Battlestar Picks up 4 Emmy Nods

Congrats to everyone on the crew! Here's the breakdown:

Outstanding Writing For A Drama Series
Battlestar Galactica · Occupation/Precipice · Sci Fi Channel · R+D TV in association with NBC Universal Television Studio Ronald D, Written by

Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Series
Battlestar Galactica · Exodus, Part 2 · Sci Fi Channel · R+D TV in association with NBC Universal Television Studio Tom Archer, Lead Compositor Brenda Campbell, Lead Compositor Doug Drexler, CG Supervisor Michael Gibson, Senior VFX Coordinator Jeremy Hoey, Lead Matte Painter Gary Hutzel, VFX Supervisor Andrew Karr, CGI Supervisor Alec McClymont, Lead CGI Artist/ Animator Adam Mojo, CGI Sequence Designer

Outstanding Sound Editing For A Series
Battlestar Galactica · Exodus, Part 2 · Sci Fi Channel · R+D TV in association with NBC Universal Television Studio Michael Baber, Music Editor Vince Balunas, Sound Editor Daniel Colman, Sound Editor Jack Levy, Supervising Sound Editor Doug Madick, Foley Artist Rick Partlow, Foley Artist

Outstanding Directing For A Drama Series
Battlestar Galactica · Exodus, Part 2 · Sci Fi Channel · R+D TV in association with NBC Universal Television Studio Felix Alcala, Director

Mini Marathon

SciFi will be showing a mini-marathon of Season 3 on December 19th, starting at 8 am:

08:00 AM BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (SEASON 3) THE OCCUPATION/ PRECIPICE (2HR)
10:00 AM BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (SEASON 3) EXODUS - PT 1
11:00 AM BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (SEASON 3) EXODUS - PT 2
12:00 PM BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (SEASON 3) COLLABORATORS
01:00 PM BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (SEASON 3) TORN - PT 1
02:00 PM BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (SEASON 3) A MEASURE OF SALVATION - PT 2
03:00 PM BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (SEASON 3) HERO

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.

Exodus Part 2 on iTunes

Episode 304: Exodus, is now up on iTunes for $1.99

Download it here.

Exodus Reviews

Bunch of reviews are up for 303:


From Entertainment Weekly:

Bringing Up Baby

On ''Battlestar Galactica,'' Sharon is told that her child is alive; plus, the insurgents discover a traitor, and Adama launches the counterattack by Marc Bernardin

Hey, before we talk about the episode itself, anyone else notice that the show credits now read ''Fighting for Survival'' instead of ''Searching for Earth''?

Now let's get into it. Who doesn't love The Great Escape, the fabulous 1963 Steve McQueen-James Coburn-Richard Attenborough World War II POW flick? Clearly, the producers do, since the whole opening sequence of this episode — where the civilians are taken off those trucks and surprised with a centurion firing squad — is a direct lift. But more than that, ''Exodus, Part One'' feels like we're gearing up for humanity's great escape. It builds momentum and emotion the whole way through. Plans are made, events are set in motion, and there's even a scene in some underground tunnels, dug, presumably, by BSG's version of Charles Bronson, Chief Tyrol. (Given that he seems such an effective leader of men, I wonder if the chief will be assigned more of a command role once he gets back to Galactica — if he gets back to Galactica.)

I guess the question ''Do androids dream of electric sheep?'' has been answered. Apparently, they dream of rocks and temples and hybrid babies. Freaky Amanda Plummer as an oracle is a huge step up from the stentorian black holy woman who died back on Kobol. Plummer plays her character as the kind of person who is in touch with the gods because she's clearly not in touch with reality. Comes to think of it, is she truly an oracle, or is she a spy? Do gods pass messages so specific, especially across different pantheons?

One of the things I've always liked the least about BSG has been the religious elements, especially when entire plot lines relied on them, like the whole ''following the prophet to the tomb of Athena'' first-season finale. It's a personal thing. But this is really the first time that I bought into it, when the pilots drew a line of salt on the ground and read from the scripture. These are people who have lost everything, and then somehow lost even more on top of that. I guess that old saying ''There are no atheists in foxholes'' applies here, too. When you're on the bleeding edge of annihilation, when the line that divides survival and desolation is as ephemeral as a trail of salt, you reach out for whatever will keep you steady.
Full Review

From TV Squad:

Battlestar Galactica: Exodus, Part One

Posted Oct 13th 2006 10:01PM by Keith McDuffee
(S03E03) As many people made note of last week, the previews for this week's episode basically gave away the fact that Roslin lived through whatever happened during the end of the first episode, as the Cylon toasters approached the group of humans in firing squad form. But at the same time several of you were willing to believe that anything could have happened to cause her to live through such a thing.In true Battlestar Galactica form, we start with a flashback to one hour earlier. Just from that alone you know things didn't go down as simply as they appeared at last episode's end.

Here's the thing with Sharon and what I said about her possibly causing that ambush. In the last episode we didn't see her with the rest of the landing party, so really if you didn't know for sure, she could have possibly been a Cylon spy put into place when following the map that was stolen. Well anyway, I thought it was possible at the time.

It definitely seems to be a good idea to capture the Cylons and disable them rather than kill them outright. Then they don't have a chance to make it to "download city" (love it). But really, how many Cylon "souls" are there? We know how many models, but I don't recall if they ever mentioned how many of each model there are.
Full Review

Finally, Best Sindication has an article entitled 'How Battlestar Galactica Saved Science Fiction'
Submitted by Art Baker on October 13, 2006 - 2:08pm. Entertainment | Television

In 1977, Star Wars reintroduced the world to the serialized space opera with groundbreaking results both creatively and financially. In the wake of this paradigm shift came a gaggle of embarrassing me-too projects both for film and television. Then there was Battlestar Galactica.

Battlestar Galactica was the brain-child of producer/writer/director Glen Larson. It was both a pastiche of the Star Wars formula, and a bizarre melding of wagon train and Egyptian mythology. The series chronicled the adventures of a “Rag Tag Fleet” running from the Cylons, a mechanized horde of robots lead by a human traitor; their destination is a mythical world called “Earth”. Battlestar Galactica was a success both theatrically and on the television. Despite it’s campy acting and plot lines there was an endearing element in the quest of these characters. Battlestar Galactica never made any apologies for borrowing the character archetypes made so popular in Star Wars. Apollo is a dark haired Luke Skywalker, Sheba the strong female cut from the Princess Leia strand, and Starbuck as the charismatic scoundrel that Han Solo would surely approve of. Despite these obvious pastiches, Battlestar Galactica got away with it.
Full Article

303 Commentary

The Commentary podcast for Exodus, Part 1 is up. Unfortunently, I just don't have the time to do proper reviews, although I have been reviewing it as part of my TV Recap, avaliable on my regular weblog, JediTrilobite.blogspot.com.

Commentary:
303 – Exodus, Part 1

Images from Exodus and Collaborators

BSG Media has some fantastic new images of the upcoming episodes Exodus and Collaborators:

SPOILERS

Exodus and Collaborators

Updated Episode Title List

Just going over the list of confirmed episodes that Gateworld has been posting.

OCCUPATION / PRECIPICE 301
EXODUS, PART 1 302
EXODUS, PART 2 303
COLLABORATORS 304
TORN 305
A MEASURE OF SALVATION 306
HERO 307
UNFINISHED BUSINESS 308
THE PASSAGE 309
EYE OF JUPITER 310
RAPTURE 311
TAKING A BREAK 312
THE WOMAN KING ???