Obviously, full of spoilers. All right. Let’s see how we did:

1. 1.I can’t believe that…
   

1. a.everybody died in a final cataclysmic confrontation
   

2. b.they rescued Hera and found a new home
   

3. c.it all turned out to be a dream
   

2. But what really shocked me was that…

1. a.Kara “Starbuck” Thrace is actually a Cylon-human half-breed; the missing 13th Cylon!
   

2. b.Kara “Starbuck” Thrace isn’t dead after all; the body she found was just a clone
   

3. c.Kara “Starbuck” Thrace is actually Optimus Prime in disguise (well, close enough)
   

3. On the other hand, anyone could see that…

1. a.Lee Adama—“secretly” gay as cheese
   

2. b.Ellen Tigh—I believe the expression is “beard”?
   

3. c.Trick question. They’re all gay.
   

4. Wow—I hadn’t expected to see _________________ in the final episode!

1. a.Cally: the Cyclon mother-God
   

2. b.Lt. Gaeta: the Cylon God of Fashion
   

3. c.Zach Adama: he’s been a maintenance worker on Galactica the whole time
   

5. As I final revelation, I feel cheated that (check all that apply):

1. a.Roslin turned out to be a secret Cylon
   

2. b.Adama turned out to be a secret Cylon
   

3. c.Number Six turned out to be a secret human
   

4. d.The planet Caprica turned out to have an exact duplicate, but with kinder, gentler Cylons nearby
   

5. e.Lucy Lawless (Number 3) and Tom Zarek rule the Galaxy as father and son? Really?
   

All in all, pretty dull.  That’s okay—I don’t generally speaking have high hopes for season finales. The two hour season finale normally devotes the first half to wrapping up the narrative action, and the second half to providing “emotional closure” — i.e., an hour or so of mawkish nostalgia for an experience that you are still having, just so you’ll know how you were supposed to have felt about it later. I’m not sure that the tenses of the English language are quite up to network television and its anticipations of nostalgia, but you get the idea. I liked a few bits (Starbuck’s disappearance in mid-dialogue was a nice touch), but overall the show was at its best when it was at its darkest, and even this semi-happy ending was not its strongest work. If I may point once again to the most underrated and unknown sci-fi show of the last 20 years, Space Above and Beyond knew how to end a show—kill all of the main characters as they fight a heroic, but ultimately doomed, battle. All of ‘em.

As to what will probably be the most controversial and disliked part of the finale—the Planet of the Apes “trick” where it turns out that the planet they find at the end is actually our Earth, and the crew of the Galactica are actually our ancestors—may I just say, (a) I was totally expecting it, and (b) if it feels cheap, it’s because Galactica’s dime-store spirituality has always been locked into repetition and fate, so it’s a given that the ending is also the beginning of another cycle. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. I was more disappointed by how the show ditched its more troubled spiritual questions (one God, or many? A merciful or a cruel one? Destiny or free will?) in favor of Gaius’ “God is more than all these things—God is a force of nature…” speech, which appears to be the show’s final take: a version of God that should be acceptable to Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews and probably atheists, too. (The “happy holidays” God.) Anyway, the biggest problem with the Galactica crew becoming the ancestors of humanity (and Hera the “mitochondrial Eve”) is that the African origin of the human species gets seriously replaced by a crew of almost entirely white people (the only African American regular got killed off several episodes earlier). Yeah, I know Boomer’s Asian and the actor playing Adama is Latino—the ideological point is the elimination of Africa as the origin of the species. I don’t normally care about this kind of thing, but really, all of them peering at the “primitives” through binoculars and saying “they don’t even have language—that’s okay, we can give it to them.” That’s just wrong.

I was, however, deeply saddened to see that the “endless ending” of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King has had an apparently deep and permanent effect on visual culture. The final episode—just like the Jackson film—“ends” about a dozen times, each more maudlin and drawn out than the last, and accompanied by the same damn faux-Celtic music! Played on the same instrumentation! If anyone knows what that “celtic flute” or pipe or whistle is, please let me know, so I can start a crusade to ban it.

The final season lost its way—ironically, since they ultimately find Earth—but it did have its moments, and the first three seasons are generally excellent. It’s still one of the key texts for understanding our complicated reaction to September 11th in the West, I think, and much like Star Trek: The Next Generation did to the original Star Trek, this remake managed to recycle something pretty cheesy into something that merits some serious consideration.

PS. The Battlestar Galactica “Frakmap”—who hooks up with whom, when and how. They forgot a few (Gaeta and whathisname, Roslin and her former student—or did they not get around to doing it? I was unclear if we were watching a ‘before’ or ‘after’ scene there).