The Series Finale

Well, the series finale is tonight. All these years. The waiting, the speculating. All ends in just a few hours.

Remember- the episode is 2 hours and 10 minutes. So if you are DVR'ing it, the last 10 minutes might be cut off. Schedule accordingly.

The truth will be revealed.

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OMG.... I got to watch the finale at 6pm. It was KICK ASS!!!

The first hour was "on the edge of my seat" action. I absolutely loved it.

Once they got to earth, it took a different twist. Still it was good.

Though, I have a HUGE question, since we now know that they reached earth 150,000 years before our time.

What happened to the raptors that they kept? You know, the one that Adama flew off in, to the site where he buried Laura and was going to build his cabin. Even if he took it apart, to use for tools, to build his cabin, etc... wouldn't archeologists have found metal from waaaaaaaaaaaay too early?

So, I guess that Kara Thrace was an angel, after seeing how she just vanished from Lee. That made me sad, because I thought that they'd be together in the end.

I think that when she told Lee that she was at the end of her journey, it was like an acceptance, and so she was just gone.

I cried when Kara said goodbye to Sam, and the fleet ships went into the sun. And I cried when Laura passed, and Adama was crying. Two quite touching moments.

Oh, I loved when Tyrol killed Tori. SWEET JUSTICE! I was so happy she was taken out.

Loved the scene when the cylons thought that it was a trick, and our peeps blew 'em away, and then Kara punched in the code, into the ftl, and they ended up above our moon.

Well, that's all for now. Chirp in, peeps!!!

Oh yeah, one last thing... that scene with Adama puking was nasty.

Man.

Just... man.

I can't believe it.

First off, about the finale as a whole... just a great send off.

The best action scenes of the series. Hands down. Just a balls out drag down fight. I didn't blink.

When the Opera House was explained and the Final Five were on the perch I yelled. It was really cool.

Once they found Earth it was sad but fitting how everyone separated.

Seeing Galactica and the fleet head toward the Sun was a bummer.

Adama next to Roslin's grave was touching. Great ending.

Then the flash forward, that brings me to the set of questions...

Inner Six and Inner Baltar are what, angels? God and Satan? Trip out. Regardless, they have been guiding events all along.

What exactly was Starbuck? Really an angel? In what way?

Guess it's fitting that not all questions were answered. Would have liked a few more things wrapped up.

As a finale, it was frakkin' amazing.

BSG- you will be missed. Best show on TV.

-HECK!

I have an idea.

After we bounce some ideas off one another, let's try and check some other sites. See what peeps are saying. Maybe it could spur some other ideas from us and we can keep the discussion alive.

I think a good chunk of the answers have to come from the viewer.

-HECK!

Battlestar Galactica's Ron Moore Answers Our Burning Questions

Mar 20, 2009 11:30 PM ET

We've finally seen the epic final episode of Battlestar Galactica, and we're sure you have tons of burning questions about the choices made by executive producer and writer of the episode, Ron Moore. Luckily for us, Moore sat down with TVGuide.com to shed light on the finale's structural, spiritual and emotional elements.

TVGuide.com: The writers started deciding a year ago what would happen in the finale. How long ago did you structure the way you wanted the finale to be written — how much would be battle scenes and how much would be the resolution on the new Earth?

Ron Moore: [By the midpoint of the season] we had revealed the origins of the final five, we had found the original Earth, we had dealt with all the backstories of people... there was a laundry list of things that were out of the way. Then it became about, what do we do in the finale and we started focusing on what is the story? What is the plot? It was clear it would be a rescue mission of Hera. Then we kind of got blacked out on the details of the assault, and what was the trick, and where were they going to jump in, and who was on what assault force — and this became very frustrating and annoying.

