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."

Comments

Drag?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

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.

Good...

[Magneon]

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.

You give them more credit than I do

[Anderson Council]

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

SPOILER - they reach earth, but...

[Stele]

Unfortunately, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, BOTH fleets are eaten by a small dog.

This whole season sucked IMO.

[nlinecomputers]

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.

Re:Good

[gobbo]

Sending pieces of paper around the ship as a futuristic method of communication??? And you gotta love how they use that 2D table top with the little plastic models of space ships to plan out their 3D space missions. Instead of using a computer for simulation, they move the ships around with their hands!

The entire premise for the show is that this museum piece, Galactica, was built in an age when humans were extremely paranoid about infected networks, as they nearly lost the previous war due to their computers being too powerful and thus, vulnerable to intelligent machines. Galactica is the only ship that survives the Cylon attack precisely because of its low-tech configuration, and it is their major playing card in strategic engagements. In their rebuilding efforts after taking damage, they struggle with this rule to keep it dumbed-down and non-networked. I take it you've missed some key episodes, like the pilot.

Re:Fascinating

[jollyreaper]

(BTW, if RDM reads this and I'm close to his master plan, then I want a hat.) The problem is that there IS NO PLAN. I wasn't sure at first but there have been enough interviews now. RDM and the writers are pulling everything out of their asses. If you think of everything JMS did with B5 to lay foreshadowing, plan payoffs years in advance, just imagine the opposite and you have the RDM approach. And what makes this so massively annoying is that RDM had previously mocked the slipshod "who gives a shit, it's just a show" approach taken by the Voyager producers.

For a show like this you can leave certain character reactions up in the air. Maybe a character will hold up through the events, maybe that character will crack. That's just like real life, you either make it or you don't. But by God, in real life your backstory is fixed. You don't find out you've got an unknown twin brother with an evil goatee, you don't find out your father is actually your arch enemy when it's already been established your mother and he weren't even on the same continent when you were conceived, etc. If there's some huge chain of events going on in the story like some massively complicated Illuminati plot, your understanding of it may change over the course of the story but the original motivation of the conspirators would not. Ok, you've got the cabal and they decide to do w, x, and y to bring about the fruition of z. That's all established. Now maybe some of the cabal decide that z ain't such a hot idea but that doesn't change what w and x were.

When you get right down to it, here are the facts about Galactica:
1. RDM assembled a great cast and crew who know how to put together a great-looking show.
2. His original idea extended no further than the miniseries
3. When the show was picked up for a full season, he set his horizon no further than the next episode
4. The only far-future plot element he had in mind for sure is that the Peggy would make an appearance.
5. Everything else is spitballing.

In other words, there is currently no explanation in mind for why:
1. The Cylons got religion in the first place.
2. What made them think attacking the Colonies would satisfy that religion.
3. What their motive is for pursuing the fleet
4. Why they want to breed when they are already capable of making clones.
5. Why the Cylons now want to find Earth
6. Why Cylons want to look human in the first place when they were fine as machines
7. How characters like Tigh, who was alive before the beginning of the first Cylon War and decades before skinjobs were invented, could in fact be a skinjob, especially when RDM already stated that skinjobs are not based on any preexisting colonial humans.

I'm absolutely convinced that when the final scene of the series finale is done, the Robot Chicken version of M. Night Sharmahoweverthefuckyouspellit will prance onto the screen and say "What a twist!" Either that or we'll get the singing/dancing alien from Space Balls.