Battlestar Galactica's Big "Frak You!"

October 27 will see the DVD release of Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, the final (?) chapter in the BSG saga. Or at least, of the version of BSG that aired on the network formerly known as the Sci Fi Channel. (A rebooted film series is already in the works.) Just in time for the new DVD, Atomic Gadfly editor and contributor Fearless Young Orphan presents her moratorium on the series. - Max Doomsday

by Fearless Young Orphan

So, I feel like I just got dumped by a man who had promised to marry me.

I finally got to the finale of Battlestar Galactica, and it took me this long because since the end of Season 2 I have had to force myself to watch episodes. Yes, I was expecting the finale to be a disappointment. I doubted the writers had the guts or the energy to write themselves back out of those corners they'd formed. What I was not expecting to feel was anger. BSG, which in its first season was some of the best television I have ever seen, ended in a pompous, lazy, cheating mess of a finale that actually pissed me off. But they've been cheating for a while now, haven't they?

For me, the steady decline of BSG began once the writers needlessly killed off a beloved character, presidential aide Billy. Oh, there are a hundred things that went wrong, all which can be summed up by the phrase, "They seemed to just stop caring," but I have a few particular bones to pick concerning the before and after of what was once my sci-fi favorite.

If you don't want to read spoilers, then as a religiously confused Cylon might turn away from the ethereal Final Five, turn away from this list of the myriad ways a great show can go infuriatingly wrong.

1. THE CYLONS.

Before: The Cylon race is threatening, merciless and confusing; machines that think in ways we humans can't imagine. They are going to hunt us to extinction if they can, and they've made a damned good start of it.

After: The Cylons whine like spoiled college freshmen. The skin jobs just want to be able to fall in luv and have babies! The toasters just want to go off and do whatever it is toasters might do when they're alone. Even the fearsome Final Five were really just trying to help humans and Cylons the whole time! Cylons don't so much "exterminate" now as have long, pointless bickerings about what it means to (insert something like: have a soul, worship one god, be human, look human, breed with a human) and whether toasters should Get The Vote.

Sample Dialog:

Six: We need to hunt down and kill the humans, or maybe not.

Eight: Nuh-uh, we need to befriend the humans and bring them to God, or maybe not.

Six: Nuh-uh, we need to unite the different kinds of Cylons and everybody can vote on stuff, or maybe not.

Eight: Maybe you should put some clothes on.

Six: Maybe you should shut your face.

Eight: I'm telling the Final Five on you, or maybe not.

Six: What, 'cause they're like our parents or gods or something, or maybe not?

Eight: Actually I'm not real clear on that, or maybe I am.

2. THE SEARCH.

Before: The remnants of the human race limp across the universe in search of a mythical, possibly nonexistent, home called Earth. They must be creative and clever, sometimes making great sacrifices (including human lives) in order to ensure survival. They reach deep within themselves to find new sources of strength to continue.

After: Let's hear more about the Cylons! Spend at least half of each episode on board the Cylon ships listening to their conversations (see Point 1, After). When you do visit the wretched leftover humans, let's focus less on the wellsprings of human endurance and more on unrequited love, family dysfunction and petty rivalries between crewmembers.

Sample Dialog:

Lee: I love you Kara and I always have. My love feels squishy and oh so wrong but I cannot help it. I'm telling you about it in this scene.

Kara: Lee, I love you in the way that makes me want to beat the crap out of you. I'm actually about to go batshit crazy.

Lee: I'm married to someone else because you broke my heart. That's a good reason to get married.

Kara: Just for example, I know where Earth is, but not in any way that helps.

Lee: But we can never be together for some reason, is what I'm saying in this scene.

Kara: Blah! Huebaoohoomaahhaaha frakkin harblarger blah.

Lee: I feel like it's just time for a change, to the next scene.

3. ADMIRAL ADAMA.

Before: Admiral Adama is a great leader, able to make the hardest of decisions. He is open to new ideas and can admit when he was wrong. He understands that a drastic turn of events means new rules are needed. We believe that a fleet would follow him loyally even to their deaths.

After: Let's have him drink, reel around, cry and throw tantrums. Make sure he acts within the dictates of a script, not as an independent character, so he can perform embarrassing, sometimes horrifying actions without explanation and then everybody will forget about it in the next episode. Eventually have him more obsessed with his beloved ship and the dying President than with that petty problem of the human race. Have him puke on himself.

Sample Dialog:

Admiral Adama: After I put this gun to Cassie's head, make a drunken meaningless speech, and put my life on the line to defend an empty airlock, I'm going to puke on myself. That is dramatic.

