The crown jewel drama on Sci Fi Channel hands down is “Battlestar Galactica,” which boasts a top drawer cast led by Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama of the Battlestar Galatica and Mary McDonnell as President Laura Roslin, who have a subtle but powerful chemistry in frame.
07/26/2008 - David Eick - 2008 Comic Con International Day Three - San Diego Convention Center - San Diego, CA. USA © Albert L. Ortega / PR Photos
The second war against the Cylons is over and The Twelve Colonies have been laid to waste. Together the two shepherd a fleet of refugees in a search for the elusive lost thirteenth colony, Earth.
BSG won the Peabody Award for overall excellence, several Emmy Awards for Visual Effects, and Emmy nominations for Writing and Directing. The show also has one of the hardest working art departments in all of television creating the outer worlds and unusual interiors that dramatically set apart the show from any other sci fi space adventure.
The hard work of Production Designer Richard Hudolin and Art Director Doug McLean gives the series such a wonderful realistic and otherworldly setting for the actors to lose themselves in their respective characters.
The Sci-Fi Channel show will be holding a live auction of props and memorabilia at the Pasadena Convention Center from January 16 to 18, with a portion of the proceeds going to United Way.
Among the items up for auction are Caprica-Six’s red dress, Adama’s blue uniform, President Laura Roslyn’s desk and a life-size viper, as well as a selection of pre-production art and costume sketches. You can log on to the auction by visiting Battlestarprops.com.
The good news is that Battlestar Galactica is getting a spinoff prequel series called "Caprica."
Signed on for twenty hours worth of finished product, including a two-hour pilot, the new series is to be set 50 years prior to Battlestar Galactica, and will focus on two rival families, the Graystones and the Adamas.
Polly Walker as Sister Clarice in Caprica
The technology of artificial intelligence and robotics will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons, the two houses go toe-to-toe blending action with corporate conspiracy and sexual politics.
Polly Walker (Rome) will be featured in the series.
Battlestar Galactica will return to TV on January 16 at 10 PM to finish off its fourth and final season.
Battlestar Galactica’s showrunners and executive producers Ron Moore and David Eick spoke to reporters by phone the other day about the long awaited return and the end of this exemplary show.
What are you most proud of, now that the end is here?
David Eick: I would have to say that I'm probably most proud of the fact that I think we were able to answer most of the questions that we had raised over the years.
And sort of to resolve most of the mysteries and sort of the grander questions of the show. And also at the same time give a resolution to all the character arcs.
Sort of to wrap it all up by the end. I think you'll find we don't sort of save everything until the last episode. We sort of start answering questions along the way.
That over the course of these last 10 we sort of bring a conclusion to a lot of things that we had set up over the years.
Ron Moore: Yes, I would add that it's so rare that you get to end things in the way that you intended. There are myriad details of course that changed and shifted.
But we talked about ending the show this way I think two years ago. And just the idea that we were able to actually dovetail it in that direction is very satisfying.
How did the end of the series affect the both of you? What does this show mean to you?
Ron Moore: I would say I found it very satisfying. I mean I was very pleased with the way that the show ended, creatively and personally. It just feels like we've completed the piece.
And now to sort of be able to step back a little bit and look at it from beginning to end I feel good about the complete story that is Battlestar Galactica.
Creatively and on a personal level it's just been a tremendous experience. And it's easily been the highlight of my career.
David Eick: It's also and I think telling that the show has provided such a great professional springboard for both of us. We don't tend to talk about that as much.
But the reality is I started writing on this show. I didn't, I hadn't been a writer prior to it. Ron started directing. Both of us have had doors opened for us.
We met people I don't think we ever would have met in the industry. And have had some opportunities that will probably continue for some time.
That's no small thing. It's hard to find those situations, that kind of fertile topsoil. And this show really, beyond just the show itself, has meant a great deal to us I think in terms of our future.
What does the future hold for both of you? Can you discuss Caprica?
Ron Moore: We both have various projects under way. Caprica has been picked up for a full season. We start shooting that probably in July.
We're putting the writing staff together now and the crew. And, just staffing up and getting ready to go.
We'll start breaking stories probably in February or maybe even as soon as the end of this month, kind of depending when all the pieces go together.
We have a game plan of sort of what the general story line is and sort of some direction. So we're not starting completely from scratch.
