Sci-fi has always had a reputation for tackling topics that mainstream entertainment consider taboo – but BSG really impressed me by grabbing some seriously hot topics with both hands and giving them a good shake.

But this final episode…

After watching it, I wondered if I’d just spent the past 4 years being surreptitiously bible-bashed without realising it. By the time the credits started rolling, I knew I wouldn’t be watching Caprica.

Starbuck is Jesus… uh huh.

We’re expected to swallow Apollo’s offhand “isn’t it funny how everyone just decided to abandon technology… but they did”?

And that cheesy bit at the end??

It was just all so banal.

On the other hand, monotheism – with its rich history of violence and intolerance – being the product of genocidal robots who are obsessed with breeding, kinda makes sense.

And what happend here? I feel that God of the movie pulled the characters’ legs, just as much as the writers pulled mine. What was the whole deal with Hera for? Why did so many people have to die, so many plots twisted?

Just to bring “mitochondrial Eve” to earth? But what is mitochondrial eve? Nothing. Just the woman that held in her a mitochondria, and gave it to two daughters, both of which still have a line of female offspring today. When one of these lines will die, mitochondrial eve will be promoted to another woman later in history. Every single one of our genes have their own Adam and Eve. Why is Hera more important than any of them?

So, if I was a character in the series, I’d say to god – all that for what? Why did we have to fight for that child?
As a viewer I feel betrayed. I was promised some real deep secret, and got nothing… just a half finished idea stretched over 3 episodes, and smeared over the rest of the series.
I think it actually ruined for me the rest of the series. It ruined my suspended disbelief. I was watching it and really enjoyed it, but now that I know that there is nothing behind it, I think it won’t be the same….

I was hoping:
There was an alien race or super cylcon pulling the strings and we’d meet them.
They would find our earth and it would be 2012. (Good spin off or movie)

I didn’t like the anti tech flavour either.

Was the finale uneven? YES. Even when you watch it as one three hour episode, it’s uneven. There are incredibly acted scenes alternating with terribly acted scenes (I assume this is because it was the last episode, and emotions were running high on the set).

Was the science bad? YES. The world was much colder and drier 150,000 years ago. That was disappointing, it would have been nice if the continents had actually looked like they did in the Pleistocene. However I chalk that up to being a dramatic concession, that Earth needed to totally recognizable to the viewers because of the fake-out with the last Earth. I can also accept the notion of parallel evolution on planets with similar environments, it’s already been established in Battlestar with references to gorillas and panthers and dogs and cats in the 12 Colonies. It fits with BSG’s predeterminism (all this has happened before, all this will happen again). I’m glad the natives- from a distance- looked suitably like Homo erectus. Erectus shared its basic body proportions with modern humans but had a smaller brain. Since they were our direct ancestors and relatively recent ancestors, it’s conceivable that a modern human and a Homo erectus, were one alive today, would encounter no reproductive barriers.

Was the finale one big Deus Ex Machina? YES. But what did we expect? One of the reasons I found BSG so interesting, as an atheist, was that the show convinced me there was a God in its universe, and early on I figured that this God was nothing like what the Cylons or the Humans had in mind.

Frequently when speaking to believers I have made the case that while I am certain that Yahweh, Aschlepus, Apollo, Quetzalcoatl and Hecate don’t exist, I’m agnostic on a slight technicality… BUT, I always add, if I am wrong, it’s not exactly going to change my life. I still have no reason to assume any one religion got everything right about it, so I’m not exactly going to start worshipping or praying, as I still have no evidence that this higher power- hypothetically speaking- cares about me or takes any particular interest in me. If there is a God, I doubt it has anything invested in Barry Greenstein, or my mother, or Barack Obama. The existence of God- realistically speaking- would have virtually no impact on my life.

Unless it had its own agenda. Now this hypothetical God, which existed within the universe of Battlestar Galactica, was arbitrary, murderous, manipulative, and fickle. Just like the God of the Old Testament. The difference is that Battlestar didn’t feature Christians, Jews or Muslims. The Cylons and Baltar’s cult were monotheists, but Baltar’s cult was basically a “God does not care” cult of theological determinism (Baltar himself is an example of someone who comes to believe that he *is* an instrument of a God that guides his actions. Technically he was right). No portrayal of God in BSG is anything that any mainstream religion would approve of, despite the fact that adherents to the 3 main Abrahamic religions worship such a God- capricious, tyrannical, and with an agenda that is larger than the human species. In other words, “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”

Here’s my theory on BSG’s God: He’s a gambler. Eternity is boring, so this God is a gambler. Remember what the “Angel” version of Six said in Times Square to Angel-Baltar, that maybe a surprise every once in a while was in “It’s” plan too. This is consistent with Baltar’s exchange with Cavil, who asks, “How do you know that God is on your side?” only to have Baltar say that he doesn’t know. All Baltar knows is that he can’t deny something greater than himself, and isn’t that enough?

Did the finale promote Luddism? YES. What about the assumption that people would just go along with that plan like sheep, abandoning their technology because of a leader’s ideal? Realistically, they’ve been couped up like animals on decaying spaceships, under what is basically a benevolent dictatorship. Earth presented an Edenic paradise, and let’s not forget that these are BSG civilians we’re talking about. These people are worse off than those refugees in “Road Warrior.” They live like parasites inside the hulls of dying metal leviathan at the mercy of their only defense, a mutinous military junta with its own internal problems. I can’t stand Luddism, but at least I can understand its appeal in a post-apocalyptic context.

And a word on politics in Battlestar: I *hate* Gaeta. Why do I hate Gaeta?
Let’s just say I think politics are situational. In the event that the human species was knocked down to less than 39,000 breeding pairs, a benevolent dictatorship really is the way to go if the goal is eventually to re-establish humanity and more humane values like democracy and social justice. Gaeta was quite inconveniently, in this context, a post-apocalyptic Populist. He exposed Roslin’s election scandal, sentencing humanity to endure the horrors of New Caprica under Baltar and the Cylons. He then switched sides to the Resistance because Baltar turned out to have been a bad political ally. Only a guy like this could be naive enough to fall prey to Zarek’s manipulation. Gaeta was a naive idealist, and Zarek was a opportunistic cynic who spoke the language of idealism.

BSG was a series about authority: where it comes from, and how we legitimize it. Of course, it had to include the authority of a God. God is a concept that is used to claim moral authority, political authority, and historical authority. Authority was tested, just like the belief and non-belief of characters like Roslin and Adama were tested. BSG was a show about the choices we make to survive and the value of survival itself. The second half of the 4th season was so beautiful for the fact that things were falling apart every which way. I had goosebumps during almost every episode from the discovery of the ruins of the 13th Tribe to the very end. Seeing the Galactica fall apart, seeing Adama’s drinking spiral out of control, seeing Adama lose control, and thinking all along, “God is a gambler with a need to lose control. The God of BSG has a fetish for games of chance. That is the only way this show makes any sense.” And though I do not believe in God, it is nonetheless a profound statement about authority and self-satisfaction.