Plot
In "Resistance", Tigh ordered supplies taken by force from civilian ships. On the civilian ship Gideon, Marines commanded by Lieutenant Joe Palladino opened fire on a hostile but unarmed crowd of civilians, killing four. [2]
Biers is preparing a report on what she calls the "Gideon massacre." Hoping to influence Biers to produce a more "balanced" report, Adama grants her unrestricted access to document life aboard Galactica .
Biers conducts frank interviews with crew members and captures some pilots' hijinks on camera. After Kat overdoses on stimulants and botches a landing, Biers follows her to Galactica's sickbay. There, she discovers Doctor Cottle treating Sharon for a complication with her pregnancy. Adama confiscates the footage, but Biers secretly keeps a copy. She then records the crew during a successful defense against incoming Cylon Raiders and uncovers a disgruntled Palladino as the perpetrator of death threats and an assassination attempt on Tigh.
In her final report, Biers describes arriving on Galactica with a bias against the crew but changing her mind. Pleased with the report, Adama recommends it be shown throughout the fleet. On Caprica, several Cylons also watch the report, as well as the secret footage of Sharon. It is then revealed that Biers herself is a Cylon as another copy sits with the other Cylons. The Raider attack was so that the footage could be transmitted to the Cylons. Biers confirms that both Sharon and her child survived and calls the child "a miracle from God."
Deleted scene
In a scene deleted from the final episode, President Laura Roslin is shown coming up with the idea of inviting Biers to Galactica. She is motivated by the upcoming presidential election and demands from the Quorum of Twelve for an investigation of the Gideon incident.
Production
Writing
The writers had been considering writing an episode focusing on a journalist aboard Galactica since the first season. Director Robert M. Young, who directed the first-season episode "Six Degrees of Separation", was brought back to direct "Final Cut" because of his experience as a documentarian. Executive producer David Eick had worked with actress Lucy Lawless (Biers) on the series Xena: Warrior Princess and tried to find a role for her in the first season. Lawless declined due to other commitments but agreed when offered the role in "Final Cut". Executive producer Ronald D. Moore cites journalist Christiane Amanpour as a model for Biers's character.
Biers's monologue at the end of her report, in which she acknowledges the crew's imperfections but lauds their heroism and resilience, reflects Moore's own "thesis of the show."
In the episode, Biers interviews a number of secondary characters, including Anastasia "Dee" Dualla, Racetrack, and Lieutenant Felix Gaeta. Moore encouraged the actors playing these characters (in these cases, Kandyse McClure, Leah Cairns, and Alessandro Juliani, respectively) to improvise their interviews extensively and teach him "things I didn't know about these people that I created." This is also the first time Dualla and Gaeta's first names are presented to the audience.
Moore considers the episode to be mainly a character piece about Galactica's crew. He said that the subplot focusing on Palladino's threats against Tigh serves only to inject what he considered was a baseline level of tension required in a television episode and admitted that he was never satisfied with it. The first draft had Palladino shooting himself at the end of his confrontation with Tigh, but the writers considered this "gratuitous" and rewrote it to have Marines arrest him instead.
Filming
According to Moore, the decision not to include any exterior shots during the battle with the Raiders was a creative choice. Showing the reactions in the CIC and hangar deck to the pilots' audio transmissions was, in his view, truer to the episode's documentary style.
Flick Harrison, the actor who plays Biers's cameraman, is a cameraman in real life. His camera is also real, and he shot some of the footage in "Final Cut" with it.
Music
At the end of Biers's report, a part of the "Colonial Anthem" from the original Battlestar Galactica plays over images of Galactica crew members. [8] Composer Bear McCreary collaborated with Stu Phillips, who wrote "Colonial Anthem", to produce the track. McCreary called the collaboration "one of the highlights of the second season." [9]
Reception
"Final Cut" received mixed critical reception. Davis gave the episode an A−, praising Lawless's performance in particular. [4] Simon Brew appreciated the surprise reveal of Biers as a Cylon but criticized numerous other elements of the episode. [10] Susan Tankersley of Television Without Pity gave "Final Cut" a C, saying that Moore's premise that the characters are "flawed but heroic" [11] had been evident from the beginning of the series and did not require a dedicated episode. [11] Jacob Clifton of Television Without Pity wrote in a review of a later episode that "'Final Cut' wasn't that bad—I liked it a lot, actually, and it's still better than most things you can see on the TV." [12] He later compared it favorably to the episodes "Litmus", "The Farm", and "Scar"; he gave the last of these an A−. [13]
Porter, Lavery, and Robson called "Final Cut" "one of [the series's] best episodes" [14] but called the Palladino subplot "mostly routine". [15] John Kubicek of BuddyTV ranked "Final Cut" as the 20th best episode of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica and called the episode "fascinating". [16]
Leland Joseph "Lee" Adama is a fictional character in the television series Battlestar Galactica. He is portrayed by actor Jamie Bamber, and is one of the main characters in the series. His first appearance was in the 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries.
