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

FrostyJack

I'm probably breaking every bit of this charter but I only read the 1st page (too many negative reviews), but I Just watched the finale. All can say is wow. Obviously it's not perfect, but remember Soprano's? Absolutely the best thing I've seen all weekend, that includes the grand slam and liverpool winning 5 0. It has moved into number 1 in all the programmes I watched ( I mean overall, I still haven't watched The Shield's last season), well actually second as you can't beat Rome. I made the piss poor mistake of watching a low qual version of the ending with took away from it. I'm so buying it on Blue-ray!

랴연

Sad Professor wrote: »

I was very disappointed tbh.

Couldn't agree more. The last half of this season has tarnished the good name of BSG forever, especially the finale.

Why the hell are they going to save Hera ? Look at all the trouble caused when Starbuck wanted to go back to the nebula to bring them to Earth for one example but Hera's in trouble and everyone sticks their hands up Star Trek style for the suicide mission.

The action special effects was very good. The story was utter crap and even the acting was dodgy at times.

Compare the assault on the colony to something like the attack on New Caprica or any other attack previously.

The Galactica jumped in and starts getting drilled with fire. = No surprise, no strategy.
The Raptors jump out of the bay and go in from the other side. = meh

And what about the cylons ? Not even a single scene of them acting surprised that the Galactica had turned up. The black lad still carrying out the tests on Hera.

They just jumped in, got the **** kicked out of them, managed to survive it and jumped away. No tactics, no good strategy to overcome the odds, nothing.

Oh and a raptor full of dead people manages to somehow nuke the place. ffs

And of all the stupidity the skin-jobs fighting has to be the worst. Why would they go on an attack when a bullet in the brain = no resurrection. Don't they have centurions who are far better, more efficient killing machines then they are ? It makes no sense whatsoever, especially Cavill in the CIC and then shooting himself ??? For what ? Why ? Theres no reason to do it.

The way the cylons acted after the Chief pulls his hand from the bath was again, stupid. "Its a trick open fire!" cries cylon idiot #1 while hopelessly outnumbered and guaranteed a quick bullet to the head.

The scene with Baltar, 6 and the opera house was ok but lacking.

Then they arrive on Earth2 and Lee 'I should-have-died-a-painful-death-in-season-2' decides they should throw all their stuff away, spread out and live like stone age neanderthals gets the fleets vote of approval ?!

It was a star trek/stargate/childrens ending to a fantastic tv show. All the last episodes of season 4 are bad but the finale really takes the biscuit.

Honestly were all the actors fired who wrote seasons 1-3 and some rejects from Star Trek Voyager signed on ?

I am so disappointed with it and no matter how hard I try I cannot like this ending.

Pure usual American Sci-Fi tripe that ST:Voyager and any number of others have been spewing out for years.

noodler

I am glad I wasn't the only one who was underwhelmed but I can't say I hated it as much as you!

We can only hypothise why everyone decided to go with Adama's guilty conscience and save Hera. I don't think we need any reason for his willingness to go, but she was also one of the few babies born on Galactica throughout the 4/5 years of the show. I also imagine many members of the crew felt guilty over the mutiny and felt they owed Adama.

Volvagia

I loved it, I thought it was a fantastic ending to the series, 10/10!

The one nit pick i do have is why the raptors were able to jump from inside the museum pod on the galactica without tearing the ship in two.

Just a couple of weeks ago, one raptor outside the pod punched a hole in the hull, but this time a few raptors, inside the ship didn't seem to have any effect (unless i missed something)

Vokes

I think that hanger bay buckled / broke in on itself when they jumped.

transylman

Yeah, very disappointing for me too. A number of logical inconsistencies that jar, especially considering the huge efforts they have gone to previously to develop character motivation.

War with Cavil. He captures Hera. Ok, we'll give you resurrection. Fine lets be friends.

We are still at risk of being attacked by the remaining cylons who probably really want to see us dead now, what will we do. Set up on this planet and give up all our technology. Brilliant.