4. PRESIDENT ROSLIN.

Before: Laura Roslin emerged as another remarkable character, becoming a leader made of steel, devoted to protecting what's left of her people. Meanwhile, she fought breast cancer. Were the inspirational visions and ideas she had due to her illness, or due to some deep intuition that there is a way to save the human race? She reconciled the practical and the mystical in her life, while never losing her backbone or her humor.

After: That government stuff is getting in the way of her love life. Forget that divine inspiration stuff, she's just a drug-addled old bitch. Highlight her bitchiness by having her, too, start making unfair and rash decisions based on no particular reasoning, just because the script calls for it. When things don't go her way, she should cry and withdraw.

Sample Dialog:

Roslin: As your President, I'm going to stop having much to do with politics.

Lee: I'm in this scene too.

Roslin: I have cancer some more.

Coddle: Madame President, we cured your cancer with Cylon blood a couple years ago.

Roslin: Not to my recollection. You're making me feel either sad and withdrawn, or like I should put on the bitch-wheels.

Lee: I'm also in the next scene.

Roslyn: Your dad is my boyfriend.

5. THE MAIN CAST.

Before: Major characters provoke audience adoration by being realistic, flawed, intriguing and distinct. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, Chief Galen Tyrol, and Gaius Baltar are a few of the greats.

After: From now on, each of these amazing characters gets to play only one scene. They can play it again and again, and switch up the lines a little bit, but really it's the same scene.

Kara becomes the most irritating batshit crazy ho-bag the universe has ever seen. She pitches fits routinely that would alienate any normal friendships beyond repair. That softness we used to see is replaced with snarling psychosis, but not interesting snarling psychosis.

Chief becomes a befuddled, fat Cylon cuckold, making boneheaded mistakes while he searches fruitlessly for his upper lip. For example, unable to control his idiot temper, he destroys the last possibility of a human/Cylon truce by throttling the Cylon who killed his wife. He could not wait five minutes more to seek vengeance.

Gaius Baltar is just bored silly, but he hopes nobody is going to kill him today; he can distract others from killing him by wailing about angels and God and stuff. That Head-Six who has been cajoling him to action - sometimes highly suspect action - ever since Season 1 is "explained," leaving a gaping maw of unanswered questions and frustration (See Point 8, After).

Put Lee Adama, the most bland of all the major characters, front and center in every single scene he can possibly be in, fulfilling whatever tedious plot-dragging function is required that episode.

Sample Dialog:

Kara: Blah! Huebaoohoomaahhaaha frakkin harblarger blah.

Chief: Where in the frak is my upper lip?

Gaius: I so totally hope no one tries to kill me today while I'm obeying the Will of God. That makes me sweaty.

Lee: I'm in this scene and also the next three.

6. THE SUPPORTING CAST.

Before: Even minor characters are so well-realized that they are becoming important to the audience. I speak of Hot Dog, Billy, Kat, Dualla, and Gaeta, among others.

After: Too much more interest in minor characters implies multilayered storytelling and subtracts time from Lee Adama and his job of the week, such as his sudden, illegal ability to basically run the government, without ever having been elected to office. Kill them. Or emaslucate them. Or emasculate them, then kill them.

Sample Dialog:

Any interesting minor character: I am a minor character becoming interesting. Blarg, I'm emasculated and/or dead for some reason.

Lee: I'm feeling conflicted about stuff in this scene.

7. THE FINAL FIVE.

Before: The revelations of Cylons among the fleet have been shocking so far. The mysterious Final Five are Cylon legends, spoken of in hushed tones of reverence. They are hiding in the human fleet. When they are awakened ... Gods only know what might happen.

After: They are awakened. Nothing much happens. All five go on more or less acting like they always did before, and after a few heart-to-heart conversations, most of the humans do too.

Sample Dialog:

Admiral Adama: I can't believe you're a Cylon, Tigh.

Colonel Tigh: I'm still the same guy.

Admiral Adama: You sure are. I was wondering why neither you nor Ellen had aged over the last few decades that I've known you.

Colonel Tigh: I know, right? I'm like 2000 years old.

Admiral Adama: Pass me a drink. I'm going to puke on myself.

Colonel Tigh: That will be dramatic.

8. THE SUPERNATURAL.

Before: A thread of mysticism has wound its way through the hard science fiction fabric of the story, in the form of strange haunting visions, premonitions, and events that seem impossible.

After: Um, it was all the Will of God. And sure, maybe God was kinda being evasive and pushy and pretty damned misleading all this time when what He really wanted was fairly simple ("I command thee to walk through a door with a little girl!" sayeth the Lord), but that's how God is. He's always yukking it up.

