I know the answer ultimately lies in execution, and I’m guessing we can all agree we’d prefer to live in a sideways timeline where we get a great mind-frak of a show that ultimately delivers satisfactory answers to its questions. But…
Now that you’ve spent years devoted to mysterious shows and witnessed the finales…
What’d you ultimately prefer: Lost, with its answers? Or Battlestar, with its unresolved questions?
I love 'em both, but I thought Lost did a better job of putting bows on things, and I was satisfied with what they DID do pretty much across the board. Other than some things I considered trivial that were not addressed, I was content.
Not so much with BSG. I was dissatisfied with many of the character resolutions, and there were too many things that - in my mind - weren’t addressed directly at all. In the end I gave it up for Ronald D. Moore and his writing staff, but it took a lot more for me to do that than it should have.
Both rank higher than The Sopranos, though. 
I’m still a huge fan of both, even after their (controversial, but in my mind, pretty solid) finales, but I just see myself returning to Lost more often. I haven’t felt the need to rewatch BSG yet, but I can imagine starting one for Lost pretty soon.
BSG Hands down. The finale for me was very solid, and answered all the question that needed answering.
I know that I never got into Lost so my answer, without any question, is BSG. Even having not gotten into Lost I haven’t been living under a rock so I do now a little bit about it and it just didn’t do to much for me…Plus, I think that putting BSG against most anything in a forum like this will more times than not come out with a known answer… 
Lost was just an ‘ink blot test’, the finale said more about the viewer than it did about the show. The ending was whatever you made of it… IMHO
This is a hard one. I love both shows, but when push comes to shove I really, really, really love BSG. BSG left me with a lot of unanswered questions, which I still find myself thinking about.
With Lost there was a more satisfying resolution, which I was hoping for with BSG and did not get.
But - BSG affected me more deeply than Lost. And I love Lost so much so, that I’m starting a re-watch now.
Both show were brilliant and a wild ride !!
Going into to the final half-season of BSG, I think Ron Moore and it’s writers knew there was a lot of unanswered threads and questions and they said “First priority: how can we make this the most exciting, interesting, dramatic, epic and character-centric final set of episodes. Second: priority: Let’s answers many of the unanswered questions.” That was a smart choice, and I feel like then kept their first priority in mind to the end.
BSG was suited for a grand finale because the show’s whole premise is leading toward a final goal “Find Earth, or a a place called Earth”. The twist of finding the burned out “real” earth at the end of the 2nd season was a brilliant twist that kept the show on a different level of interesting.
I’m gonna keep my words about Lost short. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I was a never a huge fan of Lost. But I did watch it consistently the last three seasons. So take my opinion with a grain of salt:
The finale made me like the show less than I would have otherwise. And after thinking about it, I’m almost offended now about the whole notion of the show. The Boston Globe quipped in piece this past Sunday that Lost was “TV’s greatest Ponzi scheme ever.” Yeah, that’s how I feel too.
Answers matter.
I think BSG had a better ending than LOST, because LOST lacked a giant space battle at the end.
Lost should get some points for some pretty cool airplane explosion and crashes, dontcha think?
I’m not really agreeing with the whole premise of the poll, that Lost’s finale provided answers and BSG left us with questions.
Lost ended up answering what the Flash sideways was and they kind of resolved the Jacob and MIB mystery and what was in the island that made it special. Although they did most of that back in Across the Sea which was arguably the most controversial episode of the season. Personally I belong to the group that loved across the sea and was very satisfied by the answers we got in that episode and in the finale except for the scenes with Jack and Desmond at the heart of the island. Really didn’t like the whole cork thing, it became a bit too literal. But there are lots and lots of fans that really hated both and didn’t feel like they didn’t get any answers at all. Most of the questions that were answered were new questions from season 6. There are tons of questions left from previous seasons that at some point seemed extremely important that has since been completely abandoned. A lot of fans expected Lost to be an intelligent show where everything we saw throughout the series would be wrapped up in one big finale in the end, and instead the writers seem to have just abandoned a lot of the stuff we saw along the way. Like I said I really enjoyed the finale and it was very satisfying to me. But I can see the points of the many that are disappointed and I would definitely have loved the finale even more if they had tied in a lot more of the old mysteries. I’m looking forward to reading the encyclopedia that comes out which is supposed to answer several mysteries, and then re-watching the show again. But you shouldn’t have to buy a book to get answers.
With BSG I haven’t rewatched it since the finale, so it’s not exactly fresh in my mind. But I remember being incredibly satisfied with the finale, much more so than with the Lost finale. I loved how they started out with a big battle and then after that looking at the clock and realizing there were still a lot of time yet to say goodbye to all the characters on earth. I hadn’t seen that ending coming at all. The only thing that really pissed me off was Starbuck disappearing in thin air. I had definitely expected an answer to her story. I came into BSG kind of late and was never as deeply into the mythology of the show as I am with Lost, so maybe that’s why I don’t remember being left with a lot of questions about BSG. But it thought it was a really nice ending to the story that they ended up on Earth and we got a moment to say goodbye to each and every one of our beloved characters. I even really liked the whole Opera House scene although it probably wasn’t much of an answer.
Lost should get some points for some pretty cool airplane explosion and crashes, dontcha think?
Yes, but they didn’t have their longets and best airplane crash in the last episode like BSG had with space battles.
I’ve only seen one episode of Lost in its entirety (the finale), and voted for Lost.
BSG’s finale left me disappointed. (Kara! What the heck?)
I do wonder how someone with the opposite situation (watched all of Lost, but just the finale of BSG) would vote.
I do wonder how someone with the opposite situation (watched all of Lost, but just the finale of BSG) would vote.
Depends how much they like space battles.
For me, BSG. Somehow I was way more forgiving of mythical Starbucks than at the mythical well, almost everything on Lost. Even though I do absolutely still hate that BSG epilogue sequence.
And if I think about just how much time (almost 3 years!) the Lost writers had to plan out their end game, I enjoyed the BSG final season as a whole more than Lost’s final season as a whole.
But yeah, I don’t think Lost has so much answers as just the one “It’s Magic! It’s important to have FRIENDS! Good wins over Evil!” they used to answer everything with.
I haven’t seen Lost yet (on the queue…), but having just finished up a BSG rewatch, I really did like the ending. I found it, as I said elsewhere, immensely, deeply, emotionally satisfying. And that was good enough for me.