Even the opera house scene did not make much sense. All that buildup and what was the reward, not much.

Really hate the ending.

Talisman

transylman wrote: »

Yeah, very disappointing for me too. A number of logical inconsistencies that jar, especially considering the huge efforts they have gone to previously to develop character motivation.

War with Cavil. He captures Hera. Ok, we'll give you resurrection. Fine lets be friends.

We are still at risk of being attacked by the remaining cylons who probably really want to see us dead now, what will we do. Set up on this planet and give up all our technology. Brilliant.

Even the opera house scene did not make much sense. All that buildup and what was the reward, not much.

Really hate the ending.

Just like to point out that Cavil died - he was the one that orchestrated the boxing of the final five and attack on the colonies. He was the one that wanted to exterminate the human race. Without Cavil the Cylons weren't likely to pursue the fleet - the Centurions already believed in the One God.

As for giving up the technology - it worked, the cycle was broken. Look at the timeline. Approximately 4,000 years prior to the events of the series the Cylons split from the Colonials on Kobol and set off for Earth. 2,000 years later the AI they developed rebelled and wiped them out. The Final Five escaped and head for the colonies to warn them. Arriving there they find that the Colonials have developed AI which also revolted. The Final Five end the war. The cycle was taking place approximately every 2,000 years. The remnants of the Human and Cylon race settle on the new Earth, give up their technology and start from a clean slate. You have to flash forward to 150,000 years later before their descendants begin to develop their own AI.

LoLth

well, the way I saw Hera being the saviour of humanity was: her blood, being both cylon and human shows her to be the "mother of us all" which solidifies the races of earth. Instead of being Indian or European or American her blood proves that we are all just earthlings sort of in the same way that village a hates village b but when threatened they are all proudly from Country C. similarly, if we find extraterrestrials Earth would be united under a common heritage...

as for the comment that the robots at the end were cheesy, fair enough, thats your opinion. I didnt mind it at all. Supporting that with "a search will show others agreeing" dosnt really make your case any stronger imho. a search will also show why Bush should have gotten a third term and the emrits of Intelligent Design over the flawed Darwinism.... . Also, its not necessarily a majority of fans, its a majority of fans that post to internet forums that are searchable... these could still be a minority overall.

anyway, my 2c

랴연

Talisman wrote: »

You have to flash forward to 150,000 years later before their descendants begin to develop their own AI.

So Earth humans are really really slow in the brains department ?

mrak

Goodshape wrote: »

About the "God" aspect of the show... in my mind, this is science fiction. If BSG is saying anything about our God, it's that God is just a human concept for things we don't understand, and the universe is full of things we don't understand.

This unseen guiding hand in BSG, apart form being a (little too) convenient get-out for any pesky plot points, is similar to Q or the wormhole creatures in Star Trek.... powerful, mysterious, unexplainable - yes. But not GOD. Just a SCIENCE FICTION interpretation of what we know as God might actually be.

I agree - when I hear those lads going on about "God" I am thinking "advanced civilization" or even "programmer of the simulation in which all these events are happening". I'm not thinking christian god, but just something that we don't know enough to explain yet. I'm good with the idea.

fguihen wrote: »

I believe the show meant us to think those primitive humans are indeed the earliest form of homo (tee hee!) sapiens.

I also think that the show meant us to believe that Hera was indeed "Eve" so to speak. not that the other survivors didnt have kids or anything, but that the only ones to evolve and survive and end up being " us" were Hera's decendants.

Didn't they mention something about the humans being 100% compatible and they were wondering about the odds of that..? Neanderthal's weren't compatible with humans, so I guess the ending does seem to indicate that the colonists went on to eventually replace the original humans on earth and are our ancestors (mainly from the Hera who must have bred like a good-thing).

MisterAnarchy

I have been pontificating on the finale for a few days and while I did thoroughly enjoy it I do think it isn’t without flaws.

If I’m critical ,there were a few points. Too much was left "open to interpretation" - leading to the suspicion that the writers didn't know how to end it satisfactorily.

