BSG Finale: The Plan?

[orichalcum]

There were some nice character bits and good dialogue ("Could you please not tell her the plan?) and some fun actiony stuff. But this did not wrap up the series in the way I wanted, largely because it failed to live up to a bunch of early promises - that there were 12 models, and this number was important, that they had a plan, that they evolved, that they were created by man, etc...not to mention that this show wouldn't rely on pseudoscientific gobbledygook, that it would actually regularly kill people we cared about (How the frak did Helo not die?), and that it would treat questions of religion and faith seriously if ambiguously.

fajitas, I did think of you during the whole triage sequence, especially the line, "Oh, you just know whether they're going to die."

The Star Wars refs in this ep were actually fairly cool, especially the shot where, after breaking into the ship, Cavil, dressed in black, enters surrounded by centurions in a very Vader - beginning of SW way. Though it's a little disconcerting to have Baltar cast as Han Solo.

What do I mean by saying there's bizarre Tolkien homage? So, Star Trek: DS9 for most of its run played off the really intriguing tension between the Federation view that the wormhole was inhabited by sophisticated aliens who lived outside the space-time continuum and the Bajoran belief that these were their gods, who protected and looked after them. And then there were the last 9 episodes, in which we discovered that Sisko was the semi-divine Messiah and he wrestled with his evil counterpart on the edge of a volcano over the sacred artifact, and both ultimately fell in. It was massively Mount Doomy, with a touch of Holmesiana, and felt like a bizarre excursus into fantasy.

So how does Moore (the same series creator for that part) end BSG? Well, most people get to settle down in the peaceful endless fields and go farming, especially the cute curly-haired little girl who is the delight of her father. But it turns out that this happy ending isn't achievable for everyone, and some people have to get into ships and sail/fly off on their own (towards the West, notably), leaving the new world for others. Except for the angels, who also just depart or fade away, because the new age is no longer a time for angels.

Somehow I never expected the Final Five to turn out to be High Elves.

And the Times Square/robot scene totally failed for me.

I can say, though, that Mary McDonnell is a little unnervingly good at portraying the last moments of a woman dying of cancer.

What did other folks think?