If you listen to any of the podcasts from Ron Moore (developer/exec producer), he admits that his style of making a show has a large element of improvisation involved. AFAIK, they only determined who the final four were near the end of season 3.
IMO there are pluses and minuses to both a) a completely planned out series from start to finish, and b) a rough outline of how the series will go, with room for mass improvisations along the way.
The biggest problem with a) is that a lot of times a story looks absolutely perfect on paper, but just doesn't work once you put it on the screen - or an idea seems great at the beginning of a season that you realize later on really doesn't fit. Unless you write a perfect story, start to finish, there's a pretty good chance that you're going to mess up somewhere, or that a story ends up being a lot more stale than you thought it would be. The major plus w/ this method is that things that happen throughout the series -should- make sense, as they were planned that way from the start.
The thing I like about the improvisational method is that you can change gears along the way. Although the reveal of the final 4 seems "tacked on", I'm pretty sure that the producers/writers of the show were smart enough to really drill the idea to make sure that it actually makes sense that these characters could be Cylons and I think that will become more clear as season 4 progresses.
Of course I could be completely wrong, but the quality of this show has been so high from the beginning that it would really surprise me if they completely messed up at this point. Can't wait til Friday!
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