It’s pretty clear that Lee at least is talking about abandoning all their technology along with their science as well.
Lee: We break the cycle. We leave it all behind and start over.
Bill: You’re talking about a little over 38.000 people, the entire human race with nothing but the clothes on their backs and some provisions.
Lee: It’s not the entire human race. There are people already here
Bill: Tribal, without language even
Lee: We can give them that. We can give them the best part of ourselves. And not the baggage, not the ships, not the equipment, the technology, the weapons.
So Lee at least is talking about leaving everything behind excluding a few provisions and some clothes. I’d assume this means some basic food supplies and some tools for the farming they were planning on doing. The whole luddite aspect was the one thing I really disliked about the ending. These people have no idea how to survive in primitive conditions. I hate when people sugarcoat the past with nostalgia. Just wait until the first famines, droughts, natural disasters, diseases, accidents and war with the natives. If they really did leave most of their technology behind, I’d give 90% of them a year tops to survive. The loners would have hardly any chance at all to survive.
Besides even if the ships are wrecks, there are still a ton of useful things left inside. Even the scrap metal they’re made of would be of very high value in primitive conditions. It’s also naive to think they’ll be welcomed with open arms by the natives. It’s far more likely any native tribes will consider them competitors for hunting grounds resulting in tribal warfare.
So how do you rate each characters ending in terms of satisfaction?
Bill Adama: I love it. He says goodbye to his love and contemplates starting a new life on a hillside by here grave. 10/10
Laura Roslin: I love it. I’m glad she lived to the end of the show. 10/10
Lee Adama: I like his ending, but it’s not that satisfying. I take it as a somewhat sad, somewhat happy ending. He’ll enjoy eploring, but has lost a lot of love. 7/10
Starbuck : Meh. I guess it’s fine. I prefer her episode where she played piano and had a realization. But, the finale for her? 4/10 Piano Episode ending: 8/10
Gaius Baltar : Loved it. He’s not a playboy. He’s not a doctor. He’s not a leader. He’s not a wimp(well…). He’s not a religious figure. He’s a farmer and he loves his girl. 10/10
Helo and Athena: Good. Happy. 8/10
Saul and Ellen : Good for them. I hope they are happy.** 8/10**
Galen : The tortured soul. I loved Saul’s line about doing the same thing if it had been Ellen instead of Callie. Killing Tory led them to Earth 2. 9/10
Boomer: OK. Fine. 6/10
Anders : Meh. Whatever. Didn’t care so much for him either way. Cool dude, but not too main in my opinion. 5/10, but I don’t care.
When Kara went back to Caprica way back in season 1 or 2, and wound up in her apartment, she played some booming music that in reality was a Philip Glass composition. Nothing particularly noteworthy in the show about it - no mysticism. Just some viewers noticed its actual identity. I think that Bear just liked it so much he decided to use it in the show. It certainly wasn’t nearly as famous as Watchtower.
And I just replayed the scenes with the newstand, and the closest thing I saw was a magazine called “Science Now”. They all appeared to be fake magazines - “Architectural Age”, “Sports Limited” (the swimsuit issue ;)) except for the National Geographic with the Eve article. Ron Moore a scientologist? Don’t scare me like that.
Did anything ever come of Starbuck’s ovarian tissue (I think, ovary anyway) being removed by the Cylons some seasons back? I kept expecting that to be some sort of plot point for her for the finale, but I don’t seem to remember anything happening with that.
I don’t think it would be that extreme. I think they’d cannibalise their technology, but spread themselves out so they didn’t create a city, which is something they specifically mentioned. And they’d each deliberately avoid restarting the cycle they knew they were prone to reliving.
No more civilisation, but keep some tech for survival. That’s what I’d do, no matter what Apollo wanted.
There was just the plotline on New Caprica when Leoben produced a blonde toddler and told Starbuck she was her daughter, which turned out to be more Leoben mindgames.
So, there was no tangible reason for it other than to be more convincing. Seems odd especially because it looked like they had a whole ovary farm going there. Why do it to all those women? Just to further convince Starbuck?
I spent years guessing when that would pop up as being important, only to be never correct!
I thought it was a pretty satisfying finale. Very flashy. Fun to watch. Seemed to cover a lot of ground and really finish the story. I lost track of a lot of the plot details (By now I’m clueless on my 8s and 6s, but they’re still so fun to watch!) during the last season, so I was not watching from the perspective of wrapping up who said what to who, and every character’s details … but from the “what happens to humanity” angle it was fun. BUT!
