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Battlestar Galactica's End Officially After Season 4
Ant writes "First it was off, and then it was back on. Yahoo is now reporting on a release put out by David Eick and Ronald Moore stating that they will conclude Battlestar Galactica at the end of Season 4. They said it was a creative decision, and that they wanted to end the show on their own terms. The show was always planned with a definite beginning, middle and end, unlike many other sci-fi shows and dramas. Sci Fi Channel has accepted the decision. The news had been foreshadowed this spring through statements from stars Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff. Ronald Moore himself had said that the show was heading into its final act, although he said the final act could be one or two more seasons. Now we know that the final act will last for one season. The special 2-hr. episode 'Razor' starts off the season in November. The first regular episodes of Season 4 will air in early 2008."
It was starting to drag near the middle of last season, I'm glad to see they've identified an endpoint. It'd have been a shame to have to watch that show go into the toilet -- better to burn twice as bright for my viewing amusement.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Interesting. I wonder what the end game is going to be?
My money is on "Earth is the Cylon home world" or something similarly devious.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
The entire thing has been awesome, with no detectable dragging at all. There has been, on the other hand, plenty of unjustified whining by fans who don't have and shouldn't have creative control over the show.
Unlike some people, I remember when sci-fi on TV was truly awful, for example, 1979.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
It's always good when shows like this _end_ eventually, rather than being cut once the authors run out of random reasons not to get the the goal. Four seasons is an excellent length for this series, and I hope it ends strongly. Or we could have season 5: The cylon invasion of earth.... followed by season six: the escape from earth to find _new heavenly homeworld_ ... and the cycle continues.
Once they found earth the jig was up. If it was a more primitive earth, the cylons would pound them into the ground and it would all be over, a technologically equal earth and they would likely be outnumbered by the cylons and pounded again (thanks guys for coming and bringing all your enemies along!), a more techologically advanced earth would have pounded the cylons and then assimilated the newcomers onto their society. Trying to drag it out after any of these scenarios would have dragged down the series and alas, it would have sucked.
They have a chance to go out on a high note and I am glad to see they are taking it. Sad, but I was p.o.ed that Deadwood and Rome ended too. There is precious little quality TV out there and the best series are winding down. I will be sad to see the Wire go too. Hopefully all these guys will give us some new quality series.
FRACK! This leaves a big whole in the Sci-Fi channel line up.
A big whole what?
This guy's the limit!
Sure, they may have planned the series to be exactly that long, but I doubt it. After all, these great creative visions tend to go out the window when the money starts rolling in. Any series with a planned timeline will have that timeline stretched with all sorts of filler if the show is popular enough. They start talking up the timeline again when the ratings slip.
The best recent example of this is Lost. That is another show that supposedly had the entire plot (beginning, middle, end) mapped out from the beginning. However, the show became a huge hit, and everything got stretched out to where a large chunk of the episodes are basically filler that doesn't actually move the story forward at all. Now that ratings are declining, they've put an end date on it. However, had the ratings not slipped, I guarantee they would not be talking about end dates now. In my opinion, the show has dragged on at least a season and a half longer than it should have, and it still have 3 more years to go.
Right... were they tired of making money? Or maybe they didn't make any money for the network? That seems more likely. So they creatively decided to stop the series because there were no interest from advertisers.
Sorry, I call shenanigan on the "it was a creative decision" bullshit. It's a business.
SciFi has really shot themselves in the foot by letting this series go.
Keeping a good series on too long can turn it to crap. I like Galactica, but I'm not as excited about it as I was in seasons 1 and 2. As an example, the long, overdone Starbuck/Apollo melodrama has worn thin for me. With a finite time span, the series will likely tighten up and regain some of the focus I feel it lost in season 3.
Also, hanging on to an idea after it has outlived its usefulness is what makes so many viewers disgusted with the studios in the first place. Instead of churning out more of the same thing ("Hey, the Die Hard movies raked in dough, so let's make another one!"), studios need to keep experimenting. If SciFi takes the HBO approach, and isn't afraid to kill off shows *before* they get crappy, they'll be doing the smart thing, rather than shooting themselves in the foot.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Definitely seems like a plausible end. It might not be sentimentally satisfying, but it could be done in a very poignant way.
And they're finally going to let the writers in on it!
