None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.

[constance]

I just watched the season finale of Battlestar Galactica, and I know I should've watched it weeks ago, but it took me a while to get those last episodes downloaded. But now I've watched it, and I really really want to talk about it. I mean! Gosh!

I don't even know where to start, honestly -- I just feel all keyed up and agog and even though I sort of guessed some of the twists, in the way that I guess twists, one of about six possibles floating around in my head and one turns out to be right and I'm not convinced it's really going to happen until it does, that doesn't mean I didn't watch it all going down with my mouth hanging open.

Wait, I do know where to start. It occurred to me that things might be headed for cylonhood for the music-hearers as soon as I realized not everyone was hearing the music, and then all I really needed to do was make note of who was hearing it and who wasn't to guess who those cylons might be. And then when they started quoting lyrics and I realized what song they were hearing, I just started laughing, because.

Okay, you know, none of the Cylons ever really talk about their God in any way but the most nebulous and general way, as far as I can recall, but when they started quoting lyrics, I suddenly started laughing because more than just about anything in the world, what I wanted right then was for the Cylons' monotheism to be centered around Bob Dylan. I wanted "All Along the Watchtower" to be some kind of ancient sacred hymn.

So what did you think of the season finale? Please share, I'm begging you!

Comments

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

Saw this on friendsfriends, and thought I'd share, since you ARE begging, and I just watched the entire series to date for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

The finale was really quite intense, wasn't it? I'd accidentally spoiled myself for almost everything (damn that Wikipedia!), and knew from other sources that Starbuck wasn't dead, and it still sucked me in and held me in its thrall.

I wonder when the new Cylons are going to share that information, and how the humans are going to escape their current predicament.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I'm really glad I wasn't spoiled for anything but Kara's reappearance, but I'm not sure it would've made a difference anyway, because you're right, it was mesmerizing. So surreal! And it makes me want to go back and watch the entire series over again with this episode in mind.

I want to know more about the Cylons, too. How they figure in to the Cylon infrastructure, why the Cylons don't talk about them. How long they can hold to their own inclinations against whatever programming might override them. And I wonder what enormous trouble Baltar's going to cause, and I wonder what's going to happen with the standoff they've left us with, and I wonder where Kara's been...

Oh, God. I should have waited till like the night before the Season 4 premiere to watch this. How many months again?

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

Too many months. Far too many.

How much did the seven even know about the five? Was it that they didn't discuss them because they didn't know anything, or because the split was too much to cross?

And, of course, how did Kara make it to Earth and back?

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I KNOW.

Well, and who's the last Cylon? Is it Kara or Roslin (my top two choices, after this episode), or someone else?

*screams in frustration, watches finale again*

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

Well, for the twelfth to be more dramatic than the four, it has to be Roslin, Kara, or one of the Adamas. They've resisted having both people in a couple be Cylons, which would make me think not Kara, because she's been paired with Leoben and Anders, but maybe so if she's going to be with Lee.

And now that four of the five have been revealed, are their now going to be clones of Tigh et al? If so, have the clones been in the Resurrection ships the entire time? And if that's the case, then why did no one peek?

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Oooh, my friend onthecontrary posted a theory back when the finale was still fresh for everybody except you and me (but which I have just read), and she has a theory about the four new Cylons that I really like and which explains both why the other Cylons won't talk about them and why they were all four involved heavily in the resistance movement: that they originally sided with the humans and broke the faith with the Cylons.

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

I didn't read Keri's take on it (I've met her a couple of times IRL), but I've seen that idea elsewhere.

Perhaps if the 12th is Roslin, it's so she can bring Cylon and human together into one peaceful future?

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but I hope that if things play out this way, Roslin is at her most sweetly, ruthlessly Machiavellian as it's happening (as opposed to, say, drug-addled and hallucinating), 'cos that is my very favorite mode of Roslin.

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

Ooh, she does ruthless Machiavellian so very well (I knew there had to be a use for that BA in polisci! It means I've actually read Machiavelli. Which...is of no practical value to me, and of little other value as I don't remember a whit of it).

So, perhaps she dies from the cancer relapse, and then! Another Roslin appears, which is how we discover her to be a Cylon! And no one knew until then!

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahaha, hooray for useless liberal arts eddications!

I wonder if Cylons can get cancer. :?