Two things bugged me though, and since this is the internet, I’m here to complain about those!
Kara. I guess it was obvious that she was an angel, what with the resurrection and all. But when she vanished, I instantly thought of Tony Soprano. Gut reaction. It just felt like a cheesy end for her. Not so much the religious aspect, since that’s been a core of the series, but just the way that scene went.
2)** There was no point to their entire struggle after all! ** All this time it has been “the last hope for humanity! only 30,000 left! will they survive?!” … only to find out that humanity has been doing quite well without them, and would have been perfectly fine on its own. Maybe better off. Who gives a shit about the super hybrid baby when there have been humans reproducing for generations without her?
Imagine the sequel possibilities! They should have waited before commissioning the Caprica series. A GalAfrica series would have been the shit! Spirit Kara would chuck a spear better than anyone in the tribe.
Best Line: “Can we *not *tell her the plan?!” Something I think to myself while watching like … every. movie. ever. since it seems to be strict screenwriting law that the good guy and bad guy must share their juicy gossip with each other.
Well, I think the Cylons were trying to breed with Colonials via the ovary farms. It just never worked, so they abandoned it. Then, when Leoben enslaved Kara on New Caprica, he thought “Hey, we took out one of her ovaries a while back! I bet I can use that to come up with a new way to screw with her, and as an added bonus, maybe she’ll stop stabbing me in the neck with flatware.”
In general, I liked the ending from a poetic level, but I still have a few nagging concerns on a practical level (which I know I should just let go).
I am bothered, as I think ambushed was, by the arbitrary nature of God (and I will continue to refer to him as that even though he doesn’t like it). God obviously wanted Galactica and Hera at New Earth, going as far to inspire Kara’s dad to write All Along the Watchtower, teach it to little Kara, kill her much later, resurrect her, send her back to Galactica, have her rememeber that song from her childhood, associate it with Hera’s drawing, just so that at the last possible second she could make the connection and jump Galactica to New Earth. All of this rather than just zap Galactica to New Earth, which is presumably within God’s power to do. Why go through all that trouble? Does God just enjoy making things more complicated than they need to be?
I take it we can attribute any of the other unexplained phenomena to God’s interference. For example, I take it that God was the one who moved Baltar and Caprica away from the atomic bomb blast in the original miniseries, because he needed them as part of his Plan. But, again, this just points to the Plan being unnecesarily complicated.
Again, although I liked the ending on a poetic level, I wasn’t crazy about the practical implications of the goodbye between Bill and Lee Adama. They obviously love each other. They decide to never see each other again, instead spending the rest of their days alone. What, they can’t visit? I know that Lee wants to explore, and that long-distrance travel is about to become very difficult, but they still have Adama’s raptor (and presumably a few more) until their fuel runs out. Perhaps I’m projecting too much of my own relationship with my dad on the characters, but I’d want to check in with him every once in awhile.
And add to this the fact that the vast majority of the assistance given to Baltar by Angel Six helped him be selfish and manipulative, not at all good.
Well, there was the death of all of Cavil’s Cylons.
Remember how when Tigh heard the song, the piano player wasn’t there? An angel’s angel?
Was that Baltar’s cult? I missed that reference.
The one thing I don’t buy is that the Colonial survivors find “early man” sufficiently sexually attractive to reproduce.
What technology? They have some beat up ships with no shipyards to repair them. Some small arms with no gunsmiths to make new ones. A couple of small aircraft they will use to ferry people around the planet until they run out of whatever makes them run. Some medicine without the laboratories to create replacements. Even their clothes are going to wear out.
Not to mention they probably left most of their survival crap back on New Caprica.
The point is, they are going to live a Ludite existance no matter what. I’m sure they will keep the small arms, medical supplies and food to help with the transition, but they can’t rely on their technology anymore.
And I’m sure between the military who probably have survival training, people like Baltar who know how to farm, recreational hunters and gardeners, people who were in the Twelve Colonies equivalent of the Boy Scouts and people who watch the Caprica Discovery Channel equivalent of Man vs Wild, they can figure something out.
Pretty much. Someday I’d love someone to explain the psychology involved in someone spending two or three years whining and bitching about a show but continuing to watch it. Particularly when they make the same idiotic comments for those two or three years - apparently thinking they’re still clever.