I went home and had an epiphany in the shower and said, "It's the characters, stupid!" And it really always has been, and I went back the next day and said, "Let's forget about the plot for a moment and just trust that it will work itself out, because it always does. What do we want the characters to deal with; let's talk about the individual stories and resolutions." I just had an image of someone in their house chasing a bird from the room, I didn't know what it meant but it's an image and let's put it on the board. I think it was [David] Weddle who said he was interested in seeing where the characters had come from before we got to the end, and then we kind of came up with this structure of flashbacks to show you where they end up after seeing where they came from and that formed the backbone of what the finale was going to be.

TVGuide.com: Why did you choose to have most of the flashbacks in the last two episodes instead of spreading them out more uniformly throughout the series?

Moore: I think we used them when we thought it was appropriate, I mean, we have sort of used them here and there throughout the show, but it was more to inform something important about a character. To connect you to... how the past is influencing the future and how the persons involved... you can give a clearer picture of them. And when we were approaching the finale, I just kept feeling like, and in order to understand the end you need to understand the beginning. We kept going back to the miniseries, talking about where the show had begun, where the characters had started, and it felt like the end of the show should also be about the beginning.

TVGuide.com: Were the Lee, Zak and Kara flashbacks your way of telling us that Lee and Kara were wonderful, but were never meant to be together?

Moore: Yeah, I kind of felt that Kara and Lee had never really left a moment in time on the table. They were kind of trapped in that moment perpetually of wanting, longing, feeling but never being able to fully enjoy it or fully embrace it. They just really never left that place as characters.

TVGuide.com: What exactly is Kara at the end of the series? An angel?

Moore: I think Kara remains an ambiguous figure. Kara lived a mortal life, died and was resurrected to get them to their final destiny. Clearly she was a key player in the events that led to [the fleet's] finding a home. And, I don't know if there's any more to it beyond that. I think you could call her an angel, you could call her a demon, the second coming or the first coming, I guess, chronologically speaking. You can say that she had a certain messiah-like quality, in the classic resurrection story. There's a lot of different ways you can look at it, but the more we talked about it, the more we realized there was more in the ambiguity and mystery of it than there was in trying to give it more definition in the end.

TVGuide.com: So she is completely different than the hallucination/visions of Baltar and Six?

Moore: Yes, Kara was physically among us. Everybody saw her. She was tactile, she flew a viper, she was around. She was with us. And yet, there was a body that died on the original Earth, and Baltar did the DNA analysis and it was her body, so she was literally brought back from the dead by something — by some higher power or other power, and she came back to serve a function.

TVGuide.com: Why did Hera survive when other Cylon babies and hybrid attempts did not?

Moore: The Cylons had attempted other hybrids because we had "The Farm" episode and they were attempting in all sorts of manner to have some kind of Cylon children in whatever form... I don't know that there is any rational explanation for [Hera's] existence other than it's part of some larger plan. That she was part of the other entity that doesn't like to be called God. Whatever that is, and whatever that power is, wanted Hera alone to survive as part of the story. In the show, there was a theory among the Cylons that thing that was missing was God's true love. That was part of the explanation for why they had failed. And that was why they did the initial experiment with Helo and Sharon back on Caprica in the first season. They had tried the farms, they had tried artificial insemination and all these things but there was a theory among them that maybe it was God's true love that was missing. So they set up an experiment where Helo would believe that was the Sharon he knew and would fall in love with her naturally, and that she might come to really love him, and then maybe a child would be born. And, that's exactly what ended up happening.

TVGuide.com: Hera is a fascinating character because of her power. She saved Roslin for a while by giving her blood, but was the connection between the two more than blood- deep?

Moore: Yep, it was definitely a spiritual connection. And, the spiritual component of the show was just there from the beginning. It was always a part of the show. There's a certainly a section of science fiction fandom that has always had a problem with that. They resolutely didn't want supernatural, mystical or divine presence in the show whatsoever, and were sort of put off by that, or at least had trouble accepting that. But I just thought that was part and parcel of what we did. It was our take on this part of this particular universe, and to me, it was as important in the end as it was in the beginning. It would have been strange to make it all scientifically rational at the end and that it had no other purpose or meaning, because that was sort of the premise from which we began.

TVGuide.com: Why did you choose to end the show with Six and Baltar walking through Times Square?

