At the beginning of August, Lost creator J. J. Abrams fought back against fans who claimed the ending of his show was a dumb waste of their time: “For years, I had people praising Lost to death, and now they say, ‘I’m so pissed at you for the end of Lost,'” Abrams told the Guardian, adding, “I think a lot of people who were upset with the ending were just upset that it ended. And I’ve not yet heard the pitch of what the ending should have been. I’ve just heard, ‘That sucked.'”
This is a monumental display of douchebaggery on Abrams’s part, and a breach of contract between him and his viewers: Of course his fans haven’t told him the best way to end his TV show. His fans’ job was to be fans of Lost. Abrams’s job—a job he was fairly well compensated for, I’m sure—was to write and be the creative inspiration behind Lost. Part of writing and being the creative inspiration behind Lost involved making sure that Lost ended in a satisfying way. If his fans feel that he didn’t do his job, that’s not his fans’ fault, it’s his fault.
But the disastrous failure that is the ending of Lost is nothing compared to the monumental end of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica TV series, which managed to fart itself to death on three distinct fronts: It did not answer any of the questions raised during the show; it raised additional, supremely stupid questions just before its conclusion (wait, so Starbuck is Jesus now?); and it preached at its own viewers with a lame moral (You shouldn’t trust technology? That’s what we waited six years for? The first two Terminator movies made that case in a way more compelling fashion and in a fraction of the run time). From 2003 until 2008, BSG had a glorious run, a cat-and-mouse game between the last few members of the human race and the robotic Cylons, with both in search of a long-lost planet named Earth. It was a running commentary on the war on terror and a fascinating political narrative that unfolded in real time, and it never felt heavy-handed or preachy. And then, as season 4.5 concluded in 2009, it flopped spectacularly.
At this year’s Bumbershoot, Battlestar Galactica creator Ronald Moore will discuss the history of the writing of the show with a couple of other BSG writers and producers. And you know what? When the audience Q&A comes around, it’s okay to ask him why the ending was so awful. We were promised at the beginning of every single episode that the Cylons had a plan; it was Moore’s job to prove to us that he knew what he was doing. And he failed us. He let us down by not knowing what he was doing. Message boards all around the internet are still doing postmortems, trying to figure out what went wrong (theories include Mormon demagoguery, network intrusion, and/or epic hubris). Creators should absolutely be held accountable for their crimes of bad storytelling, and you should—respectfully—hold Moore accountable for his crimes.
But it’s important to remember, too, that just because a TV show collapses during the last lap, that doesn’t make the show any less relevant or meaningful. We’re in the first real golden age of novelistic television storytelling, and like any first golden age, some kinks still have to be worked out. The Sopranos, Lost, BSG, and other, more conventional shows like The West Wing lost their way—sometimes, I shock myself when I realize how concerned I am about the quality of the next and final season of Breaking Bad—but we place too much emphasis on the conclusions of things. Nobody loves Anna Karenina because of the crazy twist ending; The Grapes of Wrath didn’t help earn John Steinbeck a Nobel Prize because of the final, bloodthirsty shoot-out scene. When you take part in a long-term storytelling endeavor—as a creator or as a consumer—you’re committed, and you take pleasure in the journey and the way characters change and struggle and live.
Would I watch BSG a second time straight through, the way I recently reenjoyed Arrested Development from beginning to end? No, not knowing how things fell apart. But I would encourage anyone to watch the series for a first time, just as I’d happily dip into an episode here or there, to revisit the delicious tension and debate and intrigue that I experienced while watching it the first time. And as a fan, I at least owe Moore the respect of saying a sincere, heartfelt thank you for so many moments he delivered to me over the span of six years. He deserves that sincere appreciation, but he also deserves the follow-up question that simply has to be asked: What the fuck happened, man? 
Hm. I guess I didn’t think the ending was all that
bad. What the hell were you expecting?
I enjoyed the endings of Lost, BSG, and the Sopranos. I guess I’m not part of the consensus that, according to the author, exists among fans of those shows.
