All This Has Happened Before
'Battlestar Galactica' recap: All this has happened before, and all this volition happen again
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…a rag-tag fleet comprised of the survivors of a genocidal holocaust — and, somewhen, those who caused that holocaust — searched for the metaphorical mutual ground upon which they could build a future, equally well as a literal ground where they could constitute the foundations for a better tomorrow.
Through it all, through tragedy and triumph, death and dishonor, torture and titillation, President Laura Roslin, Admiral William Adama, and the fleet they've watched over as humbled parents and guiding lights have endured.
And now, here we are, at the terminate of days.
As distressing as nosotros all might be that Battlestar Galactica has, for all intents and purposes, come to a close, we must also realize that its finale is a fundamentally crucial part of the experience. Every story needs an ending. On that, I retrieve we all tin concord. Equally wonderful as it has been, lo these by 4 years, I don't recall any of u.s. wanted this show that we love to carry on ad infinitum, eventually succumbing to that which plagues every show that overstays its welcome: irrelevance. Specially since, for BSG, relevance is the coin of the realm.
So the simply real question is: How did Battlestar Galactica cease? With a bang, a whimper, a petty bit of both? As gloriously somber equally Robin of Locksley blindly firing an arrow into the Sherwood depths to mark his burial spot? As frustratingly perfect every bit The Sopranos' slam to black? As hauntingly surreal every bit St. Elsewhere, revealed to be the intricate fever-dream of an autistic child?
Some will likely feel cheated; that the answers they felt were owed them were left woefully unresolved. Others volition bask in the warm glow of emotional satisfaction. Me, personally, I feel unsatisfyingly satisfied: I wanted both more and less, of which we'll get to in a infinitesimal.
One thing I recollect we can all hold on, though: This is exactly the way that Ronald D. Moore wanted his testify to end. And, as such, I have the utmost respect for his accomplishment. In goggle box, few get to tell their story their way and terminate it on their terms. For that, I think nosotros should all go outside and spill half our drinks on the sidewalk. Out of respect.
Out of that same respect, I'm gonna pepper this, near likely the final time I'll go to write nigh Battlestar Galactica, with my ten favorite BSG moments. Some are whole episodes, some are mere flicks of the wrist…just they all speak to why I love this show, even with its flaws, so damned much. And, given that I'm also recapping a two-hour episode, we're gonna exist here a while. The smoking lamp is out, and the scotch is Talisker. Want some? Become your ain. Here nosotros go.
Side by side: Caprica before the fall
The cardinal to "Daylight" is realizing that, sometimes, questions don't get answered. If you can swing with that, then what this series finale offers (and doesn't offering) will sit perfectly well.
Nosotros opened back on Caprica, Before the Fall. Then far, Caprica seems to consist of humble abodes, parks, and strip joints. I know that Adama and Tigh are men's men, but for some reason I can't imagine them hanging out at a nudie bar. Someplace with night wood and a bartender with a bow tie. Just props to Ellen Tigh for rolling with the fellas: The family that plays together, stays together.
(Favorite Moment #1: Killing Ellen Tigh. It was so tender, so sugariness, so heartbreaking to lookout the one-eyed Saul Tigh poison his own married woman because she was collaborating with the Cylons — using everything at her disposal, including her trunk and secret rebel plans, to buy her married man's freedom from toaster confinement.)
Lee was as convinced of his righteousness years agone as he is today. He sat downwardly with a daughter he simply met and lectured her about her duty to take role in the political system. And it's clear that in that location was e'er something between them. Beginning, information technology was Zak Adama. Then information technology was their jobs. After that, it was Baltar — call back when Kara slept with him? — then Sam, then decease, and finally…fate. (Information technology's besides interesting that Nib and Lee weren't on speaking terms even earlier Zak died.)
(Favorite Moment #2: Lee and Kara, sleeping together. "I beloved Kara Thrace!" Poor Lee. Shouting it at the top of his lungs, naked as a jaybird, flush with postal service-coital emotion, doesn't mean that what seems like the inevitable will last longer than a dusky New Caprica night. The push-and-pull of destiny e'er kept them in each other'due south orbit, fated never to country, and never to break away. And so she went and married Anders.)
