BSG Thread #12 (or 13)

[aeu]

[quote name='Bronn Stone' post='1730056' date='Mar 23 2009, 05.10']BUT it doesn't change for a millisecond the idea that the ME is a female ancestor of EVERY FRAKKIN' HUMAN.
....
But it is still Hera's blood that makes it happen.[/quote]

Makes what happen?


[quote]But it is by definition impossible for there to be an ME who is not a) MRCA or b) an ancestor of the MRCA.[/quote]

Not that it's important to the discussion, but I don't think this is true.

/nitpick

[Myrddin]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1729934' date='Mar 22 2009, 19.58']A perfect ending? That's REALLY what we were looking for. Expecting? That is the true source of our dissatisfaction? What a joke. And a completely moronic argument.[/quote]
Not an argument. More of a simple observation. Let's take a quiz. I'm sure you'll do well.

People who've hated the show for years will:
A) Love the finale and find all of the answers satisfactory
B) Feel underwhelmed by the finale, yet find it a somewhat enjoyable send off
C) Enjoy the action part of the finale, but find the epilogues to be needless and fate of the colonials lame
D) Hate every little bit of the finale and see it as justification for years of hate and endless internet rants

The finale is certainly open to critisicm, as is the entire run of the show. I actually enjoy reading the discussions for what worked and what didn't. There is much to criticize show and I can fully see how logical and rational people can fall into every category in my lame quiz.

I continue to find it interesting that the people who hate the show the most A) still watched it to the end and B) spend more time, effort, and passion discussing the show than people who enjoyed the experience. And C) seem to assume that anyone who disagrees is stupid and has no taste.


My view on BSG? I've found the show to be hit and miss over the years, but overall I've enjoyed it. My feelings for the finale are pretty consistent with that.

[list]
[*]The last big fight was exciting, if not exactly completely logical in its manuvering of all the characters.
[*]The flashbacks were ok, but I would've rathered seen the time spent on the characters in the present and better addressing the open questions.
[*]The finding of Earth in the past was the only way this show could end without a BSG 1980 or Planet of the Apes (2001) lame ending. Apollo, Athena, Hera, et al live on in myth.
[*]I found the jump to our present to be unnecessary. If they had tied BSG a bit more with our present, that would've been more interesting (like having another cover article visible of a UFO sighting with Cylon raider characteristics).
[/list]
Anyway. Enjoyed it. Wasn't a perfect ending, but a decent send off.

[Myrddin]

The podcast has been posted. Downloading now. Curious to see what RDM has to say about some parts.

[Shryke]

Finally saw this. Read through the thread. Agree with Ran.

The only part that bugged me a bit was the "Colonials are humanities descendants" thing. Kinda cheesy, hoping they wouldn't go for it, but the little conversation at the end about "Trying again till it work" made it more palitable.

All in all, a good finale.

[mcbigski]

Also, for what I remember, there were at least a couple of instances in the podcasts where life in the 12 Colonies was decribed as noticeably more brutal than on our world. Specifically I'm thinking of the flashback episode where Adar issues some sort of beat down on striking teachers or a union of some sort (if memory serves). Not a large point, to be sure, but it does dovetail with Apollo's 'Let's give them the best of ourselves' mentality and leave out all of the souless, detached technical stuff, and with HeadSix's relative optimism in Times Square. As if the sacrfices made did actually help improve human nature slightly, providing for a slightly higher chance of breaking the cycle.

[Werthead]

[quote]Can someone bring me up to speed on how the Cylons came about? Here's how I understand it:[/quote]

[url="http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2009/03/battlestar-galactica-what-we-know.html"]Check this out[/url]. I'm glad the finale didn't invalidate any of that considering how long it took me to write it :)

[quote]1. On the Twelve Colonies, humans develop Centurion model Cylons about 50 years ago.

