Just because I am not a professional writer doesn't mean I don't know a poor ending when I see one. I certainly know when an ending doesn't please me. The argument "you haven't done X yourself, so you have no authority to criticise X" doesn't hold water because I am the audience for the thing I am criticising. They made the ending for me, and others like me. We in general aren't pleased, and I'm perfectly qualified to tell why I am not pleased.
Point taken. I note that I'm in a minority if the poll on Sci Fi channel forum is anything to go by. Each to their own taste is the answer I suppose. Its not like I've never suffered the same with other series. I hated the way 'The Prisoner' ended and for that matter the end of DS9 and Voyager didn't meet my approval either. Biggest 'betrayal' I ever felt was at the start of Alien 3, when they casually announce that the other two survivors oof the second film had died in a fire. I nearly got up and walked out of the cinema because it spoils 'Aliens.'
If I'm understanding you correctly, you are asserting that the ending for BSG was fine because the advanced technology enjoyed by the characters made their decision to abandon said technology acceptable and reasonable.
Nope, I'm saying that given the show deals with an entirely fantastical situation in the first place. Its impossible to say how people who are cooped up in cramped conditions on the run for years on end, having seen a society wiped out by their own technology and political system turning on them, may react when shown a green field to walk through in just a loin cloth. Walk a light year in their shoes is what I'm saying.
If so, I completely dissagree. The key reason BSG works as a compelling drama is that for all the technology and setting, these characters are very real and live in a world with consequences as real as our own. The technology has not changed the fact that cancer is a terrifying disease or that racism exists. Why should it make a decision to go back to nature any more reasonable than it would be today? I didn't get the impression that Colonial thinkers had any better philosophy for life than we do, and Lee's unilateral decision to destroy their society and culture as well as commit individual suicide (from environment, starvation, disease, isolation, native attack, etc) seems simply insane and completely inexplicable.
As far as believability of I found some of the character traits, even of leading characters, to be strained at times and very inconsistent, all for melodrama. Lee and William Adama's fallout before the Baltar trial was more of a stretch for me than the series ending, for example.
As for suicide, I'm not so sure. Resourceful people working together might have a shot. It's no more far fetched than the whole premise of the show. Well, not to me anyways. And there's the whole god thing. All bets are off if, in a fantastical world, a god is a real entity. A wafe of the divine hand and a population's mind could be swayed. One of the downsides of having dieties around.
The only reason I can come up with is that the show's writers had an agenda, a message that we viewers had to be bludgeoned with. It was as sloppy as the worst episode of Star Trek or The Twilight Zone. My anger and frustration comes from the feelings of betrayal I experienced because I invested emotionally into these characters and their world. To see them piss it all away because the writers want to make some luddite/noble savage point hurt me in an almost physical way. The show had been so smart and so true to its characters only to vomit on them at the end.
Well I'm sorry it hurt that bad. The again if you want more pain, go and watch 'Spock's Brain' or 'Shades of Grey' from TOS and TNG respectively. Bleh.
As for an agenda, I don't think its safe to infer any such. They just reached a little to make the Humans turn out to be our ancestors.