Hera didnt really turn out to be anything special.
Adama was going to sacrifice all these people to get her although she is not essential!!!
Ultimately her fate had no bearing on the overall story arc whatsoever. Starbuck lead them to Earth, Hera's impact on that was minimal at best. If you look back at the series as a whole, it's now clear that the writers disregarded plot elements they put down as part of the story arc (The Eye of Jupiter was never really explained nor was the device that came from Earth that damages Cylons, odd given Earth was Cylon).
And Starbuck being the harbinger of death didnt seem to make sense either.

I suppose Baltar and Caprica probably did reproduce,as I’m sure many of the other survivors did. But all of their descendants either died out or mixed with Hera’s descendants, and there are no more pure humans. So Kara did lead humanity to it’s end. It’s just not as bad as it sounded coming from the Hybrids.

With respect to the opera house, we didn’t learn any secret about any actual opera house. I’m just assuming that when this all happened on Kobol 3000 years before, the CIC scene with Hera happened in an opera house, and the visions tapped into a tribal memory of that.

I think that the “starting” over without the fleet, or a majority of their technology seemed a little ridiculous. I mean, didnt a base star full of Cylon Centurions, just leave them? No idea if they plan on coming back? Are we sure all the bad Cylons are dead? What about diseases or viruses on a new planet ? Most children are going to die without technology. And die young. Disease, the elements, natural disasters, famine…they’ll have an average life span of 30 years, for Gods know how long.It is, essentially, the suicide of a civilization. Having left no trace but some bones in the ground, that implies that their culture and civilization decayed and died. If it had thrived in any sense, it would either still be here, or it would have left traces. All the art, all the literature, science, medicine, music…gone.
A big sacrifice to end the cycle.

I wasn’t too fond of the whole Starbuck dissapearing act. I felt like her ending was too overtly supernatural. (I never did like the fact that she came back the way she did ala Gandalf, I had a nagging suspicion that there was no way to rescue that one.)
I would have liked to see some closure with Leoben and Starbuck. He was trying to help her and guide her - more than any other cylon. Why was this? What was it in her, that he clued in about and other cylons did not? And then why was he suddenly freaked out about her?

150,000 years ago was too long ago for the colonists to arrive, it should have been more like 10,000 years.

The editing of the final scene at the colony was poorly handled too,it didn’t show its final fate.
It seems it was sucked into the singularity according to interviews with Ron Moore.

Cavil committing suicide was also a bit strange but it seems Dean Stockwell came up with that idea.
Originally Tigh threw him over a deck and killed him,would have been more poetic.

Why could some Cyons get pregnant when others couldn’t ? True love ??
Are we to take it that Cylons were able to breed after settling on earth ?

I did like that the head people were agents of a higher being seemingly one who dint like being called God.

Overall though it was a great end to an epic series .

pug_

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

Hera didnt really turn out to be anything special.
Adama was going to sacrifice all these people to get her although she is not essential!!!
Ultimately her fate had no bearing on the overall story arc whatsoever. Starbuck lead them to Earth, Hera's impact on that was minimal at best. If you look back at the series as a whole, it's now clear that the writers disregarded plot elements they put down as part of the story arc (The Eye of Jupiter was never really explained nor was the device that came from Earth that damages Cylons, odd given Earth was Cylon).
And Starbuck being the harbinger of death didnt seem to make sense either.

But Hara is the person that literally everyone on earth is descended from on the maternal side, meaning every single person alive today is part cylon. That's the significance.

150,000 years ago was too long ago for the colonists to arrive, it should have been more like 10,000 years.

150,000 years ago is when Mitochondrial Eve dates from so it had to be then otherwise she really would be of no significance.

Calibos

pug_ wrote: »

But Hara is the person that literally everyone on earth is descended from on the maternal side, meaning every single person alive today is part cylon. That's the significance.


150,000 years ago is when Mitochondrial Eve dates from so it had to be then otherwise she really would be of no significance.

She would still have been significant because without the need to rescue her, starbuck would never have found the real earth.


