Battlestar Galactica, our favorite queer vague show of all time ended its four year run on Friday and its final hours lived up to to everything we hoped it would be.
Despite its uber-geeky name, the sci-fi show about the survivors of humanity seeking a new home is likely to go down as one of the greatest television shows of all time. Imagine The Wire in space crossed with the character-driven mysteries of Lost and throw in the sociopolitical relevance of M*A*S*H and you’re halfway there. Of course, the other half of its awesomeness is the fact that it’s a spaceship full of sexylesbian robots.
Confused by the ending? Want to know how the gays wind up winning? Click ahead for a super-duper SPOILER-filled adieu to the best frakin’ ship in the fleet.
If you have not seen “Daybreak”, turn away now. We’re serious about the spoilers!
Since we’re a big gay blog- let’s start with the gay angles on the finale:
Hoshi winds up in charge of the fleet.
Admiral Adama and Co. decide to go on a suicide mission to rescue half-human/half-Cylon moppet Hera, leaving the remains of humanity in the capable of hands of Hoshi, the show’s only remaining somewhat-out gay male character. Okay, we’re sort of stretching here: Hoshi is only revealed to be gay in an online web series that ran on scifi.com earlier this year, but for a show that reads like a Dostoyevsky novel, there’s precious few fanboys who don’t know that Hoshi is now-dead mutineer Felix Gaeta’s main squeeze. Of course, that just adds to the irony– Gaeta turned against Adama and sought to bring him down, but his boyfriend wound up being the person Adama leaves in charge of the fleet, saying he can’t think of someone who commanded more respect than Hoshi. Poor Gaeta must be rolling over in his grave– or would be if his body had not been jettisoned into space.
Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing the spin-off “Admiral Hoshi’s Big Gay Space Cruise” anytime soon since Adama’s suicide mission leads to the the discovery of Earth– our Earth — and the fleet winds up abandoning their space faring ways to settle on our planet at the dawn of Mankind. Call it one small step for gays and one giant leap for Colonial-kind.
Did Baltar’s followers settle Lesbos?
Thanks to a whole lot of fulfilled prophecy and the machinations of angels/ demons that look like Tricia Helfer and James Callis, the Colonials make it to our pale blue orb in the distant past, when our ancestors are little more than walking monkeys. Desperate to escape the cycle of violence that has plagued their civilization, the remains of the Galactica fleet decide to forge their swords into plowshares and settle across the planet. In the last moments, Baltar gets a spine and leaves his female harem of religious zealots to their own devices. We’d like to think they settled on a little Greek island and spent the rest of their days composing odes to the flower of womanhood. Somebody write some fanfic about this, stat.
Alright, so both of those gay angles are pretty silly, but the finale’s message was about ending divisions and ultimately, about the power of love and the importance of seeing each other as human beings, regardless of who we are or where we came from. Human, Cylon, believer in God or gods, gay or straight– in its final hours, we see enmity dissolve into compassion; a message that is applicable to gays and lesbians as it is to anyone on the planet– which, according to BSG is made up of human-Cylon hybrids.
Sure, we still don’t really know who or what Starbuck really is, how Adama got the entire fleet to give up everything in exchange for an extended camping trip on a pre-civilized Earth or why God has such an affinity for Bob Dylan songs, but like a great symphony, BSG managed to take all the disparate themes it had played throughout the series: Duty to law versus the realities of survival, the question of whether love is selfish or selfless, the dangers of belief being the flip-side of the sustaining power of hope and recapitulatd them into a gorgeous thematic whole.
If Battlestar Galactica leaves us with one lasting message it’s that we may be victims of fate and circumstances out of our control, but we do have a choice in how we choose to deal with the hand we are dealt. It’s a message as applicable to our daily lives as it is to the massive challenges we face, not just as gays and lesbians, but as a species.
One other note: The finale reminded me of how, in a strange way, the gay and lesbian rights movement has become inexorably tied to religion. It’s not something that any of us have sought, but as religious zealots have thrown scripture and brimstone at us in their quest to damn us as sinners, gays and lesbians have found themselves answering questions about God’s love, grace and faith. While some reject belief and religion as bigotry dressed up in superstition, others have found their sexuality to an intrinsic part of their spiritual identity. Like the Cylons and the Humans in Galactica, it seems unlikely that one day gays and lesbians will triumph over the religious right or vice versa. Instead, perhaps naively, we look to the day that our differences are cast aside and our common humanity will prevail.
