And in the End: Battlestar Galactic answers all the questions, almost

At last after 77 episodes we've come to the end of that great, 4.5 season epic, "Battlestar Galactica," and what a ride - for those who haven't seen it, it's a surprisingly moving and thoughtful and evocative narrative, and you ought to stop reading right now because I'm going to discuss: The End of the Series - and readers of this blog may recall, or you can go back and check, but I pretty much predicted the ending of the series on the nose way back at the outset of season 1: the space travelers from the 12 colonies are not our descendants but our ancestors. It's a totally apt and fitting conclusion to this series, and, though everything is not perfectly explained at the end - how is Starbuck able to be alive and dead at the same time, and why do Gaius and # 6 appear in the contemporary world? - the series does amazingly wrap up virtually every loose thread in a way that kind of makes sense, given the great suspension of disbelief you must commit to in order to enjoy the series. Though the series leads us to ponder some of the basic philosophical questions: e.g., what is the difference between a human and a machine, do we have free will or are we destined, and if so by whom? or what? why was Bob Dylan's music around 150,000 years ago? - it's not heavy-handed at all, but lots of fun and with characters we come to care about. All told, a series that is much better than most would ever expect, and a great entertainment.