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You apparently don't know that many geniuses.... neurotic, nutso, emo, and unstable is not as uncommon as one thinks
Set out from the get-go to make the show X seasons (preferably 2-5) and end it, especially if the show involves a quest or mystery. American network TV needs to get out of that "milk it for as much money as possible, then cancel it with no resolution as soon as the ratings drop" mentality and realize that they can make a lot more money in the long run if the quality of their shows remains CONSISTENTLY high.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Old enough to remember watching the original series on TV, I was thrilled with the mini-series, and Season 1 was solid drama with fantastic characterization. Season 2 started strong, but aside from the odd bit of goodness appearing at random, I'd say the show got pretty sketchy after the whole Pegasus thing.
Making it worse, the entire New Caprica plot line which ended the second season went absolutely nowhere, and the spent the rest of the third season hitting a big red reset button which pretty much rewound us to the point right after the mid-season 2 Pegasus arc. Yippe, I love watching a season and a half of TV where the producers produce random plotlines, and Adama and Rosyln, who had previously been inspired characters, were written as "stupid" and thus even the character drama was removed as well.
A real shame in my opinion; however, I'm happy to hear the fourth season will be their last. Perhaps that will inspire them to tell an actual story and we'll end up with a decent finish (and I can just go on ignoring all content between mid-season 2 and the final season =).
--
~AC
I was on the fence to whether I'd tune in again after that disastrous season finale. It all came down to whether next season would be it's last or now. If I heard they were going for five seasons, I wasn't gonna bother with the fourth. But now I'd like to see how they're going to finish things up.
This show had some great moments. Even season 3 had some good ones. Exodus Pt. II was one of the finest hours in TV history. But RDM clearly had no idea of where he wanted to go with this show. Making those people (in the finale) into Cylons, based on a decision made halfway through season 3, just kind invalidated everything that came before to me. And the idea of pulling the lyrics for "All Along the Watchtower" out of the "ethereal mix" that we're all tapped into was just too stupid for me to ever look at this as a good show again (I read that one in an interview). Some people are just blown away by any manufactured twist. I prefer a degree of coherence to my storylines.
Unfortunately, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, BOTH fleets are eaten by a small dog.
There's a Cylon troop transport luring her there.
She's been declared dead and was saved by a Cylon ship before.
One of the Leobens is obsessed with getting Starbuck to fall in love with him.
Her henpit pressure had equalized to the atmospheric level due to the hole in her windshield.
She holds on to the very last second, and only when her ship breaks apart do we see her throw her brace for it.
Due to the documentary-style special effects, the shaking camera put her viper at the top of the screen when it explodes.
It's weird how many people believe what the characters are telling themselves (she's dead, Jim) rather than what the filmmakers are deliberately showing us (stuff the characters don't know, but we were shown requires far more effort in prop making, filming and editing than stuff people say).
You can't take the sky from me...
Spoiler, BSG is nothing more than a Cylon social experiment. The 12 colonies are long dead. The first show led to the death of the humans. All the humans and cylon models are really just computers set up in a situation that happened long ago ( the first show ) to try to see if they can find earth the same way the old humans did if they really believe they are human.
Zap, theres season 5 6 7. Humans fighting future cylons. Thats the only way the series could possibly continue. New cast and all. With cameos of every character to ever be on bsg.
As long as Starbuck doesn't find Patrick Duffy in her shower, we'll be fine.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The entire "New Caprica" plot line was pointless if you asked me. Everything in it was predictable with no real insight into the characters and avoiding any real issues. For Example, We never got to see Baltar act as the President on his own. For all the Cylons actions we never really got any insight on WHY they are doing what they are doing. They turned the cylons "with a plan" into simple thugs being brutal just to be brutal.
Frankly for me the show has never lived up to what Season One produced. The show had direction then, to me it lacks it now.
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You have completely refuted my post with your laser-like focus on the matter at issue.
To be honest with you, I was pretty happy watching BSG, until they decided midway through this season that they were willing to sacrifice consistency of the characters and sensible plotting in service of the mythology.
The season 2 finale shook everything up in a way that was dramatic, but completely organic. It made sense that things happened the way they did, and so it was genuinely suspenseful. The season 3 finale, on the other hand, pissed away the arc about Baltar on trial with a well-delivered, but legally irrelevant speech from Apollo, and then tried to manufacture suspense by creating the 'cliffhanger' of whether or not half the cast are really Cylons.
I sat grimly through half a season of filler episodes on child labor, and busted airlocks, but the finale was too much. Hopefully the final season will turn things around.