John in CA
It is interesting because the web episode was produced after principle photography for the show had ended. So, they basically knew Gaeta was going to lead a rebellion and Hoshi would be “Fleet Admiral” from the Basestar for a few hours.
Originally, Narcho (the mutineer who tried to shoot down President Roslin’s Raptor) was supposed to be Gaeta’s boyfriend. But they changed it to Hoshi at the last minute precisely because it would’ve been perceived as negative. After all, they already had the mentally unstable (and argurably “vllianous”) Admiral Cain as the only lesbian.
So, it would’ve been particularly bad if each and every queer character on the show turned out to be evil.
The Gay Numbers
The spin off, Caprica, is supposedly going to much more open with gay characters. The way the writer describes it at AfterElton- the view of sexuality in the Battlestar Galatica universe is not like ours in that there is no such thing as being “out” since their sexuality is not that big a deal in the first place. Hence how they treated the gay admiral, Hoshi. We shall see.
The Gay Numbers
Japhy:
It makes sense that sexuality would not be viewed in the Battlestar universe as we view it. Most of prehistory and early human societies had a space for the queers and decidedly different views than either gays or straights have of sexuality today. It’s only with the Abrahamic religions that we see the rise of real hostility toward gays being spread around the world. This is why I often become hostile when I hear some Christian Jesus freak saying that gays are unnatural. We were not even a problem with the Church until a thousand years into the Christian Church’s existence. There are some great books on the subject of homosexuality in ancient culture and prehistoric existence that you should check out since you seem interested in spirituality and religion.
blake
@John in CA:
Cain was never portrayed as mentally unstable. She was just an utterly ruthless military officer. Cain killed anyone who got in the way of her mission, whatever that might be. She didn’t care who died as long as it was part of the mission.
Cain’s ruthlessness is what separated her from Adama, who could be ruthless, had a much more caring heart.
Frankly, I hated the ultimate ending. Watching the 12 Colonies’ survivors giving up civilization to go to a stone age life seemed like a waste, especially looking back at human history. The survivors lost all of their culture, history, science, and art. How many died because of malnutrition or disease after a few winters because they sent their technology flying into the sun?
So, no, I’m not impressed that the surviving human and Cylons led to our current civilization. Human history has been a violent mess. The survivors could have built something better based on their knowledge and experience.
Wade, MD
Thank GOD!!!!
My husband has been filling up our DVR with new and rerun episodes for years. How often I try to watch the latest episode of Hell’s Kitchen and it’s not there because there was not space!
badlydrawnbear
“Sure, we still don’t really know who or what Starbuck really is …”
Umm, yeah we do. She was the “Angel of Death”. Both the Baseship Hybrid and the Anders Hybrid refer to her as the Angel of Death. Anders last line is “See you on the other side.”
So just like the Baltar and Six hallucinations were Angels in the end so was Starbuck after her ship exploded. The only difference with Starbuck is the whole fleet could see her.
The Gay Numbers
@badlydrawnbear: Exactly.
MadProfessah
@blake: I agree. I think sending the technology into the sun was simply bizarre.
I mean one can make the argument that by not having any technology around then maybe the Centurions would be less likely to come back and destroy them but it is really more like giving up. They reduced their chances of survival, by making themselves subject to infection and illness.
And what was up with Adama and his cabin? What happened to the last jumper?
The Gay Numbers
@MadProfessah: it would make sense that a culture so devastated by technology and so entrenched in religion would turn its back on technology in favor of returning to nature. Not sure what’s “weird’ bout it other than its a different world view than ours. But we have not watched the near extinction of the human race (yet) based on our advances. A return to nature of a common theme as a response to technology disasters and innovation. You can see it in a lot of sci fi literature.
The Gay Numbers
@MadProfessah: PS, You also see this response a lot of many religious traditions from Wiccans to Christianity.
rick
the entire god and lets keep doing it until we get it right stuff was incredibly stupid. i hated it, it sucked. and it was an enormous cop out.
when you have to include the supernatural you are out of original ideas.
rick
the presidents one night stand boy toy was a hunk though, and i found her actions after she was informed of her families deaths to be quite moving and actually logical.
The Gay Numbers
@rick: The oringial show had this aspect. It’s also not clear that it’s a God, Gods or none of the above (remember how the “angels” responded at the end). The oringial show made the suprme beings out to be a race of highly evolved aliens with technologies that seem like magic to humans. The same could be true here (and is likely the case) but the point is to leave it crypic given the subject matter of the show, which is in part about doubt. It would hardly be much doubt if there were certainly no God. Just as it would not be much doubt if there was a God.
