Bones' strangely scheduled seventh season just got ... stranger. But better!

With Emily Deschanel’s pregnancy reducing the upcoming campaign to 13 episodes - six this fall beginning November 3, followed by seven in the spring - we're in for a shorter-than-ideal dose of Booth and Brennan.

However, Fox has now ordered four additional episodes, possibly to air in Summer 2012, leading into the show's eighth season. This assumes there will be an eighth season, obviously, but that's a fairly safe bet.

Executive producer Stephen Nathan acknowledges that “it’s a very odd situation we’re in,” telling TV Line that Fox “has scheduled us for 13 episodes, but they also want as many episodes as we can produce.”

Thus the unusual arrangement. He said that while the dates are not set in stone, the extra four episodes will likely air apart from the original 13, and “We’re constructing the season so that the finale is Episode 13.”

At that point, “then there will ultimately be four more episodes that we can play with. [Fox] could run them on a different night, they could run them in the summer, or they could hold them for fall.”

Due to scheduling uncertainty, and the fact that The Finder is set to bridge the winter gap between the fall and spring Bones episodes, the extra quartet will be written as standalones.

“Because the show is centrally episodic, and we know what’s happening with Booth and Brennan, we can do four great episodes that are like a mini-season - a four-episode mini season after the 13-episode regular season.”

Hey, better than nothing, right?

Steve Marsi is the Managing Editor of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Google+ or email him here.