# How Battlestar Galactica should have ended **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 23, 2009, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434 "2009-03-23T05:20:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![equinoxi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/22d042/32.png) [@equinoxi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/equinoxi)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/1 "2009-03-23T05:20:48Z")
Great show but not satisfy with the ending. I prefer Hera being the sole survival ended up on planet earth that we know of. Being a child it will be more of a clean slate and it will also reinforce her importance on the whole scheme of things. One way for that to happen, they could easily have the BSG exploded killing everybody there, shortly after their final jump, but perhaps before explosion, someone could have put Hera on some pod that ended on Earth. As for the rest of the fleets, they were lost in contact forever. That would be a better ending and scrap all that monotheistic angel crap and have Baltar died in some horrible death. ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/2 "2009-03-23T14:24:34Z")
So you’re going to have one little four-year-old girl, in a pod, on Earth, by herself. That’s going to make for an uplifting ending, sure. 10 bucks says she dies in a week. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/3 "2009-03-23T14:28:25Z")
> [@Snickers](#): > > So you’re going to have one little four-year-old girl, in a pod, on Earth, by herself. That’s going to make for an uplifting ending, sure. 10 bucks says she dies in a week. I think a week is being generous. The “only one person in the escape pod” endings are so damned cliched it’s painful. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Corner\_Case](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/corner_case/32/234_2.png) [@Corner\_Case](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corner_Case)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/4 "2009-03-23T14:35:14Z")
I don’t yet know what changes I would want to make. I do know that the ending seemed too much of a Disney/Happy ending. Baltar espouses and Cavil doesn’t just shoot him when he starts his first syllable? The ending holds together, but only because the undefined Beings of Light have interfered and given hints. Why is it that everything has to make sense only through ineffable means? I think I would have liked more to die striving for their goals and living their convictions. It still doesn’t make sense to have taken the greatest military protection the fleet has to go on what is a suicide mission. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/5 "2009-03-23T14:35:16Z")
After the scene with Lee in the field, Starbuck finds herself in a map room, standing on a globe and all the characters from the series, living and dead, tell her “Congratulations!”. Oh, you wanted to know how it should have ended. Sorry. I actually was fairly satisfied with the ending. I personally would have done without the 150,000 year coda(and the toy robots), and ended it with Adama on the mountaintop, tightened up the pacing just a little bit, made it feel less like the end of LoTR, but no major changes. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/6 "2009-03-23T14:45:51Z")
> [@Corner\_Case](#): > > I don’t yet know what changes I would want to make. I do know that the ending seemed too much of a Disney/Happy ending. Baltar espouses and Cavil doesn’t just shoot him when he starts his first syllable? Umm…because there would have been a firefight in which he and his people would have been wiped out. Oh, wait, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT (eventually) HAPPENED. He was holding Hera hostage. He shoots Baltar and then Cavil dies. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/7 "2009-03-23T15:00:38Z")
I mentioned some of these in another thread, but they are worth repeating…well…to me and my warped mind. Star Wars Ending Head Six, Head Baltar and Starbuck appear Annakin/Yoda/Obi Wan style to Apollo and wave goodbye Titanic ending Adama dies, the scene fades to him walking into the CIC where every dead character is squeezed in waiting to great him. Laura is there and they embrace Jack and Rose style. Scooby Doo ending Starbuck pulls off her face and it’s Cavill. I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you medling humans. Disney ending The main cast runs singing through the fields of Earth surrounded by cartoon bluebirds and shit. Saving Private Ryan ending Baltar, Six and Hera escape in the last remaining Raptor to Earth. Adama tells Baltar to “earn this” as Galactica and Cylon ship explode. Star Trek ending Of all the Cylons…he was the most…human V: The Final Battle Ending Hera uses her magic Star Child powers to absorb the radiation from the Cylon colonies self destruct mechanism, saving everyone. Tarantino Ending Everyone kills each other during the final standoff in the CIC. ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/8 "2009-03-23T15:00:56Z")
I think it ended just about exactly as it should have. They got a happy ending. Everybody dies. And all the stuff they’d been saying had been going on all along, turns out to have been going on all along. It was a fake-fakeout. That was left with _just_ the right amount of ambiguity. It is the _rest_ of the stuff that should have been more ambiguous. All the goofy fans are obsessing over nits to pick, about abandoning technology, or other crap. All irrelevant to what was important about the finale: Everybody got a happy ending. Then they died. The end. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/9 "2009-03-23T15:18:42Z")