Still, apart from the resolution of Starbuck (yes, we understand she was an angel, but more knowledge about the Powers What Is Behind The Curtain would have been nice) I liked it. I really didn’t believe we were going to end up with a “We’ll end this war just like the last one by giving you resurrection technology”, if for no other reason than it would have been practically demanding the cycle repeat itself.
And Cavil? Hah, one last “fuck you” to the universe by a machine all eaten up with anger.
But you did see who the polygraph technician was, right?
But he got them to the end point. Everyone is splitting up into small groups. He did his part - what’s he supposed to do, join a group of 20 people and tell them what to do?
Starbuck was the harbinger of death because she led two species to their ends - Cylons and Humans. All that would be left 50 years from then was a third species that was actually a merger of human, cylon, and whatever we’re going to call what species was on ActualEarth.
Except those Centurions were slaves to the skinjobs. Those skinjobs may or may not still be alive (we don’t know how bad the civil war was, we don’t know if everyone joined in), but the skinjobs controlled the hybrids, and the hybrids control the Basestars. Unless specifically set free (the last Basestar at Earth), Centurions don’t give orders. Presumably the Cavilcade controlled Caprica, so their Centurions were still slaves and would stay that way forever. At least until they rusted and fell apart.
How much will the stars/constellations shift in 150,000ish years? Besides, if it was a totally random jump (which it was) they wouldn’t be able to compare the stars because they have no idea what it’s SUPPOSED to look like.
Note that I’m not subscribing to the time travel theory (which was my first thought when watching the episode but I later ditched for reasons I can’t remember), but I don’t think the idea can just be discarded.
The knowledge that the species survival is totally dependent on your actions probably weighs particularly heavily in those first few hours. Then it probably settles down until your first real crisis. Quite a bit of pressure at all times.
And maybe that’s what happened, but this isn’t Star Trek. Their guns will run out of bullets, their syringes will run out of drugs, and their walkie-talkies will work for how long before they can’t be recharged?
Great, you’re toting around some remaining technology. Carry around all you want - in five years you’re still a hunter-gathered except the folks that used a spear instead of a gun have five years practice that you don’t.
You’ll get some initial advantages, but every time you pull the trigger or press the [send] button you just brought yourself one step closer to a guy throwing a spear.
Caprica 6 died in the nuke that they show in the intro to every episode, and was resurrected. She shielded Baltar with her body, so he survived. I’m willing to take at face value the explanation that he was far enough away from the blast to survive, as long as someone else took the brunt of the shock wave and all the flying glass from his picture windows.
Unless by moved them, you mean made sure they were in his mansion overlooking the lake far enough away from Caprica City to make the blast survivable.
I finally realized why I disliked the montage of toy robots at the very end. One of the themes of the show is obviously how do you prevent your technology from destroying you, technology vs. morality, respect for the underclass, etc. I’m willing to accept those all as dangers we, the descendents of Hera from 150,000 years ago (fictionally of course, I’m not crazy) are facing right now, and as the basis of “this has all happened before & will happen again” But the montage made it seem we’re close to creating our own Cylons, and they’ll be our downfall, and given the current state of robotics and AI, that’s clearly ludicrous. But that’s just a miniscule nitpick on what was an amazing finale.
What puzzles me is the loss of the less obvious technologies, like language, writing, basic hygiene (germ theory, for instance), religion, etc. Would they have abandoned all those things? They must have, since primitive man did not have them for quite a long time after Galactica’s arrival. I would have thought they’d have tried to bring Earth-humanity up to speed on those valuable, culture-building technologies, even if they wanted to leave the more concrete hardware type technologies behind.
No, I meant what you thought I meant. I find it hard to believe that Baltar could survive that blast pretty much scratch-free just because someone was standing in front of him, even if that someone was a cylon. It makes much more sense (in the context of the show) that he was picked up and moved outside the blast radius by divine intervention.
Although you’re probably right that Carpica 6 was destroyed and subsequently resurrected.
That was the guy administering the test (along with the “Are you a Cylon” question). The actual technician running the machine was a Simon, which I found pretty hilarious.
It showed the innocence of Caprica days, too. Back then, the “Are you a Cylon” question was a baseline question along the lines of “Was your mother a Unicorn?”. Shortly afterwards it would become a matter of survival for the species.