Yes! Way to go Katee. You nailed it.

Lame Sauce! We need just one more season of BSG. Make it a mini-series. Why were 6 and Baltar seeing better more conniving versions of the other one? Since when does burning up on re-entry turn you into an angel zombie?
It would have been better if the Galatica jumped into, and crash and burned on the gas giant, and then came back all shiny and new, instead of broke a$$... Maybe coming back so far into the future that the fleet got tired of waiting for them and settled on earth of the past and now here we are back to 2009 with Cylons on their butts and earth under attack. An Alamo for Galatica, one last fight, and on earth it looks like a meteor shower...
Battlestar WTF - A SyFy Miniseries by Mars22581, executive producer!
I thought I watched every episode of that show, but apparently, I missed a SEASON

I thought the piano playing ghost father was going to be the boxed Cylon Daniel who escaped in some way, making Kara a half-breed long a generation before Hera. The lack of answers on this question were just laziness.

The answer is simple.
When they blew up Starbuck they had no where else to go because they hadn't thought it through.
So POP.
Thinking the idiots would accept it.
This is what happens to so many series when they don't know how to get to the end.
This has happen before.
And will happen again & again.

The ending was perfect. The show was great because they didn’t try to drag the show through the mud so that they could make another season.
Thank you Ron Moore!

The mysteries of Starbuck's character can be summed up quite simply, actually: ham-fisted hackery.

RDM painted himself into a corner, and then invented himself the world's vaguest box of miracles to extricate himself.

It's called "bad writing."

Handling plotholes in such a way (ignoring them) ruin a series. Look at what they did for Rowling's Harry potter, and Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto, a number of continuously unresolved plotholes and time paradoxes ruined the former series as it entered it's climax, and are continuing to play havok with the latter. I believe that the only reason Galactica fans didn't make a bigger deal of this earlier is that the three-part finale was done so over-the-top that it really didn't sink in until a while past the end. Plus it would have made a lot more sense in my opinion had Kara had Seven as a Daddy--or was a gendebent Seven due to Cavil's sabotage. Ressurrection Tech and all. Fills in a Plothole right there.
Srsly, it's like it was phoned in.

tl;dr version: Plotholes make for bad writing, no matter the metaphor involved.

She was an "angel" in the realm of the BSG universe. She was the north star for the galactica, which was her whole purpose from the start. What else can she be? There is nothing else to ponder on.

I think she died when she went back to the original planet Earth (the Cylon's earth). When she came back, she was back in the form of an angel. It isn't necessary to have everything tidy. I like that some things were not explained and left for us to ponder and think about.

in my opinion, it's still sublime and beautiful. it's not "hackery" or "bad writing" just because you don't like the path the writers/producers chose. you're completely free to dislike it and criticize it, sure. and it's very easy to do that from behind a computer keyboard. i think we all need to step back and appreciate the work, vision and craft a little bit more. writing is a craft. it's an art. it's an interpretation. if you don't like someone's piece of work or it doesn't inspire you in a way that you want to be inspired, then look for it elsewhere. respect the work, effort, vision and craft. we could all afford to do that a little more. write your own story or find someone else's work to admire. the negativity and hating is just mindless and numbing. rdm and crew told the story they wanted to tell, regardless of what someone else may have wanted them to write.

Starbuck was a guiding spirit. nuff said.

People, the show got canceled after only four seasons!!!

Get over it.

ty Katee, the poetry was not missed by all.

She was clearly snatched up by the Lords of Light and reincarnated, then send back to the fleet.

What happens after that, I don't know.

I'm just disappointed that everyone was so tore up over calling her an 'Angel'. It's just a word the characters used to explain her, but should not necessarily betaken at face value by the viewers.

thought the finale sucked. So Starbuck was a freaking ghost? Jeez come one. Last two seasons was a waste. Could have been a great show, but went out lame.

regardless, still one of the best shows ever if not the best imo

"MCP-001
People, the show got canceled after only four seasons!!!

Get over it."

Weeeeeeeell no. Not so much.

The producers decided on thier own to bring it to a close. The channel didn't cancel the show.

