 Spoiler-free review for BSG 4.5 on Blu. |
| Review Date: August 28, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Rago, |
Not everyone watches the show when it airs, and if you're one of those people or if you'd just like to know what's on the discs, then this review is for you.
First, let me just say that I absolutely loved the finale. I also believe that the final half of season four was perhaps the strongest of the series (definitely the bleakest). This show had always been a drama with a scifi setting, and while some folks didn't like the fact that it became much more dialogue driven and less focused on action, I loved it. There are ten episodes (finale being a three-parter, but aired as two episodes, so you could say 11 episodes) spread across 3 discs. Here's a breakdown of the EXTRAS on each disc with my opinion of what's useful and what could have been airlocked.
Disc One:
"The Journey Ends: The Arrival" is a look back at the series with the cast and crew. Worth watching.
"What the Frak is Going On With Battlestar Galactica" is a quick 8-minute summary of the show through the first 3 seasons. It's concise and hilarious.
"A Disquiet Follows My Soul Unaired Extended Episode." Better than the broadcast version, and definitely the version I'd recommend.
"Evolution of a Cue" is a behind-the-scenes look at composer Bear McCreary's creation of music for a specific scene (with Roslin). It's incredibly detailed and if you're a fan of the music on BSG, I couldn't recommend this one enough. Actually, even if you're not a fan of the music it's still very interesting.
Disc Two:
"David Eick's Video Blogs" is a collection of 11 3-5 minute video diaries with the cast and crew covering a range of topics. Some are funny and some are just fun to watch. Definitely worth watching.
"Islanded in a Stream of Stars Unaired Extended Episode." Much better than the broadcast version. I wasn't a huge fan of this episode when it originally aired, but this extended version definitely fleshes out the story a lot better and also fills in a few gaps.
Disc Three:
"A Look Back" is another collection of videos(6) with the cast and crew. Not repetitive in the least, this is also well worth watching.
"...And They Have A Plan" is a quick 4-5 minute sneak peek at what the upcoming movie, "The Plan" is all about.
"The Musicians Behind Daybreak." Bear McCreary is again on-hand to discuss what went into creating the epic score for the finale. Even better, we're introduced to the various musicians (and their instruments) who have worked on the score from the very beginning. And once again, this one comes HIGHLY recommended.
"Daybreak Unaired Extended Episode." The finale the way it was meant to be seen. This contains all three parts, and along with extra scenes, it was also re-edited a bit. I highly recommend watching this and forgoing the broadcast version.
Across all discs you'll find deleted scenes (some are very interesting while some are just filler that should have been deleted, and they are presented in SD), audio and podcast commentaries (they're all worth a listen), along with U-Control. U-Control is an interactive feature that offers little facts about the show/characters which you can access as you watch an episode. Frankly, I found it completely useless. I haven't tried the BD-Live content as yet.
It should be noted that you should watch the entire series before watching any of the extras because they do contain massive spoilers.
There is, however, one glaring omission from this box-set: "The Face Of The Enemy" webisodes. While they are available elsewhere online, they should have been included in this set. They answer a question or two (from season 3) and greatly flesh out a certain character's motivations in these final episodes. I'd recommend finding and watching them before watching the episode, "The Oath." While this exclusion is noteworthy, the strength of the rest of the content in this set more than makes up for it. And perhaps we could see them available through BD-Live one day?
Visually, BSG looks gorgeous on Blu. You do notice the intentional grain a bit more at times, but colors pop and lines are well defined (CGI looks better as well). On the audio side, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is simply fantastic. Technically, this set is remarkable.
If you've come along for the ride this far, there's absolutely no reason to not pick up this final half-season to see how this story ends. However, as to be expected, the finale won't please everyone. Whether or not you like it, at least we were given a proper conclusion, which is a rarity in today's television landscape. They told the story they wanted to tell, and left it up to their audience to decide...and that's exactly what I did.
A wonderful conclusion to the best show to ever grace our television screens. |
The Mystery of the Opera House and the Death Rattles of the Battlestar
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| Review Date: July 31, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Edmonson, Canada |
Battlestar Galactica's season 4.5 is the final season for the series, and we get it here in widescreen with Blu-ray's 1080p high definition and 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio. It's truly a treat to finally see this series as it was originally filmed.
The images sparkle and the richness of the contrast between light and dark really adds an extra punch to the scenes. Also added are extended episodes of three episodes, along with the originally aired episodes, including the three part finale shown without interruption.
