Could this be the way BSG ends? (updated)

Kenneth Hynek • 12th Mar 2009 • Entertainment, Science Fiction • Aaron Doral, All Along the Watchtower, Apollo, Athena, Aurora, Bajor, Battlestar Galactica, Boomer, Cavil, Cylon, DS9, Earth, Gaius Baltar, Galen Tyrol, God, Head Baltar, Head Six, Heavy Raider, Helo, Hera Agathon, incest, Jamie Bamber, Kara Thrace, Katee Sackhoff, Laura Roslin, New York, NYC, Raider, Ron Moore, Samuel Anders, Starbuck, Times Square, TNG, William Adama

By “this,” above, I am referring to this, the latest speculation from The Patriot Resource, based on some information posted at the Ragnar Anchorage Forum.

Since there are epic-scale spoilers, I’m going to put the rest of what I have to say behind the fold; I actually want to address each particular point from the list in turn. To be fair, I like quite a bit of it…but there’s also a few entries on the list that make me scratch my head. A lot.

So…what’s supposed to happen in the final episode of Battlestar Galactica?

Most of the crew volunteers for the suicide mission.

Like we expected them to balk, right?

The plan is to use Galactica as bait while a small team (including Athena and Helo) infiltrate the Colony using a Heavy Raider (Galactica doesn’t just jump in and start shooting – there’s a good chance that Hera will be killed if Galactica and co. jump right in and just start shooting).

That makes sense; the Colony is a massive installation by all appearances, and would be a tough nut for a badly wounded battlestar and a badly wounded basestar to take on in a stand-up fight. But by drawing out Cavil‘s forces, a small team might have a chance of getting on board, especially if they are using a Cylon vessel as their means of conveyance.

There is an obvious parallel to be drawn here between this plan and the final episode of the original series, “The Hand of God.” In that episode, the Galactica uses her fighters to draw out a basestar’s Raiders in a feint, then sneaks in behind the basestar to deliver a first strike. Apollo and Starbuck, meanwhile, use a captured Raider to sneak aboard the basestar in an effort to knock its scanners out so that the Galactica can get into position to do this.

A massive fight ensues. Galactica gets the hell knocked out of it. The Cylons take the ship, and they’re about to take out Adama and Tigh in CIC until they meet some unexpected resistance from Gaius Baltar. Baltar is critically wounded.

This would explain the various promo pictures that have surfaced which have shown e.g. an Aaron Doral-model Cylon with a bloodied forehead pointing a gun in a corridor on the Galactica. And of course, this would also address the issue of the promised effects extravaganza.

At the Colony, Boomer betrays Cavil and hands Hera over to Athena, though Helo is wounded (and possibly killed).

I’m hoping for just “wounded,” myself.

The rest of this isn’t much of a surprise; Boomer‘s expression at the end of the most recent episode pretty much gave away the fact that she was no longer in agreement or alliance with Cavil’s machinations. Her story from that point forward would take on a redemptive nature.

Of course, the problem with atoning for one’s sins (in dramatic presentations such as this) is that sometimes, one is still consumed by them:

Boomer and the Guardians (who turn on Cavil because he’s going to dissect Hera) turn off Cavil’s control over the Centurians and Raiders – but Boomer dies by Cavil’s hand.

I suppose it makes sense to close out Boomer’s character in this way. I confess, though, that I’m actually disappointed by the direction Cavil takes. It makes sense, to be sure, but it would be nice — just once — to see a story in which the “big bad guy” comes to a kind of redemption, rather than simply committing a handful of final acts of evil before being killed off.

Also: we were promised that we’d see Guardians, or at least Model 005 Centurions, again — it appears that this is indeed the case. Their presence, of course, was already hinted at in the previous episode by the appearance of early-model Raiders.

It is also nice to see that the Centurions and Raiders do end up being freed from their latest enslavement…although, given how much the plot has focused on the nature of Centurion enslavement and its violent consequences, it was to be expected that we’d see this plot point closed off.

The freed Raiders and Centurions recognize what Cavil has done to them, and, more importantly, that Anders is piloting Galactica, and so they stop attacking the humans and turn on Cavil.

