FINAL CYLON - BOON OR ANTICLIMAX?

io9's 'No Final Cylon Will Ever Be Good Enough' may be on to something ... or Ron Moore and company may surprise us with some excellent writing that lends meaning as to why the Final Cylon is the last to be revealed and why it is who it is.

So far season 4 has been very uneven, with the episodes Faith and Guess What's Coming to Dinner the high-points. The choices of Tigh, Tyrol, Tory and Anders (or TTTA as I like to call them) as 4 of the 5 were somewhat arbitrary according to some of the writers' own accounts of what went on in plotting for future episodes and actor Michael Hogan was open with displeasure at the choice for his character. But as Moore & Co. tie up the loose threads of BSG's epic story, one hopes they won't go for the boring (Adama, Helo or Lee), the obvious (Kara), the contrived (Ellen, Dualla, Zarek), the reaching for it (Callie, Zak Adama, Doc Cottle, Seelix) and do something daring (or rather did, as it's been like 2 years since they decided) ... something like making Head-Six the Final Cylon, or the rebel Hybrid, or the Galactica vessel itself. It would be nice to be pleasantly surprised, but the story arc they've set up points toward Roslin or Gaeta.

Battlestar Galactica has transitioned from a sleek, chic, sophisticated cerebral science fiction television show to a gritty, action-oriented war story. The miniseries and early episodes' spare evocative music and modern architecture, the adult and matter-of-fact dialog, the sense of danger and menace of an 'enemy within,' Head-Six, the scene of the little girl abandoned on the agro-ship and Dualla and Billie on the observation deck, Roslin's evolution into a leader on Colonial One ... these early high-points bespoke of a more refined, elegant type of science fiction drama. But now, closing in on the final episodes, it feels more like a military war movie - gray, worn, and weary. If the early part of Battlestar was the Ridley Scott brilliance and elegance of Alien, the latter half of the series is James Cameron's Aliens. Both excellent, but entirely different in their artistic presentation. If the end is the beginning, hopefully not only the story, but the look and feel of Battlestar Galactica will return to the look and feel of the miniseries.