It's Official: 3rd Season!

Not a huge surprise, after SG-1 and Atlantis have been renewed for new seasons each. Battlestar Galactica is now going on to it's third season on the SciFi channel, according to this article:

Sci Fi Orders Third Round of 'Battlestar'
Though it will come as a surprise to no one, Sci Fi Channel is readying a third season of its grim space opera "Battlestar Galactica." The series fell off somewhat during its second season-dropping from an average of 1.7 million 18- to 49-year-old viewers last year to 1.5 million. But the program still helped lead Sci Fi to consistent Friday night victories over all of basic cable, besting runners-up TNT, USA Network and Spike. Sci Fi had no comment as the renewal deal was still being finalized. Last week the network announced fellow Friday night dramas "Stargate SG-1" and "Stargate Atlantis" were renewed for 20 episodes each and noted that the 10th-season renewal of "SG-1" makes it the longest-running science fiction television program of all time, outlasting "The X-Files," "Twilight Zone" and every iteration of "Star Trek." -JAMES HIBBERD
Source

Take that, Enterprise!

SyFyPortal has also reported the news, with some interesting figures, regarding the ratings for the past two seasons:

The series did see a slight drop in its weekly viewership over the course of the show's second season, with 1.5 million viewers tuning in compared to 1.7 million that watched the show last year on average in the coveted 18-49 demographic. Overall, nearly 3 million people tune in to see the show each week.
"Galactica" did help SciFi beat other cable channels on Friday night, including TNT, USA Network and Spike.
"Battlestar Galactica" is getting ready to launch the second half of its second season in January to complete its first 20-episode year. While SciFi maintains a standard of 20-episode seasons, it was not immediately clear how many episodes SciFi had ordered, since the network was not yet ready to comment on the renewal.
Source

I Don't Want Laura To Die

New Article from the SyFyPortal:

I Don't Want Laura To Die
Author: Scott Nance Date: 10-29-2005
I'm filled with terrible apprehension when I think of "Battlestar Galactica" resuming new episodes in January: I really don't want Laura Roslin to die. But I'm not sure I want her to live, either.
By thrusting not only a woman, but a woman dying of breast cancer, into the presidency of the Twelve Colonies, Ron Moore created a powerful dramatic character, indeed. President Roslin has had to simultaneously deal with the mortality not only of the human race but her own.
Actress Mary McDonnell has given the character such vibrancy that she commands nearly every scene in which she appears. (Geena Davis, eat your heart out!)
Although she appeared in no way, shape, or form in the original 1970s series, Laura Roslin easily has become my favorite "Battlestar" character.
Through the series' first year, and the early part of the current season, the dramatic tension inherent in Laura's impending death was real, if also somewhat deferred. Her end would come someday soon--but not today.
Now that day has come. Ron Moore apparently has deferred Laura's fate no longer.
In the episode "Flight of the Phoenix," Dr. Cottle (Donnelly Rhodes) tells Laura she has no more than a month left, perhaps only a few weeks.
Single-mindedly focused only on delivering the fleet to Earth, Laura asks the doctor if she can continue to work.

Roslin taking her oath of office in the miniseries

Cottle put an exclaimation point on her condition when he says she can--if the cancer doesn't spread to her brain. That moment alone gave me a chill.
So Ron Moore and the rest have given themselves an impending choice: let Laura die, or find some miracle to save her.
Moore recently promised "a big Laura episode," would air soon after new episodes resume which will focus on her life on Caprica before the attack. He said that viewers will get to see a glimpse of what her life was like before she found out she got cancer and before the attack.
Will this be her farewell?
If series producers allow Laura to die, they will be losing one of their strongest characters, but will be staying true to the story arc they created and viewers invested themselves in emotionally.
Her loss would be felt keenly. With Laura gone, there will be more than a political vacuum on the show; the entire center of gravity would have to shift.
Her death would be a big adjustment for fans to make.
There is worry, too, however, if she were to live.
With fans so gripped by her literally life-and-death struggle, an easy out now would be a cheat and there would be a feeling of being let down.
The folks who make BSG are talented people, and I doubt that would happen, but the specter of death has been so much a fabric of Laura's character that even if the writers devise a satisfying way for her to live, will the lifting of the sword over her head lessen what makes her so compelling? Will she simply be reduced to a lady president with no greater dramatic strength? What then?
I'm certain Moore and the others have been wrestling with these questions for some time. It will be left to us viewers to see how well they have answered them.
With so much on the line for we fans of Laura Roslin, when "Battlestar" begins again with the new year, it will be a little like the proverbial car wreck: I'm not sure I want to look but probably unlikely to turn away.

BSG Comic Update

It was reported a while ago that there's a Battlestar Galactica comic in the works, and we've finally gotten some news regarding that. A writer has been assigned to the project, named Greg Pak, best known for his movie, Robot Stories. Here's the article and press release regarding BSG:

GREG PAK TO WRITE "BATTLESTAR GALACTICA" FOR DYNAMITE by Jonah Weiland, Executive Producer
Posted: July 19, 2005
While writer Greg Pak may have recently signed an exclusivity agreement with Marvel Comics, he's going to get one non-Marvel project in under his belt first. We spoke with Pak briefly to get some clarification on how this deal works with his new contract. First, as you might expect, Pak agreed to the "Battlestar Galactica" gig before the contract with Marvel was signed. Additionally, Pak has worked out a storyline for the first twelve issues of this new series.
Official Press Release
Runnemede, NJ, July 19, 2005 - Dynamic Forces Inc., the parent company of Dynamite Entertainment announced today its agreement with Universal Studios Consumer Product Group to produce comics based on the new SCI FI Channel Battlestar Galactica series. The comic series is tentatively scheduled to launch 4th Quarter 2005 with writer Greg Pak penning the ongoing series. " Greg [Pak] is a creator at the top of his game,” explained Dynamite Entertainment Spokesperson J. Allen. "Having read and reviewed his proposed first year's worth of stories, he has an in-depth understanding of what has made this new Battlestar such a success. A busy writer and movie maker, we are very lucky to have him on the BSG comic team." The creative look of the series will be based on the hit SCI FI show with details on the series artist, launch date and promotional efforts soon to follow. ABOUT GREG PAK: Greg Pak is an award-winning writer and director whose first feature film, Robot Stories, starring Tamlyn Tomita and Sab Shimono, played in 75 festivals, won 35 awards, screened theatrically across the country, and is now available on DVD from Kino International. Greg's feature screenplay Rio Chino won the Pipedream Screenwriting Award at the 2002 IFP Market and a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship in 2003. Greg wrote the screenplay for the feature film MVP, which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Greg is now writing Famous

10k

Just passed the 10,000 visitor mark! Thanks for all the visits!

Relief And Sadness For BSG

New article from SyFyPortal:

Relief And Sadness For BSG
Author: Alan Stanley Blair
Date: 10-26-2005
Source: Trek Today

The SciFi Channel may only have shown the first eleven episodes, but the series is almost completed its production cycle, and series creator Ronald D. Moore is both glad to see it finish and overcome with sadness.

"When I was at Trek, and doing 26 hours a year, the end of the season was more an occasion for the bleary-eyed and nearly brain-dead staff to plan their escapes from the Hart Building," said Moore. "It's also a reminder of just how fast this trip is going ... I can't decide if I'm just getting old or if the special quality of this experience is truly making it all seem like it's roaring past me at an impossibly fast pace."

When it made a startling return to the screen for a full season last year, "Battlestar Galactica" was met with applause and critical acclaim, and according to Moore, none of it would be possible without a very committed cast and crew who were all dedicated to making the show to as high a standard as possible.

"I found myself not only dissatisfied last night, but positively angry with myself at something I knew in my bones had fallen well below the bar I set for myself," he said. "Nothing pisses me off more than not making a show the best I think it can be and in this case, there was no one to blame but myself."

Moore also added that when writing episodes for the series, he often sits with classic episodes from the original '70s series playing in the background.

