A look back on Battlestar Galactica’s incredible episodes and arcsBy Matthew Martin| July 2, 2020 TV Blogs Previous Page Here cometh the end. SPOILERS AHEAD FINDING EARTH ARC – 10/10 He That Believeth in Me – 9/10 Six of One – 10/10 The Ties that Bind – 9/10 Escape Velocity – 9/10 The Road Less Traveled – 9/10 Faith – 10/10 Guess What’s Coming for Dinner – 10/10 Sine Qua Non – 8/10 The Hub – 10/10 Revelations – 10/10 The final nineteen episodes of the show can neither be viewed individually nor as individual arcs. The plotlines sort of bleed together throughout each half of the season, forming two large arcs with a lot of little arcs woven throughout. The first ten are the strongest series of episodes since “Kobol’s Last Gleaming” kicked off the arc that ended with “Home part two.” These ten episodes bring confusion, spectacle, shock, tension, action, euphoria, and finally devastation. It was the online reaction to “Revelations” that made me want to watch this show. Fortunately, I avoided what was so shocking about the last episode of the half-season. When the moment actually came, when the long lost planet earth was finally found, I bought in. I didn’t even care that there was a whole second half of the season to go. I was right there with them, cheering and crying that they finally made it. Then they go down to the planet…and it’s a nuclear wasteland. What an ending. It’s the ultimate “now what” ending of the show, leaving everyone seemingly completely directionless, setting the stage for the horrors that would come in the next half. A special word of praise goes to Guess What’s Coming to Dinner. It’s season four’s finale-worthy episode right there in the middle of the run, featuring a tremendous score by Bear McCreary, and a final few moments good enough to end a season on. THE FINAL ARC – 10/10 Sometimes a Great Notion – 10/10 A Disquiet Follows My Soul – 9/10 The Oath – 10/10 Blood on the Scales – 10/10 No Exit – 10/10 Deadlock – 8/10 Someone to Watch Over Me – 10/10 Islanded on a Stream of Stars – 10/10 Daybreak – 10/10 The final nine episodes (including a near-three hour finale) function much like the first half of the season: There are several little arcs woven across multiple episodes, all building to the finale. In the middle of that, and most noteworthy is the Mutiny arc with Gaeta and Tom Zarek. Before that, though, there’s a two-part follow-up to Revelations. This is the aftermath…and it’s ugly. Adama roams a trash-filled ship with FRAK EARTH spray-painted on the walls, Dee—precious, innocent Dee—commits suicide, the Cylons are lost, Starbuck discovers her own corpse, Roslin burns her Bible. Hope is completely gone. And what brings everyone back? Not good news, but worse. Gaeta and Tom Zarek stir up what seems to be half the ship against Adama. The set-up is some of the best tension in the show since Pegasus. You know something is stirring and you sit nervously waiting for the shoe to drop. When it finally does, everything explodes. The follow-up episode features great spectacle, and when the dust settles, everyone on the ship that’s left alive has a purpose and a drive again. Gaeta’s character arc over the four seasons, from the doe-eyed kid to naïve Presidential chief of staff, to the frustrated officer, to, finally, a bitter mutineer is one of the finest arcs for a “secondary” character I’ve ever seen on a TV show. As for Zarek, some people complained about his actions in this arc, thinking it betrayed the nuance his character had in the previous seasons. I disagree. I think he stayed consistent from Bastille Day to the end. Shooting the Quorum might seem out of step with him as an idealistic revolutionary, but in his mind, revolutions are bloody. He even says that to Felix when he sees the bloody aftermath. This is what a coup looks like. It’s messy but justifiable as long as you’re the ones left to write the history. There’s a reason he was in jail at the start of the show. He was always violent and willing to use violence to accomplish what he sincerely believed to be right. He’s not like Baltar, whose primary character trait is an ability to say or do anything to survive. Zarek was an idealist, albeit one more than willing to get blood on his hands to see his ideals win the day. In the end, he lost, and he did so with his head high. Two great characters, there. After the mutiny, the story shifts to the slow decline and eventual death of Galactica herself. The ship has been through a lot, and she’s breaking down before our eyes. You come to love the ship over the course of four years, so when her skeleton groans and whines as it slowly buckles under too much pressure, you feel it as much as you feel it to see Roslin lying in a bed, dying just the same. Adama’s stubborn refusal to accept that either his ship or his love are dying just makes it all the more poignant. When the time comes to strip the ship and say goodbye, Adama decides to send her out, not with a whimper but with a bang, organizing a volunteer-only rescue mission to bring little Hera back. That sets us up for the finale, where we flashback to Caprica (before the fall) and see how many of our core characters made their way to the ship that would become their destiny. Adama refused to retire to a desk job. He looked up at the stars at night and pined for them. Tigh refused to divorce himself from the old man. He owes his life to him, and that means forever. Lee and Kara had sexual chemistry from the start but Zach was the original wall that separated them. Later, Lee reflected on Kara as “the one that flew away” while Kara confesses that she is afraid of a lot of things, just not dying. Laura discovered her sisters and father were all killed by a drunk driver a year or so before the Cylons attacked. In a lot of ways, her world was over then, a year before everyone else’s. It explains her steely resolve by the time we meet her in the miniseries. And finally Baltar: He struggles with a cantankerous old father he’s embarrassed by, and of the humble life he tried to run away from. After rescuing Hera, Starbuck jumps the ship for the final time. The significance of this jump and how it plays into the series’ larger mythos (particularly Starbuck’s) is a masterclass in paying off an idea. They reach their last stop, a habitable planet today called earth. It’s not the earth they found before, the nuclear wasteland. This is a different planet, named in honor of the dream rather than the original destination. How does that square up with the constellations that pointed them to the original earth? I dunno. I suppose stellar drift could be used to explain it. The hand of God, too. Maybe we just have to accept the fact that the story was written on the fly and some things had to be tweaked along the way. I wasn’t sweating it; the sight of our little planet for the first time brings tears to my eyes every time I watch the show. Everyone gets a bittersweet ending. Roslin dies but not before seeing earth—our earth—filled with “so much life” as she says. Adama gets to retire, but without the life with Laura that he wanted. Lee gets closure with his dad, his life, and with Kara, who ascends out of sight like the Christ-allegory she is. Baltar comes to terms with his life, his whole life, in one of the most touching moments of the series: “I know about farming” he says, before breaking down. It’s so pure and real, and it only works because we spent four seasons watching this character grow and evolve from an arrogant atheist to a humble believer. Then we fast forward to the present day, to the “human” race (unbeknownst to us, a mix of human and Cylon), as we race to develop the smartest, bestest forms of AI and robotics. All this has happened before, we’re warned. Whether or not it happens again, is up to us.
