I liked the ending.
I wouldn’t say I was happy about some of the details, but I thought it was true to the tone of BSG.
It left me with much to think about. And I guess it’s Starbuck that I find myself thinking about the most.
To me it was dark because the implication was that the colonisation mostly/almost failed. Those who settled outside of Africa, or at least their descendants, didn’t make it (we’re all descended from people who migrated out of Africa some 60-70,000 years ago as far as we can tell). So Galen didn’t found the Scots as lots of people like to think.
While, as has been pointed out, the fact that we’re all meant to be descended from Hera on the female side doesn’t mean everyone else died, it does indicate a bottleneck in the population with only her maternal genetic material being passed on. So this suggests a population crash at some point after the colonisation (Phil, correct me if I’m wrong here).
Farming was developed independently in many parts of the world from around 11,000 years ago, and not transmitted from an earlier past, suggesting that ultimately farming failed and Baltar didn’t sow the seeds (pardon the awful pun) of agriculture. There’s no way the cultural traits of the colonials (Greek-sounding names, religious ideas and mythology, etc) were passed down to inspire the cultures of antiquity that share elements of these traits.
So while they may have prospered for a while, they only came through by the skin of their teeth, and most of their legacy (excepting a very small subset of the genetic heritage) was lost. At least if we’re trying to reconcile the BSG 'verse with our own timeline, and this is presumably what the writers were aiming at with connecting them to “us”.
Then there’s the distinct possibility that the whole thing with the natives panned out like it did in Hitch Hikers with the Golgafrincham B-Ark and the cavemen.
In the sequel I reckon we’ll see Earth destroyed by a Cylon constructor fleet to make way for a new resurrection bypass.
Don’t get me wrong, I still liked the ending, although my appreciation was qualified. I don’t mind the darkness, but I think a lot of it was unintentional.
You’re mostly correct. In principal just given the knowledge that Hera as our mtDNA Eve doesn’t negate significant genomic contributions from the populations of other continents to our nuclear DNA. Even if all the populations mixed evenly, eventually one mtDNA line would win out randomly. However, that could take many thousands or millions of years. Given the relatively short time span of 150k years that does imply that the Hera’s group significantly, though no necessarily replaced the other populations. Some ways that could occur are:
-
All the other Colonial groups die out naturally, and Hera’s descendants eventually migrate out and replace them.
-
Hera’s group and near descendants more reproductively fit and underwent a significantly greater population expansion relative to the other groups.
-
Nearly everyone dies off limiting the population to a small group of Hera descendants which eventually repopulates the world (a classic bottle neck).
All of these would give somewhat similar genetic signals.
I think what more than likely is the real truth, is that RDM doesn’t completely understand mtDNA and the concept of a mtEve. I cite his reference on the podcast to a mtAdam. I think he was hoping to just show that the Colonials and Cylons both contributed to our lineage. If he had known that the mtDNA clearly indicate that the vast majority (many would argue all (I’m not ready to go that far yet)) of our DNA heritage comes from modern humans in Africa at 150k years ago, with little or know contribution from humans on other continents (i.e., neanderthals, archaic humans in Asia), then maybe he wouldn’t have included the line about Colonials dispersing to other continents.
Then again maybe he would, because he never did shy away from the dark implications of his stories…
Everyone seems stuck on this, so let me try again.
MtEve is merely the earliest common direct, uninterupted female ancestor. It does not imply a bottleneck on anything other than MtDNA. In fact, it’s quite possible that the only thing we have from her is MtDNA. (Again, MtDNA is not what we usually refer to as “our DNA.”)
Other contemporary women still made, possibly greater, genetic contributions. Their decendents simply failed at some point to produce female offspring. Their lines probably were continued for that generation through their male offspring. So, (portions of) their DNA gets passed down, but their MtDNA does not. That is all.
I agree with you Pike. mtEve alone doesn’t imply lack of genetic contribution from other populations. I also should have included a forth option above which is random chance. Any and every population has to have a mtEve (as long as you believe in a common origin for life on Earth 
). There’s even one for humans and chimpanzees, only she must date to millions of years ago.
However, having a mtEve dating of 150k years ago implies that random chance is somewhat less likely. I think on a literary level the only real implication we’re supposed to take from mtEve coming from Hera’s lineage is that the combination of Colonial/Cylon/Earthling will have a better chance of survivoring than each of those populations would have living separately.
The only happy portion of the ending was the characters resolutions. But Ron Moore ended the show on the classic Sci-Fi literature ending with a moral, one that paints a bleak future for us due to the montage of the robots we’ve made and the darkness of Jimi Hendrix’s rendering of “All Along the Watchtower”.
I think I read in Smithsonian that mtDNA is traceable back beyond the common ancestor which had a symbiotic relationship with the “human/oid” in wihich it resided, which would mean we have nothing of them in us. I could be wrong.
I’d still like to stick to the idea that ‘Apollo’ is traced back to Lee. Yeah, a stretch it is, but like it I do. The Lords were, again if memory serves, humans who had gained great power–I liken to the ascended beings of SG1. Perhaps this is a path to connecting them. It is fun to think about, anyway. Then again, it could be a co-evolution of terms that’s part of the Cycle.
I still enjoy the finale. The fact that it ended on a “happy” note was a pleasant surprise. The most intriguing part is that they “imply” that we are all human/colonial/cylon. Now there’s a creation myth for you! Also, the epilouge was really cool. Will we break the cycle? I guess we will find out soon.
What I would love to see now is someone continuing the BSG legacy by creating a show in our own future where we go off into space and discover the cylons that went their own way in the finale. Bring the whole thing full circle. Someone call RDM immediately! :eek:
I kind of got the sense that that was what Virtuality was supposed to be (minus the discovery of the centurions), thematically, at least. Too bad we’ll never know.
According to EJO, that movie is Blade Runner…