Battlestar Galactica Finale: Review
So the last episode of Battlestar Galactica is on Hulu. I recognize that I've only seen the last 5 episodes of the series. I recognize that I do not have the emotional attachment some others may have. And yet, I feel confident in offering a modest review of the series:
FUCK YOU, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!
I realize that some may disagree with my assessment. So I've taken the liberty of providing you, the home viewer, with a hulu clip of all you really need to see, ever, of Battlestar Galactica. It's a little less than three minutes long. Watch it:
Apparently, we're all, you and I, the descendants of Galactican Humans and Cylons. Oh, and to the answer of why we're all here? What's life all about? Yeah. Turns out that the answer is God did it. But that's not the worst part. This is the worst part:
"Let a complex system repeat itself long enough, eventually something surprising might occur."
That's right. Battlestar Galactica's ending is The architect scene from the Second Matrix Movie.
So, in summary, it took the Battlestar Galactica franchise over 30 years to articulate the point the Wachowski brothers made in two movies: Boo Technology; yey pseudo-free will.
5 comments:
And apparently by "God" Galactica means "Bob Dylan".
Yep.
"Let a complex system repeat itself long enough, eventually something surprising might occur."
I'm not sure how much sense that makes. Wouldn't a system sufficiently complex to produce something surprising not need several repetitions to produce something surprising? Whether or not it produces something surprising is dependent on two things: the current state of the system and the rules by which it develops. If applying the rules to the initial conditions of the system fails to produce something surprising, and applying the rules to that state fails to produce something surprising, I would think there could be very few systems that would be capable of producing something surprising after that.
It depends upon what one means by "system". In my understanding a system is such that it is constructed to manifest specific results. I would say that a system in which "surprise" or "novelty" is allowed is a very shoddy system.
Think of it like a clock. A clock is a system constructed to perform a specific task. If "something surprising" occurs with a clock that would, generally speaking, mean that something was wrong with a clock. Clocks are fundamentally not surprising.
The other issue I have with this ending is that, really, Galactica was always about machines v. mankind; "zomg artificial intelligence be bad". To have that be the final message of the series, given that it has always been the fundamental message of the series, is really pretty damn lazy.
That's not to say that the final episode needed to negate that message, that they ought to have talked about how awesome technology is. But they could have said something else here at the end rather than go for the "We've been talking about robots shooting humans for about 30 years now. And, yeah, it would totally suck if that happened. So don't let robots get too smart."
This whole anti-Planet of the Apes message and then appealing to contemporary society is just...GAH I hate it so much.
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