“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.
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