Spending many years on a sci-fi series can yield a bitter letdown when the characters’ tales reach their conclusion. We nerd out for an eternal with the characters, loving them in every twist and turn and space-time anomaly that the tale is responsible for. We love them and are then surprised, oh so very surprised, by the tale’s end.
The struggles of the cherished character through the major plot developments of an episode or installment add up to such a meager sum when the next generation, the next whatever, the next painfully predictable hook obliterates everything that has come before and prompts the viewer to question the very use of those plot developments. We ask aloud, as if doing so were justified, “Did the writer really not think of a better way out of the Big Problem that didn’t involve resorting to the next preempting storyline?”
I have had so many heated late-night discussions with fellow fans about this issue that I have long since lost count. We assemble and try to conceive of alternate conclusions that could have done our beloved characters right. We’re not seeking anything that resembles a fairy-tale finish; we want something that bears the gravitas of the character’s journey and seems to honor his or her path. For us, that seems to be a minimal requirement if one wishes to label something as great science fiction.
Let’s explore some of the characters in sci-fi who earned undeserved outcomes, whose fates still rub us the wrong way. We look back on what made them such admirable talents, the reasons why their endings anger us, and—because I can’t restrain myself—speculate on how their stories could have reached a more satisfying conclusion. If you have any ideas or rationales, I would love to hear them because we all share the fondness for this sci-fi community.
Characters Who Were Cheated – From Unfulfilled Potential to Different Outcomes
Battlestar Galactica’s William Adama – A Deserving Leader of Peace
First, there’s Commander William Adama, the very solid heart of Battlestar Galactica. He is a leader you would follow anywhere, even into a black hole! Adama is stoic and steadfast and fiercely protective of the people under his command. Yet, the character is so much more than just a space military leader archetype. And in so many ways, Adama embodies the premise of the series itself. He must face pressures most of us can hardly imagine and do his job with panache and presence. Because the only thing that might be worse than the No. 1 and No. 2 bad guys we meet in the first two episodes of the series is to have no one at the top to guide the last remnants of humanity through their desperate journey across the cosmos.
Nevertheless, when Battlestar Galactica came to a close, Adama’s fate appeared to be so unsatisfying, so “meh,” that it almost seemed to be penance for a character who we all agree once did what he had to do for us to have the kind of life we lead now. In the series finale, “Daybreak,” Adama gets banished to a new planet—Lawrence Welk-ian in its quietness—where he will live after humanity makes its decision to turn back the clock, to live free of all the trappings of hard science as well as “soft” science fully realized in “gadgets, gizmos, and space travel.
Fan Wishes: Many fans have proposed a divergent ending for the series in which Adama chooses not to be isolated but, rather, to embrace and rekindle the pathos-laden, father-son relationship he has with his son. In this proposed convergence, Adama leads the surviving crew members not to a forsaken rock in the middle of nowhere but to a “community, or something about being in close quarters,” as one fan put it. “To me, it honors everything about the season without making Adama’s character into some kind of anti-Moses figure.”
From Doctor Who, Rose Tyler—A Love Story with a Bittersweet Ending
Now, let us direct our focus to Rose Tyler, a companion who in 2005 opened up a completely new chapter of Doctor Who to a generation that had previously missed out on it. Rose was the companion of the Ninth Doctor and then the Tenth Doctor. The bond that formed between the Ninth Doctor and Rose was very close and, in many ways, reminiscent of a mother-and-son relationship. The Ninth Doctor shared with her, and only her, many of the deeper feelings he had bottled up since his own regeneration. Rose and the Ninth Doctor teased each other with a kind of humor that was extremely mother-and-son-like. Rose was more than a sidekick. She was the Doctor’s partner in and through so many fantastic and dangerous adventures.
In “Doomsday,” Rose finds herself in a parallel universe, but it’s not one she would have chosen to live in. This episode confines Rose to a world where the Doctor doesn’t exist, and even though she is eventually given a “happy” version of her future with the Doctor, the human, the sense of closure isn’t quite there; a good number of fans have noted that. I personally think this episode tries to give us a happy heal-over that isn’t quite deserved, and that typing the two of them together is a way of reasserting the show’s good-friend theme sans the unsavory elements of past episodes.
