Finally saw the series finale of Battlestar. Now that it’s sunk in, I’m a little depressed. Kind of the same feeling I had after the end of Lord of the Rings, but on a smaller scale.

Now there’s no more seeing Starbuck drive herself and the rest of the crew crazy. I’m starting to miss her frequent quarrels with Lee. She hitting Lee. Lee hitting her back. Roslin and Adama. Saul Frakkin Tigh. Number Six. Above all, the conflicted, misunderstood Starbuck.

I won’t be making a recap, some people already wrote nicely about it (EW’s Marc Bernardin’s great recap here.) I guess I feel pretty much the same as how Bernardin put it.

I’m positively satisfied with it. Positive. But it took some hours after the screening last night before the feeling of fulfillment and acceptance crept in. It was a hard ending to swallow. After four years of following this series, there was this relationship or something that it was cemented into my thoughts much as the same way I thought Frodo and Sam and Merry and Pippin were friends who were never coming back at the end of LOTR. I’ve never cheered and jeered at a show’s characters more fervently, and frequently, than this one.

Yes, there were some things left unsaid (and to some extent, some belive that they were cheated from), some moments when I felt I needed more answers. But it is the finale we got, and it gave what we needed, not necessarily what we wanted. This show has been about that from the start, so why ask for it at the end?

As Ron Moore said, IT’S NOT THE PLOT. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CHARACTERS.

(POSSIBLE SPOILERS) I would have wanted a final handshake between old friends Adama and Tigh. I would have wanted a better final moment than modern-day New York. And of course, Kara Thrace. I would have wanted to see her linger longer and not just disappear.

But you know what, she did say goodbye – to Lee and to all of us. I would have wanted to see Lee with a little heartbreak after she popped away, something that would have reflected our feelings at that moment, but like Lee, we sort of knew what just happened and we just had to suck it in. The Colony was destroyed, Cavil killed himself off, there was the Opera House and All Along The Watchtower and the Colonial Anthem as the space fleet headed off into the sun. Everyone, from the President to Romo to Hera, pretty much said goodbye. And the more I think of the flashbacks – how “real” these characters have become in my mind – plus the more I think how dead they are now (150,000 years ago), the more I feel sad that I’ve just seen them for the last time.

Lee will be exploring the planet. Tyrol becomes the first Scot. The Commander is someplace he is at peace, at last, near Laura. And the colonials (we can’t call them that anymore, can we?), together with Baltar and Six, Ellen and Tigh and the Agathon family, start anew.

I will miss them all (I am missing Starbuck right now), but mostly, I want to say that I’m glad that I met them. I’m sure most fans would say the same thing, regardless of what they feel of the finale.

They will all be remembered. So Say We All.

(OR, a non-review of Episode 11 of Battlestar Galactica’s final season.)

Frak. The best episode of Dee and then… Frak!

Frak frak frak frAK FRAK FRAK! Starbuck? Capt. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace??? The Frakkers! and then, AND THEN!…

(Spoiler!! Highlight) ELLEN FRAKKING TIGH???

Roslin is right. Frak everything.

Gods I love Battlestar Galactica.

What with TWO huge ads over their site at wired.com, they’re really loving Starbuck’s profile. Last two days of wait (here in Manila).

Roslin, not Obama. More Battlestar-related net ads, this time huge side banners at The Onion’s AV Club announcing the show’s return on Friday (Saturday here in Manila).

While thinking of a way to open my review of Benjamin Button for Libre (but then suddenly I did think of something..) I had been jonesing for all things Battlestar related in anticipation of the return of the show on January 16 (17th here in Manila).

For a couple of days now, BSG ads have been popping up all over rottentomatoes.com. Hooray for the mainstream ads! and Hooray for BSG fans in RT! I wonder where else the ads appear. The current campaign motif is in white. I call it the “lips” series. The banner ad shows Roslin, beginning with a close-up of her left eye, followed by text that says, “Who among us knows the truth?” and the date of the show’s return.

The square block ad has Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, first with the eyes, then again with the same text, and finally her left profile sans the eyes again. Looks great.

Of course I’ve seen the hiatus webisodes. Gaeta and Hoshi sitting on a tree…

Then there’s Battlestarbook, a Facebook-notes type entry summarizing the events of the Miniseries created by Tara Gelsomino. “Number Six created an event: The Second Cylon War.” “Dr. Gaius Baltar became a fan of himself.” “Mr. Gaeta has joined the group: FTL FTW!” “Commander Adama has changed his status from Single to It’s Complicated.”

Fans have also posted videos of the current TV spots airing over SciFi, Space and SkyOne channels over YouTube. These drive me crazy, as the spots show a link to a clue-infested website that only muddles all speculation on the remaining mysteries of the show (youwillknowthetruth.com).

Nooooo. As much as I can’t wait for the show’s return, I have no idea how I’ll feel after the last episode airs. 10 episodes and one TV movie.