The second season of "Battlestar Galactica" is airing in reruns each Friday night on the SciFi Channel at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

Stargate SG-1, Atlantis Renewed

Not entirely Battlestar Galactica news, but it's worthy of mentioning: SciFi's hit shows Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis have both been renewed for a 10th and 3rd season, respectively. The renewal of Stargate SG-1 makes it the longest running Science Fiction show in US history.
Battlestar Galactica is part of the SciFi Friday night lineup along with these two, and it's expected that SciFi will renew BSG for a third season, given that it's been getting higher ratings than both Atlantis and SG-1.
Full article over at www.gateworld.net

New Video Feature: Tech on the Set of Episode 10

iTV: Internet Television

iTV : Internet Television

Apple has gained an enormous amount of popularity for it’s iPod, Apple’s version of the MP3 player. It’s success has boosted Apple sales by large numbers. Each version has been a relative improvement or is socially appealing enough to become very popular- The iPod Mini and iPod Shuffle being some of the more recent examples when it comes to music. Color screens, improved click wheels and more space crammed into a small case comes with each new improvement.
It comes as little surprise that Apple has ventured into the video market with the latest version of their iPod. Not only can you store a large number of songs on the hard drive, you can now download music videos and television episodes to the latest versions of iPods, which can be purchased through iTunes at a relatively cheap price of $1.99 per episode, in line with their $.99 per song or $9.99 per album.
But this is not the first time that television has ventured to a new medium: the Internet. In the past year, more and more websites are placing pilot episodes, teasers and other extras on their official web pages. Just this last month, Yahoo allowed users to watch the entire first episode of the WB’s new show, Supernatural, online, the day before it aired on regular television. The SciFi channel has done similar forays, offering the first episode of their own hit show, Battlestar Galactica online through their website. Recently, they had also placed the season finale online as the second season aired.

SciFi has done more than just place episodes online. SciFi became one of the first websites to offer downloadable commentary tracks for each episode as it came out from their main website- so that the viewers could watch along. In addition, SciFi has also placed a number of behind the scenes features to view online. Other shows have popped up online, with preview clips from Smallville appearing on Filmforce.net, among others. Television is starting to make an evolutionary jump to the internet.
Why the move? Most likely the sheer number of people who use the Internet, and given the advances in connection speeds since the mid-90s, people are able to download videos and music faster than ever before. This has caused some problems legally- especially when the BBC and Sky-One in England aired the new Dr. Who series and new Battlestar Galactica series before they hit the airwaves in the US. (Or not at all in the case of Dr. Who.) The numbers of illegal downloads of these programs skyrocketed, and for the second season of Battlestar Galactica, it was the US who got to watch the new episodes first. It would also seem that television executives, faced with the capabilities of the internet nowadays, are starting to see this as an opportunity, not as a problem, as is what Apple did with iTunes, which revolutionized online music sales, which have recently surpassed 500 million.
The next question is: How is this going to affect the television market? Already, people are able to download episodes online, which can affect both the ratings of a television show and it’s eventual release on to DVD. When programs begin offering DVD material on their own websites, this is undoubtedly going to affect DVD sales of a given program. Producers are going to have to find new features to place on DVD sets, and to be selective with what material is released online, while still using features and behind the scenes videos to generate interest for the show, without compromising the show’s ratings or profits.
As Apple has showed that downloading music can be profitable, its opening one market that could very well lead to the end of another: the DVD. At the current prices, one can buy the entire 1st Season of LOST from Apple iTunes for approximately $35, which is far under the DVD boxed set that’s available in stores. (Apple also sells episodes of the show Desperate Housewifes). Not only that, one it’s possible to download the episodes right after the show airs on television- which can also bring in new profits for studios right away.
So, where is TV going? Most likely, the Internet, through new downloading methods and systems. However, I would predict that the DVD sets will be around for a while yet- Some of us don’t have high speed internet.

Battlestar/Stargate Toys Coming

Gateworld.net and Theforce.net have both posted up announcements regarding a new line of action figures and vehicles from Hasboro. This article is from Gateworld:

First Galactica 2004 toys coming in '06
WEDNESDAY - OCTOBER 19, 2005
Hasbro will release the first line of toys from the new Battlestar Galactica series as part of the upcoming line of Star Wars toys, according to reports at Rebel Scum and TheForce.net. Both Battlestar Galactica and Stargate toys will be included as a sort of "expanded universe" along with Hasbro's new Star Wars Titanium line.
Battlestar Galactica items include:
3-inch 2004 Scout ship vehicle
3-inch 2004 Colonial 1
3-inch 2004 Raptor
3-inch 2004 Viper Mark VII
Cylon Warrior (figure)
3-inch 1978 Viper vehicle
3-inch 1978 Cylon Raider vehicle
Stargate items on the list include:
3-inch Stargate with Stand
3-inch Death Glider ship
The toys will be shipped along with the Star Wars line in 2006, so keep your eyes on the toy aisle at your favorite store! There is no word yet on the toys' availability outside the U.S.

The Final Cut

I've finally gotten the chance to catch up on a couple of episodes, the most recent of which was the Final Cut. During the time that Col. Tigh was in command of the fleet, he made a couple of orders that were highly regretable, in part the killing of several civilians on a ship called the Gillian, now known as the Gillian Massacure. Because of this, and other actions, the Galactica and the military are in poor standings with the fleet. To overcome this, Adama gives one reporter complete access to the Galactica and her crew, in an attempt to show the fleet exactly what goes on on the Galactica and who the military really is. While on board, she has to face the crew and see exactly who the crew is.
War journalism has been apart of almost every SciFi show that I've seen thus far. Stargate SG-1 featured a two part episode entitled Heros, where the Pentagon wanted some civilian documentation of the Stargate program. Babylon 5 also featured a reporter episode, where the Earth Alliance wanted to show people on Earth what life on B5 was like, but the program was twisted into a completely anti-Babylon 5 program. These Journalism episodes are similar in story. It's also a highly identifiable event, given today's events. People want to see what goes on behind closed doors, and given Galactica's trend, keeping with realistic ideas, this falls in nicely.
Final Cut has much more to do with Heros than B5's episode, because the themes are much similar, right down to the conclusions- it's the people who matter, and it's the successes that you don't see that count, not the public failures.
Overall, this episode is one of the stronger, if slightly standalone, Galactica episodes. For once, we're pulled out of Galactica and placed in the civilian's view- usually through a small screen of a camera. Especially moving was the space battle- the one that we don't see at all. Everything is seen through the camera or on the CIC/Hanger Deck. The only way that we know what's going on is over the speakers, and for the first time, we can really see what it's like on the bridge and hanger decks as the fight goes on. Truely some outstanding acting here. There are some other links to other episodes, such as the small storyline with an LT getting revenge on Tigh for deploying him to the Gillian, and Kat taking Stims, which give this episode a really rich feeling, although at times, it feels like they're trying to put too much into an episode. Lucy Lawless's character is extremely interesting, right up to the point where we find that she's a Cylon. Very motivated, well acted.
Rating: A

Ron Moore's Blog Returns

Ron Moore has returned to weblogging after a several month hiatus:

