Posted on 06/01/2007 8:46:49 AM PDT by RabidBartender
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The upcoming fourth season of Sci Fi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica" will be its final one after all.
After months of speculation, the show's producers are set to make the announcement at a press conference Friday.
Ending "Battlestar" with the upcoming 22-episode fourth season was a creative decision made by the hit show's executive producers Ronald Moore and David Eick.
"This show was always meant to have a beginning, a middle and, finally, an end," Eick and Moore said in a statement Thursday. "Over the course of the last year, the story and the characters have been moving strongly toward that end, and we've decided to listen to those internal voices and conclude the show on our own terms. And while we know our fans will be saddened to know the end is coming, they should brace themselves for a wild ride getting there -- we're going out with a bang."
The fourth and final season of "Galactica" will kick off in November with "Razor," an extended two-hour episode, with the rest of the season slated to run beginning in early 2008.
Sci Fi executive vp original programming Mark Stern said the channel's brass "respect the producers' decision to end the series."
For months, Sci Fi had dispelled rumors about "Battlestar" ending its run after the fourth season.
A couple of weeks ago, one of the show's stars, Edward James Olmos, was quoted as saying that the upcoming batch of episodes were definitely the last ones. Sci Fi issued a statement denying such a decision had been made.
Now with SG1 and BSG gone, what will carry Sci-Fi? More Corin Nemec original movies? Painkiller Jane? Yeesh.
Personally, I think KevinDavis jinxed the show with post # 6 on this thread: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1784387/posts
:P
Knew that was coming the moment they canceled SG1 and had to move BSG to Sunday because of plummeting ratings. It’s really too bad, I’m a big fan of the science fiction genre, and watching that station destroy itself has been pretty painful.
SciFi seems to cancel EVERY show after four years— I think that’s their watershed, where they can make more money showing reruns vs. paying for new episodes. They did it with ‘Farscape,’ I believe they’ve done it with most of their series, regardless of how good the ratings might be.
SciFi are, IMHO, scum. I stopped watching their network after they cancelled MST3K.
BSG is VERY expensive to make, and they have already extended the 2 year story arc to 3+...
If you’ll notice the trends EVERYWHERE in Television, the trend is to make shows CHEAPER, ie-Reality shows, No cgi shows like Painkiller, etc....
I’m disappointed, but kinda glad. Had they left it up in the air, we might have had some wildly disjointed episodes that were simply filler material to the overall storylines. Forcing the writers/staff into a definite ending means the next season should be a lot tighter, which is good. I don’t watch Lost, but a lot of people complained that because it was open-ended to an extent, it was losing its way. I’m glad BSG won’t end up going down that road.
They never should have ended Farscape either...
More pro wrestling.
More straight-to-video movies, with cheesy "CGI" that looks like it was done on a Commodore 64.
I suspect the recent trend of having series released in two groups of episodes months apart also hurts ratings. I am sure that the “big brains” (maybe from Mars Attacks) think otherwise, but the gap makes it very difficult to maintain any enthusiasm for the shows.
Yes, my observation applied to the general practice, not just BG.
Just give me fresh eps of Doctor Who. And The 4400 is coming back soon.
The headline doesn’t match the story. Sci-Fi just upped the order from 13 to 22 they aren’t grounding BSG, Moore and Eick are grounding BSG. They had a story they wanted to tell and they’re wrapping it up. As for what will carry sci-fi, remember they still have Dresden, and Eureka and they’re starting a new Flash Gordon series based on the original comics. They actually have more new content owned by them than ever before.
SciFi didn’t cancel BSG, the headline is counter to the actual story. And as for canceling Farscape (which sucked and I’ve never figured out why so many people worship the show) and MST3K that was 2 or 3 owners ago. Kind of rough calling the current group scum because they’re letting a show end on the producers terms and because they took over a channel with some other cancelations.
A sadistic culture's dreamgirl, maybe, but not mine!
Chick with gun 
Except for the DRESDEN FILES, SciFi is now unwatchable. And they’ll probably cancel that, too. Gives them more money for their special effects budget on their Sat. night “SciFi Original” movies. And now they can send “Ghost Hunters” to other countries. The network’s a bad joke.
I like the redone mythos better than the original one. The original was just too campy for my taste.
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