“You know, I know about farming.” (BSG)
Mind the spoilers, although hopefully you’ve had a chance to watch “Daybreak, Part II,” — the series finalé of Battlestar Galactica — by now, good reader. Still, and if not, mind the spoilers.
Reactions to the episode have been mixed, which was predictable. Brad Templeton, Radii of Galactica Variants didn’t seem to like it that much; the folks at 13th Colony liked it in spite of themselves, while others loved it. Michael Hall seems undecided, and Maureen Ryan loved it — it was “pretty frakkin’ wonderful,” in her words.
And here’s my own take: pretty damn good. It wasn’t quite as good as “What You Leave Behind,” the final episode of DS9 (which Ron Moore didn’t write; he was the show’s co-executive producer, however, and so had influence over most of what went on within it). But it was better than “All Good Things…“, the final episode of TNG (which Moore did write).
Moore wrote both parts of “Daybreak,” just for the record, so the stronger comparison is to how he ended TNG…and actually, I can see a few spiritual parallels between the two episodes, principally in his use, again, of bookending for many of the characters. Battlestar Wiki helpfully lists some of the major examples thereof:
- It began with the Cylon attack on Colonies nearly wiping out mankind. It ended with the Colonial attack on the Cylon Colony very likely wiping out the Cylons who didn’t join with the humans.
- Shortly after the Cylon attack on Caprica, Baltar — having unintentionally brought about the near-annihilation of the human species — flees Caprica when Karl Agathon gives him his place on a Raptor, feeling that his own life is less important to save than a famed scientist’s. But at the end of the series, it is Baltar who puts his own life at risk for the sake of saving Agathon’s daughter Hera and expresses concern for her future well being to the very end of the series (both ends of this parallel occur in wide open fields).
- Agathon and Cylon Sharon Valerii are seen together near the very beginning of the series and near the very end.
- The earliest known detail we see of Gaius Baltar’s life is his effort to break away from his family history as farmers, and his shame over his heritage. The last event we see in his embrace of a new beginning as a farmer.
- Baltar and Number Six are seen together near the very beginning of the series and near the very end.
- The series began with Galactica’s scheduled decommissioning and ends with its actual decommissioning.
- The series begins with a selfish decision Baltar makes (to give Caprica Six access to military mainframes) that nearly destroys Colonial humanity. It ends with a selfless decision Baltar makes (to fulfill his destiny in saving Hera) that gives Colonial humanity a new start in the form of Hera.
- This poetic ring is also in line with Romo Lampkin’s observation of him being President of it being “Poetic justice” and Lee Adama’s “What goes around, comes around” since Lampkin originally pushed him to be a politician. Indeed, the Cylons were revisited by the destruction they wrought on the human Colonies.
To which I would add two further, though minor, detail:
- The series begins with Helo suffering a (possibly arterial) leg wound, and demanding that a Number Eight-model Cylon (Sharon Valeri in the miniseries) leave him behind in order to complete a larger and more important task. The series ends with Helo suffering an arterial leg wound and demanding that a Number Eight-model Cylon (his wife, Sharon Agathon) leave him behind in order to save their daughter.
- The series begins with the Cylons using a computer virus to disable Colonial weapons and other defences. It ends with the Colonials, via Samuel Anders, using what could be called a virus to exert influence over the Colony’s hybrid(s?), thus disabling the Cylon “homeworld’s” defences.
What can I say? I like Karl Agathon as a character, and I’m particularly happy with how his character arc ended. He himself, his family, and especially his relationship with both his daughter and his wife, was the one mostly shining example of genuine grace and human virtue in the show; I was chagrined (to say the least) when it looked like the writers were going to tear that Agathons apart, and was just overjoyed to see that they were on the mend when Sharon shot her husband that knowing little smile during his briefing to the Raptor pilots. That things got better from there on it was pure gravy.
Now, Catholic that I am, I want to focus more on the last part of the show than on the first. Fortunately, the first part of the show followed a fairly straightforward action-driven storyline, so commentary on it need not be as comprehensive.
With that in mind…
Attacking the Colony
This was a darn fine sequence. Not quite the effects extravaganza I was hoping for, and not quite as faithful to the physics of the environment as it could have been, but still mightily impressive all the same. I think my favourite battle sequence in BSG is the battle at the Ionian Nebula as depicted in “He That Believeth In Me,” but this one would still rank high on the list of favourites.
Maybe I’m being too much of an engineer, but it seemed to me that the battle was presented as a fairly conventional slugfest. That made sense for the engagement between the Colony and the Galactica, given that they were at point-blank range. My real issue was with the Raptors, Raiders, and Vipers; they seemed to be fighting a battle in an asteroid belt rather than within deadly proximity of a black hole.
