BSG “Daybreak, Part 2” – My Final BSG Review, Part 1

When I sat down to start writing this review, I realized that it was going to be a hard one to do, in part because of how much there is to discuss about the BSG series finale, but also due to the reality that this would be my last time writing about this incredible series. After thinking about the various aspects of this finale that I wanted to write about, I realized that it would be best to divide this up into a multi-part review so that I could really delve into the episode’s various storylines and yet still keep the piece from becoming too weighty a read. To start off this first part of my review of “Daybreak, Part 2”, I want to touch base on two elements of BSG I haven’t mentioned previously, the work of the VFX team and the music score of Bear McCreary.

Gary Hutzel’s VFX Team and Bear McCreary – The magic behind the cameras

One of the common complaints about the last few episodes of BSG has been the minimal presence of its hallmark CG animation from the team lead by visual effects supervisor Gary Hutzel. In “Daybreak, Part 2”, it’s clear that Ron Moore and David Eick wanted to save the CG effects budget so as to create the visual feast seen in this two hour finale. Indeed, there were times where the CG sequences had more the quality and feel of a blockbuster film than a TV series episode. Without question, BSG’s talented team of CG artists have once again raised the bar even higher for episodic television visual effects, a fact I expect the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences will once again recognize when they hand out the Emmy awards for this season.

The other contribution that deserves much praise here is the music score written by Bear McCreary. The score he wrote for the series finale not only covers a wide range of emotions, but it also features a diverse range of musical styles. McCreary’s score successfully transports us across the various parts of the canvas that Moore has painted his story on, convincingly creating moments of tension which are soon overlapped with the somberness of what’s to come in the scenes ahead. His inclusion of the original BSG series theme in the scene where Galactica heads off to her fiery end in the sun was a wonderful tip of the hat and helped to make our last view of Galactica into one of the episode’s defining sweet-sorrow moments.

Boomer – An orphan who finally finds her reason for being

In the brig scene with Tyrol and Helo in “Daybreak, Part 1”, Tyrol makes the remark that all model Eights, whether they’re called Boomer or Athena, are the same because that’s how the Final Four made them. Some viewers have suggested that this foreshadowed Boomer’s fostering maternal instincts for Hera to mirror those of Athena. But I think the commonality shared among the Eights is not a sense of maternal bonding with a child; rather, it’s the importance of having a family to belong to, if not answer to. Boomer’s crying at the end of “Daybreak, Part 1” was not due to maternal instincts kicking in for Hera, but because she was seeing her own personal history repeating before her eyes – a child losing her family and ending up alone.

From this vantage point, Boomer’s about-face to save Hera upon hearing sounds of the human/Cylon team’s assault on the Cylon Colony makes sense. While the Cylon Simon can rationalize the advantage the Cylons have based on mathematical realities, Boomer only saw a family fighting to save their child despite those odds. Unlike before when she kidnapped Hera, now she sees a part of herself in Hera, of the orphan child that she once was and perhaps still is. And yet, she now realizes hearing the fighting going on all around her, that Hera still has a chance to be a part of a family, to have the life that Boomer never had. Although we’ve been aware of Boomer’s desire to be a part of a family, the flashback scene to when Boomer was still a rookie pilot on board Galactica allows us to appreciate just how much she has been haunted by it, if not the significance of her last words to all this. Boomer has had many moments where she could have chosen a different path to pay back Adama for his giving her that second chance to belong, to feel some sense of being a part of a family. Saving Hera is different from the other times because this one act counts not only to those coming to rescue Hera, but to Boomer as well.

With this debt paid through the act of helping to spare a child from living the life she had, Boomer’s death was the natural conclusion to a life that could no longer truly be fulfilled.

Hera and the Opera House – Alice was in Wonderland all along

One of the series mythology elements we were all waiting for Moore and Eick to explain was the meaning behind the Opera House and in true form to the series, we found out that it’s not so much a physical place as it was a vision of what was to come, if not what roles the various players were expected to play out in this supernatural plan. Personally, I never thought of the Opera House as being an actual place, but instead as is the case with dreams, it was merely a symbolic representation of some reality. When the visions of Hera, Roslyn, Athena, Gaius and Caprica Six in the Opera House were overlapped with the reality of their movements within Galactica, it immediately made sense that Galactica, the ship that had been the protector of humanity’s remnants, would be the stage where the final showdown between humans and Cylons would occur.

