The crew is twelve strong... Or, twelve official members, anyway. They are:

Frank Pike (Coster-Waldau). The mission commander. Ex-military. Coster-Waldau reported that Pike has re-created a Civil War battle in his virt module and reruns it often, trying to solve a particular historical puzzle.

—Roger Fallon (James D'Arcy). Psychiatrist. A gifted therapist and producer of an onboard reality show in which the crew members are obligated to take part, the price of their interstellar voyage. Though those two jobs might sound incompatible, Taylor said that he combines his tasks with aplomb.

—Rika Godard (Sienna Guillory). Botanist, in charge of the hydroponics. Fallon's wife, though Guillory said that her character is having an affair with someone on the ship.

—Manny Rodriguez (Jose Pablo Cantillo). Mathematician and superstring theorist.

—Valentin Orlovsky (Gene Farber). Geologist and Rodriguez's partner.

—Kenji Yamamoto (Nelson Lee). Exobiologist. Married to Alice Thibadeau. Writer/producer Taylor described them as a young couple, very much in love and having something of a second honeymoon on the ship.

—Alice Thibadeau (Joy Bryant). Exobiologist, but with a different specialty from her husband.

—Jimmy Johnson (Ritchie Coster). Inventor of the matter/antimatter weapons technology used to propel the ship. In a wheelchair because of an accident in his past. Coster described his character as "an agent of chaos." He's vital to the mission's success, which is apparently the only reason anyone puts up with him.

—Julius "Jules" Braun (Erik Jensen). Longtime NASA scientist, designer of the ship and navigator.

—Adin Meyer (Omar Metwally). Ship's doctor. Born in the West Bank of Israeli and Palestinian parentage.

—Billie Kashmiri (Kerry Bishe). Computer expert. Interfaces with the ship's artificial intelligence, which is named Gene. Or perhaps Jean. Taylor declined to say whether the personality is male or female.

—Sue Parsons (Clea DuVall). Ship's pilot. An ex-fighter pilot and very much into physical activity. Her virt modules are mainly about extreme sports.

In addition, there's also a mysterious character known only as "the green-eyed man," played by Jimmi Simpson; exactly who he is is still a mystery, as SciFi Wire admits that "nobody wanted to admit even that to us, and they didn't let us anywhere near Simpson while he tried on costumes and was briefed on a fight sequence by a pair of stunt performers."

Virtuality Characters Unveiled [SciFi Wire]

Theoretically speaking about her upcoming role on USA's Burn Notice - it's no Psyche, let's face it, but it'll do for now - Helfer couldn't help herself from talking about the end of the show that made her famous. Possibly because they're not finished shooting yet:

[The last day was supposed to be] June 30, now it’s July 7, but I think it’ll kind be around July 12 that we finish. We’ve got a couple of very heavy episodes – not giving you a spoiler there, I just mean “heavy” in terms of a lot of work to get done. So I’m not sure what day it will be, but I bet it will go into the second week of July... I think they’re fantastic scripts. Obviously, it’s the end of the series, so things are going to be revealed, and all the questions are going to be answered. There’s a lot to fit in. I’ve heard some fans say, whoa, there’s so much in every episode, and that’s certainly not going to change in the last half of the season, there’s so much to get out there. It’s intense.

All our reactions to reading script [among the cast], we talked about it – some people broke down in tears, I felt like I was punched in the stomach. More so out of a mixture of feelings like, wow, that’s why this happened, but also [sadness about the end of an era] – I was sitting on a plane, and it was like, “This is the last ‘Battlestar’ script I’ll read.” So there was that mixed into it.

There’s some really heartwarming stuff, there’s some very damaging, sad stuff. It’s such a commentary on human behavior and social behavior and where our world is and can go. I find the last episode is quite fascinating, the study of life.

Just as fascinating was how little information Helfer was given about her character when the show started:

Ron Moore had put out a series bible at the beginning of Season 1. In it, he had written a couple of pages of backstory for every lead character. For Number Six, it was one line: “The machine as woman.” Everybody else had two or three pages! [laughs] I went to Ron and I said, “You’re killing me. I have no clue about this character.” And he said, “I can’t give you a backstory, because I haven’t decided everything about the Cylons yet.”

You see, while the Cylons may have had a plan, the people controlling the Cylons...? Not so much.

Tricia Helfer of 'Battlestar Galactica' puts the sizzle in 'Burn Notice' [The Watcher]

Talking about the Final Four, he says:

We came up with the idea for the Final Four at the end of the last season, and talked about revealing them and the first questions that were asked in the writers' room was, well, "Where do you go from here? How do you play them? Are they going to be sleeper agents, are they going to be working against us, are they totally different people?" And, in all truth, that was like the actors' biggest concern, every one of the actors in that room asked me "Am I playing something completely different now? I've been playing this, I've known this character and I've gotten inside this character's head and, do I have to change all that, am I somebody else?" And I said, no no no, and I never wanted to do that. The notion of discovering that these are the four Cylons was never to make them completely different people. It would now inform who they are. It would now give them a deeper understanding of who they are, but I really didn't have any interest in flipping a switch and having Saul Tigh becoming a completely different human being.

Technical difficulties not withstanding, new commentaries appear to accompany each episode's transmission, and make fine commute listening each morning after.

Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Podcast [Sci Fi.com]

Sci Fi message board poster "Rolling Paper" writes:

Soooo. Ron D Moore, Executive Producer of the series (as he constantly reminds us) said that Galactica would end when he lost his passion for the series. So the series has ended by his dictate as we all know. Ergo he has lost his passion for the series, ergo it will probably suck.

At least the other fans who think that it'll suck have a slightly better reason. Namely, the quality of the previous season:

Given Season 3, (and I can't think of one series that has managed to recover from such a mess), I give it a 98% chance it will suck big time.

Due to the suck called S3 my standard for S4 is so low that there's only a .00005% I will think it sucks because my expectations were lowered so much by S3 it's difficult to overstate. If continuity between lines is maintained I'll be happy, forget continuity between episodes... At this point that's a pipe dream.

Will Season 4 suck? [Scifi.com]