Brad Ideas - Battlestar's "Daybreak:" The worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction - Comments

I Think There May Be a Distinction Being Missed

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:40:56 -0800

What the review actually said is that a God becoming an active character is problematic, particularly in a show that got its bones from its supposed gritty realism. I don't know that any intervention by a God has to be an automatic epic failure. Even in BSG, more subtlety could have had an effective God intervention open to multiple interpretations. The problem here is that one can argue God pretty much just takes over the entire show and becomes THE CHARACTER. I'm hard pressed to think of any clear examples where something like that works in a serious drama. Strangely, the disjointed storytelling in Season 4 simply amplifies the damage; it didn't make sense because it didn't have to make sense because the whole story turns out to be about a God and his will anyway. That's messed up, like Mr. Templeton says.

And he's also right that the BSG staff themselves gave the game away. They didn't have a clear God story in mind in the beginning. It was a bolt on. Read their interviews and listen to their own podcasts (which were probably a mistake to have ever offered given how clearly visible "that man behind the curtain" becomes toward the end).

Bolt-on and not bolt-on

brad — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:55:23 -0800

It is bolt-on from the audience’s point of view, because there were so many more natural rather than supernatural explanations possible for what was shown. Just because a show has religious people is hardly a clue that their religion is true!.

But more to the point, it was bolt-on to the writers. They have admitted they really did not know what head-six was for the first several seasons. They had her say lots of things, including angel of god, but they only decided to make the god real much later.

They had not even intended much of it. Moore threw in some lines about Cylon religion and the network write back, “Machines with religion? Give us more of that.”

Not a cop-out

chromedome — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:42:47 -0800

"God Did It" is not a cop-out--the idea of "One True God" is fundamental to the story, laid out from the very beginning of BSG. InHead Six stated openly and often that she was an Angel of God, and she was clearly manipulating Baltar.
The same concept appears in the first moments of Caprica.

The nature, intent, frequency/degree of direct intervention of this One True God/Cylon God is not at all clear, but a key mystery of the premise overall.

So, with everything in the story woven with those threads, treating as if it was a "bolt-on" plot resolution at the end is absurd. Like it or don't like it, be disappointed by the lack of details or explanations, fine--but the God element in the story arc has been present from the beginining.

The critique above invalidates itself by defining any interventions by a God as automatic epic failure, but also says BSG was great until God was used right there at the end. The concept of intervention and manipulation by God was there from the very beginning of the show.

They are human

brad — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:04:02 -0800

Our definition of a species is “can breed with successful offspring.” So the colonials are human, as they can breed with the natives.

Mitocondrial eve

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:38:15 -0800

I think the critique of the mitochondrial eve was a bit harsh. After the ending I tended to think that the colonists weren't "human" but a different species. Modern humans, or us, are actually colonial cylon hybrids dating back to Hera. This would make sense if she inherited a proportion of their strength and passed it on to offspring.

Second Gog seemed more capable of interacting with cylons then regular humans. Baltar and his ubermind aside, or regular humans in altered states. I've also wondered if such a trait could be passed on to the new hybrid humans. If that is the case then much of this could have been a sort of breeding experiment to bring things more in line with it's will. And it could be possible again, that the earth neanderthals and colonials both shared a common ancestor some how, with all the scurrying around the colonials do.

I'm going to stick with being. Not pure foresight, but great predictive power. And the only time it engages in any real action is replacing starbuck, the rest is manipulation of people. If the gods power rests mainly in being highly predictive, and in hallucinations then it need not be a real god.

The ghost busters rule "if it says it's a god it isn't" is kind of funny in that at the end H6 says it's god, and HB says he doesn't like that.

All of this needless justification aside, it was a terrible ending.

My Views

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:24:36 -0800

I love Battlestar Galactica but was disappointed with it,because it was better than any other science fiction in my view especially the first few two seasons,it was way to short,it should have lasted twice as long,if they can have boring soap operas lasting decades set in one street,I'm sure they could make this last at least 5 seasons ideally 8 with even a feature film attached at the end,but regarding the end of the series,

First of all earth 1 and two seam to be both the same to me,it's just occupying different parts of the same planet unaffected by nuclear war,you can clearly see this on adama's map when he's talking about distributing his people to different parts of the planet,some area's are green,while a lot are grey from the destruction of war.