The Gay Numbers
@rick: Follow up: this is why they were using by the way (the angels and baltar) the reference to mathmatical improabilities. This is a common argument for the existence of God. The so called complexity argument. It’s not one of certainty but claiming that the universe is so complex and the probability of things occuring so high, there must be a god. Again it’s to settle doubt.
gaydomer
@badlydrawnbear: Kara is referred to as the “harbinger of death,” which doesn’t necessarily mean angel of death. A harbinger is just someone/something that foretells something that is to come. In Irish myth, for example, banshees are the harbingers of death.
blake
@MadProfessah:
I agree. Look, living a simpler life doesn’t mean giving up toilets and antibiotics! People today have no idea how hard life was at the beginning of the 20th Century. The leading cause of death for women was childbirth! Life without dentistry? Yeah, that’s a real winning proposition. What fun it must be do see your kids die of the measles, mumps, rubella, or diarrhea.
No. Anyone who is into the fantasy that life was better pre-technology is a fool in many respects. Yeah, we don’t need all of the toys but the basics like clean water, medicine, agriculture, heating, etc. I have respect for the fact that there are nomadic peoples and that their culture should be respected but I don’t think that it’s best. Literature, art, science, law, etc. are beautiful parts of our civilization.
Sending the tech flying into the sun makes for good television but is lousy for the real world.
We know that the survivors lost their technology and their descendants fell into 145,000 years of subsistence living. What a great legacy for their children.
And, given that the 12 Colonies society had evolved passed homophobia, sexism, and color prejudice, they fell mightily to create the screwed up world we call recorded history.
Hey, who knows, maybe some of the Colonials built Atlantis and Lemuria then got the hell off the planet Earth. That would be a nice thought. But to think about all of the suffering that befell the Colonials’ ancestors: war, hunger, racism, sexism, religious bigotry, etc., etc.
Look, with the aid of the Cylons, couldn’t they have created a more equitable society where man and machine lived in peace? Where all forms of slavery, of flesh and metal, would be outlawed? Couldn’t the Centurions been given Mars, Venus, or any of the moons of Saturn or Jupiter?
I guess I look at our world and see a mess that could have been a happier place.
afrolito
People are investing way too much importance in a crap sci-fi series.
On a side note, pre history was not a golden age for gays or anyone else.
The Gay Numbers
@afrolito:There is no relationship between what I wrote about prehistory and what you wrote. You do know that right? Why the need for hyperbole and distortion? Do you get something out of the drama? I hope so because at least then one of us is entertained.
The Gay Numbers
@blake: Reading these posts are kind sad. So many of you are closed minded to anything that’s not the way you live your life. It’s incredibly boring.
The characters’ choices would not have been mine. I grew up in the rural South working the land so I have no sense of majesty about nature. Just memories of a lot of hot and hard work that I wanted to leave behind.
But, I am open to views that are not my own. So, I was able to accept the show’s conclusion as logical given the context of what had happened for the characters. It’s odd to read such closed minded thinking about a show that’s all about choices.
afrolito
@The Gay Numbers:
Really?
This is what you wrote:
“Most of prehistory and early human societies had a space for the queers and decidedly different views than either gays or straights have of sexuality today. It’s only with the Abrahamic religions that we see the rise of real hostility toward gays being spread around the world. This is why I often become hostile when I hear some Christian Jesus freak saying that gays are unnatural. We were not even a problem with the Church until a thousand years into the Christian Church’s existence.”
That certainly reads like you thought it was a golden age for homosexuality to me.
Shawn
I wish that HELO had been gay. Damn, the body on that man!
John in CA
@blake: I disagree. Cain’s behavior was quite irrational and erratic. Like Adama, she was faced with a situation where she was possibly humanity’s last hope for survival. As with Galactica, Pegasus thought the rest of the Colonial military fleet was destroyed. But unlike Adama, Cain was extremely reckless with the few people she had.
Instead of protecting them, Cain decides to strip every civilian ship she encounters for raw material and leaves them adrift for the Cylons to destroy. Smart move for a species on the verge of extinction.
She then proceeds to launch a series of ill-advised guerilla attacks on a vastly superior Cylon force without any real objective. Even though she complains about having lost half of her crew already, she executes anyone who disagrees with her “strategy” (or lack thereof). And as far as she knows, these are the only remaining humans in the entire universe. And since she won’t allow any civilian ships to join Pegasus, that’s all she’ll have for the forseeable future. Shouldn’t she be keeping the executions to a minimal to save the species from, you know, that extinction thing?
