Finale Review *Massive Spoilers*

Leprachaun

Ronald D. Moore has lost his frakkin’ mind.

Can you blame the guy?

The executive producer, writer and mastermind behind one of the most creative, mature shows on any channel has had so much pressure on him to deliver, he can be forgiven for fumbling in the long-awaited finale to his epic series “Battlestar Galactica.”

How could any non-toaster possibly fulfill the many expectations for one of the most complex setups any series has faced going into its finale? This isn’t some silly wrap-up to “ER” in which you just bring back a few old faces.

Will the rest of fandom be so understanding?

After tonight’s wildly uneven wrap-up, I think they’ll be looking for their own raptors.

Sci Fi (we don’t have to refer to it by its new STD-spelling SyFy for a few months yet) last week aired the first hour of “Daybreak,” the three-hour finale. It was never meant to be a stand-alone story. Why, example, was it necessary to see Lee Adama (Jamie Bamber) in a flashback fighting off a pigeon in his own home? Viewers will get answers tonight. Sci Fi repeats the first hour of “Daybreak” at 8 p.m. and then airs the remaining two hours beginning at 9. (The channel generously supplied this viewer with a copy of the finale.)

A crew of volunteers, humans and Cylons sets out on what seems like a certain suicide mission to rescue Hera, the human/Cylon hybrid.

The first hour features some of the most exciting, frightening action sequences captured for the small screen as Galactica faces down a fearsome assault from Cylon forces. It’s the dying ship’s finest hour.

Along the way, there are more deaths, redemptions, reunions and one suicide I didn’t see coming.

Flashbacks flesh out more of the characters’ pasts and foreshadow their futures.

One longstanding dream is finally explained. Caprica Six (Tricia Helfer) and Baltar’s (James Callis) romantic moment is interrupted by the last two people they ever expected to see. The familiar notes from the original “Battlestar” theme play at one of the most heartbreaking moments.

Moore has used this soapbox to explore the wages of war, xenophobia, torture, prisoner rights and abortion, to name just a few hot-button topics, in a manner that most other dramas wouldn’t have the temerity to approach. He’s also veered off on inexplicable religious tangents - Baltar as a Jesus figure with a dozen adoring female apostles was a particularly odious subplot. Tonight that fervor turns feverish.

It’s as if some assistant photocopying the script mixed in a batch of pages from an old “Touched By An Angel” episode. I won’t spoil the denouement, but these last shepherds of humanity make irrational decisions that fly in the face of everything they’ve struggled for. I must go on record with my unhappiness regarding the resolution of the mystery surrounding Kara Thrace (Katee Sackhoff). She deserved better and so did we. Hera’s grand destiny, on the other hand, seems to be much ado about hooey.

Like many big-screen horror movies, “Battlestar Galactica” doesn’t know when to end its story and leave well enough alone. It jumps 150,000 years in the future for a perfectly silly coda (look for Moore in a silent cameo) that I, for one, shall now repress from my memory. All it’s missing is one of those cheesy endcards from a ’50s sci-fi film “THE END?” written in faux blood.

But when “Battlestar Galactica” was good, it was brilliant.

jArgHA

*puts on blindfold*

DeepBlue

jArgHA wrote: »

*puts on blindfold*

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