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

Oh, scheisse, I'd forgotten that. That would indeed make it difficult for 12 to be Roslin. While they could use the same explanation they use for Tigh to explain Roslin or Adama being 12, it remains that were 12 Adama then Hera would not be the first hybrid (unless Adama became a Cylon later?). That leaves Lee and Kara, and between those my money'd have to be on Kara.

Liberal arts educations are ALWAYS for the win. Just not always for the paycheck.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Liberal arts educations are ALWAYS for the win. Just not always for the paycheck.

Don't I know it.

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

I've never said this before, but resistance appears futile.

O RLY?

What sort of LA ed did you receive? (I'm a bit of an education geek. It's one of my many and varied forms of geekery.)

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I have Art History, with minors in English and Anthropolgy (emphasis on folklore). I am proud to say that I probably have one of the top ten useless degrees of all time. Only Philosophy would kick me any higher, I think!

[octoberstory.livejournal.com]

PUT THAT THING OUT THE AIRLOCK.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I am going to wipe the floor with you, Gaius.

[octoberstory.livejournal.com]

I love Gaius because even though Roslin scares the living shit out of him, he'd still fuck her. And they're both probably aware of that, too. And even knowing that she knows it, he'd STILL do it just because he's an arse.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Too true, too true, but I forgive him that, since Roslin is pretty fucking hot. The thing that I find both repellent and endearing about Baltar is that I'm pretty sure that he thinks of all strong women on the show that way. Witness his night with Kara (and the subsequent mini-crisis that caused), the fact that the Six in his head called him on his attraction to Sharon, his side project with D'Anna, etc.

He's such a fucking weasel, and I adore him for it. Do you remember that top five list we played at long ago, our top five characters we love in fiction but would revile in real life? If I were to remake that list now, Gaius Baltar would top it.

damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[kickthebeat.livejournal.com]

i just rewatched the last three eps of season three a few weeks ago, but i've just sat through six episodes of season two doctor who -- AND BAWLED LIKE A BABY -- so i don't really remember much? other than lee being inexplicably likeable again. :( HARD FOR ME, C.


i posted about the season three finale, though, after i had watched it, with some thoughts about our new cylons. shall i link, or repost them here? i mean, it's wretched, as my opinions often are. also, STILL WATCHING WHO CANNOT STOP SEND HELP et cet. :(

*sends Tardis to rescue you*

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Well, I read your post before I saw this comment -- I said to myself SURELY KERI HAS GOT AN OPINION ABOUT ANDERS, TYROL, AND TIGH! SURELY SHE HAD SOMETHING TO SAY THAT I SKIPPED AT THE TIME ON ACCOUNT OF NOT WANTING TO BE SPOILED.

And I was right! And I have to say: God, I love your theory about why they were all involved in the insurgency. I am so hoping you are totally right.

And! my Cylon cup totally runneth over, even though I will have to have it explained to me, in excruciating detail, exactly how Tigh could be a Cylon. The only way I can see it is that he was the very first skinjob. And that still doesn't explain how he could've been involved in the first war.

KERI I NEED YOU BACK ON THE CASE. Stop watching Dr. Who at once!

Re: *sends Tardis to rescue you*

[octoberstory.livejournal.com]

I love me some Tighlon.

Re: *sends Tardis to rescue you*

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Tigh, walking through the door and noting who's there: Whoooooaah.

Re: *sends Tardis to rescue you*

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Also, I love the Tyrolon almost as much.

Re: damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

I'm astonished that you ever deleted the fat!Lee icon at all!

Re: damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[octoberstory.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. Fat!lee icon was the greatest ever.

Re: damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[tofty.livejournal.com]

P.S. Lee totally rocked that last episode -- I know you have trouble with Lee rocking anything, but it cannot be denied -- but he looks like such a dork in that pinstriped suit with his hair combed flat that I feel it restores some equilibrium there.

Re: damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[octoberstory.livejournal.com]

Get ready for maaaaaajor BG debates when J and I get there, because this show brings out the (didactic, self-righteous) armchair sociologists in us like nothing else, FOR REALS, YO.

