Goodbye, Battlestar [Battlestar Galactica]

I thought last night’s episode of Battlestar Galactica was one of the best final episodes for any TV series I can remember. (Maybe that’s because so few series that I care about ever get a series finale. But I digress…)

BSG’s finale was exciting, engaging, and — in the end — heartbreaking. Was it perfect? No. But it was worthy of a series that started strong and managed to give us four years of pretty decent television.

I started watching Battlestar Galactica from the beginning, meaning that I watched the original series back in the 1970s. The original Battlestar Galactica was one of the best/worst sci-fi moments of my childhood, right up there with television’s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and the 1980 film Flash Gordon.

When The SCI FI Channel decided to “reimagine” it with producer Ron Moore, I hated it before it began. Then, as I saw previews, I hated myself for wanting to watch anything that would ruin my nostalgic rememberance of the campy sci-fi show.

After seeing the new BSG’s opening mini-series, I was hooked and hoped SCI FI would see fit to give us a series. When they did, it continued to amaze and delight me. Yes, there were some “soul-sucking” episodes — when the darkness made it more painful than entertaining. But even in its bleakest moments, it stood apart from other television because it dared to be something bigger. Bigger than TV. Bigger than science fiction. Bigger than a story.

As a writer, I strive for such epic grandure in my writing. I am not satisfied to see my story play out on the page. I want my prose to leap off the page, grab the readers, and drag them into my universe — where they wait anxiously for the events to play out, for my characters to live or die, and for the secrets of my world to be revealed.

Last night, BSG held me in a trance as it finished its long story arc and brought it to a satisfying conclusion. It kept me wondering, it made me wish the best future possible for its characters, and it made me want to be a better writer.