"Yeah, that's about exactly what they say in the directors comments of S4 of B5"

Really? Well, cool. By the time it got to me, it was a chain of hearsay, so I'm glad to see it's survived relatively intact.

"That BSG ending you mention is pretty much exactly how the first series ended. They find earth, it doesn't have space travel, so to keep the cylons off earth's tail, they drop an advancement force on them and keep moving."

Nah, it had a key difference. "Earth" would be TREMENDOUSLY more powerful as a twist if it were only appearing at the very end*. So, no mention at all of a lost thirteenth colony, just the series doing its thing. All during the series, based on all sorts of hints, we are led to believe that this is somehow Earth's far future. Technology, lingo, religions, everything points to that, but nothing's ever stated. And then, at the last few minutes of the last episode, after a particularly harrowing escape, it's obvious the Fleet has managed to collect itself and work out a reasonable defense, but is now casting itself off into the stars and only THEN are we told that we are going to look for a final hidden home, a lost thirteenth colony that only exists in rumors and whispers -- a lost colony called Earth.

And THAT would be the end.

We should never actually find it with them, anymore than the castaways on Gilligan's Island must never actually be rescued.

"Surface, as a series had the distinct advantages of 1) alternate reality, and 2) limited run. They always knew it would be a one-season thing, so they /could/ make a major change. Plus, a critter like this in the modern world would be spotted in a minute, much faster than the story showed."

I didn't see indications that it was clearly an alternate reality. Out of curiosity, what indications were there?

And yes, the fact that people seemed ridiculously stupid about the existence of the critters was one of the things that annoyed me about it. Like I said, it had a lot of things that annoyed me**, but it was willing to Change The World as its ending. Before we started watching it, we read a LITTLE about it, and most people didn't like the ending, but (shrug) I think they just wanted something more Something Magical Solves The Problem as an ending.

I REALLY wish I'd seen the final episode of "Golden Years" as another example, because they set up a bunch of intriguing stuff, although I doubt they buttoned ANYTHING up.

"As for the ST endings you mention, they're frequently using a standard mystery plot device where the answer is revealed at the beginning in some fashion then evolved at the end."

No, not the ones I'm thinking of. It's kinda like Truman Capote's character in "Murder By Death", and how he was ranting at each and every one of the famous detectives for shitting on their readers by pulling resolutions out at the end that were NOT telegraphed in any way or solvable in any way upon retrospect.

Although I'll grant that sometimes a crap ending such as that can be redeemed by a line of dialogue near the beginning. Barely.

* For example, when "Planet of the Apes" was re-released on DVD, a scene was restored at the beginning that had Heston's character reviewing a chronometer and commenting on how thousands of years had passed (as well as lots of yakking about time distortion in his interminable monologue). Problem is, this TOTALLY spikes the twist at the end, and everyone guesses long before they actually see the monument. When it was originally released (as I dimly recall), we only started getting the idea this was a human "future" in the caverns, and only really got the gag when we saw the monument. The INSTANT we saw the monument, we could watch the whole movie again and it was all subtly different, but nothing actually contradicted it. In fact, I happen to really enjoy the "mystery" aspect of the whole first act, which slowly revealed more and more of this weird world.

** Maybe you and I are viewing the obvious breaks with physical reality differently in "Surface." For example, being able to magically pop to the surface in a matter of SECONDS from 10,000 feet or so isn't breaking the laws of physics in this world so much as it's simply bad-bad-bad writing. But, jeez, quibbling at the goofs in "Surface" is like shooting a barrel filled with magnetic fish. My point is just that what you may be seeing as evidence-of-an-alternate-reality I may be seeing as evidence-of-sloppy-work. 8)