Blog: The Return
Yes, it's been too frakking long.
A few random things, then I'll answer some questions:
Today is something of a notable day, in that we're putting out first drafts on the final three episodes of Season Two, which means that we're now officially in the endgame. There's a sense of relief, coupled with sadness, now that the last first drafts are being published, because it means that the heavy-lifting (in terms of writing) has come to a close, and that the final stories have been laid before us. When I was at Trek, and doing 26 hours a year, the end of the season was more an occasion for the bleary-eyed and nearly brain-dead staff to plan their escapes from the Hart Building and grab a few blissful days of drunken vacation before returning to plan out the next season than it had a taste of the bittersweet. With Galactica, while the end does bring with it the happy thoughts of not having to start with a blank page again this year and the reward of time spent thinking about something besides Kara's missing ovaries ("Now, where did I leave those ovaries? They were right here a minute ago...") it's also a reminder of just how fast this trip is going. Two seasons and a miniseries nearly under our belt at this point. How is that possible? I can't decide if I'm just getting old or if the special quality of this experience is truly making it all seem like it's roaring past me at an impossibly fast pace.
One thing that has become apparent in recent days is just how committed we are around here to maintaining the quality of the show and our incredible dissatisfaction when those goals are not met. I found myself not only dissatisfied last night, but positively angry with myself at something I knew in my bones had fallen well below the bar I set for myself and for the show in general. I won't go into it now (maybe later) but it was one of those situations where I looked at something and had to listen to the voice inside my head say "You screwed this one up." Nothing pisses me off more than not making a show the best I think it can be and in this case, there was no one to blame but myself. The only solace I take from it is the knowledge that it does still piss me off and therefore I am still doing something I'm passionately engaged in. Far too many writers, producers, directors and actors I've known have been stuck doing things that they either didn't care about or actually loathed, and I've been extremely fortunate in always being emotionally engaged in the projects I've worked on.
Okay. Enough navel-gazing.
Oh, I thought I'd mention that while I was working up in Vancouver a couple days ago, the original Galactica series was on Space TV (the Canadian version of SciFi) and I kept it on in the background while I was working on a script rewrite. There was something interesting and fun about writing the words "Starbuck" and "Apollo" and "Adama" and "Baltar" while their predecessors were carrying on within earshot. There was a connectivity to it, a sense-memory of sitting in my parents' living room in Chowchilla watching that very episode back in the '70s on our console TV that gave me pleasure and made me feel that what I was doing in the moment of writing the new adventures of this ship and its crew had a direct linkage to what had gone before.
Enough already. Questions:
"In the episode the Farm, Kara gets captured by the cylons, only they do not want her to know they are cylons. In order to get her to trust them, Dr. Simon tells Kara that she was brought in by Anders and that Anders has died. Later on, Dr. Simon makes a mistake when he calls Kara Starbuck, a name that Kara never used when talking to Dr. Simon.
My questions:
1. Did the cylons really just get lucky when they attacked or was it an ambush?
2. I realize that Dr. Simon would know who Starbuck is from cylon intelligence. What I do not understand is this: how did Dr. Simon know Anders' name?"
1. It was just an ambush, but the idea was that they had been tracking and planning to come down hard on Anders' resistance cell for a while.
2. They knew who Anders was, knew that he was a resistance leader in the area, and knew enough about his relationship with Starbuck to realize they were important to one another. Internally, we talked about the idea that Anders' cell might've been infiltrated by a Cylon agent, who provided this information, but it never made it into the script.
"I must say that even though I'm in my 30s, Mary McDonnell is my fave actress/Roslin is fave character. I love how she combines femininity with strength. I also love the reaction her character provokes in those who watch -- you can see it here on the boards. For some reason, the overly testosteroned crowd hates that "this woman" has the gall to demand to be treated as an equal by Adama. I don't know why her character, as opposed to Starbuck's or Sharon's, for example, provokes such anger (I remember most of all the "Roslin must die!," and "Roslin's Nasty Comments" threads - where she was called a "hag," and "total bitch," as well as the claims from some during the Home Part 2 discussion that Adama was "weak" and "wussified" by reuniting with the president).
I wonder, are you aware of this reaction of some to Roslin, and what is your view?"
I am aware of it and I tend to shrug it off like I do a lot of comments about the show and the characters. I like Laura and I like the way we've played her as President. I think the comments about her say more about the people making them, than it does about the character itself, frankly. I've found it interesting that there's a school of thought out there which claims that Laura should've been completely sidelined from the very beginning, that Adama should've declared martial law from the outset and ignored civilian government altogether. It probably says something about me that I found that very notion to be antithetical to the underpinnings of a decent and democratic society, and I remember the very conscious choice I made in the early stages of this project that while Colonial society was going to be flawed and riddled with problems, that at its base, it was going to be a fundamentally decent and democratic one. It was not going to toss its principles over the side in a time of crisis. It was not going to turn itself into a security-above-all state. There were certain things that mattered more than survival, certain things that mattered more than safety. They were going to hang on to their government and their rights as citizens as best they could under the situation, and would give up those rights and freedoms only grudgingly. Laura Roslin is the personification of that idea. She wasn't elected, she wasn't chosen, she arguably wasn't even ready for the role, but she represented continuity to the traditions and principles undergirding their society, and she would stand for them until she died.
"Having watched Star Trek for many years, and now an avid Galactica watcher; I have noticed unlike the Star Trek shows of the past...we know little about how Galactica works. We don't know much about her engines at all, what powers the ship..weapons. Is this an intentional effort to steer Battlestar Galactica away from the technobabble Star Trek would often be muddled in and focus time exclusively on the characters of the show? Will we learn and see more of Galactica in the future?"
I did want to stay away from the technobabble that I felt sometimes swamped the characters in Trek, and so I have intentionally avoided discussion of the technical workings of Galactica. Bit by bit, however, small windows into the inner workings do come to light and I'm sure will continue to do so in the future. Also, in all honesty, the writing staff often felt that the technological detail of the Enterprise was as limiting on Trek as it was helpful. We'd established so much about the way the engines worked and didn't work that we sometimes found ourselves discarding perfectly good story ideas or scenes because it contradicted some bit of jargon we'd tossed out two seasons before. There was always the option to write around those kind of details, of course, but inevitably, the thought of yet more tech-talk to justify doing what we wanted to do became a real irritant and we'd usually just try a different approach.
"I never felt the need to post a question before, because the show has been so airtight, but the Tomb element "Home II" leaves me a little bewildered, and the podcast didn't answer my questions. How did it end? I mean, how did Adama et. all get out of the projection, or whatever it was? Did it just fade off after a certain amount of time? Can it be replayed? Why can't the fleet send a bunch of astronomy experts or math whizes down to Kobol to view the Tomb a few times and get some pictures and calculations?"
There was an original ending where the Cylons attacked the Tomb at the last minute, blotting out the information and preventing us from gathering more, but we lost that mostly due to budget constraints and to a sense that the show was over dramatically and another battle was unnecessary. I assume that Adama et al, simply walked out of the chamber once the projection was over (I also assume it was a holographic projection of some sort). We set up in the script that the Scriptures predicted a "price in blood" would be paid by anyone visiting Kobol, so that would presumably keep Adama from inviting yet more people down to the surface for work inside the Tomb. It's a fair question and very logical, but I think that my assumption is that the ground team got enough accurate information from the projection before they left in order to have a decent idea of the general location of Earth -- or at least as much information as was available.

Heroine Chic Enters The Space Age

The Huston Chronicle has posted up an article about the role of women's roles in Science Fiction, and how it's changing. The article focuses on Zoe Washburn, from Firefly/Serenity fame, but our favorite, Starbuck, also gets some talk:

Heroine Chic Enters The Space Age

By LOUIS B. PARKS
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
Her big gun blasting away at kill-crazed mutants, Serenity's Zoe does battle in the grand tradition of Alien's Lt. Ripley. She's tough — except with her husband: Then she goes all giggly.
"I'm a lover and a fighter," says Gina Torres, who played Zoe in Firefly, the 2002 TV series, and reprised the role in Serenity. "That's what's so engaging. She is the most balanced person on that ship. She has a loving marriage (to Wash, the pilot of spaceship Serenity) and a job she embraces every morning. She likes being a soldier. She's good at it."
We can't predict the real future, but space women of the cinema future are — finally — men's equals. Zoe represents the image and status of women-in-space, but it's just one image out of many.
Also on Serenity is the cute-as-a-space-bug Kaylee (Jewel Staite). No warrior is she — Kaylee is too busy being all doe-eyed over the ship's doctor. She's also the ship's engineer and mechanic, equally at home in grease-stained dungarees or gaucho pants.

Katee Sackhoff plays Starbuck in the Sci Fi
Channel remake of Battlestar Galactica

Sci Fi Katee Sackhoff plays Starbuck in the Sci Fi Channel remake of Battlestar Galactica.
The women are equally complex — and more screwed up — on the Sci Fi Channel's hit Battlestar Galactica. Flying a fighter or punching out one of her own male comrades, Lt. "Starbuck" Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) is the orneriest, horniest pilot aboard.
Galactica's President Laura Roslin (twice Oscar-nominated Mary McDonnell) employs religious fervor to keep her terminal cancer from distracting her as she leads humanity toward a new solar system.
Even the cyborg women on the show are complex, torn between destroying men or making babies with them.

Read the full article here.

