Old Timer, surely you cannot be happy with this? (And don’t call me Shirley.)
I know in your immediate-after post you described ambivalence in your feelings, but now, in the cold light of 36 hours later…
I refrained from posting for a day or so. To let it digest. To fully absorb the significance.
And when I started posting here a few hours ago I started moderately. But each post has driven me further from contentment, closer to disappointment, and sadly, made me just a tad more bitter and cynical.
The ONE THING you and I feared above all: a deus ex machina resolution, has come to pass. In the end, anything could happen, anything did happen, and it was all down to… ‘god’. (Oh, but he doesn’t like that name - ffs.)
This ‘resolution’ so nearly negates all that has gone before; the wonderful care taken and the ambiguity created in the grey areas of mystery and the unknown.
But now we know: god was doing it. And through his frakkin’ angels, to boot. (Is there a smiley for barfing???) :eek:
[See my ‘God and BSG’ rant in the off topic area if interested further in my atheist rage.]
RS, I think you’re not allowing yourself to wallow in the ambiguity
I have to admit, I’m happy with the ending. But you also know that I was always OK with the idea of a literal deus ex machina, indeed thought that is the direction we were headed.
What I love about the ending, though, isn’t that god/gods/divine being/ being that appears divine is involved, but rather, that it isn’t made explicit - we have years worth of theorizing left to do about headSix/headBaltar, Starbuck, etc. And that is very exciting to me.
I don’t know why people is so pissed off with the mystical/religious resolutions, or lack of. This show has always been about god, “god” and “gods” was probably the second most recurring word in the show behind “frak”.
I am an atheist, and, I gotta confess, slightly anti-religious, but I got over this aspect of BSG long ago in season 1, because it was clear that this show was way more than about pure religion.
Even though the “god-did-it” extravaganza at the end bothered me a tiny bit, I would probably be even more dissatisfied it they explained away all those mystical/religious experiences through some techno-babbling “a meta-quantical chip in my brain causing hallucinations from alien continuum, Admiral!”, Star Trek style. Why that is more satisfying for some is beyond me…both are, in my view, just a way to explain the inexplicable (resurrection, visions) So I just accept that in the BSG universe, unlike our own universe, religions are true and god(s) are real. Fine by me.
Two things. My ambivelence is driven by the fact that what RDM et al did in the finale they did extremely well. Second, I may well be in denial.
The reality is that I cannot frakkin’ believe IT was pulling the strings. So I have convinced myself that while IT is out there (no room for debate folks - IT is), IT really is not pulling the strings. Even without his angel, Starbuck, there is reason to believe that the survivors - after taking out the bad Cylons - would have found a habitable planet. (There appear to be quite a few of them in the BSG universe - 12 in one solar system for Pete’s sake.)
They would have had to abandon Galactica after that last jump, but with the bad Cylons kaput, that would not have been nearly as big of a deal.
But yeah, how we got from telephones with cords to this, I cannot fathom. And while others may intelligently argue that it’s nonsense, I still want to know a whole lot more about the Kobol story, like, that’s right, who were the Lords and what was the deal with the jealous one. Maybe The Plan will reveal. Probably not.
Explaining the Head Characters via technology would have been a real problem. But here’s where I am. They REALLY didn’t influence much of anything. And they’re hardly very “angelic”. They’re more like comic relief.
The BIG “God did it” explanation problem is Kara. She is an angel - clearly. And she, as “IT’s” agent brought the survivors to their new home.
Old Timer I don’t think the lords and the jealous god were ever something they planed on dealing with. I never understood why you thot so either…
It was just backstory that filled in the orgin of how everything started. I don’t think they planed on dealing with it… And frankly, was there not a jealous got in the TOS? Maybe Ron didn’t want to go that route…
Maybe you can help me understand why you thot the Lords were a key plot point becasue I never did…
I think I grasp your frustration. I for one would have preferred the Head characters remain more mysterious, but I recognize that mine is not the only opinion.
Here’s a thought for you to wrap your noodle around. We got a rather vague explanation for Head-Six & Head-Baltar, but not for Head-Leoben or Head-Daddy. They may not be of the same… grouping as the other two.
Anyway. With the religion of the One True God figuring predominately into Caprica’s story-line, I think more revelations might be coming.
