Galactica: Ex-Machina

I'm genuinely developing a dislike for nerds. I realize the irony inherent in that statement if it doesn't include some self-loathing, but then I've never had a problem in that area. In any case, the specific nerd trait bugging me right now is the Comic Book Guy-like tendency to immediately jump on message boards and explain point by point what's wrong with a particular movie, television show, or comic book. I'm not saying this isn't the right of a fan or that everyone has to like everything, but there's a certain tone in the way these criticisms are phrased that gets to me. It's less “I didn't like this because...” and more “This is bad because...”, as though a fact is being stated instead of an opinion. These comments are especially jarring when I've had the exact opposite response to something I've just seen or read.

In any case, I know it's equally nerdy to list point by point everything I liked or was moved by from the Battlestar Galactica finale, but frak it(with SPOILERS):

1) The last few episodes have been quiet, bleak, and depressing, all building to an insane final space battle between Galactica and the Cylons on the edge of a black hole. I loved the tactics, from Helo's Raptor teams to the Viper strikes to Anders shutting down the Hybrids to Adama just ramming the ship right into their base. The old man wasn't messing around.

2) In a moment paralleling the movie that kicked off the series, Baltar is once more about to board a Raptor apparently to save himself, only to tell those aboard that he's staying behind to help in the fight to save Hera. It shows genuine growth for the character and lends credence to the notion that his role as a religious leader this season wasn't just another scam, but an actual shift in his motivations.

3) Boomer's final act is to save Hera and return her to her parents. “Tell the old man I owed him one.” First teary moment of the episode.

4) Caprica Six tells Gaius she's proud of him, that she always wanted to be proud of him, moments before they both realize that they can both see the idealized(Angelic? Demonic?) avatars of one another that has been a mystery for most of the series.

5) Fleeing from the Cylons with Hera, Helo gets shot up and orders a tearful Sharon to go on without him. They killed Helo, those bastards. Second teary moment of the episode.

6) Sharon pursues Hera through the corridors of Galactica. Laura Roslin pursues Hera through the corridors of Galactica. Gaius and Caprica Six find Hera and take her to the safety of the command center. These scenes cut between the parallel opera house dream/projection that these characters have been experiencing for the last 2 seasons, culminating in the appearance of five glowing beings in the dream sequence, and the Final Five up on the higher deck.

7) Gaius makes an impassioned speech to Cavil that stays his hand in slaying Hera long enough for Tigh to offer resurrection as a bargaining chip in a truce with the Cylons. More importantly, Baltar's speech manages to sum up the inexplicable aspects of the series to the satisfaction of some fans and frustration of others. The avatars he sees in the form of Six or himself he refers to as “angels”, but ultimately agents of some higher being or force guiding them from another plane of existence. Whether this being is the one true god of the cylons or the pantheon of gods the humans worship is irrelevant; these are just labels the finite beings in this universe assign to make sense of forces beyond them. I thought that was much better than some of the theories floating around on the internet over the years, such as Gaius having a chip implanted in his brain. I think it's possible for science fiction to include elements some might consider fantastic, provided they offer a plausible fictional scientific explanation for it.

8) The truce quickly goes awry and the Cylons don't get resurrection, all because the final five had to share memories to give them the information, and thus Galen learns that Tory was the one that sent his wife Cally out into space through a Viper launch tube. I always liked Cally, and was upset that her death went unavenged. Tory makes a laughable plea before the mind meld about no one getting upset about any dark secrets they might learn. She might have been better confessing before Galen relives her murder of Cally, breaks the link, and chokes her to death. About frakking time.

9) Kara Thrace fulfills her destiny as foreseen by a hybrid, and she is the “harbinger of death” who “will lead them all to their end.” Remembering the notes from All Along the Watchtower that Hera had drawn and equating them as coordinates for the FTL drive, she warps Galactica one last time, jumping away as the Cylon base is consumed by the nearby black hole. The evil Cylons are all dead, while humanity has reached the end of its journey on a planet much nicer than their Earth with blue skies, green fields, and primitive humans and wildlife.

10) On Lee's suggestion, they agree to forego their technology and start fresh on the new world. Adama flies the last Viper from his ship and has Sam take control of the fleet, guiding all the ships into the sun. While most believed Roslin was the “dying leader” prophesied to lead her people to a new home she would never see, I think Galactica itself was the dying leader, the ship that led the fleet to this world before being sent into the sun. Roslin on the other hand does get to see the planet...

11) Roslin has 48 hours at best throughout the final episode before she finally succumbs to her cancer. Even the normally gruff Doc Cottle is moved when she thanks him for all he's done prior to the raid on the Cylon base. I think that scene was when I knew there would be a lot of teary moments. As she watches some gazelles on the plains with Adama, she begins to have trouble breathing. “Would you like a better look?” he asks, wrapping his beloved President in a blanket and carrying her to a Raptor. Teary moment three or four. Lee and Kara notice, and come to say goodbye, realizing Adama is leaving them as well. In the Most Devastating Callback Ever, Adama for the last time asks Kara, “What do you hear, Starbuck?” “Nothing but the rain,” she replies as always, cueing his final, “Then grab your gun and bring in the cat.” They embrace; bawling ensues.

