New Horizon on 24/3/2009 at 04:01
Quote Posted by JediKorenchkin
At no point did I say it was fact? I'm quite aware that it's my opinion, I was merely expressing my dislike. Because that's what the internet is for.
You stated it as if it were fact with little to no acknowledgment. Sorry, but that's how it read. If you didn't like it, just say YOU didn't like it. It comes across as a lot less pompous that way. Or at least say, "I feel, or I think" it was the worst finale ever. Oh, and no...the internet is not some open forum for spewing unfiltered, inconsiderate comments. Everyone may use it as a dumping ground, but that's just human arrogance.
Thirith on 24/3/2009 at 07:38
If I may add my two cents: statements along the lines of "It sucked!" - or, indeed, it's counterpart "It was brilliant!" - don't invite discussion. They sound like barks in a computer game: self-contained statement, with no interest in what anyone else might say on the matter. Saying, "I hated it because of X, Y and Z" is something that you can engage with. Saying "I didn't like this" or "That worked well for me" come across like you're actually interested in a discussion.
"Worst finale ever" comes across like a final statement, a proclamation, and not a terribly interesting one. Wow, I'm sure glad I know you hated it. Now let's continue with actual discussion. Because while the internet may be there for people to bark proclamations at one another, some people find it more interesting to generate discussion, which is a give and take. "I hated it!" only really generates one response, namely "Well, I liked it!" And at that point you might as well go, "Uh huh!" "Nuh huh!" "Uh huh!" "Nuh huh!" etc. etc.
Briareos H on 24/3/2009 at 07:53
wow
rachel on 24/3/2009 at 08:28
Here's my review, shamelessly reposted from my site. Just straightforward, not profound in any way as in, what's the significance of the whole series in the grand scheme of things. That will be for later, maybe.
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Oh yeah, spoilers duh.
Since they were building up on that for the last few episodes and since it was, after all, the series finale, I was expecting to see the Old Girl, a.k.a. the Bucket, a.k.a. our (t)rusty old Battlestar Galactica go down in flames, and since they were about to go after the Bad Cylons in one last assault, I assumed she wouldn't survive the trip.
Turns out after all these years she could still hold her own in a battle against a whole Cylon Colony, although, granted, with the slight advantage of having a Cylon hooked up to her mainframe and jamming the enemy's own. I'm somewhat suprised she got so little damage from a head-on collision but I'll be willing to let it pass cause that maneuver was just cool. And they weren't that far from the Colony after all, so relatively minor structural damage is believable, since she's got a reinforced armor and not a thin titanium hull like a certain Enterprise I know... Okay, it's a stretch but hey what the hell. :)
The Opera House, as anyone with half a brain would have guessed by now, turned out to be indeed our very own Galactica, and the reveal was handled beautifully, with the Final Five and everything. Looked great. It's sad to see the CIC completely gutted though. I was so pleased to see Tory get what she deserved. I was a big Cally fan from way back to the miniseries, and even when she was all whiny and messed-up I was hoping she would somehow get her life back on track. I never forgave Tory for murdering her. Go Chief! It's called Karma, bitch.
Speaking of baddies, I just loved Cavil's last moment. "Oh frak!". It was so in his character. Dean Stockwell nailed it, there was no other way for him to go.
I was less rejoiced by Boomer's demise, though I could certainly see it coming. She did steal Athena and Helo's child after all. Then she got second-thought. Changed her mind. Typical of the Eights, this. But as she put it, she made that one last choice count. Good for her, I guess.
I did think Helo was toast, for a moment. They spent quite a bit without showing him onscreen after he was shot, the bastards.
I know that canon now is that Daniel is not Kara's father but I don't care. To me it makes sense that he is, and the Finale is not disappointing in one way or another as far as that element is concerned. It makes her connection to the Five more tangible. And even if there are Angels (Head-Baltar and Head-Six), and even if post-Earth Kara herself is not human, it still makes sense that she got the Music from them. Somehow. I wonder how some can think she runs away from Lee. It's obvious she just vanished once her mission complete. The place was absolutely flat and she was nowhere in sight, there's no way someone can run that fast. There must be some kind of way outta here, indeed.
One thing puzzles me though. How did they get the info about the location of the Colony? Space is an awful big place to just happen to locate the black hole the Cylons happen to orbit.
Speaking of the Colony, shame about Racetrack. I liked her. Looked like she could survive everything. Well, I guess not. Post-mortem kaboom makes for one hell of a good-bye though.
