[discostu]

Why not? Killing one of the big characters ups the drama ante for the rest of the season because EVERYBODY becomes expendable. Also Eddie has a multifaceted career and has already impacted Galactica production schedule so he could do other stuff (no public grousing or complaining from Ron and company, just aknowledgement that they had to write around his being unavailable), so it could be that everybody had a sit down and decided to part ways (that's why Billy got killed off, Paul Campbell was getting lots of offers and all parties mutually agreed they were holding his career back keeping him on Galatica).

[af_vet_rr]

Good points, and actually Adama's death would make a lot of room for other characters to develop quite a bit, but I don't know that any of them could carry the show at this point. Having rewatched it, his character has picked the show up and put it on his back several times.

I would see Baltar being killed off before Adama, simply because Baltar has two friends - himself and Number 6 - everybody else wants him dead.