I also thought Arrested Development showed signs of weakening toward the end, and I’m kind of glad it went out before things deteriorated further.
@2, add me to that list. While I had my problems with Lost’s final season, the ending was fine for me. I loved the Sopranos cut to black and BSG’s ending was IMO the only way the show could work with in the confines of the universe RDM created.
Paul, you have proven once again that 99% of the time, you and I just disagree completely on all things geek.
lol @ critiquing Abrams.
He totally believes his own bullshit and the only thing he’s good at is viral marketing and making compelling trailers.
I still think he might one day make a really incredible film or complete series.
As yet, he’s a perpetual disappointment.
Super 8 was a strong 3 out of 5 with flashes of absolute laziness and stupidity and it’s supposed to be his proudest work to date.
Star Trek and Cloverfield are the only things that guy came close with. Everything else has been the proverbial Emperor’s clothes.
BSG ended with the prevention of it all happening again for another 150,000 years. For that time, the descendants of Human and Cylon lived together in peace. They threw their tech away to break the cycle, and in doing so, succeeded. The attack on the colony I think was just for the ending to be fun and pretty. And the Cylons did have a plan. It was just derailed back at the end of Season 2 by Boomer and Caprica Six, and the occupation.
I paid a lot of attention to this show, and understand the ending.
@6 No you don’t.
It’s bizarre that people blame (or credit — I liked it!) J. J. Abrams for the ending of LOST given that he handed it over to Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof fairly early in the series.
Sure the last episode of BSG was sloppy (the Starbuck ridiculousness, especially), but I don’t see where else it should have gone. Would a couple more “answers” or “reveals” really have made that much of a difference?
The last couple seasons of BSG were way too concerned with all the “Final 5” prophecies and visions and all that BS. I never cared about that and it didn’t make any sense to me. So these same people bounce from one end of the galaxy to the other at least 2-3 times and civilization developed the same way in each case so that they could return and tag along with the humans that don’t get wiped out by a machine revolt to start the whole thing over again? Because angels, that’s why! The series worked best when it echoed current events and went places the rest of the media was still too scared to touch. Should have ended on the burned-out “earth” – it would have been a bummer but it would have made a lot more sense.
@7: Yes I do. Argue that I don’t, instead of simply stating that I don’t. Because I’m reasonably sure I got a satisfying ending out of this show.
I was neither blown away nor pissed off by the endings of Lost and BSG.
There are only two series I’ve seen end their runs pitch perfectly: Angel and The Shield.
Both Battlestar Galactica and Lost had meandering and random plots with too many side plots thrown in. Both were great shows, but mostly because of the acting and directing, not because of the stories. The stories were incomplete and the endings of both shows pointed that out in a glaring fashion.
Babylon 5 had much more coherent and formulated storylines. It’s too bad the network axed it before it could be properly run and J. Michael Straczynski was forced to film a premature ending (and then try to throw together another season as an afterthought when it was picked up by a different network).
I think it’s valuable to delineate the different “endings” to BSG.
There are some who disliked the whole adding-more-questions-instead-of-answering-them in the back half of the season. A larger number disliked the Starbuck-as-Jesus-or-at-least-Lazarus plot point. A greater number still hated the idea that a tiny number of tech-eschewing humans and Cylons ranged out over a planet to interbreed (how’s that again?) with humanoid/apes to create us (maybe?).
Then there was the near universal loathing for the ham-fisted, didactic, already-been-covered “robots = genocide of ‘humans’ = robots become new ‘humans'” cycle. Particularly the terrible montage editing.
I usually recommend people watch the first two seasons, then just stop and make up their own ending. It’s bound to be better than reality.
I never minded the question implicit during the series of “is God directing this, and are the visions really angels or hallucinations?”
I did mind that they answered it.
I know we all wanted answers, but this answer was worse than having the questions.
Deus ex machina is always a cop out in story telling. They should have done it in a way that explained what happened, but left the why up to the viewer.
I didn’t like the Lost or BSG endings either. For both they went to a supernatural place while I was wanting real answers. It’s like asking about how babies are made and getting the story of Adam & Eve. Instead of weaving together answers that make some semblance of sense in a fantastic natural world, they sprinkled some fairy dust and used magic.
