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| Saturday, March 28, 2009 09:30 PM |
| On the Viewer - Battlestar Galactica (Season 4.5, Episode 10 - "Daybreak Part 2") |
 by Fëanor |
Yes, I've finally seen the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. Now I can talk to my friends and visit websites without fear! But obviously if you have not seen the final episode yet, do not read this post! It's loaded with spoilers.
The opening, overhead, fly-in shot of the city reminds me very much of Blade Runner.
LOL! Tigh and Adama are at a strip club, and Tigh is trying to buy Adama a lap dance, against his will. That's hilarious.
Wow. It's weird to see Tigh with both eyes again. I'm so used to the patch. Also, I love the ridiculous way Tigh is laughing in this sequence.
Back to Lee, his brother, and Starbuck. Interesting analysis of Lee by his brother: he's not really the idealistic dreamer he seems to be; beneath the romantic exterior lies the heart of a true cynic. And now they're arguing about their dad. Starbuck says she thinks she's starting to like Lee, and you can see on his face he's very pleased about that, if also embarrassed.
Oh good lord, this is going to be uncomfortable: Roslin's blind date! And it's doubly awkward, as it turns out the guy was one of her students. Great line: "The night's young, apparently so are you. Let's see what happens."
The entire Adama family is drunk simultaneously! I really didn't need to see the Admiral throwing up on himself, though. Ew.
Love the wonderfully moving, heartbreaking scene between Roslin and Cottle. As Cottle starts getting emotional, Roslin says, "No, don't spoil your image; just light a cigarette and go and grumble."
Helo describes an almost impossible mission to his Raptor pilots, then says it's volunteer-only, and they all raise their hands at once. The commanders of all the separate parts of the mission are explaining their parts to their people. Very cool. They're going to move Anders into the CIC??
This I did not expect: Adama is giving command of the fleet over to Hoshi!
Adama has to move slimy Cylon cables out of the way in the CIC. Tigh: "Still not too late to flush them all out the airlock." Adama: "Take too much time."
And Romo Lampkin is now the President. Good lord. Well, he's certainly not the worst President they've ever had!
Gaius made a last minute decision to stay and fight, as I thought he might. I think Lee's presence there finally pushed him over the edge. Lee's only reaction is to throw him a rifle.
Woah. It's pretty scary seeing all those Centurions marching around. With red paint on them? Is that the symbol of the rebels?
Roslin has to draw an X on the forehead of soldiers who are too injured to save. That's pretty cold.
Hey, quick shot of the old Centurion in the glass case and the rows of seats from the very first episode! Does this mean they're somehow going to make use of all the launch tubes?
Adama of Galactica: "She will not fail us if we do not fail her."
70 minutes of episode left, and they already jumped in for the start of the final battle. And it's not starting off well for Galactica! But Anders messed up the hybrids and got the guns turned off. Also, he turned the lights red on Galactica. Nice going, Anders!
Oh, very cool! If I understood what just happened correctly, the Raptors didn't get launched out of the other launch bay; they just FTL-jumped right out of there! It's a trick you can only do once, I'm guessing, but hey, once is all they've got left!
Ramming speed, motherfrakkers! Aww yeah. They just plowed Galactica right into the Colony and are now busting open the hatches and belaying down inside. This plan is insane. I love it.
It's funny watching the Centurions give military hand signals.
They're taking their helmets off now that they're inside the Colony. Is that really a good idea?
Racetrack's Raptor got busted open by a meteor right after they armed their nukes. I have a feeling that's going to be important later...
Huh. They've got the old school-looking Cylons in the Colony. That's handy for keeping the sides apart.
The Cylon doctor: "I think you may have overestimated their chances." Thanks, Grand Moff Tarkin! I love little references like that.
Cylon doctor: "We have superior firepower and superior numbers and in the end it's all about mathematics." Then Boomer breaks his neck. Heh heh. Guess it's not all about mathematics after all, is it? Great scene.
Cavil of Boomer's betrayal: "Trust never entered into it. I simply miscalculated her need to engage in gestures of futility." I love that guy.
Cylon doctor: "We must be cautious." I could be wrong, as that's a rather basic phrase, but I think that might be another Star Wars reference.
Caprica Six to Baltar: "I always wanted to be proud of you. I guess I always felt that was the only thing missing."
They're going to break off in the middle of this fight to do a lengthy flashback, aren't they? I'm going to freak out if they do that.
Woah! Baltar and Caprica Six are both seeing the imaginary Baltar and the imaginary Caprica at the same time! And there's more talk about fate and the future of Cylons and humans. Hmm...
Man, the humans are having to waste a ridiculous amount of ammo to take down even one Centurion.
I knew it! Frakking flashback! Argh! It's a pretty frakked up flashback, too. Tigh and Adama being pretty brutal to rookie Boomer. But it does inform what Boomer just said. And now we're going right back to the present.
Jeez, this is some way for Roslin to spend her last two days of life: watching bloody, torn up soldiers get wheeled off into a corner of the med bay to die.
The plan is actually going surprisingly well, all things considered.
Where the hell is Roslin going? And there goes Hera. Damn it! I think we're really in the middle of the recurring dream now. Maybe it's finally going to come together and make sense.
Damn that little girl is squirrelly!
Yes, it's just like in the dream; Baltar and Caprica have found Hera. The opera house is the CIC.
Baltar: "There's another force at work here. There always has been."
