AirLockAlpha.com

While it isn't exactly news to Airlock Alpha readers, it is official. The fourth season of "Battlestar Galactica" will be the show's final season.

Executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick made the joint announcement late Thursday confirming what has been reported by a number of news sources -- and even stars Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff -- for weeks.

"This show was always meant to have a beginning, a middle, and finally, an end," the producers said in their release, according to industry trade publication Variety. "Over the course of the last year, the story and the characters have been moving strongly toward that end, and we've decided to listen to those internal voices and conclude the show on our own terms."

Airlock Alpha was the first news outlet to report the end of "Battlestar Galactica" back in February when we reported that if SciFi Channel ordered 22 hours of the show in its fourth season, it would signal the end.

"If you're a fan, you don't want to see any more than 13 episodes," the source told Airlock Alpha at the time. "Questions are going back and forth on whether or not [SciFi Channel] will pick the show up again. It's not a decision you make at the last minute because obviously [the network] will want to allow the show to wrap up."

The network did pick the series up for 22 episodes about a week later, and from that point on, rumors grew very strong about the possible end of the series.

That was until Olmos and Sackhoff, known as Adm. Adama and Kara "Starbuck" Thrace in the series, told reporters at the Saturn awards last month that the show would be ending after the upcoming fourth season, which begins with a telemovie in November.

Soon after those statements were made, Eick himself issued a statement saying that not only had no decision been made, but that Olmos had given premature predictions of the show's end in the past. Sources continued to tell Airlock Alpha after that statement that the show would end, even if the fourth season was split to create a virtual fifth season, and no evidence of Olmos ever making previous statements about the show's end ever surfaced despite numerous requests for it.

"We have always known that Ron and David had a plan for 'Galactica,'" said Mark Stern, SciFi's executive vice president of original programming.

Moore has not announced any future projects outside of BSG as of yet, but Eick already is the showrunner for the first season of yet another 1970s remake, the new NBC series "Bionic Woman" which premieres this fall.

The actual start of BSG's third season will begin in early 2008. The November telemovie will focus on the Battlestar Pegasus, and will include the return of guest actress Michelle Forbes, according to previous reports.