Questions after finishing BSG

[lapsedmodernist]

1. I thought that part of the location identification for the original (nuked) Earth was the star map of the 12 zodiac constellations that appears in the Tomb of Athena on Kobol. How can that be if the New Earth/Our Earth has the same 12 constellations visible from it?

2. I never did get why, exactly, Baltar gave Gina the nuclear warhead, with which she eventually blew up Cloud 9 when the settlement on New Caprica began. Also why did Gina kill herself?

3. What was the deal with the hybrids' repetition that Kara is the "harbinger of death"? Did they mean--for the Cylons, whose Resurrection Ship was destroyed?

4. So, what was Kara in the end? Literally an Angel of God? A "Fallen" Angel?

5. I wonder how they came up with the idea to use "All Along the Watchtower" as The Song--anyone know?

Comments

[boymaenad.livejournal.com]

I can answer #5 with a cynical opinion based on interviews and things. and that is, Ron Moore is in looooove with that song, and had wanted to use it on a number of shows/episodes in the past, and finally figured out a way to. it makes only a little bit of sense, and mostly the kind of post-hoc sense you need things to make when you are driven to do something that most of the other people working with you don't want you to do. I think it was a serious shark-jump moment and I barely respected the show after that. though it still had its moments, and I enjoyed it even when I didn't respect it.

Bear McCreary did what he could with it, bringing it into the BSG universe, but really, I think it's pretty ridiculous. imagine the same concept with a unique song in an ancient tongue, similar to the moaning theme that starts every episode. how great would that have been?

but ... you liked Caprica, so... ;)

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

wait, what does liking Caprica have to do with it??

And was Kara's piano song actually a reworking/part of All Along the Watchtower, or was it somehow combined for the show?

[boymaenad.livejournal.com]

I thought Caprica was everything that was wrong with BSG as it decayed, only more so. less and less emotionally motivated; more and more flimsy storyline motivated by someone's checklist of points he wanted to make (and probably the same guy in both). good stuff in theory, totally unbelievable in actual experience.

I felt like the Watchtower sequence, and much of what surrounded and followed it, felt like characters I had come to believe in being jerked around in non-canonical ways by Ron Moore, to satisfy his whims. I don't know how true that is, but that's how it felt.

IIRC, Starbuck at one point is playing something unrelated, which later kind of gets entwined with it, and that had more to do with her composer father and her personal destiny (on which I too am unclear, but at least it did remain interestingly nebulous, pun intended) than the Watchtower song. but at another point, Starbuck starts to play composer Bear's counterpoint arrangement to the Watchtower song, which might be what you're talking about (I haven't watched this stuff in years).

for interesting reading...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Battlestar_Galactica_(reimagining)

http://www.bearmccreary.com/blog/?p=2167 (and all the other entries around this time)

[contrasoma.livejournal.com]

1. Wizardry! IAS, from what I've gathered from people who worked on the show, the writers purge left a lot of loose threads blowing in the wind, never to be taken up or resolved. This, among many others, is one of my major grievances with the way the show ended.

2. Can't remember.

3/4. From what I've pieced together, Kara acts as a semi-Biblical angel of death type figure who heralds death for the Cylons. The hybrids, who are in touch with the wishy-washy divinity in the Galactica universe, are in tune with this. Similarly, Balthar acts as a sort of angel of forbidden knowledge. Both are "sleeper angels" of a sort.

5. What boymaenad said. Definitely the shark-jump moment for me. So we're to believe that there's something transcendental and eternal about the song, and that it'll implant itself umpteen thousand years later in the mind of a young Robert Zimmerman? Ridiculous. The early days of Galactica were wonderful, and plenty of people within the academic science fiction community look at the second season as the best science fiction television ever produced, but the ridiculously sentimental and reductive direction it took, especially at the very end, is tremendously disappointing.

[isolt.livejournal.com]

1. Uh... yeah. It's a plot hole.
2. I assume she killed herself and took everyone with her out of Cylon rage + her own trauma. Baltar was stupid about her because he missed Caprica Six.
3. I took Kara as being the harbinger of death for everyone: in settling (our) earth, neither the human race nor the cylons were going to continue life as they had known it.
4. We're not supposed to get an answer, is what I took away from reading stuff after the series ended.

If you don't read the reviews on Television Without Pity, I highly recommend what their reviewer had to say about BSG. He's prone to a lot of wankery about Gnosticism but really calls the show on the places where it falls down.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

neither the human race nor the cylons were going to continue life as they had known it.

yeah but that is not exactly death...that fits more with "you will lead them to their end"--but I guess now the "death" part would just be about the cylons. Sort of. It still is not clear to me whether or not they could reproduce beyond Helo and Athena.

[isolt.livejournal.com]

I think for humans and cylons who were committed to things as they were, it was as good as death.

It's totally not clear to me who Hera would have been able to reproduce with... but I guess she got it on with everyone else's kids and had a lot of babies >.>

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

oh and I LOVE TWOP reviews, ESPECIALLY Jacob's reviews, they are my favorite! So yes, of course I read them. I find them poetic/transcendental and love his character analysis.

[isolt.livejournal.com]

The things he has to say about Ellen Tigh after it's revealed that she's the fifth of the final five are so. damn. awesome.

Jacob always winds up reviewing pretty much every show I watch. Even Gossip Girl.

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

My read on why Gina blew up the warhead was that a) she was still very damaged from her time on Pegasus, and b) she wanted the Cylons to be able to find the remaining humans (it was the traces of that explosion that led them to the settlement). Or, at least, that "God" wanted the Cylons to find the humans, so "He" planted that idea in her head.

I forget exactly why he gave her the warhead. Wasn't there some blackmail involved, or emotional coercion? Maybe by the Six in his head? He gave it to her partly because she was part of the secret rebel group that wanted peace and reconciliation with the Cylons, I remember that much.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Or, at least, that "God" wanted the Cylons to find the humans, so "He" planted that idea in her head.

I hadn't thought of that--so would that be a part of "the plan" (as in "they have a plan")--which I am still not sure about...what exactly was it?

I don't think there was blackmail...for some reason he really wanted Gina to trust him, and it seemed like the fact that she was a Six was wrapped up with his HeadSix...but yeah, the whole thing is just very confusing to me, still.

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole "they have a plan" thing eventually was proved to be complete hogwash, and soundly mocked by the viewers. Maybe that was the original conception, and it morphed into "He has a plan"? If I wanted to be *very* kind, I could postulate that it was the Final Five who had the plan...? Which they then forgot when they were put into human bodies...?