At risk of James Blish accusing me of jumping into the duck-pond, I got a Problematic on the exile-fleet trope. Namely: do they need to be going from system-to-system looking for Earthlike planets?
That first planet has some REALLY weird fauna on it, but never mind all that. Why are they even looking at the planet? The overcrowded colony ship doesn't need a whole planet. At present it needs water (mainly), agricultural resources (phosphor, nitrogen, organics), and living-space. That means asteroids fit for hollowing into O'Neills, for anyone who'd stay there. A shipyard, and more ships. If anyone is entirely unwelcome in this star-system, they can take one of those ships and THEN strike out for the next place.
Battlestar Galactica is a special case here - in 2003ish anyway - because they had a democracy (of sorts) alongside the fleet. More to the point they were fleeing a (lost) Butlerian Jihad - no stealth in space! So when Tundra Planet In Nebula showed up, they took it. Similar may be said for Homeworld where, in fact, the mothership DOES try to mine resources.
A few generations settling the planetoids as BELTALOWDA, and building more [seed]ships, seems the smarter play than settling someone else's planet. Excuse me if that seems oddly leftwing to my readers.
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