Annals of Sci-Fi: A Primitive Heaven - The Final Season of Battlestar Galactica

Finally, after many months of waiting while working on my MFA, I finally sat down and watched the final season of Battlestar Galactica. What words of praise and pleasure, what confessions of satisfaction and wish fulfillment can I offer as tribute that hasn't already been proffered? (Rhetorical question can be so useful.)

So I will only make 4 relatively small objection and reservations about story choices.

One, was the pastoral ending. The gross primitivism that was propagated by "going back to nature" bored me to tears. Was this really the best solution they could find? Really? It's so cliche to look with that sepia lens of nostalgia upon the distant, "natural" past with the longing that is myopic and infantile (or geriatric).

Are we to believe that these people who are used to indoor plumbing, whiskey, ice, glasses as opposed to gourd dippers, modern shelter and central heating, people who probably don't know the first thing about arable land, farming food, raising livestock, people who are used to "jumping" through space, having rubber soled shoes (where are they going to get rubber?), toothpaste for their toothbrush (where's the drug store? the plastic for the toothbrush? the fluoride for the paste?)--I could go on and on here so I'll stop--can any intelligent viewer take seriously this "solution"? (I love rhetorical questions.)

Two, was Gaelan killing Tory. I liked that the murder of the chief's wife was finally addressed/known by another person. But the murder of Tory seemed to me to be an endorsement for a ethics summed up by "an eye for an eye". This, too, is a bit sophomoric. Are we to believe that the death of Tory is only an instance of two characters colliding or a greater ethical proposition by the writers? Given that the whole episode felt like a laying out of moral and political ideals and tenets, I think it would be foolish to assume that Gaelan taking vengeance wasn't also a moral message.

Three, was who was Daniel and why wasn't his character developed? The great thing about Battlestar is that they never forget a storyline or a character and they never let either of those go to waste. So I was surprised that they would introduce such an enigmatic character like a malformed cylon and then drop it. It's unprecedented by nearly four seasons of habitual efficiency and care shown by the show's writers.

And lastly, four, was Kara Thrace. What were we supposed to think about her disappearance at the end? That she was a guardian angel . . . who happened to go through intense anxiety and agony over finding Earth after she returned to the Galactica early in the season? That she was never real . . . but real to herself, and to everyone around her, so real in fact that she held a gun to Roseline's head and burned her own corpse? (Did I mention my affection for rhetorical questions?)

In any case, in spite of all these trivial objections and niggling questions, Battlestar Galactica has been one of the greatest television experiences of my life. It was one of those rare moments when mythic proportioned story line, always captivating and almost involuntarily entertaining, was combined with legend-sized, fascinating characters.

I frakking loved every minute of it.