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."

Good

[Skyshadow]

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.

Fascinating

[Erwos]

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.

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.

It was inevitable

[Bullfish]

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.

We always planned it this way!

[eln]

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.

"it was a creative decision"

[lbmouse]

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.

Not necessarily

[Infonaut]

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.

Earth has already wiped itself out...

[Etherwalk]

Definitely seems like a plausible end. It might not be sentimentally satisfying, but it could be done in a very poignant way.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a hard time making it through all the episodes. The show has such an unrealistic portrayal of the future!

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! WTF?!? ...just can't get past stuff like that... ...and don't even get me started on that episode where Starbuck crashes on that planet and manages to fix the crashed Cylon ship and return home with it...

Re:Jumped the robotic shark long time ago

[revlayle]

You apparently don't know that many geniuses.... neurotic, nutso, emo, and unstable is not as uncommon as one thinks

The Brits have it right--limited and focused

[elrous0]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Brits have the right idea about tight, limited series runs.

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.

parent is a [show x sucks] troll, but still...

[Scrameustache]

it was just some kind of CRAZY hallucination, like Starbuck really being dead!

We see her hand on the ejector seat lever.
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 [web-l.com].

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).

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

[twilight30]

Totally agreed. My favourite show currently in production, but Jesus, has it ever sucked the big one this season.

Tigh: I'm telling you, there's Cylon sabotage aboard this ship!
Adama: You're telling me there's sabotage? With music?
No, Colonel Tigh.
That sound you're hearing?
That's the sound of the writers pissing away three years of hard-won credibility in the space of seven minutes.

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.

Re:That's fine

[Abcd1234]

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).

Re:Prediction

[Scrameustache]

No, Kara Thrace is the 5th cylon.
How do you think she came back from the dead?

I don't think she did [slashdot.org].
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).

slashdotter smarter than the father of numbers?

[Scrameustache]

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

1- Just because they think they're cylons doesn't mean they're cylons.
2- You just called Pythagoras [wikipedia.org] "too stupid for you".

Re:That leaves only one question:

[Omestes]

Season = future DVD set, natch.

Re:Drag?

[Belial6]

I don't know what original series you were watching, but the Original Battlestar Galactica that I watched was dramatically better than the current slop they are feeding us. The Cylons looked better in the original. The ships looked better. The characters where more believable. The Cylon back story actually made sense. Heck, it took the original series until the universally panned 'Galactica 1980' for them to introduce the stupid idea of human looking Cylons. The only thing that the new series does better is create a gritty look, as opposed to the '70 'clean dirty' look.

Re:Good

[Zenaku]

Spoilers may follow.

I'll gladly recant if I'm wrong, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that Starbuck is the 5th of the final five, so we've seen them all.

And I think that sucks. Having 4 to 5 major characters (Okay, so Tory is not a major character and Anders is debatable) suddenly turn out to be cylons smacks of retcon to me, and it renders all their previous development with these characters flat and uninteresting. I'm mostly referring to Tigh's callous and unflinching bigotry towards the "Toasters," and the relationship between Tyrell and Sharon (Boomer/Valeri, not Athena/Agathon).

If I were to go back and watch season one and two again, this lame Shyamalanesque twist will have already polluted my perception, and those stories will seem meaningless, overpowered by the blunt graceless irony of "but HE'S A CYLON!"

I thought the end of season two was bad, but this is worse. It retroactively ruins parts of the series that were previously good.

Re:This whole season sucked IMO.

[Dasher42]

I disagree. If anything, you saw the Cylons running up against their own limitations and becoming confused. You had your hardliners and your doves, and even the doves were showing a level of arrogance that screamed "white man's burden". It was a change, and it wasn't what was visible before, and ultimately, it seems to me that we have a plan in action, but it's not as clear as it was when the Cylons were operating as machines. Far as I'm concerned, the overall story is still quite strong and the storyteller deserves a chance to make things unfold when and where he chooses, after which we can judge it. It's certainly good enough in the meanwhile.

Re:Fascinating

[Scrameustache]

Have you considered the implications of what we've seen of the Final Five?
Four of them are on Galactica.

I'm not so sure about that. My take is that those four have been brainwashed by the Cylons to think they're Cylons too (the XO can't be a Cylon, he was fighting them before they evolved into skinjobs).