But I suppose that’s a minor quibble.
The attack plan largely made sense; multiple strike vectors meant a greater chance of someone — anyone — rescuing Hera Agathon. I didn’t quite get why Lee Adama’s team went in with pressure suits initially, while Starbuck’s teams were just in standard body armour; if there was a risk of finding no atmosphere at Lee’s entry point, why wasn’t it assumed that there would be a risk of finding no atmosphere at Starbuck’s entry point? That quibble aside, the plan made sense, and was well-executed. Losses among the Raptors, especially, were heavy as all get out;
And that shot of the Galactica crashing into the Colony? That isn’t quite how I thought they’d do it, but it was pretty cool all the same.
The fighting inside the Colony was the sort of tense action we’ve come to expect from the series at its best, and it had me on the edge of my seat with its relentless pacing. It was neat to see the old-school Centurions in action again, as well, although they didn’t come to the aid of Boomer as many suspected they might. Cavil’s enslavement of his Centurion “bretheren” evidently extends to the old models as well. Which makes his hypocrisy that much deeper and more striking, I suppose. Seeing the old and new Centurions slugging it out was also pretty cool, if not somewhat funny.
Also, the people who predicted that a virus would play a role in the Colonial victory were essentially correct. Though I don’t recall it being mentioned specifically, Anders’ exertion of control over the Hybrids aboard the Colony was basically just that: a virus.
The Cylon boarding action, in which Cavil et. al. attempt to take control of the Galactica was excellent. Sure, the CGI was a bit spotty in parts, and there seemed to be some inconsistency as to the number of bullets necessary to fell a Centurion…but the dramatic feel of that sequence was, overall, very good. There was a feeling of hopelessness to much of it. What I liked even more, though, was how it all ended; the sequence was briefly superseded by the Opera House beat, and when we came back to Cavil’s invasion of the ship, it had been resolved in the Colonials’ favour — we enter CIC to see William Adama kicking over a dead Simon-model Cylon. There was a real sense there of off-screen plot progression and action, which I loved.
And the denouement in the CIC worked for me. Cavil’s entertainment of Baltar’s statements about divine orchestration was somewhat unexpected…but I liked that Baltar didn’t quibble, for once, when things were really on the line. Perhaps it’s just me, but I can appreciate what he did in that moment, when he openly admitted (again) to seeing angels; sometimes, you just need to stick your neck out and make plain your faith…and see what results.
The results of Baltar’s leap of faith (and Cavil’s) were interesting to me for another reason. Catholics recently celebrated the feast of St. Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus. We know very little of Joseph, save for a few lines of Scripture. But we do know that Joseph was, according to Matthew, a “righteous man.” As John da Fiesole notes, however, the immediate result of Joseph’s righteousness is to make a bad decision.
Even the one spot where he does tell shows us something:
Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.
St. Joseph’s devotees have made a great deal out of those words in bold. Here I’ll just point out that the immediate result of his righteousness is… a bad decision.
Now, I’m not a man distinguished by righteousness, and I’ve made some bad decisions in my time. But none of my decisions to date have been so bad that God had to send an angel to correct me.
And yet, that’s exactly the point St. Joseph’s righteousness and mercy brought him to. So much for his righteousness and mercy.
In a sense, this is what happens in the CIC — the immediate result of a leap of faith made by all parties to the conflict, a leap of faith which is signed and sealed with the cessation of hostilities even, is a bad decision: the Final Five agree to grant Cavil’s faction the designs for resurrection technology.
Why is this a bad decision? In a few words: it represents a continuation of the cycle of history, and thus of the violence. If humanity and Cylonity are going to move forward and survive, resurrection technology cannot be allowed to exist — the imbalance it creates between the two groups can only lead to renewed conflict at some later point.
Of course, the bad decision does not pan out, and those hoping most to benefit from it wind up losing everything. The exposure of each of the Final Five to each others’ memories proves fatal for the arrangement, as Galen Tyrol realizes who killed his wife. He rips his hands from Anders’ tub, interrupting the download of the resurrection “blueprints” to the Colony, and throttles the life out of Tory Foster. Aaron Doral presumes that this was intended all along, and resumes shooting at the Colonials, who shoot back, perforating Doral and another Simon standing nearby. At the same time, Racetrack — dead, having been killed be a rock fragment impacting her Raptor — accidentally nudges a launch button when another rock hits her ship; the nuclear weapons that launch as a result severely damage the Colony and disrupt its orbit, sending it plummeting into the black hole.
