Two Riders were Approaching, the Wind Began to Howl

I just watched the last episode of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. Note to one and all, you now only have to avoid talking about season 4.

(Spoil me and I will hunt you down and kill you with my bare hands.)

Not quite sure what to say about season 3. I am beginning to wonder what Ronald D. Moore is smoking in those cigars of his. (To paraphrase one Dr. Ray Stantz, Moore is either an authentic wacko or a certified genius.) I enjoyed it immensely, however, and I strongly suspect that it is going to be lodged in my head for a while, which is kind of the idea. So there you go.

Did you know that Ronald D. Moore got his start in Star Trek: The Next Generation and was responsible for a big part of Deep Space Nine, rated by noted expert You Look Like a Nail as the best Star Trek series evah? Now you know!

(Updated a little while later ...)

I think that my last comment above, re: Moore's sordid past, may be quite appropriate to the discussion at hand. Think about it.

Star Trek: The Next Generation was the flagship of the Paramount empire. They literally built a network on its back. TNG was famous for the sharp constraints on what you could and could not do. Conflict could not come from character dynamics; everyone had to get along. There was a solid formula and you couldn't break it. The show was episodic, and must always be so.

Then he gets a lot more freedom on DS9 and makes the most un-Star-Trek of the Star Treks. Watch Far Beyond the Stars or In the Pale Moonlight and tell me that this isn't the work of a writer pushing his boundaries, kept in the neat little sandbox one script too long.

Then they give him Battlestar and tell him to get creative. BSG becomes a ratings monster. Battlestar pulls down the kinds of numbers you'd expect from a mainstream show, not a Sci Fi TV show that nobody's supposed to be watching. The studios give him his head. Run with it.

Season 3 of BSG ends in a state of quantum uncertainty. It is extraordinarily good, and completely batshit crazy, simultaneously. Observation, in retrospect, will likely collapse it down to one possible state. For the moment, though, the cat is both dead and alive.

I am intensely interested in what Moore is going to do next.

This is exactly why Joss Whedon calls BSG the best show he's ever seen.

And people say there's nothing good on television.