The ending while Romantic is totally unrealistic,giving up all the technology to live like pre historic man when most probably can't hunt grow crops or light fires and who in their right mind would throw it all a way and start a fresh,it would be like fleeing a a war torn country in a luxury Yacht with all the mod cons and as soon as you reach a remote island sinking it and swimming a shore in nothing but what you are wearing and carrying a small bag,you wouldn't do that by choice,it would only happen if you were ship wrecked,and have no alternative,I doubt few people would be capable of surviving today let alone people from a far more advanced society then they don't explain what happened to Adama's Viper he flew out of Galactica and the seven raptors seen on the planet's surface near to the three structures,and what happened the the raptor that Launched it nukes at the cylon colony,you see the flight crew injured,but what about the assault team and then lets not Forget how Star Bucks Viper blew up in space but was found light years away on earth or the fact we didn't find out who she really was,she obviously wasn't a ghost?

I think they should have built small settlements in the various locations that people were taken to around the planet,then they could have learned the necessary skills to live on the land while still having the security of their camps to fall back on until they built up enough confident and know how to set out on their own or in family's if they so wished, much like settlers have done in our history in say America,then we could have seen 10 minutes of small scenes set a year or two in the future with how key characters lives had turned out,that would have been a much better ending,after all why rush out a half hearted effort after all the work that had gone before,that to me made no sense to me what so ever,also it should have been set in the future like the reviewer suggest,then it would have made sense.

Nausea

Anonymous — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:33:36 -0800

I don't watch supposedly great shows when they're being broadcast. I wait for years and then watch them all at once. I had heard BSD was great so I never watched a single episode and avoided knowing anything about it. I purchased the 4 year box set and watched the entire series over the last two weeks. I find it has incredible impact to take in in this way and can be incredibly enjoyable. There's a cohesion to the thread of a story for me; it's all fresh in my mind, the entire run. The impact on me is sometimes profound. I feel like I'm living a show (if it's a show that I can lose myself in, of course) and will dream about it every night. I did this for the wire, the Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, The Shield, etc. And when a show is great, the impact can be VERY STRONG.

I am not exaggerating when I say I felt actually nauseous and sad after completing BSD last night. The first thing I did was Google <"Battlestar Galactica" "worst ending"> and found this masterful essay which echoes much of my own thoughts. It helps ease the pain. They built up numerous, seemingly connected mysteries and then spat upon every thread, tied up nothing; everything was just a deus ex machina, nothing made sense, people acted as they never would. The colonists just gave up penicillin and light bulbs and civilization and dispersed into tents on the savanna to little out some short brutal life on a world with foreign (to them) flora and fauna. I could go on and on but you've done much of it for me. Bah. I feel sick and betrayed.

Late, But Agree

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:39:08 -0800

Way late to the party, but I read this entire thing, and all the comments (make whatever you want of me based on that fact).

Templeton seems correct. I didn't read anything that meaningfully contradicted him. It seemed like the rebuttals were either (1) it was a great show in the beginning so you simply can't turn on it; (2) it means something sophisticated to me that the writers never meaningfully articulated; or (3) it's just a TV show.

(1) It was a great show in the beginning. However, a lot of people do think it became lazy, hack drivel in the final lap.
(2) Good for you. You're free to enjoy whatever you want, but that doesn't mean people who fail to see your vision simply don't get it.
(3) That's true. People are simply wondering whether it was a good one in the end or not.

Thanks for the effort, Mr. Templeton.

I didn't need mysteries

Jess — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:59:17 -0700

Who asked for all these mysteries? I mean, yes, it is crap that they went down that path and then were unable to come up with a satisfactory resolution.

But a more basic issue for me is that these convoluted Lost-style mysteries detracted from the show. Who asked for these mysteries? Not me.

Here we had a compelling premise, complex and nuanced characters, each with an interesting backstory and each struggling to cope with their situation, and all of this set in an intriguing military, political, and cultural milieu. There was plenty to work with for 4 seasons. Plenty. We didn't need opera houses, Final Fives, a Final Five backstory that is impossible to believe (i.e., 5 twentysomething super-geniuses singlehandedly invent resurrection, travel across the galaxy unaided, and revamp an entire species), Bob Dylan, and all of the other unrealistic drivel that clogged up the show. Why didn't RDM have faith in his own original creation? Why try to change it into Lost in S3 and S4?

As for the upcoming movie, because it goes back to Season 1, it threatens to pollute all of those good episodes with Final Five nonsense.

The Almost Nearly Final Worst Ending Ever

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:14:35 -0700

"The Plan" is due out on DVD this month. Written by Jane "Filler Queen" Espenson and directed by James "Wall Slide" Olmos it promises to be the final worst ending ever though given the claim it won't be the last BSG production maybe that should be the final after the final before the final Final FINAL worst ending ever.