And yes, I will grant that it was a bit contrived for Racetrack’s Raptor to conveniently end up pointing its nukes at the Colony, and then firing them off. I was also surprised by the power of the nukes against the Colony, and I was curious as to the origin of the weapons in the first place (I was under the impression that the Galactica only had an arsenal of “ship to ship” weapons at her disposal, not Raptor-launchable ordinance). I suppose that the rebel Cylon basestar could have furnished the Galactica with the weapons, though; I doubt “Admiral Hoshi” would have had much need of the things.
But contrived and curious though the situation might have been, I thought it worked. It hammered home just how fatal the temptation to repeat and prolong the cycle of violence really was.
I also liked it when Cavil shot himself — to me, that made perfect sense. For Cavil, everything hinged on regaining resurrection. When that was interrupted — and when, with Tory’s death, it became impossible for the technology to ever be obtained again, I think Cavil’s brain did a quick calculation and came up with only one logical answer: all is lost, all is hopeless…end it now. It was a perfectly natural move for a nihilist like Cavil to engage in, given the circumstances.
Ron Moore confirmed this point, in fact:
Cavil killing himself came from Dean Stockwell. [in the script, Tigh was supposed to fling over the edge of a higher level in the CIC.] Dean called me himself and said, “You know, I just really think that in that moment, Cavil would realize the jig is up and it’s all hopeless and just put a gun in his mouth and shoot himself.“
And so he did. I’ve seen a few reactions around the Internet that basically amount to: “why’d he do that?” But if you really look into the character of Cavil and his philosophical standpoint, it makes sense. Cavil was effectively dead the moment Tory Foster died; the only question remaining was how many years he was willing to wait for oblivion to come and claim him.
And I suppose that’s one final bookend for the series: by a machination of Cavil’s (and of Doral’s, if we recall the Caprica-situated parts of episodes in the first two seasons), the Colonies were wiped out by a nuclear holocaust, robbing humanity of its home(s). At the end, and then by a fluke (although one that also resulted from hasty aforethought by two Raptor pilots, who had preemptively armed their ordinance), the Cylon “homeworld” was wiped out by its own kind of nuclear holocaust, robbing Cylonity of its home.
The Opera House
One of the themes I touched on in my own “how I’d like to see it end” article was the notion that Kobol and/or the Lords of Kobol needed to lose significance in order for humanity and Cylonity to move ahead. That was not to say that Religion as a whole needed to bow out of the narrative or out of the lives of the characters, however. It was, rather, to say that Kobol itself needed to be de-divinized, if in fact the cycle of violent history to which it was connected was going to truly be broken.
And with the revelation that the Opera House visions shared by Athena, Laura Roslin, and Caprica Six were not a reference not to a divine realm, or to Kobol, or even to Earth, I think the show’s producers accomplished that exact goal, handily. The revelation that the Galactica herself was the Opera House was done very well, and with some excellent visual cues. I really liked it; it worked.
Some funny moments
There was some genuinely funny moments. Saul Tigh’s remark to Adama that it wasn’t too late to airlock the Cylons was pretty funny, and I also liked Helo’s comment to his Raptor jocks regarding their thirst for new and unusual ways to die. Likewise, Cavil’s exclamation that two civilizations were being kept waiting by Tory Foster’s nervous evasions evoked a laugh from me. And Starbuck had a couple of killer quips in the scene that ended with Boomer’s execution.
I think my favourite exchange, though, was between Baltar and Caprica Six, the former of whom was surprised to see the latter show up armed and ready for battle. Baltar tries to play the alpha male and expresses his surprise at Caprica’s presence. Her reply — “I’ve probably been in more battles than you!” — not only rings true (since, in fact, she had been), but was just a genuinely funny moment between these two actors, just for the way Tricia Helfer delivered the line (and then to James Callis’s Baltar, helmet askew in a way that, for me, evoked Rick Moranis at his most geeky).
Some dark moments
There were also some genuinely dark moments, most of which were in the show’s first half. To be fair, there was a lot of misdirection put out by the show’s actors and producers, which led me and many others to assume that the show’s ending would be very dark, possibly borderline nihilistic.
From the Maureen Ryan interview again:
MR: I think one thing that threw me about the finale was that it was hopeful.
RDM: [laughs] There were a fair number of people that were prepared for the most nihilistic [finale ever].
MR: “You’re going to kill them all, aren’t you!?”
RDM: I know.
MR: It’s the ultimate sucker punch of “Battlestar Galactica” — that it ends on a hopeful note.
RDM: Yeah, it’s true. It’s the final twist. The final twist is — that it’s all OK.
But there were still dark moments. The scene where Roslin had to deal with her role as a triage nurse was particularly wrenching — for some reason, I found I could really connect with the fear and despair that the wounded would have had going in to sickbay, the terror at being one of those flagged with the black ‘X’ of a hopeless case.
