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.

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.