Would somebody just shoot Cavil in the head while Baltar is babbling on? Seriously.
Cavil: "How do you know that God is on your side, Doctor?"
Baltar: "God's a force of nature.... Good and evil, we created those.... You want to break the cycle.... That's in our hands, and our hands only."
Tigh: "You give us Hera, and we will give you resurrection. But the war ends here."
Heh. I like Cavil throwing the "leap of faith" thing back at them.
Hmm. Not sure how I feel about the whole truce-making scene, and Baltar's big speech. A little corny. It ultimately made sense, and no one acted out of character. But I wish someone would have just shot Cavil in the head anyway.
They lost only four Vipers and seven Raptors. That's not bad, all things considered.
Oh wow. What Tory did to the Chief's wife is finally going to come out now. That sure had a long payoff!
Cavil: "Hey, I don't mean to rush you, but you are keeping two civilizations waiting!" Heh. An asshole to the end.
Holy crap. What Tory did to Cally, and the Chief's reaction, destroys everything. That's unexpected, but it really works.
Cavil just shot himself? That was a weird reaction.
I knew this was coming. Racetrack and the nukes. Holy crap. There go the Cylons.
Starbuck: "There must be some kind of way out of here." The notes of the song are the coordinates.
Dying doesn't scare Kara Thrace. Only being forgotten.
Shit. Galactica is just falling apart. The ship can't jump again. Wherever they are is where they're going to stay. And where they are is Earth.
Okay, I was wondering about this originally - whether the Earth they'd find would be the Earth of the far future, or the Earth of the distant past. It looks like it's the Earth of the distant past. We are the descendants of Cylons and the remaining humans from the 12 colonies.
But hey, since when was there grass and life on this Earth? I thought it was irradiated so badly that nothing could grow or live here. I thought that was why they left. If they could have lived here in the first place, why did they leave?
Ugh. I really don't like where this is going. Lee wants them to throw away all their technology, live like primitives, and help the pre-verbal natives learn stuff? Who's going to go for that? "Our brains have always charged ahead of our hearts." C'mon, man. They're also splitting everybody up all across the planet?? This is just insane. I'm with Lampkin; I don't buy that everybody would agree to this idea. I certainly wouldn't! I'd want a nice soft bed and some sturdy walls and my iPod! I'm also not sure I buy the "let's just set the Centurions free and hope they don't come back and kill us all" idea. And they're just having Anders pilot all their ships into the sun. And Anders and Starbuck are both okay with that?! Battlestar, what are you doing?! You're falling apart at the end here! None of this makes sense! Also, how can there possibly still be 30 minutes left? I'm not going to have to watch Baltar have sex with a Neanderthal, am I?
Adama says a final good-bye to Galactica. That scene was pretty powerful. And it looks like Anders is living the dream! For as long as he'll still be living, anyway. How long will it take to fly all the ships to the sun at less than FTL speeds? I'd think pretty long!
Hey, they're playing the theme song to the original show! That's a nice touch. I always loved that song.
The Chief is just going to go live alone in an icy waste somewhere. Jeez. I give him maybe until the first winter, then he's dead. In fact, I give them all maybe until the first winter, then they'd all die. I'm guessing the great majority of them have no knowledge or experience of living like this, and it looks like they've all split themselves off into such small groups that they have no chance of surviving.
They flash back to a scene where Ellen is telling Tigh all she ever wanted was to be with him forever. That's nice, but doesn't she remember that whenever they're together for any length of time, they just tear into each other constantly?
I didn't even get until now that this is the real Earth, our Earth, and the other planet that they called Earth wasn't really Earth at all. That's just confusing, man.
It also confuses me that everybody's just splitting up and flying to different places all over the planet. Wouldn't you kind of want to stick together? First of all, for protection - to help each other survive - and secondly because, you know, these are the only other humans left alive in all the universe, and they're your only family. Sure, after seeing them every day for the last however many years, you're probably a little tired of hanging out with them at this point, but c'mon. They're also all you've got left.
We finally get to see the end of Lee and Kara's first night together. Awkward!
Okay, how in the hell did Starbuck just vanish like that? Was she really supposed to be an angel?? Are they ever going to explain what she was? (Answer: no.)
Back to Roslin's incredibly awkward date with her student. He took off all his clothes and got into bed, and she got into her nightgown, and now she's going to kick him out? That's cold.
Adama's final scene with Roslin was very moving.
Sorry, I just don't see Gaius being a good farmer, even if it is in his blood.
So the explanation for the imaginary Baltar and the imaginary Six, and for Starbuck coming back to life, is just some vague hand-waving about God and angels? Meh.
Way back when they were first going to arrive at "Earth," I considered the idea that it might be the Earth of the distant past, and that we were meant to be these characters' descendants. And I thought that idea was kind of cool. But I don't really like the way they ended up presenting and developing the idea here. I loved the first half of this episode - it was intense and exciting and dramatic and well done. But the second half I don't think made a lot of sense, logically or emotionally. I just don't see all these people, en masse, throwing away all their technology and creature comforts and going to live like animals out in the wilderness. And furthermore, I just don't see them surviving. There were also one too many corny speeches. And the whole recurring opera house dream ended up being mostly meaningless. I'm pretty disappointed. I didn't know how they were going to be able to wrap up this show. Maybe there wasn't an easy or a good way to do it. But I don't like the way that they did do it. |
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