Daybreak, Part 2

Close the cover. This story is done.

Tonight was the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. (Upcoming movie not included. Spin-off series Caprica included less.) And it was a good ending. I have to say that it was not the "best" episode of Battlestar Galactica. Other episodes featured better moments of tension, better spectacular space battles, better moments of character drama. By most any measure, I think you could find some other episode of the series to rank above this one.

But... the whole was greater than the sum of the parts here, I think. And more importantly, it was the right ending. So even if other episodes impact me more strongly, I was nevertheless satisfied by this one.

Indeed, the "before the fall" flashbacks did turn out to be more relevant upon seeing them in the full three-hour context rather than the one-hour sampling from last week. Particularly potent was Adama coming that close to retiring before his role in the grand adventure could take place, and Starbuck confiding her fear of not being remembered (as "on point" a moment as there could possibly be).

Some fun bits, if not momentous ones, included the brief presidency of Romo Lampkin, Roslin breaking into tears as she thanked the Doctor, and "can we not tell her the plan?"

So then... the Big Stuff. It turns out that Earth was not Earth. Not our Earth, anyway. The people who used to joke online that the end would have Baltar appearing in our past and becoming Jesus were kinda-sorta warm. Really, it was all there in the Adama monologue from the opening credits of the original series -- the notion that "life here began out there," and that stellar travelers were the ancestors of our ancient cultures. That basically had to be the end of the series. And so while the mid-season point of "finding Earth" turned out to be a bait-and-switch, I forgive it. I think it was wise to put that mislead earlier in the season so as to bring doubt that the ending would be anything other than what it was.

So Head Six and Head Baltar turn out not to be psychological hallucinations, but actual angels. (I suppose in that one early season four episode where Baltar saw Head Baltar rather than Head Six, it was actually the other angel appearing to him for a change.) It's a bit hard to buy these angels stalking Baltar and Caprica for four years and trumping up their destinies which turn out only to be being there to pick up Hera. Still, if it lacks anything in strength of plot, it makes up for it in thematic and visual strength. The portrayal of all the events of the opera house vision coming to pass made from some cool-looking moments.

Then there was the conclusion of Starbuck's story. She was apparently an agent of God or the gods, sent back from beyond death to get them all to Earth. (Now that had the narrative potence that the Baltar/Six business lacked a bit, in my opinion.) And being on borrowed time, she simply vanished once her task was done. Cool stuff. The only flaw there -- and a small one, I think -- is that I don't think it quite meshed with the "hybrid's prophecy" we heard back in Razor. "She is the herald of the apocalypse. The harbinger of death. They must not follow her." No, as it turned out, they actually must follow her. By why quibble over the random babblings of a hybrid?

Then there was the death of Roslin, another mythic event for the show. I don't think anyone was surprised that she at last succumbed to her cancer in the final episode, but it was still powerful to see that moment, and Adama's reaction to it.

Yet for all the great moments Mary McDonnell delivered in this finale, I was strangely most moved by a brief, almost thrown-away moment between Baltar and Caprica Six. When Baltar broke down telling her that he knew something about farming, it was a powerfully resonant moment for the character, knowing how much he despised his "common" background.

And I think that's about all I have to say. Again, the right ending to satisfy for this series.