Laura Roslin, meanwhile, channeled The Real Housewives of Caprica Metropolis, and got cougariffic on a erstwhile student. Apparently, everyone can handle his or her liquor better than Ol' Bill Adama, Admiral Gakbar himself.
Adama and that corporate job he refused to accept remind me, of all things, of Outset Blood. When John Rambo is crying that he used to be able to wing a gunship, drive a tank, exist in charge of million dollar equipment and hundreds of men'south lives and at present he can't hold a job parking cars. Adama has been The Man, and here's some pencil pusher request if he'southward e'er stolen cash from a register.
(Favorite Moment #3: Laura thanking Dr. Cottle. This is a brand-new i, right from the finale, just I was moved more by this simple gesture — showing genuine appreciation for the man who did everything within his considerable medical powers to keep her alive for as long as he did — than I was by Laura's decease. I was a chip like Cottle in that scene, trying my all-time to keep information technology together.)
In that location was something refreshingly former school about the lead-upward about the preparations for the last boxing. Plans being made all over the ship, Adama saying that the firefight volition be "like two quondam ships on the line, slugging it out at point blank range," installing Sam's hybrid hot tub in the CIC, promoting Hoshi to Admiral and Lampkin to President — setting the fleet'due south affairs in gild. Cerise-striped Centurions marched on the flight deck, much similar when they were marching on New Caprica. Just at present, they're on our side. Or we're on their side. Or in that location'due south a side, and we're all on it.
And, finally, Adama "going around the horn," giving us i last good await inside the ship he, like we, has come up to dear.
Adjacent: The Old Man leaves the Sometime Girl
(Favorite Moment #4: Presenting Laura with the Blackbird. Damnit, I still get chills thinking about it. How does Galactica'south crew bear witness affection for and credence of their President? Past building the first ship since C-24-hour interval and naming information technology "Laura.")
Baltar manned up and stayed on Galactica, leaving his flock behind. ("They're all yours now, Paula. Enjoy them.") I'g puzzled past what's happened to Gaius Baltar. We'd been asked to invest and then much fourth dimension in his religious conversion, his newfound sense of purpose. We've been shown he and his people being handed weapons, as if they'd be the armada's last line of defense against the Cylons running rampant among them. And all of that fell by the wayside, simply because Baltar stepped up and agreed to go along the rescue Hera mission. I mean, it'southward overnice that he's not a wuss, but that just feels like a story dead-end — similar the whole Sagittarion fiasco — that Ronald D. Moore and Co. followed that didn't lead anywhere.
(Favorite Moment #5: Caprica 6 snaps a infant'due south neck. While watching the miniseries, that was precisely when I said to myself, "Self, if this prove is willing to impale a baby, so all bets are off: It tin exercise annihilation. We're watching the rest of this affair, I don't care what y'all're doing on Fri night.")
I'm merely gonna pop this in verbatim. Because this was the last fourth dimension we'd watch William Adama lead men and women into battle. The last time we'd heed to him stir the soul: "This is the Admiral. Just so there'll be no misunderstandings later on. Galactica's seen a lot of history, gone through a lot of battles. This will be her last. She will not fail us, if nosotros do not fail her. If we succeed in our mission, Galactica volition bring u.s. dwelling house. If nosotros don't, it doesn't matter anyway. Activeness stations!"
I don't intendance how you've felt virtually the terminal few episodes, whether you lot establish them illuminating, or boring, or elegiac: You can't tell me that this firefight wasn't wondrous to behold. Galactica absorbing punishment like Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle, Sam the super-hybrid shutting down the Colony'south slackers, Adama ordering "all ahead flank speed" and ramming the nose of the old girl downwards the commonage Cylon throat — this is what had been missing for me in the run-up to the finale. Spectacle. Valor. Stuff blowing up existent good.
(Favorite Moment #half dozen: "Exodus, Part Ii." With Adama unwilling to get out his people behind on New Caprica, he hatched a daring rescue plan. In case it failed, he sent Lee — and the Battlestar Pegasus — off with the rest of the fleet for safety. As the Colonial insurgency fought information technology out with the Cylons on the ground, Galactica jumped into the godsdamned atmosphere, falling like a rock earlier it launched its vipers and jumped back out. Crippled from the effort, Galactica is a sitting duck for the multiple Cylon baseships, bearing downward on her. Only earlier all is lost, Pegasus rolled in to salve the day. Never have CG ships moving through space been then frakking heroic.)