So things are well in hand. In Caprica we feel really good about that. And beyond that, I've got some future things in development and sort of waiting to see what will happen with Virtuality, which is a pilot at Fox.
David Eick: Nothing really, I'm going to shoot some pool. Try to do a lot of drinking. No, there's a lot, as I said, we both have deals at Universal.
So there's a pretty active development slate for both of us in terms of pilots. There are two at NBC right now that I have that are in serious contention and, various and sundry things elsewhere.
So it's an act of time. But our most primary focus right now is Caprica because that really is the next at bat.
How will Caprica tie into the mythos of what we learned throughout Battlestar Galactica?
Ron Moore: They'll certainly tie in. But we sort of set out deliberately to set up Caprica in a way that you didn't have to see Battlestar. I mean I think you could literally watch the pilot to Caprica without seeing a frame of film on Galactica and you would get it.
You could invest in that story completely on its own and just go from there. Because we wanted it to stand as its own project and we didn't want you to have to study up on Battlestar in order to enjoy Caprica.
How will you answer all the questions remaining in these final 10 episodes?
Ron Moore: Some if it will just be on a crawl in the end credit. By the way, in case you were wondering.
Well, that's the trick of doing it. The first decision was not to try to answer every single thing in the last episode. Because then the last episode just becomes a running tally of, oh and there's this question, and oh and there's that question and so and so and so and so.
There were certain things that would be raised naturally earlier in the story line. And then you could sort of deal with them on a case by case basis.
You just wanted each sort of revelation and each sort of answer to sort of have its own kind of moment in the sun, and not to make everything a giant mystery.
And to sort of let it proceed organically. It was a bit of a trick. But it didn't seem like it was too burdensome as we went through it. It felt kind of natural.
As we broke out the last 10 episodes there seemed like there were natural sort of places where we could explain this. And oh that revelation can go here. And, oh we'll fill this detail in there. And we'll still save these pieces for the end.
How do you view yourselves and the show in TV history?
Ron Moore: Yes, this is just the show that we work on. I tend to sort of think of it just as a show that David and I put on for our friends and family and for the cast members.
I mean it's just sort of our show. And I'm sort of always surprised when anybody watches the damn thing,
This is the idea that it's sort of something larger. It's sort of, well that's interesting. But it doesn't, I don't know, I'm not really emotionally connected to that idea.
David Eick: We try not to, I mean I think both of us have a tendency to be pretty pragmatic anyway. We like to keep normal hours. We don't like a lot of drama in our life.
We like to sort of have a happy group of people working together. There's not a lot of Hollywood hysteria. I think along with that comes a certain pragmatism in how we look at the work.
It is a job. It's a lot of hard work, long hours. It's a lot of sweat. And if you try to take a step back from it and say to yourself look at us, we're making Peabody Award-winning work.
Or ‘gee aren't we special’… I think you lose your way. So we I think try to keep our nose to the grindstone. I think it will probably be a couple years before we're able to kind of step back and go - and assess it with any kind of objectivity.
Can you give some storyline teases?
Ron Moore: Well they'll certainly be heavily into the story line. You know, what can I tell you about that. I mean with the discovery of Earth and the discovery of what Earth is, it certainly throws everyone's lives into question.
I think where we wanted to get to at the mid season break was what if you took everyone's fondest hope and dream away from them?
And then what happens to these people? And so, the final four are sort of in the same boat with everyone else. That's they're having to sort of re-evaluate well where do we go from here?
What does this mean for us? And I guess most profoundly for the final four is what are our specific origins? How did we come to be? What is our relationship with the rest of the Cylons? And what does this all mean for us specifically?
Those story lines will definitely play out in a very large way over the last 10 episodes.
Will Caprica fan appreciate the Cylon thread?
Ron Moore: Well hopefully they view it as is intended, which is a period piece. We're doing a period piece.
And in any period piece you kind of know what lays in the future if you're doing madmen - the '60s are a-coming. And you know that that whole world is going to collapse.
If you're doing a World War II piece, you know the Nazis are going to lose. But, you still are able to tell fascinating and compelling stories as periods.
I think that's what we're doing for this as well. I mean that's at least the intent.
What's the status in The Plan?