If I were a writer, I'd have the following plotlines going on:
Wild Guess #1
The 4 cylons who were "activated" in the season 3 finale try to kill Hera, while continuing to enable Galactica to locate Earth (ultimately with the goal to obliterate it). The reasoning could be that the 4 were activated to "correct" the pro-human behavior that the cylons have been exhibiting, and keep the cylon goal of human extermination on track. Each of the 4 has risen to a unique position of power that allows them to enable the humans on their quest for Earth, and gives them direct insight into cylon-human relations. The 4 would essentially be considered a planned countermeasure to insure the initial cylon groupthink.
Wild Guess #2 (Warning: Season 3 Spoiler)
Chief Tyrol's child may not actually be his. If it was his child, it would mean that there are two hybrid human-cylons that exist. If it is his child, and the 4 are actually attempting to kill Hera, it's likely that the Chief's child would also meet the same fate. If it actually isn't the Chief's child, it'd make an interesting episode to see how Tyrol reacts to it.
Wild Guess #3
There's still one last cylon model unaccounted for. My guess would be that this cylon is likely the one tasked with destroying Earth, and will likely not reveal him or herself until the final episodes.
Endings
Cool Ending #1:
They get to Earth, they find it's the cylon homeworld, and that they're all actually cylons. The truth is that the cylons successfully exterminated the human race thousands of years ago. The entire 12 colonies and the human-cylon struggle was an experiment (possibly one of many) that the cylons did to attempt to become "more human", and to attempt to understand what the human race went through the when the cylons succeeded the first time. They proceed to design and plan the next version of the experiment, to send out another 12 colonies to repeat the experiment. (It would explain why both humans and cylons both arrived at the temple when the supernova was going to blow, 'cause they were programmed to. It would also explain why baltar sees the cylon and occasionally "knows" things.)
Cool Ending #2:
They arrive at Earth, which is technologically advanced and populated by humans. The Earth humans reveal that the entire Battlestar contingent are actually all cylons (or the Earth humans just refuse to accept that they're human). The Earth humans essentially say, "This isn't the first time you cylons have tried to destroy Earth. Now all of you shoo (or we'll blast you), and stop trying to use our myths of the 12 lost colonies to obliterate our planet." (Alt Twist: The Battlestar crew is believed to be who they say they are, the last cylon activates and obliterates the race.)
Lame Ending:
They arrive at Earth, which is populated by humans, cylons and hybrids (or the remains of such a society is found), which magically causes the tension between the cylons and humans to dissappear and they live happily ever after.
But seriously, that whole "Cylons can haxx0r any network!!!" thing is such bullshit. If you don't have a port open to the outside world, the Cylons are not getting into your network. As it was explained to me by someone who worked on mission-critical military computers, everything is kept KISS. Your fire control system is your fire control system. It isn't on a box running twenty other applications, it's a dedicated system. There's nothing on there but the bare minimum of code required to generate the firing solutions, accept input, and run the display. The scope of the software and size of the codebase is limited enough that you can truly say it's pretty much debugged. Flight control systems are the same way. It's not like the civilian world where all you want is a computer to act as a print server so you have a default Windows install with all sorts of god knows what running in the background. A ship would still have laptops for writing reports, looking at video, pictures, etc, but none of that would be tied into the main mission-critical systems. Look at the space shuttle. You see the mission specialists may have brought along laptops to use in conjunction with their experiments on the mission but the flight control system is still segregated from all of that. With an internet connection to the ground, it would be completely possible for the laptop to catch a virus but it's going no further than the laptop.
Now I know what some people will say, the real world isn't always logical. We've all heard the story of the US Navy destroyer that had to be towed back to port because NT crashed the propulsion system. http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2100362/mole-pc
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Wow, congrats, you poked a whole in the premise behind made-up technology in a fictional universe. What will be your next trick? A thrilling deconstruction of the infeasibility of humaniform cylons? Maybe an exposition on the impossibility of FTL drives?
I'm going to have to ask you to kindly shut the frell up. Too right. What a smeghead.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It might depend on what you like about the show. I happen to think episodes like "And Maggie Makes Three" and "Lisa's First Word" are some of the best episodes of the entire series. And then there's "Homer the Great", "Kamp Krusty", and the many brilliant halloween episode skits. That was back in the day when they could pull off some insightful satire, and occasionally put out a truly heartfelt episode without it coming off corny. These days, it's mainly lowbrow humour and slapstick (though I hear, recently, they've been turning back to satire a bit).
