I honestly don’t understand the SciFi channel.
The channel that decided to cancel Stargate-SG1 after 10 continuously successful seasons. The channel that decided to kill Farscape because quality television is too expensive to produce for the masses. The channel that enjoys making made-for-TV-excrement like MANSQUITO (and no, I’m NOT making this up)…
The channel that has destroyed Battlestar Galactica — not outright, but in a manner akin to being pecked to death by ducks!
Make no mistake: Battlestar Galactica is the best show on American television…and one of the best American shows of the last two decades. After a ground-breaking mini-series, three astonishing seasons, and the upcoming telefilm RAZOR (about the backstory of the Battlestar Pegasus), most of us were convinced we were in the heyday of another US sci-fi renaissance…
Instead, SciFi pulls a strop on executive producers Ron Moore and David Eick in order to get its own, bottom-of-the-barrel way.
First, they deny the Galactica execs the chance to wrap things up with two final seasons. Fine…the producers decide to wrap it all up in a single season, to give the series proper closure.
But SciFi is devious and cunning. This 20-episode fourth and final season will apparently be split into TWO seasons, each comprising 10 episodes, and (perhaps-nee-likely) be shown almost a year apart…giving the channel two seasons for the price of one!
Then, to add insult to injury, instead of premiering the long-awaited season 4 (or should that be season 4.1) in January, they push back the premier date to MARCH, in order to help promote the DVD sales of season 3 (because we’re all about the bottom line)!
If I were executive producer, I would be extremely pissed off right about now.
I honestly believe (as do many others, including Galactica star Jamie Bamber) that the SciFi channel doesn’t know what to do with quality shows such as Galactica. They’re not used to such successful, powerful, emotional, epic drama…they’re used to kitschy, cheap, disposable entertainment with ray-guns, half-naked alien babes, and ridiculous, B-movie dialogue. If they could schedule nothing but Ed-Wood-quality turds, they would!
Battlestar Galactica is art (an idea endorsed by Admiral Adama himself, the magnificent Edward James Olmos) — hence SciFi’s decision to kill the series with with a minimum amount of fuss. In a world where reality television sucks the will to live, sitcoms have descended into the realm of meaningless tripe, and dramas run on either an unchanging formula (24), an unending franchise (CSI, Law & Order), or unhinged confusion (Lost), Galactica was a shining light of originality, intelligence and beauty. Surely no one would try to strangle such creative genius…?
Wrong! 