The Visual Effects of Galactica

Uemedia has posted up an article on the visual effects of the New Galactica, going into detail about how the CGI done by Zoic Studios is created. It provides a really good insight into the scenes that we see in space.

So Say We All: The Visual Effects of "Battlestar Galactica"
I’ve always been a huge sci-fi fan, growing up in the ’70s with the likes of “Star Wars” at the movies and “Battlestar Galactica” on TV. I was initially skeptical of the SciFi Channel’s re-imagining of “Galactica,” which launched as a series earlier this year. I found myself quickly won over by the show’s deep character development and realistic depiction of a group of wartime refugees on the run from the now complex and clever Cylons. A major part of the show’s appeal is the Emmy-nominated visual effects work created by Culver City-based Zoic Studios and Atmosphere in Vancouver, Canada. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Zoic’s digital effects supervisor Chris Zapara and visual effects producer Steve Kullback to discuss their efforts.
“Battlestar Galactica” is modeled and animated primarily in NewTek’s LightWave 3D with a sprinkling of Maya. Compositing is accomplished with Discreet Combustion and Adobe After Effects. Zoic employs a modest but effective crew. According to Chris, the team comprises “at the peak of a typical episode: five Lightwave Artists, two compositors along with supervisors, producers and support crew. As many as eleven people work on a given day per episode.” Many of the animators are huge fans of the original “Galactica” and bring a lot of that love to their work on the new series.
One of “Galactica’s” most distinctive features is the camera work. Shots are constantly zooming and reframing like classic documentary combat footage. This style adds visual energy and great verisimilitude and is used consistently in the live action and animated footage. The show’s aesthetic stands in contrast to the stately, majestic shots typically seen in science fiction shows and films. Artist Mark Shimer demonstrated that the seemingly erratic camera movement is created by strategically placing start and end keyframes for a shot in LightWave, then adding “wild” keyframes to shake things up. Chris joked, “the effects ‘cameraman’ in our show would be fired on any other show, because it’s losing frame and there’s always a lot of zoom! But it adds realism.”
The Galactica herself is a huge model consisting of over 3.4 million polygons. The ship can be loaded in various levels of detail to suit each camera angle without overloading the animator’s workstation. Zoic is able to provide its creative producers with a lot of flexibility by rendering each shot in several layers, including a key light pass, depth pass and radiosity pass. Steve commented, “our models are really good, our LightWave artists are really good. We’ve gone the extra step in splitting out the rendering layers so we can fine-tune.” By outputting them in separate passes, shots can be greatly finessed during compositing to allow for creative changes in lighting and depth of field without requiring a costly and time-consuming re-render in 3D.
An assortment of civilian spacecraft referred to affectionately as the rag-tag fleet usually surrounds the Galactica as its charge. Fans of the original series have noted many ships from that show remain in the new fleet. “Galactica’s” first season CG supervisor Lee Stringer helped lead the initial effort by studying the original model ships and meticulously recreating them in LightWave. Chris noted, “Lee really liked those older models. He even went the extra mile by researching the original plastic models that were kit-bashed to create the Colonial Movers ship, [a fan favorite.]” Having the old ships flying with the new Galactica provides a great visual bridge to the classic show and contributes to the update’s nostalgia factor.
A recent episode saw the arrival of The Pegasus, another Battlestar whose power seemingly eclipses the mighty Galactica. Zoic was able to model this complex ship on a greatly protracted schedule. Chris outlined the process, “our turnaround on the Pegasus was a matter of 5-6 weeks vs. the original Galactica model which took 5 or 6 months. Jose Perez was the chief modeler for the Pegasus.” Fan reaction was very positive to the new ship and its clear ties to the look and feel of the same ship on the original series.
Zoic receives live action plates from the production on D5 tapes in HD 1080/24p. CG elements are composited into these plates after they are motion tracked using Boujou and often a degree of manual eyeballing. Chris and Steve are quick to praise the efforts of visual effects supervisor Gary Hutzel and his producer Mike Gibson, who run the effects efforts on the “Galactica” set in Vancouver, “Gary does a good job making sure we’re supplied with tracking markers and camera data. He also comes from a background of lighting and shooting traditional effects and miniatures. Gary really keeps us on task. Even with good data, tracking live action is probably one of the harder aspects of the show.”
Zoic is able to successfully composite elements such as the robotic Cylon Centurions as well as virtual extensions to the show’s sets using Boujou’s tracking solutions. The menacing, reflective Centurions are frequently glimpsed running, often through varied environments like rain, smoke and fire. Meanwhile, the Galactica’s main hangar bay is a large set made massive by digital extensions. These extensions are seamlessly blended via a mixture of 3D set pieces, background ships and equipment along with CG and 2D people shot on greenscreen.
A new technique Zoic is experimenting with is something called enhanced animatics. A typical effects shot begins with a description on a script page along with a storyboard and possibly a rudimentary animatic. Adam 'Mojo' Lebowitz, a longtime Lightwave wizard and Zoic artist, pioneered the concept of creating greatly enhanced visuals that depict entire effects sequences as described in the script rather than on a shot-by-shot basis. The upgraded animation is combined with sound effects, music and dialogue and edited on an Avid to present to the producers. This method sounds like a win-win situation. Producers get a near-final looking previsualization of a given effects sequence and the artists at Zoic have an opportunity to contribute creatively to the design and flow of entire sequences. Chris and Steve also credited Executive Producer Ron Moore for creating an environment open to this level of collaboration.
Zoic’s completed shots are output back onto D5 tape in full 1080/24p. Steve described the power required to deliver this level of resolution on a weekly series schedule, “we have approximately 300 render nodes. Most are dual-CPU Intel boxes in a 1U form-factor with a minimum per-processor speed of 2GHz. They all have 4GB of RAM and are connected via Ethernet with Extreme Networks switches. For storage we use Isilon Systems and have approximately 40TB available for production work. We’ve also just brought a system online that uses artist and producer boxes with a screensaver coded in-house to advertise availability. This adds 120 CPUs.”
Zoic employs a full-time staff of engineers and IT wranglers to organize and schedule renders. The system is often employed on other effects work done by the company, which has recently included the feature films Serenity, The Day After Tomorrow, Spider-Man 2 and Zathura. Zoic’s other TV series work has included Angel, Firefly, Invasion and CBS’s CSI series.
The success of “Battlestar Galactica’s” visual effects comes out of the great affection Zoic has for the series and a clearly evident pride in its signature look. Chris added, “the artists who work at Zoic are truly fans of the show. We enjoy sitting down on Friday night to watch it every week just like everyone else.” The Galactica is in great hands and should continue to fly proudly for many seasons as she leads her rag-tag fleet in search of a home called Earth.

Article reprinted from Uemedia. More images are avaliable through that link.

China's Second Manned Mission to Space to Galactica Theme

China has just launched their second manned mission to space this morning, two years after their first manned mission. The launch was covered by the state television networks to a modified version of the 1970's Battlestar Galactica theme.

Full article here: Reuters South Africa

China launches its second manned spacecraft Shenzhou VI at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gansu Province October 12, 2005. REUTERS/China Newsphoto

New Video Blog

David Eick has posted up a new video blog on the official site. Click on the image to take a look.

Bear McCreary Live Concert

"Battlestar Galactica" Composer in Live Internet Concert!
Release Date:(10/12/2005)
"Battlestar Galactica" composer Bear McCreary's band 17 Billion Miles of DNA will perform a live internet concert Thursday, October 20th @ 9pm. This bizarre little jazz band is best described as Django Reinhardt meets Astor Piazzola meets Axl Rose. "Battlestar" vocalist Bt4 will be singing lead vocals, and "Battlestar" percussion maestro M.B. Gordy will be on drums. McCreary plays accordion, and provides all the original songs and arrangements.

eOnline Interview with Ronald Moore

EOnline has posted up an interview with Ronald Moore:

Battlestar geeks, unite! As promised in the column, here is the full transcript of my talk with Creator and Executive Producer Ron Moore, with the questions YOU sent in.

Chris Perez: What do you think of all of the critical acclaim Battlestar Galactica has been receiving?
Ron: It’s really nice! Thank you. It’s really gratifying. I’m really glad that people are finding it and enjoying it because we love making it.