Natch. An enslaved Cylon can be trusted to turn on its master in due season. For all his prattle about wanting to avenge the enslavement of his Cylon “ancestors,” Cavil is every bit as guilty of the same crime.

It would be nice to see him redeemed rather than slaughtered, though. But I suppose that would be too much to ask for.

Also, it’s interesting that the fourth season will, in effect, be book-ended by the refusal of the Raiders (and, in this episode, the Centurions) to do battle with Samuel Anders and the vehicle he is piloting.

Another massive fight ensues. Cavil and co. are destroyed, but Galactica is crippled.

Effects extravaganza…check. These should be some cool fight scenes. It’s curious that we see no mention of the Fleet’s basestar, although we can presume that it probably takes part in the fighting as well.

You know, it occurs to me that the Galactica still has a full — or nearly full — arsenal of nukes aboard; I can’t see Adama letting these go to waste, good reader…can you?

The fleet jumps to the sight of the battle to evacuate Galactica.

Makes sense.

The Raiders and Centurions feed Anders the location of a habitable world that Cavil knew of, then leave forever. Anders feeds the fleet the coordinates and everyone jumps there, though the strain of jumping the shattered Galactica kills Anders.

It’s about to this point, I think, that I’m really happy with the direction of the episode (assuming this speculation is accurate to begin with). It gets back to some of the stuff that made the first couple seasons of the show really great — make a plan, execute the plan, fight the Cylons, and get the job done.

Here, though, things get dicey. Granted, we’ve been seeing hints in the starry backdrop of the space scenes that the Fleet — and the Cylons as well — are close to Earth, our Earth. Presumably, this is the planet that is known to Cavil.

But: how the heck did Cavil know about this planet? From where did he get the information? When did he discover it? Why didn’t he do more with the discovery than just sit on the secret for whatever duration?

It’s a pity that Anders doesn’t make it — he’s really become a great character — but it makes sense that his fate would be tied to that of the broken Galactica, to which he is connected. Katee Sackhoff had previously hinted that Anders wouldn’t survive. It appears this is indeed the case.

Roslin dies aboard the ruins of Galactica. Adama stays with her, alone on a dead ship. Baltar dies on the new planet…which he dubs Earth.

Pretty much all of this could have been expected; each leader figure closes out his or her role in the arrival at this new planet. It’s rather interesting that Baltar is the one to give it its name, although the name itself is hardly a surprise.

Why do I have the feeling that we’ll get a clear view of at least one recognizable continent when the Fleet arrives in orbit around the planet?

Hera reveals that Daniel survived, after a fashion, and that he’s been guiding his loved ones as best he can through projection. Starbuck and Baltar are his children (and yes, eat your heart out, smooching Luke and Leia from ESB, the original Starbuck DID have sex with her brother); and Daniel plugged into Roslin after she took on Cylon blood.

Firstly: eeeeeeeeew.

Secondly: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.

Thirdly: another frakkin’ info-dump? This time from Hera? I have severe doubts that this exposition will work to anyone’s satisfaction, if in fact it takes place.

After Apollo runs around in a lush field shooting his gun into the air like a maniac, he and Starbuck embrace.

Jamie Bamber did let on that his last scene involved running around with extras, shooting at things. I had thought that “things” meant…you know…Cylons, rather than clouds. But hey, I can see it.

Although: Lee and Kara? We’ve been through this once before, and then to general audience disappointment if memory serves. Granted, it does tie up the plot thread that is Galen Tyrol‘s repeated observation that nobody ended up with who they were supposed to be with…but still.

Speaking of the Chief, we haven’t seen mention of him in any of the above. What becomes of him, especially given that he was most recently known to be cooling his heels in the Galactica‘s brig for his role in the kidnapping of Hera?

Flash forward to thousands of years later. The setting: the planet the humans and Cylons settled, specifically, NYC. “All of this has happened before….”

Apart from the Baltar/Starbuck incest revelation — seriously? — this is the plot point I take the most issue with. Not that I was unaware of it; there have been a few spoilers floating around for a while that the final scene would involve Head Six (and possibly Head Baltar) wandering through Times Square.