It becomes more obvious how the various scenes were shot by comparing the softer interior shots of the Cylon base ship to the harsher, clearer scenes on the Battlestar Galactica. This adds an otherworldly quality to the scenes shot inside the Cylon ship which are contrasted with the sharp details of close-ups of Adama and others on the Battlestar Galactica that emphasizes a psychological immediacy. Perhaps this contrast in clarity can be said to accentuate the fact that the Cylon's world isn't the blood and guts world of the humans, and that the Cylons live in a sort of utopia. The human's world is fraught with the harsh reality of life and death struggles whereas the interiors of the Cylon ship are represented by the pristine, orderly world of soft, tranquil blinking patterns of lights, and water like streams of beaded light dripping down strands of veils. The Cylon's world represents a kind of idealized world whereas the human world is often portrayed as disorderly, archaic, and dilapidated. This representation of the human world as a messy and complicated place is reflected in their various ideologies as well as in their pantheon of gods. Other techniques, from the steadier shots inside the Cylon ship, compared to the jumpy camera movements through the Battlestar Galactica's labyrinth of hallways, emphasizes these two different worlds.
In the final episode these two worlds are replaced with a natural, restful world where everything is seemingly in harmony. The humans vanquish themselves of their technology and attempt a new beginning in harmony with nature, though of course after a few days, or even a few nights of sleeping without the comforts of life, and being bitten by mosquitoes, the euphoria of being temporarily cleansed of civilization will begin to wear off, and the hard work will begin. People will try to make their lives more comfortable, and attempt to gain some control over their world. People will again invent tools and begin to make things. And so the cycle will repeat, or will it? Will there be a new permutation? What makes it so interesting to see this series on Blu-ray is to see how the cinematography accentuates these various aspects and points of view.
The very last scenes take us to our contemporary world. It seems the writers have again taken some liberties and have left us with some more perplexing questions as the final season has numerous leaps of logic and flights of fantasy not seen in the earlier seasons. At the very end, in our time, 150,000 years later, we see Number 6 and Baltar. Was Gaius Baltar a Cylon after all? How else could he be alive 150,000 years after the survivors of Battlestar Galactica landed on Earth, remembering everthing that has come before? If Cylons didn't die out wouldn't they have directed civilization differently? Apparently some things have changed since the last cycle given that Cylons already exist before humans have developed Cylons. But why then does everything look the same as our time right down to the buildings?
At the end is Kara Thrace shown to be an angel after all since she disappears into thin air? Or is Lee dreaming? If this was a ghost story then I would have suspended my disbelief, but this isn't the world that we were presented with in earlier seasons. Everything seemed to adhere to the natural world that we know. But in the final season there seems to be many amazing things that transpire. It is never explained how Number 6 and Baltar at one point can see the other's subconsious self, or why they even had these subconscious alter egos and no one else did, or how Number 6, Roslin, or Sharon, shared the same vision of the opera house and no one else does. Kara is perhaps a ghost who also sees other ghosts, like the man (her father?) playing the piano who disappears when Kara is suddenly surrounded by members of the final five. Interestingly, there is a clip that shows a poster that advertises Kara's father performing at an opera house.
The last season lacks some of the clarity of earlier seasons, but through the overall strength of the characters, the high quality production, the immense creativity, and searing drama, these lapses don't sink the ship.
Perhaps one disappointing omission from this set is that there are no "The Face of the Enemy" webisodes included. In these webisodes Gaeta's past relationship to the Cylon model "Sharon" helps explain his distrust of Cylons. This leads eventually to Gaeta's treasonous ways as he teams up with Zarek against Adama. |
awesome BSG finale.
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| Review Date: September 13, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Kendell D. Boyer, Japan |
| The blue-ray BSG finale was outstanding. I got the movie in new condition and delivery time was great. |
Wonderful to see BSG in BluRay
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| Review Date: September 14, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Debra Miller, Athens, AL USA |
| While I watch this last season of Battlestar Galactica, it is with bittersweet pleasure. These characters that I have grown to love, a story line that I miss are almost painful to watch, because I know that their fate. However, in seeing this production, I see things I didn't notice the first time I watched the series on TV. These subtle nuances make this collection a must have to BSG fans. Enough that I *may* consider (in the future) trading in my "normal" DVDs of BSG for BluRay. Actually, I bought a BluRay player just so I could watch this series! While I was one of the folks that was disappointed in the final episode, all of the action leading up to that point was fantastic and innovative. The presentation here makes the interesting journey all that much better. I am looking forward to more material of equal quality. |
An absolutely brilliant ending to a glorious series
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| Review Date: April 21, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Robert Moore, Chicago, IL USA |
Warning! Spoiler alert! The following review contains very signficant spoilers, including several regarding the final episode of the series. If you wish to remain spoiler free, do NOT read the following review.