The only reason to pick 150,000 years was Mitochondrial eve. The only reason to include Mitochondrial eve was because RDM had acknowledged that earth had the fossil record, ie he felt he needed to naturalistically tie in the colonials with evolution and our fossil record, ie this was our universe this was happening in, not a starwars, galaxy far far away kind of universe.

The thing is though it was wasted effort trying to 'naturalistically' tie it to evolution on earth when you were introducing a supernatural element anyway in that it had to be the hand of god intervening because the odds of a separately evolved homind species on a planet 1 million Light years away (Actually thats the mother of all exagerations Adama, Cylon Earth is only one jump away and we know that was 2000 lightyears from colonial space(hundreds of jumps over the course of the series)) being genetically compatible/identical with the colonials was astronomical.

So wasted effort in setting the arrival 150,000 year ago which just gets you into trouble with the conbclusions that logically must be drawn, ie not a happy ending. More like a civilistaion comitting suicide like another poster said. Not only did they give up modern technology, they gave up the wheel agriculture and fire too!! because there is no record of these till 10,000 years ago. In other words they all died off and their kids reverted to a hunter gatherer lifestyle for the next 140,000 years!! And What a future for Hera!! "Scientists discovered the fossilised remains of a Young Woman...." She only lived to 30 at most FFS!!

Lee said, "We'll give them the best part of ourselves" You can't even say they gave us language, We didn't develope that till 50,000 years ago!!

To summerise. Seeing as RDM had supernatural forces guiding the evolution of both sets of humans, no need for the mitichondrial eve tie in and the 150,000 year ago setting. Instead have them arrive 10,000 like others said and have "the best part of ourselves" gift be Farming, Civilisation and Greco Roman mythology which ties back in with the whole galatica mythos anyway.

That said, I enjoyed it, but it bugs me that the very series that proclaimed at the beginning its more realistic science credentials actually turned out to have as much if not more bad science at the end of the series than bloody Stargate FFS!!

pug_

I agree everyone that was left behind probably didn't have it easy. Whether any evidence of fire etc would have survived 150,000 years I don't know but it doesn't really matter.

They said all along that she was the key to the survival of both human and cylon races which according to the story line she was. I don't think it really matters that much if anyone had a jolly good time on earth while they were alive once Hera procreated and produced female heirs which she did thus fulfilling her fate.

cian_r

Final episode was brilliant 10/10.

Loved the original theme tune when the Galactica headed off on its final trip.

Only bad point I can think of is that there will never be another episode. I'm gutted! This was the best show on TV ... bar none!

AnCapaillMor

As whole series it could've answered a bit more but as an episode it was fantastic. Thinking about the questions baltars faith speech made it make sense. Loved the whole opera house scene culminating with the final 5 looking down.

bazz26

Can somebody explain this?

When Kara jumped Galactica to Earth 2.0 how did the rest of the fleet find them?

Stark

They had a raptor on board Galactica and they sent it to the rendez-vous coordinates in order to relay Earth 2.0's location to the fleet.

Vokes

A Raptor met them at the rendevouz point.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

the new admiral even mentions that 'happiest day of my life when i saw that raptor appear at the rendez-vous'

Calibos

Galactica sent a raptor to the original agreed jump rendevous coordinates. Remember Admiral 'Gaeta BF' said, "Boy was I glad to see that raptor jump in"

noodler

Okay now explain this for me.

If Kara was only an angel for season 4 then how did Leoben and her Mother predict her special destiny ages before that?

MisterAnarchy

noodler wrote: »

Okay now explain this for me.

If Kara was only an angel for season 4 then how did Leoben and her Mother predict her special destiny ages before that?

Well I guess her unexpected death on earth meant she had to be resurrected as an angel so as to fulfill her destiny.

Goodshape

I have a suspicion that they had some other idea / ending in mind when the decided to kill and resurrect Kara. Same goes for a lot of things, unfortunately.

But I've never really been that fussed about getting an answer to a lot of those things anyway.

