finale – Only Mostly Dead

I’ve just watched the finale of Battlestar Galactica, and whilst I’m probably not up to a proper review I did want to say something about it.

Earlier in the year I bought a box set with the mini-series and seasons 1-3 in and worked my way through it in a matter of weeks. I then started on season 4 – courtesy of my internet friends – but had had the final 3 or 4 episodes sitting on my harddrive for the last few months. I think part of me didn’t want to watch the end, and part of me had run out of patience with the increasingly convoluted plot and depressing storylines of season 4.

Anyway yesterday I finished all but the finale and today I watched that.

What a let-down. Not because I expected cast-iron consistency or wanted all those outstanding questions answered (“because of God’s plan” seemed to be the one-size-fits-all one anyway) but because I wanted something a bit more uplifting. Everyone seems to end up either dead or alone, or at the very least facing a life of hard work as a subsistence farmer with only their SO as company.

I’ll admit it’s been a tough weekend personally so I may be projecting my need for a happy ending but I found that, at best, a little flat.

One of my favourite Joss Whedon quotes comes from a commentary track where he’s discussing the liberties they took with consistency and reality etc and he says

“Some shows, X-Files for example, very much into the realism, the science behind whatever the horror is, explaining it, really justifying it in the world. We are so much more about the emotion resulting from
this. Not why there might actually be vampires, but how you might actually feel in high school if you had to fight them.”

BSG at its best let you experience what it would feel like to be a small band of refugees on the run from an enemy trying to wipe you out. All the technical stuff it always felt like it was grounded in how people relate to modern-day technology. So it felt real.

This ending didn’t feel real. Because I think that whilst there would be some spreading out if 38,000 people had a whole planet to share, I think there would be large groups wanting to stay close.

And despite the beauty of the African plains or whereever they were supposed to be, I reckon they’d never be so foolish as to throw away all their existing technology. “Never underestimate the desire for a clean slate,” says Adama. “Never underestimate a writer’s willingness to override the logical for the poetic, ” say I.

Still the series as a whole was excellent.

Don’t you hate it when you find someone doing what you’re trying to do, only better? Someone to whom, if you’re honest, you can point and say, “look that’s what I meant!” and all your indulging friends will smile faintly and say, “Oh, I get it now.” Well turns out there’s someone like that for me and I’ve just read his blog.

Those of you with a long memory, or who’ve skimmed the archives for the good bits will know that I did a humourous recap of both the series 2 and series 3 finales of the new Dr Who. And you may have been wondering (if you are vaguely in step with the changing of the seasons, the rise and fall of the tides, the TV schedules and so on) whether I had forgotten to do so again, or whether my utter laziness just meant it was late.

The fact of the matter is that I had pretty much decided not to bother because some things are so bad that even to point and laugh is not worth the effort. Or so I thought…

Then I read Mr Andrew Rilstone’s reaction to the final couplet of Dr Who episodes. Check it out. He’s funny, clever and insightful. He makes important points about things I agree with. He understands that there’s a difference between silliness for silliness’ sake and silliness that gets you somewhere. He goes on a bit, but then so did that bloody finale.

He says the kinds of things I’d like to say but does it better. And he’s actually so funny and clever and all that I almost don’t hate him at all.

Almost…