Sample Dialog:

Gaius Baltar: I hope nobody kills me today.

Head-Six: Gaius, I'm your extremely hot guardian-angel-type-thing and all that vague stuff I've been harassing you about for the last four years sounded really important, but it wasn't.

Gaius Baltar: What should I do?

Head-Six: Look sweaty and try to have a lot of sex with me and others. It's God's will.

Gaius Baltar: Praise God.

9. HERA AGATHON.

Before: Hera, the little human/Cylon girl, has been trumped up as the key to the future of mankind. She's been passed around like a briefcase full of drugs. Hell, Admiral Adama takes half the damned fleet to rescue her in what might be a suicide mission. We can't wait for the payoff.

After: Yep, they have this covered. She's literally the mother of the human race. Those Caprica/Baltar angels - oh yeah, they're angels, did you catch that? - are going to tell us that at the very end. All the efforts on her behalf were totally worth it, not more of this jerk-the-rug-out-from-under-you and we-didn't-really-think-this-through crap. The fleet dropped something like 30,000 people off on the new improved Earth, which already had a population of emaciated natives just ready to do the nasty, but Hera was the only one who ever had a baby. This is not hard to believe, based on how many of the fleet decided to become nomadic hermits, never wanting to set eyes on the jackasses around them again.

Sample Dialog:

Caprica Angel: Here we are in Present-Day New York City. Look there at that Present-Day Magazine: it's a picture of some cavewoman they dug up, which is Hera and somehow they can tell she's the mother of the human race. Or I'm confirming it right now with my dialog.

Gaius Angel: Yep, she sure is. And you sure are.

Caprica Angel: That's important.

Gaius Angel: It sure is.

10. A HOME CALLED EARTH.

Before: The ultimate goal of the fleet is to find Earth. They are trying to go Home. Ancient clues have laid a difficult path for humankind to follow, and they race against the Cylons who wish to reach Earth for their own nefarious reasons. The story is epic and heartrending.

After: Actually, they're clueless about how to end it. They never expected to make it past Season 1. Who the hell ever thought they'd have to dream up an ending for this? So, just cobble together some chain of events that could, technically, put everybody in the same room together, and if anyone says "WTF" then just say it was the Will of God. That works for lots of things.

[Author's Note: I attempted to summarize the 13 Colonies/Cylons/Final Five backstory here, and found that I could not. Any two consecutive sentences caused my computer to lock up and I got a "Go to zero" error.]

Sample Dialog:

Admiral Adama: Look, it's the real Earth now. Thank you for finding it for us with that Jimi Hendrix song, Starbuck you batshit crazy ho-bag.

Kara: All that stuff before, when I spent nearly a whole season leading us to the dumpy first Earth, I was just kidding.

Admiral Adama: Ha ha, that was funny.

Kara: It was the Will of God.

Admiral Adama: That explains everything.

Yes, BSG managed to take anything that was important and terrific in the first two seasons, and in the last two, kill it, ruin it, or render it pointless. I haven't had a show go this wrong on me since The X-Files. And I haven't accepted an "It was God's Will" explanation for a plot since Charlton Heston said it in The Ten Commandments.

At the conclusion of the series, the fleet disperses all over new improved Earth, deciding that the endless nightmare of grousing a living off the land is preferable to living in comfort and convenience. Admiral Adama sends the fleet ships, most of the population's possessions, and all of their technology plummeting straight into the Sun. Does incinerating the cultural heritage you've just spent four years trying to save seem sensible? Does destroying all your technology seem like a good idea, when confronting life on a new and unknown planet? Hell yes it does. Too bad that they didn't leave most of the characters on the ships before doing so, along with the DVDs of the final two seasons.

Years ago I played an excellent computer strategy game called Homeworld. In this game, I was in charge of getting a fleet of colony ships across the universe to the legendary place of my race's birth, while scratching for resources and fighting off an enemy race, as well as coping with disasters like deadly asteroid fields. Do you know what the finale was? It was me and my fleet, annihilating our enemies in a grueling battle and landing on our new home planet. The game basically said, "You made it!" and it was over, yet I felt like the Ruler of the Universe. I had brought my people home. This was all that was required. To my recollection, I felt that satisfaction without ever consulting Lee Adama, listening to Kara Thrace howl, talking to an angel, having sex with a Cylon, or puking on myself.

I had the BSG prequel, Caprica, on my Netflix queue until I saw the series finale. Now it has been deleted, replaced with Season 1 of Fringe. That looks like some good sci-fi.