I think the final managed to be fraking awesome while answering and concluding the main points... and if all that stuff that was fairly obviously just "a good idea at the time" (head-6 / head-baltar / kara / opera house / etc.) just turned out to be some scifi style higher power then fine. Glad we didn't have to dwell on it any more.

It was still fraking awesome.

Vokes

noodler wrote: »

Okay now explain this for me.

If Kara was only an angel for season 4 then how did Leoben and her Mother predict her special destiny ages before that?

God told 'em i guess

Reflector

랴연 wrote: »

Oh and a raptor full of dead people manages to somehow nuke the place. ffs

yeah was a bit silly, her hand just moves and sets off about 10 nukes, surely they'd have a safer system than that.

pug_

Reflector wrote: »

yeah was a bit silly, her hand just moves and sets off about 10 nukes, surely they'd have a safer system than that.

They did, but they decided to turn the safety off seconds before they got hit by the asteroid.

BlitzKrieg

it does get a big hmmmm from me.

It does try to end too much on a good notion with a dark *maybe* rather then a much more realistic grittier one.

The result is they tie up the wrong loose ends and some bits are good story and some bits are not.

On a side note, I CALLED RAMMING SPEED!

So initial impressions were good, some flashback bits to flesh out the whole how we got here bit at the end, but really these should have been spread out more over the last 5 episodes and not the last two. Anywho the attack is pretty eye candy its initially pretty cool with this focused ship of the line battle between two sides where one was vastyl superiro but then it becomes a little disconnected though in comparison to escape from new caprica, it was all undentifiable corridors and random space battles. The actual goal Hera is again handed to them (this time by boomer and not 6), the counterattack was the same, the feeling of a force pushing its way through galactica was only felt when hera got loose and you had that scene of cavil being escorted by centurians.

Speaking of Cavil. As a villian/character he had gone up and up since his introduction, reaching the point where he had gone from cynical cylon to head villian at the end of season 3, but really he was a mere footnote in this episode not worthy of his prior accomplishments. Not only as a character, but also as an actor. THe scene in Ops was cringeworthy, between his *give me the phone, This is Cavil, Stop the attac* dialogue which was not only badly written but also poorely delivered to his *oh Frack* depature from the series I couldnt decide which was worse.


Anywho end of the attack is not the worse bits of storytelling, not the best, regardless of whether you accept Balter's load of neo christian crap about angels, the end result is the same it was a story of divine intervention by coincedence and chance. Which if you are a being that can see the future then it is probably the best way to act within the universe if you wish to preserver an illusion of free will.

Overall I was hooked at this point of the story all the same and enjoying myself and the music etc leading up to the new earth.

Here is where things start to annoy me

-Good story telling: Those who proved some form of emotional courage/nobility, the good qualities of mankind by majority's opinion opt to save Hera, those who do not, stayed with the fleet. THose with the fleet while not punished, continue on in life to find some small colony and live an insignifficent but happy existence. Those who do prove themselves by trial of fire are brought to a gloriful eden of a planet, divided from the rest of the fleet forever but are finally at earth.

Thats what I first thought when I saw earth. That everyone who stayed to save Hera were awarded with earth and because of Galactica had broken her back they were now stranded on earth.

On the topic of Earth, that p*ssed me off, you click its our earth straight away and i felt *cop out!* I must admit to hoping for something different for a finale, maybe darker, mayber lighter, just different the whole predesscors to earth (that the galacticans would find earth and become out ancestors) theory was a initial theory of mine when I started watching the series and all the events of season 3 and 4 buried it under a mountain. Now it feels like all those events were just some glorified sucker punch to make me 2nd guess the ending I already saw coming.

anyway the neo earth side of the story, its a nice enough wrap up, sort of slots in with some general knowledge of history and religion, those who still believed in the old gods and were adapt at their scienece etc went on to form the greeks, others such as in Australia, Africa and the Americas were either (if you are negative) wiped out by the locals or were (if you are positive) intergrated into those cultures very well. And Balters little tribe of believers went on to be the Jewish people and later christians etc. Sort of.