Moore: Two things: One, Dave Eick and I had the image of number Six walking through Times Square in her red dress a couple of years ago. We thought potentially that that was just a great visual note to end on. And that also came out of the idea that we eventually wanted the show to directly relate to us. That the show was always intended to be relevant and be current to our society and lives and that it wasn't completely escapist — "Oh here's a story about a bunch of people who are not related to us on Earth at all." We wanted it to ultimately circle back and say look, these people were our forbearers; in a real sense what happened to them, could happen to us. Look around you. Wake up. Think about the society that you live in and we wanted to make that literal at the end.

TVGuide.com: Can you explain the idea behind using "All Along the Watchtower" as a sort of unconscious constant for both Cylons and humans?

Moore: I was always fascinated by the idea that music is this thing that musicians catch out of the air, from the ether. They just pluck it out of nowhere and you hear it and it's beautiful and moving, and it touches us in a way that we can't even understand. Well, where does it come from? It feels like it lives somehow in the collective unconscious or it's a constant in the universe. So, here's a song that transcends the eons and that was around and was somehow divinely inspired or has some connection to the greater energy of the universe. It existed tens of thousands of years ago, and through time people somehow heard it, plucked it out of the air and shared it with the people around them. That happed with Anders, to Kara and it happened to Bob Dylan!

TVGuide.com: I know this is a Sophie's Choice kind of decision, but do you have a favorite moment from the finale?
Moore: I think the moment when Kara jumps the ship and when we pan up seeing the Earth rise up from the moon was probably my favorite moment because it really is the end point — in terms of story — from where we began. I mean that was the promise from the miniseries that we'll find a place called Earth, and here it is. So there was a tremendous amount of satisfaction seeing that finally happen.

TVGuide.com: And it was such a gorgeous shot...

Moore: It was inspired by two different photos: the famous shot they took on Apollo 8 of Earth's rise over the moon, and then the actual image of Earth we used. We drew upon the Apollo 17 shot — there's a big famous picture of the full Earth that they took on Apollo 17, so we took liberties with both of those and combined them.

TVGuide.com: Any word on when we'll get to see the final prequel movie, "The Plan?"

Moore: Don't have a date for it yet, but they said that it's gonna be in the fall some time, possibly in November. But, there's no firm date for that.

TVGuide.com: What's the deal with this Battlestar movie that's being made — it's not your version of Battlestar?
Moore: Well I don't really know anything about it. They didn't talk to me before they made the deal with Glen Larson, so I don't really know much about it.

TVGuide.com: So they never approached you about a movie?
Moore: Nope. They never picked up the phone. Let's put it that way. But that's OK because I had kind of put the word out that for quite a while that I didn't think that our version of Galactica was going to lend itself to a feature film. I knew that we wanted to end the series the way that we did, and it really wraps up the show. There's really not a story to tell after the finale that would be Battlestar Galactica.
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-HECK!

More from Discover Magazine...

Battlestar Galactica: Watched The Finale? Still Got Questions? We’ve Got Answers!

Earlier this week in New York, Battlestar Galactica’s co-creators David Eick and Ron Moore, along with cast members Mary McDonnell (President Roslin) and Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama), sat down with the press for a Q&A session following a screening of the last episode. We were just as brimming with questions as you are about the finale, and here are some of the answers we got. Needless to say, what follows below the jump contains MASSIVE SPOILERS if you haven’t already seen tonight’s show, so don’t say you weren’t warned!

What exactly was Kara, and were people chasing down a rabbit hole when they assumed her father was Daniel, the missing 8th model cylon?

Ron Moore: Daniel is definitely a rabbit hole. It was an unintentional rabbit hole, to be honest. I was kind of surprised when I started picking up [that] speculation online.
For those of you who don’t know, there was a deep part of the cylon backstory that had to do with one of the cylons that was created by the final five [called Daniel. Daniel] was later sort of aborted by Cavill… it was always intended just to be sort of an interesting bit of backstory about Cavill and his jealously. A Cain and Abel sort of allegory. Then people really started grabbing on to it and seizing on it as some major part of the mythology. In couple of interviews and in the last podcast I tried to go out of my way to say “look, don’t spend too much time and energy on this particular theory,” because it was never intended to be that major a piece of the mythology.

