BSG 2003 S4E20/21 'Daybreak Part 2/Part 3' ***Spoilers***

lostexpectation

it seems to me the chief was one top 3 actors in them finding earth, he cared so much for human he shot tory which ended up them not a giving the cylons resurrection and

..hang on thats irrelevant it all came down to a actually dead women nuking the cylon base.????

Overheal

noodler wrote: »

The robots at the end were horrible and ruined a serious conclusion for me. We hardly needed the terminator message rammed home anymore did we?

Anyway, a quick search shows plenty of people found the last robot scenes far too cheesy.

Oh well, if the internet says it, then I retract my opinion and also find it cheesy :rolleyes:

It wasn't just about the robots it had a lot to say about human nature.

On the robots note, last week marked a major milestone for the coming doom when a completely autonomous UAV made a human kill.

http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25656&Itemid=128

so clearly despite Terminator being a shiny warning to humanity since the 80s, we still aren't listening. So I agree with Moore on the reiteration of the point.

sadista

Best line of the episode:

'Hey I dont mean to rush you but you are keeping two civilisations waiting!'

As much as I hate Cavill he's a bit of a legend sometimes!

There were so many points at which I thought it was finished but it justkept going, not necessarily a bad thing though. Loved every minute of it! It was completely satisfying!:D

fguihen

Very awesome.

I am truly happy they finished it off, with no option to cash in with more episodes at a later date. its a rare quality in a tv show nowdays, not to betray the story and just make tons of extra episodes as there is some demand there (xfiles, lost,prisonbreak, im looking in your direction.....).

Although i think it could have been played out differently giving more concrete answers, i think it was done well. it was a very daring ending to trust a lot of the mysteries to "devine intervention", and i thought after seeing that there would be a huge amount of unsatisfied people, but it seems as though the majority of fans loved it, be they religious, believers in a higher power or not.

They could have taken the easy way out with time travel or other such nonsense but they went with their gut. excellent work.

The ending is so tragic and hopeful at the same time. the pretty much all go their seperate ways, to die in peace ( tyroll, Adama et al). after searching so long, you would think they would be happy, but instead they just want solitude and peace and alone time. i really felt for tyroll and Adama.

i have a few questions though:

1. why did Lee just so easily accept Kara just "vanished" due to divine intervention? its not like him. also, why did he just let his dad disappear forever? i guess it was to give it a tragic ending, which it most certainly did.

2. they say the child was the missing link, and dna from her skelliton is found in all of us today. but what about the rest of the colony? their dna is slightly different from Hera's, but are we to assume they just didnt mate with any natives, or they didnt have any offspring? i mean there were 30-40 thousand survivors. surely some of their colonies around the globe thrived and this would give huge genetic varation, visible even today. or is this actualy visible in our genes today ( is european or asian genome subtly different from that derived in africa, or did we all originate in africa)? just wondering how it ties in with reality.

3. I dont see the point of the visions anymore. that opera house vision didnt make a whole lot of sense now that we see all they had to do was get hera back, so she could eventually propogate with primitive earthlings.



Im just nitpicking , and i really thought it was an awesome ending to an awesome series, one il visit time and time again on dvd.

pug_

On the whole 'it doesn't like to be called God' thing. Maybe they were hinting that the god was really some kind of uber cylon? Could be that we're all part of some matrix style virtual reality explaining how events are so easily controlled. Or we're all descended from a much much older cylon race and some of the genetic markers allows us to see angels at 'gods' will? Or something else along those lines.

pug_

fguihen wrote: »

1. why did Lee just so easily accept Kara just "vanished" due to divine intervention? its not like him. also, why did he just let his dad disappear forever? i guess it was to give it a tragic ending, which it most certainly did.

In fairness what's he supposed to do when he's standing in the middle of a field with no one else around and she just disappears? it's not like she was playing hide and seek. I was wondering about letting Adama go myself, but I guess some things you just have to accept.

2. they say the child was the missing link, and dna from her skelliton is found in all of us today. but what about the rest of the colony? their dna is slightly different from Hera's, but are we to assume they just didnt mate with any natives, or they didnt have any offspring? i mean there were 30-40 thousand survivors. surely some of their colonies around the globe thrived and this would give huge genetic varation, visible even today. or is this actualy visible in our genes today ( is european or asian genome subtly different from that derived in africa, or did we all originate in africa)? just wondering how it ties in with reality.

