I wonder what you guys think about the ending.
If you haven't seen it, stop reading here.
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God did it all. Technology is bad so let's get rid of it, let's forget the lessons we've learned. Let's chuck our ships into the Sun. Characters disappear and go somewhere. I think of Kara at Season 1 and 2, all that she went through and for what? What did she learn? After all ends she goes: Yeap, my work here is done. Bye Lee."
But here's my biggest disappointment: I just wonder, how many of you would use God as an explanation for everything that happend in your sci-fi novel?
If you want to see a current movie that has a "deus ex machina" ending, go see "Knowing" starring Nicholas Cage. It was a pretty good movie until about 3/4 of the way through, when it took a decidely weird twist that left me, in the theatre, feeling cheated. Even my boyfriend, who is not a writer, walked out of the theater saying "It's like they couldn't figure out how to wrap up the plot so they threw that in to resolve it."
Enough viewers enjoyed the plot to make the show a success, so "God as an explanation for everything" can work. Without the early foreshadowing, though, the ending wouldn't have.
*Edited to add: Looks like Elan and I wanted to make the same point at the same time. **Edited again to correct a misspelling.
[This message has been edited by aspirit (edited April 05, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by Elan (edited April 12, 2009).]
If they'd put those who still wanted to roam on the ships and jumped them away, then scrubbed Earth's location I would have been more satisfied, but all in all it was a good ending to a good series.
I watched it all and I loved it and I never thought the ultimate explanantion for everything would be that there's a "God with a plan and that IT sends Angels to help it happen". There was religion but how many times has religious myths have been used in sci-fi to cover some ancient race of superevolved ETs or "whatever you want that's not just God".
I was watching sci-fi, so my assumption wasn't so crazy.
If you felt it ended okay, Elan, fine. Some people liked the ending, some didn't. No sense arguing about that.
I wasn't suprised there was a God (ever since Baltar went Jesus the parallels were clear), I was suprised by how many elements of the story fell back on this invisible force that sent coordinates via a Bob Dylan song and doesn't like to be called "God".
In any case, none of you answered my question: How many of *you* would use God as an explanation for everything in your sci-fi novel?
That was my question.
[This message has been edited by Nicole (edited April 05, 2009).]
quote:
Check your spelling before correcting mine
Elan, I hadn't seen your post when I created mine. My misspelling was an oversight.
Terry Goodkind is a great example of this. In the end it isn't Richard's strength, brilliance, or innovation that saves them from certain doom, it's a gimmick that mages in the distant past designed godlike power SPECIFICALLY for him, and he uses it to make all the bad things go away. I wasn't thrilled about the books leading up to them because they seemed to do nothing but preach and describe atrocities, but this firmly clamped a seal down on any respect I might have had for Goodkind.
Readers want to see characters fighting and struggling to succeed, and in the end even if they have some help in the fight, the killing blow (as it were) should be theirs. The writer who solves his character's problem for him isn't doing anyone, least of all himself, a favor.
Otherwise you find yourself wondering stuff like why Richard couldn't have just
*spoiler alert for Sword of Truth series*
shoved the Sword of Truth into a box of Orden in the first book and saved everyone a lot of wasted time.
I agree, Natej. And by Gods I didn't mean just a literal God, I mean any omniscient force that has unlimited powers all across the universe. I'd love an omniscient force with "issues", though. That'd be fun.
MartinV, I felt the same. I'm not saying the ending was horrible, I did tear up in a few places. I just thought it'd be something as sublime as say, the episode 33 in season 1. But I was a bit bothered by what Natej mentioned in his/her first post. And I agree, BSG was the best thing since Firefly.
I'll always be a Browncoat.
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Truth to tell, I've avoided the whole thing. The campy 1970s version left a bad taste in my mouth...I know this one was nothing like that, but nothing I heard about it thrilled me enough to make me look into it and watch the show. Hope you guys got something out of it, though.
That's pretty much how I felt. I couldn't believe they were dredging that up again. Never could get into it. If it was a good series, it's a shame they didn't just change enough to make it stand on it's own, without the baggage of the previous version.
It was something I swore never to do. If I wrote a book, it would stand on its own...if I wrote a sequel, that would also stand on its own. (Not that I've had the chance in paying markets...I did try out an Internet Fan Fiction series along these lines, with limited success.)
Robert, I agree that you should be able to read a book (pick up a saga in the middle and still understand it) on its own. But the thing I like about TV series like BSG is the history and the incredible depth of characters that have been explored in 80-90 episodes. You can't do that and still have coherent individual episodes/books.
All this when the show/book saga is good, of course.
What prompted me to start this thread was actually a statment by the creator of BSG about he not having planned too far into the story, about making up stuff (prophecies, for example) and not having a clear idea of how they'd be resolved. Like, the creators of the show didn't know who the Final Five cylon models where until the last minute.
That's scary. Because, as far as I've learned here, you have to have some sort of plan (even if it's revised as you go along). But it makes sense to plot a novel thinking about what happens at the end, even if it's a bit nebulous. You write *towards* somewhere, don't you?
On series and stand-alones---it's not that things don't acquire depth with length. Often they do. But it's the feeling of having to buy or watch all of it that gets me. My time is short; my money is not so plentiful that I want to spend it without regard.
On the other hand, making things stand alone has its own perils. I recall a series of police procedurals by Ed McBain that, I'm told, all stood alone (I only read two or three of them, and they did), but nearly all contained a peculiar explanation of how a character named Meyer Meyer got his name. Was it worth it, each time?
Usually, yes, I do.
But my most recent short story wrote itself, with the characters deciding the ending. "The villain must lose, but this is not a revenge story," they said. "As heroes we'll demonstrate compassion towards the villain, 'cos that's the way we are -- and it means he could return in sequels to annoy us further ..."
I enjoy the adventure of not knowing quite when or where my story will end. I enjoy listening to and learning from my characters. And if God stars in one of my stories, and He tells me the ending, I sure ain't gonna argue with Him ... mind, I'm probably going to Hell anyway, so I might argue for a while just for the, um, hell of it ...