Favorite part: the mini-series and season 1. When the show was about running and survival, about battling the cylons, about the strain and stress between the humans in the fleet from the war, it was a good series. They had a good balance of action and human drama then.
The writers tried too much in seasons 2 and 3. They made the show take various political and religious tones and plots, copying actual history and modern conflicts to fuel most of the story. That's when it started to fail. In the special, they commented that the network tried to keep them from making the series too "dark". I think that was part of the problem, that the show became kind of overly depressing in its darkness (to some extent, it was necessary, given the nature of the show), but even greater was that they kept skipping around with a new central themes. The whole gods vs god aspect would have been less annoying if it actually resolved itself in some way, but it just seemed to evaporate, until this final episode in season 4, which seemed to indicate some sort of higher being "It" (kind of like the unseen mover of events in my favorite game of all time, Chrono Trigger) but didn't reveal everything we were wondering about the "angels" of Gaius and Caprica. I got the pseudo-Roman religion they used for the 12 colonies, but the pseudo-Christian aspect didn't sit well with me because it rang really false with the cylon interpretation and Gaius' saccharine preaching. The whole prophet/messiah thing (especially the stereotypical "Jesus look", even worse than Collier in The 4400) with Gaius Baltar was extremely annoying, but at least he was a character that you kind of wanted to hate, but was really pathetic (like a sad puppy, I think someone in the series said) and occasionally altruistic. Gaius was really the central character of the series, I think, even more than Adama or Roslin were. He pretty much sums up the entire feel of the series, right up until the end when he takes up a gun to defend the ship (he looked surprisingly proper and not quite as foolish as he usually did when taking on a role).
The cylons were an excellent enemy in the first half of the series, but then the cylons in the fleet, the "final five", just made it unclear who the enemy was. Which was the point, I know, but the primary enemy that developed (Cavil, I guess) wasn't as strong and clear a villain as the cylons appeared to be at the start of the series. I don't know about everyone else, but I love a clear, almost archetypal evil, enemy.
Overall, I would like the series if maybe 70% of the material, some entire episodes, some scenes from some episodes, and some entire story arcs, were removed. It's true with almost any story I've read or series I've watched that I disliked a portion of what it contained, but in this case the percentage is unusually high - and yet I still liked it enough to watch it until the end. I liked the original direction the series started off with, and the ratio of action (I love the battle scenes) to drama. The final episode yesterday, which I saw this morning, had a good amount of action. The final ending was somewhat predictable, but it at least it had the semblance of an ending, unlike many series' I have seen in the past. It's really disappointing when a series is left hanging, but they wrapped up most of the story nicely with this last episode. BSG was a flawed series, but it had the feel of an epic story, with low and high points to match, so it doesn't suffer poorly in my judgment.
Series rating: 7/10
I would put BSG at maybe number 8 or so out of all the sci-fi shows I have seen. It would be up there ahead of Stargate Atlantis and perhaps ahead of Stargate for its drama, but behind in terms of plot pacing and likeability of characters. I don't think I liked anyone in BSG that much (except maybe Hot Dog or Doc Cottle
). Maybe they were just all too irritatingly real and changeable to like for long. BSG falls short of my all time favorite sci-fi series like Quantum Leap (much preferred Dean Stockwell as the good guy
), Firefly, and Twin Peaks, which all, like BSG, are overall excellent TV series and not just excellent sci-fi series. If there is a show that I would give an equivalent rating of 7, it would be Sliders, which started off well and ended up really bad with the Kromaggs. The two series are very different, and I like them both for different reasons, but I think I like them about equally.
Would I rewatch BSG? No, I don't think so. Maybe I might rewatch the mini-series for nostalgia's sake at some point in the future, but not the main series, for all the reasons I mentioned previously. I'm ambivalent about whether sticking around for the series was a good thing or not. I'm glad the series is over, but I wish it was more of the series I liked and not weighed down with the things I didn't like.
Facebook
Twitter