TV is the New Reading

“Battlestar Galactica” final season resumes with new quest, new questions

Friday marked the beginning of the end for the intrepid band of interstellar nomads aboard the Sci Fi channel’s “Battlestar Galactica,” and I’m honestly not sure how I feel about that.

First off, I’m pleased that a story this good is allowed to have a solidly developed ending. The past few years have seen plenty of productions that don’t so much end as stop. Apart from FOX’s “Drive” and ABC’s unforgivable treatment of “Pushing Daisies,” two abrupt endings that leap effortlessly to mind are “The 4400” and “The Dead Zone,” both on USA. Both productions had sufficiently engaging characters and storylines they should’ve been given an additional season to wrap things up.

On “Galactica,” the season opened with a shaky alliance between humans and a race of androids called Cylons, who have been pursuing them across the galaxy for four seasons. Led by cryptic prophecies and visions, both groups were in a race to find Earth after Cylons destroyed their home planet of Caprica.

Well, on Friday they found it. Sadly, there’d been a nuclear war here about 2,000 years ago and the land and water were still radioactive.

That wasn’t the only odd thing, however. They’d discovered a new line of Cylons hidden among the humans -- a line that appeared to have vanished two seasons ago. Also, all of the remains on this planet were, in fact, Cylon, a discovery borne out by a small group of Cylons recently discovered living among humans -- a group who remembered living here 2,000 years ago.

Also raising a few eyebrows is a body discovered in a small runabout -- a body discovered to be that of Kara Thrace, call sign “Starbuck,” who’d been instrumental in leading the group the rest of the way to Earth. When she discovered her remains, crash landed on the plane and which had clearly been there for quite some time, she lost it. “What am I?” she demanded to know. “What am I?!”

And as viewers, we’re not sure either.

Clearly something significant happened to Earth – and had happened before, and was happening again. But whether this show is taking place in the very distant future or the very distant past, certainly a radioactive Earth is no fit place for the colonists to colonize, so with grim determination and a harrowing sense of loss, they’re off to find some-place else they can live.

That “someplace else” is the focus of the final dozen or so episodes, which is a little disappointing in that everyone was thinking that Earth was their final destination, and going “someplace else” seems less like the final chapter of an epic and more like an epilogue. But I know I’m excited by some of the intriguing questions raised in the series return Friday, and I’ll absolutely be making that final journey with them.

New episodes of “Battlestar Galactica” air 9 p.m. Fridays on Sci Fi..

Back Back to Shows Back to Main Page Next