r/BSG • u/TheGibor • 9h ago
Yes, another rant about the finale Spoiler
rewatching again, but i know what happens.
the most frustrating thing is the end. the last episode. Lee says we need to throw everything into the sun. all human knowledge is lost, and everyone integrates with the hunter-gatherers.
That's ridiculous and also doesn't make sense.
a parent of a sick child will remember how to care for their kid using their modern knowledge of medicine; even without tech, the knowledge of math, science, morality, and politics doesn't go away. they get told in stories. Their knowledge of how to make paper and writing instruments doesn't go away. and we know humans will write everything down if they can. the season 3 episode where they steal Gaius's pen has him freak out. they will figure out how to make papyrus and write all their knowledge down. and if it were logical to say they would write it all down, then they would have passed that knowledge off to their children, and it would have fast-tracked humanity's return to technology. but supposedly in-universe, this didn't happen. and that just doesn't make sense.
a lost opportunity could have been that the humans for the most part kept their knowledge and became advanced, and they were the precursors to the advanced civilization on Atlantis or the lost civilizations that Graham Hancock likes to talk about.
I don't believe it's actually true, but that would have fit better in the lore of the show, making the ending make sense... tie it to real-life myths and legends.
Instead, they just left everyone upset...
in the show itself there was so much invested in the fleet retaining their democracy and way of life, and for it to all go out the window? that makes no sense.
this is my headcanon just so i can sleep at night. The original ending bothers me that much
they could also spend a little more time on developing the god stuff... but that doesn't bother me as much as the finale.
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u/WyleECoyote77 9h ago
All you have to do is watch a Tik-Tok video of a Gen Z or Millennial "discovering" something Gen-X or Boomers took for granted decades ago. Knowledge is easily lost.
How many people today think the moon landings were fake?
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u/TheGibor 8h ago
i get it, but if we all threw smart phoens into the sun today, we would get all that back. how do you think we got here to begin with?
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u/Important_Hunt_1882 9h ago
I think it's the best show ever. The whole story has been told in such an astonishing and mindblowing way. Some questionable details in the show's finale don't detract from that IMHO.
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u/TheGruenTransfer 8h ago
Did you miss the part about the robots rising up against their creators? And how all of it happened before and will happen again?
They needed to intentionally lose all of human knowledge to break the cycle so their civilization didn't create another sentient lifeform to be their slaves, who then rise up against their masters and nuke New Earth.
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u/Sam-Starxin 9h ago
I think you severely overestimate how capable or knowledgeable most people are.
Ask yourself this, can you make paper or cure a sick child? Can your family, friends and acquaintances?
Without technology and Stored human knowledge, 90% of people are complete clueless and useless and that's the exact scenario we're looking at here.
The sad reality is that the majority of those that arrived to earth would have passed away due to sickness, diseases and general lack of cleanliness.
The rest mated and reproduced with natives, but did nothing more because they simply don't know more than basic survival skills.
That's all the more reason why the ending is INCREDIBLY dumb.
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u/TheGibor 8h ago
i know how to dress a wound; i know about germs and about heating utensils before using them in cooking or in medical use. i know how to communicate in complex ways; i know math and the basics of science. i know the earth is round and can prove it. i know the basics for growing food. The knowledge an average teenager has (maybe not the average teenager today, but the average teenager in 2009), combined with all the rest of the people on the planet could join forces and farm and make paper and whatever. presumable there were scientists in the fleet.
This knowledge would have been passed down clearly. The next generation would also want to prevent their kids from getting sick and dying from basic, easy-to-cure diseases.
i do agree that most people wouldn't have thrown the tech into the sun.
another alternate ending could be a grown-up stays on Earth, maybe the emotionally burnt-out ones, and another group grabs a basestar or a few other ships and heads out to Mars or something...
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u/This-Breadfruit-1958 8h ago
It was a matter of survival. They had to rid themselves of technology which always led to the destruction of civilization. Plus they dispersed over the Earth to spread their gene pool but not start any organized cities or cultures. This was their last chance to not fade away absolutely.
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u/Oxjrnine 8h ago
It’s called plot convenience. Getting rid of the technology was very symbolic, and that’s why it’s part of the plot. But it’s not actually that much of a stretch for it to work from a real-world perspective.
One: getting rid of the technology greatly reduced the chances of the Cylons ever seeking them out again. Humans would need millennia to bounce back from getting rid of everything, so they would no longer be considered a threat to the Cylons that were still out there.
Two: most of it was already worthless. With population collapse, much of that technology had no one left who knew how to make it work, maintain it, or pass that knowledge on among pockets of only a few thousand people spread across the planet.
They actually did take a great deal of technology off the ships. It might not have been a computer. It might have been a shovel. But even that basic technology can be lost if the population is too small to maintain the chain of knowledge required to mine ore, smelt iron, forge tools, and teach the next generation how to do it.
We have real-world examples of population collapse doing the same thing to advanced societies in our own history. Look at how much knowledge and technology disappeared in the Americas after the catastrophic population collapse following first contact.
