“Don’t Underestimate the Desire For A Clean Slate” | Battlestar Galactica 

When you think of it, this is probably the most tragic story of all time. We literally witnessed the last years of a civilization.

I bet the group that landed within Australia only lasted for 2 months.

“There are those who believe that life here began out there…with tribes of humans…”

4 seasons to finally see Adama in viper.

While it's not the ending I would have chosen -- I'd have had them keep an emergency cache of advanced tech and supplies, and maybe one operable Raptor for each settlement, with the fleet "going dark" in the asteroid belt or maybe the Kuiper Belt -- I did find it to be oddly satisfying. Overall, this was a great series -- among the very best SF ever to grace the small screen, and it compares well with mainstream TV series, too.

I loved BSG! I love the way that this episode includes music from the original BSG--great music, hokey television show.

Seeing the Galactica flying into the sun is one of the saddest moments. All that history gone that like that.

A better ending would have been founding Atlantus, and after a period of time Atlantus being wiped out by some natural disaster. But by then the survivors as a whole had intigrated into the native people. They could still have done their modern ending. Dumping a bunch of city dwellers in the wilderness without training is a sure way for them to quickly end up dead. It took our ancesters a great deal of time to learn the skills needed to survive and these people wouldn't even have known what plants they could eat. Not to mention the native humans reaction to new compitition for their resources.

Years after this show, after so many thrilling re-watches of different scenes, this is the one that brought me to tears. William Adama is a man of honor. You can ask if he's a Cylon. It's before The Fall. We didn't know. He'll tolerate the silliness. You WILL NOT ask him if he's stolen money from a cash drawer. This is the man who led us to Earth. So Say We All.

This show is the best sci fi tv show ever. It was a complete masterpiece.

I miss this show so much

My idea for a better ending, with borrowed ideas from the game Homeworld: The colonials opt to move the fleet into parking orbit in one of Jupiter's many moons. The location of the fleet, plus every scrap of knowledge that could be accumulated, gets loaded into an archive. The archive is split into multiple fragments and scattered to every corner of Earth. In order to be fully decrypted, all the fragments must be found. They are paired with a radioactive beacon, something with a half-life of hundreds of thousands of years. If the colonials' descendants want to follow the ancients' footsteps to the stars, they'll have to cooperate. Thus the Fleet sleeps, until the day it may be needed again.

I miss this show.

I never understood the harsh criticism of this ending, it delivered all the emotional punch one could have ever hoped for and more. Ultimately, the writers had to pick a time; The Present had been done before in the original, the future would have been a headache, and for the distant past to work out you just have to somehow explain the space faring civilization away. The bittersweet conclusion to this story -to me at least- was the show staying true to itself, after all what set BSG apart was an acknowledgment of the unpredictable, unexpected and sometimes brutally unfair turns that life throws at you.

Such great writing on this show. I wanted it to go on forever.

Well, I think most people think about this ending the same way I do. It's just not smart to call it a "clean slate" when all you're really doing is to ensure that the coming generations forget everything and learn nothing from the past.

Thing is the ending probably wouldn't have been quite so bad if they just removed the "hey, there are already natives here!" bit. Only reason it was put in there was because of a line in like season 2 about how low the fleet population was getting but that was in large part down to it being a fleet and not having a planet to settle on.

Humans in this series up to this point made the cylons then fought them and made massive mistakes along the way, the cylons were made by humans then rebelled and ended up in a civil war making massive mistakes along the way. Many died, many sacrifices with more than a few "we f'd up" on both sides. Now that both sides have come together and taken account of everything and all that happened, they both realize that mistakes of the past are done, all they can do is learn and work together and move on. A big "ok people/cylons/all we all fracked up and messed up everything, let's make amends and move on from it together..."

No one may believe me, but when the series started, I predicted they would end up in the distant past of Earth. Arriving at too similar a moment in tech evolution would strain credulity. As for criticisms of them throwing away their technology, I'd argue 30,000 people is not enough to support all the specialisations required to maintain even a 1950s level, plus uncontrollable technological evolution was what got them into trouble in the first place...the thing was to break the cycle of violence decisively. They might have motored on for many generations at a 1860s level, lacking only the critical mass to industrialise, then encountered a pandemic or volcano and disappeared with little trace...150,000 years is a long long time.

So say we all!

I think the way it should have ended was when you see them fly past the moon and you see Earth. That would have been perfect.

Chief went to Scotland!??? No wonder that place is awesome!!!

And yet, somehow, nobody ever finds all those landing craft later? This is always the same problem with the Silurian Hypothesis, or any variation of it such as "Atlantis".

