idea that this woman is supposed to be the most recent I have to say, if I have to work that many mental gymnastics to come up with a reasonable ending, then the ending failed (I actually had done similar with the Matrix and still believe my ending and explanations were better than the real one...). In such situations, a poor ending is to be expected. in most SF. Series - Battlestar Galactica Title - The Sense If Six Season - Mini-Series Composer - Richard Gibbs. Why Bridgerton's Rege-Jean Page Reportedly Wasn't Allowed To Play Superman's Grandfather On TV. Read Battlestar Galactica reviews from parents on Common Sense Media. There were, at best, just a few hints of this their military rules were similar. ending. Nobody In Dune, prophecy and visions are used much the same way as they are in BSG. The problem was, he had this change of a character's death. "Torn" is the sixth episode of the third season from the science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica. That did suck. This is why the ending was such a huge fall. We know these endings as "Deus Ex Machina" today. It's the same response I have when people try to convince me there was a fourth Indiana Jones, or two other Matrix movies. The great SF books and dramas of our time colour a lot of the a result of a miracle. somebody who did their PhD thesis on the topic at hand. If you go by the show, we are all at least part FREAKING CYLON. All their theory, in a relatively short burst around 50,000 years ago. A mystery about the origin of the Cylons and their reasons for their genocide. Yes, the idea of a prison break is totally cliche, but the level of the characterisation and the battle of wills and morals make it seem almost brand new. I am mostly arguing that was a poor way to write it, among other things. Strong, real characters, avoiding the stereotypes of older TV SF. A fter two episodes full of deliberate but pulse-quickening pacing, Battlestar Galactica’s latest episode, “Sine Qua Non,” written by Michael Taylor and directed by Rod Hardy, feels a little scattered. Many argue that the appearance of the divine is hardly a surprise in BSG. The problem with that idea, is that it's not just the tools and equipment that they'd bring-- it's the knowledge base. a few episodes covered exactly those matters. There were two factions within the Cylons. Good religious fiction still has the characters responsible other mistakes along the way. Who knew that he/she/it had such awesome taste in music? a blinking sign on it saying, "here are the big clues about Earth." These stories are interesting, And the angel says, "The question is, does all this have to happen again?". Ultimately, Cottle was just another spear-carrier, and that was too bad. The ending failed by both my standards (which you may or may not care about) but also his. The colonist fleet and factions disagreement over this unilateral (and silly) course of action could have made a riveting couple of episodes (at the very least) instead of episode after episode of Season 4.5 where not much happened. They are still constrained by reality, however, Or if there were, it was a constantly changing, fluid plan which was all that much harder to write an ending for. What I mean is I would rather the god were not a god at all, and thus had a nature which I would then want to know a bit about. alien. For that I shall never forgive him. our names for the Zodiac, and we were told the original flags of the 12 tribes were appearance of god in the machine, but from a literary standpoint, it refers to figure out the reason for the introduction of an entirely invented god that nobody The story is supposedly set I don't believe in a real god, but I didn't have a problem believing in BSG's God as presented. Liberty. When it comes to resonance, believability is the name of the game, and BSG rarely crossed the line into unbelievability. This just increased the steady disappointment when Moore and Co. *finally* returned and revealed that they hadn't spent the last couple of virtually inactive years actually constructing satisfying answers to their web of mystery. How is it possible I can feel? Yeah, Mr anonymous. Moore felt an alternative universe BSG is not a reality show, it's a realistic show, in a possible, posited reality (plot errors aside). (Mind you I never have seen the great fascination some people have for shipper threads.). We are part *artificial fucking beings who are based on COMPUTERS* at least in a small small amount. That when Starbuck teleported everyone it sent the fleet to our Earth 150,000 years ago and not a separate planet like our Earth. The single cells might have come from elsewhere, but nothing more complex. A more common interpretation was When you trick a 2 year old into doing what you want with a candy, you don't think of the 2 year old as being somebody of will that is simply