How do you think she came back from the dead? I don't think she did.
I also don't think that the victims of cylon brainwashing (some of whom were alive during the first cylon war, before the cylons evolved into replicants) are cylons themselves.
I'll change my mind when they show me multiple copies (and not in a dream sequence).
You can't take the sky from me...
Or I could just mock your spelling but that might be a bit dickish.
Not to mention about as clever as your original post.
what about Pegasus then? How did it manage to survive? It was a modern ship and yet seemed to have networked computers. Clearly they managed to secure their networks because they survived encounters with the Cyclons.
They survived because they made a random FTL jump to the middle of nowhere and had time to figure out what went wrong (i.e. Six's virus in Baltar's program). They had also already been tipped off to the fact that something was wrong with their computers by the fact that the rest of the fleet had been slaughtered.
As implausible events go in BSG, the explanation here is one of the most sensible.
If they land on the planet, exhausted from battle and hoping to find a new home, only to get a snarled "The boat's full, we don't want any more aliens to steal our jobs".
Now that would be a way to end it with a bang!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
2- You just called Pythagoras "too stupid for you".
You can't take the sky from me...
Babylon 5 does not belong on that list. The show was planned for five seasons. Fox announced that they were canning it at the beginning of the fourth season, so the last two seasons were written into season four, then the show was moved to another network for a fifth season. The fourth season was, arguably, the best. The fifth season was not nearly as good, but you cannot blame the show being canceled when it was on the fifth season, as it had already been announced, before the season started, that the fifth season would be the last.
Rhapsody in Numbers
I'd pay money to see her find Claudia Black or Amanda Tapping in her shower though! ;-)
Season = future DVD set, natch.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
If they went touch screen/laptop/shiny happy ship we would be back to either (take your pick) USS Enterprise-D or the Battlestar Pegasus (or maybe Voyager may be a better comparison). These ships are top of the line, fully crewed with the cream of the fleet, with top notch systems, equipment and fighter craft.
Instead the writers chose to use the Galactica (otherwise known as The Bucket). A ship that was at the end of its life cycle, on antiquated equipment, about to be decommissioned, shut down, and two steps ahead of being used for target practice. The ship is crewed with the misfits, rejects and unwanted of the fleet (including Adama if you read between the lines in a couple of episodes). Things are broken, get fixed and life goes on without a refit.
The writers consciously decided to avoid the 'Star Trek Look'. I think it allows for better story telling.
I understand that any given ship, character, plot ticket or Checkov's gun only lasts as long as the writers want them to last. The writers do understand this: Filling the screen with needless shoot-em-ups will not advance the story. So the writers have to be able to balance many things on the head of a pin: All of the characters and their current moods/direction, the enemies mood/direction, the current status of the equipment everybody has, the goals that the different sides have. Everyone has to have an investment in the outcome, the 'good guys' the 'bad guys' and the audience. Plus the writers have to produce 20 episodes per season. If we're being gentle, that means one episode written every two weeks. That takes a lot of energy.
If you want a good comparison, try Babylon 5. It as written for television, had a five year run (the fifth year was weak, but that was because the fourth season crammed fifth season material in when they were under threat of cancellation). But look at how the show is paced and the battle sequences are used to propel the plot instead of being the excuse for the plot.
If I wanted to watch an hour of mindless violence with no plot, I'd watch Starcraft or Homeworld replays (retouched with BSG ships) stored as movies.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Dude...its BSG, not sex.
Leave the poor guy alone, he's married. BSG is as close as he's gonna get...
Why not watch the show? They explain all of this.
Gaius Baltar devised a brilliant new command and navigation program that was installed on all computers in the fleet. Six put in a backdoor in this program that allowed Cylons to r00t the new system and disable them. That's why the entire Colonial Fleet was sitting ducks, except for Galactica (because the "Old Man" refused to have the network computers needed to run the new software) and Pegasus (which was being refit and hadn't had the new software installed yet).
In other words, Watch The Fucking Show.
I bet if they used SFTP engines instead the cylons would have a harder time hacking into their computers.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I'm probably the lone dissenter here, but aside from the doctor episode, every one of those episodes you mentioned was fantastic. I particularly liked the boxing epidode; I thought it gave some wonderful character insights. I don't know what you guys are looking for in a sci-fi drama. Maybe you just like stuff to blow up. As far as I'm concerned, season three was damn near flawless.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
cat