Battlestar Galactica Season Three

The best show on television, now that The Wire has heartbreakingly run its course, and the best sci-fi series perhaps ever, returns with its third season now available on DVD to tide fans over until the beginning of its fourth and final season, which starts in the beginning of April. And, for fans still reeling from the mind-frack that was the Cylon-revealing, Starbuck-resurrecting, "All Along the Watchtower”-playing ending of season three, that date can’t come fast enough. But to rewind to the beginning, season three starts off where season two cliff-hangs: with the majority of the survivors stranded on New Caprica under Cylon occupation, with the remainder of the fleet in hiding attempting to devise a plan of rescue. It’s impossible to miss the comparisons to America’s quagmire in Iraq, especially when the debate over the legitimacy of suicide-bombing occurs, but season three gets everyone (well, almost everyone) back into space and searching for Earth after only four episodes, although the fallout from the New Caprica arc remains throughout. The rest of the season three finds the fleet continuing their search for Earth while fleeing the Cylons, grappling with the legitimacy of using a biological weapon to potentially destroy the Cylon race once and for all and the return and subsequent trial of Gaius Baltar, which threatens to tear the fleet apart. And, of course, there is the aforementioned cliffhanger ending, which reveals almost all of the remaining Cylon models and leaves the fleet in utter peril. In terms of extras, Battlestar Galactica Season Three features the most of any set yet. On top of the podcast commentaries with executive producer Donald Moore, who obviously is a treasure trove of episodic knowledge for fans, there are deleted scenes for almost every episode (most of which were cut for pacing), the Resistance webisodes on New Caprica that connected season two to three. There’s also Moore’s 25-minute longer version of the episode "Unfinished Business,” which, although adding more, lacks any grand revelations, and video blogs by David Eick. There’s no question that season three is as strong as any other Battlestar season and thankfully it isn’t broken up into two editions, like previous seasons. Hopefully, season four can live up to the expectations the ending of season three has placed upon it.