I have been waiting a long time for a new BSG and this episode left me completely unsatisfied. They haven't answered any of the cliffhangers left from the first half of the season, and just opened more questions. This is exactly the paralysis of the plot that turned me off from Lost. I am so tired of being strung along about who the last cylon is I just don't care anymore. I know they made it seem like it was Ellen, but that doesn't explain Kara's dead body. Really it seems like they are just going to say that they really are all cylons who left the planet before a nuclear war, but that seems like a weak twist to me. Not to mention it looks like they are going to string along the twist until the last episode which is twice as weak.
The paralysis of the plot in
Lost and
BSG was down to the writers on both shows not having a time frame to finish the show in. Once both shows set an end date, they got a lot better (
Lost's fourth season was easily the best to date, and the penultimate Season 5 looks very interesting and different).
The producers have also clearly stated that they can't leave all of the mysteries for the final episode as there wouldn't be time to address all of them. Their statements, and the actors' suggest that each remaining episode will look at and try to answer an outstanding storyline, character or mystery element from the show. For example, this week's episode:
Will apparently resolve Tom Zarek's storyline and the political direction the Fleet has taken since New Caprica, as well as revisiting some of the other ships in the Fleet and bringing in how the revelation of Tyrol being a Cylon has impacted on the 'common workers' of the Fleet he previously represented. Subsequent episodes will address how the Final Five were reborn after the destruction of Earth, whether it is possible to bring Ellen back via the same methodology, what happened to the other Cylons after the civil war, who the 'head-people' are, what Hera's destiny is and what happened to Starbuck.
For what it's worth most of the remaining mysteries in the show are supposed to have been answered by episode 417 or 418 at the latest, so the finale can concetrate on resolution rather than exposition.
I also heard they were supposed to find Earth 200 years from our time now.
Apparently this was from an on-set source who misread the script where it said the 13th Tribe was wiped out 2,000 years ago and thought it was 200. They also clearly thought that we were the 13th Tribe, which we clearly are not, since the 13th Tribe was on Earth for less than 2,000 years whilst we have 10,000 years of recorded history. If the Earth shown in the mid-season episodes is 'our' Earth (the producers have not commited themselves in interviews to anything beyond than this is the planet that the sacred scrolls call Earth), then clearly our time is in its remote past or remote future.