When it comes to the conclusion of Doctor Who’s Tenth Doctor era, fan theories abound. One of the most popular holds that the story could have ended differently—indeed, more imaginatively—if the writers had had the nerve to depart from the all-too-common “impossible love” trope. Instead of separating the Doctor and Rose by putting one of them in a parallel universe, the narrative could have allowed them to reunite across dimensions. Their meeting need not have been romantic. The essence of the Eleventh or Twelfth Doctor swinging back into Rose’s life for one last, zany adventure could have served as an odd closure for a duo whose resonance with fans made them too valuable to be literally and permanently separated.
Finn appeared poised to be one of the most engaging characters in the new Star Wars trilogy when The Force Awakens was released. His story as a turned stormtrooper offered something fresh for the franchise: an intergalactic soldier who, instead of charging onto a futuristic battlefield, ran the other way, a fellow who found courage in subterranean escape hatches rather than under a blaster-slinging command. By the time the second film, directed by Rian Johnson, came out, though, it felt as if the filmmakers had lost the thread on what made Finn so appealing in that first installment.
The concluding film cast Finn mostly to the sidelines, concentrating more on Rey’s lineage and Kylo Ren’s redemption than on Finn’s backstory and defection. If there were supposed to be suggestions of a strong bond between Finn and the Force, they never coalesced into anything of real substance. Finn and Rey seem to have some intense moments on Pasaana, but what was he trying to tell her, and what relevance could it possibly have in the future? Or is the future simply going to continue being what the last two years have been for Finn—a vague, understudied, and underutilized existence?
What fans wanted: An alternative take on The Rise of Skywalker that fully brings to blossom Finn’s Force connection. Instead of being a bland leader, imagine if he had become a leader for a new generation of individuals attuned to the Force—individuals who, like him, have been conditioned to reject the First Order’s doctorates in stormtrooper economics. This plot development could easily have added another layer to the story, and because Star Wars is supposed to embody the idea that the Force isn’t limited to a few elite families, it would have been perfect in that regard as well.
Naomi Nagata from The Expanse: A Survivor’s Tale That Wasn’t Resolved Enough
One of the most vibrant figures in the show The Expanse, Naomi Nagata is a character with such bravery, brilliance, and dynamism that she has captivated many fans of the show. As a character who is supposed to be representing a woman of science, Nagata is at least ostensibly one with whom we could believe a science fiction show would want to be aligned. But in what is now appearing to be an increasingly familiar pattern among the characters who could be designated as women of science in The Expanse, she is a character with whom many science fiction fans might have at least some trouble aligning.
Nevertheless, this is far from being the full account of Naomi. In fact, her character serves as an axis around which many of the vital themes that The Expanse confronts revolve.
What Fans Wanted: The Expanse’s fans have often collaborated to create a vision for a sequel that would explore the future of the Belt in the “post-Free Navy” era, with Naomi as a key player. While some of our imagined scenarios would have been pretty amazing on screen, we collectively see the following as a plot episode (or movie) worthy of fan service and, more importantly, a feasible “future” for Naomi and the Belt.
In our minds, this story takes place some years after the events of the season 6 finale, “Babylon’s Ashes.”
John Crichton from Farscape – A Hero’s Journey That Merited a Proper Conclusion
The classic fish-out-of-water story is John Crichton’s tale in Farscape. An astronaut, hurled through a wormhole into a part of the universe impossibly far from home, must confront bizarre alien species and perilous predicaments. But it isn’t just about survival. Crichton infuses the role with postmodern heroism. He brings humor and pathos to the part. His is a kind of almost noble determination and a fairly studious ascent to the leadership role that makes Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood look like a toy with a dad who funded only a boys’ club.
However, many fans believed that the Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars miniseries wrapped up Crichton’s character arc in a manner that seemed overly swift. Teeming with action and drenched in drama, the miniseries was nevertheless forced to condense what could have easily been a full season’s worth of narrative into a matter of hours. And that forced nature—of both the narrative and the characters within it—was much lamented by series devotees. Indeed, to some fans, what occurred in the miniseries was like a bad Farscape fanfiction nightmare come to life.
