Frakkin’ Clack: The silence is deafening

Over the past few days, a lucky load of people got to pack into theaters to see this Friday’s Battlestar Galactica series finale, courtesy of SciFi (or is it Syfy yet?). Though I haven’t gone too much out of my way looking for it, everyone seems to be taking Ron Moore’s oath of secrecy to heart; I haven’t seen any big spoilers leak from it yet, save one, involving Kara Thrace’s relationship status.

This silence over the finale is somewhat worrisome. Instead of people bursting the Twitterverse with “OMFrakkingG! The BSG finale was incredible!”, we’ve got nothing. Go take a little search on Twitter — it’s eerily quiet. It’s not that I’m expecting spoilers there at all, just some sort of reaction. Instead we’re getting a trickle of “I saw the finale” or “I’m going to see the finale” … then nothing.

I don’t want to dwell too much on what to expect or not expect from the finale based on anything coming out of (or not coming out of) the preview screening, but it’s hard not to think the show’s going out with a whimper rather than whollop. Most people have been complaining that the later half of this season has been lackluster, with not a whole lot to discuss or get excited about. I tend to agree. Within the past few episodes, the battle scenes during the initial credit roll are more exciting than the episode itself.

Moore’s said he saved a lot of budget money for the finale, which is why we haven’t seen too many big-budget effects going on for past few weeks. For what it’s worth, I’ll just be happy if the upcoming battle is even a little bit like what the previews are hinting at. At this point, despite what Moore says in his latest podcast about this show “never being about the action,” screw the storyline — I want The Bucket to go down in a blaze of glory as the Cylon colony erupts in a shower of sparks. End scene. End series. OK, maybe I’m only half serious about that last part.

What would you like to get out of the finale?

Speaking of the podcast, a few points from the latest (which went up yesterday):

• We will get one more podcast after this latest one, which will include all three hours, then likely the writer’s retreat podcast for the finale. There will be one for The Plan, but will be done in-studio.
• Deleted/extended scenes from episode 420, including a longer decompression scene from the earlier part of the episode, will be in the DVD for this season.
• That wasn’t Jupiter we saw Boomer jump next to in that episode.
• Now, the deal with Daniel/Kara. Moore goes into the whole Kara being the daughter of Daniel thing and the connection between Daniel and Kara. He says he typically doesn’t want to put theories to rest, because it’s fun to hang onto theories, but the whole Daniel story is not part of the plan. There is no connection between Kara and Daniel. He goes on to say that he doesn’t want people to be distracted by the Daniel story and admits it’s his own fault, not realizing the impact of the Daniel story when it was introduced. He’s pretty overwhelmed at how much people are consumed with the Daniel storyline and, in short, he pretty much puts the Daniel story to bed. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
• Moore and the writers jokingly refer to the Cylon colony as “Cylonia” in the writers’ room.

Clacked by Keith McDuffee
on Mar 17, 2009 @ 15:00 EST5EDT