Here’s the Golden Fucking Rule for story-telling: NO MORE GOD-DAMNED PROPHECIES. When you need a prophecy to tell your story, it’s an (almost) sure sign that you don’t actually have a story to tell, and so you are going to fall back on a god-damned ghost story.
Seasons 1 and 2 of BSG were pretty dang good. Seasons 3 and on just sucked monkey balls, when all the hokey religious / prophesy crap entered the story. That, and every third person being a Cylon just strains credibility too far.
Paul Constant,
You are a fucking awful writer, and you are one of the luckiest people in the world to be paid to write the above adolescent garbage article/post/piece of crap.
Go work in a gas station or build something with your hands and write for 10 years, then, maybe, come back.
Please quit your job and let someone with talent take your place. For everyone’s sake.
Thank you.
JBrabble
Sorry, but the entire remake of BSG made no sense.
It’s interesting how people have different perspectives. I so totally detested LOST’s ending that I wound up watching BSG, even though I previously tried to and hated it. I wound up absolutely adoring the ending.
@15 I liked Lost’s better than BSG’s. Lost was always a blend of pseudoscience and supernaturalism. The dead had been talking to people from beyond the grave, and psychics had been running around since the pilot. So making The Island the Earthly connection to the afterlife, and the fountain of the human soul wasn’t a complete reversal.
BSG on the other hand sold itself as a gritty naturalistic drama, that explored religion as a construct that drives human decision making. Myth in Battlestar was based on real events, but the existence of gods effecting events was left ambiguous. Then the last episode aired, and it turned out we weren’t watching a show about a naturalistic universe. The characters had been marionettes controlled by beings they could never hope to comprehend. None of the decisions people made mattered. God did it.
The problem with the BSG ending is that it affected a lot of things retroactively. Thus, it is hard to watch again knowing what things actually are and/or mean.
Example, when they say the Cylons have a plan? We yell, “Don’t worry! They don’t, really!” It takes the menace out of it all.
My understanding of the ending: Starbuck was an angel. Baltar and Six were angels. They kept making this shit happen because they thought it was fun. Angels are always dicking humans around for kicks, apparently. I found this ending to be super lame. When I recommend the show to people, I tell them to turn it off after the first hour of the finale. That was a fine ending. We didn’t need to know why all of this happened before and will happen again. We don’t have the mysteries of the universe answered for us in real life, so why should they be answered in a TV show? Especially one that had been praised for being so “realistic”.
Also, the whole “they have a plan” shit was a mandate from the scifi network. RDM never wanted that thing there.
But no amount of explaining will ever get through to you Paul. You fail constantly at being a geek.
I honestly can’t defend the ending to BSG, because I believe very much like you do that Ron Moore pooped the bed. However, what I can do is explain how I would have ended the series (with far more plot points resolved). This is really long and nerd-tastic, so read at your own risk!
(First, my version assumes everything up until and including the reveal about the 12th Cylon is canon to the series.)
Now, here is my ending broken down to its basic concept: The “Final 5 cylons” were members of a previously unnamed humanoid race- when their Earth got nuked by their version of cylons, those cylons went on to evolve into humanity as we know it… So everyone on the show is actually one version of cylon or another, and it’s all a cycle of destruction-evolution-creation that continues Ad infinitum. (“All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again”)
Now for backstory: In my version, the Final 5 were part of a group of 12 scientists tasked with creating a “safeguard” against the total annihilation of their race from the robots they had created (just as they had previously rebelled against their creators eons before). The solution agreed upon by the 12 was to create a massive supercomputer space station (nicknamed “13”) which would not only house the collective knowledge of their race, but also hold the capability to resurrect the 12 and help them both repopulate their race and ultimately end the cycle of destruction… Unfortunately, when the robots attacked, the resurrection capabilities were not fully completed on space station 13- resulting in only 5 individuals being successfully resurrected.