Tbh I had assumed exactly that, that the colonies didn't mate so well with the natives and probably events happened to make the other colonies die off in a generation or two. The eve they were talking about is real. Apparently all human dna can be traced back to her or something, so according to the storyline we're all really descended from Hera not any of the humans from the colonies. In fairness they all came from a very technological background and possibly weren't too well adapted to living off the land, so it's not that hard to believe they died off pretty quickly. Or maybe their immune systems weren't able to cope with some local bug that didn't affect Hera. I don't know loads of possible answers.

3. I dont see the point of the visions anymore. that opera house vision didnt make a whole lot of sense now that we see all they had to do was get hera back, so she could eventually propogate with primitive earthlings.

Ah, but what would have happened if things didn't pan out exactly as they did, one small difference to that whole thing could have seen Hera wandering down a different corridor or Caprica and Baltar arriving 10 seconds too late and things would have ended very differently. The way I see it the sequence of events had to follow one path and one path only, any deviation would have ended in disaster which is why it was drummed into them what to do via the visions.

Derek Coleman

pug_ wrote: »

On the whole 'it doesn't like to be called God' thing. Maybe they were hinting that the god was really some kind of uber cylon? Could be that we're all part of some matrix style virtual reality explaining how events are so easily controlled. Or we're all descended from a much much older cylon race and some of the genetic markers allows us to see angels at 'gods' will? Or something else along those lines.

Ehhh NO.

pug_

Ehh why not then? :P

[EDIT] OK maybe I over elaborated a little, but when they said 'it' it occurred to me that they might have been referring to a cylon or some form of machine as opposed to some form of ethereal divinity.

Derek Coleman

Ha! Surely you can't be serious. How can you get your explanation from the line "It doesn't like that name". Thats some LEAP.

Listen to Baltars speech to Cavil. "God is a force of nature". Sorry, but I'll get all Vulcan on you and believe that the Logical explanation is that its a supreme being and is not just Christianity's GOD. And the word "it" doesn't give God a sexuality so its man or woman or whatever. You see it doesn't offend or exclude anyone.

p.s. Six says "That too is in Gods Plan" ....... maybe its the name PLAN it doesn't like?

degrassinoel

dont call me shirley!

Derek Coleman

Thats un believeable because I thought of that when I wrote it. ha. LMAO. Brilliant Noel.

ixoy

Really liked it and thought it was pretty as much good and conclusive as could be expected - nice farewells to the characters, an end to the mission, nods to the series, and of course big frakking battles.

Couple of little quibbles:

1) The Opera House reveal was done well... but I just have a niggling feeling that this was never the plan all along. It felt that the dream didn't actually play an important part, but rather a running symbolism to their predicament and that things would still have played out the same without it.

2) As symbolic as incinerating the fleet was, did Adama not think that the refugees would appreciate things like heat and medicine? Did he bother to consult first or just fire them onto Earth where they, used to civilisation, would struggle to probably even start a fire, never mind live out their lives?

3) If Hera is the mother of us all, then how did she spawn? Did she have lots of babies? Or were there more matings between humans and cylons? If so why was Hera really that important once on earth?

noodler

Overheal wrote: »

Oh well, if the internet says it, then I retract my opinion and also find it cheesy :rolleyes:

It wasn't just about the robots it had a lot to say about human nature.

On the robots note, last week marked a major milestone for the coming doom when a completely autonomous UAV made a human kill.

http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25656&Itemid=128

so clearly despite Terminator being a shiny warning to humanity since the 80s, we still aren't listening. So I agree with Moore on the reiteration of the point.

You don't have to retract it but just to show that despite your "Are you kidding me" it seems the majority of fans thought it was way over the top. They would have been more fitting at the end of a real documentary on the perils of AI by someone like Micheal Moore.

Here for example. http://www.bsgcast.com/bsgcast-422-daybreak-part-2/#comments

Rollie Eyes are the sign of a diseased mind by the way.

I thought Adama was going to kill himself, was very surprised he wanted to live away from everyone else. I think we are overreacting to the Hera finding. There must have been millions of people around back then and we only ever find a handful of skeletal remains so the whole destiny is that out of the thousands (only) of colonials/Cylons all we find is Hera. I am still unsure if her adding to the gene pool was such a salvation? Maybe she was the only oen that could mate with the locals?

Now we don't know who killed Roslin's sistsers, I initially thought Lee but of course Adama and Tigh were absolutely locked as well.

The universal acclaim for Tory's death is quite someting!

Derek Coleman

I have no knowledge of chemistry or whatever you need to make a point like this but regarding Hera......

She is the product of a Human and a cylon having a baby. 38,000 Humans from the colony settled on Earth but you are forgetting that the 2's , 6's, and 8's also settled on Earth. So if any of them had children with a human then that child would be similar to Hera.

