io9 Exclusive: The Battlestar Galactica Finale You Didn't See
The Battlestar Galactica ending you saw last Friday wasn't the one that creator Ronald D. Moore originally had in mind. RDM told us how the show could have ended: with one pissed-off, grudge-holding cylon.
Besides the upcoming movies and Caprica would you ever revisit the Battlestar characters?
You know, you never say never - which I've really learned in this business... I can just tell you that there's no plan to do anything like that. There's not even like a notion in my head. Right now, there are no plans. But you never know.
Practically speaking, the sets have been destroyed, so there's no set to go shoot on, and that would be an enormous expense to recreate those sets. Now, I will tell you that we digitally archived all the sets top to bottom completely. So we have a virtual archive of Galactica, and all the sets and props and wardrobe and all of that. So you could theoretically go back and try and do something again. We just sort of did that and put it in the vault for later. But there's nothing that I can see that lends itself towards that. And when you see the finale, you'll know that we really do put a period at the end of the sentence, in terms of the story that we've been telling.
What about the endings that you brainstormed that didn't get made for BSG? Can you talk about those at all?
There was a different ending that we had, it was all about Ellen aboard the Colony. She was sort of turned by Cavil, because she found out that Tigh had impregnated Caprica Six, and that deeply embittered her. And she sort of became dedicated to the idea of destroying Galactica and the fleet out of revenge. And [she and Cavil] got Hera, and then the final confrontation became very personalized between Tigh versus Ellen, and should they forgive.
That was the story, generally speaking. We didn't have a lot more than just what I spun out to you, when the writer's strike hit. Over the course of the writer's strike, I rethought about it and thought, "That's not going to do it. It's not epic enough. It's not interesting enough." That's when we decided to start over, and reinvent the last arc of the show.
And I know it's not really fair to ask but really quick just curious, who's your favorite character on BSG?
Baltar. Baltar's probably my favorite character.
Were you ever worried when you started to spin that character off into the deep end, that you'd never be able to bring him back?
Yeah but that was always the challenge. I always liked doing that. I always wanted to kick him out, and then see if I could reel him back.
