26 Mar 07 Some BSG Stuff Explained by the Show’s Creator

Ron D. Moore, the creator of Battlestar Galactica, answered a few questions for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about aspects of the season four finale, and the future of the series. It contains a lot of good stuff, and contains some solid commentary and “rulings” that will help trim some of the theories and speculation down.

Revealed is that:

• The Tigh-Anders-Foster-Tyrol Cylon contingent are “full” but “fundamentally different” Cylons and are a “separate category from everyone else.” It is a “pretty good possibility” that the homicidal Cylons (should we start calling them the HomiCylons?) don’t know the identities of the TAFT Cylons because of “something to do with the humans who created the Cylons or perhaps even the God the Cylons worship.”
• RDM advises that “how [the TAFT Cylons] came to be who they are” will be a Season 4 storyline.
• RDM didn’t deny that Nicholas Tyrol is a half-human, half-Cylon child. So Callie can probably effectively be ruled human.
• In fact, RDM confirmed that there are no pure Cylon children, so that rules out Agathon being a Cylon. (And in the future, any pairing that results in a child in which one of the partners is a confirmed Cylon, the other can be definitively ruled human.)
• Starbuck is signed for S4.
• The Battlestar Pegasus movie features the whole cast and is “just a couple of extra episodes for the fourth season that will air earlier than the rest of the season, sometime in the fall. They’ll come out on DVD the next day.”
• “Caprica” will not be picked up as a series (at the moment), but may be picked up a movie or DVD. “No one is saying it’s over, but we’re also not going forward at this moment. Right now it’s on the back burner.”
• The show is “moving into the final chapters” and is in the “third act of the series” — suggesting very highly that Season Four or Season Five may be the last. It appears that the show will end with or shortly after their arrival at Earth: “I think the series has a built-in ending. The series is about the search for Earth and when the time comes, I fully expect we will resolve that one way or another. You get to Earth and what might you find?”
• Whether S4 will be the last, or if there will be an S5, depends not upon ratings but upon: “I have two chapters left in my head and I can see those being of different lengths. … The question of how many episodes is the best route to get there and deciding how much do we want to go out now and end strong and how much do we want to try to extend it because we all love it and go for another year. It’s an emotional/creative conversation that David and I have almost daily as we muddle through it all.”
• S4, generally, will explore themes of “new alliances and broken alliances among the panoply of our characters within the rag tag fleet and without. Different allegiances in terms of loyalties, relationships broken and some new ones formed. All the pieces line up in different ways than they have heretofore.”
• The Post-Gazette columnist is a real ungrateful snot. Read the “Rob’s Call” postscript.