Given what folks have said in the comboxes, I’m sure many are jazzed about tonight’s season finale for Battlestar Galactica.
It’s apparently got so much story in it that the show’s creators convinced the network to allow them to break out of the hour-long format and do a 90-minute finale (airing from 10-11:30 Eastern & Pacific).
I’m expecting a major clifffhanger at the end–if not a major rolling cliffhanger (that is, multiple cliffhangars involving different plot lines, piled on top of each other).
Last season we got a cliffhanger involving the sudden self-outing of Sharon as a Cylon in an out-of-the-blue act of extreme violence.
This year the cliffhanger may be even more intense. (The show’s creators like to top themselves.)
But it appears we’ll have to wait even longer to find out what happens on the other side of it.
And we may not find out on the Sci-Fi Channel at all.
Huh?
Here’s what’s going on: Normally Sci-Fi’s shows run 20 episode seasons, divided into two blocks of ten. The first 10 episodes air as a "summer season" and the second 10 episodes air as a winter season, starting in January. That’s the way SG-1 and Atlantis work, and it’s the way BGS has . . . until now.
Word is that Galactica will skip the "summer season" and will not start showing new episodes again UNTIL OCTOBER.
I am majorly unhappy about this.
I also wonder what it’ll do to the ratings of Sci-Fi’s Friday night lineup. Despite being last in the lineup of shows for that night, Galactica pulls higher ratings than SG-1 and Atlantis. That’s the OPPOSITE of what normally happens on a network: The lead-in shows get higher ratings, which then fall off as the evening wears on.
Galactica has been so good that it’s done the reverse. I’m sure that SG-1 and Atlantis have benefitted from this, with viewers deciding to tune in early since they’re committed to be there to see Galactica. But without Galactica in that 10 p.m. slot, the ratings for SG-1 and Atlantis may suffer, with viewers having less motivation to tune in.
(I know I’ll be less motivated to rush home after Friday night square dancing and tune in, meaning that I may not stay up for the replays of the Stargates and may instead just wait to see them on DVD.)
Why would Sci-Fi do this?
I don’t know. They may be trying to bring Galactica in line with the way TV series normally air their new shows, which have a fall premier and then play through spring, with a summer hiatus.
But there may be more to it than that.
SY-FY PORTAL IS REPORTING THAT NBC UNIVERSAL, WHICH OWNS SCI-FI, MAY BE MULLING WHETHER IT WANTS TO YANK GALACTICA OFF SCI-FI AND PUT IT ON NBC.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)
That’s a prospect that makes me distinctly . . . nervous.
Many have called BSG the best show on television, and I certainly think it stands up against the junk normally airing on the Big 3 networks (none of which I tune in to watch).
It’d be nice to see Galactica get the mainstream success that its quality merits.
But.
You need much bigger ratings to stay on the air on a major network than on a cable channel, and if Galactica’s ratings don’t take off fast, NBC could decide to pull the plug on the show . . . whereas it could have stayed on Sci-Fi for years and years and years. (Like SG-1.)
Also: NBC network executives could "take more of an interest" in BSG if it were promoted to the bigtime, meaning more interference with the way Ron Moore and his team have been running the show.
And since the suits at NBC don’t understand science fiction the way the suits at Sci-Fi presumably do, that could mean a lot of idiotic, ham-fisted interferences in the show . . . like the ones that killed Crusade.
So I’m nervous, and we’ll have to wait to see what happens.
Looks like there’s more than one Galactica-related cliffhanger afoot.
Jimmy,
Get Tivo, you’ll never regret it. I no longer adjust my schedule to meet the TV. The TV now adjusts it schedule for my convenience. I saw one advertised for $29.00 the other day. Trust me, you’ll love it.
They are using the summer slot for arguably the greatest sci-fi franchise of all time: Doctor Who. And based on the love the series has been getting overseas, Whovians in the midst of a two-decade-long drought (it’s hard to count the 90s TV movie) are about to have their thirst quenched in a big way. If nothing else, Galactica fans, please have mercy on those of us who have had to sit and wait while the new Who series rolled on without any broadcast in the U.S. If you can bring yourself to keep up the Friday viewership, it would be much appreciated (not to mention maybe preventing a move to NBC if there is a determined contingent of SciFi channel loyalists).
http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/
That photo is an advertisment for party life syndrome.ha ha.
I am a great lover of BG, too, and I also admit that I probably watch the StarGates because of BG. (This would not be true if Jack O’Neil and General Hammond were still regulars.)
I am concerned especially by the rumor that BG might be moved to NBC. I too fear that it would kill it.
On the other hand, I am looking forward to the Dr Who series. I remember the Tom Baker Dr Who series very fondly.
You usually rush home to watch sci-fi after square dancing? That’s inexcusable.