2. These Cylons revolt, and a war ensues.[/quote]

The Twelve Colonies actually developed robotics technology much earlier than that, perhaps 60-70 years before the Fall of the Colonies. However, those robots were non-sentient, clanking servitors only a bit more advanced than our production-assembly robots and supercomputers of today. Approximately 55 years before the Fall a major breakthrough was made:

SPOILER: Caprica

The Graystone corporation successfully uploaded a deceased human's personality matrix into an AI, held it there and then downloaded it into a robotic body, granting that 'robot', the prototype Centuion, sentience. Unfortunately, they either didn't know or didn't care that the human in question was a monotheist who believed in the One True God rather than the twelve Lords of Kobol. This gave the prototype Cylon, and all the models copied from it, their religion.

[quote]3. A peace is agreed upon.[/quote]

The First Cylon War started 52 years before the Fall and ended 12 years later. In the last year of the War the Cylons seemed to start getting the upper hand (landing an invasion force on Tauron, for example) but the Final Five members of the otherwise extinct 13th Tribe arrived and convinced them to suspsend the war in return for them giving them information on how to build their own humanoid models (which the Centurions deemed desirable so they could emulate God, who appears in the monotheist mythology in a humanoid form).

[quote]4. The Cylons stay to themselves, and develop the newer robotic Cylons and the seven or so skinjobs.[/quote]

With the help of the Final Five, yes.

[quote]Now, how did the Cylons know about resurrection tech, the Final Five and the one true god?[/quote]

The 13th Tribe was a race consisting entirely of skinjob-like Cylons who were created by the other Twelve Tribes on Kobol, roughly 4,000 years before the Fall. The 13th was exiled to Earth, presumably by the Lords of Kobol who were pissed off with the Twelve creating artificial life without their say-so. The 13th Tribe originally resurrected, like the later Cylons, but worked out how to procreate naturally and the technology was lost. The Final Five were told to reconstitute the resurrection tech by the messengers (progenitors of Head-Six and Head-Baltar, probably the same entities in a different guise since Anders didn't recognise the one he saw) to escape the coming nuclear war. The 13th Tribe had created their own mechanical servitors to serve them, but these gained sentient and nuked the planet for reasons never entirely explained. The Five resurrected on a ship orbiting the planet and headed back to Kobol and then the Colonies to warn the other tribes not to repeat their mistake.

The mechanical Centurions on the Colonies got their religion from the first Centurion prototype, as covered above.

[quote]How did fake-Earth have what looked like Centurions on it thousands(?) of years ago?[/quote]

Because the 13th Tribe built them. All of the Centurions on Original Earth (which is the more correct term: we're the fake Earth, technically) were destroyed in the war.

[quote name='Ser Scot A Ellison' post='1730114' date='Mar 23 2009, 12.09']I have two more important questions (for those of us without cable.) When's the Season 4.5 DVD going to be available? Is SciFi going to upload all of Daybreak Pt. 2 on Friday night?[/quote]

SciFi should upload [i]Daybreak Part II[/i] on Friday or Saturday. Season 4.5 comes out on DVD in the UK in on 1 June. No date has been set for the USA. The rumour is either November to tie in with the release of [i]The Plan[/i], or even the start of next year to tie in with [b]Caprica[/b]. The [b]Caprica [/b]pilot movie is released on DVD on 21 April in the USA, but does not have a UK release date yet.

[quote name='denstorebog' post='1730182' date='Mar 23 2009, 13.55']But it's times like these that we should focus on the Good Things. And one thing that I don't think I've seen anyone disagree on so far - nor expect to, really - is the quality of the work of composer Bear McCreary. Reading his blog (http://www.bearmccreary.com) is always a joy, and he outdid himself completely throughout Season 4 up until and including the final episode - which says a lot considering the S3 score. I'd say that between the high production values of Season 4 (visual effects, set design), the personal relationships between the characters, and finally McCrearys score, neither the finale nor the series itself could ever become a complete waste of time in my eyes. There would always be something there for me to come back to, and there was in the finale as well.[/quote]

Bear McCreary's music was legendary throughout.

[quote]Makes what happen?[/quote]

Us. Hera is the sole member of either the Cylon or human species who has no antigens in her blood (making her O-type) and is the sole member of both species who shares that with us. That makes all of modern humanity her direct descendants, and without her the human race would have presumably ceased to exist. So Hera is the most important person in the whole damn show from that perspective.