David Eick: It’s like Boxey in that way!

Moore: Kara is what you want her to be. It’s easy to put the label on her of “angel” or “messenger of God” or something like that. Kara Thrace died and was resurrected and came back and took the people to their final end. That was her role, her destiny in the show… We debated back and forth in the writers’ room about giving it more clarity and saying definitively what she is. We decided that the more you try to put a name on it, the less interesting it became, and we just decided this was the most interesting way for her to go out, with her just disappearing and [leave people wondering exactly what she was].

We see Galactica jump away from the Colony. Are we to assume there are a lot of pissed off Cavills out there still, or were they destroyed?

Moore: The final [cut] came out a little less clear on that than I intended…. It was scripted and the idea was that when Racetrack hits the nukes—the nukes come in and smack into the colony—it takes the colony out of the stream that was swirling around the singularity and [the colony] fell in and was destroyed. I think as we went through the [editing process], when we kept cutting frames and doing this and that, one of the things that became less apparent was that the colony was doomed. The intention was that everyone who was aboard the colony would perish.

At what point did you decide to make it Earth-of-the-past that we were going to wind up on, and what was your reason for that?

Moore: We decided that a couple of years ago. I don’t think we ever really had a version of the show where we [were] in the future or in the present, those didn’t seem as interesting. In the early [development of the show], we would talk about the fact that we would see a lot of contemporary things in the show from language to wardrobe to all kinds of production design details. That only made sense to us in terms of a lot of things that we see in the show and we feel are taken from our contemporary world are actually theirs to begin with. [They] somehow spread down through eons and came to us through the collective unconsciousness. Or, more directly, [as when] Lee said we would give them the better part of ourselves.

Eick: There was a time when we were talking about “they land, and its Pterodactyls and Tyrannosaurus Rex.” But the idea that they were part of the genus of humankind seemed like the right—and more affordable!—way to do that.

Moore: We also had this image of Six walking through Times Square that we came up with long ago.

Who attacked the original Earth?

Moore: The backstory of the original Earth was supposed to be that the 13th tribe of cylons came to that world, started over and essentially destroyed themselves. There was some internecine warfare that occurred among the cylons themselves, which was another repetition in the cycle of “all of this has happened before and all will happen again.” Even they, who were the rebels that split off, [had] enough of humanity in them as cylons that they eventually destroyed themselves.

Why did Cavill decide to kill himself?

Moore: Cavill killing himself actually came from Dean Stockwell [the actor who played Cavill]. As scripted in that final climatic CIC battle, Tigh was going to grab Cavill and fling him over the edge of the upper level and he was going to fall to his death. Dean called me and said “y’know, I just really think that, in that moment, Cavill would realize the jig is up and it’s all hopeless, and he should just put a gun in his mouth and shoot himself.” And I said: “…Okay!”

For the actors, what was the last scene that you filmed and what was the mood like on the set?

Mary McDonnell: My last scene was Laura Roslin’s last moment in the Raptor. That was about 3:45 am on a very small set. I think I was one of the first people to wrap—she died and we all hugged, and my son and I went to the airport and went back to LA… It happened quickly, it was set to happen a week later and the schedule was changed, so suddenly it was over, it was really interesting, very much like the show for me.

Edward James Olmos: My last day was when I was on the mountainside and it was the last moment that I was on camera. It was quite an experience all the way around, that moment in time. I think everybody had a real easy time [acting] with the emotions that we had at the very end, it’s pretty honest all the way around. The last time that I saw Starbuck and Lee was the last scene where I saw them [in the show]. Pretty intense.

McDonnell: But we’re here, and we’re alive! I wore bright blue so you would know I was alive.

With the use of “All Along The Watchtower,” are you trying to get at some notion that there is some universal consciousness that goes back as far as the human/cylon races’ arrival?