Athena’s execution of Boomer was another cold moment. It made sense, and was a natural point for the two Sharons to come to, but it was still cold and brutal. And of course, the final shootout and Cavil’s quick-thinking suicide were a final exclamation point, a last dark note to end off the action-packed first half of the episode.
But that was about it for genuinely dark stuff. I might add to this list the uncertainty regarding Helo’s fate that went on for at least another half hour…but little else.
Some hopeful moments
There were a handful of sequences on Earth, and in space, that really had a hopeful overtone. The free Centurions were given the basestar to explore the galaxy with as it pleased them to do; that was nice to see. The planet was found to be teeming with life, and I especially liked how when Laura Roslin did finally die, it was in a moment of appreciating the abundance and variety evident in the animal life on the planet; that continuity of life and death was just marvelous.
Baltar’s redemption was, as well, very touching — it was, easily, Grace’s favourite part of the episode. Brad Templeton didn’t like the revelation that Baltar knew that Caprica Six had “employers” when he he gave her access to the defence mainframe, but this was not a new concept to the series; I seem to recall certain discussions in the miniseries which referenced this same external employer. The revelation that Baltar himself could have been severely punished for granting Caprica Six the access that he did was new, somewhat, but not altogether unsurprising. And I don’t think it really detracted from his final redemption in any significant way.
And his final line to Caprica Six, which gives this post its title, was particularly poignant. That was just a damn good scene, and I think perfectly encapsulated the message of hope and redemption that the writers were evidently aiming for with this finalé.
And then, of course, the angels. There’s more I want to say on that, but they deserve their own section. Suffice to say, for the moment, that it was really nice to see a work of science fiction that didn’t even make the slightest attempt to “out” God, or the gods, as some sort of purely natural actor(s). I liked that they left the supernatural component in the story, and that it remained supernatural.
But more on that later.
The flashbacks
I don’t have time to comment on these today. Check back tomorrow or on Wednesday for my thoughts on these.
Link to follow-up article: “You and I, right here, right now.”
Brief notes on origins
I don’t have time to flesh this out today, so please check back tomorrow or Wednesday for a follow-up article. This was a significant and fascinating part of the story, especially for an evolutionary creationist like me, and I want to do both the show and the philosophy justice with my commentary. And I just don’t have that kind of time today.
So check back tomrrow.
Link to follow-up article: [coming soon!]
Just in brief, however, let me say this: I recall a blog post that I wrote about a year ago (well, ten-ish months), as part of a discussion with James McGrath of Exploring Our Matrix. The post dealt, primarily, with the theology of the series, and was in fact a response by McGrath to another article I had written on the same topic. That discussion ranged through many different topics, one of which was a discussion of the specific mythic nature of the narrative.
That BSG would end with an arrival at Earth — our Earth — was a foregone conclusion for both McGrath and myself. Where we disagreed, with specific respect to the nature of Earth, was over what state the Earth would be in when it was finally discovered, and what sort of narrative was thus being told because of it. McGrath proved to be more correct than I, in that he posited an arrival at a primitive Earth that the Colonials would seed with humans — BSG, then, would be a kind of “origins myth” for our times. I disagreed, feeling that the show was more eschatological in nature:
BSG has always struck me not as an “origins myth” for our times as much as it has seemed to be an “eschatological myth” for our times. It’s not a story about humanity’s beginning, but about humanity’s end. The cyclical nature of history has been a recurring theme in the show; I think, before the end of the show, the cycle will be broken, and history “as it is known” will come to an end — and then, quite possibly a fiery, sudden end. The show is not so much a re-working of the Book of Genesis as it is a re-working of the Book of Revelation.
To be fair, I wasn’t totally incorrect; there is a strong eschatological component to the overall story arc of Battlestar Galactica. In a very real sense, the Colonials experience the “end times.” But out of that eschatology, they become participants in the origin of humanity on Earth. Which, I suppose, fits with the cyclical nature of history as depicted in the show — one humanity’s eschaton becomes another humanity’s origins.
Still, I was sure that the series would end with a return to Earth, not an arrival at it for the first time. In this, as with my guess as to the identity of the final Cylon, I was wrong.
Kara Thrace and the angels
I don’t have time to comment on Starbuck and the head beings today. Check back tomorrow or on Wednesday for my thoughts on these aspects of the story. This is another of those things that I want to get right, and I don’t have the means to do so today.
Link to follow-up article: [coming soon!]
On God
I have to disappoint the good reader one last time. Tomorrow or Wednesday will have to be given over to commentary on this issue.
Link to follow-up article: [coming soon!]
