eBay item no. 400032321233
Seller: zerbutz
Buyer: o***r ( 278)
Price: $831.31
A nice page that went for a premium (for a pre-Ger piece, which average about $550). I was in there with $825 and got sniped (which used to bother me - a lot! - and now I'm sort of c'est la guerre about it).
So... give this a try and report back.
http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g2/applegame.htm
I'm going against the tide on this Battlestar Galactica Finale backlash: the more I think about it (and, frankly, accept the writers at face value and go with it) the more I like it. I think there are 3 main debates: (1) the retcon debate: was this more like the last episode of "Newhart" when Bob wakes up next to Emily (an homage to the Bobby Ewing shower scene), and they just spooged it in there; or (2) the lazy debate: this precious ending had been in mind since the start, and regardless of where the show had organically evolved to, that's our story and we're sticking with it, even if it doesn't quite follow; or (3) the makes-no-sense debate, a bad narrative choice: why would these people ditch their technology and "move backwards"?
I think you can read all of these into it, but I also think you can go with the last scene of "The Sixth Sense," or the last revelation of "St. Elsewhere" - I think they had a plan all along, which pretty much lobs off debates (1) and (3), and I could say more about those, and leaves the question of whether this was a painted into a corner lazybones finale. I don't think so. because it recasts the entire series in a quite reasonable and thoughtful way.
One of the reasons we all like LOST is that it is in our faces that we only know as much as the characters, and while the writers are more informed than we are, they are not telling... they are showing. This worked exceptionally well in Season One, because we were all as clueless as the Lostaways, and it somehow feels a little less satisfying today because we, and they, actually know more, and it is casting a new light on their/our prior experiences.
Battlestar Galactica worked, in retrospect, because not only were we seeing the world and events ONLY through the POV of the characters, we were also (in effect) as faked out as they were because we bought into the interpretation of the weirdest events of the series: everything related to religion, and the (putative) visions being experienced by the characters.
In the "150,000 years later" segment, we learn a great deal about the nature of Hera and, much more importantly, the nature of the high-technology beings who appear to us as versions of Caprica-6 and Baltar. If the writers had wanted a cheap way out, they would have turned them into super-luminal beings who "climbed aboard their starships, and headed for the sky" (to borrow a lyric. If you want to see how a bad ending to BSG would turn out, grab a tub of popcorn, turn off your central processing unit, and go see "Knowing" (now playing at a theater near you).
From the first moments of the series, these being are nudging things along in this particular cycle of this experiment in watching complex systems (systems that I hypothesize are techno-organic beings who are trying to see if they can replicate themselves in order to understand themselves better... a guess). Caprica-6 and Baltar (somehow) survive the incineration of their apartment (shown at the start of nearly every episode), and then the series (this cycle) becomes a multilayered story of (a) their redemption (can it occur?), (b) organics and techs living in harmony (can it occur?), and (c) what are the conditions that allow the cycle to play out differently?
(a) we see the redemption of Caprica-6 and Baltar as a major arch, noodged along by the high-tech beings whom they (and we) interpret as visions [Arthur Clarke's Third Law of Prediction, operating in full force], and the who thing hits a crescendo when the 4 of them are together in the same scene during the end of the last episode, for the first and only time, and all aware of each other
(b) the story of Hera (that is, what Hera represents) is also told over the whole series, and quite consistently - the overlap of the "dreams and visions" of the opera house with CIC Galactica was masterfully done, and the critical roles that Caprica-6 and Baltar play in this, as a part of their redemption, are equally clear
(c) I think one of the lessons from BSG is the same one that the Oracle understood, and that the Architect refused to understand, in The Matrix (where the techno-organic harmony narrative is also played out). The Architect does not like the imperfection of free will, and that free will has two aspects (Neo and Smith - two sides of the same coin) - and until you embrace those characteristics of organic beings, you cannot achieve harmony. In BSG, I would argue that accepting the most noteworthy death in the final episode (Tory) and the way in which is takes place, as a mechanism of resolution that breaks the cycle (because at that moment resurrection is lost to all sides, and the good of the many outweighs the good of the one (Or, if you are into to, there has been shift, in the last decade, for people who do computer modeling of EC, Evolutionary Computation, to shift from single-objective optimization (the good of the one) to multiple-objective optimization (the good of the many) and the evidence seems to favor the latter). Anyhow, I see the murder of Tory to be an ultimate issue, not a cheap way out: can the most defensible moral choice be the murder of an individual? Tory gets killed. Neo commits suicide.
Without the "150,000 years later" segment, we do not learn how this cycle (this choice) has turned out, and in the choices that were made, pushes it right through the fourth wall.
Not coda at all... but an integral part of the story.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it.