Just statin' the facts, so don't be hatin'!

This is for those of you who watched Galactica but were alwasys suffering from ADD.
The series always had a spiritual theme! As early as season 1, Baltar's vision Of Caprica 6 always told him that she was an angel sent to him by the one true God.
Ron Moore didn't sudenlly copble together the finale. He always had an idea as to where this was all going to end.
Understand, I'm quite the athiest, yet I found the ending so moving that I almost wanted to believe. I don't, but points to Moore for making me swallow hard.
Glen "Larceny" Larson never could have dreamt of anything as original as what Moore and Co. came up with.

This is for those of you who watched Galactica but were alwasys suffering from ADD.
The series always had a spiritual theme! As early as season 1, Baltar's vision Of Caprica 6 always told him that she was an angel sent to him by the one true God.
Ron Moore didn't sudenlly copble together the finale. He always had an idea as to where this was all going to end.
Understand, I'm quite the athiest, yet I found the ending so moving that I almost wanted to believe. I don't, but points to Moore for making me swallow hard.
Glen "Larceny" Larson never could have dreamt of anything as original as what Moore and Co. came up with.

The ending was good, not great, couldve been better, but it was good. The thing is they couldve gone in any direction but they decided to go that route, the spiritual route. Everyone will have their own alternate ending, including me. But I can say that it gives me enough closure, but its not enough for me to buy any more dvds, in fact now that I know how it ends, its almost anti-climatic. This huge build up ends in a way that I feel like its not worth watching twice, not worth paying all that money.
With that kind of ending, it even makes it more dificult to watch the prequel series, cause no matter how interesting that series can be, I will always come back to the conclusion "whats the point, I already know how it will end...."

This is for those of you who watched Galactica but were alwasys suffering from ADD.
The series always had a spiritual theme! As early as season 1, Baltar's vision Of Caprica 6 always told him that she was an angel sent to him by the one true God.
Ron Moore didn't sudenlly copble together the finale. He always had an idea as to where this was all going to end.
Understand, I'm quite the athiest, yet I found the ending so moving that I almost wanted to believe. I don't, but points to Moore for making me swallow hard.
Glen "Larceny" Larson never could have dreamt of anything as original as what Moore and Co. came up with.

To who ever said the show was canceled, it wasn't the they (producers) decided to stop it after 4 seasons so it would end on a high instead of dragging it through the mud, and come on guys Starbuck was obviously "god." she just didn't know it XD

Starbuck's mystery is just one of a hundred bad things about Season 4. I haven't bought Season 4 on DVD yet, and I'm not sure if I ever will. They messed BSG up so bad in Season 4, it's not funny.

It doesn't matter who or what she really was. It was still a fantastic series.

I have been re-watching the entire series (with my wife this time) and just finished Season 2.5. It is obvious that:

- The show always had a religious element - it is clear as day. Some higher power was always at work - you can see it repeatedly.
- Head Six was not part of Baltar's subconscious because she often knew things he did not.
- Starbuck had a "special destiny" and was fated to be a salvation figure.

So, feel free to not like the ending but saying that the writers were "hacks" and "wrote themselves into a corner" is an absolutely baseless claim. It looks to me like they had the broad story elements plotted out from the start.

Ron Moore is dead to me. I MEAN IT.

Beore the series finale, syfy showed interviews with the writers and creaters of the show. In those interviews the writers themselves said they had absolutely no clue how to end it. Finally, one of them came in and wrote on the board "It's about the characters, stupid," not the story. So it's not quite the baseless claim you think it is.

I thought BSG lost its way toward the end of season 3, with some fairly reckless plotting that the writers couldn't follow up on.

I managed to stick with it until the end, but I can't help thinking that there could have been a far more tidy and logical conclusion to the show.

Look, it's so obvious when you rewatch the whole thing that they knew where the broad story was going. There are pieces of dialogue and plot points in literally every episode. Go back and rewatch it all too, if you doubt me.