It does serve to note, however, that some people obviously didn’t like the inclusion of the supernatural in the final resolution of the story. Brad Templeton, for example, went out of his way to write an article about why this was a bad idea. He’s not the only one who didn’t like the religious aspect of the ending.
Ron Moore had this to say, again from the Maureen Ryan interview:
It [religion] was embedded in the mythology of the show since the miniseries, so that definitely had to be part of it, and it had to have a satisfying ending on that note, but I didn’t want to come right out and have a bearded guy in the heavens or something or sort of give voice to it. I just wanted to leave it mysterious. And as with so many things, the questions are more interesting than the answers are.
It’s almost inherently something we can know. It seems like it’s a continuing theme in mythology, that you can’t really know the divine. You can experience it, you can encounter it, things can be revealed to you, but you can never really understand the mysteries at the heart of it. And the more you try to put definitions on it, the less satisfying it becomes. Once you get to the place where you imagine God as a bearded guy in a cloud, it becomes less satisfying.
Baltar’s speech in CIC is pivotal — “There’s another presence here, we’ve all felt it, we’ve all seen its impact, we know it’s around us, we know it’s around us right now, and we have to have a leap of faith and trust that it’s there and believe that it exists, even if you can’t understand what it is and what its motivations are, if it has motivations.”
Time runs short, so I will say only that I thought the inclusion of the supernatural in the finalé was the right decision. It was also consistent with the rest of the series. As I wrote, after watching “Faith“:
I think it’s clear that the producers and writers of Battlestar are attempting to communicate the reality of God within the show; He exists and, what is more, is very personal and present. The theme of “I am with you” resonates throughout the show, with the line being uttered by several different characters (always in relation to death, and in particular in relation to consolation in times of suffering and fear of what lies “beyond”). The experience of God’s “I am with you” is described (by Nana Visitor, who turns in one heck of a guest performance) as being accompanied by a sense of being warm and safe. That same sense resonates at the end of the episode when Samuel Anders consoles the dying Number Eight, and then with the same words.
This also speaks to the agentic actions of God in the series; not only does he address people directly, as in the case of Emily Kowalski, but He speaks through other people (as in the case of Anders). Of course, God’s speaking through other characters had been alluded to in previous episodes, in reference to the Cylon Hybrids, and it serves to note that once again a basestar’s Hybrid serves in a prophetic role. More on that later.
Also, I can’t help but observe that this is another instance in the series in which impending death and the passage between death and life has been abstracted with imagery involving water. In Faith, the imagery involves a ship crossing a river, where lost loved ones await the arrival of the recently deceased with open arms in an air of joy and celebration. (Grace noted that she’d heard a similar analogy of the passage between life and death from a priest at her church in Vermilion.) In Resurrection Ship, Part II, when Lee Adama is slowly dying of oxygen deprivation in the cold of space, the imagery invovles him at first floating, and then slowly sinking, into a dark abyss of water.
And I think that these scenes not only communicate the reality of God and His actions in the Universe in BSG, but also the realities of heaven and hell. One observes that William Adama is an atheist, and certainly Lee Adama has shown no religious sentiments in any episode of the series so far (and in fact, it could be argued that the way in which he discusses sacramentality with Starbuck in this episode demonstrates an “outside looking in” perspective).
The connection is tenuous, I realize, but the sense that one comes away with is that there is a connection between these different bits of visual imagery that relates to the people having them. For the secular Lee, the passage across the water is despairing and doomed. For the religious Emily, it is a time of joy and hopefulness.
At any rate, the existence of both a personal and present God and an afterlife is quite clearly communicated. There is a supernatural dimension to the Universe in BSG, and what is perhaps most impressive about it is that it is being demonstrated, more and more, in such a way that shows that the existence of the supernatural is an idea which is compatible with empirical realities, albeit in ways that at times require understanding things in ways that could be termed “outside the box.”
I think that theme was upheld in the finalé. And to be honest, I don’t see why people are getting their noses bent out of shape by the inclusion of the supernatural in the ending. Is it really any worse a decision to write a story in which the divine is posited to exist than it is to write a story in which the divine is stripped away and revealed to be…I don’t know…a gigantic orbital computer installation?
I don’t see why it would be.
Life and the human experience are not so clean and precise as to be described in strictly natural terms at all times. That’s true even of something as basic and native to all people as love…but in the history of humanity, there are other things which defy concrete explanation, as Moore notes. Being Catholic, I could point to any number of apparently miraculous healings, or the dancing Sun witnessed by thousands (believers and non-believers alike).
The point is: mystery is a component of our existence and of our experience of the world. And whether or not God ultimately does exist, that element of mystery will be ever-present, and the human spirit will seek after an ever-deeper understanding of it that will never be fully realized.
