The End of an Epic

I just finished watching the finale of Battlestar Galactica for a second time and wanted to post a few thoughts on it. First things first, Battlestar is without a doubt one of the finest science fiction series of all time. The approach that Battlestar took was that of the first science fiction novels, in which the fiction was not the subject, but merely a tool for revealing and confronting issues of the real world we live in. Battlestar confronted the issues of our day with brutal honesty and I loved it for this. Real moral dilemmas were presented, ones that had no clear right or wrong side, and that we as viewers weren't sure how to mentally deal with. While I was interested by Battlestar's exploration of artificial intelligence and the nature of persons, it was always the political conflicts between humans that interested me the most. Battlestar even explored the supernatural in several episodes, but the religious themes in the show were primarily used to examine Colonial society and religion's relationship to characters' decision-making. While the question of the existence of a supernatural was certainly posed, it was never a question that I was interested in having answered within the context of the Battlestar narrative. Much more interesting to me were the ways in which real people dealt with the consequences of their respective belief or unbelief in the supernatural.

So, we come to the finale, which I have mixed feelings about (and probably always will). On the one hand, I enjoyed the well-staged final battle, some of the flashbacks, and the ways in which each character arc was resolved. I felt that the characters came full circle and were left in a very natural, logical and fulfilling place by the end. I was not pleased, however, with how the finale dealt with the supernatural. Three things in particular were troublesome:

1. The "deus ex machina" nature of the ending—the fact that the narrative relied heavily on the supernatural. For most of the show, the progression of the narrative had been motivated and carried out by the characters in the story. The finale introduced the supernatural as an actual agent (not merely a vague, grand "mover of events"). To me this was ultimately unsatisfying. I particularly disliked the fact that humans were discovered to have evolved separately on earth. Something of this utter improbability can only be explained through use of the supernatural.

2. The way in which the supernatural was talked about—Baltar's categorization of the supernatural as a "force of nature", "beyond good and evil" was a disappointing portion of the episode with shaky theological grounding. Nearly all of Head Six and Head Baltar's conversation at the end of the episode was far too explicit and hokey.

3. The fact that the Battlestar "universe" and our own were connected so closely. Showing modern Times Square, New York City, was a mistake. It took me out of the immersive world of Battlestar in a way that almost broke the "fourth wall". I felt like the last three minutes simply did not belong in a Galactica episode. Aesthetically, it was jarring, especially the last video montage of robotic advancements, put to a modern rendition of "All Along the Watchtower". The connection between the two "worlds" was also troublesome because of the sheer improbability that our modern civilization would be so close in all almost every aspect to Colonial civilization. We have the same clothes, cars, weapons, etc. down to the smallest details. Sure, this fits with the theme of show "all this has happened before, all this will happen again" but it implies some sort of mystical set of Platonic forms built into our DNA that tell us what a car should look like, etc. This kind of mysticism is not in keeping with what the show has been. The "all this has happened before" statement had been a sobering view of the cyclical nature of human history and our repeated engagement in war, not some weird mystical mantra. I feel that if the connection between the Battlestar world and our own had not been made so explicit, then the similarities between the two worlds could simply have been "visual analogies".

The way in which the finale used the supernatural was disappointing and, as all finales have the possibility of doing, it marred the show. The brilliance of the show overall, however, gives me confidence that the mistakes of the finale will not be enough to significantly affect the show's legacy, or disturb its place as one of the finest shows in television history.