Season 4 (2008-09)

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Summary

Presently set to air in the United States in March of 2008; this is the final season of the Re-imagined Series, where the last of the Final Five is revealed.

Story

General

• A two hour television movie, called "Razor" set during the events of Season 2 is slated to air on November 24, 2007. It has a framing story set after the destruction of Pegasus, but will be largely told via flashbacks to a time prior to "Pegasus" during Helena Cain's command.
• According to Katee Sackhoff, the Fleet will find Earth . Ron Moore also says, that Earth will be found and that there is a good chance of finding out in what state the planet is, but is being deliberately vague .
• Moore indicated that he will make his directorial debut in the second half of this season, although this is uncertain in lieu of the Writers Guild of America strike.

Character developments

• Katee Sackhoff is signed for this season . Additionally, Sackhoff herself mentions that her character is neither an illusion nor a Cylon. Although Sackhoff later mentions that Thrace believes she is a Cylon. Thrace also has a lot of material with Laura Roslin and the "Cylon ladies".
• The third episode of season four, "The Ties That Bind", will feature a "goodbye to another longtime character, though who that is and the manner of his or her departure should come as a surprise."
• Mark Sheppard has said that he will reprise his role as Romo Lampkin, but not for many episodes .
• Nana Visitor, known to genre viewers as Kira Nerys on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, will appear in the episode "Faith". She is playing a cancer patient named Emily who meets Laura Roslin in Galactica's sickbay. The two bond and eventually discuss matters of morality and faith. All of Visitor's scenes are with Mary McDonnell .
• According to reports from ComicCon and a radio show, Lee Adama will grow a beard and do more civilian things, Chief Tyrol will shave his head, and Admiral Adama will fly a Viper .
• Despite the Viper scene in "Crossroads, Part II", Lee Adama will not be returning to Galactica's ranks, but instead continue his own path as a civilian.
• According to a Season 4 promo, Starbuck will return to Galactica and try to lead the Colonials to Earth, but she is said to be a Cylon and is not taken seriously.
• Taylor mentions that Jake the dog will make a return this season.
• Taylor assured fans that the romantic polygon between Lee Adama-Anastasia Dualla-Kara Thrace-Samuel Anders was "pretty thoroughly" put to bed in Season 3 and will not be revisited again.
• As for Dualla, Taylor claimed that: "I think Dee is someone who wears more of her character on the surface. She’s basically a pretty straightforward, upbeat character, someone who says what’s on her mind and is honest about what she’s feeling. And maybe in the context of the show that makes her a bit less dark and tortured, and perhaps less compelling, than a character such as, say, her romantic nemesis in said polygon: Kara. However, I think we may find that even a personality such as Dee’s has its dark side. ‘Nuff said for now."
• Ellen Tigh will return this season, but she is not the final Cylon, and most of her scenes will be in the form of flashbacks as Saul Tigh attempts to deal with his actions on New Caprica in light of his self-revelation as a member of the Final Five.
• Sackhoff mentioned that "Revelations" could act as the series finale were the strike to continue for an inordinate amount of time, if need be.
• Jamie Bamber apparently slipped on the fact that Thrace's and Leoben Conoy's scenes in "Revelations", which are apparently set in a forest, are set on Earth.

Cylon developments

• Moore indicated that the last of the Final Five will be revealed this season.
• MediaBlvd Magazine reports that an early Season 4 episode will deal with a violent rebellion by Centurions against their humanoid masters, after some Centurions regain the intelligence that they lost through the enslavement by the humanoid models..
• Number Three, played by Lucy Lawless, will return for 2 or 3 episodes around episode 10, as revealed at ComicCon . In addition, she and Laura Roslin will have a face-to-face scene as "there is a lot more contact" between the Cylons and the humans.
• Additionally Boomer will, in Taylor's words, "be back, big time!"

Notes

• Moore indicates that this season begins the "third act in the three-act structure where we're all moving towards the finale and the climax of all these different plot lines. In my head there's two chapters to go in the story and those can be of varying lengths."
• On Friday, June 1st 2007 the SciFi Channel issued a statement saying that Season 4 is going to be the final season. Ending the series with the upcoming 22-episode fourth season was a creative decision made by the show's executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick. SciFi executive VP of original programming Mark Stern said the channel's brass "respect the producers' decision to end the series."
• According to the press release for the third season soundtrack released by La-La Land Records, the fourth season premiere was slated to air on Friday, January 11, 2008 on the US SciFi Channel. However, a spokesperson for the SciFi Channel issued a denial regarding the date to SyFy Portal's Michael Hinman, stating only that the show will premiere only in "early 2008" and that it was "not in January".
• It is unclear if the season will be split into two halves of 10 episodes each with a hiatus in between.
• After filming all producible scripts, the production went dark on 16 November 2007 due to the WGA strike.