Because that is true, I wonder again why it was apparently such a bad idea for the writers to leave room for the supernatural in the finalé of Battlestar Galactica? Granted, it was bound to be a controversial decision, because people have strong opinions in both directions about the divine. But if it’s legitimate for Star Trek to come just short of revealing that all monotheistic religions were the result of the influence of a malevolent entity eventually imprisoned in the galactic core, surely it’s legitimate for BSG to come to the point of revealing that the supernatural does exist and that — whatever name it prefers to be called by — it does take an active role in guiding the events that shape the fates of its “children,” the races and beings it has created.
The only part I really didn’t like
The montage at the end, with various bits of stock footage from Japanese trade shows and whatnot, demonstrating emergent technology in robotics on Earth. I think Moore could have cut things off at the shot of the homeless people, right when Jimi Hendrix‘ version of “All Along the Watchtower” started up.
Powered by ScribeFire.
A short comment or two:
The montage was dissatisfying – if one were to speak of the cycle repeating as the angels Baltar and Six did, homelessness, tech and other problems should have been included. Then again, as BSG can be construed as a warning myth for our times, much like Terminator or, less dramatically, Asimov’s Robot novels, our fascination with ‘circus robots’ can be shown up as potentially dangerous.
As to All Along the Watchtower, I am glad that it, and McCreary’s adaptations, were not a seeming throwaway at the end of season 3 but were foreshadowed early that season and remained important to the end of the finale. On a similar note, I liked how Passacaglia (the Opera house music) and the vision itself also were not dropped but remained throughout the series to the end. In short, I like it when something that appears important is not dropped/ never seen again. JMS on B5 did similar things – he would not focus on putting a proverbial gun on the coffee table unless, at some point, the gun was going to be used.
Waiting for your other thoughts, but this post reminded me of Warren for some odd reason…;)
An interesting connection that I haven’t seen anyone make yet is that the original (1978) series’ creator was a Mormon, and Mormon mythology influenced the ‘12 colonies with a lost 13th’ that carried over here. When they were deciding where the Colonials were going to set up their various pockets of civilisation, it almost seemed like they were arguing for the seeding of what might become 13 tribes.
Anyway – this is an excellent post and may have swung my opinion about the episode, as I was definitely in the ‘dislike’ camp before I read this and now I’m much more undecided. Thank you for giving me something to think about!
“It [religion] was embedded in the mythology of the show since the miniseries, so that definitely had to be part of it, and it had to have a satisfying ending on that note”
Having people practice various religions within the show is one thing (and that was in the show since the miniseries), having God actually intervene is another.
@Jason: Well, it’s always nice to know I’ve provided food for thought; I’m glad to hear you derived something meaningful from the article.
You are definitely correct to note the Mormon influence in the original series, and I may yet make mention of it when I expand my section on the religious aspects of the show. Obviously, the re-imagined series was substantially “less Mormon” than the original, however.
@Ausir: “God” has been intervening in events in the show since the first season, though, and then to a generally increasing degree. So whereas in the first season, Baltar’s prayer of repentance was connected to the returned ship by what might have been coincidence, by the fourth season we were seeing actual miracles (the boy’s healing early on in the 4th season) and explicit references to the divine and agentic action of God in the BSGverse.
I’ve yet to see a satisfactory explanation for why this constitutes poor form or bad writing.
You’ve written an excellent post with so many points I would like to comment on, but since I’m reading this rather late in my day, I’m just going to reply to the god/angels reveal for now.
I’m going to have to overly simply this for brevity’s sake but one of the reasons that I would have preferred for god to have stayed ambiguous is that (I feel) more weight is then placed on each character’s decisions and actions.
Yes, everyone can still choose what to do once he/she sees Head characters, has visions, lives out a prophecy, etc. But if you know that it really is god sending messages, you’d pretty much have to be a real idiot to refuse. Even though the characters didn’t know all this during the run of the series, it makes me think that there’s a decreed Right way. If I had known this, I would have been less involved in each character’s struggles.
For example, Baltar was usually slapped back in line when he strayed.
I would say that this is bad writing only to the point that it was a break in tone from the rest of the series.
And technically, this element made the series more fantasy (dealing with the not explainable) than sci-fi. Not that this is a huge point, but it was a bit jarring for me to find out right at the very end that I wasn’t watching what I thought I was watching.
If I may, I want to remark first on something you said in your last paragraph.
What I found jarring, at the end, was that I’d been watching exactly what Ron Moore and his writers had been telling me I was watching for 4 seasons — a show in which literal angels were agentic actors influencing events affecting the lives of human beings, on behalf of a deity who remained off-screen.