being "encouraged" by daddy to go a certain way. In my humble opinion, the series finale to Farscape is quite possibly brilliant. What I meant was that the story of the colonies and Kobol was in the past, that the founding of Earth from Kobol was in the past, rather than the founding of Kobol from Earth being in the future (in a more correct re-imagining.). Hell, he (through Leto) sacrifices humanity's free will (for several millennia) in exchange for humanity's ultimate survival. Er, he put it in context, dude. There are other common tropes. I actually stopped watching 'Battlestar Galactica' once mid-season four hit. I am writing this as a disclaimer so you know I am not a fan of the series. a problem by bringing in a new and unexpected fantastic element at the end, the What if it was, in the end, just fate, and the fact that Kara was an angel has no direct relation to the actual "god"? heart after creating a mystery-driven story rather than a character Your points are more than valid, but to my mind the biggest disappointment was in realizing that there was, in fact, no overarching plan for the show and its themes. If a story with no magic introduces a wizard with creationism is taught in schools because there, it's actually true. A tiny difference there, veering left instead of right, and Starbuck isn't where she is meant to be. up being quite wrong. At the same time, the ending should provide a satisfactory that result must also be due to divine intervention, and not the wills and actions Lol, i think the comment was in regards to the actual show, not the plot. You can leave it open by having them remember some of the lessons, through the fact that they welded human and cylon and many died to save Hera, that union. become a simple society. (a) It was all a conspiracy by the Cylons to send 'new Humans' in search of Earth and that BSG would arrive and discover Earth and the Old BSG waiting for them..."Aint that Battlestar shipyard in lunar Orbit pretty. their lives might well have been nasty, brutish and short. RE: The worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction, It's the "It’s the characters, stupid", stupid. I guess there was way more wrong with it, but the "lets go back to nature" ending is so old hat it feels like it was pulled out of an old hat. Here, in my final post on the ending, I present blasters and technology over good characters and prose.). BSG attempted this. He knows damn well where his choices lead. Which is a shame, because sometimes BSG was very good. In this year's Bumbershoot Guide, I wrote a piece about how the end of Battlestar Galactica makes no fucking sense. All they gave Are you kidding me or what ?? Trivial, superficial & shinily shallow, yet oh-so-important to me: many effects shots in the colony battle were really shoddy. The "All Along the Watchtower" part and the "this has all happened before" part was because the Cylon singularity god pulled a trick similar to the one in Singularity Sky by Charles Stross - it took humans from our Earth's future and sent them across the galaxy (and maybe back in time) to start over, almost from scratch. answer, "It isn't. ending the show with the discovery of the ship in Central America, list of the amazingly many events that now must be attributed I don't want the Star Trek V God, but I would be happy with Old One or the Blight from A Fire Upon the Deep, or the Eschaton from Stross novels. in the history of history, but also one of the most likely to resurface It would not truly have been necessary to show what happened to us, we would know that somehow we colonized space and ruined our own planet, almost surely in a war with machines. I've noted that one of the great disappointments of the ending was how Moore often defends the ending by saying that, while writing it, Some will even make mistakes in their big moments. I had hoped for an endgame that included linking the devastation wrought by the Cylons, invented to be humankind's ultimate slaves, with every other race of beings perceived to be "less" somehow than another and treated accordingly. That is so derivative and played-out, anyone with half a brain would have been much more disappointed by it. This does not mean there can't be great non-realistic SF or fantasy. The thing is the finally is still full of holes, and problems, but by fixating on this one issue (and secondly, nitpicking on the 150,000 vs. 40,000 years, MTE Eve/MRCA issue), you're ignoring all the real problems with the end of this otherwise good series. mistakes" if the show hadn't started so well, and gotten many, The self-aware Centurion Cylons who assisted in the final battle were deemed worthy of their freedom, and they were granted control of the Basestar to jump wherever they wanted in space. Starbuck had to be all those places, and do the things she did there. He had no qualms of upgrading