But at the same time, it was understood (or so I thought) that BSG was an experiment in naturalistic science fiction. Why then, at the final moment, does it abandon that ideal to set itself up as a “human origins” mythology?

Then again: or does it?

Now that I think about it, that caption could be taken in a number of ways. It could be meant as a pithy warning from the writers to us, the viewers in this modern day, to be careful of…whatever. But I wonder if perhaps it wouldn’t instead be meant as a hint that the whole series is set in Earth’s far future, when it has become something akin to Earth as portrayed in e.g. Dune or Firefly — abandoned by humanity, and only now returned to.

Of course, the odds that humanity exactly rebuilds New York in the event of its return to Earth would be astronomically low. But then, the series is predicated on the view that history repeats itself.

What I hope is that the writers don’t intend to basically wipe out all the wonderful work they’ve done developing a story about overcoming the cycle of history and violence with a casual but ominous hint that the next holocaust is just around the corner.

So that’s it — what is apparently the structure of the episode called “Daybreak,” the three-hour series final&e for BSG. It has some high points, and it has a few low points as well.

What are the key deficiencies?

For starters, there doesn’t appear to be any further exploration of the Aurora motif in the character of Kara Thrace; the buildup from the third season apparently is left unresolved. That’s rather disappointing.

Somewhat more disappointing, to my thinking, is that the various spiritual/religious aspects of the show don’t appear to receive the same sort of “wrap up” treatment that Ron Moore gave to the Bajoran religious themes in DS9. To be fair, it doesn’t appear that he went the TNG route of pulling away the curtain to reduce God and the gods to purely natural phenomena; the supernaturalism surrounding both appears to remain intact. It just still seems a bit empty, in spite of that.

Additionally, there doesn’t appear to be a strict denouement to the “All Along the Watchtower” plot thread, although I suppose this could be a part of the Hera Agathon Daniel-related info-dump.

Most disappointing, however, is the “yeah, we went there” moment in the whole thing: Baltar and Starbuck as siblings. It’s mostly the incest that’s bothersome here. Just…eeeeew. Which is a real shame, because I actually like how the above addresses some of the speculation flying around concerning Baltar and Starbuck; it settles the argument over which of them is “Daniel” by saying that neither of them is, but that both of them are his offspring.

What are the key strengths?

The part of the Baltar/Starbuck revelation that I like is also true for how the above wraps up the dying leader motif; Laura Roslin fulfills her role in this regard…but so does William Adama (who, it seems, elects to die with his ship without ever setting foot on the new planet). There’s been some debate as to whom the prophecy really refers to, with some even going so far as to speculate that the Galactica herself is the dying leader. I think I even saw speculation that Anders fulfilled that role.

And again: they all do — Adama, Roslin, Galactica, and Anders.

Then there’s that first half of the whole thing, which gets us back to what really worked for BSG in its first two seasons: the plot, the execution, the tactics, and the slugfest, with character drama peppered into the action, in a way that allowed each to feed off the other.

Finally, I like that we’ll probably see “Crossroads Earth” (our Earth) again, although I do acknowledge that I don’t like the method of its revelation. Too…too deus ex machina (frakkin’ literally!) for my liking. But I prefer the ending that arrifes the Fleet at a planet rather than the ending that leaves them stuck — even if only for a while — on e.g. the Colony.

Speaking of which: what happens to the Colony? Do the Centurions and Guardians take it on a whirlwind tour of the galaxy?

Update: from TPR:

Thanks in part to some tips, we’ve tracked down the “source” of yesterday’s rumor here at the IMDB Forums. The “spoilers” were posted in response to some horrific speculation found here. Though we admit to finding some aspects of the info we posted yesterday intriguing and possible, based on the poster’s lack of a track record, we have to chalk it up to complete speculation. We stand by our posting it because we did (and still do) find some of it plausible so it’s not going anywhere. We promise to have some real spoilers posted some time tonight.

So there you have it. Consume the above only with appropriate quantities of salt.

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