Real SciFi

The SyFyPortal has posted up this interesting article:

Grazier: Making Science-Fiction Real
'Battlestar Galactica' science expert shares secrets

Source: SyFy Portal

(December 06 2006) - The writing team of David Weddle and Bradley Thompson had a great strategy to rescue the colonists trapped on New Caprica on "Battlestar Galactica," but first, they had to find out whether or not it would be practical.

They didn't need to visit special effects -- those guys can do anything. Showrunner Ronald D. Moore? As long as it was entertaining and smart, he would already be onboard.

No, this one needed to go elsewhere, like "Battlestar's" resident science advisor, Dr. Kevin Grazier.

The rescue strategy? Have the Galactica jump well within New Caprica's gravitational pull, and in a free-fall belly-flop of the ship, launch Vipers and jump away before the Galactica crashes to the ground. All of this needed to be figured out quickly, as it was being planned for the fourth episode of the third season, "Exodus, Part 2."

"I said something in my notes about that episode to the effect that I woul dbe remiss in my job if I didn't say that this wouldn't happen like that," Grazier told SyFy Portal's Michael Hinman about the freefall. "It would break up. But because of the high coolness factor, and since this was science-fiction, I wanted to see this."

Not everything in science can be ignored because of the "high coolness" factor, and Grazier is well aware of how tech-savvy many fans of science-fiction are. That means spending a lot of time pouring over scientific details of scripts being planned for both "Battlestar Galactica" and another SciFi Channel original show, "Eureka." Sometimes, the solution can be easy ... other times, Grazier's task could be almost impossible, like when he was asked during the show's second season to explain how Faster-Than-Light drives worked.

"I was told they were writing a large portion of 'The Captain's Hand' on how the drive works, how it can be damaged, and to have the captain, in a 'Wrath of Khan'-like move, save the ship," Grazier said. "So I had to spend five hours figuring out how the RTL drive worked."

Full Article Here.