Final Season of Battlestar Galactica Confirmed

Ant writes "Via Dark Horizons, IESB reported from the 10th annual Saturn awards yesterday, and spoke with Battlestar Galactica stars Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff. Olmos confirmed that, as far as the show that's been running so far, the fourth season will be the last one. It's currently slated to start airing in January of 2008. 'Olmos says "This will probably be the most extraordinary season of 'Battlestar'. It's the final season, so it's definitely going to be the most vicious. As far as we know, in respects of the way we have this show constructed, this is the final season." Sackhoff says "I think part of the problem is that it's an expensive show. It is [a great show], but we don't have the viewership that a great show should get."'"

Re:Why so expensive?

[SpiffyMarc]

Star Trek is SUPER cheap to produce! Have you actually watched those episodes?? Every planet is a series of caves!

Seriously though, Star Trek TV series have been notorious for having small budgets.

Re:You could see this coming

[jimstapleton]

I'd say Stargate and Dr. Who are good.

Of course, we can't hold SciFi accountable for Dr. Who since they can't touch it other than playing it, thank all that is good.

but seriously, when these go off the air, I'm probably just gonna ditch cable.

But there's so much left

[fearpi]

Having followed the show for the entire run, I can agree with all of these sentiments: that the show is one of the best on television, that the show hit a weak stretch in season 3, and that it may be best to keep the entire show strong to end it before it gets too long. The problem, however, in this case, is that Ronald D. Moore still has "two chapters" he wants to tell (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07085/770732-352.s tm [post-gazette.com]). Passage of time has been crucial to the show (especially the season 2 finale) and while it wouldn't be as bad as seeing nothing of consequence happen for long stretches of episodes (Star Treks), the show now runs the risk of having all that RDM wanted to happen over two seasons occur in the short span of one. True, it may give us a filler-free season, but the show's success is largely due to its believability - and that comes into jeopardy, I think, if the show and the Galactica herself comes an unbelievably long way in such a short amount of time.

Re:That's what you get

[hey hey hey]

morons whistling Hendrix in the bathroom

morons whistling Dylan in the bathroom

Hendrix is the just the most famous cover.

Re:Why is it that. all good things come to an end.

[CyberLord Seven]

Funny that you mention Lost because the four big US networks are now complaining that they have lost 2.5 million viewers since last Spring. It's not just Battlestar Galactica.

Mike Elgen over at Computerworld has a few ideas on where those viewers have gone. I don't know why so many have left so quickly but I'm sure it has something to do with the poor shows available. "Survivor", "American Idol". These are the shows with the highest ratings?

If you think things are bad on TV now, wait until June when the Writer's Guild of America West and East combine for the first time in a long while to get better contracts from the production studios. The Director's Guild and another couple of Guilds are lined up right after that. TV will be pretty poor for a long while I guess.

Won't bother me though. I watch very little besides BG and the canceled "Daybreak". And why should I when I have access to HD television and excellent shows such as "Planet Earth" on Discovery HD.

Re:you can always count on the Sci-Fi channel...

[Yonder Way]

Married With Children? Bad example. They ran it for ten years. And it did run out of steam at the end.

Re:That's what you get

[crabpeople]

I believe dylan gave the song to hendrix. I know he said he prefered it to his version and played the hendrix version exclusively after his death.

Re: flashback

[zero_offset]

Gaak. You can do a hell of a lot better than that. Tricia Helfer [livejournal.com]

Re:Parent is not Flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ron Moore has stated in his podcasts that the stand-alone episodes were a result of studio requests to make the show more accessible to new viewers. He also indicated that some of the episodes were set in fairly static environments because they had blown a great deal of their budget in the initial New Caprica episodes for Season 3.