Translating that broad story into actual scenes is another matter and what I heard them say was that they got hung up on the scenes and the dialogue at the end so they chose to go character-centric as opposed to using pure exposition to wrap everything up in the tidiest way for everyone. They chose to end with an emphasis on feelings and emotions and relationships as opposed to the emphasis on just flat out answering every single question, in order, that people wanted very specific answers to (and it seems that the answers all had to be based purely on science for some people to be considered answers). Personally, I liked this approach since:

(a) Once again, I realized that it was totally consistent with the entire run of the show.

(b) I viewed the show as art as opposed to a word problem that needed to be solved with exact precision.

To each their own though.

It was "Q" that did it !!! Oh now i get it .moore was desperate and thought "hey ,that "Q" guy from startrek is always moving from reality to reality so why not have him srew with this reality" Thats gotta be it .yep, it was "Q'S doing .Just trying to set picard up for more fun just watch!~ (just as plausable as any other lame explanation.)

I could agree with that Q ending more then that crappy ending. Hell it be awesome to see him laughing at the end of the show saying something like "OWNED!" No it wasn't a Perfect ending! \I see simple minded people saying that way to much. First of all nothing is perfect... second of all it was a major cough out ending.

The first seasons had Hera constanly being talked about, then she just happens to be the oldest skeleton ever found? That is just stupid. Yes I know this show had Mormon religious stuff but still it didn't need to end for the OMG If it can't be explained then GOD must have done it! Aka I can't use my mind to think of a possible reason as to why something is the way it is.

Check out the story in Dynamite Comics four part series "The Final Five". It's a different continuity than that of of reimagined B-star G, but provides some of the best ways to put together the whole story, albeit, with some divine intervention.

Katee discusses Starbuck and what she thought she was in this new Q & A from her website:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmI3sTpTIWk

www.kateesackhoff.com

"The first seasons had Hera constanly being talked about, then she just happens to be the oldest skeleton ever found? That is just stupid."

Uh, you need to pay more attention. All of humanity could be traced back to Hera, i.e. we were all descended from her.

So, yeah, you could say she was pretty important.

I invariably find that the people that didn't like the BSG finale didn't even come close to understanding the BSG finale. Ron Moore didn't spoon feed the concepts to the (generally stupid) masses, but pretty much everything was there.

I'm okay with the show's gradual transition from gritty hyper realism to aesthetic existentialism; perfect for our times. But it still comes across as the writers not having thoroughly thought through the ending of the series. I'm with many of the others on the forums, its as if the writers painting themselves in the corner and having to make a few leaps to get out, some of like a Twin Peaks, a decade + later.

Great find on the webcast by Katee and Tricia. It looks like the writers planned all along for Starbuck to end up as an "angel" in the end and lead mankind to Earth.

I think her ass-kissing response is as pathetic as an "entertainer" like Ron Moore choosing science fiction to espouse his immature theological beliefs. I hope neither of them stays in the genre. Z4

have to agree with red ante in his post above. the ending was good but not great. but u recieved a conclusion that u handt quite expected. and isnt that why u watch tv? to be entertained and maybe suprised? not to watch an expected rehash that u knew was going to happen? i also agree with redante about anything more is anti climatic. i loved the characters and their purposeand hopes. but i want to add while i love bsg for what it was why, why do i have ANY desire to see the prequel and or caprica. when the show ended i was satisfied. while i could have hoped for a few different tweaksat the end, i sat back and enjoyed what i thought was to be near impossible a return of a show that had been cancelled and resurrceted (sorry no pun intended) and new life and vigor breathed into it. not many shows today , i think could be brought back to such sucsess. i thank the writers and the actors and fans for acomplishing it. hear e syfy channel DO NOT keep bringing back clones(sorry yes pun intended) of bgs over and over again !

I think you can take a good sci-fi story and finish it two ways: you can focus of the minutia of the story's mythology, or you can focus on the characters and themes.

I've rarely seen a story improved by an increasingly intense focus on its own mythology. Such stories actually seem self-indulgent and lacking for me. Take the Matrix, a film with decently round characters and heavy on theme. The sequels, however, focused more and more on the differences between different programs, and the details of Zion, the identity of the Merovingian (a minor figure), the nature of the ghost twins, and so on and so forth. And this was nice for the fanboy, sure, but did it contribute to the theme? Not at all.

