Sorry I didn’t get to this over the weekend, but life has a way of getting in the way.

Anyhow, here’s a rundown of the conference call Battlestar Galactica exec prods David Eick and Ronald Moore gave to members of the media on Friday.

I’ve grouped the comments by subject, rather than chronologically, as the questions ad answers jumped around quite a bit.

The series ending

Eick said the decision wasn’t reached lightly and was only made after he and Moore made sure they had determined they could tell the story they had set out to tell.

Moore said he and Eick felt the show had reached its “third act” and was nearing its conclusion. SciFi asked them to think about it for a while, but “didn’t really fight” them when they came back and said they were ready to end it.

The plan is to end the show. The plan is to bring us to a definitive conclusion. There’s no plans or even thoughts, really, of doing a follow on feature or miniseries or anything like that.

Still, he said, “Never say never because who knows how we’ll actually feel.”

Plus he said he didn’t know that every single minute thing on the series would be resolved to the fans’ satisfaction. They might “leave some things open to the imagination,” he said.

Moore said most of the cast and crew were surprised by the decision, but it depended on the individual. Some “were ready for its third act,” he said. Others believed the show had more life in it yet. No matter the case, everyone’s been looking at this season in a new light. “Instead of being a step on a journey, it’s the concluding step.”

Filming is up in Vancouver, B.C., in Canada, and Eick visited the recently. ” It felt like the beginning of senior year up there.”
Usually, a 22-episode season for BSG would have seemed a huge amount of time to fill. This time, it hardly seemed enough.

This time it was almost like, OK, let’s make sure we have enough time to get where we need to go.

As for Earth, we’ll see more of it this season, Moore promised. “We will get to a place that we will call Earth before the end of the series.”

As for whether we’ll get to see what that Earth is like, “I think there’s a good chance,” he said. But, he noted, “We haven’t written that show yet.”

A possible “Caprica” series

Readers of this blog (and of anything else BSG-related) know that SciFi had been looking at a new series, “Caprica.”

It would take us back to before the first Cylon war — to the days when the technology that led to the current Cylons were first created.

It would basically take the stories we come to discover in Battlestar Galactica and go all the way back to their embryo. The discovery of the technology that will lead to the Cylons, specifically.

Right now, however, it’s “not on the front burner,” Eick said. They’d still like to do it, though, and suggested those interested call or e-mail SciFi to let the network know of their desires.

The miniseries/”bonus episodes”

Moore, asked about the two-hour episode/movie, Razor, to be show in the fall, explained that he and Eick had been approached by the home video folks in between filming the seasons about releasing a couple of episodes on DVD as a standalone movie that still fit in with the storyline.

The episodes, he explained, would have to come from the timeline before the cliffhanger ending. They didn’t want to go back before the series began, but rather to go back a season or two, telling a story that would fill in the time and also connect somehow to Season 4.

Eick said they decided to tie the episodes to the story of the Pegasus. Some of the bonus episodes/movie will involve Pegasus’ backstory — i.e., how it escaped the destruction of the colonies and the rest of the fleet. Other parts will take place after Cain dies.

He admitted he sort of regretted having gotten rid of the Pegasus.

The “final four” Cylons and other tidbits

Moore said he and Eick quickly gravitated to the four they eventually decided would be the “final four” (no word on who the final fifth is)

Tigh, he said, was “kind of the sexiest,” as he was a drunk, had spent his entire adult life fighting the Cylons and even killed his wife because of her collaboration with the toasters.

Anders, he said, had participated in two resistance movements (on Caprica after the nuclear attack and then again on New Caprica) “and was drawn to Kara Thrace for reasons unknown.”

Tyrol was one of the “most human characters.” They regarded him as the one viewers would be most surprised that he turned out to be a Cylon. But the religious connection in his background and being drawn to the temple on the algae planet helped set the stage. He was drawn there for a reason. He’s also dreamed about being a Cylon and even fell in love with a Cylon (Boomer, when neither knew she was a Cylon).

Tori, the president’s aide, he said, was “a wild card.” We (and Moore and Eick) knew the least about her. That made it more fun, he said, because they wouldn’t be locked into as many specific choices in exploring her Cylon backstory.

And their “true” backstories will be delved into, he said. “They’re all the same people. They didn’t switch over and become robots suddenly.”

The four are going to try to figure out what being a Cylon means to who and what they are and they wonder if they are dangers to each other, the ship or others, and if they should keep the secret among themselves.

Eick used Tricia Helfer (Number Six) in another piolot for another series he was working on, Them, about an extraterrestrial sleeper cell. He also used Katee Sackhoff in the “Bionic Woman” pilot and she probably will crop up in future episodes.

“Bionic Woman” has been picked up and “Them,” he said, is “being flirted with as a mid-season replacement.”

As for the question on many people’s minds, Eick and Moore had been trying to figure out a way to get “All Along the Watchtower” in long before last season’s finale.

Eick said they’d thought of opening the miniseries with the Simon & Garfunkle’s “America.” And in the first season, when Sharon and Helo are in a diner on the now-radioactive Caprica, they toyed with the idea of having The Beatles’ “Yesterday” in a jukebox.