Throughout the whole trial, Jim was very much Anti-Lee, saying "he's betraying the Old Man, his own people, and waffling abominably AS USUAL because this whole Baltar Defense hooey is nothing but a petty attempt to punish Roslin and his dad"; I was very much Pro-Lee, saying, "good for him because he has the courage to follow his own convictions in the face of overwhelming pressure to capitulate, which is a true test of character." (This was just round 2 of a disagreement that goes way back to Lee's foiling of the attempted military coup against Roslin--I was a Lee apologist even then, when J was scorning him for breaking the chain of command, holding a superior officer at gunpoint, and betraying the trust of the fleet. J claimed that in real life no one in his outfit would ever trust him again; I said that, whether in real life or in the reality of BG, not-too-distant history would exonerate Lee because his instincts are so fundamentally sound that they usually anticipate the moral conclusions that people would reach, anyway, if they weren't so busy gunning for revenge and issuing ultimatums and putting collaborators out airlocks. Plus, I suspect Jim was just lashing out due of a major soft spot for Dualla, whom he sees as a victim of Lee's infernal waffling [see above] and shiftlessness, to which I say: at least Lee's infidelity hasn't KILLED Dee, which is more than Dee can say for her own Ex.)

Anyhow. I felt totally gratifed by Lee's speech, and J declared he'd reversed his opinion of the boy 100 percent, and we cried and drank Shiraz and talked about our feelings, it was great.

In further news, That Blind Bastard Was Hot.

Re: damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[tofty.livejournal.com]

All through the trial, I kept thinking, Baltar is a lucky SOB, to have Badger as a lawyer!

I sort of agree with Jim, though, about Lee. That is, I agree with both of you, to a degree. You're right that Lee's decisions are generally good ones, made using a moral compass that pretty much always points true north. But his kickass moral courage makes not for a decent military officer. In a military setting, one's own senses of right and wrong are expected to be subsumed to the collective. A military officer obeys orders first and asks questions later (if at all), and every time Lee is forced to choose between his individual preference and the military decision, he chooses his own preference; and no matter how good his instincts are (and they are very good indeed, all things considered), the fact that he ever considers his own wishes in the first place makes him a serious military liability.

I think he'd be better served as an advocate, you know? An attorney, or a legislator, or an abitrator of some sort. And I wonder if he doesn't feel the same way; I'm remembering a conversation between him and Tigh a while back, after the attempted coup, I think, where Tigh tells Lee that he's unfit to wear a uniform, and Lee agrees. (In fact, he says something like, "You're right, I am unfit. But so are you." Which is, you know, a good point.)

Re: damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[octoberstory.livejournal.com]

I think he'd be better served as an advocate, you know?
Agreed, definitely. My admiration for him (romantic befuddlement notwithstanding) doesn't really admit his superiority as a military man--in fact, it kind of runs contrary to it, as you pointed out. Whereas J and I differed because he seemed to think that Lee's priorities made him a bad man, as opposed to a bad soldier. Or that the two were synonomous.

I think it bears remembering, too, that the stakes are so incredibly frigging high in the BSG universe that the characters and viewers must constantly revise their criteria for what makes a "good" soldier--or a "good" president, a "good" scientist, etc. In our reality, we all generally agree that a good soldier follows orders above all; there may be casualties as a result, unnecessary injuries, even mass destruction. Superior officers are capable of errors in judgment, but we agree that maintaining the integrity of the whole trumps individual objections because isolated incidents, however bloody, are preferable to anarchy.

But what happens when your margin for error shrinks to about 1%...that is to say, when one really bad mistake may lead directly to the end of humanity? Does a "good" soldier's moral imperative change when he believes that an order may be not just disastrous, but apocalyptic? What possible use can it be to maintain the integrity of the military chain of command if there's no humanity left for the military to protect?

But then, J would argue that it's in situations like that that the chain of command is MOST worth observing, and that if humanity has any shot at surviving then order has to be maintained on every level.

I don't know, I really don't know. That's what I love about this show. It's structured like a Greek tragedy (the pantheism and hubris and suggestions of a universe in which the laws of the Gods supercede the laws of man), but is otherwise totally modern in its treatment of men and women as flawed, loveable creatures with opposing instincts and free will to act on them. I like that there are so few easy answers.

Right, that's more than enough rambling about that.

Re: damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Hahah! Again, I'm running sort of in between the two of you, as to whether-and-how the military process (and other processes as well) should be altered. I believe they should be altered, actually -- behaviors and expectations and procedures that worked reasonably well in regulating a series of planets populated by billions of people are going to be cumbersome and counterproductive when you're talking about fewer than 50,000 people crammed on a (dwindling) handful of spaceships. I think that Lee is right to question the status quo -- but I think that the way he approaches changing it is dangerously impulsive, for a man who wields a good deal of authority.

