**mild spoilers**
Within the first five minutes of 2003’s Battlestar Galactica mini-series, I knew I was witnessing something unique. The entire first season that followed may well be the best first season of any show put to film. The beginning of season 2 continued with that quality, but somewhere around mid-season things began to go off course. While the show had echoed our current world since day one, it had generally avoided making direct correlations. That changed beginning in season 2 when the show basically became headline-of-the-week, with heavy handed messages on abortion, torture, anti-war sentiment, election controversies, labor unions, and Iraq. Characters’ motivations and personalities would routinely switch based on whatever point the writers wanted to make that week. The show seemed to no longer offer an honest reflection of our world, but only served to narrowly enforce the writers’ specific view of it.
It is a testament to the quality of the show that I continued to stick with it. Any lesser show I probably would’ve have tuned out. Even at its worst, it was still better than 90% of everything else out there. Thankfully, with the finale of season 3, the show began to find its legs again. While the revelation of the final five (or four at the time) cylons was hotly debated, the execution was brilliant. The scene where Tigh, Anders, Tyrol and Tory walk into the same room to the tune of “All Along the Watchtower” remains one of my favorite moments in the entire series.
While season 4 didn’t quite attain the greatness of season 1 as a whole, the revelation of the fate of Earth, along with the mutiny that followed, are definitely some of the best episodes of the entire series. It wasn’t until the last few weeks, leading up to last night’s finale, that I began to worry again. The show wasn’t bad, it just appeared to be treading water. I was concerned that the writers were leaving too much for the finale to wrap up, or that they would just flat out disregard a lot of the dangling plot threads. In my opinion, the show’s greatness and longevity largely hinged on the execution of the finale, and I wasn’t sure they could pull it off.
I’ve never been more glad to be wrong.
Honestly, it’s difficult to put into words. The first hour was absolutely relentless. The revelation of the opera house was particularly impressive, as was the ultimate meaning to the song and the resolution to Tory’s murder of Cally. The second hour was largely devoted to wrapping up the characters’ fates, which was satisfactory for the most part. My only real disappointment was that I didn’t get the answer to the one question I was most curious about over the entire course of the show. Namely, who was “God?” So much time had been devoted to talking about this person or entity that was manipulating everything that I was a expecting a more definitive answer. In fact, the finale seemed to suggest that there might be two different powers at work - the one that Kara serves, and the one who “doesn’t like that name” that Head Baltar and Head Six serve. God and Satan perhaps? If so, I can live with that. In fact, I think one of the great things about the finale is that it leaves some things open for discussion. These things will surely be debated and analyzed for years to come.
All in all, it was an amazing finale and the perfect bookend to a flawed but ultimately great series, ranking right up there Star Trek: The Next Generation’s finale “All Good Things” and my favorite show of all time, The Shield’s “Family Meeting.”
Click here to see my collection of winnings from the Battlestar Galactica prop auctions.
