Battlestar Galactica Finale Review - Part 1

Man, it’s been a long time, but I needed to find something to write about. When the series finale of one of the best sci-fi shows ever gets aired, that’s a recipe for an entry. For those of you who have been living in a cave with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears for the past few weeks, the finale of Battlestar Galactica aired last Friday and I’m going to run it down for you.

To start off, I wanted to see three things. I wanted to get an explanation as to why Baltar sees Six in his head, what the hell is up with Starbuck, and I wanted to see Daniel get unboxed by the Cylons and have it turn out to be Dirk Benedict. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

So the show starts up where we left off, people picking sides on who is going to risk life and limb to rescue a little girl from a near impenetrable Cylon fortress. No offense, but are you seriously going to risk humanity for one Cylon/human hybrid? I guess the answer is yes since Adama promotes Hoshi to Admiral (seriously, Hoshi?!?!) and takes off. The plan is simple. Jump to the one spot that jumping is allowed and open fire. In order to survive past five minutes, Sam is going to use some weird Cylon trick to stop the guns from firing by confusing the hybrids or something. I was a little lost at that point.

So, the Galactica jumps in and all hell breaks loose. Point blank slugfest between the Galactica and the Cylon base. Raptors launch to the other side of the base to land and penetrate the base. After what seems like forever, Sam uses his mumbo-jumbo to silence the Cylon guns. Galactica launches its fighters and then rams the base, as yet another entry into the base to rescue Hera. This kid better shit gold or something for all the trouble they are going to.

Inside the Cylon base (I need a nickname for this thing, like Fortress Toaster or something), Boomer has finally snapped and has absconded with Hera, as a way to make up for kidnapping her, cracking her mom upside the head, banging her dad, nearly crippling Galactica, and handing Hera over for experimentation. Yeah, all is forgiven. Anyway, she finds the rescue team, hands the kid over, we get a cool flashback to Boomer’s early days as a pilot, and Athena riddles her with bullets.

Finally, the Cylons have had enough and start to storm the Galactica. Now, Baltar and Six are hunkered down in one of the corridors as some line defense against this eventuality, and we get to see the good doctor waving a gun around. While sitting there, we learn that Six also sees an apparition, except it’s of Baltar. Talk about freaky.

Anyway, the rescue crew brings Hera aboard and Helo immediately gets shot in the leg. He tells his wife to let him bleed out and protect their kid. Of course, she doesn’t listen and the kid just takes off. Once they figure out that Hera is gone, they fall back letting Helo to die, on the floor of the Galactica (or so we think).

Then, it what seems like destiny (since we’ve seen the Opera House dream enough times), Baltar and Six find the kid and take her to the CIC, while Athena and Roslin chase them down. This is the point that Cavil shows up and puts the gun to Hera’s head and wants to take her back.

The Final 5 (minus Sam who is catatonic in a pool of goo) make a deal. They get Hera back and they give the Cylons the secret to resurrection. In order to do this, Chief, Saul, Ellen, and Tory all need to dip their hands in the goo that Sam is in, since all five need to put the information together. Now here’s the thing, when doing this, you get to see into the mind of the other four.

Instead of getting some Cinemax After Dark by seeing the various misdeeds of Ellen, we get to see Tory killing the Chief’s wife. Oops. He doesn’t take it lightly and decides to strangle Tory. God bless him. However, this cuts off the download of resurrection to the Cylons and they get mildly annoyed.

Cavil does his best Admiral Ackbar impression by screaming “It’s a trap” and the gun fire starts up again in the CIC. It’s around this time that we remember the Raptor that got tagged earlier. Earlier, a raptor had been flying outside the Cylon base and had armed their nukes before something crashed through the windshield and killed them all. Well, gravity took hold and the pilots hand accidently hit the launch button and the nukes went streaking toward the base.

And just for fun, I’m ending this there. Why? Because I’m tired of typing and I don’t want this to be some massive entry. So tomorrow I’ll come back and fill you in on the end of the battle and what happens next. Plus, my own analysis, with guest quotes from Seamus and the Duchess. It’s fun for the whole family. Until tomorrow.