NEXT: Galactica = Opera Firm
As Lee led his assault team out Galactica's snout, Helo and his raptor wranglers landed some other strike team, and they fanned out looking for Hera, running and gunning through the Colony. Lucky for them, Boomer decided to switch sides i last fourth dimension. (And Simon paid the price.)
Then now Baltar and Caprica Vi stood on the line, nervous, set to repel borders. "I'm proud of yous," she told him. "I've ever wanted to be proud of yous." And and so the Head games got complicated…because Caprica and Baltar can see each other'south Head people. Which doesn't make whatever sense, but more than on that later.
A wave of Centurions boarded Galactica, while Boomer found Helo and Sharon on the Colony and handed over Hera. "Tell the sometime man, I owed him one." And and so, equally Sharon plugged Boomer, we flashed back to Adama giving a immature, near-washout Boomer one terminal chance to go along her billet on Galactica. What goes around, comes around.
(Favorite Moment #7: Shooting Adama. We knew that Boomer was a Cylon, and we knew she was struggling with the thing inside her that was forcing her to do bad things. But we weren't even close to prepared for her to walk into CIC and popular the Former Homo in the chest. Hell of a way to cliffhang the first flavor.)
With the ringlet-haired bundle dorsum in their possession, the assault teams returned to Galactica, only to notice that they've gotta shoot their mode to the CIC. When one of the Dorals fired a few rounds into Helo'southward leg, Hera decided to run off. After everything she'd been through, she chose that moment to run from her parents? I will say that, at least, we got a resolution for the Opera Business firm stuff. That everything those four people saw — Laura, Caprica Half-dozen, Baltar, and Sharon — would serve as a kind of cognitive GPS to lead them to Hera, and then bring her precisely where she needed to be (to get captured by Cavil). It all came together and information technology all made sense. I wonder how much of this was planned — if they knew way back when they kickoff introduced the opera business firm sequence two seasons ago that this was how information technology would resolve. If they did…that'southward awesome.
Why does Baltar go to make the big speech that saves Hera? "I encounter angels. Angels in this very room. Now I may be mad, but that doesn't mean that I'g not right." Why not any number of people continuing in that location who might take something to add together to the conversation? And why didn't someone shoot Cavil in the skull while he was distracted by Gaius' blathering?
NEXT: The showtime of the endings
(Favorite Moment #8: 1 Year Later. Gaius Baltar assumed the role of President of the Colonies, and he made his showtime social club of business settling on the inhospitable New Caprica. Equally the weight of the role — and the detonation of a nuke in the fleet — settled in, Baltar rested his head on his desk. When he raised information technology again, we were already a year into life on New Caprica, with President Baltar surrounded by harlots and hopped upwards on pills. A ballsy storytelling maneuver that worked similar a charm.)
Anyway, a truce was called: the Five agreed to requite the Cylons the Resurrection tech once more, if Cavil would call off the assault and render Hera. Too bad the just style for the V to pass on that info was to join in some goopy mind meld that allowed them to share each other's memories. And the minute Tory's lilliputian "I killed Cally" secret wasn't a secret anymore, Tyrol totally lost his cool, snapped her neck similar a twig, and inadvertently started another firefight…one which ends with Cavil dead, the Colony crippled, and Kara jumping Galactica to condom by tapping the "All Along the Watchtower" music into the FTL drive. (Nosotros'll skip over the incredibly long odds of a raptor with a dead crew firing its missiles at but the right time, and every missile hitting the Colony.)
Galactica reappeared, having used her very last spring to become articulate of the Colony, simply she was bucking like a bronco, buckling like a can can. It was a Battlestar that looked like a toy that'd been played with too much. And then we got to Earth. Or, at least, the planet nosotros know every bit Earth…which isn't the existent Earth, just a lush prehistoric rock with all kinds of wildlife and Cro-Magnons walking the savannah.
(Favorite Moment #9: "33." The miniseries was its own make of wearisome-burn awesome, only the commencement episode out of the gate — which had the Cylons pouncing on the armada every 33 minutes — established it'due south lived-in grizzliness with speed and economic system.)
