“Daybreak Part II”

Well here it was. The end. With millions of questions to answer and a lot to answer for. Does it deliver?

It delivers enough.

Given the daunting task this episode had given the preceding leading up chapters, this fact that this episode was able to get out if it’s own way enough to weave a tale that not only answered most of the questions, leave the viewer with definite closure and be mostly satisfying is quite an achievement.

It doesn’t start out that way though. We begin with more flashbacks and by the end of the episode, I felt that the flashbacks did nothing but take up time that the show didn’t really have.

The general gist of the story is simple. Adama leads the rebel Cylons and humans who volunteered to attack the Colony and save Hera.

Upon getting there there is a ferocious battle as Helo, Athena, Starbuck and Apollo lead raids on the Colony itself, while the Final Five through Anders slows the Colony’s response times.

Of course, Boomer gets to flip flop one last time, taking Hera from Cavil’s crew and delivering her to Helo and Athena before Athena gets her revenge by opening fire on her.

After getting Hera back to the battlestar we finally get to see the opera house scene play out in real life as Hera gets loose and Athena runs after her and from other parts of the ship, Roslin as well as the reunited Baltar and Caprica Six who eventually saves Hera and they all cometogether in the CIC where the Final five were.

There rages a standoff with Cavil himself and Adama. A peace is negotiated when Tigh offers to trade Hera for resurrection technology. In order to give them the information the final five have to unite and send the information down to the Colony computer. Unfortunately the five becoming one is quite literally mentally so no secret is safe and Tyrol discovers that Tory killed Cally. Tyrol breaks the uni-mind and kills Tory. Thinking it was a trick, all hell breaks loose and ultimately the humans win when they nuke the colony and Kara is forced to jump away immediately.

Of course she puts in the numbers she worked out from the song and it leads them to Earth.

What? Didn’t we see Earth? Well I guess this new Earth is OUR Earth. The Earth we previously visited wasn’t Earth. This is Earth because Adama names it Earth as their final destination.

And it’s 150,000 years in the past.

And Hera is mitochondrial Eve, the one humanity as we know it was birthed from.

We learn a ton throughout though.

Personal Six and Personal Baltar are in fact agents of God as they claimed. And furthermore it seems although it is not implicitly said that Kara Thrace was dead and that Kara had become an angel. It is not certain if she was always an angel in human form or if she became an angel after her death…or further why she didn’t know either way but she has a goodbye with Lee before fading away.

Roslin passes away on New Earth as she rides off with Adama to build a cabin far away from everyone.

Baltar redeems himself by selflessly staying behind, reuniting with Caprica Six (which seemed a bit forced to be honest, considering just a few episodes back she and Tigh were having a baby together and she loved him.) Baltar though was the highlight and the only one whose flashbacks really meant something in terms of the actual story.

Now one big question that I just didn’t get. During the standoff, after the final five break the uni-mind, Cavill kills himself.

What? I didn’t understand that at all. It seemed very out of character. Someone whose sole goal was resurrection technology just decides, ok things look grim. Bye!

Overall, while there are some sloppy moments and some stumbles, the series goes out well and on a high note, especially given the obstacles of some of the groundwork episodes.

B

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