When 13 regenerated the Final 5, it had a plan for stopping the cycle of violence by helping by directing the evolution of the new robot species- so when they settled upon Cobal, 13 appeared and presented the Final 5 as “gods” to the new species. These “gods” then helped the robots evolve into a humanoid form that 13 could manipulate much like the Final 5. In this way, 13 became able to influence and predict the actions of all the robot species. When the robot species evolution was complete, 13 sent them along to the 12 colonies, and went dormant… waiting for the inevitable creation of the next robot generation and the continuation of the cycle.
When the cylons rebelled against the humans centuries later, 13 came back to again to exert its influence upon the new robot species and to help influence their destiny. 13 helped them become human, but restricted them to 7 versions (picked from the people the Final 5 had known in their previous lives), and each version would have many copies capable of resurrection, in stark contrast to the previous version of humanity.
Now 13 had to accomplish it’s ultimate goal: break the cycle of violence. With its vast knowledge of human experience across three “generations”, and the ability to run simulations and possible scenarios and outcomes, 13 decided that the only possible way to stop the cycle would be to blend the two generations once they both were in need of a common home world and unable to survive without each other.
This was the cylon “plan” alluded to at the beginning of every episode.
Now for how season 4.5 would have ended differently (some basic plot outlines)- in my version, key figures, such as Adama, start to receive weird visions and messages from 13. Adama is understandably concerned, and wrongfully comes to the conclusion that 13 is the final secret humanoid cylon, and the mastermind of the genocide of the human race.
During the insurrection, Colonel Ty is killed, and finds himself resurrected on 13, along with his wife. As the series nears its end, main characters all start having more and more visions brought on by 13; Adama sees his wife pleading for peace, Roselyn and Six see the opera house, Starbuck sees a mysterious figure calling out to her, etc. In all of the visions, it is apparent that 13 is behind them.
As the finale to the series looms, Starbuck become unhinged, and once again leaves on a quest to find this mysterious 13. When she finds and boards the space station, Ty and his wife are waiting for her and explain their shared history and 13’s plan. Starbuck learns that she was one of the original 12 scientists, and when 13 needed to plant “operatives” among the humans to carry out the plan, it picked her as one of its archetypes… Thus, when she died prematurely, 13 simply recreated her and sent her back to Galactica to continue her mission.
In the finale, a massive battle between the remaining humans and cylons commences- as all hope seems lost for the humans, 13 makes its entrance, and brings the fighting to a temporary standstill. When given the chance to live together in harmony, Cavell betrays 13 and launches a suicide mission with the remaining evil cylons. 13 is damaged in the attack, but instructs Starbuck on how to lead the human/cylon alliance to a new “Earth” to start a new society. When they arrive, 13 explodes, taking with it Starbuck, and the Final 5. The remaining humans and cylons are left on Earth to rebuild, and we never find out if this new “Earth” exists in the past or the future.
In one final “twist”, we see Head Six and Head Baltar sitting upon a hill watching this new society unfold. They contemplate whether 13’s gambit will work, and if so whether this new human/cylon society will ever evolve enough to find them… Insinuating that the Head Six/Baltar were not visions brought on by 13, but rather the influence of an unknown and possibly far advanced version of humanity.
Right. As illustrated above, the people who hate the endings of shows the most are the ones who invest a huge amount of effort trying to write their own backstories and explanations. This is a totally great and fun way for someone to experience long-format scripted dramas, but it comes with the almost certain price of being horribly disappointed that the show’s writers and creators didn’t live up to their imagined brilliance (or were always more interested in characters than intricate unassailable backstories and plot machinations).
I mean, “they had a plan” : sign on to a false treaty, spend 50 years infiltrating the humans, and then eradicate them with sleeper agents on the inside. It’s not that complex of a plan, but it almost worked and sustained a pretty great show for five mostly solid seasons, right?
I guess that a nutball last twenty minutes doesn’t ruin the whole thing for me, particularly since the finale (actually for both shows) had more than enough in the way of great human moments to send it off.
