First “Flash Gordon” now this….
According to reports from the “Battlestar Galactica” panels at DragonCon, it appears SCI FI is considering splitting the final season of the hit show into two halves…with a long wait in between. If the rumor is true, SCI FI would air the first ten episodes of season four in Febuary of 2008 and then take a hiatus until February of 2009 to air the final ten episodes, according to a report at Buddy TV.
Before you come completely unglued and go Cylon on your co-workers and friends, remember this is just a rumor coming out of DragonCon. We’ve had no official confirmation from The SCI FI Channel that they would do this or wouldn’t do this.
Hopefully, if SCI FI is considering this move, the swell of fan protest might cause them to reconsider the position or realize that ten episodes a year just isn’t enough for the fandom. And how they could easily destroy the momentum and goodwill the fans and critics have given them for “Battlestar Galactica.”
If they had announced this initially…like, say, the way they did with the endgame for “Lost”…I could hardly complain. At least they would have been honest about it. But this seems very calculated. Buying some small measure of goodwill with the fans by offsetting the long hiatus with expectation of a 20-ep season, then wait as long as possible to announce a mid-season split…typical SFC BS.
Ten Bucks says, that this is what they’ll do, so they’ll have programing, because they will not be allowed to film anything during the strike, which will have reprcussions on the 2009 year.
This is a huge piss take!
If this turns out to be true, well, I would be very disappointed.
Why is anyone surprised about this? BSG was phenomenal for the first two seasons, was a huge disappointment in S3 and I fully expect S4 to be slightly more interesting than watching the hair on my arms grow.
Oddly, it seems lots of people are still fanatically into the show, despite it being painfully obvious that Ron Moore and company do NOT “have a plan” and actually make it up as they go along-sometimes not knowing for more than a couple episodes what’s going to happen next.
For evidence of this, watch any episode in Season 3, or listen to Moore’s podcasts where he freely admits this.
No surprise SFC will drag it out as long as possible since they don’t have anything else worth watching except maybe the Stargate franchise…
Actually, I thought the third season is the best so far. I found the first season to be very boring and pointless, the second season was better, but there didn’t actually seem to be a clear “direction” for the series until the third season. Now, I just can’t wait for the fourth season.
Just my opinion.
Of course they’ll do this. There’s a year break for Dr. Who coming up, and if they couldn’t bother to announce The Dresden Files cancellation, why would they bother to announce this officially either?
I don’t watch BSG, but I feel your pain. SFC pulled a similiar stunt with the most recent seasons of both Stargate SG-1 (s10) and Stargate Atlantis (s3), airing the first 10 episodes of each starting in July of 2006 and delaying the back halves till April of 2007, instead of January like they used to.
The practical effect? Viewers in the UK and possibly other countries saw the back halves long before we did.
Strangely enough, Atlantis’s upcoming season will have only a month-long mid-season break. I’d like to think that was brought about by SFC being pounded on by pissed-off fans.
Also, there had been a rumor that Eureka’s current season was going to be split as well, but this one was eventually refuted by SFC.
Wow, I mean, with lost its okay because they’ve warned us but this is jjust stupid. Why can’t scifi end the season, and put up another great tv show? Why is this so hard for scifi to understan?
Well….at least it means more Galactica watercoaler podcast.
“Eureka” only lasts for about 13 episodes. It would only be about 6 or 7 episodes for each split. I find it hard to believe that the Sci-Fi Channel would split a series that’s already half of a normal season anyway.
It’s really rare that I get so upset about the practices with the SCIFI channel. The channel has lost much of its appeal since Farscape was on. Adding shows like ECW and the soap opera Passions while a huge stretch for scifi fans to watch. The idea was to attract non scifi viewers to late at night and the early morning hours schedule. I supported the channel because coming from my MBA/Marketing degree, I understood the 4 different phase of product life: Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline. The Scifi Channel is in the maturity phase. In this phase, you look to bring in new customers to the product but on the same token, for this to happen, the product has to be changed; hence ECW and Passions.
Fine, I am very supportive of this move although I would argue for better scifi programming during the same hours or at least strive for some creativity. Hell, G4TV worked Star Trek 2.0 which led me to prefer their programming over the SCIFI channel. In this case, the scifi show attracted me to this channel when the normal G4TV programming deals with gaming and electronics matters.
Now, let’s get into the heart of the matter and that is milking the success of a program to death. Farscape is a prime example where 1/2 way through a season’s run there would be these huge breaks. Yes, it made our wanting for new shows that much stronger but you run the risk of losing your base. To this day, I have not seen season 4 and 5 of Farscape for this reason. They just lost me. Jump several years later to BSG, and the latest news, which can be just a rumor but I doubt it, is that BSG final season will be split in half with the first 10 episodes in 1/08 and the last 10 episode in 1/09. NO FRAKKING WAY SHOULD WE PUT UP WITH THIS!!!!
It is bad enough that we have to wait between season up to 6 months. But as I was writing this, I started to think that BSG is the only thing keeping the SCIFI channel worth watching. What’s left, Stargate: Atlantis, Flash Gordon, Eureka? Give me a FRAKKING break, these series are just horrible and just slightly better that Andromeda or Mutant X and that’s not saying much. The channel has nothing left to offer us and I will find a way to voice this to the channel and to the producers of BSG. If fans can revive a cancelled tv series like StarTrek, or the big screen treatment like Serenity or closure with Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars; BSG has no less appeal to an end the series right.
A final note, the new Bionic Woman on NBC and Dr. Who & Torchwood on BBC America, have grabbed my interest and will be a must on my tv watching list. If the SCIFI channel does what is being planned for BSG, I will boycott the series and wait for it DVD and it will be the whole season not 4.0 and 4.5; just 4.0 period you motherFRAKKERS.
I posted a response to the Show Me Scifi blog on WordPress about a petition. Lolabuck posted a comment about a letter writing campaign. Please go to my blog for more details http://www.monsterscifishow.wordpress.com
sci fi need to listen to the fans. make this a season to remember and finish a great story with a bang not a whimper, you corporate slags
SciFi never listens to their fan base because they are always listening to their bean counters to make their decisions for them. They have always shown a complete disrespect for the fans and no where was that more evident than the Farscape fiasco. Lying and insulting the public was either just plain arrogant or seriously underestimating the intelligence of their viewership. At least Space Channel in Canada listens to much greater degree than SciFi does!