The importance of Hera also became realized as we see that it’s Hera who not only draws everyone together for that final confrontation in the CIC (or the Opera House theatre), but she also becomes the catalyst for putting an end to the cycle. Had Tory not murdered Cally, perhaps that peace would’ve been achieved not just between the rebel Cylons and humans, but with all Cylons. On an aside, it was nice to finally see Tory have some relevance to the overall plot again instead of simply filling in the fourth slot in the Final Four equation. The revelation of Tory’s actions from earlier this season also helped to give Tyrol’s character that push to finally make a choice on which side of the human/Cylon equation he felt most at ease with. More on that in the next section.

Tyrol – He never was much of a people person

In my reviews of the last few episodes, I’ve complained about the inconsistent nature Tyrol has shown in terms of his loyalty, where one week he’s siding with his old shipmates and the next, he’s nonchalantly taking the Cylon side, frak the consequences for his human colleagues. At times, it was easy to see this as being the result of his own confusion as to where his loyalties should belong. But there were enough times where this was more due to shoddy writing that I hoped by the end, we’d have this flip-flopping addressed by the character himself instead of the writers asking us to just brush this mess under the nearest carpet.

Having Tyrol find out that Tory had murdered Cally was a brillant move because it had him dealing with both sides at the same time. Despite the harsh words Tyrol spoke regarding Cally after her death, it was clear that he did love her and what he had thought was his son. Reliving how Tory had killed Cally, Tyrol was reminded not only of what he had lost, but also of how both humans and Cylons have nothing to offer him anymore. After he kills Tory, his slumped down body reflects less his shock or horror at what has transpired and more the simple truth that he was just plain tried with the lot of them. His admission to such to Ellen and Tigh while strolling the plains of Earth is an honest acknowledgement of Tyrol’s contradictory posturing going into the series finale, if not the expected inevitability of his character ending up alone. In many ways perhaps the Tyrol we had known had died during the mutiny, something he himself may have realized when he admitted to one of the mutineers in “Blood On The Scales” how Galactica used to be one hell of a ship. He’s clearly lost anything of personal worth already and sticking around humans or Cylons is only going to serve as a painful reminder of that, if not also of his sense of personal disconnect from both realities.

Tigh and Ellen – The love story with a happy ending

The relationship between Tigh and Ellen has certainly been a complicated and emotionally-driven one, but in “Daybreak, Part 2”, we finally get that much needed scene to appreciate Ellen’s sense of love for Tigh.

From the very beginning, we’ve seen that Ellen manipulates the situation to ensure Tigh’s and her own survival, but as the flashback scenes on Caprica show us, that’s more a result of her being a survivor than a manipulator-type personality. In the scenes where we see Ellen and Tigh celebrating his retirement from the Colonial forces, we begin to understand the resentment she expressed in “Deadlock” regarding Tigh’s love for Adama and consequently, his unflinching loyalty to serve by Adama’s side in the fleet. For Ellen, this has been the reason she’s been denied the chance at a real life with Tigh, one that would consist of more than an occasional break from ship duty. In this light, all her machinations to pull Tigh away are not those of a selfish, petty woman, but rather that of a wife whose happiness over finally being able to be together with her husband was violently ripped away due to the Cylon attack on the colonies. While Ellen has admitted that she’s been in love with Tigh for over a thousand years, these flashbacks effectively show us that her love is much like Tigh’s, existing in the here and now and not simply based on some shared history.

Watching them walk off together holding hands, one could certainly appreciate that this couple had endured enough, had sacrificed enough for those around them, and deserved to at last have that chance at a life of just being there for each other. It’s surprising to think that Ellen and Tigh would be the couple that would be walking off into that happy ending. Then again, there was another couple who we saw in this episode who also deserved that chance at building a new life together.

Coming up next in my review of “Daybreak, Part 2″ . . . Baltar gets his redemption, Lee finally spreads his wings, saying goodbye to Laura, the end of Adama, how do you solve a problem like Kara, and of course, the series ending. And yes, I have some interesting thoughts on that one.

Some other posts you may enjoy:

1. BSG “Daybreak, Part 2” – My Final BSG Review, Part 2
2. BSG “Daybreak, Part 2” – My Final BSG Review, The Conclusion
3. BSG “Daybreak, Part 1” – The End Is Found In Where We Began
4. BSG “Islanded in a Stream of Stars” – Finding One’s Place To Call Home
5. BSG “Someone To Watch Over Me” – A Return to the Well Executed and Balanced Meal
6. BSG “A Disquiet Follows My Soul” – Paging Howard Beale

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