IMO, Adama and Roslin are working through change much more effectively. They're slower off the mark (and in fact are often goaded into change by Lee, much as Adama in particular would be reluctant to admit that), but they're better about testing and talking about it together and with others. They are more flexible about subsuming their own most dearly-held principles to what they see as the common good, and so their adaptations in the world order are less cataclysmic, and less feckless as well. (Though they have their moments too, don't they? :D)

[friendly.livejournal.com]

BOB DYLAN IS THE FIFTH

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Not unless he is also God!

[octoberstory.livejournal.com]

I think I saw a 60 Minutes segment once about a Japanese man who had structured a Christian congregation around the teachings (via lyrics) of Bob Dylan. Like, he had seriously founded a denomination of the faith called Dylanism.

*thinks about Kara, holds up lighter to "Just Like a Woman"*

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha, maybe they'll work that sect into the show. That'd be awesome.

[dahlia-777.livejournal.com]

I was blown away by the last ep too! I swear to you, my palms were sweating and I was shaking and I was sitting bolt upright on the sofa mouthing "OMG, OMG, OMG!!!" like a maniac. Colonel Tigh was the biggest shock, but Tyrol was a surprise too. Anders and Roslin's aide, meh, not so bothered. I always thought Billy was a Cylon so I was mentally prepared for his replacement to be one too. But Tigh - how screwed up is he going to be now? Loved how he went *straight* into denial. Loved it.

Kara - what a fab way for her to come back after all the angst and emo-handwringing just before she "died". I wasn't spoiled for her reappearance but I totally expected it. I don't know if she's the final cylon or not but it would make sense. Either that or she's made some Very Significant Discovery on that mysterious gas planet she disappeared into.

And can I just say that I love Baltar SO MUCH! I feel disloyal to Kara for saying this because she's my favourite character nearly all of the time, but whenever Baltar's on screen I'm not watching anyone else, you know what I'm saying...?

[tofty.livejournal.com]

After the idea that the people hearing the music might very well be Cylons dawned on me, I spent the rest of the episode in pretty heavy denial myself! I sat there clenching the arms of my desk chair with my mouth open, thinking NO WAY THIS IS SO COMPLETELY INSANE (caps entirely appropriate here) -- not only the idea of the Cylons themselves, which the only one who didn't leave me completely enraptured and agog was Tori, in whom I've always perceived a kind of robotic quality (not that I expected her to be a Cylon, just that she's so incredibly methodical and chilly). I love the idea of Anders as a Cylon almost as much as I adore both Tigh and Tyrol as Cylons, though. Think of him trapped under rubble with Sharon and Caprica and D'Anna! And Sharon and Caprica letting him go! ♥ I wonder if they knew he was one of them?

And I wonder who D'Anna was apologizing to, when she finally saw the final five before we did! I'm thinking Tigh, because she was pretty nasty about him when she was making the documentary -- but who knows, really.

Oh, man. As far as my favorite character goes, I'd be hard-pressed to say. Starbuck and Baltar and Roslin and Tigh (and to a lesser degree Adama and Lee and Tyrol) are all completely mesmerizing to me, and my favorite tends to change with the storylines they're working out as opposed to their characters. But yeah, Baltar is divine, isn't he?! OMG, his line at the end of the trial was vintage Gaius: "I always knew that I was going to be acquitted, but the fact that I have been found innocent shouldn't disguise in any way that this trial has been a total pantomime." *dies* I do love him so.

[dahlia-777.livejournal.com]

Think of him trapped under rubble with Sharon and Caprica and D'Anna! And Sharon and Caprica letting him go! I'd forgotten that but you're so right - delicious irony. I don't think they know who the other cylons are - they're machines and could just remove that from their "memory", either to further their cause or because of some rift we don't yet know about. Maybe the cylons we've just found out about deliberately wiped their memory? We don't even know how they fit into the cylon hierarchy yet. Is Tigh chief cylon? Oh, so many possibilities.

How do you feel about the makers saying the next series will be the last? In a way I think it's good - they'll quit while they're ahead, and at least there's no risk of it being cancelled because of stupid ratings (RIP Sunset Beach - I'm still bitter!). But on the other hand it's such a shame and I'll miss it so much. It's more than a TV show, you know. It transcends mere entertainment - it's art!

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I feel exactly the same about the proposed series end. I'm glad they're limiting themselves to a strictly-regulated time frame, and quitting before the show starts to crumble. But I don't know what I'll do without BSG! It's one of the things I've looked forward to most, since I first started watching it.

They had better answer all those questions before the series ends, though. If they don't, I will have to cut somebody.