Lo, there be Spoilers here
After watching these characters’ lives be shredded, built up, re-shredded and eventually ground into a gaseous mist of blood, there was no other way to end Battlestar Galactica . These characters have gone through the fucking wringer for our amusement and we needed to pay tribute to the characters - the actors, the writers, and production team. And I didn’t mind giving them that moment, after all the “Oh Shit” moments they’ve given me.
A Child’s Odyssey… and Adult’s
From the very beginning, Ronald D. Moore’s BSG set off on a parallel path of the 70s show, and if you look at the two shows, I see one as the children’s version of BSG and the other the accurate one, comparing children’s nativity plays to the sick fucking Passion-of-the-Christ blood and gore. Even down to the Angelic version of characters in this intergalatic odyssey, there’s a kid’s version and the “warts and all” truth version.
BSG was ripe for it’s time: in moment of panic, America was about to declare war on the world to ensure tyrants never force others to obey them. There’s a kernel of painful truth in that last sentence. BSG similarly blockaded the characters into a metal box against a deadly environment. The metaphor wasn’t just spot-on, but obvious.
So, what does this mean to television?
I don’t know. I do believe that episodic TV that has no goal is mind is reaching an end. Personally, while I can’t stand 5 minute episodes like The Guild or Red vs. Blue - funny as they are, the story is never deep enough for me. And excellently written TV is now more rare, especially with the CSI/Numbers/Bones feces-infested shows that insult everyone who participates in them these days. Real science is hard. Real life is hard. Why don’t we EVER see the villain get away and the cold case grow cold, die, and be an bitter pill.
BSG gaves us plenty of bitter pills, from romances that should’ve and shouldn’t to betrayals to the worst suicide ever depicted on tv (Dualla’s). Depressing and horrific. But it made for a compelling story. End to end, BSG left it’s mark on television.
The Cautionary
The cautionary tale of BSG truly is what is the next phase of life. Where do we go from here? My opinion is we go forward. We build the robots. We make the AI. We do it early. We do it often. We do it prolifically. And we make a strong effort to not obliterate ourselves in the process. We do these things like the way we climb mountains: because we can, because it’s there. Moore’s cautionary also comes with the nature of man, questioning the religious effort of people. Having heard him speak a couple times, he’s as brazen as most people get about this.
But still we have billions of people working to perpetrate the myth machines. However, Moore has as well. Making Kara Thrace an angel - or a construct that fulfilled it’s mission and self-deleted, and implying that Caprica 6 and Baltar could see constructs/angels, means there’s a design in the chaos. It’s very ham-handed, deus ex machina, and my rational-minded viewpoint, disappointing. I believe he backed down from the wall of “your religions are lies” - spoon feeding myth-lovers a last minute backdoor so that “everything” end ok because a deity is looking out for these characters.