From here on out, "Daybreak" was only a series of endings. For me, some of them worked very well: the Centurions getting the baseship, Sam piloting Galactica and the fleet into the sun (while the classic Battlestar Galactica theme crept in to Deport McCreary's score), Adama taking his concluding viper flying off an abased flight deck, Tyrol heading off to be a Scottish highlander, Adama and Starbuck'southward concluding exchange:
"Whaddya hear, Starbuck?"
"Nothing only the rain."
"Well grab your gun and bring in the cat."
And Laura's death could've been some kind of histrionic, melodramatic affair…simply it was handled with class and grace. (And the flashback to her all sexy in her lingerie, kicking her cub to the curb and deciding to get into the political game, was a overnice bookend.) With her demise came the dissolution of BSG's first family. I don't understand why Beak Adama was never going to see his son again. Why did Laura's expiry take to send him into a self-imposed exile? Why should he turn his back on Lee and Tigh and alive out his days alone, in the cabin he'll build?
NEXT: Kara's surprising exit
Merely that's nothing compared to what happened with Kara Thrace. For all of its religious overtones and prophetical trappings, Battlestar Galactica has been a show rooted in the real. It was divers past a very real holocaust and the harsh realities of a earth lost, of shattered promise, that gave the show its shape. For characters to dice, and come dorsum from the dead, and vanish into sparse air…feels like a betrayal of that fundamental premise. Is she an angel, as Baltar would merits? A collective figment of anybody's imagination? I know that Ron Moore has said that Kara is any we want her to be. I want her to make sense. (And who, exactly, was Kara the Harbinger of Decease for? The Cylons? Non for the humans, conspicuously.) Drunk on Caprica with Lee, she revealed that her greatest fear was of not being remembered. Of existence forgotten. No hazard of that, to be sure. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace volition remain one of the corking modern television characters. I only wish that her ending honored her.
(Favorite Moment #10: Kara Thrace, with her guns back on. Felix Gaeta stirred up a hornets' nest with his mutiny, but in "The Adjuration" Starbuck shook off her soul-searching shock, strapped on her pistolas, and started gunning downwards the offenders. "I tin do this all day." Amen, sister.)
Finally, 150,000 years subsequently. In New York Urban center. Head Baltar and Head Six peer over the shoulder of Ronald D. Moore himself (Angels? Devils?) every bit he read about the discovery of mitochondrial Eve, the woman to whom all of humanity can be traced. Hera. Y'all know, of all the endings this episode had, the NYC ane was my to the lowest degree favorite. Why hammer the bespeak so friggin' difficult? We go it. Nosotros're doing the very same affair the Colonies did, inventing artificial intelligence, letting applied science run abroad from us. We would've gotten that without the CNBC reports of cutesy robots. The minute we saw the outline of Africa from infinite, we kinda knew where this was heading.
I've said information technology before, and I'll say it hither: I don't begrudge Ron Moore his recalcitrance in ending Battlestar Galactica. Information technology must exist a simultaneously difficult and joyous affair, making your fashion to the end of such a storytelling journey. Do I wish I'd gotten more answers? Sure. While not as reliant upon mystery and riddles as Lost, Battlestar Galactica had its share of lore, of arcana, of threads that seemed to be attached to the finish of something larger. And we got a lot of those answers — that Cylon episode before this season delivered the goods (and The Plan promises to deliver more than) — but there are all the same some that nag.
Merely some questions get answered, and some just lead to other questions. Such is life, such is Battlestar Galactica.
It'southward hard to summarize four years of a television show. It but is. It's hard to take in more than than 80 hours of television and brand any kind of existent judgment about it. There's only so much to consider: the high points and the low, the nooks and the crannies, the roads taken and those left untraveled. BSG has been, for me, a revelatory experience. I grew up on science fiction and watched as Hollywood slowly genu-jerked and focus-grouped it into a shadow of its former self. Ron Moore, David Eick, their stellar writing staff, their multifaceted ensemble, and their nimble production team have rekindled my love for the genre. They've shown me that passion, dedication, and talent, all in service of a man with a vision, can work wonders.
To infringe from the original Big Willie, Battlestar Galactica was a television evidence; have it for all in all, I shall non look upon its like once again.
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Source: https://ew.com/recap/battlestar-galactica-recap-all-this-has-happened-and-all-this-will-happen-again/
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