Just die already!

Battlestar's "Daybreak:" The worst ending in the history of on-s

fog464 — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:17:25 -0700

Sorry Brad, u need a reality check.
1. The original bsg was love boat in space and ron moore has kept faith with glen
larsons original but more importantly heavily leaned upon asimov robots /
foundation as a basis to finish off the series. Dont forget asimov provided the
ideas for the BSG second series which never happened.
2. This is cable and sci fis budget was crap
3. Ron moore needed a soft landing for the show which did it justice rather than the normal quick ending forced by cancellation.
4. Linking to the present was good.
5. Use of devine being was a good idea and squared away caprica 6
I'm not sure what you really expected, i thought the special effects were good
and shot of the moon awsom.
So get a grip and be thankful we didnt end up with a pure remake or richard hatch version. The proiposed new film sounds crap.

Trivial, superficial &

Anonymous — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:57:04 -0700

Trivial, superficial & shinily shallow, yet oh-so-important to me: many effects shots in the colony battle were really shoddy. As someone who works in vfx and watched the series with respect and awe, almost all of these sequences had lighting and compositing issues that I had never noticed to this degree in any other episode.

Billboards in Times Square

Anonymous — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:50:10 -0700

Billboards in Times Square of Lil Wayne have happened before and will happen again.

Re: WRONG

Jeremy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:40:30 -0700

This is absurd and ridiculous. As BSG went along, there were so many metaphysical elements. So many intriguing, spiritual ideas. In the end, it's very cool and quite cathartic to get this sense of an omnipotent God who was slightly interfering along the way to bring people to their new lives. He wanted them where they ended up. And if God exists, then God doesn't owe us an explanation. He can do whatever He wants. The spiritual, mysterious aspects of the finale and the show are what I appreciated most. It really makes people think and discuss faith.

Consider instead, a giant face appeared at the end and stole the ship. HOW DUMB. No one would be discussing that. There's no life implications with that. I can't even begin to say how dumb that would be.

Regarding the Eve, what was dumb about that was the implication that she is THE missing link. As well pointed out above, all of our people who mated and had children would be part of the process of forming modern humanity, not just her. She's merely the first mix.

Cheers

Kristoffer Lawson — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:15:39 -0700

After just completing the series (which I churned through after some saying the ending was great), it's been fantastic to find this blog article with comments that accurately reflect my own feelings, especially after meeting Brad last year in Finland. It was an utter cop out and, in retrospect, I wish I had watched the last episode first. Then I would either not have bothered with the rest of the series or at least would not have had any expectations of something promising coming up.

This was even worse than the endings that don't reveal anything at all (like The Cube), which I generally put down as lazy writing. Building a mystery is easy. Resolving it requires thought. However, this was a revelation without any revelation. No mysteries were solved, because there were no mysteries, as it was all just one huge 'miracle'. It's even worse than a 'it was all just a dream' ending. The Cylons had no plan, the opera house meant nothing whatsoever, Kara was unexplained. Ugh. I too was fretting over the cliché of the "back to basics" ideal. If that kind of life is so great, then why do so few want to practise it in reality? There is no way I could be expected to believe everyone would suddenly want to give up on everything they have, and why should they? How could the books, beliefs and technology they have possibly weaken their chances of survival? That certainly wasn't the case before. Their weakness was that their technology was crap compared to the Cylons, not that they had it in the first place.

BSG was far from perfect before all of that. Some of the plot twists were highly unbelievable, and some were just plain boring, but we drove ourselves forwards for the good parts and with the belief that some final story would bring it all together with a satisfying thunk. That was not to be, and I feel we wasted our time.

Oh and I couldn't care less now about a prequel. Milking money, and I've lost interest in the characters.

Battlestar's "Daybreak:" The worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction

brad — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:38:15 -0700

Battlestar Galactica attracted a lot of fans and a lot of kudos during its run, and engendered this sub blog about it. Here, in my final post on the ending, I present the case that its final hour was the worst ending in the history of science fiction on the screen. This is a condemnation of course, but also praise, because my message is not simply that the ending was poor, but that the show rose so high that it was able to fall so very far. I mean it was the most disappointing ending ever.

(There are, of course, major spoilers in this essay.)

Other SF shows have ended very badly, to be sure. This is particularly true of TV SF. Indeed, it is in the nature of TV SF to end badly. First of all, it’s written in episodic form. Most great endings are planned from the start. TV endings rarely are. To make things worse, TV shows are usually ended when the show is in the middle of a decline. They are often the result of a cancellation, or sometimes a producer who realizes a cancellation is imminent. Quite frequently, the decline that led to cancellation can be the result of a creative failure on the show — either the original visionaries have gone, or they are burned out. In such situations, a poor ending is to be expected.

