Galactica.com - For 'Battlestar Galactica,' it's the beginning of the end

By Maureen Ryan, on 04-04-2008

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For 'Battlestar Galactica,' it's the beginning of the end
By Maureen Ryan

After three seasons of complicated moral and political dilemmas, the fourth and final season of “Battlestar Galactica” (9 p.m. Friday, Sci Fi) begins with a simple question: “Which way will we go?”

The query isn’t hypothetical; it’s literal.

The 40,000 people in the ragtag “Galactica” fleet are still on the run from the murderous Cylons. But as the season begins, President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) and Adm. William Adama (Edward James Olmos) struggle with conflicting clues about how to get to their destination, a mythical place known as Earth.

Without giving too much away, opinions differ on which way to go, and the process of choosing a path for the fleet gets ugly. But then, nothing in the “Battlestar Galactica” universe has ever been easy, and that’s the point.

“The choices just get harder,” executive producer Ronald D. Moore said in a mid-March phone interview.

Since it debuted in 2003, the Peabody Award-winning show has explored the idea that, as Moore said, “it’s not easy to come up with a simple philosophy that can guide you at every moment along the way.” “At the end of the day, what does it say about you – the choices that you’ve made and the way that you’ve chosen them,” Moore said of knotty moral underpinnings of the show, which pulled in a meager 2 million viewers each week in its third season but ended up on many critics’ Top 10 lists.

“In a larger sense, what does it say about your society that you as a group and as a people have taken these paths? At the end, you look back at the paths that you’ve trod and, you know, did you lay waste to villages along the way? … Did you leave certain areas better than you found them? You have to assess all those things. Ultimately it’s all very complicated.”

The dilemmas on the drama have many parallels in the real world. The Cylons, who began as robots but can look like people, believe in one god, and some are bent on imposing that monotheism on the galaxy — even if they have to destroy humanity to do so. And during the course of their long journey to Earth, members of the fleet have considered Cylon genocide, fixed elections, tortured prisoners and committed murder -- all for reasons they felt they could justify at the time.

Most humans hate the Cylons, who destroyed the 12 colonies that the people in the fleet called home and also subjected the 40,000 survivors to a terrifying occupation. But at the end of last season, four very surprised members of the fleet, including Saul Tigh (the terrific Michael Hogan, who is interviewed here), the admiral’s right-hand man, found out that they are actually members of the mechanized race.

The four survivors understandably find it hard to accept this idea. And for the battle-scarred population of the fleet, accepting the Cylons as a legitimate race may be the most psychologically daunting prospect they've faced yet, Moore said.

“[The humans] justify a lot of their behavior and attitude toward the Cylons by saying, ‘These are not people,’” Moore said. “‘These are machines; they do not have souls.’ ... Nonetheless, they continually find themselves crossing that boundary. They fall in love with them,” and one Cylon, Sharon “Athena” Valerii (Grace Park), serves in the fleet’s military wing.

Given all the confusion over identities, beliefs and prophecies, it’s no surprise that some members of the Galactica fleet form a cult around former president Gaius Baltar (James Callis), whose self-serving pomposity provides much of the show’s dark comic relief. An ambivalent Baltar makes the best of his situation – his new cult comes complete with sexy acolytes – and he begins spreading the word of the one true God, even as he contemplates the horrible crimes he committed when he was in office.

Baltar’s not the only one who’d rather forget some of his past actions; almost every member of the fleet has done morally questionable things. And the increasing conflicts over whether the fleet’s going in the right direction don’t bode well for hotheaded pilot Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (Katee Sackhoff), who everyone thought was killed in action near the end of Season 3. It was unsettling when she reappeared in the finale to say she’d found Earth.

As is typical on this show, Starbuck's reception on board the Galactica doesn't exactly go as you think it would. Though Sci Fi only sent one Season 4 episode for review, it looks as though the prodigal pilot, as well as the rest of the Galactica crew, is in for a bumpy ride.

“There are some relationships that will be torn asunder,” said Moore, who’s directing an episode for the first time this season. “There will be some things that will be fundamentally broken over the course of the season. We’re going to lose certain characters; some things are not going to be repaired. There’s a sense of finality about it,” he said.

That’s only fitting, because after its fourth season, this gripping series and its charismatic cast will be gone for good.

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