FWIW, here is how I would modify the ending of BSG:
They find our Earth, it looks like a great place to live… but there’s a catch. Earth is crawling with microbes that the Colonials have no genetic resistance to. The members of the fleet are protected by the broad-spectrum immunizations they had as children, but without the means to duplicate advanced medical technology, their children won’t stand a chance. The Fleet is simply too broken down and lacking too much equipment to try to keep a technological civilzation going. This will be the last generation of Homo Kobolis; the survivors will get to finish out their lives and that will be it.
They can’t even interbreed with the native hominids because they’re just a little too different genetically. The sole exception is Hera, because of her unique Human-Cylon heritage. Her descendents will uplift the natives from being basically smart animals to having true conciousness- “souls”. She’ll pass along the flame of spiritual being. There’ll be a humanity, but it won’t be the Colonials. The experiment in having conciousness inhabiting a material body will have been rebooted.
“You are the harbinger of death Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end.”
In all fairness even Mr. Hard Science, Issac Asimov went kinda, sorta metaphysical at the end of his “Foundation” series with the whole “Gaia” planet concept.
In the miniseries, HeadSix outright told Baltar that she was an angel from God. He didn’t believe her, and she then told him some other stuff (the head chip, the psychotic break) that was lies. Everyone assumed that all of those explanations were lies.
Turned out that was not the case. But the ‘angel from God’ thing was indeed stated in the miniseries.
I also am not bothered by fantasy elements as long as they aren’t sprung out of nowhere, or at least are given a good-enough-for-scifi “scientific explanation”.
Well really, what did you expect? Telepathy and so on were all over the original series; the existence of such things was canon before ST:NG was even dreamed up.
From real to fantasy bothers me. From SF to fantasy only bothers me if the show pretends to still be SF. And I’m always okay with a weird ending, as I hate being able to predict them.
As for another example to consider: what did you think about the Matrix trilogy when they turned Neo into having magical powers? I only bought it by fanwank.
Both shows were supernatural from the very beginning. BSG particularly was quite religious, with it’s head angels and prophecies and visions. As for Lost, it had supernatural elements from the beginning too, it was always just a question of whether the flavor would be more sci-fi or supernatural (psychics can go either way). I think they always took the stance that ‘sufficiently advanced tech (or anything that might be rational but is just hard for us to understand) is indistinguishable from magic’. I think both shows did a fairly good job of mixing the spiritual stuff with the science stuff, and saying that really, they aren’t mutually incompatible.
All the way back to the (second) pilot, where various forms of ESP are mentioned as being scientifically understood, at least well enough to attach a definite number to the abilities. (And 2 crewmen end up as major league psionics.)
To expand on this a bit more…
Spock’s Vulcan telepathic abilities were important in many episodes, one of which involved the human telepath Miranda Jones (played by Diana Muldaur - she was just all over the place in Trek, wasn’t she?).
Telepathic species abound in TOS - Vulcans, Melkot, Thasians, Medusans, Talosians (from the first pilot), the people of Deneb IV (mentioned in the second pilot), Kzinti (Animated series, but still pre-TNG)…Probably some others that my memory and a quick search of Memory Alpha aren’t bringing up.
And I think TOS is the only series to feature human telepaths.
That’s not true. Vorlons = Order, Shadows = Chaos, yes, but the Vorlons were shown to be just as manipulative and self-interested as the Shadows, just as capable of seeing people as tools, and just as capable of [del]geno[/del]planeticide. They show no compunction against directly altering entire species to fit in with their metaphysical ideology. I’ve never seen the Vorlons as “Good”, ever since their appearance in the pilot, threatening to blow up an entire station over one murder. Collective punishment, in other words (something we consider a war crime, BTW).
Well said MrDibble (although I disagree on one point*)
Kosh was “good” and even then, only for varying degrees of good.–but he’d “gone native”, so to speak. Kosh’s replacement was a colossal asshole and so were all the other Vorlons. They had no interest in any of the second/third generations species except as chess-pieces in their live-action chess game with the Shadows.
*The one point: It wasn’t even “order” vs “chaos”–The Vorlons encouraged the B5 crew to rebel against Earth, the Shadows started a very ordered, very controlled fascist dictatorship on Earth. The only principle the Vorlons (excluding Kosh) and the Shadows held to was that the other side sucked and that by causing their pawns to fight every 1000 years, it’d promote a “survival of the fittest” thing and cause the lesser races to evolve faster (although they clearly didn’t like the idea of the later races evolving and much of their actions despite their claims of wanting to help the newer races evolve make much more sense if viewed as them starting those wars to keep them from technologically and morally advancing–rebooting civilization every thousand years or so so everyone has to start over.
I actually just bought the BSG DVD-set this week, I had never seen it before. I don’t believe it aired in Norway. I’m about 3/4 through the first season and I’m already sick of the constant blather about god-this and god-that. God is great, god is merciful, god is love, repent your sins blah blah blah blah. I guess maybe they tone it down again in the next seasons (?), but right now I can’t imagine anyone would feel blindsided by this show “turning” metaphysical. I would be hard pressed to call this science fiction at all. Good acting though.
Battlestar Galactica used religion from the very beginning in order to explore the condition of humanity. That did not necessarily make it a show in which it was inevitable that mysticism would turn out to be literally real. In fact, the early shows worked very hard to maintain a realistic framework. Just as our world today, people are constantly talking about their supernatural beliefs. That doesn’t mean that any of them are true. People are constantly pointing out how such and such event confirms such beliefs. That doesn’t mean they’re right.
In fact, what was one of the most interesting questions that the show suggested it would explore is how it would resolve all the questions without ever explicitly portraying the supernatural. Which is exactly what happens in real life. Things happen, and many of us can come up with satisfactory scientific explanations, but there will always be a large number of people who insist that these events prove their beliefs.
That’s what made Galactica such a smart show. The end, in which all the “angel” stuff was revealed to be literally true, betrayed that intelligence completely.
The problem was not that there was a mystical element. The problem was removing the ambiguity and asserting the “mystical” answer over all other possible explanations.
Ah crud, that makes sense, I would probably see the rest of the show in a very different light if I hadn’t know that little tidbit in advance. I guess you can put me down in the “not ok with it” column then. And a great example of how a bad ending can retroactively poison everything that came before it.
Was it revealed to be literally true? I still haven’t seen the whole series, but [spoiler] what I’ve read is that the Cylons never stop talking about God. But that doesn’t mean this God is “revealed” to be literally God. (Indeed, at the very end, one character says “You know it doesn’t like to be called that,” suggesting it’s not literally God.
Is it the Starbuck Resurrection that bothers people?[/spoiler]
This is the second time this observation has been brought up in the thread, and I can’t say I understand it.[spoiler]First, the fact that it doesn’t like to be called god doesn’t suggest that it’s not literally god. At least, not to me. It only suggests that this entity with god-like powers doesn’t like being called god. I can easily imagine a god that didn’t want people to call it god. I’d actually prefer a god like that to the traditional variety.
Second, it’s indisputably an entity with god-like powers that is responsible for most, if not all, of the “mysticism” in the show. Whether it’s literally god or some god-like alien doesn’t change the fact that the “mysticism” was explicitly asserted to be literally true, rather than just a possibility. And that’s the problem, as far as I’m concerned. Opening the possibility, leaving the door open a crack, is fine. It’s human. Saying that this being (literally god or god-alien or whatever) actually exists for certain and has directed events from the beginning? That’s just a load of crap.[/spoiler]