Ellen Tigh is a fictional character from the 2004 Battlestar Galactica reboot series, portrayed by Kate Vernon from 2004 to 2009. She is the manipulative wife of series regular Colonel Saul Tigh during the first three seasons of the series. In season four, she is revealed to be the last of the Final Five Cylons, synthetic humanoid machines who are the precursors to the Cylon antagonists who oppose the human race throughout much of the series.
"33" is the first episode of the first season and the pilot episode of the reimagined military science fiction television show Battlestar Galactica, immediately following the events of the 2003 miniseries. "33" follows Galactica and its civilian fleet as they are forced to contend with constant Cylon pursuit for days without sleep; they are forced to ultimately destroy one of their own ships to foil the Cylons and earn their first respite of the series.
"Litmus" is the sixth episode of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series. In the episode, an investigation into a Cylon infiltration comes to focus on the relationship between Chief Galen Tyrol and the Galactica copy of Boomer in order to weed out other sleeper agents.
"The Hand of God" is the tenth episode of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series. It shares its title with the last episode of the original series.
"Kobol's Last Gleaming" is the two-part first-season finale of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series.
"Scattered" is the first episode of the second season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series. It aired originally on the Sci Fi Channel on July 15, 2005.
"Resistance" is the fourth episode of the second season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series. It aired originally on the Sci Fi Channel on August 5, 2005.
"Flight of the Phoenix" is the ninth episode of the second season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series. It aired originally on the Sci Fi Channel on September 16, 2005.
"Pegasus" is the tenth episode of the second season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series. It aired originally on the Sci Fi Channel on September 23, 2005. Following "Pegasus", the series went on hiatus until January 2006.
"Resurrection Ship" is a two-part episode of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series. Part 1 aired originally on the Sci Fi Channel on January 6, 2006, and Part 2 aired on January 13, 2006. It was the first episode broadcast after a hiatus following the broadcast of the previous episode, "Pegasus", on September 23, 2005.
"Sacrifice" is the sixteenth episode of the second season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series. It aired originally on the Sci Fi Channel on February 10, 2006.
"Occupation" is the third season premiere and 34th episode of the re-imagined American science fiction drama television series Battlestar Galactica. The episode was written by re-imagined creator Ronald D. Moore, and directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan. It first aired on October 6, 2006 on the Sci-Fi Channel along with the following episode "Precipice". In the episode, the Cylons are in their fourth month of a military occupation on New Caprica, where the majority of the human population are residing. A resistance movement is trying to drive the Cylons away. Meanwhile, Admiral William Adama continues his plan to rescue everybody there. Unlike most episodes up to this point, it does not include a survivor count, leaving it unclear as to how many died when several ships were destroyed in the previous episode.
"Precipice" is the second part of the third season premiere and 35th episode of the re-imagined American science fiction drama television series Battlestar Galactica. The episode was written by re-imagined creator Ronald D. Moore, and directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan. It first aired on October 6, 2006 on the Sci-Fi Channel along with the preceding episode "Occupation". In "Precipice", the Cylons respond to the suicide attack in the previous episode by rounding up over 200 civilians believed to be affiliated with the resistance, and later decide to have them executed. Meanwhile, Galactica is to send a squadron to meet with the resistance on New Caprica. Unlike most episodes, it does not include a survivor count.
The music of the 2004 TV series Battlestar Galactica is a body of work largely credited to the composers Bear McCreary and Richard Gibbs. The music of Battlestar Galactica displays a variety of ethnic influences and generally does not conform to the "orchestral" style of many science fiction scores.
"Crossroads" are the nineteenth and twentieth episodes of the third season and season finale from the science fiction television series, Battlestar Galactica. Neither episode begins with a survivor count.
"Revelations" is the tenth episode in the fourth season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. It first aired on television in the United States on June 13, 2008. The episode serves as the mid-season finale of the fourth season, with the concluding episodes of the series airing after a hiatus. The survivor count shown in the title sequence is 39,665.
"Sometimes a Great Notion" is the eleventh episode in the fourth season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. It aired on television on Sci Fi and Space in the United States and Canada respectively on January 16, 2009 and on Sky One in the United Kingdom on January 20, 2009. This episode is the first after the mid-season finale of the fourth season ("Revelations"), which aired in June 2008. The episode title is a reference to the novel of the same name, written by Ken Kesey. The episode was also the last to be written before the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. It received a Nielsen rating of 1.6 and was received positively throughout.
"Daybreak" is the three-part series finale of the reimagined science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica, and are the 74th and 75th episodes overall. The episodes aired on the U.S. Sci Fi Channel and SPACE in Canada respectively on March 13 and March 20, 2009. The second part is double-length. The episodes were written by Ronald D. Moore, and directed by Michael Rymer. The Season 4.5 DVD and Blu-ray releases for Region 1 feature an extended version of the finale, which not only combines all three parts as a single episode, but also integrates it with new scenes not seen in the aired versions of either part. The survivor count shown in the title sequence for Part 1 is 39,516. The survivor count shown in the title sequence for Part 2 is 39,406. At the end of Part 2, Admiral Adama announces the survivor population at approximately 38,000.
