As you all know, I’m no fan of Ron Moore’s reimagined Battlestar Galactica series. I honestly did try to appreciate it on its own terms, but it just never hooked me and I gave up on it midway through the first season. Still, I have followed some of the online commentary about the show over the years, and I was curious today to see how things wrapped up in the series finale last Friday night.

Apparently, aspects of the conclusion left a lot of people scratching their heads. From what I gather, the show ended with the ragtag fugitive fleet arriving at Earth — our Earth — some 150,000 years ago, and discovering the place inhabited by spear-carrying hunter-gatherers. The weary colonials ultimately decide to abandon their ships and technology and blend in with the primitives on the planet below. Some of the comments I’m seeing out there question this, as well as Starbuck’s ultimate fate and the revelation of, for lack of a better word, “angels” who were overseeing, and perhaps guiding, everything. A recurring sentiment seems to be “what the hell was that all about?”

Well, this aging fan of the much-disparaged 1978 version of BSG is chuckling his head off right now, because these elements are all right out of the original series. Recall the opening prologue from the original: “There are those who believe that life here began out there… far across the universe with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Toltecs… or the Mayans… or the Egyptians…” By “going native,” Ron Moore’s colonials are simply living up to the “ancient astronaut” underpinnings of Glen Larson’s Galactica.

The angels and Starbuck turning out to be some kind of spirit-being who knows the way to Earth have their precedents in the original, as well. In the original-series episode, “The War of the Gods,” the Dirk Benedict version of Starbuck, along with Apollo and Sheba, encounter the Ship of Light and the highly advanced beings who dwell within it, angels, for lack of a better word, who declare that they are watching out for their “younger brothers and sisters.” They seem especially interested in Starbuck, and tell him that, “as you are, we once were; as we are, you may one day become.” When he and his companions return to the Galactica, they bring with them subliminal impressions of Earth’s location. Sounds to me like Ron Moore was perhaps a little more faithful to the original series than I — and the young fans of the new version who’ve always been so nasty about the old one — really understood.

Now, as I said, I didn’t watch the new BSG, so it’s possible I’m completely misinterpreting what I’ve been reading about the finale. But I gotta tell you, I’m feeling some degree of vindication right now. I think I’m going to celebrate by cracking open a bottle of fine ambrosia and seeing if I can rustle up some mushies…