Broken Frontier

Last Sunday fans witnessed the finale to the third season of Battlestar Galactica. The episode had more twists and turns than a Michael Jackson trial. In it we learned which characters may be Cylons, the fate of Giaus Baltar, and more news on the Battlestar’s search for Earth.

However, one of the biggest surprises of the finale came after the credits. Fans were shocked when SCI FI announced the show wouldn’t return until sometime around the end of 2007. After looking into the matter on the Sci-fi Channel’s website, I found this news announcement from March 22nd, two days prior to the finale:
“SCI FI has renewed Battlestar Galactica for a full fourth season, commissioning 22 hour-long episodes of "the best show on television." This will include a special two-hour extended event that will air during fourth quarter 2007 and be released on DVD by Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Production will resume in May with an eye toward an early 2008 season premiere.”

This isn’t the first time fans have been forced to wait for the popular science fiction show to return. Season two ended in March 2006 and the show didn’t return with season three until October. The seven-month hiatus was feared to be so long that the creators filmed web-isodes to air in between in hopes of keeping the attention of their fan-base.

For me this is an especially hard blow because I’ve been nothing but underwhelmed with the third season of Battlestar. It started out moderately interesting with Admiral Adama rescuing the human race from the Cylons on New Caprica. But the show and characters never seemed to recover from the events that transpired on that planet.

Is that realistic? Yes. Does it make for interesting television? Not really. The latest series finale was no exception. The twist where they reveal that four main characters might be Cylons seemed more like an afterthought than an important plot point.

Granted, there’s nothing really at risk here. Even if the weekly schedule doesn’t resume until January, fans will still return to watch the show. It’s not like the creators have money at stake. It’s just frustrating to make the fans wait for so long. This isn’t the kind of show that invites new viewers. The continuity ensures you have to watch every episode if you want to understand what’s going on. Perhaps what we’re seeing here is that the series’ creators are more focused on making money on the show when it makes it to DVD than they are on getting big ratings when the series originally airs.

Now I’m not stupid, making a show like this is expensive and time consuming. But why weren’t they filming the fourth season back when the third season first started airing? Was there really a moment when they weren’t sure if SCI FI was going to renew the series? I mean, it’s one of the most popular science fiction series in years and has gained lots of media attention.

I’m still curious what the significance is of the “two-hour extended event” SCI FI has promised us earlier this year. Is it going to be full of recap material trying to bring in new fans? Or is it going to be a gift to fans who were forced to endure such a huge gap?

I hope the writers have some great stories lined up for the next season. This one sure didn’t seem to have the punch the previous season-enders did. Will fans return? Yeah, probably. Will it be worth the wait? We’ll just have to find out early next year. But they better have something special planned to reward their fans for sticking around after a nine-month hiatus. So say we all.