Seth Zilger: Any chance of a Starbuck/Apollo romantic relationship? How do you feel writing their scenes, since some fans may want them to be together, but it may lose it’s edge if they were to get together.
Ron: Yeah, it’s the famous Sam and Diane problem. I’m trying not to be too coy about it. It’s a really delicate, fine line that you’re trying to walk here, where yeah, you don’t want to just suddenly get them together and now they’re a couple and all the sort of angst and tension is gone, which is what’s drawing people into the relationship. But at the same time, you don’t want to be coy about it and keep teasing and ‘oh, they almost’ and ‘oh, it’s just so cute,’ because that gets annoying too. So what I’m trying to do is just sort of be true to who these two characters are. I mean, they are kind of oil and water. They’re very different people who have a strong personal connection and a strong sort of emotional attraction to one another, and a physical attraction, but it’s complicated by a lot of baggage and a lot of stuff, so I think the truth of that relationship is that it will always kind of dance in and dance out. There are times when they feel like it’s the right thing to do, and then it will get screwed up, and then there are times when they’ll just be at each other and wanting to kill one another and then they’ll realize that there’s something deeper between them. So I don’t think it will ever be a simple relationship.

Kathryn Tennaro: have you considered making a movie out of BSG (like Joss' Serenity)?
Ron: I don’t know. I’m not sure that the show lends itself to a feature film. One of the strengths I think of the show is all the serialized elements of it. All the continuing storyline. All the character work and the fabric of the show and the myth, and all the textures of it. With a feature you’re doing a big one off, here’s one big flashy film, and I’m not sure that’s really what this show is about. So I haven’t really seriously considered that.


See the rest of it here:
http://www.eonline.com/Insider/Boards/ann.jspa?annID=169

Season 2 Second Half News

A very good news post on a number of Season 2 storylines that they're going to be exploring in the second half, which is airing in January:

Battlestar Galactica Executive Producer Ron Moore and actor Jamie Bamer took part in a Q & A session at E!Online. Ron reveals what’s coming up in Season 2, Part 2:
"Second half of the season starts in January. We shot the first ten then took a four week break in the summer, but we’re back. Right now we’re shooting episode 15 and we will continue shooting until first week in December."
"The second half of the season obviously is going to deal with the cliffhanger where we left off, with Pegasus and Galactica about to do battle. First episode will deal with that. Then we’re going to do some episodes with, well, one of the characters who’s going to have a major role to play is Lee Adama. He’s going to go on his own emotional journey and eventually find himself."
"There’s a big Laura episode. You get to see her life on Caprice before the attack, and you’ll get to meet president Adar, who was the president she worked for when she was the Secretary of Education. And you’ll get to see a glimpse of what her life was like before she found out she got cancer and before the attack."
"There’s a storyline where Baltar’s sort of growing affinity for the Cylons becomes more prominent and he starts becoming somewhat darker and scarier character as time goes on."
"We’re going to be doing big episodes with the other battlestar, Pegasus. We’ve got a big fighter plane combat episode that’s all about Kara and one of our other pilots named Kat and their competition with each other and sort of with themselves as regards to one Cylon raider out there that keeps coming back and killing pilots again and again."
"We’re gonna try to do a couple of really controversial episodes. We’re gonna deal with some sort of hot-button issues of today that will be translated into Galactica’s world. Like abortion is definitely going to become an issue on the show."
"We’re going to do a Cylon-oriented episode later in the season that’s sort of a story that’s told primarily from the cylon’s point of view for the first time. Sort of get inside their heads, see what they’re about when they’re not out chasing Galactica. And then we’ve got, of course, a big two-part finale where a lot of things are gonna change, and the show’s gonna sort of make a fairly significant, radical change of direction."
What about a renewal for Season 3? "We’re having general conversations about it. The network hasn’t made it a formal pickup. I’d say the indications look good. But they don’t have to pull the trigger on it for a few more months. It’s just the way networks work, they will probably not do it until they have to. February or March. I’m optimistic. I’ve been optimistic since we did the miniseries that we’d get picked up and I feel that we’re going to get picked up."
Meanwhile, Jamie reveals (to the delight of his fans) that Apollo will be, urm, revealing a lot more of himself and will be seeing "lots of loving. Looots of looooving. Yeah, my bathrobe has been on my peg in my trailer almost every day it seems. Lots of relationship stuff. Lots of darkness. He gets into a very dark place and almost does away with himself. He gets lost in space for a bit and thinks nobody’s going to rescue him and goes to a very dark moment which then affects everything else that he does. He questions everything that goes on and holds everyone else at a distance. Basically falls apart a bit and in that, he falls into many different arms, so it’s gonna to be interesting. It’s a really good story for him in the second half of the season, and I think he ends up then commanding the Pegasus as well for a bit. He’s got a lot to do."

Looks like we've got some good stuff coming soon

Battlestar Galactica Novelization Cover

Amazon.com has the cover art for the upcoming novelization of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. It's being written by Jeffrey Carver, who's written a number of books in the Science Fiction field.

Here's the cover:

Amazon.com lists this as a hardcover for a recommended price of 25.95, but they're selling it for 17.13. It also says in the book description: The first novel based on the SCI FI Channel's biggest hit series ever! Does this mean that there will be more of them, either covering the series or other, standalone novels? According to the author's webpage, the book will be released in Janruary 2006.
This is what Carver has to say about the book:

The SciFi Channel's new hit series, Battlestar Galactica, is loosely based on the original 1978 series, but very different in tone and character. If you're a fan, come relive the four-hour miniseries that kicked it off. If you've never seen the TV show, this is a great introduction to a very human cast of characters, struggling to lead humanity to survival in the face of attempted genocide. The Cylons are far more than chrome toasters now; they're all too nearly human, and they have a deadly agenda.
This was my first movie novelization. I loved the miniseries, and I had a terrific time writing this.

Carver's webpage is http://www.starrigger.net/ and his weblog is: http://starrigger.blogspot.com/

Locus Reviews Season 1

Locus Magazine, one of the biggest SciFi industry magazines, has reviewed the first season of Battlestar Galactica:


Battlestar Galactica: Season One: Television's New Math by Cynthia Ward

An Alchemical Transformation
When I heard Hollywood was remaking one of the cheesy 1970s' cheesiest TV shows, my eyes rolled so high, they almost popped out of my head. If remakes had descended to refashioning the world's most blatant Star Wars ripoff, then Hollywood had run out of barrel bottom, and started scraping dirt.
But: "The Battlestar Galactica pilot is surprisingly good," the SF writer Thomas Marcinko told my partner and me. "In fact, it's excellent" — and he pressed the miniseries DVD into our hands. "You'll see."
My partner and I were exhausted, so "We'll only watch an hour," we agreed, sure we wouldn't finish that first hour.
We watched the whole three hours in one sitting.
With 2003's Battlestar Galactica: Miniseries, Executive Producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick performed an amazing alchemy, turning cheese to gold. They thought through the implications of a robot terrorist attack that puts the human race only 50,000 lives from extinction, and they avoided trivializing terrorism. They replaced the 1978 series' simplistic, racially-dubious morality (good cowboys/flyboys vs. evil Indians/robots) with the moral complexities of real life, and they deepened the characters, mixing great heroism with personal weaknesses that could doom humanity.
And, in a television first, the miniseries' creators extrapolated the Cylon robots' revolt with the classic rigor of print SF. As the Cylon space fleet tracks down humanity's last survivors, Commander William Adama (Edward James Olmos) doesn't dream up some new, physically impossible space-battle maneuver that whisks millions to safety. Engineers wring no miraculous last-minute burst of energy from their tylium fuel. Science genius Gaius Baltar (James Callis) doesn't whip some wondrous new teleporter, photon super-torpedo, or nanotech Cylon-disassembler out of his butt. A small two-pilot spacecraft rescuing humans from a nuked planet must, because of strict weight limits, leave most of the refugees, and one pilot, to die.
In short, the creators of Battlestar Galactica: Miniseries achieved a second TV first: they extrapolated with the merciless logic of Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations." The characters in the miniseries face horrifying dilemmas that allow no good choices.
This pitiless logic continues in Battlestar Galactica: Season One.

