Major spoilers. Bringing a complex television show like Battlestar Galactica to a fitting close is a colossal task, particularly considering how many questions were still unexplained as this feature-length finale began. No matter what you do, you won't please everyone. Ronald D. Moore's "Daybreak: Part 2" will certainly split opinion, but I found it to be exciting and enlightening, with a touching climax that provided a happy ending tinged with sorrow. Days later, it's still lingering in my memory, as I'm sure the show will for many years to come...
The dilapidated Galactica has been manned by volunteers willing to help Adama (Edward James Olmos) retrieve hybrid Hera (Iliana Gomez-Martinez) from the Cylon Colony, perched in the gravity well of a singularity wreathed with asteroids. The first half of the finale is effectively a non-stop action spectacle, as Galactica jumps into close proximity with the Colony, launches all its remaining Raptors, and withstands a barrage of enemy gunfire as Anders (Michael Trucco) remotely connects to the Cylon Hybrids to disrupt their defensive capabilities. Galactica then rams the Colony head-on, busting through its walls, allowing armed teams (including rebel Cylon centurions) to pour into the stronghold to rescue Hera from Cavil's (Dean Stockwell) experimentations.To say the visual effects are amazing would be a gross understatement. Considering this is a humble cable series, the visuals are movie-quality at times and Daybreak's budget has clearly been doubled to allow for some fresh imagery and a greater level of complexity and detail in the CGI. I dare say the yearlong post-production time has also allowed for more technical nuances. The animated Cylon centurions have never looked better, while the lattice of missiles and smoke trails that spit around the battling spaceships were strikingly beautiful. The camerawork was also beautifully handled; claustrophobic, new angles on old sets, with plenty of attractive compositions.
At the risk of just regurgitating what happened in laborious detail, let's just take a look at how the big questions were answered, and what happened to the main characters...
The Opera House: A staple of BSG from season 1, these were explained as visions the "angels" (Head Six and Head Baltar) had given to certain people, in any effort to guide their actions throughout the course of their lives. Once Hera was handed back to her mother Sharon (Grace Park) by a remorseful Boomer during the Colony's attack, the little girl later fled from some gunfire, to be found wandering the besieged corridors by Caprica Six (Tricia Helfer) and Baltar (James Callis). Roslin and Sharon were also present, trying desperately to find the missing Hera. The "concert hall" Caprica and Baltar were compelled to take Hera to turned out to be the CIC, as we came to realize these Opera House visions were just topographic representations of Galactica's structure, leading them to the safest place to take Hera. A copout? Perhaps. It certainly was a mild let-down because it was utterly unguessable.
Callie's Murder: I'd almost forgotten about Tory (Rekha Sharma) killing Tyrol's (Aaron Douglas) wife Callie earlier this season, once she found out about the Final Five and threatened to expose them. Soon after Cavil manages to take Hera hostage in the CIC, the Final Five agree to give the Cylons resurrection technology in return for Hera – as she's otherwise the key to both race's survival. Cavil agrees to the truce, ending the hostilities, but when the Final Five link together in Anders' tank to transfer their combined knowledge of Resurrection technology to the Cylons, their sharing of consciousness means Tory is exposed as Callie's killer. Shocked and outraged, the Chief breaks their mental link and strangles Tory to death. It's an act the Cylons take as a trick, triggering the suicide of Cavil in the resulting melee, and the resumption of all-out warfare."All Along The Watchtower": Facing insurmountable odds against the Cylon Colony after the aborted truce, Adama tells Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) to jump Galactica out of range, and she decides to use the musical notes as co-ordinates (having previously given each note an identifying number.) And, wouldn't you know it, those jump co-ordinates take the ship to... well, Earth. Our Earth.
New Earth: The entire fleet converge on the blue planet, Galactica suffering a "broken back" after its final, fateful jump. The fleet land on the planet and discover it to be a green and hospitable environment populated by tribal humans in Africa, circa 150,000 B.C. Yes, it turns out that the nuked Earth from mid-season wasn't our Earth – it was the name of a similar planet the Thirteenth Tribe populated. This new planet is later christened Earth as a tribute to their utopian dream, and the fleet decide to settle there with the indigenous people (who are genetically close enough to breed with, according to Doc Cottle.) Effectively then, BSG has given us the Earth-based climax most people assumed would happen, having successfully bluffed us into believing the discovery of Earth has already been made (which, technically, it had.) It was a ploy helped by widespread belief the Brooklyn Bridge was visible amongst the ruins of that nuked planet, too.