Moore: The notion is sort of how you posited it. The music, the lyrics, the composition, is divine, eternal, it’s something that lives in the collective unconsciousness of everyone in the show and all of us today. It’s a musical theme that repeats itself and crops up in unexpected places. Different people hear it and pluck it out of the ether and write songs. It’s a connection of the divine and the mortal. Music is something that people literally catch out of the air and can’t really define exactly how they composed it. [So] here is a song that transcends many eons and many different people and cultures and the stars, and was ultimately reinvented by one Mr. Bob Dylan here on Earth.

Eick: It was a simple way, I thought, to communicate clearly the idea [the show is not set in the future.] That this is a story about a culture that gave birth to ours. There was an episode in season one in which Helo and Sharon are running for their lives. They hole up in a diner and there’s a cylon centurion cornering them. For the longest time we planned to have an old jukebox in the diner that would play “Yesterday”, or whatever we could afford—

Moore: Not “Yesterday.”

Eick: —Probably not “Yesterday.” Something from The Guess Who perhaps. I think we felt it was too soon. It would confuse things and…people would just be thrown by it, but we were thinking about it that far back, that music would be a great way to say to the audience that it follows [a] cyclical theme of “this has all happened before and will happen again.” This culture is the one that gave birth to ours, so that all the colloquialisms and all the slang that you hear and the behavior that is idiosyncratic—playing cards or whatever—we get that from them, not the other way around.

There’s been a lot of talk about how setting an end date for a scripted serial helps to recharge it. Did you find that true?
Moore: In terms of the writers’ room it certainly focused us. We made the decision that fourth season was going to be the last season once we got to the end of the third season. We had writers’ retreats, and we had dedicated sessions to say “this is the end, what’s the last story, what’s the final arc?” It really made everybody very focused and very specific about exactly how this was going to line up. Part of the motivation to make it the final season was that we didn’t want to get to the place where we felt like the ship was keeling over and we were having a problem. We all instinctively felt that the show had the reached the third act by the time the show got to the end of that third season.

Eick: Going back a year before that, Ron and I sat down for our biannual “what the hell do we do this year meeting?” Heading into season three there was a real sense of creative frustration. We wanted to expand the show and … find a new ways [of] story telling. [So season three] became what we call the cylon-centric season. It’s when we introduced the base ship, it’s when we introduced some new cylons. It gave the show life, but after a year of that, when we sat down heading into season four, it was a much shorter conversation. It was basically “okay, what if we end it? What if we just decide it’s over?” Let’s call this…the dovetailing season. If we know that going in, how would that inform story telling decisions?” So it was a very early decision. I remember from my perspective going into that 4th season there was a different energy on the set. There was tremendous focus and concentration that I was getting from the entire ensemble.

McDonnell: Part of what was extraordinary about that is as you are able to view [the end approaching] you can then kick into gear and plot your finish. What that ends up doing is simplifying things for you. You know where your head is and you can let go in many moments were you probably would have worked very hard [before, but] you didn’t need to. So a lot of us felt a kind of simplification. A kind of humility that came over us and that gives you a lot of energy. You just know where you are going and you are proud to be a part of it. And you let go. That was the experience I think many of us had.

Olmos: We had a meeting at the very beginning of the show and we all, 13 of us, sat down in my trailer—

McDonnell: He had the biggest trailer.

Omos: —it was beautiful! And we sat down as we discussed the possibilities. I talked to them about making sure we understood that if, by chance, this situation was to move forward and we were to do this as a series, and this was to go on to for one year, four years, ten years, who knows, that we had to understand what that meant… I just knew that…the story would have a beginning, a middle and an end, and that we had to pace ourselves.