So........ we are all spawned from half human/ half cylon children from 150,000 years ago.

It makes sense to me. :rolleyes:

noodler

No I guess that is the most practical solution Derek. Of course it means the Hera was only important symbolically though. Could Cavil not just have used Ellen to make a baby? (Like Final Five Tight did with Caprica?) or would the whole 'only conceive in love' bull**** rear its head again.

Its the catch 22. If Hera was such a small part of the gene pool then how did she save humanity bar saving their dna? Whilst if the other Cylons and humand could produce Heras then it diminished her importance somewhat.

Sherifu

Enjoyable final episode.

Not perfect but pretty good.

Cavil shooting himself and Chief killing Tory were what I really enjoyed.

DeVore

I dont understand why Hera is the saviour of humanity... did we lose the ability to procreate all of a sudden?

I thought the pacing was poor but the endings were ok (Tory's ending was very well done and I'm glad she got hers in the end, never liked her).

There were some great moments but I was a bit dissappointed with Kara's story, she deserved a stronger ending. Over-sentimentality with the Pres made it seem a bit too sugary for me but I think they did a fine job over all and rounded out the season well.

DeV.

Derek Coleman

Hmmmmm......

I'm trying to put out fires all over this forum

Ok I'll believe that Hera is the saviour of the human race because her blood saved Roslin who led them to Earth.

Or, Hera is the saviour because without her Starbuck would not have had the drawing/co-ordinates.

But I seriously believe that the importance of Hera to the human race is not because she personally done something. Its more like the importance of her half human/cylon DNA surviving on a planet which they didn't evolve from.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

as I see it, hera saved humanity because God/whateverhisnameis had planned for her to be the starting point of the new human race as our mitochondrial eve and this fits in with kara thrace being the harbinger of death. She did lead the human race to it's end, we are descended from hera not from any of the civilian fleet or the battlestar crew. Their lines and the old human race are completely wiped out now and only heras new human populates the planet, a mix of cylon and human. It's not that the fleet lost the ability to ****, it's just that over time their descendants didn't make it and god either knew this or planned this so that heras new human could arive without the baggage of the past cycle(s).

lostexpectation

but hera is part human by cylon, so what does that mean for them on earth, so who does hera frack?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

wut? whoever she wants to I guess.

Derek Coleman

Black man and White woman have baby = Mixed race baby.

Mixed race man and White woman have baby = Mixed race baby.

When Cylons and Humans settled on Earth and started having babies the dilution of the Human Race started.

So to some it all up........ We are all descendents of a Cylon and Human cocktail of DNA. (Not in real life tho) :rolleyes:

pug_

Derek Coleman wrote: »

Ha! Surely you can't be serious. How can you get your explanation from the line "It doesn't like that name". Thats some LEAP.

Listen to Baltars speech to Cavil. "God is a force of nature". Sorry, but I'll get all Vulcan on you and believe that the Logical explanation is that its a supreme being and is not just Christianity's GOD. And the word "it" doesn't give God a sexuality so its man or woman or whatever. You see it doesn't offend or exclude anyone.

p.s. Six says "That too is in Gods Plan" ....... maybe its the name PLAN it doesn't like?

Initially I wasn't that serious, but now I think I might be just a bit, I'm curious to see what a vulcan would look like on me.

I wouldn't be so quick to rule it out, they've been banging on about Gods plan for years now, and then they come up with a show called the plan that details the plan the cylons were working under. Coincidence?

pug_

As for the importance of Hara, it's all based on Mitochondrial Eve

her mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is now found in all living humans: every mtDNA in every living person is derived from hers.

So essentially the importance of Hera is that we're all literally descended from her in some way.

Another interesting article in science daily here

The human race was divided into two separate groups within Africa for as much as half of its existence, says a Tel Aviv University mathematician. Climate change, reduction in populations and harsh conditions may have caused and maintained the separation.

Not the main focus of the article, but still interesting none the less in the context of BSG.

ixoy

pug_ wrote: »

So essentially the importance of Hera is that we're all literally descended from her in some way.

But that would mean she had to have lots of kids with lots of different people in order to provide a gene pool from which we descended. Surely it makes more sense for there to be a wider base to choose from, such as the mating between the surviving BSG crew and the "good" Cylons.

pug_

ixoy wrote: »

But that would mean she had to have lots of kids with lots of different people in order to provide a gene pool from which we descended. Surely it makes more sense for there to be a wider base to choose from, such as the mating between the surviving BSG crew and the "good" Cylons.

Read the article...

