I could have done without the "Science is BAD" lecture and proto-Cylon montage at the end, but you know, I think this show has earned it. Not the scene specifically, but the right to be a little indulgent in the end.
This. At a certain point I was worried that Apollo was going to tell us that he was also going to be careful not to litter. But I also agree on feeling they'd kind of earned the right. And I did love Baltar growling, "You know he doesn't like that name."
I figure that's why Hera specifically is "mitochondrial Eve" - nobody else lived long enough to have more kids.
Well, I don't think it needs to be taken that far. Other people could have had plenty of descendants. Humanity came close to dying out at least once tens of thousands of years later.
It's a Mobius strip; if it hadn't been Hera, it would have been someone else. But it was Hera, so that's why she's important. I kind of like that part of it: Hera wasn't at all important to the fleet. She was important to the viewers, because we're descended from her. And it's a cute nod to the original show, too.
I don't think it was perfect but I never really expected they'd cross every T. I have simple needs: I got to see lots of spaceships and explosions, so yay. And the clusterfuck that ended with Cavil shooting himself? And then the nuking of the colony? Comedy gold, people. I hit pause, laughed for a couple of minutes, then I watched that sequence again for giggles before moving on.
I know too much about non-tech subsistence living to believe they're going to be happy for very long, especially without medicine and, oh, guns and just about everything else.
IJS, but as opposed to how happy they have been? I think it'd suck, but the civilian fleet has been living in sucksville for years now, so this'd just be a different flavor.