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Science-fiction series always have a way of drawing viewers in by utilizing mystery boxes and various difficult-to-understand concepts. The mission is usually impossible, but more often than not, good triumphs over evil. The cases where that doesn’t happen, though, are where the true intrigue lies. Here are seven sci-fi shows with truly dark endings.
7) ALF
While the text above mentions how sitcoms and sci-fi shows can’t scratch the same itch, ALF is the one exception. The show revolves around an alien who crash-lands in California and moves in with a nice family. While ALF enjoys being on Earth, he really wants to return home, and he gets a chance in the show’s finale. However, the government captures him before he can depart. ALF was cancelled before it could resolve its cliffhanger, with a television film having to pick up the slack six years later.
6) 12 Monkeys
Syfy’s 12 Monkeys doesn’t seem like a show that belongs on this list. After travelling through time to save the world from a nasty plague orchestrated by the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, Cole gets to have his cake and eat it, too, by surviving the timeline change. However, the show’s seemingly happy ending may not be as cozy as it seems, as there is evidence that being an anomaly could create problems for Cole and the people he cares about down the line.
5) Blake’s 7
The most popular BBC sci-fi show, of course, is Doctor Who, which has its fair share of dark moments. However, none of them compares to the ending of Blake’s 7. After the leader of the show’s crew, Roj Blake, disappears, his former right-hand man, Kerr Avon, tracks him down in the last episode of series four. The reunion doesn’t go as planned, though, as Avon kills Blake and watches as the rest of the crew gets shot by Federation troops. The screen cuts to black before he bites it, but the implication is that he doesn’t survive the battle.
4) Battlestar Galactica
Fighting for survival is the name of the game in Battlestar Galactica. The war between humanity and the Cylons drives both species to near extinction, but they find common ground at the end of the show. After discovering a new Earth, everyone agrees to give up technology and restart society from the beginning. But the ending, while wholesome, fails to consider how hard things will be for all the survivors. The best they can hope for is that half of them survive the difficult conditions.