La Belle Series Sans Merci
In Season One's first episode, the deserving Hugo Award winner "33", Cylon basestars and warships appear every thirty-three minutes to attack the humans' small, desperate fleet. One human ship disappears — but eventually reappears. Did the Olympic Carrier experience FTL engine trouble, or a Cylon takeover? This isn't easy to determine, because the newest, self-created Cylon models look and feel human, with at least one model programmed to think it is human. The refugees don't know how to sort human from Cylon. Should the Olympic Carrier be welcomed like the prodigal son, at the risk of Cylons annihilating the last 50,000 humans? Or should this civilian passenger ship be destroyed, at the risk of massacring 1,345 innocent humans?
Commander Adama and President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) make the decision to destroy the Olympic Carrier; the leader of the Viper fighter pilots, Captain Lee "Apollo" Adama (Jamie Bamber), makes the decision to obey the order. And the knowledge that he may have cold-bloodedly killed over a thousand people haunts Lee. Should he "take responsibility for his actions, right or wrong," and get over it, as his father and commander, William Adama, advises? Or should he, as President Roslin counsels, appear perfectly confident that he did the right thing, but remember and learn from his mistakes?
The cold equations of brutally-necessary choices and inevitable consequences affect all the characters. The best fighter pilot, Lieutenant Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Katee Sackhoff), chooses to obey the order to torture a human-seeming Cylon, in an attempt to extract the location of a nuke, which the Cylon claims to have hidden in the human fleet and programmed to go off in mere hours. The Cylon suffers pain, as any tortured human would, and believes sincerely in God (the Cylons are devout monotheists; the humans are polytheists). Starbuck leads the Cylon to doubt in his salvation, but he plants doubt in her mind about her Gods and the nature of the soul.
The choices and their costs are probably best represented by Laura Roslin. A minor cabinet member (Secretary of Education) until the Cylons eliminated the president of humanity's twelve Colony worlds and the forty-odd other officials preceding her in the line of succession, Roslin was sworn in as president during the miniseries. She is viewed as a naive school-teacher by Commander Adama and his second-in-command, Colonel Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan).
They are mistaken. Roslin is a shrewd and sophisticated politician, idealistic and inspirational, yet expert in the Machiavellian manipulation, dissembling, and backstabbing of Realpolitik (you'd swear BG's producers abducted the better writers from The West Wing). After a dangerous political foe (a recently-freed prisoner who may be a noble freedom-fighter, or a terrorist plotting more deadly violence against his human opponents) forces a new election, Roslin changes vice-presidential candidates. She replaces the more qualified candidate, who is her old friend and most loyal ally, with the inexperienced, arrogant, charismatic, and popular Dr. Gaius Baltar, because he's the best choice to win. Yet her choice of the weak, possibly delusional Baltar — the traitor who enabled the near-total genocide of humanity — will surely cost the humans dearly.
Roslin makes other difficult choices with grave consequences. She chooses to avoid eroding humankind's remaining hope by keeping secret her inoperable breast cancer, which gives her less than six months to live. But, because it's too late for conventional therapies to save her, she begins taking a controversial herb. This treatment causes hallucinations. They turn out to be prescient. Roslin consults the fleet's high priestess, and learns that her visions, illness, and impending death seem to fulfill an old, shockingly clear prophecy. It's a prophecy with which Roslin was previously unfamiliar, and it describes a Moses-like leader with a wasting illness, who will lead humanity to the Gods' planet, Kobol, and then, though she will not herself enter it, to the Promised Land: the mythic, lost thirteenth colony of Earth.
In the pilot, Commander Adama rallied the remnants of humanity by announcing that they would find Earth. However, neither Adama nor the president believed Earth existed. But when a planet greatly resembling lost Kobol is discovered, President Roslin makes her most momentous decision. She decides she is carrying out the Gods' will. As a result, she manipulates Starbuck into disobeying orders and taking off in the fleet's recently-captured Cylon flyer. Starbuck jumps across the light-years to Caprica — the former capital-world of the Colonies, nuked and overrun by Cylons — in search of an artifact, the "Arrow of Apollo," which, according to prophesy, will lead humanity to Earth. Sending Starbuck to Cylon Central endangers the human fleet, and precipitates a military coup that results in Roslin's incarceration and Commander Adama's perhaps-fatal incapacitation.
The cold equations of Battlestar Galactica: Season One permit no easy choices, have severe consequences, and raise serious questions. Is it permissible to lie, if a lie may be humanity's only hope? Should a loyal ally be sacrificed to political expediency? If the president isn't elected, is the government legitimate? Is martial law ever justified? Should personal feelings override group safety, or is the group always more important than the individual? Is it okay to negotiate with terrorists? Is terrorism ever justified? Is torture permissible when the survival of the entire human race is at stake? Should you tell people that some foes are indistinguishable from friends? Should you share this knowledge when you don't know how to sort human from Cylon — and when sharing will lead to paranoia, witch hunts, murder, the breakdown of society, perhaps even extinction?
Among the questions raised by the series are the biggest: If a leader makes her decisions based on religious beliefs or visions, is she crazy, or doing the right thing? Does a supreme being act in human affairs? Is there a God? If robots share every trait of their human creators, are they truly any different from humans? Do only humans have souls? What makes a human, human?
Battlestar Galactica: Season One offers no clear-cut answers. Morality remains conditional, complex, uncertain. It's left to us, the viewers, to decide whether each character's decisions and actions are right or wrong. In this, BG resembles no other genre television show, past or present, and few non-genre shows of any season.
As in The Sopranos, The West Wing, and Nip/Tuck, the problems and crises in Battlestar Galactica: Season One are as complex and demanding as those in a great novel, in or out of genre. And the characters attempting to solve those dilemmas are as complicated and flawed as the characters of a great novel. But the show's biggest questions — about God, faith, the soul, and the nature of humanity — are asked by relatively few novels, and no other TV show.
And as it incisively explores our most vital questions and concerns, Battlestar Galactica becomes not only the best SF TV show ever, but the best show on TV.

DVD Extras
The DVD box set (Universal, 2005) collects all thirteen Season One episodes of Battlestar Galactica, with the three-hour miniseries that preceded it (you needn't buy the separately available miniseries DVD). Miniseries and episodes are in anamorphic widescreen. The miniseries has commentary by Executive Producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick and Director Michael Rymer. Nine episodes have commentary by all three, by Moore and Eick, or by mastermind Moore alone. Disk 5 includes scenes deleted from the episodes; they generally provide additional insight into the characters and stories (though you'll be glad that the scenes with the annoying wiseass brat, Boxy, were deleted).
Additional bonus material consists of "Sketches and Art" (including photos and short videos); "Battlestar Galactica: The Series Lowdown"; and eight "Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes." Like the commentary, the features are interesting; they provide additional insight into the miniseries and Season One, and will be of especial value to anyone hoping to write scripts, act, direct, do special effects, etc. However, fans of print SF will be infuriated by the featurette "From Miniseries to Series," which condescendingly discusses introducing people-centered, realistic drama to "sci-fi." And, while the "Epilogue" is a little puffy about how everyone just totally loves working with everyone else, you know the actors aren't exaggerating when they express their joy in playing such wonderful characters.

Aaron Douglas and Tahmoh Penikett Chat

Reported by Galactica Station:

Galactica One UK: Online ChatWednesday 5th October

For all you Battlestar Galactica fans, there's an online chat with Aaron Douglas and Tahmoh Penikett this Saturday 8th Oct at around 1pm UK time here in the Wolf Chat Room
http://forums.delphiforums.com/Chatters12
Aaron Douglas and Tahmoh Penikett will chat online live from Wolf's Battlestar One Convention in the Thistle Hotel Heathrow London on this Saturday afternoon (tickets are still available from Wolf if you want to go to the event)
Please make sure you can get into the chat room well before the day of the chat.
How the chat will work!
You will be able to put your questions to Aaron & Tahmoh live, but in they will be in batches. The mod will tell you when to put your questions up, you will have about 30 or 50 secs to do this, so have your question ready before hand. The mod will then put the room on hold so that Aaron & Tahmoh can scroll back over everyone's questions and pick out the ones they want to answer. Please don't be disappointed if yours isn't picked. We will do this over and over so you can have more than one go.
When the room is on mod you will not be able to type in the chat. There is nothing wrong with your computer this is what happens when the chat room goes on mod.
Each actor will have roughly ? hour online, I'm not sure which for them will be up first as this is a live chat and there will be a lot going on at the event.
As this is a live chat there may well be a few problems on the day, if there are please bare with us while we sort them out, i.e. we may not start on time and I may have to pinch a fans laptop lol.
Anyway join us if you can and have fun.