Head Six first asserted her angelic nature in about the middle of the first season, if memory serves. In another first season episode, “The Hand of God,” Baltar makes what could be interpreted as either a wild-ass guess or a guided decision in pinpointing the critical weakness in the Cylon refinery. That ambiguity held on for about two and a half seasons, but began to wane once the Final Five plot surged to the forefront. An explicit miraculous healing opened the fourth season…and I think we both know how things progressed from there.
I was bracing myself for a “pulling back the curtain” moment all the way through, readying myself for another disappointment in the expectation that all this “God talk” would turn out to be…say…nothing more than the machinations of an ethereal remnant of the Number Seven (Daniel) model, alive as a kind of registry ghost in the programming of his brother and sister models.
In the end, that’s not what happened — what did happen is that we were handed a series that featured supernatural characters who were exactly what they asserted themselves to be.
I don’t see how that is true, to be honest. Science fiction — at least in my experience — is quick to feature things that defy explanation (or, at least, rational/sensible explanation) when it suits its purposes to do so. Heisenberg compensators, anyone?
Granted, we tend to conflate the idea of sci-fi with a more secular ideal, and as such tend to expect that if something approaching the shape or status of a god does in fact appear in a work of science fiction, said thing will eventually be outed as the result of purely naturalistic phenomena.
That’s not quite how Ron Moore works, though; he’s addressed the issue of gods and religion in a few different series now, including one Star Trek series (and Star Trek set the standard for “pulling back the curtain” in modern televised sci-fi), and then in ways which have tended to be a bit more…ambiguous on the matter of what the divine entities are.
If that makes the show a work of fantasy, then so be it; there’s nothing wrong with fantasy. More to the point, if it was a fantasy, it was a fantasy that incorporated sci-fi elements, but also incorporated fairly typical dramatic conventions as well. And one notes that the show was billed as a drama as often as it was billed as sci-fi, regardless of which channel was showing it.
That’s entirely dependent on the nature of “god” though, isn’t it? If we’re talking about a complete string-puller, then yes, the emphasis on each character’s freely chosen actions and freely made decisions is diminished.
If, on the other hand, we’re talking about something closer to e.g. the God I profess faith in as a Catholic, then there is greater emphasis placed on each character’s decisions and actions, because the human ability to make free decisions and to act freely is a key aspect of the relationship of humanity to the Christian God; this is a God which does not desire us to be a race of automatons.
BSG’s “God” is neither the Christian God nor a complete string-puller — it resides somewhere on the spectrum between the two, in that it does take a more directly perceptible role in the orchestration and outcome of events, but not to the point that it abrogates the ability of the characters to make free decisions.
That’s even true of Baltar — for as much as Head Six beats him up, slaps him, and/or appears in the form of Shelley Godfrey to try and motivate his actions, it’s still up to Baltar to choose whether to go along with the plan or reject it.
I could point to a whole book of counter-examples to that last point.
Or, to put it another way: what you say is true, except for its failure to account for the fallen and imperfect nature of humanity. Give us all the answers, and we’ll still find ways to end up pouting under a shrub. Hand us the keys to the kingdom, and we still find ways to rattle off three denials before the cock crows twice.
Which, incidentally, is one of the points that BSG makes, and then often painfully. There was that scene a couple of episodes before the end, in which the ship captains are laying claim to Galactica’s components before the ship has even been decommissioned. There might only be 38,000 humans left in the universe, but these short-sighted fools are too anxious to parcel out and divide up the spoils of their sole means of protection in order to…what, exactly?
Like it or not, that’s humanity for you. We’re weak, we’re narrow, we’re selfish, and we put vain self-interest ahead of almost every beneficial thing most of the time. It’s nice to think that if God showed up and told us what to do, we’d just up and do it…but in all probability, that’s not what would happen.
And if that means we’re all idiots…well, that might not be far from the truth.
That there was a definite plan was, again, an element of the show from fairly early on. That it took four seasons for that plan to be revealed (let alone come to fruition) doesn’t diminish the show or its characters in any real way, I don’t think.
Would the show have somehow been more meaningful if it had ended on a materialistic note which exposed God and the gods as mere frauds or figments, thus rendering the human struggle to survive little more than an attempt to delay pointless oblivion?
At times, yes. Not that he didn’t have a choice to stay out of line, though. What motivated Baltar to get back in line, at least at the outset, was pure and unadulterated fear and cowardice, rather than a lack of options.
Baltar reminds me of Jonah in this regard.
But was it really that much of a break in tone? Granted, it was a more hopeful note to end on than most of us were expecting…but in terms of the portrayal of the supernatural, it wasn’t a break in tone at all — it was, if anything, a failure on our part to realize that Moore et. al. were being straight up with us from the first season onward.