The problem with Less Adama's plan and the viewing of this is rather simple we know our history, and you weigh up having cvilisation from the get go with common understanding and common goals to dividing people up so much that they forget how to get along and leads to a history which we spent most of it killing each other.

THe only way his plan makes sense is if he accepts the futility of human co existence that we were always end up killing ourselves and that dividing us up slows it down (so unlike the colonies and earth) it took well over 150 000 years for us to get to the endgame.

Now that might have worked if it wasnt from Lee Adama, but from the God of coincidences (going back to the notion that Galactica should have ended up there on her own)

Anywho, all the characters get their write up.

With the head six and balter explained, Starbuck being one aswell doesnt make sense, and also doesnt fit with how our God of coincedences has acted so far. So for her explanatation I give a resounding *meh*


Finally the ending piece. The only thought that went through my head was:

If this was some celestial force of nature, repeating a process again and again in the hope of creating a human race that wasnt self destructive, Not a good human race or a bad one, just one that doesnt plant the seeds of its own destruction, then his process seems a bit messy. Considering that the changes example to example are so vastly different that they have breeded vastly different results if you consider earth, kobol and the colonies as different experiments as angel baltar hinted, if that was just bad dialogue then you could say it was one big experiment [kobol] and it is only now at new earth has it been finished and he can restart the process with its one single change being Hera. But as seperate experiments they had vast differences, too much you could say for a scientific process, and he starts this experiment off with the same issues. Sure if the centurians hadnt been allowed to do as they pleased and the cultural differences brought by the colonists hadnt been the precursor to countless wars) it might be argued that the only change made has been Hera and her influence could have saved humanity by her genetic influence creating a less self destructive species?

God is a bad scientist


But mostly I am nitpicking, the show was one of those that was so much had been built up by us the fans with theories and character exploration that it was impossible for them to satisfy us with a middle of the ground happy ending. It was all or nothing and the show didnt give it all, so we really got nothing back.

telemachus

I'm not sure if anyone else saw that special that came out just prior to the final episode where Moore talks about being stuck for some time over how to write the final episode and then walks in and scrawls IT'S THE CHARACTERS on the whiteboard, but it really does show. I don't believe he had much idea what was going to happen, and in his decision to make it so character driven I think he maybe sacrifices the plot a little to get his characters to the final resting point he felt fitting for them.

As for the whole going rustic and forsaking technology I didn't agree with that at all as a method of breaking the oft focused on cycle, it merely discarded any good humanity accumulated and put a reset on technology so annihilation would arrive a little later rather than finding a way around the problem, all the talk of love overcoming and acceptance of the other race came to nothing, and no doubt two or three generations down the line they'd be smashing each others heads open with rocks and clubs. The baggage Lee referred to wasn't technological accumulation, it was what's in our heads, humanity doesn't need to make AI creations to mistreat and then turn on them, they can and will repeatedly do that to themselves. All they achieved was to ensure that all record of past mistakes were lost, and that when technology inevitably caught back up, man didn't have the half chance of learning from history so as not to repeat it, they simply passed the problem on to a generation way down the line, to grope in the dark for a solution.

The Baltar and Six destiny left me a little underwhelmed, the foreshadowing and prominence of them both from the very start seemed to hint that they were going to be in some way involved in humanity's fate beyond running accross a young child in a corridor. Given that they were the only ones bestowed with these angelic avatars of "god" for such a long time I rather expected something more elaborate. What with all the other (considerably hefty at times) interfering this "god" indulged in i'm sure he could have saved the child in a more efficent way (maybe inspired an overwhelming divine urge for one of the marines to pee, and run into her on the way to the toilets )

Biggins

I now have the pleasure of seeing so far in my life two great complete series.
One was "The West Wing" and now "BSG" - overall, it don't get any better than that.
So far there is nothing on at the moment I can even say comes close to either or both of them.

BSG I will miss you.
Well done to all involved in making the series.