[G'Kar]

Werthead, I don't think you mentioned the diseased probe. How does that fit into the timeline?

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1730454' date='Mar 23 2009, 14.13']Us. Hera is the sole member of either the Cylon or human species who has no antigens in her blood (making her O-type) and is the sole member of both species who shares that with us. That makes all of modern humanity her direct descendants, and[b] without her the human race would have presumably ceased to exist.[/b] So Hera is the most important person in the whole damn show from that perspective.[/quote]I'm not entirely sure how that can be substantiated. It does not necessarily mean that humanity would cease to exist, but that there would simply be some other mitochondrial eve other than Hera.

[tzanth]

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1730487' date='Mar 23 2009, 10.35']I'm not entirely sure how that can be substantiated. It does not necessarily mean that humanity would cease to exist, but that there would simply be some other mitochondrial eve other than Hera.[/quote]

Exactly. Mitochondrial eve really has no intrinsic significance.

[Shryke]

The colonial-human hybrids were the ones that ultimately survived and populated the planet. That's her significance, on top of being the cause of the end confrontation which lead to them fidning earth.

She's a blinking tech-box.

[lotuspixie]

I've taken a few days to mull it over, and to read through this and other forums and think about what other people's responses to the finale were, and I think I've finally got my coherent thoughts about it.

I didn't like the finale AT ALL, but should have seen it coming. For the past season and a half I've been in denial. All the cyclon talk about 'god', I chalked up to silly superstition (as Gaius says). The opera house, the visions, the weird what-the-frak-is-going-on-with-kara stuff, all of it, had all the 'spiritual' gobbledy-gook tone to it. But I again ignored it thinking, "well, we just don't know what's [i]really[/i] going on yet. it will make sense later." (i had all these awesome ideas about the projections and resurrections etc etc etc, that had [i]something[/i] to do with science/reality/science-fiction, just not 'god')

So, therefore, my disappointment in the finale should not have been a surprise. But it was. As soon as it became clear that kara and the head six and head baltar were 'angels' or something, that ruined most of the show for me. I mean the whole frakking show. I'm not even sure if i think that it was a copout any more. I guess I just convinced myself I was watching a different show that I really was.

:/

[Yagathai]

[quote name='lotuspixie' post='1730510' date='Mar 23 2009, 14.57']So, therefore, my disappointment in the finale should not have been a surprise. But it was. As soon as it became clear that kara and the head six and head baltar were 'angels' or something, that ruined most of the show for me. I mean the whole frakking show. I'm not even sure if i think that it was a copout any more. I guess I just convinced myself I was watching a different show that I really was.[/quote]

I prefer to think of Kara as a ghost, not an angel. Tomato, tomAHto...

[lotuspixie]

[quote name='Yagathai' post='1730516' date='Mar 23 2009, 14.02']I prefer to think of Kara as a ghost, not an angel. Tomato, tomAHto...[/quote]

... potato, potAHto

:)

[Werthead]

[quote name='G'Kar' post='1730470' date='Mar 23 2009, 18.25']Werthead, I don't think you mentioned the diseased probe. How does that fit into the timeline?[/quote]

The diseased probe fits into the part of Season 3 known as the 'Unwatchably Shit Period'. Given that the events of [i]Hero[/i], [i]A Measure of Salvation[/i] and [i]Torn[/i] have never been referred to again, my belief is that all three have been stricken from the record (you can also extend this to [i]Unfinished Business[/i], but YMMV). Are you telling me Bulldog wouldn't have volunteered for the final mission if he hadn't been retconned out of existence?

Still, if I had to address the probe, it would appear that the 13th Tribe dropped it as a marker on the way to Earth. The probe carried a virus that both the Final Five (as members of the 13th Tribe) and the humans are immune to, originating on Kobol. However, because the virus had effectively ceased to exist as a current threat in the Colonies, the Final Five forgot to immunize their skinjob creations against it, hence they were vulnerable to it. Hera's magic blood saved Athena.