Sadly, I’m hard pressed to think of a TV SF series that had a truly great ending. That’s the sort of ending you might find in a great book or movie, the ending that caps the work perfectly, which solidifies things in a cohesive whole. Great endings will sometimes finally make sense out of everything, or reveal a surprise that, in retrospect, should have been obvious all along. I’m convinced that many of the world’s best endings came about when the writer actually worked out the ending first, then then wrote a story leading to that ending.

There have been endings that were better than the show. Star Trek: Voyager sunk to dreadful depths in the middle of its run, and its mediocre ending was thus a step up. Among good SF/Fantasy shows, Quantum Leap, Buffy and the Prisoner stand out as having had decent endings. Babylon 5’s endings (plural) were good but, just as I praise Battlestar Galactica (BSG) by saying its ending sucked, Babylon 5’s endings were not up to the high quality of the show. (What is commonly believed to be B5’s original planned ending, written before the show began, might well have made the grade.)

Ron Moore’s goals

To understand the fall of BSG, one must examine it both in terms of more general goals for good SF, and the stated goals of the head writer and executive producer, Ronald D. Moore. The ending failed by both my standards (which you may or may not care about) but also his.

Moore began the journey by laying out a manifesto of how he wanted to change TV SF. He wrote an essay about Naturalistic Science Fiction where he outlined some great goals and promises, which I will summarize here, in a slightly different order

Avoiding SF clichés like time travel, mind control, god-like powers, and technobabble.
Keeping the science real.
Strong, real characters, avoiding the stereotypes of older TV SF. The show should be about them, not the hardware.
A new visual and editing style unlike what has come before, with a focus on realism.

Over time he expanded, modified and sometimes intentionally broke these rules. He allowed the ships to make sound in space after vowing they would not. He eschewed aliens in general. He increased his focus on characters, saying that his mantra in concluding the show was “it’s the characters, stupid.”

The link to reality

In addition, his other goal for the end was to make a connection to our real world. To let the audience see how the story of the characters related to our story. Indeed, the writers toyed with not destroying Galactica, and leaving it buried on Earth, and ending the show with the discovery of the ship in Central America. They rejected this ending because they felt it would violate our contemporary reality too quickly, and make it clear this was an alternate history. Moore felt an alternative universe was not sufficient.

The successes, and then failures

During its run, BSG offered much that was great, in several cases groundbreaking elements never seen before in TV SF:

Artificial minds in humanoid bodies who were emotional, sexual and religious.
Getting a general audience to undertand the “humanity” of these machines.
Stirring space battles with much better concepts of space than typically found on TV. Bullets and missiles, not force-rays.
No bumpy-head aliens, no planet of the week, no cute time travel or alternate-reality-where-everybody-is-evil episodes.
Dark stories of interesting characters.
Multiple copies of the same being, beings programmed to think they were human, beings able to transfer their mind to a new body at the moment of death.
A mystery about the origins of the society and its legends, and a mystery about a lost planet named Earth.
A mystery about the origin of the Cylons and their reasons for their genocide.
Daring use of concepts like suicide bombing and terrorism by the protagonists.
Kick-ass leadership characters in Adama and Roslin who were complex, but neither over the top nor understated.
Starbuck as a woman. Before she became a toy of god, at least.
Baltar: One of the best TV villains ever, a self-centered slightly mad scientist who does evil without wishing to, manipulated by a strange vision in his head.
Other superb characters, notably Tigh, Tyrol, Gaeta and Zarek.

But it all came to a far lesser end due to the following failures I will outline in too much detail:

The confirmation/revelation of an intervening god as the driving force behind events
The use of that god to resolve large numbers of major plot points
A number of significant scientific mistakes on major plot points, including:
- Twisting the whole story to fit a completely wrong idea of what Mitochondrial Eve is
- To support that concept, an impossible-to-credit political shift among the characters
- The use of concepts from Intelligent Design to resolve plot issues.
- The introduction of the nonsense idea of “collective unconscious” to explain cultural similarities.
The use of “big secrets” to dominate what was supposed to be a character-driven story
Removing all connection to our reality by trying to build a poorly constructed one
Mistakes, one of them major and never corrected, which misled the audience

And then I’ll explain the reason why the fall was so great — how, until the last moments, a few minor differences could have fixed most of the problems.