So at the end of the third season, beginning of fourth season, we had a meeting, and we were told then that this was going to be the final season. Everybody got very depressed…I don’t think any of the actors wanted to stop the show… But we had hit the end, we were going into the fourth and final act. And we knew it. So we talked about the very first time we ever got together, and we said it’s like a marathon. In marathon you have to start off fast, really really intensely strong, your first mile has to extraordinary. Then the next 24 miles have to be consistent…. And then the last mile has to be the strongest mile that you’ve run the whole 26 miles…To win it, your final mile has to be your strongest mile… So we knew where we where coming from, we knew where we were, and now we knew where were going… I think that led to some of our strongest performances.

In the last scene, are “Six” and “Baltar” angels or demons?

Moore: I think they’re both. We never try to name exactly what the “Head” characters are—we called them “Head Baltar” and “Head Six” all throughout the show, internally. We never really looked at them as angels or demons because they seemed to periodically say evil things and good things, they tended to save people and they tended to damn people. There was this sense that they worked in service of something else. You could say “a higher power” or you could say “another power,” [but] they were in service to something else that was guiding and helping, sometimes obstructing, and sometimes tempting the people on the show. The idea at the very end was that whatever they are in service to continues and is eternal and is always around. And they too are still around…and with all of us who are the children of Hera. They continue to walk among us and watch, and at some point they may or may not intercede at a key moment.
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-HECK!

I had mixed feelings. Loved most of it, felt like some of it was really a stretch.

I enjoyed the idea of the ending, the sun suicide of the ships, and the let's go back to nature and live like the Amish for the people,

but the concept is so far out there for anything that could really happen. I could see a certain percentage of them wanting to do that, but to get them all to agree to abandon all the small creature comforts they had and scrap the whole damn fleet...

NO WAY.

I understand Ron Moore wanted to strand them on Earth, and have them be our ancestors (or Hera be our ancestor), but he could have had them show up in one ship like Galactica that was so far gone, they had to give it up, or other plot devices to have them go retro.

The idea of going Amish is a fun one, and lots of people I know talk about what a great lifestyle it is, but I have heard of no one in real life that goes and does it, except maybe some hippie communes in the 60's. The idea of it is neat. Live in a sweet grassland and farm, and just junk the t.v. and the car, and do away with cities. But as I was reading on another site, the first toothache to hit, the first cancer case, and people want the Doctor to be close with some up to date tools to help them.



Other than that, I bought the ending, I even bought the whole angel stuff. Ron Moore reading was a little funky, it was aight though.

I wonder where they filmed the end at, those vistas were like a Windows screensaver. Really a pretty place. It was supposed to be in Africa, but I wonder if they shot it there or somewhere else.

Tyrol going off to England was cool. Like I read on another site, it was like a Highlander shout out.

I don't get why Adama would want to live alone without his son. I wouldn't want to live around Apollo, but it's Bill's kid dammit.

Why is it hard to believe that they could ditch technology and live off the Earth?

Robots humans created destroyed their home in a nuclear holocaust. Tens of more thousands were hunted down and killed in the aftermath. After 5 years of running, being afraid that any moment they could be blown to hell, I think getting back to nature would be a hell of an alternative.

Plus, Galactica was about the nicest thing in the fleet. But even the higher ups had shitty, cold, damp metal quarters. The pilots lived in bunk beds. What about those poor bastards who lived on the mining ships? What about the waste recycling ship? Were all these people really living in luxury with their 'technology'?

Creature comforts my big white ass.

After being trapped on a steel bucket in space for years, give me a grassy field, cool breeze and a log cabin any day.

It was time for humanity to hit the reset button. I totally agree with the choice.

And no doubt they took what medicine they had, which wasn't much to begin with. Remember in the first few seasons when meds were sold on the black market?

Surely they took weapons, maybe a few other basics to help them get started.

-HECK!

I'm with you, Heck! Sure, it would be great to have advancements, etc... but, I would be dying to have fresh air, a breeze of wind, to feel water, grass, sand, look at trees, see animals, grow food, have a real home. They lived in cramped quarters aboard the Galactica. The other ships probably had much worse living quarters. They were running out of everything. It couldn't last. And, I would want to get back to the basics, and hope that I would never see a cylon that was wanting to kill me, again.