Had Galactica and its large civilian fleet not existed, and Helena was our only hope, I think it would have been a pretty short show.
Zoe Brain
It was obvious from the first series that everyone was being manipulated. That behind the scenes there was some Power, pulling the strings.
The ending made sense in that context, though was no great surprise. I thought the Angels were a neat touch though, as was the “he hates being called that”.
Given the propensity for rebellion and disunity, I’m surprised that a small group of dissenters didn’t “borrow” a ship and go exploring though. I’d also be interested in how the Centurions got along, given that their former slavemasters, the purebred Cylon race would go extinct eventually.
Alerted
@Zoe Brian, minor nitpick but the line was actually “you know IT hates being called that”
I loved the finale and the whole show, even the not that great Baltar trial episodes were an important part of the puzzle
ChristopherM
I felt the finale really left quite a lot of questions about the Cylons unanswered, so I was excited at the end to see the ad for the 2-hour special this fall for the story from the Cylon point of view. Everything was so human-focused. In particular, I want to know how the final five survived the original destruction of Earth (the implication is that they had invented resurrection technology, but I want details, dammit!) and how they came to be among the human-created Cylons. And where did the final five’s race of Cylons come from? And was Ellen Tigh aware all along of her origins when the other four had forgotten?
I have heard that the actress who plays Starbuck was unhappy with how they left her character as well.
msim
BG was very good but it fell short on gay characters.
Torchwood is much more exciting and even Doctor Who, a children’s program, is more inclusive: they’ve had married lesbian elderly ladies, pan-sexual time-travellers, a bisexual Shakespeare, etc).
Still, I’ll miss it…
blake
@John in CA:
I think Cain was evil, cruel, and way over her head. She had no respect for democracy. So, Cain was like a lot of military dictators (Pinochet, etc.). She raided the civilian ships and took the crew and resources she felt that she could support. That’s it.
blake
@The Gay Numbers:
You’re missing my point. I have no problem with people living an agrarian life. I do see the wasted opportunity and the realization of the HELL that must have befallen the Colonials. Have you read anything about the harsh life of the Jamestown colonists? Oh, that’s right. They all disappeared.
The Colonials lost their tech, written language, poetry, art, and the rest along with the important stuff like sanitation! Do you have any idea how bad life can be without clean water? What do you do when you’re kid has a fever and antibiotics could cure it before the infection caused fever kills your child?
One can have a lower tech life without all of materialism and problems that exist. But, I’m a realist about how painful life is without clean water, toilets, medicine, and law.
In Israel, there are kibbutzes that allow for simpler lives.
Spencer
@rick: I like many of the posts on this article. Decenting and otherwise. But I have to disagree with Rick when he says “when you have to include the supernatural you are out of original ideas.” I think it is exactly the oposite.
When you can redefine the “supernatural” in an new, fresh way, I think it is thought provoking. BG did that. They took religion and made it a factor, but it isn’t a religion that anyone on earth today has ever ascribed to. It was their own twist on “higher powers.”
I think the supernatural is a great area for creative thinkers to explore. It doesn’t mean that they are out of ideas. In fact, I believe it means they are delving into an area that many have followed along in traditional paths like Christianity, Buddism, Hinduism, Islam, Greek Pagan, etc. I think BG took aspects of these things, created original supernatural bents, and married them into something that was new and thought provoking.
As far as what I over-all thought of the eppisode, I liked most of it. I agree, with those who think everybody would not be on board with losing their technology, art, and history. To far fetched for even sci-fi. I did not care that Bill and Lee Adama each wound up alone. I also didn’t care for the fact that Starbuck’s story ended with no possiblity of a future. I understand all of those ideas creatively and how they evoked emotion from the audience, but I would have prefered it differently.
I did love that they finally let the President finally lose her battle with cancer for the emotion that it provoked. I, unlike many, liked the 150,000 years later scene with the “angels.” I also liked the backflash scenes with the various characters. They answered a lot of questions.
Overall, I am satisfied with the conclusion. I think the writers and producers stayed true to their storyline. Good for them.
The Gay Numbers
@afrolito: The problem is your reading comprehension. “A space” does not translate into ” a golden age.”