The beginning of the end is nine days to go.

It’s my email signature.

Some people put quotables from historical figures, some put their business titles and contact numbers. Some people put jokes. People who receive emails from my Yahoo account have probably read the phrase above (title) as my email signature. I’ll explain briefly where I got the phrase.

“Are you alive?” is the first line ever said in the Battlestar Galactica series (yes, it’s one of those entries again, as I fill in the gap that is the midseason break before the final 10 episodes air in January). The line is given by Cylon Number Six, played so well by Canadian supermodel Tricia Helfer. The video below (posted over YouTube) is the first four minutes of the Miniseries, first aired in 2003, which briefly explains the main narrative conflict between humans and their robotic enemies.

As the story begins, a human officer of the Colonial planets is sent as emissary to a remote space station, where humans and Cylons can hold diplomatic exchanges after the bloody war between the two. For forty years, the Cylons send no one. They don’t give a clue that they’re still around. Until one day, the hangar opens, and a stunningly beautiful woman walks toward the officer and asks curiously if he was “alive”.

Of course we know the answer is obvious. But such is the hallmark of this show that very frequently asks questions from the other side of the coin (Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City also asks questions in every episode, but not quite this way). Are you alive? Are you happy? What makes you tick? Are you doing what you’re supposed to be doing? Are you fulfilled?

And the person that’s asking is a machine – intelligent, but artificial. There are no voiceovers or subtitles that say so. We just know that she is. The show regards its viewers intelligently.

A brief thought, and then the officer replies, “Yes.” He thinks, therefore he is. The woman in red leans forward, brings her face closer to the human’s and says, “Prove it.”

Are you alive? Prove it.

Still filling in my Battlestar Galactica relapse, I managed to find something very amusing that’s been happening to the American lexicon since the introduction of the “re-imagined” series thanks to BSG fans in Entertainment Weekly, Dilbert, Gossip Girl, Veronica Mars, Scrubs and in particular Rainn Wilson’s Dwight in The Office. God knows where else.

Official Battlestar curseword “frak” is turning up everywhere. Earlier in September, CNN posted this article detailing the history of the fictional Curse Word that’s seeping into mainstream American lingo. It sounds dirty, just like the word it’s supposed to replace. But it’s not a real word, so you can use it anyway, anywhere, anyhow.

I haven’t replaced the regular word in my usage just yet, but I’ve caught myself saying frak several times instead. Google “frak” and a number of blogs unrelated to Battlestar will appear using the word. What the frak. Frak us.

To the uninitiate, here’s a couple of videos dedicated to the word – the first is in the show Veronica Mars, as used by actor Kristen Bell, and the second is a compilation of usage in Battlestar Galactica.

Have a frakkin’ good time.

…on clear, cloudless nights particularly after a storm. Those are my favorite times, and one of the reasons why I love taking walks at night. The cool windy air smells fresh and the empty streets, still damp with rainwater, adds a cinematic character to the city. It’s not the same in the countryside, but the smell of wet windy air is like taking in air for the first time.

I look up and for a moment stare at the stars, wondering if they would look (arranged) the same if it had been a different period in time. Or a different planet. I do this to remind myself how small and insignificant I am, and, as Jodie Foster said in Contact, how rare and precious we all are. In a way, I would tend to believe, this keeps my feet on the ground. I am such a big dreamer that often I lose my personal sense of The Now.

The other night, while sharing favorite episodes of The West Wing, a friend asked what I did to feed my Battlestar Galactica relapse while the show is in its mid-season hiatus. I didn’t get to answer the question, so tonight I googled battlestar and updated myself with what’s happening with my favorite show on television as it heads towards its final 10 episodes beginning January.

I came across an online article which posted a few pictures of a special commemorative book of BSG to be distributed to the cast & crew. In it was a picture of one of the Call Sheets – a sheet of paper that outlines a day’s work in a film ot tv production, usually organized by the assistant director/s. It looked very similar to the ones I made for Big Time, primarily because I got the format from an assistant director who was trained in the states who trained me in my first work in the first movie set I was on.

Googling further, it turns out one of the show’s producers has leaked the titles of its few remaining episodes. They are:

• 413: Sometimes a Great Notion
  414: A Disquiet Follows My Soul
  415: The Oath
  416: Blood on the Scales
  417: No Exit
  418: Deadlock
  419: Someone to Watch Over Me
  420: Islanded In A Stream Of Stars
  421: Daybreak 1
  422: Daybreak 2
  423: Daybreak 3

The title of the penultimate episode before the 3-part series finale, Islanded in a Stream of Stars, prompted this post. I didn’t have to google for the source of the phrase, because somebody posted it as a comment in the article.

“For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in a stream of stars – pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across the eternal seas of space and time”
- Henry Beston, The Outermost House, 1933

For those who believe that the human race is worth saving from itself, there is still time