Gonna be honest I enjoyed the whole series and thought the ending was perfect to me

They should have saved some of the fleet for future generations. It would have made sense to keep the fleet in orbit of, say, Mars. Or just park the ships on the lunar surface facing Earth.

I would have gone with Doc Cottle, he had smokes….. seriously a great show but not the ending that I expected.

0:10 Nice to see thought went into the little details, the map here shoes the continental positions of earth at the time. Australia is basically formed and Europe and the Americas are in touching distance.

Ending is kind of od, all about ending the cycle yet it is how they got there in the first place Humanity advances its technology thinking it is not enough so they introduced automatons unaware of the dangers it could posses should they keep upgrading their machines Now if they kept the knowledge or even just pass it as a simple story in time would turn into a fairy tale, all the while keeping the fleet buried in a nearby planet, so that the future humans could piece things together and how to avoid whatever happened to their ancestors, maybe even be open to a more friendly approach first the Cylons and Centurions in the far future. Clean slate is great and all but if you are trying to avoid something in the future, this is not the way to go, infact imagine the Cylons coming back or Centurions expecting the now humans to be more open to them, but instead they get met by fearful humanity, fear of the unknown. But to each their own if some people prefer this ending then thats all good for me, there's just certain scenarios that I find lacking

La mejorvserie de ciencia ficcion de la historia de la television

Don't underestimate the willingness to write weak endings in order to make a plot device work.

If there is any cliff hanger story line plot possibilities here. It would be around 4 possible storylines.

Sad. I still miss the show. Sorry they pulled the plug.

Hey, a decendant of Adama ran a prison gang(American Me)!

Always hated this ending. Like really, bin all your meds (you can't make them any more) and tech (for the same reason). Vaporise the memory of everything that everyone that's been done...with out leaving a fracking time capsule or SOMETHING.

The people who complain that 1) it's stupid to just throw everything away and start over and 2) it's ridiculous that there were already humans there aren't even wrong, but both points are so minor in the show's narrative that it boggles my mind at how much it bothers them.

Would've been cooler if the fleet was left hiding behind the moon for the future humans to discover.

It should have been a map of Pangea on the table

If they'd seen a glimpse of 2023, they sure as hell would have made sure to keep at least one ship for the technology and information to remain.

The Drop Bears in Australia will wipe out most of them.

As someone who’s never watched this series, how is this at all happy?. It looks depressing. Granted I don’t need every sci fi to be Star Trek. But it be nice to have some hope. I’ve seen the last scene and it leads to our world being the way it is, which is still kinda sad and depressing.

This was a really stupid ending. it guaranteed to things. One that all the surviving colonists would be dead in twenty years. Two that the cycle would continue.

Ngl i cried so hard on this one

If this was 5,000 years ago instead of 150,000 this would have been fine

Battlestar Galactica clip -- upload 9 hours ago. WHAT YEAR IS IT?

I hated the ending. Knowing that we went through all the horrible wars we've had in our history.

So say we all

BSG ❤

This is such a bad ending throwing away all that knowledge just so there decendants can repeat the same mistakes in the future.

And throw away the lessons....

Why the didn't just park the Fleet on the Dark side of the moon is beyond me 🤷‍♂️

Tabula rasa

Perfection 😶

im rizal from indonesia and exlafator glaxsi

This was such a stupid ending for the show. Without advanced technology the "Earth" humans and/or the "Galactica" humans would be wiped out by a pathogen from the other group they had no immunity to.

This was the most stupid ending of a series. To went full stone age from space age.

Sending the ships into the sun was one of many bonehead decisions the writers choose to go with on this series. Can't say that this series was in my top 100 faves, but with all the money and time and effort being put into production, you'd have thought the writers could make an overriding reason to keep the Galactica in orbit, just in case. Suppose 6 months after all the ships are destroyed, they discovered an asteroid on a collision course with their new home. That asteroid wouldn't have to be a gigantic size to cause an extinction level event. Yeah, they'd be screwed then wouldn't they? Or, suppose there were other life forms other than the humans and the Cylons. What if these other aliens wanted Earth for themselves or the humans and their resources? Oh, screwed again because they have no way to defend themselves. Wanted to like this show so much but it was just too mediocre.

this is one of the DUMBEST endings i have ever seen..... there was absolutely no reason to have this Clean slate, this entire event would have been a incredibly important bookmark in human history, to be remembered what NOT to do ever again. but is all forgotten with humanity doomed to repeat the same mistakes, which was actually pointed out at the final scene.... and who the hell were these primitive humans? was the new earth a failed colony or something? so many questions left unanswered.... but yeah they could have rebuilt civilization working with the cylons an maybe dont stop at 12 colonies and DONT network your entire military lol

i think anders is one of, if not the, toughest member of galactica.

Worst ending of all time.