That’s the area of disagreement. I have watched the earlier seasons a few times and the Lords are front and center - The Arrow of Apollo, The Scrolls, Kobol, Zeus’s admonition not to return, Athena’s suicide, her temple, the statutes, the constellations, why the 12 left 2,000 years after the 13th, the fact that the 5 priests a/k/a the FF worshipped the god whose name must not be said, who also appears to have been the jealous god - I’ll shut it down there.
That whole back story was fascinating to me and, I thought, was essential to explaining and understanding the Cycle. Apparently, I was incorrect. Although, it’s certainly possible that back when all this was being written and produced, RDM and company had no idea whether they ever would resolve it or not. Probably the same held true for the head characters.
Of course, this is purely personal, but I would much rather have had the whole Kobol saga explained in the context of the Cycle than the Head Characters appear to be a couple of mythic imps answering to “IT”. Also, I did not find the Bill, Laura, Lee back stories to be particularly interesting or compelling. In the grand scheme of wrapping up the show, which was brilliantly executed, “who” cares why Bill stayed in the military, Laura joined the Adar campaign or that Lee almost frakked Starbuck on a table while his brother was “sleeping” five feet away? I certainly was not “wondering” about any of those things as we closed in on the end.
Having said all that, and I’ve written this elsewhere, I may have gotten some, perhaps inadvertent, perhaps not, Kobol answers at the conclusion. The Cycle may well be repeating itself, to a point, in that the survivors should seem like “gods” to the natives AND we appear to have the groundwork set for the growth of tribes.
So…OT why can’t you make the imaginative leap to believe in your vision of Galactica that the IT was the Jealous God or the Lords of Kobol or whatever you want. That the “angels” may have been two of the Lords since in Greek Mythology the gods report to a head god similarly to how angels report to god in judeo-christian mythology.(Oh crap maybe shouldn’t have said that)
That’s what I got from it, although I thought the cycle was not repeating itself quite the same this time because the Colonials didn’t build a city like that on Kobol; instead, they scattered, yet still somehow influenced the development of the human race as we are today.
As for the deus in the deus ex machina, I was surprised when I saw it that they went in that direction, but upon further consideration, there almost had to be some greater power moving the pieces around because of the Eye of Jupiter going nova at just the right time. I think most other things could cut either way, but that one doesn’t seem to have a good rational explanation beyond really ridiculous chance.
That said, though I’m growing a bit more leery of the coda the more I think about it, Six’s comment about humanity possibly not repeating the cycle due essentially to the Law of Very Large Numbers at least cracks the door open a little bit. It’s like Vincent and Jules say in their argument in the diner in Pulp Fiction: how do you tell the difference between the hand of God and ridiculous chance? Wouldn’t they look the same? Even if there is somebody planting Head People in peoples’ minds, how do we know whether Racetrack’s dead body hitting the nuke button is an act of “It” or just one of those things that happens? Is destiny only destiny in retrospect–this is the way it had to be because it’s the way it turned out? One thing the flashbacks did do well–I think it was most obvious with Boomer–was how these characters made choices that led them to their destinies. Though “It” is out there, I like that it’s left ambiguous just how much string-pulling “It” did to get them there.
I guess the simplest answer is that I did not set up the mysteries and it isn’t my story. I expect Melville to tell me whether Ahab kills the whale or whether the whale kills Ahab - and tantalize me with whether Ahab really kills himself - and he does tell me all that and closes the door with one left alive.
Sure. Remember I still love this show and thought the finale was brilliantly executed. But the Kobol issues could have been addressed and we still would have the fascintating questions of what happens to “them”, what happens in our time and what IT is to address.
I’m not breaking the dishes over this. I just wish that Kobol had been more directly addressed and that so many answers were not dependent on IT. It’s an opinion - nothing more, nothing less.
Two other quick points:
I had hoped that the ending would leave us hanging as to whether the resolution and the lead up to it (4 years) could be explained logically or by “God”. Well, that did not happen.
I think RDM is enormously talented and thank him for a great show. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago - if somebody put a gun to my head and said, “OT - create something 10% as good as BSG or I’m pulling the trigger” I’d have to say, “Go ahead, shoot”.
