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Battlestar Galactica Creator Reveals Biggest Regret About the Series Finale
For Ronald D. Moore, the story ended just fine… but saying ‘goodbye’ for good is never easy.
Criticism aside, it’s safe to say that the story-ending events of Battlestar Galactica were informed by a fair amount of deep science fiction thinking. Framing human history, across its wider lore, as a technologically vast tale of events that already had happened in Earth’s distant past, the acclaimed SYFY series’ finale episode managed to answer fans’ long-simmering questions — but in unexpected ways.
Like the famous “a long time ago” opening scroll that launched the Star Wars franchise, Battlestar Galactica reveals in its final, closing hours, that humanity’s spacefaring survival war against the Cylons is actually a saga from ancient days gone by. In that framing, the entire series amounts to a precursor struggle that afforded humans a chance at survival and at hitting a civilization-starting reset switch; one that would eventually birth a fictionalized version of the modern world we know.
Creator Ronald D. Moore: Battlestar Galactica needed ‘a definitive ending’
Despite serving up rapid answers for one of the most popular (and critically acclaimed) sci-fi series of all time, BSG’s ending did tie up most of the series’ loose ends — even as it puzzled some fans who’d hoped for a lengthier, more in-depth explanation of its larger storyline.
But it’s not the way the series's story ended that leaves creator Ronald D. Moore with any persisting pangs of regret these days. Rather, it’s the camaraderie and friendship that Battlestar Galactica forged among its cast and creative team — a group who came together, through four sensational seasons (and a miniseries) in the early 2000s — to produce an epic military sci-fi saga that’s still a standard-bearer for what the genre can be, at its best, on the small screen.
“To me, I wanted [Battlestar Galactica] to have a definitive ending,” Moore shared (via Screen Rant) during remarks at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. “I felt strongly at the time that I didn't want to then try to put the gang back together later on, so I destroyed the Galactica, sent this fleet into the sun, landed them on Earth, and said, ‘This is the end.’"
But, as he explained, there remains “a part of me that wishes I hadn't done that, because how much fun would it be to work with Eddie [Edward James Olmos as Cpt. William Adama] again? How much fun would it be with Mary [McDonnell, as President Laura Roslinand] James [Callis, as Dr. Gaius Baltar], Katee [Sackhoff, as Kara “Starbuck” Thrace] and Tricia [Helfer, as Cylon Number Six], and all of them? Now I'm going to forget their names, but I love all of them. There's a part of me that would have very much enjoyed doing that, but I feel like we said everything we wanted to say and we've gone off stage at the right point. I'm happy to leave that desire as our legacy.”
For now, that means we can only speculate on what BSG’s post-series future might’ve looked like — if only the finale had left Moore wishing for an added bit of closure.
In the meantime, if you're looking for a recent slice of thoughtful sci-fi themed around humanity’s space survival, hit up Peacock here to check out The Ark. Both seasons of the hit SYFY series are streaming now!