I’m okay with the ending. I’m okay with it going the mystical route rather than the scientific route because, unlike what @20 said, the show always had a mystical bent to go along with its gritty naturalistic bent. Remember the episode when they found the Tomb of Athena? That was second season — pretty early on — and they go into the cave and then all of a sudden they’re standing on a grassy knoll looking at the night sky? That’s pretty mystical. The deal on the show was that organized religion (be it human or Cylon) was flawed, not that spirituality was. So the Starbuck-as-angel thing doesn’t bug me, and neither does the reincarnation thing.
Here’s what DID bug me.
1) The boxed Cylon was totally Kara’s dad. Don’t give me that crap about “nooo, it’s a coincidence”, Moore.
2) The horrible anvilicious montage at the end.
AND! I can explain the plan thing. I heard somewhere that the presence of the “and they have a plan” in the opening credits was an addition by the network, NOT the creators. They really wanted it there. Then Moore was like, “Shit, I guess they better have a plan,” and then they made the kind of horrible made-for-TV movie “The Plan”, which explains the plan, and the plan is basically that their plan got fucked up and we never saw it on screen. So yeah, that’s problematic, but it is an explanation, at least.
Really, it should have been obvious to anyone paying attention that Ron Moore was completely inept, and made drastic plot decisions because “it sounded cool”. Remember glowing spines in the pilot? The mysterious message informing Adama about the nature of the 12 Cylons? Even Moore admitted that killing Starbuck and revealing the Final 4 in one fell swoop were done for shock value with little thought to the consequences to the overall story… which is just shoddy writing.
You should rewatch it and pay attention this time. Or find something more productive to waste your time on.
I was disappointed because the story was leading to an obvious conclusion… The prophecy and the black hole were taking the story to a time displacement angle where Kobal would have been founded by the survivors of the war – both sides. Extremely obvious, and thus in my opinion became too obvious and they tried to escape the corner they wrote themselves into. However, there are escapes to return to this ultimate outcome. The reboot from the cyclon perspective allows a few possibilities – the Cylons who flew away at the end found Kobal thus saying we are all cylons, or some elements from the battle at the black hole found Kobal or my least favorite will involve us on this Earth leading to founding Kobal in the past. To me the only way the prophacy makes any sense is if it is taken into the past as a history rather than a prophesy.
I loved the first couple of seasons of BSG. But then it started to fall into mystical pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo, and I totally lost interest. I stopped watching after the 3rd season. I don’t even know how it ended, and now I’m pretty sure I don’t care.
Regarding Paul Constant’s Slog post response to me, I’d like to address his questions with what I think are the answers.
I have no idea why the opening credits didn’t change to say that they didn’t have a plan. After all, the tie-in movie The Plan ended towards the end of Season 2, exactly when the plan was derailed. Might have been because it looked cool.
Starbuck had a sort of spiritual awakening, which led to her committing suicide, and becoming one of the “angels”. Leoben said as much on the Demetrius, and it was flashabacked to when she typed in the coordinates. This moves into the next few points.
It can really be explained with “God did it”, through the angels of Starbuck (the second incarnation), and Head Six and Head Baltar. The two are around at the end because angels are immortal. They mention how they saw Kobol, and Earth I fall, just like the Colonies, indicating that they are very old, so 150,000 years might not be so far-fetched a time frame for them to survive.
I’m not sure what you meant by “how does that connect to anything”, but I can explain that no, it probably doesn’t happen every time, seeing as how the cycle repeated itself every 2000 years (Kobol 2000 years prior, Earth I 4000 years prior) before the series began.
The modern-day city was New York, and the second Earth was this Earth. It was a warning. It was either saying “don’t let AI get out of control” or “be nice to your AI, they can KILL YOU!”
And if you’re going to pick out a comment for a whole Slog post and ask for a response, please have the decency to open comments on said post.
Lastly, there’s a wiki for everything: http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Main_P…
No one at the literary event asked about the ending. All of the questions were about the creative process, especially about writing a really long story with lots of characters.
The panel (Moore, two writers, and a moderator from EMP/SFM) did mention that network interference was a recurring problem. (In the episode “33”, the network insisted upon the possibility of a nuke aboard the cruise ship, and had Moore delete a scene where Apollo clearly sees humans aboard it before he destroys it. Moore did have the shadows Apollo sees put into the ship, though.)
