Lower Decks

(First of Two Parts)

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me — or my views and opinions regarding Battlestar Galactica over the years — that I found the series finale disappointing. More specifically, I felt it was maddeningly frustrating. I won’t go as far as to suggest it was insulting to me as a viewer, because I don’t take my television that seriously.

Over the past few weeks as the series was winding down I’ve had time to reconsider my feelings about the show. And while I still maintain that many of my complaints about the series are legitimate, I’m now able to see things in a new light. More on that tomorrow, however. Today, I’m going to discuss when and how I feel the finale went wrong.

As disappointing as the finale was, in all fairness I felt the first hour (“Daybreak, Part 2″) was terrific, following as it did the events in the previous episode (“Daybreak, Part 1″). Having a specific mission at hand kept mindless chatter to a minimum, although flashbacks still managed to occasionally interrupt the flow of the episode.

For me, the moment the finale went wrong was the scene in the C.I.C. when Cavil, after listening to an impassioned speech from Baltar, agreed to release Hera in return for the secret of resurrection technology from the Final Five. Two things bothered me about this. First, the ease with which Hera was rescued. Adama’s plan really shouldn’t have worked. Of course, it was obvious that ultimately the Colonials would succeed but there should have been more resistance.

True, Pod Anders was able to turn off Cavil’s defenses just when it looked like the Galactica was about to be toast. That doesn’t explain how a few dozen Vipers were able to fight off hundreds of Cylon raiders or how the allied forces of the Colonials and the turncoat Cylons were able to get past Cavil’s forces and actually make their way to Hera. Boomer bringing Hera to Athena, Helo and Starbuck sure helped; that Cavil wouldn’t have increased security around her the moment the Galactica jumped seems unlikely.

The second thing that bothered me was Cavil actually agreeing to turn Hera over after going to so much work to kidnap her in the first place. Was he in a tight situation? Perhaps. But Hera was apparently future of the Cylon race and he gave her up without a fight, even though he had a gun to her head.

It’s possible Cavil had always planned to use Hera as a bartering chip to trade for resurrection technology. If so, how did he know a) Adama would find the colony, b) the Galactica would jump to the colony on a suicide mission and c) Adama and the Final Five would be open to the idea of a trade?

Something I found especially difficult to accept Tyrol killing Tory. After Cally died, Tyrol openly admitted that he despised her. The following exchange comes from “Escape Velocity” and demonstrates the depth of his hatred (thanks to Battlestar Wiki for the transcription):

Tyrol: I didn’t know. So I buried my head in the sand, and I took it, and I settled. I settled for that shriek. Those dull, vacant eyes. Boiled cabbage stench of her. And why? Because this is my life. This is the life I picked! And that’s fine. But you know what, it’s not! I didn’t pick this life! This isn’t my frakkin’ life!

Adama: What the hell’s gotten in to you? Don’t do this. Don’t do this to her memory.

Tyrol: You know what? I’m sorry if I’m not doing this the way you want me to, the way you might, but I’m not making an angel out of someone who wasn’t an angel. But I can see you have. And now you’ve come down here to be in my club. But you’re not in my club. You don’t know what frakkin’ club I’m in because you never ask the right questions.

And yet, while sharing memories with Tory and the others, he sees her hitting the button that sent Cally into space and in a rage he kills her. For starters, what are the odds that specific memory would come up? I suppose, under all that pressure, Tory could not help but think about it and Tyrol just snapped. Having never liked the character of Tory, killing her off was probably the best part of the episode for me.

I did like Racetrack, so her being killed by an errant space rock was sad. But somehow her lifeless body later slumps and hits a switch that unleashes a salvo of nuclear missiles that — somehow — manage to hit the Cylon colony without — somehow — striking the Galactica, causing the colony to explode in a spectacular fireball that — somehow — doesn’t damage the already damaged Galactica.

Again, what are the odds of that happening? It sure was incredible luck that Starbuck was able to take the time to punch in the coordinates from the creepy song she and Hera wrote, allowing the Galactica to jump away. It was close but she pulled it off. Whew.

Admittedly, these plot points were simply means to an end, ways to move the story forward. They might have been trite or obvious but they got the job done. Plus, it seems likely that Starbuck would have eventually decoded the notes of the song into jump coordinates, given the right amount of time. The Cylon colony exploding was just the impetus she needed to put it all together. Right?

It was just after all this excitement came to an end and the Galactica, in her final jump, had arrived over Earth, that the finale took a turn for the unbelievable. Up until this point, I was enjoying the finale. The events that took place in the last third of the two-hour episode turned the finale — and the series as a whole — on its head. And to me, at least, they proved that Battlestar Galactica that ended on Friday, March 20th, 2009 wasn’t the same Battlestar Galactica that began on Monday, December 8th, 2003.

I’ll cover that tomorrow on Wednesday.