BSG producers on Hera, Starbuck, and cornerless paper

[alexiscartwheel]

Ron Moore and David Eick answered some questions for the folks at National Geographic: Battlestar Geographica: Galactica's Secrets Revealed in the "Yellow Magazine".

I get what they were trying to do with the pull forward and the mitochondrial Eve voiceover, but I still think the Ron Moore cameo is too jarring. And Hera is the mother of all because it's really all about love. Hmm. I agree that love is good, but that doesn't explain how she knows "All Along the Watchtower," now does it?

I'm, of course, most interested in what he had to say about Starbuck:

Starbuck—the hotshot pilot who died and then was alive again, and in the finale just vanishes—has people asking, what exactly was she?

Moore: You know we just made a decision to be ambiguous about exactly what Starbuck was. That there was a certain mystery about who and what she was. I liked the note that we ended on. She knew that her journey was over. She had completed her destiny, and it was time to leave. I mean we also know that she literally died and was resurrected. And that there is a certain obvious resonance with a certain Christian myth and notions of life after death. Ultimately she's connected to the divine. She's connected to something else that we can't quite understand or connect with fully. And the more you try to explain it the less satisfying it becomes.

I agree that there's a strong possibility that no explanation of who or what Starbuck was could be satisfying. I also agree that Kara sensing that she fulfilled her destiny and feeling at peace because of that is a good thing. I just don't like her suddenly vanishing. Since Kara remains a mystery no matter what, I'd rather her be a mystery that gets to stick around on Earth. I liked Lee's sentiment that it didn't matter what Kara was, only that they were both still alive.


Kara is too awesome to vanish, even if she's already died.

What do the humans in the show have against right angles on paper anyway?

Moore: Now that's one of the deepest mysteries of the entire show. That is the Da Vinci Code of Battlestar Galactica.

Eick: That's purposely left unsolved just to torture the fans. All I know is the prop guy from the miniseries who had that idea lived in infamy for the next five years, with assistants shaving corners off of everything in sight, saying "I want to strangle whoever had this idea."

Ahahahahaha!! I commend you, evil prop genius!

Also in the "we don't know what this means" file, I read somewhere, I think on io9 (I've apparently closed the tab already, and I'm feeling too lazy to go look again), that the whole Lee/pigeon thing doesn't symbolize anything in particular. Ron Moore just thought it was cool. *facepalm* Sometimes it is better if the writers just don't tell you what they were thinking, eh? I do have my own theory on that scene, though, so there.

Comments

[alexiscartwheel.livejournal.com]

D'Anna definitely left the show with a whimper.

I didn't want Kara to have been brought back to life in a mystical way by a divine power, but that's what happened, so what would have been an improvement on her disappearing the way she did? I can't think of a different way that would have been better within those parameters.

When Ellen came back they had that discussion of resurrection and said the humans used to have the technology, but forgot once they didn't need it anymore, or something to that effect. At that point I really thought that was a clue about Kara and that someone had downloaded her consciousness into a new body. (The ship and tags were a wrinkle that might still have required some divine intervention... I don't know.) Umm... I don't think I'm really going anywhere with this except to says things would have been really different if, like Ellen, Kara was version 2.0 instead of... an angel?

He will wrestle mountain lions with his bare hands. Obviously. I think the idea was that most of the survivors would be in small communities, just spread out across the globe, but seeing Bill, Lee, Chief, Baltar & Six, etc. going off alone gives a different impression.

Boomer's a hard nut to crack. Most of the time when it looks like she's headed toward redemption, it's part of some double cross. In the end she takes Hera back, but that's not good enough for redemption either (whereas Baltar definitely has a redemptive story at the end when he stays to fight... and saves Here). Maybe because even when she's doing something good, it's a payback to Adama? Maybe it's supposed to be a weakness in Athena?

Or maybe she just didn't deserve to die. That'd hardly be a new thing for BSG. I don't think Gaeta really deserved to die. I understand he did under military code and all, but I can see why he did what he did, and definitely wouldn't judge him to be a bad person overall.

[ex-jo-blogs.livejournal.com]

With Boomer, I've always figured we're meant to think that up until the time she shot Bill, she wasn't in conscious control of what she was doing - she only began making choices once she was resurrected. I don't think it was a double-cross when she helped Sam escape on Caprica, and I can understand why she was so messed up and open to being turned against her original 'family'. It's a long time since I watched it, so one day I'd like to go back and revisit her arc in seasons 1-3 and see if my sympathy for her is well-founded.

I thought Kara had been given a new body and it was something to do with what happened to her on Caprica. I hoped Cavil had something a whole lot better up his sleeve than some hazy plan to vivisect Hera involving sticking sharp objects into her brain - that seemingly either never actually took place, despite the length of time she was in the hands of Cavil and the Simons, or didn't happen at all.

I figured that if Cavil and *was* the dangerous adversary we were led to believe, then he would also be behind the recreation of Kara's viper. I hoped the introduction of the Cylon colony was going to actually, um, I dunno, lead to some NEW information that explained things like resurrection, the hybrids, Cylon projection, where the Centurion's religious faith came from etc...

So many things were dropped or not explained to my satisfaction. I think I'm going to just pretend that most of season 4 never happened and someday we'll get a final season that actually lives up to the quality of the best episodes in seasons 1-3.

Oh well - I still have Lost to care about, and the writers on that show seem to be doing quite well at the moment!

ETA - oops, sorry!

[alexiscartwheel.livejournal.com]

It's a long time since I watched it, so one day I'd like to go back and revisit her arc in seasons 1-3 and see if my sympathy for her is well-founded.
I'm with you there. Boomer's had complicated arc, and I don't remember all of the older stuff that well. I think that's true for other characters as well; I'll get a much better picture of how their stories went once I can go back and watch from the beginning again.

Simon was just... probing Hera's ear or something? Cylon/Human hybrids have really unique ear canals you know! Cavil and the other Cylons bringing back Kara and recreating her viper and sending her back to rouse suspicion could've been an interesting way to go. There was that suspicion at first that Kara was a Cylon, but the fleet seemed to lose interest in her identity after a bit.

I think I'm going to just pretend that most of season 4 never happened...
That's what fandom's for, right? :)

I've never gotten into Lost. I've seen a couple episodes, but it didn't grab me right at first, and then it seemed too complex and daunting to catch up.