What the Viewers Yearned For: A bonus season would have been a wish come true, but just a handful of additional episodes could have afforded Farscape the narrative wherewithal to bestow upon John Crichton the farewell he was owed. Envision a final episode that gifted Crichton with a respite in his near-constant quest for a ridiculous amount of untold story time (aka his Copernican revolution at the end of Season 4). Still imagine what Farscape could have done (and was clearly capable of doing) with a limited budget and the same all-in, no-holds-barred attitude it brought to everything else.
Why Closure in Science Fiction Is Important Why We Invest in Finales – It’s About More Than Simply Tying Up a Narrative
The sci-fi genre’s endings are often not given enough attention in favor of their story’s origins or its middle portions. Yet they provide essential closure not just for the characters but also for the fans who have journeyed with them into futuristic landscapes and across the cosmos. With the audience’s investment in complex world-building, more care should be taken to craft the final act. It can have a huge impact on interpretation. And interpretation is what fans live for. Whether they be novels, graphic novels, or television programs, the universe’s audience craves understanding—closure in the movement from one part of the story to the next in a way that makes sense and resonates.
The ability to dream of worlds where anything can happen is what makes sci-fi magical. But this is not to say that any conclusion will suffice. A conclusion that wraps things up, resolves the plot, and ties up the themes—with a good story “message” or “meaning” to take home—tends to be celebrated as a good ending. In these moments of character closure, opportunity knocks. Why do the kinds of good endings that resolve anything with a nice bow make us feel good? Why do we often take them for granted or seldom notice them until they don’t happen?
Fan Theories and Alternate Endings Keep Stories Alive.
A truly wonderful facet of being part of the sci-fi fandom is the support that fans provide to story creators when they come up with unsatisfactory conclusions. Fans often go to great lengths, and indeed labor mightily, to make some sort of narrative sense out of what we might call the “less-than-definitive conclusions” that sci-fi stories seem to arrive at. They resolve themselves to the task of figuratively holding the creators of these stories up when said creators have apparently fallen short. Indeed, we would argue that this aspect of fandom shows the fans taking narrative ownership in some ways.
What we talk about concerning characters in sci-fi ensures that they last far longer than their movies or shows ever could. Even when a narrative doesn’t resolve in a satisfying way, if we keep making air quotes in conversation, that’s just a clear sign of how much we loved those characters. And let’s be real: doing these conversations is definitely keeping the spirit of sci-fi alive in 2023!
A Reflection on Why I Continue to Cling to These Narratives
The impact of a story’s ending is magnified when we consider how integral the characters are to our lives. They are with us during those hours we spend binging, during the long stretches of the day where they become our drivers, or during the breath-holding moments when we are just too close to parting with our reality. Fictional characters have accompanied many of us on those long drives and served as our only company. They matter. They have become entwined with our lives in ways few realize or are likely to dramatize. And when they do not receive an ending worthy of their part in our lives, when they go off not with a bang or a whimper but with a few unchosen words, it can feel like a gut punch and a poke at our innermost emotions.
This individual connection creates my desire for superior endings—not just for my sake but also for the sake of those individuals who deserved more resolution in the plot. They have done so much for the story—so is it too much to ask that they get an ending reflecting some peace and happiness?
The Reason We Will Continue to Pin Our Hopes on More Favorable Outcomes
What can we conclude from all this? Perhaps it’s that the characters who end up with something less than an ending we can accept will always occupy a space close to our hearts. We might even be saying that for us, these characters who are implored to behave in a way palatable for us are the ones whose outcomes we want corrected because, when we get right down to it, they deserve it. Or maybe what we should be thriving on is the idea that as long as there are fans, there are folks ready, willing, and able to dream up all sorts of wonderful what-might-have-beens.
Whether you follow Doctor Who, adore Star Wars, or are an unqualified fan of Farscape, we—together, each of us—constitute a union of love for the stories told within these franchises. We dissect their plots, lose our tempers over their frustrating twists, and moment by moment, wonder about what left our favorite characters at the end of the line in a place that can only be described as nowhere. The tools are at hand, as are the brains, and in half an hour or so, we’re capable of putting together a next installment. If there’s to be one. Or if there’s not to be one ever again. Either way, Farscape characters live forever in our minds.
If you have ideas about how Finn might have led a new order of Force-sensitive warriors or how Adama could have found a second act in his old age, let us hear them! For in the realms of science fiction, storytelling has become a renewable resource—a comic book that can be redone and done again until the end of time; a fan base that promises to push the universes we love into further imaginings.
