A little over a week ago the new millennium reincarnation of "Battlestar Galactica" ended its four season run. Series finale. All questions answered. We will know the truth.

And it ended pretty much as the series had been pushing the story. Which pissed off a lot of people. And by a lot of people, I mean not that many because viewer-ship wasn't ever huge. But science fiction fans are a religious lot when it comes to their "stories," so there was a fair amount of chatter last week on the Internets about the end of all things.

I didn't start watching "Battlestar Galactica" until season three had finished broadcasting. I started getting Netflix to watch the series. The first month or so of that service was almost completely three hour chunks of the TV series. And then, right before season four started broadcasting, I watched season three in quick succession to catch up.

Needless to say, I got into this TV series. And the last half of the fourth season was phenomenal. Which probably made the end feel wrong. Because, when it came down to it, this ending had been telegraphed years before. So the thing that "Battlestar Galactica" was really good at (surprising the viewer) didn't happen in the finale. Or at least I wasn't surprised (except that the start time was bumped up an hour, which meant I had to wait for the second showing...making for a long Friday night of TV watching).

But what really gets at viewers with a series finale is inherent in its construction: it's the end. These characters are all dead (even the ones who survive after the last scene). There will be no more of this story.

And the withdrawal is what hurts. There is suddenly a hole created by the absence of these "friends" we'd been watching for years.

Most of the time I don't get to the end of a series. I watched "Friends" until Rachel got pregnant. I watched "90210" for a little bit (but started a few years in and quit a few years later). I watched "Cheers" till the end, but didn't make it through all of "Family Ties." "My So-Called Life" was rerun so many times (thanks MTV) that when I rented it from Netflix I knew almost every line of the series...which was a little scary. I watched the entire run of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," and that was a really good series. But that was it for the Star Trek universe for me. The movies, which ended the "Next Generation" series, became increasingly irrelevant. I did watch (eventually) all of the original and NG episodes because of afternoon reruns. But "Voyager" and "Enterprise?" I watched one episode each.

My favorite hour long TV series is "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I started watching it near the end of the first season. I'd loved the movie, and I wasn't sure if a TV show was necessary. And then I got sucked in. Immediately. And the episode I first saw didn't even have any vampires in it.

But by the end, I was ready for it to be over. Even though now, when I go back (I have the "Chosen" DVD collection and watch the entirety of the show once a year) I realize those last couple of seasons were pretty good. Even if the series could have ended after the fifth season (Buffy dies, you see...but being fantasy or science fiction or whatever it actually is, Buffy is brought back from the dead). I still mist up when Buffy takes that plunge. Or earlier in that season when her mom dies. And, yep, at the end of the last episode where the entire town of Sunnydale implodes.

But back to "Battlestar Galactica." The original 70s series I watched some (and even the second series when they are on our Earth in our time), but remembered nothing of except that the robots were clunky and they had mechanical dogs.

This BG show was lauded for being a mirror to our post-9/11 society. Which any good drama should be (although many, I assume, are not). And this series was certainly dramatic. Rarely was it funny. But it was relentless, much of the time, in exploring different human reactions to extraordinary events. And maybe that's part of what they were trying to say with the ending. Stopping a freight train is hard with just a few ropes, though.

I've read scientific explorations about what Earth might have been like when our intrepid Galactiers landed here at the end. And that maybe it was too easy to convince an entire civilization to give up their advanced technology to live amongst the lions and elephants. Or that it would be impossible for one little girl to be everyone's ancestor. And what was with all the "ghosts" and "angels" and Japanese robots?

But really, when it comes down to it, we didn't want to know the "truth." Or the answers to all the questions they stuffed into those last two plus hours. We wanted to keep watching it on Friday nights (or some other time if it was taped on a VCR, recorded on a Tivo, streamed on the Internet or viewed later on DVD). We didn't want the dance to end.

Don't stop believing, indeed.

Matt Worley definitely has a little Cylon in him.