Confirmed: Battlestar done after 4

I reported on May 11th (as did many places) that Edward James Olmos let slip that Sci Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica was going to wrap it up after just four unimpressive seasons. I'd like to make clear quickly that the first season was great, and the last season is likely to be stellar, it's just the middle that sucked, and the ratings agree with me.

Olmos was dead certain about this, he told iF Magazine (referring to what is shooting right now, but has not yet aired) that "We're heading into the final season. This is the final season as we speak." And it wasn't long before exec producer David Eick came out and flatly denied that the series was done, that no decision had been made, and that this wasn't the first time Olmos said something like this and that he's a bit of a kidder.

And now Eick is a bit of a liar.

"This show was always meant to have a beginning, a middle and, finally, an end," producers said. "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."

I find it so odd that a show so universally acclaimed by critics could have screwed it up so badly. Everyone talked about it as the best science fiction ever done on television (sorry, that honor belongs to Babylon 5) and even I would put it in the top 5, but it didn't have mass appeal. In fact, it didn't even have niche appeal. BSG is pulling in similar ratings to that of Stargate: SG-1, and that show was recently canceled after a record setting 10 seasons on the air, albeit on cable, not broadcast.

You can sit and dissect it for hours, but there's nothing to be gained. There's a TV movie coming that probably won't involve the main cast, Katee Sackhoff has already quit the show and moved on (she's now on NBC's Bionic Woman remake) and there's supposedly an original spinoff in the works called Caprica that is set before the famous events of the original series. That, by the way, is still very much up in the air right now.

Oddly, Eick is also an exec producer on Bionic Woman, and Ron Moore won't have trouble finding new work out there.

It's sad, but I'd rather see the show wrapped the way the showrunner wants, than to have it just cut off abruptly or have it slowly bleed to death. At least we'll get to see the end.

Topics: Television, Battlestar Galactica, David Eick, Ronald Moore