BSG Spoiler

Jeremy Francis · 22 Mar 2009, 04:10 · from 2009-March.txt.gz

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From: francisj at iinet.net.au (Jeremy Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:10:57 +0900
Subject: (urth) BSG Spoiler
In-Reply-To: <49C56C67.4070601 at io.com>
References: <W85788332174731237308642@webmail43>	<672C2051E9384B4B8E9EE654B29CB711@eMachinePC>	<D8B9D7A1-EFBB-43A8-8C96-6285C9360C5E at butcherbaker.org>
	<49C56C67.4070601 at io.com>
Message-ID: <000001c9aaa4$33cf1e60$9b6d5b20$@net.au>

I rarely weigh in on anything on this list but may I share my disgust with
that ending.  It was essentially two hours of "Oh, shit, I've backed myself
into a corner.  How do I get out?"  This leads to some of the more absurd
elements of the episode - the first of which was when Cavil consented to
some sort of treaty based on Gaius' "I see angels!" statement, followed by
Lee's "Atavism for all, enjoy copulating with the mud-smeared natives;
alternatively, contract diseases we'll have no hope of curing," head angel
Kara (who could still fly a Viper and could be seen by all), the shoe-horned
opera "explanation", and the dancing robot montage.  Not to mention so many
people being willing to die to save one half-Cylon little girl.  Might I say
that the "God" in the BSG universe is pretty stupid - so, you can send new
people, who fly real (apparently) Vipers, and the best means of getting
humanity to where they're going is to have Kara remember the coordinates
when she's standing right in front of the FTL console?  

"God did it" or "magic did it" out of nowhere is considered a lazy
explanation for a reason.  Though, to be honest, I found "Time to split up,
with few supplies, and not even try to create a civilisation" even more
ridiculous.  I can imagine the fleet members: "I'm a mechanic.  What the
hell do I know about being a hunter-gatherer?  Is it too late to side with
Gaeta?" 
Aspiring TV writers: this is why you plan what you're going to write, at
least in general detail, at the start of your series.  See: Carnivale,
Babylon 5, or even Deep Space 9 (which, while not as good as the others, was
fairly cogent).  I've thought since they found the "real" Earth that there
was no convincing way to end this series, and I was right.

At least we got Cavil blowing his brains out, Baltar's "I know a bit about
farming", and Roslin's death, which were all very effective/awesome scenes.
Oh, silly Adama, you can't marry a corpse.

-----Original Message-----
From: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On
Behalf Of Jeff Wilson
Sent: Sunday, 22 March 2009 7:39 AM
To: The Urth Mailing List
Subject: Re: (urth) BSG Spoiler

Son of Witz wrote:

> [complete spoilitude follows]
> 
> my big questions were answered, and most threads were resolved, even if 
> pat TV answers weren't given. Maybe Wolfe has conditioned me to get less 
> confirmation.
> the biggest unresolved issue, to me is "they have a plan"  well, what 
> was it.
> 
> the thing ended up exactly where I'd been hoping and suspecting, a 
> merger of the biological beings, a new humanity, a separation from 
> centurions, a new Home on Earth, a clean slate.  So, whatever the plan 
> was, even if it was demonic, it's fruit was what I'd hoped for, and as 
> the story seems to indicate, as God intended.
> 
> hmm. where have I seen that before. SF Quasi-Angelic eugenics plan for 
> bettering humanity and an apocatastasis for humanity, and cyclical 
> iterations of Earth, and cyclical iterations of humanity creating beings 
> that think they're better who put humanity through the crucible?  Gods 
> plans working through flawed and evil beings?  Survivors of a ship 
> landing on a new earth and going native?
> It all seems VERY New Sun to me.
> 
> Starbuck is an angelic eidolon of sorts.  What else could she be? It 
> begs the question of who resurrects and how? but I'm okay with the 
> delicious ambiguity there.

The exceptional thing is that it happened at least _twice_; there was no 
way for the "first" Starbuck's corpse and wreckage to have gotten from 
the gas giant to Earth. I think this also hints that the the disappeared 
Starbuck *went* somewhere instead of dissipated. Unfortunately, she is 
not shown in the epilogue.

> this is as resolved as I need it to be. my wife disagrees.  The "big 
> reveal" was her disappearance.   Wouldn't angel wings or dialogue have 
> been cheesy?
> My wife would want me to hedge that with the questions of why she had 
> that role, why she had that song?  I'm okay with it. There was enough 
> early prophesy with her finding the arrow, with her as the angelic 
> masthead for Adama's boat.  "Harbinger of Doom" is problematic.  But 
> again, as we've argued on the list, an clean slate reset is often seen 
> as doom, even though it's a rebirth.

Harbinger of _death_.  Which could refer to he prowess as a warrior, or 
that anyone she shacks up with end up untimely dead?

> Operah house has been going on since what, season 2?  people kept saying 
> they'd dropped the ball.   I beg to differ. A good example of the fact 
> that they did know where they were going. I think there is enough on 
> display to see that they knew who it would end. it was all the threads 
> beginning to end that they wove together as they went.

You made a typo there, that "who" was better known than "what" - but the 
real murkiness was what the Cylon's plot could possibly be - and we 
still really don't have a good idea of what rational plan "John" could 
have had that would have attracted the participation of the less insane 
skinjobs.

> Cavil's cop out was even ok, if a little easy. He went against all of 
> his petty issues and made a truce in the name of his peoples survival.  
> He doesn't seem to want to stay around to see it, or see it fall apart. 
> but he killed himself instead of killing the truce.

Did we watch the same show? The truce with Cavil's people ended before 
he killed himself.

> funny bit with Gaelin going north.
> wonder if his strain evolves into the Gaelic peoples...

a lone, sterile cylon skinjob on an island with no people?

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >
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