[quote]I'm not entirely sure how that can be substantiated. It does not necessarily mean that humanity would cease to exist, but that there would simply be some other mitochondrial eve other than Hera.[/quote]

My take was that without Hera and her blood and DNA, which was more hardcore than either Cylon or human genes by themselves (and presumably the primitivies), they wouldn't be able to survive against the illnesses and bacteria on the new planet. Hera and Hera's genes alone allowed humanity to survive.

I mean if you don't conclude that, then, indeed, the whole thing doesn't make any sense whatsoever, unless Hera's role was instead to simply give the Watchtower score to Kara. And given that she'd already done that, there was no reason to save her other than to say "Thanks". And maybe Adama's decision that he owed Athena one (or more likely half a dozen) for saving him and the Fleet several times over.

[tzanth]

[quote name='Bronn Stone' post='1729870' date='Mar 22 2009, 17.11']Had Colonials bred successfully, the Bering migration would have been met by a continent chock full o' humans. They likely had similar numbers (Colonials = Migrators) and a 135,000 year head start. Yet we know that there was no human activity in the Americas until the Bering migration. The only reasonable conclusion is that the Colonial settlements in the Americas could not thrive. Since the Americas are extremely well suited to human habitation, the only reasonable conclusion is that Colonials could not breed successfully[/quote]

Why would colonials be suddenly unable to breed? They bred a whole system full of people back in the colonies. The far more likely explanation is that the majority of colonial groups died out after a generation or two due to the fact that none of them had a frakking clue how to live off the land with no technological resource base.* The inevitable conflicts that would quickly come about after people realized what a disastrous decision they had made would also be likely to hasten the demise of most of the colonials.

*This is doubly true since the colonials are a civilization founded by space travelers. Their culture would have absolutly no knowledge of the hunter-gatherer life style.

[Shryke]

Yeah, I just figured the Probe was left there as a signpost on the way to Earth, as there seems to be evidence of Kobol/Earth interaction.

[tzanth]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1730536' date='Mar 23 2009, 11.13']My take was that without Hera and her blood and DNA, which was more hardcore than either Cylon or human genes by themselves (and presumably the primitivies), they wouldn't be able to survive against the illnesses and bacteria on the new planet. Hera and Hera's genes alone allowed humanity to survive.[/quote]

But there were already humans on the planet. Clearly they were surviving pretty damn well. Also, did I miss something, cause I don't recall any discussion of Earth bound diseases being a problem for the colonials.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1730502' date='Mar 23 2009, 14.50'][b]The colonial-human hybrids were the ones that ultimately survived and populated the planet. [/b]That's her significance, on top of being the cause of the end confrontation which lead to them fidning earth.

She's a blinking tech-box.[/quote]That is an even less substantiated conjecture. Proof please.

[quote name='Werthead' post='1730536' date='Mar 23 2009, 15.13']My take was that without Hera and her blood and DNA, which was more hardcore than either Cylon or human genes by themselves (and presumably the primitivies), they wouldn't be able to survive against the illnesses and bacteria on the new planet. Hera and Hera's genes alone allowed humanity to survive.[/quote]You know what would have allowed humanity to survive? Science, medicine, technology. Too bad they decided to give that up. But you are right, I'm not sure if I can buy that explanation.

[Rob B]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1729824' date='Mar 22 2009, 20.15']The fact that apparently Head-Six and Head-Baltar knew the future is intriguing and has given rise to some fan theories that they actually are Six and Baltar who gained immortality somehow and have been time-travelling all over the shop to make sure everything happened right.[/quote]This is a pretty interesting theory I hadn't seen before.

One of the major reasons the finale worked for me is because it echoes the one of the themes and basis of the original series in that humanity is much older than what we believe it to be on Earth and that humans as they are today were, for lack of a better term, uplifted through the intervention of space travelers/gods – humans from Kobol and Caprica maybe. This argument was posed in the controversial book The Chariots of the Gods, which served as a major inspiration for the original series.

[Shryke]

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1730564' date='Mar 23 2009, 15.40']That is an even less substantiated conjecture. Proof please.[/quote]

She's apparently our Mitochondrial Ancestor or whatever. Apparently a little bit of her is in all of us.

Also, Blinking Tech-Box.