Moore's BSG takes a different path, focusing on the theme rather than the details that don't matter. The theme was set from the beginning, that the universe if full of mystery, and that there are things we simply can't know, but that in the middle of it all, the human soul, the spark that makes us who we are, is constant. Ultimately, I think Sackoff's right. It doesn't matter what Starbuck was, because we know WHO she was. That's all that matters.

Agreed. Actually, I think Moore had Bill Adama state the major theme in the mini-series:

"Why? Why are we as a people worth saving? ...Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore."

Sharon re-iterates this to him later when he asks her why the Cylons tried to obliterate humanity. "Why do you think humanity is worth saving?"

This show was ALWAYS about the redemption of the human soul at its core. It just happened to be set in space.

Here's my theory. Scifi channel and Ronald D Moore giddy with their peabody award decided to push and pad out a story that really should have ended at season three and wrote themselves into a corner they couldn't escape from. Hence the frakked up ending.

What, after the Peabody award did they then go back in time and insert all the many, many lines, scenes and concepts that totally supported the 4th season ending? Re-watch the series - it's obvious when you do that they had an ending like this planned all along.

Heh, I love that people who liked the ending seem to claim the the people who didn't (me included) somehow don't "get it". Whats to get? The entire season was one giant middle finger to everything the characters did throughout the entire show. I mean if "divine intervention" is the ultimate explanation then none of the characters choices were really theirs were they? I mean if some higher power was the cause of such fateful events then it doesn't really matter what happens, since its all part of the plan God has mapped out..

Pathetic... I enjoyed the pseudo-religious tones of the show thinking that they'd be nothing more than that, tones, not giant brush strokes over the whole canvas, blindly covering up holes in the painting. But slowly and surely, starting in the third season, the tones grew and grew, and by the end of the fourth season it encompassed the entire show. If Starbuck hadn't simply disappeared I might, MIGHT have swallowed the ending with a very bitter attitude but when she just vanishes, well, there went all credibility the writers had (90% of which being Wrong Moore).

Oh well, I'll still have the first two seasons to watch, in fact I'll just imagine that the show ended with the fleet finding the burnt out Earth, that's much more palatable.

Personally, I liked the ending but it wasn't what I was expecting (I thought it was going to turn out that they had gone through the cycle so many times that they were all Cylons and didn't know it). Once I saw the ending, I kicked myself for being so blind that this was obviously the type of ending that they had been moving towards. Heck, just about every episode had one or more non-corporeal entities saying "God loves you." and "God has a plan" - not very subtle. When I re-watched the series, I realized even more so that this theme was always there and that it was a blind spot on my part that I didn't see it coming. So, in my opinion, the whole "he is a hack" and "he wrote himself into a corner and needed to introduce God to get himself out of it" line of attack (and I do mean attack since the attacks here can get incredibly personal) are just sour grapes from people who didn't like the ending. Hey, it's fine not to like the ending but those statements just aren't true.

In terms of the ending being deflating because it eliminates free will, I would also disagree. If God's goal was to "perfect humanity" so that it didn't fall into the same destructive pattern over and over again, he/she could have simply stopped the creation of the Cylons or the destruction of the colonies. Instead, he/she did not intervene. The intervention came only to preserve humanity and, even then, it was in such very subtle ways that the outcome still depended upon what decisions humanity made. The last several episodes were all about whether humanity, Adama in particular, was going to give into despair and/or hatred or whether faith and understanding would win the day. The deciding factor on this was found in the human heart, not from divine intervention. To me, it looked like humanity answered the question that Adama posed in the mini-series' "Why do we (humanity) deserve to live?" I found that to be very humanistic.

Personally, I would have liked to have seen more action in the 4th season. I didn't partcularly like seeing Kara just disappear. I didn't like seeing the humans just give up their technology. However, I also probably would have painted a more expressive smile on the Mona Lisa, too. In other words, I might have done some things differently but that doesn't stop me from really having a lot of admiration for what Moore and company created. I'm just a pretty big believer in artistic freedom so I have always been puzzled by people who get angry at artists for expressing their ideas.