Review: Battlestar Galactica Season Four

So here it is, the big finale to my summer viewing of Battlestar Galactica. It's been a long, but mostly enjoyable road with the exception of some speed bumps occurring in season three so far. Unfortunately, a lot of problems persist into the series' final chapter along with a few new ones. But, I still can't hate on it too much, as it easily provides the most exciting and complex set of scenarios found in the show, and ends up tying up most of its loose ends up rather well, even if it isn't quite how I would have done it. It's one of those situations where I want to criticize it for not being as good as the rest of the series, but I must acknowledge that it is still much better than a vast majority of its contemporaries.

Season four kicks off well enough, avoiding the painfully slow start of the previous season, but quickly starts delving into all-too-familiar sci-fi territories. As the show hit the season 4.5 finale (due to the writers strike), themes reminiscent of works like Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, and Heart of Darkness had started cropping up all over the place. I'm not about to say that borrowing from these works is necessarily a bad thing, but when the uses become so gratuitous and transparent, it makes for a more predictable and boring viewing experience.

However, it is only right around the finales when the show gets this caught up in tired messages. For the rest, there is still plenty of character intrigue, drama, and mystery for the most part, some of which gets wonderfully left up to interpretation (although I assume that some may have wanted absolutely everything explained). But (again, for me personally), I almost wish that the last episode never existed, or at least, was made a bit shorter by cutting out all of the heavy-handed hand-holding that explained what Battlestar Galactica was 'really about.'

My main objection comes at the final few minutes of the entire series, where Gaius Baltar and Caprica Six address one of the main themes of the show in some of the most forced and contrived dialogue I've ever encountered. So, in a way, my complaint is more about the way it was executed (poorly) more than the message itself, but I am not without issue there either. To put it simply, this little exchange sells the entire series short because there is easily more than one single conclusion to be drawn from the experiences of these people, yet the show seems to insist otherwise.

Even through all this bashing though, I can't say that I wouldn't recommend Battlestar Galactica. Upon the final montage, I still felt like I had experienced something truly special. If there is one way for me to wrap up the show, I would say that it is somewhat like the flagship itself: although it may develop some deep flaws over time, Battlestar Galactica hangs in there long enough to get you somewhere meaningful and worthwhile.