One of the constraints in making a television series — cost of sets — prevented the writers from exploring individual ships in the “rag-tag fleet”, as Moore called it. Instead, they had to bring characters onto the Galactica (e.g. the pregnant teenager) for those stories.
One of the stories one of the writers proposed was having President Rosilyn visit another luxury ship, declare that there were no longer any first-class tickets, and start subdividing large suites for poor families to occupy. The author wanted to hear the outraged cries of “socialism!!” from his American audience.
Oh, and the “Final Five” part came as an afterthought. (“If we allow Baltar aboard a BaseStar, he’ll see all of the Cylon types, right? Um, how many has he seen — one, two, … six, seven. That leaves the final five!”) Even science fiction is not always rocket science…
BSG is #5 on this list of shows written on the fly, from Cracked.
I prefer to think of BSG as a less bullshit-riddled story explaining the foundation of Mormonism.
Higher beings fucking with people could have been an interesting way to take the story if it had not been so ham handed and poorly executed. But we got ‘God did it’.
That show was saved by its actors as the plots were nonsensical after the second season.
I love you, nerds!
I didn’t watch the last few episodes and never really cared.
I see a lot of atheists whining that they’re dissatisfied because Lost and BSG ended with everyone joining the godhead or becoming elements of the allNOW or whatever. Don’t cry, atheists! Do what I do! If you’re reading a work of fiction and you see the word “GOD”, just read “AUTHOR”. There, now you don’t feel threatened anymore!
Anyway, it was a perfectly serviceable classic sci-fi ending: it turns out that the last man and woman on earth are — CRO-MAGNON ADAM AND ROBOT EVE!!! It’s straight-up Zelazny.
Oh jeez. The ending wasn’t the best, but come on… BSG was a ton of fun, pretty smart at times, and managed to stay enjoyable through a pretty long run, but it ALWAYS had contradictions, really dumb moments, go-nowhere episodes, some weak characters…
I loved the show, I really did, but it was pretty clear from the start it was junk food. GREAT junk food, sure! Lighten up; it’s not Mad Men or something.
A friend of mine has an interesting theory about Starbuck: She did actually die in her raptor and Starbuck 2 was actually a goddess incarnated in her form (probably Aurora). Now whether the authors intended this or not doesn’t really matter, the show is all about the power of the imagination (as imperfect as it is) and letting your creation go on to foster it’s own thing. Also, the show wasn’t anti-technology at all. In fact modern day humans are supposed to all be a cylon/human hybrid. Technology is a tool to create something new that is fulfilling in unexpected ways.
BSG was a groundbreaking series with an ending that came just at the right time in a way that wasn’t contrived.
There was a difference between the ending of Lost and BSG. Lost was all about deus ex machina. BSG was poetic.
I just tell myself BSG ended when Brother Cavil ate a bullet. Perfect ending right there, better to leave issues unresolved than to wrap them up with a stupid epilogue.
33 is right. That show was right-wing Mormon propaganda camouflaged as Sci-Fi. It took off almost exclusively because of misplaced fan-boy nostalgia and it hit a nerve after 9/11. “They’re debating complicated issues… like torture!” No they weren’t. Moore was justifying a heinous worldview and re-packing a Mormon religious lies. The “grittiness” of the art direction made it seem deep. But it wasn’t at all.
While there was some interesting ideas and story telling in the first two seasons – here and there – it really was a total piece of right-wing shit after that.
I had to stop watching Lost for one reason: Kate.
I usually agree with you, Constant, but I’m sorry to say that you’ve got this one wrong:
It has been scientifically proven that the series fell apart for good mid-way through Season 3, after the humans left New Caprica and the writers saw fit to destroy the chemistry between Baltar and Caprica 6.
@44 Thereby destroying any sense of internal consistency in their relationship, and also destroying a good portion of all character motivation for both of them the rest of the series.
I mean really. They pretty much fucking forget about each other!