Ron Moore: I don't know that we have an air date for The Plan yet. And I don't know that we have an air date for Caprica yet. So I think those are probably up to SCI FI.
The Plan has been completed. It's shot. It's being edited. I haven't seen the cut yet. But it is done. Or it's in the can as it were. And I don't know what their plans are for air dates yet.
Ron, are you still involved with the - The Thing?
Ron Moore: Yes. Just working on some re-writes. And no, it hasn't been green lit or, you know, anything bigger then that. Futures just run on their own pace. Much slower then the TV pace.
I'm working on a re-write of the draft right now. And, you know, they still like it and everyone still happy. We'll just kind of wait and see when and if it happens.
Do you lurk and monitor fans site on the Web?
Ron Moore: I have a habit of going and sort of monitoring Web sites on the night that a - that a new episode airs. I'll kind of surf around a few Web sites just to kind of pick up fan reaction.
I get a kick out of sort of seeing message boards entries as the show was on the air. I'll try to go to like a, I'll put a couple windows up on my computer and watch sort of live reactions to people as they get to act breaks.
I think that's kind of enjoyable. And sort of receive some reviews and kind of see what the general tenor of it is. But after that I kind of don't, I don't monitor it very closely beyond that.
How long are we going to have to wait for the final Cylon?
Ron Moore: Oh well that, all I will tell you is that it is not in the final episode.
Talk about the religious themes in the show.
David Eick: Do you want to tell them the Michael Jackson story?
Ron Moore: Yes. It came very early on. The first draft of the mini-series and there was just a line in it, in a scene with Number 6 in Baltar where she said to him "God is Love".
When I wrote it I didn't really know what it meant. But I thought it was an interesting thing for a robot to say. And I just kind of liked it and kept it in there.
When we got notes back from the network there was an executive at the time named Michael Jackson who really liked it. And said this is a really interesting idea.
You already have certain things going on with Al Qaeda and religious fundamentalism that are sort of thematic into the piece if you go further in this direction.
And I thought well Hell, I'm not going to get the note to have more religious content on the show very often. And I just went for it. And then it, but it just played, it was also very organic.
It played into things that were already inherent in the show. There was a lot of terms taken from the Greek gods and the Roman gods that were already in the show.
And it felt natural to then make the colonials polytheists and then, you know, if Number 6 says the God, singular, is love, it made her a monotheist. And then I thought well that's fascinating already.
The monotheists versus the polytheists and we're, the colonial - the humans are the polytheists. And it just all became a really fascinating sort of blend of ideas.
How did you choose who the final five Cylons would be?
Ron Moore: I think David has a dartboard and we...
David Eick: The answer is it was a little of both.
Ron Moore: Yes, it was a little of both. I mean the final four came up literally in a moment in a writer's room where we were struggling with the end of season three.
And trying to figure out certain things. And I just said, because it was all about the trial of Baltar. And we had always set that up to be the end of the season.
And it was, the structure was working fine. But it just didn’t seem to satisfy. And it didn't quite seem as big an idea to me. I said, I just wish that there was, we had some bigger revelation here.
I just said, I just got this image of four of our people walking from different areas of the ship and all ending up in one room together.
And they all close the doors and they look at each other. And they say, okay we're Cylon. And then we just reveal like four of them, in one fell swoop.
Everyone was kind of taken a back in the moment. And then we, the more we talked about it, it just became ‘well why not? Why don't we really do that?’
And then we just talked about who those final four would be with an idea of holding out the last one for the last season.
Then, settling on the last one. We kind of had a good idea going into the last season who the final Cylon was. And, but we were willing to sort of, look at other candidates and see who it could be and which one makes the most sense in the mythology.
Ultimately we stuck with the original choice because it just made the most sense in terms of the history of the show and what it means for the characters.
Does that song "All Along the Watchtower" have any significance to you particularly or to the story?
Ron Moore: I had personally been obsessed with the song for a while. So, I just thought it was a fascinating song and the lyrics.
I had wanted to work it into a project of mine since, for the last several years. In fact I wanted to do a whole Roswell episode about it.
It was just sort of always in the back of my mind. And as we started talking about music and using music as a trigger, I just immediately said oh and it has to be "All Along the Watchtower".
And everybody kind of laughed. Then I just was very much, dogged about it. And kept going and made, and then we got the rights. And that became the song.
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