By Fred Topel | Image property of respective holders.
Battlestar Galactica
The announcement that the fourth season of Battlestar
Galactica will be its last has not quite filled fans with the glee
that Lost's end date has. For one, it's so soon. Second, people
actually want BSG to keep going. But series creator Ronald Moore
decided it was time to call it.
Ron Moore on Ending Battlestar Galactica
"I think it was somewhere around the midpoint of the season when we
were working on the story where they got to the algae planet and discovered
the temple," said Moore. "The temple gave Deanna a glimpse of
the final five and then that triggers the beacon that points the way to
earth. Sort of both of those events felt like you were promising the audience
that you were moving towards revelation. And indeed by the end of the season,
we had taken that moment and moved it to okay, we're going to reveal four
of the final five Cylons and one of our characters has actually been to
earth and seen it."
Perhaps Moore is avoiding going through Lost's season three doldrums
of "Are we still going anywhere?" "That was sort of probably
the moment when I think we started feeling like, 'You know, if we don't
start paying this off, if we don't really reveal those secrets and really
start moving in that direction, you get to a place where you're just feeling
like you're jerking off the audience or you're just treading water.' We
never wanted to be in that position. We wanted to always be striving forward
and always be pushing the show to its limits and not being afraid to move
onto the next part of the story. That was probably where it began."
As its most critically acclaimed show, the Sci
Fi Channel wasn't too eager to let go of Battlestar either. "There
was discussion of how long it should go on. To their credit, they were very
sensitive to what we wanted to do, creatively, on the show, since this came
from David [Eick] and I approaching them and saying, 'Look, we feel that
the show has reached its third act and that it’s about the resolution
of the series and we feel like the storyline is propelling us towards a
conclusion.' They asked us questions about why we felt that way, and they
understood the reasons and they wanted us to think about it for a while
and make sure that this was what we wanted to do, but they didn’t
really fight us on it. They expressed concern that the show might be able
to go on longer and they wanted to make sure that we weren’t passing
up opportunities to continue telling stories with the series, but they were
very accommodating. When David and I were very clear that this was what
we really, definitively wanted to do, they supported it."
Battlestar Galactica is now resuming production on season four.
Add to Heffee!
