Battlestar Galactica's Creator Had One Big Regret About The Sci-Fi Series' Ending

The fourth and final season of the reimagined "Battlestar Galactica" was the show's most divisive. Perhaps that was unavoidable given how "Galactica" had threaded long-running mysteries and philosophical questions throughout its run. When you keep the audience guessing for years, the resolutions can't satisfy them all.

The finale of "Battlestar Galactica," the three-part episode "Daybreak," leaves nothing to chance and no door unclosed. It gives answers and you can take them or leave them — there is an Earth, the God whispered about throughout the show is real (but remains unseen), and the series is set thousands of years in the past. The humans and humanoid Cylons are, collectively, the ancestors of modern mankind.

I interviewed several of the "Galactica" writers and cast members for the 15th anniversary of "Daybreak" in 2024, including co-creator David Eick. Despite how mixed fans have been on the episode over the years, the people who made it are satisfied where the journey ended. But with the benefit of hindsight, Eick's co-creator, Ronald D. Moore, thinks he may have ended it too thoroughly.

In a 2024 interview with Screen Rant, Moore said he wanted as definitive an ending as possible at the time. It's hard to get a firmer ending than having the show's titular spaceship fly into the sun! Moore elaborated:

"I said goodbye. To me, I wanted ['Battlestar Galactica'] to have a definitive ending. I felt strongly at the time that I didn't want to then try to put the gang back together later."

But absence makes the heart grow fonder. As he has spent more and more years without "Battlestar" and the team that made the show, that impossible reunion show looks more and more tempting. Moore continued: 

"There's a part of me that wishes I hadn't done that because how much fun would it be to work with [Edward James Olmos] again? How much fun would it be with Mary [McDonnell] and James [Callis], Katee [Sackhoff] and Tricia [Helfer], and all of them?"

Moore came up writing on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and then carried on to "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager." As he ran "Battlestar," which had a similar setting to "Star Trek," he saw a chance to make the big swings he never could on "Trek." Resource shortages? Religious and political disputes with no moralizing or easy answers? Character conflict? "Battlestar Galactica" had it all!

By "Galactica" season 3, Moore felt the show had reached its "third act" and the fourth would be the last. In another "Star Trek" comparison, think about how many "Trek" movies or shows end with the starship blasting off into warp, onto the next adventure. "Galactica" ends definitely with the characters' journeys resolved. They purposefully strand themselves on Earth, with only a future of quiet farming to look forward to. President Laura Roslin (McDonnell) finally succumbs to her cancer, while Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Sackhoff) vanishes, having fulfilled her destiny to lead her people to their promised land. Good luck doing a "Galactica" reunion without them!

I don't think anyone's idea of a "Galactica" reunion is Adam (Olmos) farming and living in a cabin on prehistoric Earth, but that's the only possibility "Daybreak" leaves open. The very last scene jumps ahead to modern times, by which point all the main characters are long dead and completely forgotten. The ending does hint the cycle of man vs. machine will repeat again, but that conflict would be so far removed from the "Galactica" fans knew as to not be connected at all.

So while Moore evidently misses his days working on "Galactica," he recognizes trying to tack on more would only detract from the show. "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," he explained to Screen Rant.

A constant refrain in "Battlestar Galactica" is that "All of this has happened before and will happen again." The show was a remake of an earlier 1970s sci-fi show. So far, attempts at "Galactica" prequels or spin-offs haven't taken. Maybe "Galactica" fans should be grateful that, for now, it's a rare genre franchise that actually got to say its piece and then rest, with no postscript needed.