The Fleet's Finale: The fleet decide to abandon their technology (to wipe the slate clean), so the brain-dead Anders is connected to the Cylon data-stream and left to pilot all their ships into the Sun, after a somber farewell from Starbuck. The 39,406 survivors of the fleet are then spread around the planet in small grops, while the rebel Cylon centurions are given their freedom and leave in their baseship to find their own destiny.
Roslin's Cancer: In the most poignant moment of the finale for me, Roslin finally succumbed to her cancer while flying over the Earth in a Raptor piloted by her lover Adama, taking in all the beauty and marveling at "so much life". When Adama notices she's passed away, he puts his ring on her finger, takes her body to a picturesque part of the countryside and buries her on the crest of a hill. This moment really choked me, as Roslin's death has been such a long time coming, and so brilliantly played by McDonnell and Olmos. Those actors really have done a superb job making their relationship believable and heartfelt, so the inevitably bittersweet ending really packed a punch.Who Or What Is Starbuck? Well, after Lee (Jamie Bamber) bids farewell to his departing father in a green field, he reveals to Starbuck that he has ambitions to explore this new planet, whereas Starbuck just has a sense that that her work here is done. As Lee turns back to her, he finds she's vanished into thin air – assumedly meaning she was an instrument of God herself. This was the one aspect of the finale I can understand people having issues with. It's a bit trite to answer the questions surrounding Starbuck by playing the "God card" – so, her childhood visions of a maelstrom were given to her by these "angels" (ensuring she enter that maelstrom to crash-land and die on the surface of the Thirteenth Tribe's Earth), her factory-new Viper was likely constructed by the angels, etc.
It's not particularly clear why these angels would want to use Starbuck to guide the fleet to the "wrong" Earth initially, although you could argue mankind needed this low to achieve their highs and, after all, "God works in mysterious ways." For me, I think there's been enough of a spiritual flavour to BSG throughout its lifespan, so explaining some of the more confusing questions with notions of a divine entity guiding "prophets" and intervening in lives is something I feel happy to accept. A scientific answer for BSG's visions and hallucinations would have been cleverer, but a spiritual one was more emotional.
Settling In: Caprica Six and Baltar leave to be together, now that Caprica Six has fallen in love with Baltar again, and he can put his farming background to good use. Tigh (Michael Hogan) and Ellen (Kate Vernon) can finally be together, with no distractions getting in the way (or much booze available, let's be honest), Tyrol decides to lead a solitary existence somewhere far away, while Helo (Tahmoh Penikett), Sharon leave to raise hera.
Flashforward: The most beguiling aspect of the finale was definitely the excellent denouement, which leaped forward in time by 150,000 years to modern-day New York City. Here, we see a man (played by Ronald D. Moore himself) reading a magazine about the recently-discovered "missing link" -- the skeletal body of a little girl found in Tanzania. Head Six and Head Baltar are reading over his shoulder, making it clear that this Mitochondrial Eve was crossbreed Hera – meaning everyone on Earth are descended from extra-terrestrial humans, their artificial creations and crossbreed progeny.
The "angels" then remark on the future of this new Earth, speculating that similar disaster awaits as humans are once again creating robots in their own image – although hope is offered be Head Six's insistence that if you "let a complex system repeat itself long enough; eventually something surprising might occur," leading to a fun montage of Japanese robots set to Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" (the same music that guided the Colonials to Earth millennia ago.) All this has happened before, and all this will happen again?
Was it the perfect conclusion? Not quite, but it was close enough and got the emotional impact across. We can argue and nitpick the intricacies for years, but it felt like a strong finish. However, the flashbacks to a pre-Fall Caprica felt even more redundant than last week, and I was disappointed there was no twist involving Zak Adama (Tobias Mehler) to make us rethink Lee and Starbuck's relationship all these years. I was waiting for something to happen of great consequence there, but it just never came (no pun intended.) Elsewhere, Tigh gurgles and yells "yeeeah!" in a strip club as Ellen dotes on him, a drunken Adama vomits in a street then walks out of a job interview, Roslin has sex with a toyboy former-student and enters politics, and we see Baltar inadvertently agree to help Caprica Six destroy their planet.Hera's ultimate role in the mythology came together well enough, despite remaining a walking plot-device. In the end, she wasn't quite as vital to mankind's future once they found a planet of humans to procreate with. And I guess her birth is still down to genetic fluke, as other Cylon-Human couplings still can't produce children – so I guess there were never any baby Baltar's running around with Caprica Six playing mommy. As mentioned, I know some people will be unhappy about the ambiguity surrounding Starbuck in the end, but I didn't mind turning the script turning her into a kind of seraphim to annul some tricky questions.