> [@equinoxi](#): > > Great show but not satisfy with the ending. I prefer Hera being the sole survival ended up on planet earth that we know of. Being a child it will be more of a clean slate and it will also reinforce her importance on the whole scheme of things. > > One way for that to happen, they could easily have the BSG exploded killing everybody there, shortly after their final jump, but perhaps before explosion, someone could have put Hera on some pod that ended on Earth. As for the rest of the fleets, they were lost in contact forever. That would be a better ending and scrap all that monotheistic angel crap and have Baltar died in some horrible death. I’m not saying that you haven’t, in this post, conclusively proven yourself to be a better writer than the team that has produced four years of one of the best television shows in recent memory, but I will say that I’ll stick with what we were given, thanks anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/10 "2009-03-23T15:18:56Z")
> [@Lightray](#): > > Everybody got a happy ending. Then they died. The end. Heh. For certain values of “everybody”. Poor Cavil. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/11 "2009-03-23T15:36:16Z")
I’m not even sure that Cavil got a bad ending. After all, life was pretty much one constant aggravation to him. And he got rid of his aggravation on his own terms. No worse than the end that Galen took for himself. D’Anna kinda got a suck ending, but not in the finale. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/12 "2009-03-23T15:48:31Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I…Saving Private Ryan ending > Baltar, Six and Hera escape in the last remaining Raptor to Earth. Adama tells Baltar to “earn this” as Galactica and Cylon ship explode… That actually could have worked, but I would still have flash forwarded 150K years to the present day. However instead of Baltar & Six it could just be a random college professor lecturing about Mitochondrial Eve. Then cut to the robot montage. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/13 "2009-03-23T16:00:34Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > That actually could have worked, but I would still have flash forwarded 150K years to the present day. However instead of Baltar & Six it could just be a random college professor lecturing about Mitochondrial Eve. Then cut to the robot montage. But it showed definitively, 100%, that the Head People weren’t just figments of Six’s and Baltar’s imaginations. They were really, truly, external beings. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/14 "2009-03-23T16:11:57Z")
I thought the ending was about the best that could be done with the implication throughout the series that Hera was “special” in some way, and resolving the visions of Baltar and Six. (“Special” considering the original meaning of the word, not that she rode on the short yellow Raptor to school.) How I would have ended it: they land in the Earth of 12,000-15,000 years BCE, on a large island in the Atlantic Ocean. Humans are on the planet, but they’re still tribal. The BSG humans and Cylons settle the island, bringing their technology with them. It turns out the island is Atlantis. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/15 "2009-03-23T17:29:43Z")
> [@Lightray](#): > > I’m not even sure that Cavil got a bad ending. After all, life was pretty much one constant aggravation to him. And he got rid of his aggravation on his own terms. No worse than the end that Galen took for himself. Cavil’s ending was great. Basically he’s like “AHHHH FRACK THIS SHIT!!!” ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/16 "2009-03-23T18:27:53Z")
Who would have guessed that the Galactica was the “B Ark” with all the middle managers, telephone sanitizers and other unnecesary folks? All it needed was for someone to realize that the answer to all their problems was “42.” ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/17 "2009-03-23T18:47:21Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > Who would have guessed that the Galactica was the “B Ark” with all the middle managers, telephone sanitizers and other unnecesary folks? All it needed was for someone to realize that the answer to all their problems was “42.” C’mon, we’ve been complaining for _years_ about the absurd number of journalists in the fleet. That handwriting was on the wall _long_ ago. ---
**Author:** ![Prox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/da6949/32.png) [@Prox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prox)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/18 "2009-03-23T19:05:07Z")
I thought the ending was good, too. I wish the writers were able to come up with a more satisfying end for Starbuck though. Perhaps she gets mortally wounded during the CIC fight but manages to jump Galactica. On her death bed, she can give her speech to Lee and tell him she’s not coming back this time. I’m not really a writer, but I think something like that would be more satisfying then Starbuck just disappearing. I’m of two minds about the coda. I thought it was fun, and give a nice explanation point on the importance of Hera, but the robot montage wasn’t that great. And like I said in the other thread, I thought Adama looking over his valley was a great shot to end the series with. ---
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/19 "2009-03-23T19:53:18Z")
> [@Snickers](#): > > So you’re going to have one little four-year-old girl, in a pod, on Earth, by herself. That’s going to make for an uplifting ending, sure. 10 bucks says she dies in a week. Nah the closing shot would have been the pod doors opening and Hera looking out at a pack of dingo’s ---
**Author:** ![kasuo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8c91f0/32.png) [@kasuo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kasuo)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434/20 "2009-03-23T20:16:54Z")
> [@Critical1](#): > > Nah the closing shot would have been the pod doors opening and Hera looking out at a pack of dingo’s But then the dingos would eat her and Athena would have to talk with an Aussie accent. I would’ve thought the pounding that the Galactica took from the Cylon’s colony ships mounted guns should’ve utterly destroyed her quickly, especially given the Fives’ slow response to getting Anders!Hackbot online. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-battlestar-galactica-should-have-ended/490434.md?page=2)