Disclaimer: I am an atheist. However, I enjoy and can accept the invocation of God in fiction. Please keep this in mind when reading my thoughts on this episode. It may help to give the sarcasm and blasphemy some context. You have been warned.
Before I watched this, the final episode of the entire series, I wrote down several questions that I expected answers to. My aim with this was to put down exactly what I was hoping to have answers to by the end of the episode, such that I could judge if I was satisfied with the way the series ended. (Spoiler alert: I was!)
Questions
1. What is going on with these Opera House visions that Laura, Caprica Six, Athena, Hera and Gaius have been sharing?
2. If there is a connection, how is all of this connected to the Earth we know, and this time?
3. Why have Gaius and Caprica Six been seeing Head versions of themselves? Who/what are these Head Characters?
4. Who/what is Kara Thrace? This question has several parts, as I see it:
a. After she died in Maelstrom, how did she come back in a shiny new viper?
b. How did her dead body end up on Cylon Earth?
c. Was her father Daniel, the Number Seven?
d. In what way is she the "harbinger of death" as the original Hybrid, the normal Hybrid and Hybrid Sam have been telling us?
Now for points and quotes! I will come back to how well (or not) I think these questions were answered at the end.
Episode 20: Daybreak Part 2
Laura (to Dr. Cottle): "Don't spoil your image. Just light a cigarette and go and grumble."
Tigh (to Adama): "Still not too late to flush them out the airlock!"
Cavil (to a Four): "Please continue stating the perfectly obvious. It fills me with confidence."
Adama: "What do you hear Starbuck?"
Starbuck: "Nothing but the rain."
-This made me cry so much. It was more moving than Lee saying goodbye to his father, and such a great callback to the Miniseries, as it was the first piece of dialogue we heard between these two characters.
Answers
So, I was mostly satisfied with the ways in which the questions I posed previously were answered. I was perhaps expecting fuller and less divine-influenced answers, but I didn't write the show, so I'm not going to complain about the story itself. If I allow for and accept the "God did it" answer (essentially a deus ex machina device) that was heavily implied as answers to several of my and other questions, I can say that I got my answers. Let's go through them one by one.
1. These Opera House visions were prophetic in nature, and essentially led Gaius to be the one to negotiate the deal between Cavil and his forces and the allied Humans and Cylon Rebels. Why exactly these people had been having these visions is left unexplained as far as I see it, though we could take it to be implied that "God" (or whatever name he/she/it prefers) gave them the visions for some unknown reason. Basically, I think it was a foreshadowing device, and made for a good way to create ongoing suspense by having these characters collectively see something that was going to happen. I'm not sure, however, what the symbolism of Galactica being depicted as an Opera House was.
2. This question was answered quite explicitly. Basically, Kara Thrace jumped the Galactica (through divine intervention and a computational analysis of the music her father taught her?) to our Earth 150,000 years before today (or presumably, the date that this episode aired), where the Humans and Cylons of the allied fleet settled. The revelation at the end that modern Humans discovered the remains of what appeared to be mitochondrial Eve (implied to be Hera) means that we are all descendants of Cylon/Human hybrids, which is nice!
3. The final scene of the episode in which Head Six explains the above answer indicates that both she and what we've been calling Head Gaius are in fact beings of an independent nature, not only manifesting themselves in the 'heads' of others, thus calling them Head Characters is a misnomer. This tells us then that they are not figments of Gaius Baltar and Caprica Six's imaginations, but it does not explain us why those are the only two people that ever saw them. If we allow for the "God did it" hypothesis, then we can explain it away, but we still don't know why. This feels like a handy way of the writers not explaining it, but then I'm not sure we need to know exactly why.
4. This is the hardest question to explain, I think, at least in a detailed way. It seems like the simple answer is that the Kara Thrace that returned to the fleet at the end of Season 3 claiming that she'd been to (Cylon?) Earth was in fact a being similar in nature to those that we've been calling Head Six and Head Gaius, but with two important differences: that everyone can see her, and that she doesn't know exactly what she is. So, in more detail:
a. God did it...? I'm willing to accept this here, because to look for any other explanation just makes my brain hurt!
b. Who the frak knows? This one is still bothering me, as I can't work out a reasonable explanation for it. I don't buy the "God did it" one here, because there seems now to be not much reason for it, except maybe that she needed to find her own dead body and burn it in order to be able to move on and do what she had been sent back to do, namely to lead the fleet to a new home, as the goddess Aurora.
c. I believe that yes, Daniel was Kara's father, and that she was the first Human/Cylon hybrid. Even though this is not explicitly mentioned, I think it is heavily implied, with the man at the piano being clearly "artistic", as Ellen describes him as having been, and just the fact that it would be pointless to mention an entirely new Cylon model that we'd never heard of so late in the series and then have him be completely irrelevant to the story.
d. This part is the one I find most difficult to answer. The fact that we had this prophecy repeated to us multiple times by three different (though similarly abled) characters, seems to imply that it must indeed be important and highly relevant, but I'm not actually convinced that it came true. Perhaps if we consider that Hera ended up being the ultimate ancestor of all of humanity on this Earth, and she was a Human/Cylon hybrid, then perhaps this prophecy speaks of the fact that Kara Thrace brought all of the remaining pure Humans and pure Cylons to our Earth, where they eventually became extinct in favour of Hera's descendants. Thus, Kara Thrace brought the lines of pure Humans and Cylons to their end? This seems to work to me, but it feels like the way this prophecy was repeated, it should've been something more dramatic than this.
