Today is the Series Finale of Battle Star Galactica. What? Didn't the show end in the 70's with a brief relaunch in the 80's with space motorcycles on Earth a la Chips?
Sure Sure, but I'm talking about the modern 2000's SciFi channel reboot where everything is dark, confusing, David Lynchy and preachy. You know, the one that started out with all this great promise during the first season and then spun out into a steaming unwatchable pile of crap nut-punching yet another one of our childhood memories in the process.
What is wrong with BSG, you ask? The short answer is "Everything". The long answer is nicely encapsulated by the fine folks at IO9 who still give a damn.
I stopped watching this depressing wreck of a masturbatory space soap opera when they split the final season in half and made us wait until 2009 for the conclusion, but I probably should have given up after Season 2.
So tonight, instead of watching Mr Stand and Deliver cry because he can't teach Cylons calculus, we are going to the midnight Twilight DVD launch party.... I know... I know...
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4 comments:
Marc,
You could not be more wrong. What you are missing is one of the most under-appreciated shows made over the last ten years.
The complaint I am most confused about is you calling it "preachy". How can it be preachy? There is no one view point (a la Boston Legal). Instead, this show has plunged its characters into a moras where they must confront a truly terrifying of calculating their freedoms, their ethics, their morals versus the basic need to try and survive in a very, very hostile universe.
Take away the science fiction aspects (FTL drive, efficient space drives) and what you have been ignoring is week after week of people in incredibly difficult situations trying to make their own way out and still being able to live with themselves.
What you have been missing is the development of Colonel Saul Tigh (played by Michael Hogan). A drunk, a cuckhold, a human, but secretly a cylon. This character has travelled perhaps the furthest of any through the course of 88 episodes. His path to redemption has not been the typical one. Hell, he discovers that he is actually the creator of the enemy he has been fighting for so many years (and not just in a Batman, oops I knocked a thug into a vat of chemicals way). But aside from his purely internal conflicts, he is also one who must balance the difficult role of being the XO. The XO is the worst job in the world. He has to anticipate what his boss would do. He has to be hammer of wrath and vengence to his CO's redemptive and caring nature.
Hogan's Tigh has been confronted with choices. Many would think that a man at his charcter's age is set in stone, that the choices he has made have left him in a position unable to change. However, this extremely flawed character, who hit his nadir early in season 2 when he tried to do an Adama type play for stability, without the Adama touch of knowing where the line is precisely. At that point, it would have been easy to leave the character in disgrace, to be the Dick Cheney of the Adama command structure.
And yet the writers did not. They took him on a journey. It was not easy. He lapsed back into alcoholism. He went back with his Lady Macbeth of a wife. But when his moment (some at the time thought his defining moment came) he remembered that at his core, he was something more than just the wreckage of a career.
What was he? At his basic nature, I would argue that Hogan's Tigh is a sheepdog. Without something to protect, he is at loose ends, lacking in a direction. But with his flock threatened once more, Hogan's Tigh returned to what he was, to doing what was needed, to fighting the threat to his flock's survival. He made hard decisions, decisions that meant sacrificing part of his soul in order to see that there would be something left for the fleet to rescue when the day came.
However, in my opinion, Hogan's character's defining moment was not to be found in the chaos of the "Fall" of the miniseries. It was not when he took over for the wouneded Adama at the end of season 1/beginning of season 2. It was in a small compartment of the Galactica during last season's finally.
In Crossroads Pt. 2, the 4 of the final 5 cylons are revealed. And at that moment, the four of them are faced with a question: what am I? As the other 3 start to bicker, Tight stays quiet for a moment and then buttons his tunic up and makes a simple statement: "My name is Saul Tigh. I'm an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be. "
I don't care what other people say. I think that was perhaps the most powerful line of the entire series. This is a man who has had his world ripped away from him. Who when told he could just switch sides to the more powerful, and in some ways very seductive, enemy's side. Yet he chooses to be something different, a man not dictated by his creator but by the friends, allegiances, and actions which he has chosen.
If you think that the this is a "David Lynchy" type show, apparently you need to go back and watch Twin Peaks or some other Lynch offering. This series has built consistently on its great promise. Melding a fantastic, but very very gritty, science fiction world with nearly 4 seasons worth of thought provoking, allegorical stories. Rarely do these stories offer easy answers. These are not morality plays where the hero always acts heroic. Instead, it is about people in heroic situations trying to find their to a promised land which may not exist.
Tonight will be the "Bucket's" final jump. Unfortunately, it appears that there will be no more adventures of BSG-62, the last of the Colonial Battlestars. And that, is sad.
Of course, if you want something fluffy and gooey, go to your Twilight release party. If you want something that has some substance, cross the red line with Adama and the rest for the Galactica's final mission.
What the frack is up with BSG? I heard them talking about this on NPR this morning-- REAL news people. Personally, I couldn't get past the omission of Muffit so never got hooked.
So Bill... are you saying you like Tigh? I know you identify with him, but I've seen more subtle character development in the Popeye cartoon story arcs.
"Wait... he's gonna eat the Spinich now??? Oh I see, then he'll whale away on Bluto!!!"
How was the final episode? Disjointed with uneven pacing? Could the resolve anything without introducing some deus ex machina ending?
I always got the feeling that the new BSG is more or less what Babylon-5 would have looked like post 9/11.
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