12) We've been seeing flashbacks in these final episodes to what the characters were all doing prior to the Cylon attack that forced them to flee their homeworld. We saw that Gaius was the son of a farmer before he was an arrogant scientist. We saw that Roslin experienced unimaginable tragedy and lost her whole family, leading her down the path that put her in the president's staff and ultimately, to become the president when she survives the attack. We saw what led Adama and Tigh to be on the Galactica for one last ceremony before the ship would have been retired. And we saw how Lee first met Kara, who was once engaged to his brother Zak, who died in a flying accident prior to the invasion. While Zak is passed out on the couch, his brother and his fiancée have a drunken conversation that nearly leads to infidelity. More importantly, Kara reveals that her worst fear isn't death, but being forgotten. In the present, as Lee and Kara watch Adama and Roslin leave, Kara tells him that her work is done, that she understands why she came back. The strong implication is that she was another celestial being like the ideal Gaius and Six, that Kara Thrace did crash and die but her soul had unfinished business and manifested a new physical form(and Viper) in order to complete it. Lee scoffs at this idea, but when he turns around, Kara has disappeared. We see another scene of Lee back on Caprica, as a pigeon that had gotten into his apartment, flapping around and causing him grief as he tried to chase it out, finally rises, and soars out the open window. Damn.

13) Adama and Roslin soar over the plains. Roslin smiles, looking out the window and murmuring weakly, “So much life...” Adama goes on about the planet, and about the dream cabin he'll build for them, something they had discussed once before when they thought they'd found a new planet to settle on. Her hand slips from his grasp, but he's still a sentence or two from noticing. When he turns and sees that she's gone, he takes her hand in his, fighting the tears, and slips his wedding ring off his finger and on to hers. William Adama fights tears mortal viewers cannot, and I lose count.

14) Tigh's little “grunt laughs” throughout the episode killed me, and were bright moments amid the tearjerking ones. It was funny in the bar/stripclub flashbacks, and funny/poignant in the flashback after Boomer's death to Bill giving the rookie Boomer a hard time about landing the Raptor's cleanly. The best one was right after they land on the new planet and are surveying the primitive life. Cottle notes that they have human DNA and Gaius asks if that means they're compatible for mating. “You have a one track mind, Doc” says Adama, and when Baltar protests he adds, “...and no sense of humor.” The peanut gallery punctuation of Tigh's grunt laugh in that scene was perfection.

15) We hear Helo and Sharon talking as the camera pans across the tall grass. Helo lives! He's using a cane and Agathons are holding hands with their daughter. Helo boasts about teaching Hera to hunt while Sharon laughs, remembering his experience with a bug back when they met on Caprica. I'm glad the episode offered some tears of joy; I was so certain that family unit was getting a tragic end that it was a great surprise to discover it intact.

16) Gaius and Six witness Hera's safety and happiness with her family. Their avatars appear to them one last time, and now their journey is complete. But where do they go from here? We get one last flashback to Caprica, to the day Baltar agreed to let Six see the defense grid plans, an action that would open the doors for the Cylon invasion. Back then it was clear that these were the villains of the series. Baltar is smarmy, saying he's doing it for love then scoffing; he's only interested in one thing. Six is seductive and clearly using him as a tool in her invasion plans. But then we jump back to the present as she caresses his cheek, as they stand on a new world as redeemed characters wholly different from who and what they were in the first episode. Gaius tells her he knows how to cultivate the land and farm, getting choked up as this reminds him of his father. Six comforts him, and the two go off to live happily ever after in some valley.

17) Adama sits on a hill, still describing the cabin he's going to build there. The camera pans over to a pile of rocks, to the grave of Laura Roslin, as he tells her how the land is beautiful like she was. Enough with the tearjerker moments.

18) Epilogue: The show isn't over yet. Hera plays in the fields, and looks out over the landscape. The camera pans over trees and finally up to a city. My city. New York City. A caption tells us that it's 150,000 years later. This is our world; the Capricans were our ancestors. So that's where we got “All Along the Watchtower” from. In voiceover, Six is reading an article about scientists finding the bones of a woman who lived in Tanzania, whom they believe to be Mitochondrial Eve, the common ancestor of all humanity. We see the red-dress Six at a newstand with the black suit and crimson shirt Gaius. To the right, Ron Moore is reading a magazine and making a cameo on his show. Six and Baltar walk on, noting how this Earth has grown into a corrupt, technology bloated disaster like Caprica, Kobol, and the original Cylon Earth. “All of this has happened before...” These beings, which the original Gaius chose to describe as angels, are judgmental and carrying some of the worst traits of the finite beings they based their mortal forms upon. Six wonders if god will repeat the cycle and destroy it all to start over once more. “Don't call him that; he hates that...” says Gaius ominously, and I note that these two wear a bit too much red for angels. I expect to hear Sympathy for the Devil, which would fit the scene and give it a certain tone, but of course we hear “All Along the Watchtower” one last time, not the ancient version of the Cylons but one of the ones we're more familiar with. Various clips are shown of toys and robots that exist here and now in our world, including some of the more humanoid models being developed. Could it all happen again? Here and now?

The series left me thinking, and pleased with the overall outcome. Moore even provides further insight for all the slow viewers asking questions like “Why did they go back to Earth and why wasn't it nuked?” or “How was Kara the harbinger of death and what end did she lead them to?” or making comments like “Angels don't exist; what a horrible and unrealistic deus ex machina. These writers suck.” They don't have a problem with space ships jumping through space, killer robots, or humanoid beings that evolved from robots and can procreate with humans. But mention gods or angels, even in vague obscure terms that allow viewers to draw their own conclusions, and red flags go up. I don't get it, but I'm glad I got to experience this series.