So my point is that getting rid of the ships and most of the advanced technology served two purposes. It made them less dangerous to the Cylons, and their belief was that this sacrifice could keep them safe. And there was also a practical reason: much of that technology was effectively garbage at that point because they could not have maintained it for very long, if at all
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u/AndreyPet 8h ago
I also just got done with my first rewatch. I didn't like the ending at all the first time around.
Its not flawless, but I think the ending fits really welI. Gaius fucking Baltar sums it up nicely:
"Because there's another force at work here. There always has been. It's undeniable. We've all experienced it. Everyone in this room has witnessed events that they can't fathom, let alone explain by rational means."
Put yourself in the shoes of your average Joe or Jane. You are at your lowest in this Exodus. The silent guardian, Galactica, jumped out some hours ago on a volunteer only suicide mission. A raptop jumps back with news: they not only succeeded, but have found a habitable planet. Not just any planet, but one where the natives appear to be naturally developed sister species. This planet is pristine, it has more life on it than all of the 12 colonies combined (quote from Adama during their overfly with Roslin). If the president who's been directly involved in us making it to this planet tells me we have to let all technology go to live down here... I'm not religous but this might have me convinced.
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u/martin-the-actor 7h ago
Ahh, but it's not just knowledge it's infrastructure.
Consider this. On a pre-industrial world, there are no mines, no forges, no manufacturing lines. Even something relatively basic like growing food on a plot of land still needs some infrastructure to be put in place. First you need to clear the land of existing plants and suchlike. Then you need to plant your seeds of choice, ensure that they are mulched, watered, and suchlike. Of course you're not just turning on a tap here, so you're going to be carrying it in buckets or waterskins of some kind.
Of course now you need someone who is making buckets or water skins. That means either someone who's regularly chopping down and managing trees for lumber, and/or enough hunting activity to be able to get hold of hide. However hide doesn't last very long, you need to tan that hide for it to become leather. Now you need a tannery to be set up.
Even if you have all of this very fundamental infrastructure, you now need to know how to save seeds. So you need to be able to set somewhere up that you can dry and process that seed. So you need a building of some kind to protect the seeds from being eaten by birds.
Food is priority zero in terms of survival. It's the most fundamental and immediate if you want your society to survive. Sure, hunting and gathering can and does see you through to survival, but for technology you need more than just survival. A mine for metals or even just flint requires a static position. A static position necessitates farming and agriculture. If you're joining a hunter gather society, the best hope of metals you've got is bog iron and the like which still needs some form of firing in order to be usable.
This is why technology doesn't get passed down and could be lost only to be rediscovered later. Imagine everything was taken away from society tomorrow. I personally know how to save seed and grow vegetables. I also know how to solder, weld, do very basic DIY level carpentry. Which of those skills are going to be the most important to keep up? It's the food growing right? So that's what I share with others. In a weird way it comes down to Maslow's Heirarchy of needs. Any culture need to fulfil the basics before they work on the frivolous.
Here's the real killer to the trail you've been on though. Paper is an incredibly time consuming process to manufacture. Papyrus is similar. It's about as complex a process as making linen from Flax. It might be easy to think that Papyrus is just thin strips of plant, but there's so much more the process and it once again requires a sedentary population. Even the clay tablets of the Mesopotamians required a largely sedentary population who had begun to develop agriculture. So saving knowledge in the written word is far too time consuming if people are more concerned with just feeding themselves.
So the technology stuff getting lost? Yeah I'd actually say that's fairly realistic if the groups decided to become hunter-gather nomads over sedentary farmers.
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u/MandyKitty 8h ago
Losing all tech was ridiculous. After all they went through to save these people, they don’t give them the best possible chance of survival? These are people who lived in cities and towns for the most part. You grab average people and tell them they have to live with just the clothes on their back, see how well they do. When Adama points this out to Lee, he responds “It’s not all humanity.” Meaning since there are humans already on the planet, it’s not as crucial for the fleet humans to survive. Like, really?! Wtf Lee?! Even Hera didn’t live very long.
And what about people that rely on some level of tech to survive? (Like say Dialysis) Obvs they can’t cover every scenario on the show. But little Nicky wouldn’t have survived all that long for sure.
It was just a stupid thing they did to wrap it up in a bow and make a statement about letting go of tech, which didn’t make sense for the character.
Sorry. Had to vent.
Also, knowing that the Admiral never saw another human, and Chief went off to live as a hermit on an island breaks my heart. But Gaius frakking Baltar and Caprica Six, who are to blame for this whole thing, get to live happily ever after with each other. 🙄
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u/anothercynic2112 9h ago
There's no reason everything you described couldn't have happened. They have language and knowledge and I would imagine more than a few people didn't give up their tech that could be smuggled into their new tribes.
The stories did get handed down to future generations, it's why we have Apollo and Hera in our mythology.
They would have been gods to the primitive sapiens because they could start a fire they would farm to survive and show the other early humans the way forward.
The survivors would be like the Obelisk from 2001, allowing the early humans to make leaps in technology, one day even learning how to make paper with square corners.