Cast

Stars

• Edward James Olmos as William Adama
• Mary McDonnell as Laura Roslin
• Katee Sackhoff as Kara "Starbuck" Thrace
• Jamie Bamber as Lee "Apollo" Adama
• James Callis as Gaius Baltar
• Tricia Helfer as Number Six
• Grace Park as Sharon Agathon/Number Eight

Production Crew

Producers

• Ronald D. Moore - Developer / Executive Producer / Writer
• David Eick - Executive Producer
• Toni Graphia - Co-Executive Producer / Writer
• Harvey Frand - Producer
• Glen A. Larson - Consulting Producer

Directors & Writing Staff

To view the list of all the directors and staff, go to the Battlestar Galactica Crew Guide page.

Episodes

To view the list of episodes, go to the Battlestar Galactica Episode Guide page.

Official Statements

• Official SciFi.com Release
• Ronald D. Moore discusses planning the season:

It will be a serialized show to an extent. I think what we talked about with the network — because their concern is the drop-off in viewers and giving too many hurdles for new viewers to overcome to watch the show — we're always going to try to provide at least an episodic quality to each show. Even though there are plotlines that are ongoing over the course of the whole season, we'll try to give you something in each episode that you can hold on to that starts and stops within that episode.

• Moore discusses the Final Five:

Well, you can see from the end of the third season that they all sort of are still the same people. They're still the same characters. They didn't switch over and become robots suddenly. So essentially you're going to see an extension of that initial moment where they try to figure out what does this mean to them. If they're Cylons, when did that begin? What are their true backstories and what are they meant to do? What are they supposed to do? Are they dangerous to each other? Are they dangerous to the ship? Do they trust any of the people around them? Should they keep the secret only among themselves? That's essentially where their storylines are going to pick up.

• Moore discusses ending the series:

Yeah, I mean, the burden [in breaking 20 episodes for this season] then became okay, now we have a great deal to wrap up and bring resolution to and we wanted to pay off a lot of things and we wanted to tie up a lot of loose threads. It felt like we had more than enough to get to where we were going to, whereas usually when you're facing the 20 episode order, it's like, "Okay, whew, we need 20 of these? Where are we going to get 20 of these?" You have to start breaking it down into smaller, bite sized chunks and move yourself along. This time, it was almost like, "Okay, let's make sure we've got enough time to get everywhere we need to go."

• Katee Sackhoff tells what she can about this final season:

We will find Earth. And [my character, Kara Thrace is] not a figment of people's imaginations.

• Sackhoff discusses ending the series:

I'm happy about it. It is a choice that was made by us. The rug was not pulled out from underneath us. We're going out on a high, with our heads held high. We made the choice and we're going to be able to decide our end and our fate, instead of [having to] wrap it up as fast as we possibly can because we've been cancelled. And it was a smart thing to go out on a high. And you know, this is my fourth series. I think I've done more television than anyone else on the show, except maybe Eddie [James Olmos], because of Miami Vice. He's right there with me! But I've done s**tloads of television, and every single show the rug is pulled from out underneath you, and you're going, "What do I do now?" And this is such a great opportunity to wrap it up, say everything you want to say in your character, and put it to bed.

• David Weddle on the fourth season:

Brad and I wrote the opening episode of year four and we were up in Vancouver for its pre-production and some of the first few days of filming. The revelation at the end of last season of our four Cylons who didn't know they were Cylons has once again upset all the chess pieces. So the big challenges starting out this season are how do you play those characters going forward and track their emotional development, or unravelling as the case may be, in a way that's organic as well as genuine and not contrived. Also, as most people know, Starbuck reappeared in the final seconds of last year's finale, so there's also the question of how to deal with that character going forward. There are going to be lots of twists and turns this year. You're going to see our characters wrestling with tormenting problems and experiencing, perhaps, some rather jaw-dropping changes and evolutions. All the dynamics that you may have become used to on the Galactica ship itself will be in flux and we think, and hope, that's going to be tremendously fun to watch.

• Lucy Lawless on the cast and crew reaction behind the scenes:

Things seem great actually; far more comfortable than we did on Xena at this stage, but maybe it hasn’t hit them or maybe it’s an easy adjustment because there are so many of them and several of them are working on Bionic Woman. The mood is really great. I’m surprised how comfortable they are. Halfway through the last season of Xena, the cast tended to get snappish with one another, and I think it was just anxiety of not knowing where your mortgage payments were coming from. I think the writers’ strike is probably of more significance at this moment; than the end of the show. I don’t think it’s quite real to them yet.

• Michael Taylor discusses homosexuality in this season:

In Season 4, Battlestar will be the gayest show on television. Forget secret Cylons, all our characters will be revealed to be gay. We will even see gay Centurions and gay daggits. Actually, the daggits will object to the use of that term and will insist on simply being called dogs. And Season 4 will indeed see the return of a favorite dog, though not necessarily a gay dog… but, um, what was the question again?

Oh, right: Will we see more gay folks on Galactica [this] season. Well, to take a more serious tack, I think part of the point about Cain’s and Gina’s relationship is that the fact that they had a same-sex relationship was no big deal. I think we started from the idea of wanting to explore whether Cain’s anger and revulsion at Gina, so evident in her first appearance in Season Two’s “Pegasus,” had a personal component. And the idea that Cain had had an intimate relationship with Gina quickly came to mind. It made Gina’s betrayal that much more devastating for her.

Related Topics

• List of Recurring Character Appearances (RDM)