Speaking of goodbyes, back to Galactica actual. The Bucket's end was very moving. The way she broke after the jump... woah. I really thought it was the end of it. Sending her into the Sun, in that perfect strike Anders always dreamed of, is a good death. She deserved her retirement.
Roslin too. Lately I had grown tired of Roslin's presidency, before she got too sick to do anything but get high on painkillers and smoke joints with Adama. But her last moments too were handled beautifully. It's funny that Adama takes her on a Raptor ride right before she dies (which, by the way, is also a very moving moment), I seem to recall the original ending of Blade Runner also had Deckard and Rachel flying low over green landscapes. I think it's an interesting parallel, especially when you know the original, unfilmed ending had Rachel die too. (Olmos was in BR, if you're missing the connection).
Now for the 150,000-years-later jump.
It's a bit of a WTF, but it's not that outlandish in the context of the series. I don't think I'll see any Cylon-like tech in my lifetime though. Singularity ain't near enough for that. That said I'm no rocket scientist so who knows...
I don't take it as a "technology is evil" message, but rather as a "careful with what you do" message.
But above all, as a SCI-FI IS AWESOME message. Battlestar Galactica has ended, and it was one hell of a ride.
So say we all.
JediKorenchkin on 24/3/2009 at 11:18
Okay, here.
I felt like the finale sucked for a number of reasons. I loved the first half of the eipsode or so, the assault on Cavil's station was absolutely fantastic. Stuff like the Lawyer becoming the new President was excellent and caught me off guard.
After talk of the truce, however, things just went quickly downhill.
- I didn't feel like Cavil would ever really go along with a truce. I understand that survivability trumps all, but it seemed way too easy for him to give up. And then the second someone starts shooting, he turns around and kills himself? It was so far out of character, and so anticlimactic that I was beside myself with disappointment.
- If the plan with Thrace was just for her to disappear inexplicably, why not just have her launch herself into the sun with Sam? It's a lot less "lol at you audience". The idea of her being an angel isn't terrible, except that she herself had hallucinations of her father (in this case it could be presumed he's an angel), and previously the "angels" only appeared to single people, whereas Thrace was able to walk around, get shot at, feel, etc. I feel like they set a pattern and then broke it because no one else working on the show had any idea what Thrace was either.
- The flashbacks in the last number of episodes, particularly the finale, went absolutely nowhere and just felt like filler. What's the point of seeing how Thrace and Lee met? Or seeing Baltar and Caprica first meeting again? We already know the things that happened, and when those scenes don't give any new information, it seems worthless to have them. I didn't hate them earlier on, but now during the last episode, I want to see what's coming, not what already happened.
- The idea that Hera held the key to humanity's survival never really made a lot of sense to me. Just by existing she had proved that human/cylon mating was possible. Going through all that to save her was cute, but in no way was her survival "super important". And then they find some natives that they can procreate with anyway.
- The scene with Boomer having a debt with the old man felt so far out of character for him. Drinking while commanding? That's the kind of thing that Saul did, not Bill. Furthermore, if Boomer wanted to pay him back, she could have done it, you know, by not fucking them all over.
- The stuff on the planet with Adama and Roslin was so adorable and sad that it had me in tears. Probably one of my biggest disappointments with that entire bit though, is that we know Adama isn't coming back, and at no point during the end did he say goodbye to Saul.
- As a whole I felt like finding this perfect planet was just too happy of an ending for a show that started with a holocaust and went in an even more bleak direction from there. And the last few minutes were so goddamn irritatingly preachy.
rachel on 24/3/2009 at 12:30
I don't think Kara was an Angel as we usually understand the term, and she definitely shouldnt' be put on the same level as Head-Six/Baltar. She was literally resurrected, brought back from the dead to "complete her destiny", not an ethereal being or anything like that. Her having visions of her own and being actually there is a dead giveaway she was more than a collective hallucination. And her rematerialized Viper was just as real, with clues that led them to Earth-that-was.
I do agree on the Boomer flashback. I thought at the very least the debt she had was for nearly shooting him dead, not some rookie pilot mistake from way back no-one cared about any more...
Thirith on 24/3/2009 at 14:38
@JediKorenchkin: Thanks a lot for your explanations of why you thought the finale sucked. You definitely have good points, even though I don't agree, or not completely, on most of them.
