BSG: Finally a Finale

It's been nearly 24 hours now since I watched the finale of Battlestar Galactica. I've been mulling over the events of the episode, sorting them out, savoring the bits I liked and trying to work out the bits that didn't feel right. More shows need to follow this model of having a beginning, middle and end planned out ahead of time as opposed to shooting for seasonal reneweal immortality.

All of the best stories have endings and overall this was a very good ending for a series that has been one of the best shows on television. Just as not ever epsiode of the series was a hit not every part of the finale worked quite as well as they might have been hoping.

Spoilers ahead and plenty of them!

I was grateful they spared us any lengthy goodbyes as Galactica left the fleet for her final mission. And Baltar's hand-wringing was non-existent, we all knew that this was going to be the one selfless act of his life that would define his reason for existence so don't even be coy and pretend he's going with the fleet.

For that matter they wasted no time getting into the big battle, one jump and in and the guns started pounding. I think the FX have been light in recent episodes because they were saving everything up for this episode and it's all the better for it. Yet still for all of the high-tech weaponry it felt almost like a pirate adventure with Galactica ramming the Cylon colony and the crew rappelling down lines to board it.

The long-running visions of trying to find Hera in the opera housse were finally linked to Deana's visions of the Final Five by Baltar and Six and their part in all of it. And all this time the both of them have been nudged, guided and mentally jostled by a pair of angels. Angels - that works for me, a lot better than some lame "chip in their heads" pseudo sci fi techno jargon hand wave could have ever done. And the same goes for Kara Thrace, I think her character is made all the more interesting and meaningful by her being an angel.

I got the feeling that the opera house visions were just as much memories as premonitions. Events like these had played themselves out so many times that they were becoming part of the genetic memory of everyone involved. I don't think "All Along the Watchtower" triggered the Final Five. I think that passing through the region of space that served as a signpost for the 13th Tribe of Kobol unlocked some of their shared memories which happened to include knowledge they were Cylons and a song they knew way back when. The same could be said for Kara's ability to play the song, her "father" taught her something important a very long time ago, the song is just a metaphor for a deeply seated memory.

How many times had God tried to set His plan in motion only to have it all go awry because of a bad pattern being repeated? Genetic memory, how much of our baggage is built-in and how much do we choose to drag along? Are we capable of overcoming the mistakes of our past and actually working towards a new way of doing things or is screwing things up just the way that we're wired? Big questions for a sci fi TV show. Regardless of genre, if more shows were as well-crafted and thought-provoking as Battlestar Galactica has been I'd be watching a lot more television.