In the words of the immortal Butthead, forewarned is . . . uh . . . something.
I am astonished that the finale of BSG is proving to be controversial. I watched the final episode with a sense of excitement, delight, and deep gratitude. I found it moving and appropriate to the series as a whole. I would rank it with the best series finales that I have ever seen, alongside BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and SIX FEET UNDER. In particular I found the final 20 or so minutes to be especially gratifying, as we see the final 38,000 some odd survivors of the long journey from the 12 Colonies to New Earth finally find their new home. Did everything end precisely as I wanted? Of course not. But what is important is that it ended the way that Ron Moore clearly intended it to end. I had long suspected that one of the first things that had been conceived was the role of Hera (or someone like Hera) in the overall scheme of things. That she would indeed prove to be "The Shape of Things to Come" was something of which I was confident, and I found the role ascribed to her -- essentially the DNA mother of our own humanity -- as both powerful and fulfilling of the great importance assigned to her. [And Ron Moore's brief cameo as the gent reading the magazine about what is obviously Hera's remains was similar to J. Michael Straczynski's cameo at the end of BABYLON 5.]
The 2008-2009 television season has seen the ending of a string of truly great series. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, THE SHIELD, and THE WIRE managed to end on their own terms, with their overall arcs ended on their own schedule. Other equally great series like PUSHING DAISIES were stopped in mid-stride. That a show as great as PUSHING DAISIES could be cancelled makes me all the more grateful that some shows like BSG manage to make it all the way to the end. My own television viewing will now be greatly diminished by the end of BSG. No show of the past five years has so consistently obsessed me. It wasn't always as consistent as I would have liked. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS is a far steadier, more consistently brilliant show, but while it has never had anywhere near as many as weak episodes as BSG, neither has it ever reached BSG's best moments. Never, ever have I had a series (with the exception of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) at its best so completely shock and amaze me. No other show (except BUFFY) has managed to astonish me so frequently. And it did this by almost never recycling stories seen on other series. BSG not only never recycled stories from other shows, but never recycled its own stories. Any stunning plot twist, once used, was never used again.
Rarely do series redefine their genre, but BSG has done more to alter what one can do on a television Sci-fi series than any since STAR TREK first debuted in the late sixties. No future serious series in the genre can ignore the achievements of BSG. They might decide not to take up the challenge that BSG has laid down, but even that is a way of acknowledging the new standards it has laid down. Series like STARGATE SG-1 now seem oddly simplistic in comparison. Ron Moore stated in his initial mission statement that his goal was to completely redefine TV Sci-fi and in this he was supremely successful. It is impossible to overstate the importance of BSG in taking TV Sci-fi to the next level. Many have noted that it was the first important Sci-fi series that was made for adults rather than teens, but it is also the first that was directed to thinking adults instead of only Sci-fi geeks. BSG expanded the audience of those interested in Sci-fi, with thousands of people who had previously been determined not to watch any show in the genre obsessed with the fate of those on Galactica. And it has also been a huge hit with academics and intellectuals. The only television series that has received as much attention from academics has been BUFFY, and the only show to attract as much attention from nonacademic intellectuals has been BUFFY and THE SOPRANOS. Who would have thought a show based on the passionately maligned 1978 series (a show that has a small but dedicated cadre of fans, but which is otherwise attacked by TV critics and serious Sci-fi fans and writers as one of the worst series in TV history) could have ascended to such heights?