Now had you said that you rushed home to watch the detective channel (which we incidentally don’t get over here)I’d still be your friend 🙂
God Bless
NOW, i know why jimmy is SUCH a sci-fi fan. remember the MST3K line? “Whoa, space babes.”
NBC has a track record of taking successful cable shows that appeal to a niche and trying them out on broadcast TV. (See Queer Eye for the Straight Guy).
The ideal scenario is for NBC to give Galactica a well-hyped ten-week stint during the summer. It could be reruns of season 3, or it could be a first-run block of episodes with reruns planned later on Sci Fi. I don’t watch the show, so I don’t know if there is a reasonable “jumping on point” for new viewers to latch on to the show without needing a lot of backstory explained. A move might be more likely if it seems that creative forces appear to be shifting in a direction to provide that point.
If the show’s creators and the Sci Fi channel bosses are smart (remember how Farscape ended?), they will insist that NBC have a fallback strategy for devolving the show back to cable if it fails to get high enough ratings for broadcast television. The real danger in a move to NBC is probably not creative interference by the network, but the possibility that the show becomes too expensive to move back to cable if it doesn’t do well on NBC or too costly to continue if it initially does moderately well, but has a ratings decline after 1-2 seasons and has to be cancelled, when it could have run a decade on SF.
No, the problem with moving it to NBC is now you got NBC sticking it’s nose in on the program.
NBC: “Uh. Yeah, we’re going to have to do something about that Executive Decision on prohibiting abortion. Our female viewers may not tune in with that kind of issue. And we’re going to have to have a little more diversity on the show. Oh and all that talk about God? We dropped that when Little House was cancelled!”
Well I guess the upside is that we can finally watch BSG on HDTV. I guess I will have to lookup what channel NBC is on since I currenly have no idea.
NBC please don’t mess up BSG!
I too think that moving the show, which I have watched since the first season, could be a huge mistake. I had not heard that it may happen, and I hope it doesn’t. It is fascinating to see how much the show has deviated from the original. And waiting till October is going to cause me great pain.
I’m acutally kind of a weirdo, I love the two Stargates and like BSG too, but I would watch the Stargates w/o BSG. Nevertheless, I hope they don’t move BSG to NBC just as Jimmy said for all the reasons he said. It would probably wind up getting cancelled or interfered with.
Is the Sci-Fi channel going to bring in Enterprise? I would like that.
(Not that I heard they were going to do that, it would just be nice).
yeah, I hope BSG is on HDTV ASAP otherwise I’ll be stuck watching NBC without a TIVO… WTVR to that.
Thank you for changing to a smaller picture!
This probably isn’t the best thread to discuss this, but I just watched the season finale on tape and was a little disappointed. I won’t give any spoilers here, but I always get very uneasy when a television series changes the storyline drastically. They had a good thing going and this just seems to go overboard in shaking things up.
P.S. If they switch to NBC, will they still be able to use the dirty five-letter-word?!
I wonder if this is just a marketing ploy by Bonnie Hammer at SciFi. She’s on my short list of mediocre media people. I remember when she introduced programs out of order (to highlight the most suggestive episodes first) and other nonsense.
Sex with Cylon robots? Hmmm, where might that be covered in the CC?? Hmmm, “masterboting”?? :)))
Sex with Cylon robots?
Yeah, it’s covered. It’s called adultry.
With robots?
It’s artificial and contraceptive.
Jimmy, the Space Babe is gone. Now we just have a blonde on drugs.
Quick questions, were those Cylon “babes” with the “Pres” right before the bad news was announced? And did I hear correctly based on the vote count, that there are less than 50,000 of us remaining? Any idea how many Cylons there are? And what is the TV moral rating for BG?
And a comment: I haven’t watched BG for over a year but did watch the final for this year. It really was easy to fill in the parts I missed indicating the show is running low on innovation resulting in a waning veiwer base and possible cancellation.
Not so, Realist. If you tuned in to any TV series a year later, you would notice few changes. A couple characters might be with different people, or dead, but most shows would have the same sets, same basic plot, same characters with maybe an addition or two. Trust me, a lot happened.
There are less than 50,000 because of the you-know-what that happened to you-know-what.
You know? Toward the end? That thing that happened?
And I think it’s rated TV-MA, or whatever the adult rating is.
At least, if it isn’t, it should be.
“I’ll never forgive the Klingons for what they did. Klingons killed my son..”
.. I mean:
“I’ll never forgive Sci-Fi for what they did. Sci-Fi killed MST3K.”
And did I hear correctly based on the vote count, that there are less than 50,000 of us remaining?
I assume that there is a minimum age to vote, and the total pop would include people younger than that. Also, maybe criminals don’t have the right to vote.
Of course, even in the most important election in their history, some people will just be too lazy to vote.