EPIC!  Truely epic show. The finale was absolutely some of the most thought provoking science fiction since perhaps Babylon 5.  As far as exploring the questions of 'what is it to be human', 'where did we come from', 'good and evil', and the 'origins' of myth and religion the show is completely without equal. It is definately a 'thinking mans' show and requires a good bit of reading between the lines to understand the subtleties and parallels of many of the characters.  I have no doubt I will be continuing to contemplate the concepts, questions and insights of the show for days, weeks, and years. Just teasing apart the nuances of any one character has lead to many eye opening thoughts. 

I truely hope this show wins some awards for writing and acting. In a sea of mostly mindless television drivel this has been one of the rare gems that pushes to think and feel about concepts both internal and external, to reevaluate attitudes about ourselves, our society, and our place in the universe. If we had more shows like this we might even have a better world.

I liked the finale. As far as battle sequences go, I would rate it in between Resurrection Ship (season 2)/New Caprica (season 3) and the Nebula battle (season 4). Resurrection Ship and New Caprica battles just stand out a bit more. Though, Galactica ramming a hole in the Colony was not what I expected!

They tied up the Hera plot line in the last 2 minutes, which was sort of amusing in a way and half made sense - okay, we knew she had the key to Cylon resurrection, but why was she that important to Humanity as well? They referenced her when talking about the "oldest known bones found" magazine, but why her? I mean, there were plenty of other children around there?

Other than that, I thought some of the characters wrapped up their stuff a bit too quick. Nobody expected Roslyn to survive, but if Apollo didn't see Adama carrying her to the Raptor, Adama would've just taken off without saying goodbye to his son, Kara, or well anyone.

Kara's I guess makes sense in a way, that Cylon has always been trying to tell her she's an angel, and the "Kara Thrace is the harbinger of death, she will lead humanity to its destruction" line the hybrid kept spitting out in Razor finally made sense: she would jump them to "Earth" (whichever Earth that is), they would re-build the civilization and end up starting the cycle. And since she was an angel she would keep getting brought back to try it again (hence seeing her body on the 'real' Earth). But I still expected a little more than "I'm done here, Lee" *poof*.

The one I got the best was Tyrrol.. cause after finding out a cylon killed his wife, he didn't really belong with either side.

All in all, I thought it was a pretty powerful finale, and other than tying the individual character arcs at the very end, it didn't feel very rushed at all, which is sort of a rare thing these days.

Going into the finale I didn't like the flashbacks to pre-genocide caprica of the previous episode, there was too much in the present that needed some resoulution and direction to end the show. All in all having seen the finale its those flashbacks that very neatly close the circle for nearly all the major characters.

I also rather enjoyed the point that baltar made, God didn't care: he never was on anyone's side, humanity and cylon alike created the religious baggage. In the end humanity is responsible for saving itself by making better choices or endlessly repeating the bad ones. 

The one beef I have is the fate of the cylons. The mystical solution of proto humans on final earth seemed to marginalize the theme that humanity and cylons needed eachother to survive. Those left on the colony were nuked and left for dead, and those who weren't in direct human relation ships (everyone but the final 5, Athena, and Caprica 6) decided to stay in orbit to grease the wheels of the new colony. I feel like Cavil's (#1) need to be a machine could have been resolved better than his suicide in the Conrol Room when shit hit the fan. Perhaps the movie "the plan" will address it but most of the first 7 cylons had really become characters in their own rights and the finale didn't tie their stories together like they did for the human characters and the final 5. 

Hehe I really liked Cavil's death.  Dry and darkly comical right up to the end.

I was pleasently suprised. The way the last part of the season had been going I thought we would see 30 minutes of prep for the batlle, 60 minutes of battle, then 30 minutes to wrap up all the story lines. But instead they jupmed away with Hera, found Earth and still had 60 minutes to go.

* Tory died. Finally got what was coming to her.

* Starbuck disapeaered. Hey is that what we're like in our dreams? We're angels and then when we wake up, poof, we're gone. 

* Ron Moore's cameo. Nice

* The opera house dream coming true on Galactica.

* Old Centurians fighting the new ones. And they won a baseship as reward. Leaves room for a Earth meets evolved Cylon story if they every want to go that route.

Yeah, that reference to "Those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it" is about the one thing I really liked about the finale. AND Cavil's End of course.

The rest was... well, probably the best they could come up with...

But Starbucket being an returning angel... BLEH!

The whole thing felt rushed to me, they did tie stuff up which was good I couldn't help thinking of Hitch Hikerguide to the Galaxy towards the end.

One of the more interesting story plots to me was always going to be, what was going to happen when they discovered Earth. There were a number of plausible options and it has to be said the production team choose the cheap to produce option.

I'm going to read the Ron Moore interview now (thanks for the link btw), see what his take is.

Overall BSG is one of the best scifi series when taken as a whole.

Well, if you caught a short ad, there's going to be another BSG "movie" in the fall, centering around the Cylons and their "Plan" (which, I imagine, did not include their own extinction originally..).

It's even called "The Plan". Should be interesting!

Caprica also sounded good at first, but now I'm not so sure. It may be good, going to the origins of their technology, resurrection, etc.. but it's still going to be a modern-ish drama.

I don't think it is necessarily that they chose to not use their knowledge. With no tools etc, and a very small population it will be hard to just survive, in a few generations only will almost all tech knowlege be lost for good. Knowing that certain things can exist dioesn't mean they could reproduce them. Look at what the Plage did in Europe, how much knowledge was lost and how long it took to get back on track. With so many people dead most people had to concentrate on just staying alive, and communication was rare. Besides, even if they had knowledge of Raptors and how to fly them, how many of them would know about metalurgy etc.?

Anyway I liked the ending and I like that they are our ancestors; better than if they got here now or in the furure. I always wondered how that was going top be, In 1980 the had them get here in our present and it was a pretty dumb ,movie. It was cool that Starbuck was an angel. I liked the religiousness of it. Too many sci-fi shows try to erase this because it makes it harder to write for, i think.

Did anyone notice that the old style cylons were tougher than the newer ones? In the fire fight the new one went down with a shot but the old ones seemed to take quite a few hits.

Well it's been a few years between those two, I'll attribute it to "they learned to make better bullets"

I thought it was pretty good, but like others said, it kind of felt rushed. To me, it felt like even an hour into it the writers still had no idea how to end it or tie up the lose ends. And why did Adama never come back to live with Apollo? I mean, they're father and son, why would he want to live alone for years on end?

How do we know that that is "our" Earth? Our Earth could have been the one that was an apocolyptic wasteland.

I suspect he might have been making a joke about his penis.  I need to watch that scene again, but I think "Six" is looking down when she says "god" causing "Baltar" to make a joke alluding to her thinking his male anaotomy is a god.

Appearantly the anglefied versions of Baltar and Six are pretty much like thier corporeal counterparts.