Ron Moore Provides Some Answers on The Battlestar Galactica Finale and Season 4

In an interview with Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Ron Moore answered some of the questions raised in the season finale of Battlestar Galactica and provided some hints as to what is to come in Season 4. The finale showed four characters hearing strange music, leading them to conclude that they were actually Cylons. No evidence was acutally given that they were correct, but Moore has verified that they really are four of the five members of the final five. In explaining the music that they heard, Moore said:

It’s more that they arrived at a certain point in space and they were made aware of who they are. The music manifests a dawning awareness. These are four of the final five, which puts them in a separate category from everybody else. There are reasons for that I can’t really get into. We’ll be playing out those plot lines for quite a while.

With Tyrol now identified as a type of Cylon, we find that Hera is no longer unique as the only half-human, half-Cylon. When Owen noted in the interview that Hera isn’t the only half-Cylon baby, Moore simply answered, “Oh, yeah.” When asked if there are others, he said, “You never know.”

Having Tigh be a Cylon creates obvious problems with our view of Cylon history, as we are led to believe that Tigh had been around since well before there were even Cylons in human form. When Moore was asked if the four were placed in the Colonial fleet as adults, Moore gave a vague answer:

I don’t know if it’s that simple. I think it’s something that goes back pretty far. A lot of the specifics of the back story of how this came about will reveal itself over the course of the next season. Those four are trying to figure out their own story. They don’t really understand what this all means. Tigh’s been in two wars and wondering, how could this be? A part of next season’s storylines will uncover how they came to be who they are and the specifics of that.

We find out little more about these four. Moore describes the final five as “different fundamentally” from the other Cylons. When asked if we will meet the fifth member of the final five, Moore just says, “I think so.” No word as to whether we have already met the fifth member, with some speculating it might be Kara Thrace. The one character who has actually seen the final five, D’Anna (played by Lucy Lawless) has been deactivated by her fellow Cylons, but we do know that when she saw one of them she said, “I’m sorry.” There must be a story there, and Moore says they are looking at getting Lawless to return for this story. This might be complicated as she has been signed for another pilot.

Moore evades many questions, such as whether it was really Starbuck that Lee saw at the end. He does reveal that Katee Sackhoff was signed for next season (which hardly comes as a surprise after seeing her return.) I suspect that ths really was Starbuck and that she might really be able to lead the fleet to earth, although this might take many episodes to both convince the fleet to follow and for the fleet to get to earth. Moore does hint that they will reach earth in the end:

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? Is it really their home? You’ve been promising the audience that end point from the beginning, so you’re duty-bound to go there when you end it.

There are no clues as to what they will find. Will they arrive on the earth of our present, or of another era. Starbuck has been told by Leoben, “This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.” I have a suspicion that they will reach earth, but perhaps as our ancestors, only to repeat the cycle with a new civilization ultimating building their own Cylons, with the final five perhaps being survivors of the Cylons of an earlier cycle.
Perhaps we will get some clues in the extended episode about Pegasus to be shown before the season begins. Moore says, “There is a tie from these episodes into the events in season four. … It’s an opportunity to set up something for the fourth season that had not been told to the audience and that the characters themselves hadn’t realized, and then go into the fourth season.” Maybe we will learn something to explain the apparent contradictions between those revealed to be members of the final five and what we believe we know about human and Cylon history.

The twenty-two episode Season 4 may or may not be the end. Moore says this will be a creative decision:

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.

Moore also promises not to end with a cliff hanger as Farscape ended:

It’s very important to me not to do that. It’s something we’ve talked about all along. We want to go out on our own terms and decide when our story ends. We wouldn’t want to be in a situation where the story is not completed in the way we want to. …

The future of the proposed spin off series Caprica is also unclear, but the show is back in production:

It’s now back in development. They’re not picking it up as a pilot at the moment. They might want to pick it up as a movie or as a DVD release. 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.

All in all, we have a few answers here but plenty to wonder about until next year.

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