I have started rewatching the series from the very beginning in light of the series finale and I am amazed at how good it all feels knowing how it will end. The series finale of BSG fit the rest of the series so perfectly that it managed retroactively to make the rest even better. I frankly have long suspected that Ron Moore is a big, fat liar. He has often stated things that were not true or at least were only partially true. I think he had a great deal of the overall story planned from near the beginning. I believe he had many of the main arc details in mind from the beginning. I do think that he left a lot of room for alternation and development, but I believe he knew from the time of the miniseries that he intended to have the remnants of the human race align with the Cylons to become the genetic ancestors of our own human race. One of the first moments in BSG of note was when Caprica Six looked at an infant with amazement, shortly before she broke its neck (an act that is one of the most effective mission statements I've ever seen -- after that, you knew the show was capable of anything). And the crucial moment came when President Laura Roslin stressed to Commander Adama that it was crucial that they leave that part of the galaxy to find a new home where the survivors could "start having babies." Early in the first episode of Season One Head Six asks Gaius Baltar if he would like to have a child. We then soon learn of the mission of the other Sharon on Caprica to try and make Helo fall in love with her and get her pregnant. In retrospect, we see that "The Plan" was to perpetuate the Cylon race by biological reproduction.
Similarly, from early on the show was concerned with ever deepening religious themes, as God (though Head Baltar in the finale tells Head Six that he doesn't care for that name) directed the fate of both Cylons and humans to their eventual fate. Even Starbuck is shown to be an instrument of God, as she is sent back to the fleet after her death in order to help them find their way to their new home. Until the finale we had no idea precisely how deep this idea that God had a plan for them truly was, but as the series comes to an end we realize that Head Six's words to Baltar in the first regular season episode were absolutely true: this all was God's plan. To what degree this God coincides with a Christian or Muslim or Jewish god is very much open to debate, but that it unceasingly is at the core of BSG cannot now be questioned.
BSG begins with the question -- put forward by Bill Adama as he participates in Galactica's decommissioning ceremony -- whether humanity had a right to survive. The answer to this is delayed for the length of the series, as we see the fleet undergo a series of trials. The parallels with the account in Exodus of the Children of Israel departing from Egypt to the Promised Land increase as the series nears its end. Just as the Children of Israel undergo a series of temptations, so do the members of the fate. Likewise, the fleet's Moses, Laura Roslin, is allowed to see the promised land but not enter (she dies as Adama finds the spot upon which to build the cabin she longed for). That humanity has earned the right to survive comes as the crew of Galactica undertakes the ship's final mission, the rescue of the Human-Cylon hybrid child Hera, whose DNA becomes the foundation of a new humanity.
So, the show's many rich and deep themes are successfully and beautifully resolved at the end. Those who found the ending unsatisfying seem not to recognize this. But I'm baffled. What more can one ask of a series than to resolve successfully all its major themes?
While I loved the end of the series, I can understand some of the uneasiness some felt. In order to break the cycle ("All of this has happened before; all of this will happen again") of death and destruction, Lee Adama persuades the survivors to embrace a nontechnological culture. I understand this on a poetic level even as I question it on a psychological level. And like many I found the departure of Starbuck, one of the great iconic characters in the history of TV (it is funny now to remember how upset some were that Starbuck was going to be played by a girl), both too sudden and less than satisfying. But this is nitpicking and should be recognized as such. To carp on something that wasn't quite done to one's satisfaction while ignoring the massive number of things that were done so exceptionally well is petty.
Sadly the end of BSG signals the disbanding of one of the most wonderful and largest casts in the history of television. Only LOST can match BSG in the size and richness of its cast of characters. I'm going to miss Adama, Laura Roslin, Lee, Kara, Sharon (in whatever form), Helo, Hera, Tigh, Tyrol, Baltar, all of the Sixes, Dee, Ellen, Duck, Kat, Billy, Tory, Anders, Racetrack, Cally, Doc Cottle, Jake, Elosha, Sgt. Mathis, Captain Kelly, Zarek, Gaeta, Seelix, Hotdog, Romo Lampkin and all the others (all the way down to the tattooed Asian guy who never had a line of dialogue and whose main function seemed to be to keep Galactica's card games going) -- not to mention the Cavils, Dorals, D'Annas, Simons, and Leobens. And I'm going to miss Galactica itself. For five years this show has been one of the great presences in my life. I won't be saying goodbye easily.
We do have the BSG prequel CAPRICA to look forward to next month (the pilot film is being released on DVD in April and will go to series in January 2010) and the film BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: THE PLAN appears in the fall. The latter will almost certainly resolve one of the final remaining mysteries of BSG: who Caprica Six saw in the miniseries and uttered the words, "I've been expecting you." So, while I'm heartbroken that this great series is leaving us, its departure is eased by the new series and the upcoming film. And I am intensely grateful that such a great series ended so marvelouslyl. I believe that those who are complaining about the finale are way off base and I also believe that as they rewatch the series and reassess the finale in light of that they'll recognize what a brilliant ending it was. |
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