For those of you who don’t want to know about spoilers, don’t read this.
This past Friday, the season finale of Battlestar Galactica aired. I have to say that was a brain blower. Sure, a lot of it was totally unsurprising given the course of the election campagne shown in the preceeding episode; it was rather obvious Baltar was going to win the election and that the colony would be established on New Caprica. Also, it was obvious to me that the Cylons would find New Caprica. Of course, I didn’t see the nuclear blast being the item that gave them away, but that is at least believable.
I found it interesting just how badly Baltar’s reign on New Caprica was going. But really, given that we know the planet is barely hospitable, much of that may not be his fault. And labour unrest, poor living conditions, and all that are not terribly surprising given the circumstances. Even so, after a year, one would expect there to be more than that level of infrastructure. And we see Baltar living the high life while the general population is suffering.
The sheer incompetence of Baltar’s leadership coupled with his surrender at the end was poignant. He really had no choice but to surrender on behalf of the colonies but the fact that his actions put him (and the colonies) in that position must have occurred to him.
Just where the occupation of New Caprica will go is anyone’s guess at the moment. We know there will be a resistance. We know that the fleet with some people escaped. There is a lot of potential for the coming third season.
If the writers can succeed in building the same calibre of episodes around New Caprica as they did around Kobol and the Adama assassination attempt, it looked like we’ll be seeing a great deal of tension in the next season. Too bad we have to wait until October to see it. Well, hopefully it will be worth the wait.