Holy Frakkin' Hell: Battlestar Galactica

Tonight begins the return of stellar television to our world -- five new shows return between tonight and Monday (tune in to my blog throughout the day today for writeups on three of them, with the other two on the weekend). And, of course, the sixth, and most important, starts next Wednesday! Battlestar Galactica airs the first of the final ten episodes of the series tonight at 10pm (on Space in Canada, Sci-Fi Channel in the US) and WHOA, these last eps are going to be doozies. As I've said in a few of the comments sections recently, I discovered about a month ago that I had missed the end of the season. I thought I'd missed one episode (my PVR is allergic to Space, for some reason, and will tape a single minute of a program and then shut off. This is the only channel where this weirdness occurs). I couldn't find it anywhere, and was stuck. I recently discovered I'd missed THREE episodes, and had a lot of catching up to do. So, last weekend, my husband and I rented the final disk of the DVD and caught up. And... well... WOW.

First of all, Deanna is back, and I cannot be happier. Lucy Lawless pulled a classic Xena move (how I miss Xena) when she was first reborn, grabbed one of the Cylons and knocked him out, all with that jaw-jut she did so well on Xena. I was in heaven.

Then, while the Hybrid was jumping the ship continuously, Deanna confronted Roslin, who was sitting over Gaius's dying body, and Roslin told her she needed to know the final five, who would lead them all back to Earth. Deanna said, "You mean you don't know you're one of them?" and the music swelled, the camera did that BSG patented quick-zoom, Roslin's eyes widened... and then the music abruptly stopped and Deanna sat in her chair cackling. It was AWESOME. Best fake revelation of the year. It's definitely one of my favourite moments of the series.

After four of the five were outed (William Adama's reaction to Tigh being a Cylon was brilliant) and Tigh was almost sent out the airlock, Anders and Tyrrol realized Starbuck's ship was offering the coordinates to Earth. Deanna made a pact to work together with the humans and all go back to Earth (she was kinda in the same boat as the humans anyway, since the Resurrection ship had gone kablammo and there would be no more risings in the Cylon world).

I thought the series would end with the discovery of Earth. But then again, I thought Lost would end with a rescue. Looks like today's television is all about thwarting expectations. Survivors are rescued on Lost two seasons from the end, and at the end of the 2008 BSG finale, they all arrived on Earth. It was a beautiful moment as they jumped into Earth's range, and we saw that globe for the first time on the series. And then... they arrived and all had their awful Charlton Heston moment:



Yup. It's New York City, and apparently Hiro didn't save the world. The big question about BSG has always been, does this show happen in the future, or in the distant past, before recorded history? Since they're all on spaceships, one would tend to believe that they were in the future, but there was always that fascinating potential that they might actually be our ancestors, not our descendents. Well, now that has been answered: you can see a remnant of the Brooklyn Bridge in one of the scenes, and there also appeared to be a giant cross lying on the ground. Earth has been obliterated, and the humans apparently left in spaceships to escape. So now the question is, will Wall-E come rolling out to greet them?

Tune in tonight and find out!