To find the Mitochondrial Eve of all living humans, one can start by tracing a line from every individual to his/her mother, then continue those lines from each of those mothers to their mothers and so on, effectively tracing a family tree backward in time based purely on mitochondrial lineages. Going back through time these mitochondrial lineages will converge when two or more women have the same mother. The further back in time one goes, the fewer mitochondrial ancestors of living humans there will be. Eventually only one is left, and this one is the most recent common matrilineal ancestor of all humans alive today, i.e. Mitochondrial Eve.

It is possible to draw the same matrilineal tree forward in time by starting with all human female contemporaries of Mitochondrial Eve. Some of these women may have died childless. Others left only male children. For the rest who became mothers with at least one daughter, one can trace a line forward in time connecting them to their daughter(s). As the forward lineages progress in time, more and more lineage lines become extinct, as the last female in a line dies childless or leaves no female children. Eventually, only one single lineage remains, which includes all mothers, and in the next generation, all people, and hence all people alive today.

Also...

Misconception: Mitochrondrial Eve was the only woman alive at that time

Allan Wilson's naming Mitochondrial Eve[3] after Eve of the Genesis creation story has led to some misunderstandings among the general public. A common misconception is that Mitochondrial Eve was the only living human female of her time. Had this been the case, humanity would have long since become extinct due to an extreme example of a population bottleneck.[citation needed]

Indeed, not only were many women alive at the same time as Mitochondrial Eve but many of them have living descendants through their sons. While the mtDNA of these women is gone, their Nuclear genes are present in today's population.[4]

What distinguishes Mitochondrial Eve (and her matrilineal ancestors) from all her female contemporaries is that she has a purely matrilineal line of descent to all humans alive today, whereas all her female contemporaries with descendants alive today have at least one male in every line of descent. Because mitochondrial DNA is only passed through matrilineal descent, all humans alive today have mitochondrial DNA that is traceable back to Mitochondrial Eve.

Furthermore, it can be shown that every female contemporary of Mitochondrial Eve either has no living descendant today or is an ancestor to all living people. Starting with 'the' MRCA at around 3,000 years ago, one can trace all ancestors of the MRCA backward in time. At every ancestral generation, more and more ancestors (via both paternal and maternal lines) of MRCA are found. These ancestors are by definition also common ancestors of all living people. Eventually, there will be a point in past where all humans can be divided into two groups: those who left no descendants today and those who are common ancestors of all living humans today. This point in time is termed the identical ancestors point and is estimated to be between 5,000 and 15,000 years ago. Since Mitochondrial Eve is estimated to have lived more than hundred thousand years before the identical ancestors point, every woman contemporary to her is either not an ancestor of any living people, or a common ancestor of all living people.[1][5]

Essentially every living person alive can trace their maternal lineage back to her. In reality there is no belief that she is literally the first woman to carry this gene just the oldest found to date, but the shows premis is that she was indeed the first woman to have this gene, and therefore we are all descended from her literally.

degrassinoel

i think what the writers were getting at were the numbers, 38,000 humans, and how many skinjobs?

one skinjob and one human managed to have a mixed race child, if they are compatible with each other, as hera is proof of that, then so are the rest of teh skinjobs and the 38k humans, plus, they are or would have been geneticly compatible with the indigeonous population,

lots of ridin'

150,000 years later - baddabing

pug_

degrassinoel wrote: »

i think what the writers were getting at were the numbers, 38,000 humans, and how many skinjobs?

one skinjob and one human managed to have a mixed race child, if they are compatible with each other, as hera is proof of that, then so are the rest of teh skinjobs and the 38k humans, plus, they are or would have been geneticly compatible with the indigeonous population,

lots of ridin'

150,000 years later - baddabing

So why have a shot of Mitochondrial Eve on the front cover of time magazine directly after a shot of Hera if not do draw a direct comparison between the two?

[EDIT] Just watched the end again to be sure, and they actually tell you that she is Mitochondrial Eve, so yup that's what that one means.

redbhoy1888

Totally satisfied by the finale of this fantastic series.Real lump in the throat to see Galactica ending her days and it answered a question I always wondered about ie if Humans found Earth no matter what the era where did the ships go?

Its been mentioned before but what do we all watch now?

Johnny Storm

Great ep IMHO. Maybe a bit over-literal in trying to explain every last thing but what's the point of nitpicking? - it was still great.

My personal favourite bit: Baltar more-or-less redeeming himself with his speech to Cavil and then later when he was overcome as he said "I do know about farming, you know". Ahhhhhh

PS No frakkin' way would I adopt a primitive neolithic lifestyle and let my starship packed with techno-goodies be thrown away.
BTW this was a big missed opportunity to give Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" a runout