If someone does this, get a transcript! I'll be away for the weekend and won't be able to participate.

Season 2.0 Box Art

TVShowsonDVD.com has released the box art for the second Galactica DVD set to hit stores, later this December.

Here's what they have to say about it:

(Click to Enlarge)

Last week we reported on the December 20th release of Battlestar Galactica - Season 2.0, the first half (10 episodes) of the second season of the 2004 series. What else is coming on the 3-DVD set that goes for $49.98 SRP?

Universal has revealed that the extras for this set will indeed include the podcasts we were sure would be in there. Also among the supplements are deleted scenes. Want more? You got it! Look no further than this box set if you want to see exclusive sneak peaks of upcoming episodes before they air!

Looks good!

More 2.0 Set News

Gateworld.net picked up the story on the 2.0 DVD set:

Season 2.0 coming to DVD in December
WEDNESDAY - OCTOBER 5, 2005
Universal will release the first half of Battlestar Galactica's second season on DVD December 20 (Region 1 - North America), The Digital Bits is reporting.The 3-disc set will include all 10 episodes aired this summer on The SCI FI Channel, from "Scattered" to "Pegasus." It will also include bonus features. The release will come with a rather steep asking price of $49.98.
Episodes will be presented in anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.
Presumably a "Season 2.5" release will follow the winter broadcast of the second half of the season, along with a full Season Two set for those who can hold out until later in 2006. Universal released the complete first season on DVD in North America just last month.
The second half of Season Two kicks off in January on SCI FI.

Zoic BSG Video

Found this cool little short video on the Zoic webpage. For those of you who don't know, Zoic is the special effects company that's responsible for Battlestar Galactica, as well as Firefly, Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and a number of other television shows, commercials and feature films.

Take a look:

www.zoicstudios.com

Go to Creations, then Television, then down a little to Battlestar Galactica. There's link at the bottom of the secion that says Movie.

The Captain's Hand

Gateworld.net has posted up some new details on an episode entitled the Captain's Hand. From all appearences, this episode looks to come very quickly after the conclusion of the Pegasus duo. Here's the article:

First details on 'The Captain's Hand'
TUESDAY - OCTOBER 4, 2005
The first info has arrived at GateWorld for "The Captain's Hand," an upcoming episode of Battlestar Galactica's second season!
Beware of spoilers in the report below. (Highlight to Read)

Lee Adama travels to the Battlestar Pegasus, where he meets up with Kara Thrace. Lee has been promoted to Major, and Kara to Captain. The two encounter Commander Barry Trammel, now in charge of the Pegasus, who orders Kara to the flight deck while he and Lee proceed to C.I.C.
A Raptor scout group from the Pegasus is several hours overdue. Trammel is worried -- but beyond the immediate problem, he believes it is symptomatic of a larger issue on his ship: an overall lack of discipline and cohesion between the men and women assigned to the Battlestar. And when things continue to go wrong, Trammel throws the blame at the occasionally insubordinate Starbuck. He restricts her to quarters, intent on shipping her back to Galactica.
Meanwhile, President Roslin's relationship with Vice President Baltar is growing increasingly strained.
Trammel is clearly having his own command crisis, and is hurt when Lee suggests that they coordinate the search for the missing Raptors with Admiral Adama (also recently promoted) and the Galactica. If Kara's plan to find the ships doesn't work, Trammel suggests that the deaths of the Raptor crews will be on Lee's head.
Guest characters include Commander Barry Trammel, Hoshi (the Pegasus's version of Lt. Gaeta), and Gage (a Pegasus C.I.C. officer).

"The Captain's Table" will air early in 2006 as part of the second half of Galactica's second season. New episodes return to The SCI FI Channel in January.

Amazing Space

Entertainment Weekly has the following article on Battlestar Galactica:

The return of Sci Fi's ''Battlestar Galactica'' -- The update of the original '70's series proves its worth with smart writing by Neil Drumming

BATTLE STARS Helfer, Callis, Sackhoff, Olmos, Bamber, McDonnell, and Park

Mary McDonnell looks miserable. It's only her first scene of the day for Sci Fi's Battlestar Galactica, and she's being asked to struggle up a muddy Vancouver hillside in a downpour, while her woolly red mane clings limply to her face. Even with studly costar Jamie Bamber propping her up, this would seem to be the beginning of a dreadful afternoon.
Yet just before the director yells ''Cut!'' and the fake rain blinks out, McDonnell — apropos of nothing — lets out a jolly chuckle. Word comes down from above, radioed from a producer to a grumpy third assistant director: ''Just a suggestion, Mary shouldn't be laughing.''
Well, why not? Sure, McDonnell plays Battlestar's President Laura Roslin, a schoolteacher forced to lead thousands of desperate, space-faring refugees after humanity is virtually exterminated by killer robots. As if that's not enough, breast cancer threatens to kill her in months. But amid all this cosmic gloom, McDonnell and the folks behind the gritty Battlestar remake have good reason to be giddy: The show — based on a 1978 ABC series starring Lorne Greene that lasted only one season — has quickly become the highest-rated program in Sci Fi Channel's 13-year history, averaging over 2.8 million viewers in its first season.
The updated series, which begins its second season on Friday, July 15, at 10 p.m., is not your typical tidy space opera: A civilization of humans in a distant galaxy creates a race of powerful robots (Cylons) who violently turn the tables on their masters. But the look of the humans is at odds with the futuristic setting — these highly advanced folks wear everyday suits, communicate via clunky old phones (with cords!), and travel in run-down spaceships.
''I wanted it to feel and look different,'' says writer-executive producer Ronald D. Moore (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Roswell), who, along with fellow exec producer David Eick, was charged with reimagining the '70s show as a miniseries/pilot that aired on Sci Fi in 2003. ''I did not want the viewer to be put off by space clothes, space hair, and wacky designs. There's so much artifice in science fiction that distances the audience from the drama.'' Edward James Olmos, who plays curmudgeonly Commander Adama, shares Moore's concerns. ''The first four-eyed monster I see, I'm going to faint,'' he says. ''And I am out of the picture.''
But while Moore's vision was more low-tech and alien-free than the original — not to mention glossy genre giants Star Wars and Star Trek — he stayed true to the first Battlestar in one key aspect. ''I was really struck by the dark nature of the premise,'' he says. ''There's this genocidal attack that wipes out the human race, and then your heroes are people that are running away. When you watch that pilot in the post-9/11 world, it has a completely different resonance than it did in 1978.''