The Gay Numbers
@blake: I will agree that it’s prbably a strech that everyone agreed to it. But I don’t think its a surprise that people so devastated by technology would want to give it all up. Sanitation is actually an easy one to continue through simple techniques. I doubt they would have realized that within a generation or two they would be gone completely. Just that they were making new choices.
Trey
I loved the show, but I wouldn’t put it up there with The Wire. C’mon!
blake
@The Gay Numbers:
Antibiotics? Vaccinations? Seriously, would you want to live in a pre-industrial society? Heck, would you want to live 1865 or 1392? Both ages sucked! No dentistry! No real medicine!
Technology was a scape goat. They could have built a different society with limited technology. What if they kept their tech at 1914 level with the antibiotics? They could have had laws to restrict technology. Forced technology to move in a biological development away from computers?
The Gay Numbers
@blake: You keep trying to see this through our eyes. I am trying to imagine it through theirs. Would I want to live like that? No. But these characters are not me. I’ve not lived through the destruction of my race. That’s the funhouse mirror part for me. Seeing things through other people’s eyes rather than my own. Getting to see people do the unimaginable. In context, I am just saying there is a logic to the characters’ actions. Not that I would do what they do. I have my own logic. So do you . Our logic is not the point of why I watch their story. I see parts of me in the story, but I don’t want it to be like a perfect mirror. Like I said, I do agree that it’s weird all of them would agree to it, but it’s not so weird given the circumstances. I am curious: are you one of those guys who dates guys who look similar to yourself? See, I am the type who likes guys who look nothing like me or act nothing like me. I like opposites and differences. So, it’s kind of interesting to see an entire society that does not make the same decisions I would make.
dgz
this finale ranked even below The Sopranos’, imho. talk about nonsensical; it’s like they went fishing for tears. no meaningful relationships were maintained; they all went in different directions and procreated with various homo erectus, thus founding humanity… which is part robot. gah!
and how is Baltar still alive? even with the fountain of youth, he should have some pretty gnarly sun damage by now.
John in CA
@The Gay Numbers: I think they had other reasons as well. I’m not saying it is what I would’ve done. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. Wasn’t technology – namely, a nuclear detonation in orbit – the reason why the Cylons were able to locate New Caprica?
After the Fall, then that experience with the occupation, I can understand why Lee wouldn’t want to build a “modern” city on Earth (only to have the Cylons come back in a few years). Again, I wouldn’t necessarily throw the baby out with the bath water like that. But there’s certainly no guarantee that every member of the Cavil faction died when the Colony was sucked into the black hole. There might be some surviving copies on other ships or the old Colonial planets. With no resurrection or females, they’d presumably die out after a few decades. But after so much trauma, I suppose one could ask why they’d take that risk?
No Galactica or Rebel Basestar to defend Earth means even a small Cylon force could spell big trouble.
Bob
I loved the finale, with one exception: I wanted more info on Starbuck. At first I was OK with the “she’s an angel or demon” angle, but then started to remember how the “angel/demon” Six never really interacted with her surroundings, only those who could see her. Starbuck, well, shot the hell out of everybody this past season. I understand wanting to leave a bit of mystery, but I really felt too adrift with her character. The rest, though, was brilliant. Especially chief snapping Tory’s neck. I wanted that to happen AGES ago!
blake
@The Gay Numbers:
What is with your dime store psychoanalysis and cheap shots? Get a grip. You continue to try to push your psychobabble on me. Why? My thoughts are based on history and the reality of how harsh life is for the poor. In Haiti, the poor eat dirt cookies to just get something in their stomachs.
I’m just being realistic about the hell a world without antibiotics and medicine would be. We can see that in poorest parts of the world today. Do you know how many teen girls and young women die in Africa, for instance, from fistula, where a hole develops in the bladder or bowel or baby can’t be delivered because it become stuck? To deliberately give up on all science seems more than strange, it seems foolish.
If you knew of a child that died because her parents decided to pray the illness away instead of taking the child to a hospital where $10 in antibiotics could cure the child’s illness, what would you think? That’s my point.
One can be tired of high technology but not so scared to abandon logic. Abandon computer technology. Fine. No computers. Keep the medical tech and live at the level of horse and buggies.
Anyway, we’ll have to disagree.
The Gay Numbers
@blake: Uhm- okay- like I said you seem to want to keep turning to the story into What black would do. It’s not dime store psychoanalysis. it’s what you are doing.
The Gay Numbers
@Bob: Oh I agree their choise is not the most rational, but then the story line isn’t about rational people. Hell even the robots were irrational.