It was just a shame recent fan speculation about Starbuck's father (many predicting he must be Daniel, the favoured Cylon that jealous Cavil "killed") was proven to be an unfortunate case of the audience extrapolating answers where none existed. So no, Starbuck wasn't the first example of a crossbred human-Cylon, and the fact her dad composed "All Along The Watchtower" just made him the proto-Bob Dylan of the Twelve Colonies. I have no idea how you explain that the song's notes are also the coordinates of a habitable planet using Colonial jump-technology... beyond another leap of faith that God was pulling strings even back then, in preparation for Starbuck's great destiny. Indeed, belief in a divine being orchestrating events became the de facto answer for anything left unexplained by the end – which you'll either embrace, grudgingly accept, find annoying, or hate, depending on your attitude to BSG's spiritual side.Ultimately, the few complains I have about "Daybreak: Part 2" are swept aside by the moments that totally worked, or those that hit emotional peaks. It was a great decision to give the audience pure sci-fi spectacle for the first half, then spend longer giving these characters a meaningful send-off in the meditative second half. There were a few times when I thought the story was about to slide into baloney, conflict with established facts, and even throw time-travel into the equation at the eleventh hour to patch some flaws, but things actually made broad sense by the end. I also found that quite a few nitpicks were dispelled with some after-show debate and web-browsing.
Incidnetally, I feel sorry for poor D'Anna, who decided to stay on the wasteland of proto-Earth, and doesn't know that her comrades found a better, utopian Earth. Maybe those rebel centurions jumped back and offered her a chance to reunite with everyone else? If not, that's quite an amusingly bleak end for her character!
"Daybreak: Part 2" was something of a rare occasion in the annals of sci-fi television, in that a serialzed story actually reached a predetermined conclusion without fudging the story too badly. I never expected a watertight answer to everything, particularly when BSG's writers openly say they only really started thinking about the end-game a few years ago, and delivered the Final Five curveball merely to punch-up a limp third season finale. Maybe BSG could have been even better if there had been a masterplan to begin with, or maybe a lot of its genius resulted from the writers semi-improvising – we'll never know. But I do know this: Battlestar Galactica was a brave, intelligent, thrilling and profound sci-fi allegory of our times... and its finale left me both elated and sombre, quietly grieving that (beyond the upcoming, unnecessary-feeling prequel "The Plan") the journey has some to an end for these wonderful characters.
So say we all?
24 March 2009
Sky1, 9pm
Writer: Ronald D. Moore
Director: Michael Rymer
Cast: Edward James Olmos (Adama), Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck), Mary McDonnell (Roslin), James Callis (Baltar/Head Baltar), Jamie Bamber (Lee), Grace Park (Sharon/Boomer), Tricia Helfer (Caprica Six/Head Six), Mark A. Sheppard (Romo Lampkin), Kerry Norton (Layne Ishay), Tobias Mehler (Zak Adama), Lara Gilchrist (Paulla Schaffer), Brad Dryborough (Lt. Hoshi), Leela Savasta (Tracey Anne), Michael Hogan (Tigh), Callum Keith Rennie (Leoben Conoy), Bodie Olmos (Hot Dog), Kate Vernon (Ellen), Donnelly Rhodes (Doc Cottle), Aaron Douglas (Tyrol), Michael Trucco (Anders), Matthew Bennett (Aaron Doral), Rekha Sharma (Tory), Dean Stockwell (Cavil), Tiffany Lyndall-Knight (Cylon Hybrid), Colin Lawrence (Skulls), Leah Cairns (Racetrack), Colin Corrigan (Marine Allan Nowart), Iliana Gomez-Martinez (Hera), Simone Bailly (Shona), Darcy Laurie (Dealino), Rick Worthy (Simon), Tahmoh Penikett (Helo), Dan Payne (Sean), Richard Jollymore (Marine #1), Kevin McNulty (Frank Porthos), Holly Eglinton (Stripper), Ronald D. Moore (Man Reading Magazine) & Anthony St. John (Marine #2)