Cast of 'Battlestar Galactica'

OUT OF SIGHT Lucy Lawless is prepped for a Galactica guest spot

Like most things sci-fi, the original Battlestar had a small but rabid core of fans. So even before the 2003 miniseries aired, Moore's rejiggering of favorite characters and plot points — cigar-smoking alpha male Starbuck is now a woman? Cylons that look like humans? — raised the hackles of the change-fearing online owls. ''When Galactica landed on my table, I cringed, a butt-crunching cringe,'' says Bamber (Band of Brothers), who plays Apollo, the character originated by Richard Hatch. ''It was so of its time. Why do it again? I had remake-itis.'' Sci Fi Channel president Bonnie Hammer, on the other hand, was itching to resurrect the title — and Moore's take was the first in years to jibe with her own. ''It wasn't campy,'' says Hammer. ''You can't create a series that deals with a civilization being threatened and have it be blue skies.''
The fans ultimately bought that logic. The two-parter did so well for Sci Fi — scoring more than 4 million viewers — the network picked it up as a series. Moore, who had previously spent 10 years toiling in the clean-uniformed Star Trek universe, dived headlong into Battlestar's grim alternative reality, weaving together stories of religion-fueled conflict, ugly wartime politics, and sex. ''We go at the same issues [as they do] on 24 or The West Wing,'' says McDonnell(Dances With Wolves). ''There's this docudrama reality brothered with fantasy escapism.''
But sometimes Battlestar's reality can get so intense, the cast longs for a little fantasy. During a ripped-from-the-headlines episode in season 1, Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) brutalizes a fundamentalist prisoner à la Abu Ghraib. (In one of the show's many sympathy-subverting twists, the humans practice polytheism while their Cylon enemies massacre mankind on behalf of the one true ''God.'') ''I was having nightmares for a week afterward,'' says Sackhoff. Jokes Grace Park, who plays Boomer, a sweet-faced pilot who periodically turns saboteur for reasons even she can't explain: ''This is entertainment? It's like watching a car wreck.''
And this week's pileup is taking a while to film. As the camera crew sets up a complicated shot, half a dozen costumed cast members, waiting to be marooned on the planet Kobol, form a rowdy circle beneath the damp leaves. Park wanders toward the noise.
''What the hell is happening here?'' she asks.
''We're playing the laughing game,'' says Tahmoh Penikett (a.k.a. strapping Lieutenant Helo).
Sackhoff lets out an impressive witchlike cackle. Jamie Bamber draws kudos for his maniacal bellowing. But Mary McDonnell trumps all with a throaty, pained impersonation of her husband.
''He laughs like he broke his rib,'' she giggles. Around here, it seems, any semblance of suffering makes for a good show.

Galactica also made a CNN/EW list of recommended things at #3.

DVD Site

Scifi has launched a new site for the Battlestar Galactica Season1 DVD Set. See it here:

http://www.battlestargalacticadvd.com/

Boston.com's Top 50 SciFi Shows

Battlestar Galactica makes the list, twice:


Number 2
'Battlestar Galactica' (New)
The new 'Battlestar Galactica' just barely missed the number 1 spot due to its newbie status in the sci-fi genre. However, this is easily on track to becoming Number 1 due to its great writing and a wonderful vision by executive producer Ronald D. Moore. The show is a modern-day remake of its 1970s predecessory but features more compelling story plots, a darker tone and surprising twists and turns in almost every episode.

Number 35
'Battlestar Galactica' (Original)
The 1978 series 'Battlestar Galactica' is a fantastic story of 12 colonies destroyed by a race of mechanized beings called Cylons, who are bent on destroying mankind. Commander Adama, played by the late Lorne Green, leads a rag-tag fugitive fleet across the galaxy in search of the lost 13th tribe, who settled on a planet called Earth. The great cast included Dirk Benedict as Starbuck and Richard Hatch as Apollo.


Stargate Atlantis makes #26, Firefly made #17, Stargate SG-1 made #6, Babylon 5 #5, and the Original Star Trek tops the list at #1.

Cylons: Not about Destruction

Nowplayingmag has this article with Ron Moore about the Cylons:


Moore’s Cylons: “Just Not About Destruction”

Written by Scott Collura
Friday, 30 September 2005
Battlestar Galactica may have had its mid-season finale last week, slipping into reruns now until January, but that doesn’t mean that the red-eye of the Cylons isn’t continuing its slow but steady pendulum swing as showrunner Ron Moore preps the remaining 10 episodes of the season. In the final part of our discussion with Moore (read part one by clicking here, part two by clicking here, and check out our Galactica cast video interview by clicking here), the executive producer of the hit show explains that he has plans for those red-eyed toasters – and their more evolved, human-like brethren.
“Overall the Cylons are just not about destruction. They have their own civilization and their own ethos. What are they doing with the Colonies?” asks Moore, referring to the decimated human planets of the show. “They left a lot of the buildings intact; they’re cleaning up the bodies. I think they’re intent on using the Colonies for themselves. The question is for what.”
Part of that answer no doubt lies in the breeding and reproduction experiments that Starbuck encountered in the episode “The Farm,” but Moore says that there is more to the story than that, and he expects that, despite Starbuck and Helo having escaped from Caprica recently, we will see more of the devastated Colonial planet in future episodes.
“We will probably go back,” he says. “We’ll be away from Caprica for a good chunk of the season, but we’re talking about heading back there. I think part of the show will always have one foot on Caprica in some shape or form. It just feels like that’s part of our tale as well. What happens back at the Colonies now that the Cylons have taken over? Who’s left, who’s not? What are the Cylons doing with the Colonies? What’s their structure? What’s their society? Why did they want the Colonies? I think it will always be a kind of interesting story to tell.”
Another potential storytelling device that has been thrown around by the writers of the show is to do an all-Cylon episode, wherein the humans, who are typically our heroes, would be portrayed for the audience through the Cylons’ eyes. In that light, Commander Adama and company may look a lot less noble and civilized than they typically do.
“That’s not written, but it’s something we’re talking about,” explains Moore. “I always wanted [the Cylons] to be complex. I always felt one of the problems of the original Battlestar was the Cylons were just bad. They were just evil. They were just out to conquer the galaxy – they just wanted to shoot you. And I thought that this series was going to be much more complicated than that and that our opponents would have much more interesting sides to them. That they would have humanity, for lack of a better word. They have feelings and emotions. They have a theology. They have a belief system. They worship a loving God of salvation. They’re complicated opponents, which I think makes them more formidable opponents. It’s like, ‘These guys scare me.’ You may not know what to do with these guys exactly, or how to outmaneuver them, or what their weak point is, or how you defeat them, or how do you just survive against the Cylons… Because they are sort of much more fully formed beings than you are typically ready to encounter in this genre.”
Which is not to say that Moore is changing what the core of Battlestar Galactica is. Throughout the run of his show, he has always managed to reference key points and elements from the original while also modernizing them or otherwise adapting them to fit with his new take on the Galactica universe. Whether it’s the arrival of the Battlestar Pegasus in “Pegasus” or Adama taking the offensive against the Cylons in “The Hand of God,” whether it’s giving us a true “rogue” in the person of Katee Sackhoff’s Starbuck or fitting the death of Apollo’s brother Zak into the main story (an obscure event in the original series’ pilot), the new Galactica maintains the through-line of its predecessor despite its very different tone.
“Searching for Earth… I think that will always be part of the show. I think it is one of the fundamental ideas of what the show is,” says Moore. “I always wanted this to be Battlestar Galactica, just a different version of it. There are certain things that make it Battlestar Galactica and without them it would be something else. It’s an aircraft carrier in space, shepherding a bunch of civilian ships, and looking for a place called Earth. That is kind of the logline of the series. Now, that doesn’t mean they can’t find Earth. That doesn’t mean you can’t find Earth and then have problems, or do some different kind of storytelling. But I don’t know that I ever really want to yank the fundamentals away from the show. You never say never. You want to be able to say, ‘Well, wait a minute, we’ve got this great space station idea. Let’s do that for a season.’ I mean, you never know. But basically, I don’t think so.”
Of course, another way that Moore has kept the torch of the original show burning is by casting that series’ star Richard Hatch in the recurring role of sketchy politico Tom Zarek. After two appearances in season one, the character has shown up for a string of episodes already in year two – and it’s not just because of Hatch’s affiliation with the original Galactica that he keeps returning.
“We’re going to continue to reprise Richard,” says Moore. “He just works really well for us. He’s a good character, a good actor, and he works well in the show. We don’t have a lot of people that are recognizable faces out there in the civilian fleet, and [Zarek’s] one of them, so it helps us connect with that population outside of Galactica.”
As for bringing back other actors from the old show, Moore says that he’s not opposed to it, but that it would have to be for the right reasons.
“You never know as far as the original players,” he says. “It’s sort of like Richard was a unique case. He and I talked and then we sort of came up with a great character that was a good match for him. Hopefully if we were to bring anyone else back from the original show, it would be similar: that we would have a great character that was a good fit as opposed to just a walk-on or a stunt or something like that.”
And at the rate that Moore and his writers kill off characters on the series, they may very well need to start utilizing some of those casting resources.
“[The network’s] concerns are things like, ‘How high is the body count this week?’” laughs Moore. “‘Do we have to kill all these people?! How about we kill half these people?!!’”