That is all for now. Overall, I was very happy with this episode, and am extremely sad the show is over for me, though I will no doubt come back to it again soon!
I have decided to save "The Plan" for next month, and will be watching it as a special Christmas treat for myself. So look out for a post about my thoughts on that in roughly a month's time! The next year, I plan to start watching Caprica. I can't wait!
One final thing: If you've been reading along and enjoying this journey with me, thank you. Even if you've never commented, I'm really happy to have shared this with you. Thanks for reading!
Before I watched this, the final episode of the entire series, I wrote down several questions that I expected answers to. My aim with this was to put down exactly what I was hoping to have answers to by the end of the episode, such that I could judge if I was satisfied with the way the series ended. (Spoiler alert: I was!)
Questions
1. What is going on with these Opera House visions that Laura, Caprica Six, Athena, Hera and Gaius have been sharing?
2. If there is a connection, how is all of this connected to the Earth we know, and this time?
3. Why have Gaius and Caprica Six been seeing Head versions of themselves? Who/what are these Head Characters?
4. Who/what is Kara Thrace? This question has several parts, as I see it:
a. After she died in Maelstrom, how did she come back in a shiny new viper?
b. How did her dead body end up on Cylon Earth?
c. Was her father Daniel, the Number Seven?
d. In what way is she the "harbinger of death" as the original Hybrid, the normal Hybrid and Hybrid Sam have been telling us?
Now for points and quotes! I will come back to how well (or not) I think these questions were answered at the end.
Episode 20: Daybreak Part 2
- Why is Ellen in the strip bar with Bill and Saul in the flashback to Caprica? I thought it was explained by Cavil in "No Exit" that she was sent directly to the Galactica from wherever Cavil was holding her in the season 1 episode "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down". However, the more I think about this, the less sense it makes, because Adama remembered her once she arrived on the ship. I hope this is something that gets dealt with in "The Plan".
- I enjoyed Laura's hot teacher routine with her date! "Did I say you should go?" HOT!
- What a lovely scene between Laura and Dr. Cottle. He really deserved that.
- Admiral Hoshi? Really? I'm still surprised he was not more upset by Gaeta's death.
- Gaius finally does a selfless act!
- The Galactica's plan of attack at the Colony was absolutely fraking insane! Ramming the ship directly in to it! WTF?!
- Boomer finally achieves redemption by returning Hera, but Athena shooting her was inevitable and obvious. I'm glad she went after doing something good, though.
- When Caprica Six and Gaius both saw Head Six and Head Gaius at the same time I was so shocked that I it my head on the wall behind me. Then I squeed so loudly I didn't hear anything they said and had to rewind. OMG! I never saw that coming, but it was so perfect! It's also new that Caprica Six sees Head Six, as far as we know.
- So the Opera House = Galactica, and the CIC in particular.
- Finally Tori having killed Cally and being of any relevance to the story comes back. Tyrol killing Tori when he discovers this really makes it clear that he did love Cally, despite what he had said before, since he was willing to break the download of the secret to resurrection, and kill Tori for it, essentially destroying the secret of resurrection and jeopardising the truce between the Humans/Rebel Cylons and Cavil's lot.
- This resulting in Cavil shooting himself seemed unbelievable to me. It didn't seem to fit with his character that he would commit suicide.
- A shot of the moon before we see our Earth was a great idea to really establish where we were. I squeed so hard at this! I also really liked that they chose to centre the image of Earth on the continent of Africa, rather than North America, which they showed at the end of Season 3. Since East Africa is where they landed, however, this makes much more sense.
- So it looks like Kara Thrace was a Head Character, but for everyone...? It was so wonderfully heartbreaking when she vanished as Lee was talking to her.
- I had heard that there were a lot of people who were unhappy with the ending of the series, and I can sort of see why, though I was not one of them. From an artistic point of view, it was a little jarring to see Head Six and Head Gaius walking through the modern day streets of New York City, as it sort of brought me out of the show, but I think this was the point; to connect that story to us in the here and now. From a storytelling point of view, however, I think it was utterly flawless.
- And what a great touch that we end on hearing the Jimi Hendrix version of All Along the Watchtower as we are shown images of the direction in which modern robotic technology is headed.
Laura (to Dr. Cottle): "Don't spoil your image. Just light a cigarette and go and grumble."
Tigh (to Adama): "Still not too late to flush them out the airlock!"
Cavil (to a Four): "Please continue stating the perfectly obvious. It fills me with confidence."
Adama: "What do you hear Starbuck?"
