'The Battlestar Ending You Didn't See'

Another round of Battlestar endings you didn't see.

"There was a point in the development process where we discussed the idea of the Galactica not being destroyed, but having somehow landed on the surface more or less intact, but unable to ever get into orbit again (the particulars here were never worked out, so don't ask how she made it down without being torn apart). We talked about them basically abandoning the ship and moving out into the world.

"Cut to the present-day in Central America where there are these enormous mysterious mounds that archeologists have not been able to understand (it may have been South America, I can't recall the exact location, but these mounds really do exist). Someone is doing a new kind of survey of the mounds with some kind of ground-penetrating radar or something and lo and behold, we see the outlines of the Galactica still buried under the surface."

This version of the plot is pretty strongly suggested by what actually aired. When Galactica made its last jump and wound up crippled in orbit around the Moon, I thought this was exactly what we were going to get: Galactica crash-lands on primitive Earth while the rest of the fleet is just left out there, never to be heard from again. I was a little surprised when everyone else popped up.

Wound have made more sense, I think, than the version of the story where they just give up all technology voluntarily, with nary a dissenting voice...