A friend of mine finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica, thanks to his Netflix membership and wrote me to tell me how much he and his wife loved the ending – and asking me a couple of questions about the finale.

I think about the finale often, I’ll admit, and I haven’t erased it off my DVR yet, though I haven’t watched it more than twice. I’ve gone back and forth from loving it to being disappointed in the last few minutes of it.

But as I wrote back to my friend, whom I’ll call S., I realized it really was the perfect ending. It is what the show was about all along. Fate. Destiny. Faith. Whatever the personal belief of the viewers, this is what the show was about.

The belief in the one true god was a dividing line between human and cylon from the miniseries itself. Not the only thing that separated them, but it wouldn’t be the first time religion exacerbated a rift between two cultures.

As I wrote, I realized I was putting an awful lot of thought into my answers, so  I thought I’d share his questions and my answers here, too. I’d love to hear what others think.

• First, S. wondered why Cavil killed himself. His wife thought it was because he believed he’d be resurrected on the base ship, but he disagreed. “I thought there was no further opportunity for resurrection. That’s why he agreed to let Hera go, after he was promised that the Cylons would re-create resurrection.”

He’s right, in fact. There was no further opportunity for resurrection, at least not until the Cylons figured it out again, and that seemed highly unlikely.

Cavil killed himself, I believe, because he saw that his time was at an end. I think he killed himself almost BECAUSE there was no resurrection, rather than it spite of there being no resurrection.

Why? Because no matter what he said about the Final Five, he wanted to be one of them. They were his creators. When he saw the whole group of them together and then Tori was gone and there no longer was any hope for his resurrection, what did he have to live for anymore?

He certainly did not want to reproduce the “human” way, nor did he want to reproduce WITH humans. His back was against a wall and he did what all bullies/cowards do: He took the easy way out and ended his life so he didn’t have to figure out where to go from there.

The other question S. had was about the very final scene. It was obvious to him how Caprica Six could be there. She was, after all, a Cylon. But how could Baltar be there? S’s wife suggested they were the “angel” versions and S. thought that made perfect sense.

I completely agreed with his wife on this one, and I think that’s been pretty well established now (hey, he just finished watching, he hasn’t read anything about it to this point so he wouldn’t be spoiled!).

I reminded him of the visions both Baltar and Caprica Six had of the “Head Baltar.”

But then I wondered: Were the “earthly” versions of them actually angels as well? Forced to take human and Cylon form in order to push their races on the path they needed to go.

It kind of makes sense. After all, how in the world did Baltar survive the nuclear blast in the miniseries? It never really made any sense. How could Caprica Six truly have shielded him from that blast, which destroyed his home? She was destroyed and resurrected. And we never saw how Baltar got there.

Was Baltar truly an angel the whole time and Caprica Six an angel the whole time – not all the Sixes, just Caprica Six – in order to blend in and put humanity on a course to finally be at peace with the Cylons?

I’m starting to wonder. Of course, in some ways it doesn’t matter any more, it’s a moot point. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to know.

S’s final thought on the finale was a comment/observation, about Kara. He wasn’t so sure how he felt about her being an angel/ghost. But, he remarked, everything in the series had kind of made sense and had been explained. But Kara’s return never really did make any logical sense. Which was, of course, the point.

I realized in writing my response that it did make perfect sense for Kara to be an angel. She gave her life to her destiny. Her destiny was to find Earth and lead both races to it. And then to find the next Earth and lead both races to it to start over.

But it made me realize that one thing truly was never explained: How did her mother know she had a destiny? Did her mother have any idea what this destiny was? I’d have loved to have understood her mother more.

And her father – well, Kara being an angel/ghost makes me believe that perhaps she really was playing piano with her father on Galactica. Her father could have been an angel/ghost, and guiding her along to give her the clues she needed to fulfill her destiny. The only difference is that everyone in the fleet could see Starbuck. But they had to see her in order to trust her at all. Only Kara needed to see her dad.

That’s all I’ve got for now. However, we do have The Plan telemovie airing this fall, and an article on i09 promised we’d actually learn why Boomer stuck by Cavil, which has been a rather baffling point as well.

And, it appears that yet ANOTHER treatment of BSG, this time with Glen A. Larson’s blessing, could be coming to the big screen, according to HitFix.com, helmed by Bryan Singer.

I have to say, I’m good with that. Even though it would be a different take on it, I’ve never been able to get enough of BSG, even the cheesy Galactica: 1980.

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Can’t wait! Here’s the trailer for the Battlestar Galactica telemovie airing this fall, “The Plan.”

Looks fraktacularly awesome, naturally:

(Hat tip to i09, where I originally saw it posted.)

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I’ve not ended the So Say We All blog carnival for simply one reason: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan – the BSG telemovie – airs in September and from what I read this weekend on SciFi Wire, it’s gonna be amazing.

It’s written by Jane Espenson and directed by Edward James Olmos and it’s not exactly a secret what it’s about: It’s the Cylon perspective on basically the entire series. How and why the Cylons did what they did.

I think it’s a brilliant move because we pretty much were conditioned to believe the Cylons were just bad, unfeeling machines. Sure, they were given more humanity than the original BSG allowed, but in the end, they were bent on the destruction of humanity and, being human, that didn’t go over too well with us, the viewers.

Lest we forget, it was humanity who made the first move, by making slaves out of the machines. (I have the Caprica miniseries on DVD, by the way, and just haven’t had a chance to watch it. I’m hoping the slow summer season gives me the opportunity to watch it and finish Season 1 of Torchwood, too, but that’s another story for another day.)

One of the nice things about the telemovie, I believe, is that it’s going to give more airtime to some of the lesser-known characters. We had lots of time with the various iterations of Six, we got lots of D’Anna and the Sharons. Leoben had a not insignificant amount of screentime. But considering his role in everything, Cavil didn’t get as much play as one might have expected.

And Simon and Theodore (sorry, Aaron) got so little screentime it was easy to forget one or both of them. Aaron had virtually no facetime with the audience after the miniseries and Simon was in those couple of episodes that took place on the radioactive Caprica when Starbuck met Anders, and then showed up most as window dressing after that.

One might think we’d see more of those two in particular because they sided with Brother Cavil, and this is, after all, Cavil’s war.

Olmos pretty much confirmed that much in the SciFi Wire article, saying Dean Stockwell was basically the star of the telemovie:

I have to tell you right now, Dean Stockwell is a brilliant artist. He does a magnificent job of leading The Plan. The Plan is exactly that. It was how they planned to do what they did and what happened. It was monumental. All I can tell you is it’s an extraordinary look at the Cylons, how they masterminded what they did.

It’ll be interesting, too, if we learn more about the Final Five Cylons’ backstories, which seems possible. And maybe more about Daniel?

Olmos thinks the telemovie will give fans a reason and desire to go back to the beginning of the series and watch it again, with a new perspective.

I’d wager he’s right. After all, we don’t need much of a reason to go back and watch it all over again.

It’s supposed to air in September and I, for one, can’t frakkin’ wait.

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