As for the merits of throwing away your technology to go bush – I suppose in an idyllic swoon everyone may have forgotten about the debilitating effects of bad weather, disease, predators, warfare with the natives, and the general discomforts of operating as hunter gathers or mud-hut settlers without any of the the necessary skills – but I find it hard to believe that all 38,000 would have been as stupid as that.

Yeah, I did have a bit of a problem with that. we have 38,000 humans and Cylons and not even 1%, the crew of a ship, decided to tell Lee “Hey, Frack off. We don’t have any ability to live in stone age times and we’re not going to do it.”

Failing that, why didn’t some of these people start rebuilding a modern society from stone age materials? It would take generations, but with education of the following generations some small part of the new colony would have been able to get it up and running, say, within 100 years.

I chalk it up to Moore wanting to get from A to B; from the BSG storyline to “They are our ancestors” so he can give his moral lesson for the series, that of Human Hubris gone out of control.

BTW, there was more than one #8 which landed on planet, or so it’s safe to presume, why aren’t they “Mitochondrial Eve” but Hera is?

I loved the series (for me the best two episodes were the mutiny eps, S413 + 14), but hated that ending. It looked to me like everyone just gave up.

As for the merits of throwing away your technology to go bush – I suppose in an idyllic swoon everyone may have forgotten about the debilitating effects of bad weather, disease, predators, warfare with the natives, and the general discomforts of operating as hunter gathers or mud-hut settlers without any of the the necessary skills – but I find it hard to believe that all 38,000 would have been as stupid as that.

It all came across as some sort of green fantasy. The reality is, such a decision would have resulted in a short, nasty and brutish life.

As for the spiritual dimension – it just didn’t wash. The whole “Opera House” routine seemed contrived, and I get the feeling they had a lot of hard work to try and tie in all the luscious dream-sequence imagery they had peppered the series with into some sort of coherent denouement. It was a big ask, and it didn’t work for me.

At the time I watched it, I went progressively through the stages of whistful sadness, mild irritation, dissapointment, and finally flat out anger that my intelligence was being insulted.

But they really didn’t need the child, they already had the answer, so that seemed a little anti-climactic. And the flashbacks were over done.

I was really glad Baltar joined them in the end, prophesy-wise he had to, but they always could have gotten him there some other way.

Even though I understood (and on many levels I agree), I thought the driving all the tech into the sun was stupid. What if they discovered after a few months they were allergic to the planet or that summer was only 2 weeks a year or something else bad about the planet (or gave away something else they needed).

So was Kara an angel too? If not, what was she?

And lastly, with all the knowledge those 30,000+ people had I think society would have evolved way past where they had it 150,000 years later. It was way too long of a timeline (IMHO).

There is no way they would have ignored all sorts of things like: the wheel, fire, tools, farming, bows/arrows, building. That’s not even factoring more complicated things: medicine, extracting metals, engines, computing, etc.

And the fact that they found Hera’s DNA felt anti-climactic too. Even though she had been the first human/cylon DNA

How many people would remember Baltar’s jail cell confession of growing up on a farm at Baltar’s “I know about farming” breakdown.

I like the scenes. The finale was about endings and beginnings. It was nice to see how many of these people made such inconsequential decisions that bring them all the way from the humdrum of their prior lives all the way to a new planet and a new life “a million miles from home”. Lee joined the military to pay for college, Adama stayed in because he couldn’t stand having to prove his integrity, Rosalyn because she decided that there had to be something more to life (and grief) than a “fun time” with a younger man. Baltar because of “the things we do for love… well, you know.”

Are these decisions the work of God to bring about it’s will. Or after having the luxury of surviving are they just post-hoc rationalizations for “Why me?” I think it’s intended that we don’t/can’t know.

I can see you’re taking my point seriously… I mean, with the language you’ve chosen? How could you NOT be taking me seriously? It’d just be crazy to suggest otherwise!

Bill,

The flashbacks were lame. I’ll give you that. I think they should have been cut entirely.

Homosexuality a sin? Well the Bible makes it pretty clear that it is one, although it’s not clear to me just how grave it is compared to things like adultery and divorce and masturbation. So it then becomes a simple question: are faggots blowing each other and butt-fucking each other more often than married couples are getting divorced and cheating on each other today, and 13 year olds are jerking off? Yes or no?

From my perspective, this really isn’t hard. We have all kinds of tools available to us today to help us answer these questions, actually. Moreso than anyone in Moses’ day, anyway.

1. Not all media must conform to my sensibilities, hence the vigorous market for a Sex and the City movie.

2. I can’t speak for everyone who employed the term, but my mention of deux ex machina pertained to 1. improbably shoehorning events and characters to recreate historical events to cheap effect throughout the series, and 2. an ending that, in order to explain the folks settling on prehistoric Earth w/o leaving a trace, had a bunch of space refugees from a holocaust decide to collectively ditch all technology (presumably including soft toilet paper) and launch it into the sun.

In contrast, the use of “Angels” technically fits the definition of deux ex machina exactly, yet in the end defies it, because the “hand of God” was written as an ongoing theme of the series for quite some time. So it actually makes sense.

While part of me thinks the angels ending was so-so, another part thinks it was kind of interesting. Can’t make up for ditching the Charmin and the lame flashbacks, however.

But what would that look like? I mean, short of something glaring coming up, the point it that the problem is a gradual trend. Things never look all that different from previous generations, or that which does look different can certainly be argued always into meaninglessness, but the fall does eventually come.

I don’t think you’ll ever find what you’re looking for on a graph or in a study. We both know either can be constructed in such a way to reveal whatever one wishes them to reveal.

So, it seems, Dean, that perhaps you’re part of the generation that will pass the problem on to the next. The evidence you ask for will never coalesce in the way you want it to.

If evil were easy to see, plain as day, everyone would stand against it. But evil isn’t always like that. And you seem to want it to be plain as day – you won’t accept anecdotes.

Sorry but evil doesn’t wait for the next Rasmussen poll to telegraph its plans. 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6 tells the Believer that the world will be exclaiming peace when the end comes.

The information you’ll want won’t exist – and still the end will come.

And that’s the point.

Nevertheless, in a work of fiction–especially a good one–you’re going to have themes and philosophical ideas. The idea that technological and financial growth has moved faster than spiritual and intellectual growth fits in very well with the themes about human nature that have predominated throughout this series’ run–and, bonus, will tend to play well to pessimistic sensibilities in general. Although I liked the optimistic note at the end. ;-)