[...]What LOST Fans Can Learn from Battlestar Galactica’s Series Finale DocArzt's LOST Blog[...]…

[...]What LOST Fans Can Learn from Battlestar Galactica’s Series Finale DocArzt's LOST Blog[...]…

Not in my estimation, and I’ve watched the entire run of BSG.

“especially for female characters.”

I’ll give you “strong” female characters, and yet I still personally like Kate and Sun and Juliet far more than Starbuck, Roslin and Six.

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/03/battlestar-galactica-daybreak-finale-moore-mcdonnell-olmos.html

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2009/03/20/battlestar-galactica-watched-the-finale-still-got-questions-weve-got-answers/

Thankfully “Lost” got to plan for it’s ending. So far so good!

I thought the last episode was great. And when I think about it, most awesome long-term stories, like TV shows, comics, and long books have had endings that don’t fulfill me the way the story as a whole did.

I agree with Desi’s Brother on a lot. The Gaeta Mutiny story was fantastic.

For me the key problems with the finale were:

There was no conflict on the HUMAN level. I was bored to tears by the battle. Who cares. That is not the strength of this show. It is the philosophical and ethical dilemmas. They should have had the battle in the episode before and found new earth and devoted the entire two hours to the debate on board Gallactica as to what direction they should take. I would have loved to see a series of arguements made in front of the fleet and had people vote on what to do.

What would the human race do if it suddenly had a new planet. I bet you anything there would be whole groups of utopian societies that would form. There would be battles and in the end we would destroy the new planet again. (which I guess was implied).

To me the essence of this show was that human technology has evolved beyond our own ethical judgement. And I would have liked to see them make the same mistakes all over again. It would have said far more.

It was totally contrived to have everyone give up their technology. Sure it might be the ideal, but there had to to be a mental realization that that was necessary on the part of everyone. IMPOSSIBLE. For one half the fleet was devided in a coup only a few weeks earlier. This doesn’t not heal over night!

For me the key is don’t wrap up the conflict. That never goes away. You can start a new life, but it will not be ideal. That was the biggest mistake. It sent them all off for solo lives and broke the family apart. I just don’t buy it.

There are certain fundametal conflicts on LOST. Fate vs Free Will and Reason vs Faith. there should never be a resolution to these dilemmas. I love the idea of having the characters change places, but don’t decide a winner. That would be a mistake. Resolve the story aspects that make no sense but don’t take away the mystery. It is a really fine balancing act. How can you keep it so that we can still wonder but not feel disappointed. For me I think they need to realize which actors have the ability to pull off the emotional needs of the finale. That would be Desmond, Jack and Locke. It should be a Desmond centric episode because the writers are clearly considerably more inspired when they write his episodes than others.

http://galactica-station.blogspot.com/2009/03/watched-finale-still-got-questions-weve.html

…pretty sure that’s all out of my system now.

The absoloute worst bit, however, was their re-use of the Sam Adams quote regarding physics etc. I can see how this speech was intended to flow and to sound, but sadly, as with any fiction, the most inspirational and eloquent moments will only ever as be as inspirational and eloquent as the writers themselves – which in this case raises some serious questions. This grubby little lump of faux-profundity was a clunker, and it amazed me when they pulled it out of the bag again. They should have known better, really.

Anyway…venting accomplished. I was just very dissapointed by the whole thing, with so many questions which had seemed crucial to the show’s overall mythology just brushed aside or answered by having Starbuck vanish into thin air. Also, the budget-saving exit of the fleet was…blatant. CG work & rendering new footage is expensive i imagine – using 3d software quite a lot myself – but…the fleet was a character in itself, as was Galactica…and just having them dissappear fading into white seems lame as hell. The producer could do with a slap upside his head; we needed a proper end to Galactica (footage of ship ploughing into the sun, coming apart in epic fashion etc, bittersweet music plays) far more then we needed some different sentinal models. The repeated flashbacks – which were far less profound and artistic than intended, i think -also came accross as a blatant way of getting the series finished off with what remained of the budget.

As Desi’s Brother said earlier, could you imagine what you would think if someone came here or to one of the Lost message boards after the Lost Finale and said, “Well I only watched the last ten episodes and it’s hard to see what all the fuss was about.” Granted this is a Lost board and you don’t HAVE to be a BSG fan, but as a hardcore BSG fan myself I find your comment kind of ridiculous to be honest.

And DB, I have to agree again with what you say about BSG’s female character development being superb compared to Lost. I’ve never enjoyed female characters more than on BSG, and you can tell that the writers had genuine care for them and knew how to use them to their advantage. I liked the beginning of season three on New Caprica, but after the season descended into a bad love triangle/quadrangle that didn’t need to be there at all (*ahem* the similarities with Lost endure) it started dragging and becoming boring for me, but I think they rectified that rather quickly when they started to focus more on the Final Five.

I was annoyed by killing off Tory, that was just ugly and way too easy.

As I’ve said above the Angel stuff and the complete throwing out of all the Atheist stuff was disappointing. That was one of the most interesting aspects of this show.

I did like that they were the founding population of Earth. That was kind of fun, although I don’t like the implication that we couldn’t evolve farming ourselves. That was annoying.

However, the narrative techniques origins are in Greek Myth. Battlestar had a Greek Myth quality and the Gods were often reffered to.

But, yeah I was annoyed by the completely one sided decision to go with God when the show had been such an interesting dialogue between Atheism and religion. I think the ambiguity was lost.

It was also a really hollywood ending. It would have been so much more powerful if Agathon had died and when we see him with Athena and Hera he was actually a Cylon projection. That would be really tragic and frankly having it all end with a single mother would have been pretty sweet considering the strength of the women characters on this show. that was a missed oppertunity.

What do you think Angel Baltar meant at the end when he said “Shh He doesn’t like when we call him that”?

I have been less into this last season. The only really strong part was Gaeta’s Coup.

I agree about the lame use of GOD as the explanation for everything. The Atheism of Baltar was one of the most interesting things about the show. But I did like that he was finally shown to be a Judas character. That his mistakes and evil deeds served a greater purpsose so therefor they were “meant to be”. I thought that was interesting in a narrative sense. But I agree, I was annoyed by the angels.