BSG series finale thoughts

In the last hour of the Battlestar Galactica series finale, the show's overwhelmingly grey and black palette gave way to the lushest possible greens and blues. The show depicted Pleistocene Africa as the garden of Eden, a point hammered home by the revelation that Hera was "mitochondrial Eve." In this landscape of peaceful bounty, the fighter jocks and maintenance workers and cult members (that's a job, right?) could finally lay down their burdens, renounce technology and return to the land as farmers or hunter-gatherers.

It's a beatific ending for the characters, but it runs completely counter to one of the overriding themes of the series, which is the reconstitution of civil society in the wake of devastating disruption. The struggles to establish a government independent of military chains of command, to reinstate the rule of law, to develop mechanisms by which grievances can be expressed and resolved, all became meaningless the moment Lee Adama decided that he'd really rather be hunting antelope. A conclusion like this doesn't just abandon one of the series' central concerns, but negates the significance of what's come before. And that's leaving aside the massive drawbacks of the decision - a few weeks ago a tube of toothpaste was one of the most valuable items in the entire fleet, but now everyone will put up with rotting teeth, untreated wounds, precarious food supplies and backbreaking physical labor just...because? I didn't buy it in David Copperfield when the urban Micawber family solved its problems by going off to Australia and becoming sheep farmers, and I don't believe that setting off into the prehistoric wilderness without tools, seeds, or knowledge of the local plant and animal life is conducive to long-term survival. Over the course of its run BSG has done a very good job of combining science fiction with mythic fantasy, but the last episode tilted too far in the latter direction, jettisoning all plausibility for as it reached for an allegorical grandeur it couldn't quite achieve.

On the other hand, the acting was great, the special effects, music and cinematography were firing on all cylinders, there were many heartwrenching character moments and the series as a whole has been one of the best works of television's new Golden Age. So, you know, there's always that.