Quote Posted by JediKorenchkin
- I didn't feel like Cavil would ever really go along with a truce. I understand that survivability trumps all, but it seemed way too easy for him to give up. And then the second someone starts shooting, he turns around and kills himself? It was so far out of character, and so anticlimactic that I was beside myself with disappointment.
Cavil was a coward and a snake in the grass, at least to my understanding. He wanted immortality back, and in his mind Hera was one way of getting at it, her being a hybrid - at the very least she might reveal the secrets of 'immortality' through procreation.
The truce gave him a second option: the Final Five invented another form of immortality, if they remembered it and shared it with him he'd get what he wanted. (He could still come back later to be his usual pissed-off self and destroy humanity once he knew he couldn't die. The man loves his God Mode...)
The moment Tyrol kills Tory, that option is off the table. Cavil's lost what he wants and he's not in a position where he can get out of it - but he can deny the humans victory by ending his life on his own terms. He doesn't get immortality? At least he decides how he goes. BLAM.
Quote:
- If the plan with Thrace was just for her to disappear inexplicably, why not just have her launch herself into the sun with Sam? It's a lot less "lol at you audience". The idea of her being an angel isn't terrible, except that she herself had hallucinations of her father (in this case it could be presumed he's an angel), and previously the "angels" only appeared to single people, whereas Thrace was able to walk around, get shot at, feel, etc. I feel like they set a pattern and then broke it because no one else working on the show had any idea what Thrace was either.
I agree that this didn't seem thought through in any way. It resonated for me emotionally, but it should also make sense. One note though: we've had a (possible) manifestation of the head-"angels" before - Shelley Godfrey in season 1. There are hints in that episode that she pretty much vanished into thin air. (I haven't seen the episode in a while, so I may have the details wrong.)
Quote:
- The flashbacks in the last number of episodes, particularly the finale, went absolutely nowhere and just felt like filler. What's the point of seeing how Thrace and Lee met? Or seeing Baltar and Caprica first meeting again? We already know the things that happened, and when those scenes don't give any new information, it seems worthless to have them. I didn't hate them earlier on, but now during the last episode, I want to see what's coming, not what already happened.
The flashbacks worked okay for me in terms of bookends: where did the characters start, where did they end? It's a bit hackneyed as a narrative strategy, but I liked it. However, the flashbacks could have been better in themselves - they felt flabby and self-indulgent, even if they did highlight the journey these characters have been on.
Quote:
- The idea that Hera held the key to humanity's survival never really made a lot of sense to me. Just by existing she had proved that human/cylon mating was possible. Going through all that to save her was cute, but in no way was her survival "super important". And then they find some natives that they can procreate with anyway.
I'd agree on this. I can come up with a number of reasons why Adama needed to go and save her, but the series could have made a better job of making the decision convincing.
Quote:
- The scene with Boomer having a debt with the old man felt so far out of character for him. Drinking while commanding? That's the kind of thing that Saul did, not Bill. Furthermore, if Boomer wanted to pay him back, she could have done it, you know, by not fucking them all over.
Ditto. Boomer's always been portrayed as conflicting, as wavering between Evil Boomer and Good Boomer (put in a simplistic way). You don't need to underline the decision with a superfluous flashback.
Quote:
- (...) And the last few minutes were so goddamn irritatingly preachy.
Yes, added to which it didn't fit the series very well. The tone was off, it came across as smug - and in the end, I don't think that "Treat your robots well because otherwise they'll rise up against you!" was ever a main theme of the series. Yes, it was the starting point for the plot, but thematically the series has always been more about revenge and redemption, doing the right thing vs. getting the right (?) results, holding on to ethics during crises, humanity being its own worst enemy. The final five minutes made me think that the writers had a wobbly grasp on what their series was.
DaBeast on 24/3/2009 at 14:53
Babylon 5 was superior in almost every way.
ZylonBane on 24/3/2009 at 14:54
It's worth noting that arguably the most awesome moment in the entire episode -- Cavil just saying fuck it and blowing his brains out -- wasn't in the original script. That was entirely Dean Stockwell's idea.
Thirith on 24/3/2009 at 15:26
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
It's worth noting that arguably the most awesome moment in the entire episode -- Cavil just saying fuck it and blowing his brains out -- wasn't in the original script. That was entirely Dean Stockwell's idea.
It's funny - most of the people I've heard (read) that didn't like the finale felt that Cavil's death didn't make any sense and was a stupid writers' cop-out.
