Two series by former Deep Space Nine writers, Ira Steven Behr's The 4400 and Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, appear to be headed for third seasons on their respective cable channels.

Coming Soon! reports that The 4400 has just been given a third-season renewal by USA Network, which has ordered 13 additional episodes of the Emmy-nominated series originally co-created by another DS9 writer, Rene Echevarria. USA's executive vice president Jeff Wachtel announced that The 4400 will return to broadcast new episodes in the summer of 2006. "Even in this increasingly competitive climate, renewing The 4400 was an easy call," he said.

Both the miniseries and weekly series about a group of people returned from probable alien influence were critically acclaimed and brought the network its highest ratings ever among adult viewers. "The creative team's ability to balance story, character and 'big themes' really makes this show unique," noted Wachtel. Production on the new season will commence in Vancouver early next year.

Although Battlestar Galactica has not officially been picked up for another season yet by Sci-Fi and Moore will only say he "hopes" that it will, he told Now Playing Magazine that he and his staff have discussed what they plan to do in the series' upcoming third year. "We’re sort of looking into larger story arcs as to where the series is ultimately going," he said. "We've had preliminary discussions about conceptually what we want the third season to reflect and how we would approach it."

Season two, he added, was originally planned to start with a "big flashback episode" ending in a cliffhanger, but "we kind of abandoned that" even though flashbacks of Tigh and Adama's first meeting remain in the aired version. "It was just one of those ideas that we didn’t like as much as we thought we would...it turns out we picked up exactly where we left off!"

Because more footage was shot for the flashbacks, Moore said that the earlier years of Tigh and Adama may make appearances later this season or next season. "We’ve got them in the can. We’ve talked about maybe sprinkling them in some other episodes or in some other context," he said.

The 4400 is discussed at Coming Soon!, while Moore speaks about Battlestar Galactica in Now Playing Magazine.

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