FROM THE ADAMA JOURNALS:

Ila and I used to enjoy going to the theater at least once or twice during each of my rare furloughs. She recognized my need for escape and usually selected comedies or musical entertainments. But once in a while, to satisfy Ila, we went to a tragedy.

Caprican tragedy contained one significant variation over the tragedies created in the rest of the twelve worlds—the added feature of the alternative ending. The alternative ending was intended as a kind of release following the emotional drain of the sad or awesome events of the play proper. Some audience members didn’t stay around for it, claiming that the proper reaction to the fate of the tragic hero or heroine was to purge ourselves by participating emotionally in the tragedy. But I always enjoyed the alternative endings, bizarre as some of them were. Generally, they showed what the lives of their hero or heroine would have been like if they had surmounted or survived the dramatic events that had propelled them toward their disaster. Often their lives were shown as serene, their experiences having brought them emotional and intellectual growth as human beings. Because of what seemed to me a forced optimism in such an ending, I much preferred the other traditional alternative, in which the playwright generally showed that the complications of life (and, by implication, drama) continued to affect or plague the characters, although usually in not as nobly tragic a way as the main drama. I liked that. I liked the idea that we were all expected to continue the drama of our own lives past major crisis points, and had to renew our hopes, fears, and mysterious expectations on a regular basis.

Ila said such a reaction suited me, since after the pleasant intervals of furlough I always had to return to my own continuing tragedy, the war with the Cylons. She preferred the meaningful single crisis, the test of nobility or even merely of the dimensions of character, over the uncertain extensions of the alternative ending. She may have had something there. Whatever, she’s dead now, away from suffering—while I have to confront one major crisis after another. I sometimes consider alternative endings—ones where the Cylons give up, or we finally destroy them, or a mysterious third force interferes and decides the outcome for us. Even more, I would rather not consider tragedy at all. Ila, I needed you here now, I needed that particular alternative ending.