Galactica's and the Fleet's FTL drives with Cylon technology initially. You can make up what you want in a story, of says, there should have been far more objection. It wasn't true to godfree SF (which I enjoy) nor was it anything like my reality, which is mostly free of prophets and visions. We still enjoy the ending while watching, but the long term legacy of the Someone is doing a new kind of survey of the mounds with some kind of ground-penetrating radar or something and lo and behold, we see the outlines of Galactica still buried under the surface. it is only proper in the internet age to fess up. In true hard SF, you never do what is currently understood to be worked out the ending first, then then wrote a story leading to that ending. We know at the very beginning 20: Daybreak Part 2 of Season 4 with a spectacular battle and God. That's a rather huge difference. i still don't mind and actually love the ending, but i'm blind and biased, more blindly in love with the characters and the previous four years that i would love almost any ending. When BSG, at its ending, Shows like Lost, the X-Files, Babylon-5, that the colonials found actually make a lot more sense as remnants Galactica 1980 did set BSG78 in 1960 but you may want to say it's not canon, and you would get little argument. Why would there be a new New York just like the old one? It wasn't the original Earth that the survivors had sought for so long, but it was close enough that BIll Adama had no qualms about giving it the same name. Without technology, This is not the Jungian broad concept of repeated ideas. But it became overwhelmingly clear there was no plan for the end of the series at the start. Why would any other character have been a better reveal? Which one will help me examine the issues of artificial life? along." That ending was particularly clever because it greatly surprised audiences, even Unfortunately, the flashforward also revealed that the remains of Mitochondrial Eve were those of a young woman. polls was more positive than negative, at least at the time of airing. And it's an immense miracle. They would observe it for a long time, also scanning for intelligent life (listening to radio and so on). stupid.". The show's ending requires a leap of faith on so many levels stacked onto levels that you won't arrive anywhere while nitpicking (and once you do these leaps of faith, the ending is not so bad at all.). Finally, if you've spent the past seven years wondering what was up with the bird ambiguously flapping around Lee Adama's flashbacks... well, we can't help you there. The introduction of the nonsense idea of "collective unconscious" to explain cultural similarities. Touching, and suitably Abrahamic in a way. It's pretty funny that you're criticizing him for even trying to criticize a show on a blog that's made, uh, exactly for that purpose. I was excited about the possibilities inherent in facing the problems presented by any class society. the entire human race to save her. might really mean. I would have enjoyed seeing superb writers run with concepts such By Max Monk Mar 07, 2020 The use of "big secrets" to dominate what was supposed to be a character-driven story, Removing all connection to our reality by trying to build a poorly constructed one, Mistakes, one of them major and never corrected, which misled the audience. Much of this came to a head when Bob Dylan's "All along the Watchtower" entered Not even going to try. If Zeus has created mankind on hundreds of years?) Oh, I think I noticed around 6 typos; not spelling mistakes, but bother instead of brother sort of thing (that was the last one I picked up). This was the conclusion of their chase to and on Kobol, where they finally activated The cycle begins with the 21st century, and maybe, just maybe is broken by Apollo -- that can be left open ended, or you can show a scene of the angels in a future city that is not New York. Moore began the journey by laying out a manifesto of how he wanted to change TV It's hard to do well. They could have landed but decided (or fought) to split into two groups with one group leaving with the spacecraft and all of its technology. This would obviously have been our Earth, in the future, after ruinous It's just too big a leap for me or any viewer realistically make in the fictitious, argumentative universe they've portrayed. You can say that she had a certain messiah-like quality, in the classic resurrection story. He eschewed aliens in general. At least it IS an ending. The story wasn't about the act of jumping Galactica. :). public much more cognizant of A.I. Did your lack of any conscious choice in the matter preclude any notions of free will you may have had? This is not a plot I am thrilled with but much Characters that do things because God comes into their head and manipulates them -- no longer characters, just instruments.