Starbuck: "Nothing but the rain."
-This made me cry so much. It was more moving than Lee saying goodbye to his father, and such a great callback to the Miniseries, as it was the first piece of dialogue we heard between these two characters.
Answers
So, I was mostly satisfied with the ways in which the questions I posed previously were answered. I was perhaps expecting fuller and less divine-influenced answers, but I didn't write the show, so I'm not going to complain about the story itself. If I allow for and accept the "God did it" answer (essentially a deus ex machina device) that was heavily implied as answers to several of my and other questions, I can say that I got my answers. Let's go through them one by one.
1. These Opera House visions were prophetic in nature, and essentially led Gaius to be the one to negotiate the deal between Cavil and his forces and the allied Humans and Cylon Rebels. Why exactly these people had been having these visions is left unexplained as far as I see it, though we could take it to be implied that "God" (or whatever name he/she/it prefers) gave them the visions for some unknown reason. Basically, I think it was a foreshadowing device, and made for a good way to create ongoing suspense by having these characters collectively see something that was going to happen. I'm not sure, however, what the symbolism of Galactica being depicted as an Opera House was.
2. This question was answered quite explicitly. Basically, Kara Thrace jumped the Galactica (through divine intervention and a computational analysis of the music her father taught her?) to our Earth 150,000 years before today (or presumably, the date that this episode aired), where the Humans and Cylons of the allied fleet settled. The revelation at the end that modern Humans discovered the remains of what appeared to be mitochondrial Eve (implied to be Hera) means that we are all descendants of Cylon/Human hybrids, which is nice!
3. The final scene of the episode in which Head Six explains the above answer indicates that both she and what we've been calling Head Gaius are in fact beings of an independent nature, not only manifesting themselves in the 'heads' of others, thus calling them Head Characters is a misnomer. This tells us then that they are not figments of Gaius Baltar and Caprica Six's imaginations, but it does not explain us why those are the only two people that ever saw them. If we allow for the "God did it" hypothesis, then we can explain it away, but we still don't know why. This feels like a handy way of the writers not explaining it, but then I'm not sure we need to know exactly why.
4. This is the hardest question to explain, I think, at least in a detailed way. It seems like the simple answer is that the Kara Thrace that returned to the fleet at the end of Season 3 claiming that she'd been to (Cylon?) Earth was in fact a being similar in nature to those that we've been calling Head Six and Head Gaius, but with two important differences: that everyone can see her, and that she doesn't know exactly what she is. So, in more detail:
a. God did it...? I'm willing to accept this here, because to look for any other explanation just makes my brain hurt!
b. Who the frak knows? This one is still bothering me, as I can't work out a reasonable explanation for it. I don't buy the "God did it" one here, because there seems now to be not much reason for it, except maybe that she needed to find her own dead body and burn it in order to be able to move on and do what she had been sent back to do, namely to lead the fleet to a new home, as the goddess Aurora.
c. I believe that yes, Daniel was Kara's father, and that she was the first Human/Cylon hybrid. Even though this is not explicitly mentioned, I think it is heavily implied, with the man at the piano being clearly "artistic", as Ellen describes him as having been, and just the fact that it would be pointless to mention an entirely new Cylon model that we'd never heard of so late in the series and then have him be completely irrelevant to the story.
d. This part is the one I find most difficult to answer. The fact that we had this prophecy repeated to us multiple times by three different (though similarly abled) characters, seems to imply that it must indeed be important and highly relevant, but I'm not actually convinced that it came true. Perhaps if we consider that Hera ended up being the ultimate ancestor of all of humanity on this Earth, and she was a Human/Cylon hybrid, then perhaps this prophecy speaks of the fact that Kara Thrace brought all of the remaining pure Humans and pure Cylons to our Earth, where they eventually became extinct in favour of Hera's descendants. Thus, Kara Thrace brought the lines of pure Humans and Cylons to their end? This seems to work to me, but it feels like the way this prophecy was repeated, it should've been something more dramatic than this.
That is all for now. Overall, I was very happy with this episode, and am extremely sad the show is over for me, though I will no doubt come back to it again soon!
I have decided to save "The Plan" for next month, and will be watching it as a special Christmas treat for myself. So look out for a post about my thoughts on that in roughly a month's time! The next year, I plan to start watching Caprica. I can't wait!
One final thing: If you've been reading along and enjoying this journey with me, thank you. Even if you've never commented, I'm really happy to have shared this with you. Thanks for reading!
Congratulations Sam, an excellent effort and I don't know if it was the same for you but when you're putting your thoughts onto "paper" you sometimes surprise yourself:)
ReplyDeleteGood luck with Caprica, only managed 3 episodes myself but I was already writing it off when it was announced.
Thank you so much, Jarrak. I did indeed surprise myself by doing this, and liked it. I will be doing it more often with shows, I think. That's a shame about Caprica. I would be interested to hear why you wrote it off, but perhaps that's a conversation best left till after I finish watching, so as to avoid spoilers, and who knows, maybe I'll convince you to give it another try!
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