I thought about the same kind of thing in Heroes. But if you strip a civilization of it's Telepaths, then make a world where the only breeding stock is telepaths, then you're essentially making a world of your own superiors that can re-enter your civilization at any time and muck with you or take you out as they see fit.

Besides, it HAS been don in SF, that's the whole ending of Space Seed in the original Trek and the resulting movie sequel, Wrath of Khan. the only twist was that the planet suffered some problems that prevented them from flourishing.

In Andromeda, the Nietzcheans were allowed to monitor their own genetic selections for generations making them essentially a superior race, one that threatened the entire galaxy, were it not for their own in-fighting.

Heck, you could say that BSG is about the same thing. They left the cylons alone after the first war where Humlons were developed and used to take out the society from the inside.

Gerard, I think your memory of B5 is pretty inaccurate. What you described definitely did not happen in the final two seasons.

That said, the comparison with Babylon 5 is useful since both were long stories told in episodic television. There were plot twists in B5 a well, but if one were to go back and view previous episodes, one realizes that these twists were planned well in advance; the ground work was set before hand: when Character A betrays Character B in season 5, the motives have clearly established in previous seasons. When the People of C turn out not to be as kind as once thought in Season 4, one realizes that it was hinted at practically the very beginning. When the planet of D falls into civil war, the tensions in that society were shown the first time we visit.

With BSG 2.0, Moore created a strong first two seasons, but by the last season had lost sight of the story he had begun in 2003.

The basic rules of storytelling are the same whether one is writing science-fiction or a family drama: The ending needs to make sense in the context of what came before; story elements that feature bear upon the ending need to be firmly established. Science-fiction isn't a license for the story not to make sense.

> If you remember, that's where the original faded out. On the arrival at Earth.

No, they never got to Earth in the original series. They got to Earth in the first episode of the deservedly-maligned spinoff, "Galactica 1980."