Head Six declared to Baltar, about the middle of the first season, that she was an angel of God, if memory serves. Turns out that she was exactly what she said she was.
That’s not a break, at least not according to how I understand the term.
Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All » Recommended Battlestar Galactica Reading (April 12, 2009, 8:16 am).
[...] Kenneth Hynek always has thoughtful and well-developed things to say. He’s written several analysis and reaction articles. You can find them all from You know, I know about farming. [...]
Kenneth, you’re right on many points, of which I don’t dispute. I didn’t want to have my original comment run too long so I may not have explained my points properly.
I don’t think the god reveal was an illegitimate ending. It was just one I was not expecting to be so clear-cut. But, I still stick to my original belief that it’s hard not to think that there is a Right way to do something when a god character has stated it to be so.
I think it was a break in tone because the show has usually not been about moral certainties. Are Cylons alive? Run or fight? When is an act unforgivable and when do you have to allow for another chance?
The show never really presented one side as right and one side as wrong. It often put two of the most beloved and trusted characters, Roslin and Adama, as the voice of opposing views.
I totally agree that the characters still have to choose their own actions, but for me, the viewer, if I know that the god character wants things one way, it shifts how I feel towards each character. A divine decree is often more of a storytelling problem outside the fictional world than in it.
For me, since I have not seen Ron Moore’s other works, I didn’t expect the god reveal to be THE final answer. I anticipated that it would be a part of the whole, but I thought that god would be working through the science–or in somewhat of a smaller capacity.
It speaks well for the series in general that you and I are watching the exact same thing and thinking that the story is obvious. But my assumption was wrong.
Since Head Six (and Head Baltar, I’m guessing) came on the scene right after the destruction, it seems to me that the entire journey has been about getting Hera to earth. I have to speculate that something influenced Athena to get with Helo to create this child.
In the godly scheme of things, this isn’t an issue. I would have to think that god has to operate mostly on the macro level. My emotional dissonance probably has more to do with my connection to these characters and how what is epic in human terms is still pretty puny overall. What do I have? hurt pride? An outraged insistence that the other characters’ trials and triumphs are important too? I’m not sure yet.
I don’t know if I’ve explained my feelings any better or worse with this. Thanks for the chance at clarification though.
Sorry it took so long to approve your comment, by the way. With Easter and coming back from Wyoming all crammed into one weekend, it’s taken me this long to get my head back on straight.
I don’t deny that there is a “right way” to do something in response to a commandment from God. Obviously, there is. But to be able to acknowledge that fact is a far different thing than to actually carry it out, and that applies on both an individual and a societal level.
Have a read of Exodus if you need some rather striking examples of what I’m getting at here. Have a look even at my own life — I believe that Eighth Commandment is a specific command from God, yet I’ve been guilty of telling lies in the past.
It’s nice to think that in the face of certainty about the Almighty, we’d do the right thing. And perhaps we would, often enough. But we would not do so consistently; we would not be human if we did.
Does not the choice to follow — or not follow — God’s plan fall into that same set of discussions, though?
It did and it didn’t. We saw the ethics of abortion and the merits of dictatorship vs. democracy debated, and we saw the nature of what a Cylon was debated as well.
But even in those ambiguities, certainties emerged. Whether human or not, the rape of a Cylon was presented as an unequivocal evil, as was the attempted genocide against same.
Fair enough. I suppose it depends on how you connect with the divine character in the first place, whether you agree with its aims and ends or not. I come at it differently — for me, the issue is the response of the characters to the divine plan, rather than the plan itself.
Which is basically the human condition, if you think about it…and so is rather in keeping with the overall theme of the show.
Fair enough — that’s the expectation you brought to the series. But then where does the issue truly rest — with Moore’s execution of his concept (which derives from his previous works with which you are not familiar) of with your own pre-conceptions?
To be fair, mine was as well — I was expecting certain level of “pulling back the curtain” which utterly failed to materialize.
That’s one thing that’s left up to ambiguity. It COULD be an explicit design of God’s (akin to the ordained conception of Jesus by Mary), or it could be God working through the machinations of man and Cylon to effect a greater good (akin to our God moving the heart — and working through the actions of — of a certain Babylonian king).
Getting Hera to Earth, as an event, is kind of a focal point for what is ultimately taking place, a kind of locus for the overall plan. But the overall plan is bringing the cycle of violence to an end through the unification of humanity and Cylonity.
If you don’t mind my asking, why do you say so?
Fair enough.
I suspect I understand your perspective a bit more now, although I’m thinking the most pivotal part of what you’re saying (or have yet to say) is intimated in your penultimate paragraph.