‘Battlestar Galactica’ nearing the end of its mission

Last week, the news broke that the Sci Fi Channel series “Battlestar Galactica” is ending for good after its upcoming fourth season.

So a June 1 telephone media conference, in which the show’s creators talked about “Battlestar’s” end, could have been funereal. But it was far from that, thanks to the irrepressible humor of executive producer David Eick, who responded to many questions with a quip.

What stories does he regret not having the time to tell in the show’s four-season run?

“We never got Starbuck and No. 6 together,” Eick joked.

Executive producer Ron Moore was more serious, but he seemed sanguine about the show’s final season. He sounded like a man whose show is going out with pride.

“The only regret I remember we had toward the end of the third season was (not being able to do more with Battlestar Pegasus). Now we get a chance to do that too,” Moore said.

Moore was referring to a two-hour episode called “Razor” that will air in November. It’ll return to the story of the Pegasus and its leader, the memorable Adm. Cain (Michelle Forbes). But fans should be aware that “Razor” will not pick up the thread of the show’s jaw-dropping season finale. Season 4 proper will begin in early 2008, and will consist of 20 additional hours.

Moore said he began to feel that the story was about to reach its third and final act during Season 3.

The midpoint of that season was “probably the moment when I think we started feeling like, if we don’t start paying this off, if we don’t really reveal those secrets and start moving in that direction, you get to a place where you feel like ... you’re just treading water,” Moore said.

“We really start taking our cues from the story itself,” he added, “and it just feels like the story has moved forward aggressively, and that’s one of the things I’m proud of about the series - (it’s) unafraid to take risks. ... And it just feels like the momentum of the series is now moving toward the conclusion.”

At some point in the final season, the rag-tag Galactica fleet will reach Earth, which was its long-cherished goal, but Moore was understandably cryptic about the details (after all, mind-blowing surprises are among the best things about “Battlestar Galactica”).

“Well, I don’t want to be that definitive about it,” he said. “But the show has always been about a search for Earth, and I think to end the series without getting to Earth, or a version of Earth or something we call Earth, or having at least somebody say `Earth,’ it would be unsatisfying. So it will definitely figure into (next season’s) story line.”

Moore and Eick have several other projects in the works: They’ve helped create the “Galactica” prequel “Caprica” (which appears to be stuck in the development process at the moment); Moore is working on a script for a remake of “The Thing”; and Eick is the executive producer of “Bionic Woman,” an NBC remake of the `70s show that will feature “Battlestar’s” Katee Sackhoff in an occasional guest-starring role. But it sounds as though finishing the “Battlestar Galactica” run strongly is the duo’s priority, and Moore promises the show will wrap up its stories as definitively as it can.

“But it’s also the kind of thing where you never say never, because who knows how we’ll feel when we actually write the conclusion - will there be a plotline or a story that we create on the page that opens a later door? It’d be foolish to say, `Absolutely not.’ But right now the plan is now for a definitive ending,” Moore said.