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Bluto
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From some website...
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Galactica Returns This Summer
SCI FI Channel announced that the second season of its hit original series Battlestar Galactica will premiere this summer, with 20 new episodes. The channel added that the entire ensemble cast will return for season two, including Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Helfer and Grace Park. Also resuming their roles are executive producer and writer Ronald D. Moore and executive producer David Eick.
Galactica will resume production in Vancouver, B.C., in March and will again anchor the channel's SCI FI Friday block of prime-time original series.
The series, which premiered on Jan. 14, has been averaging over 3 million viewers per episode and has quickly become SCI FI's highest-rated original series and has received unprecedented critical acclaim. Galactica airs Fridays at 10 p.m. ET, part of the channel's successful SCI FI Friday lineup, which also includes Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. Galactica ends its first season with a finale episode on April 1.
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02-24-2005 03:57 AM
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Whidden
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Posted by Ron at 09:51 PM
February 04, 2005
Trek goes back to the Fans
Now that Enterprise has been cancelled, we're about to enter a period not seen since the orignal series ended its run just a few weeks before Apollo 11 landed on the moon: a time without a Star Trek film or TV project on the horizon. From the reaction I've seen thus far, the consensus view seems to be that this is merely a pause in the trek, and that before too long, we'll be talking about the newest take on Roddenberry's universe, be it television, feature, animation or sock puppet. I tend to agree, insofar as I know first hand that Viacom considers "the Franchise" to be one of their crown jewels and I've personally heard them refer to the "next fifty years of Star Trek" as a corporate priority.
So Star Trek isn't dead and it isn't dying. It has, however, entered into an interregnum, a pause in the treadmill of overlapping productions that have become the norm for the series that was once considered "too cerebral for television."
Certainly there is sadness in this news. There has been a Star Trek production either in prep or being filmed on Stages 8 & 9 on the Paramount lot since 1977, when Star Trek: Phase Two began initial construction for a second series featuring all the original characters but Spock (these sets were then revamped for Star Trek: The Motion Picture). An entire infrastructure has been built around the productions, staffed by people whose involvement in the Franchise goes back over two decades. The dedication, passion, and talent of these artisans and craftsmen cannot be overstated. The unsung heroes of Trek, the people who sweat every detail, who take the time to think through continuity and try to make the vast universe consistent, people like Mike and Denise Okuda, Dave Rossi, Michael Westmore, Herman Zimmerman, Bob Blackman, and many others, are about to leave and take with them an enormous body of knowledge and talent that cannot be and will not be replicated again. That is cause for both tears and eulogies as the close of Enterprise signals the true end of an era.
However, there is another side of this story, one that perhaps is somewhat more hopeful and positive: Star Trek has now been returned to the care of its community of fans.
I say returned because there was a time when the fans were the exclusive owners and operators of what would later become the Franchise. From 1969 until 1979, a genuine grassroots movement of fans gathered together in conventions, published newsletters (in the primordial ooze of the pre-internet era, no less), wrote scads of fan fiction, created their own props and uniforms, and dreamed the dream of what it was to live aboard the good ship Enterprise.
I was one of those fans; I was a kid growing up in the 1970's who found Star Trek in strip syndication and bought every book and magazine I could lay my hands on and every piece of fan merchandise I could con my parents into buying and I can tell you that some of those efforts were abysmal and some were brilliant, but all of them were driven by a sense of passion rooted in a belief that Trek was our secret club. We, the fans, embroidered the Trek tapestry while the powers that be at Paramount dawdled. In those years, the best stories told not those written by Gene or any other "professional writers" (no offense to the short-lived, but well intentioned animated series), but by people like Sondra Marshak, Myrna Culbreath, and Jacqueline Lichtenberg. Who are they? Fans. People who loved Star Trek and were able to breath life into it during the interregnum between the show and the Franchise.
Star Trek now returns to the care of its fans and its fans can decide for themselves what kind of experience they want to have during this next interregnum. They can consume the seemingly endless licensed products available to them from the Franchise, everything from barware to shower curtains, and read only the mainstream, officially licensed and sanctioned books, or they can go their own way. Some of the most daring and creatively challenging Star Trek material has been created not by Paramount, but by amateurs, who simply had an idea for an interesting twist on the Trek universe. Think Kirk and Spock were secret lovers? Wonder about the social and cultural history of the planet Vulcan? Believe the Mirror Universe is more fascinating than our own? All these topics and many others were, and are, tackled by fans in their own fiction, their own stories, their own dreams.
Step back from the merchandising. Rediscover the joy and wonder of the universe Roddenberry created. Talk to people who share your common interest and who understand the difference between phaser mark I and mark II (duh!). You don't need another series to enjoy Star Trek. You need only your own imagination and the desire to boldly go where no man has gone before.
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02-24-2005 11:53 PM
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Whidden
KANSAS LAW DOG
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February 19, 2005
Season Two and Q & A
So it's official: we're doing a second season.
To say that this is happy news is to indulge in a display of understatement. The road to television success is a long one, littered with various hurdles, all of which must be vaulted: the studio pitch session, the network pitch, the story outline, the first draft script, the second draft script, the green-light to produce the pilot, casting the pilot, making the pilot, ordering the series, producing the series, getting the reviews, getting an audience, and then.... getting a second season. We've managed to clear that hurdle and it feels frakking good.
We've been working on the first six episodes for a couple of months now and we're gearing up to prep them for filming, probably in late March. Season Two will be heavily influenced by the end of Season One, so it's hard to get into anything remotely specific until the last episode has aired in the US. I could say... well... er... not much. Let's just get to the questions and answers.
"Will we ever get any more of the back story to the Cylon Wars?, ie What started them and how did the Colonists drive them away."
We will see more of this backstory as the series unfolds. Some of the inter-war period will be explored in the first few episodes of Season 2. Other tales of the first Cylon Wars will be filled in eventually.
"Appart from the fleet is there any chance that there are other survivers. Clearly Colonial One would not have gotten to every ship that was in transit and those that had FTL could have escaped as well."
We are talking about shows that deal with other survivors right now. Don't ask about the Pegasus -- I haven't made up my mind yet.
"Will we see any of the origonal cast appart from Richard Hatch. "
It's possible, but not yet on the board.
"Why "frack"? Where did the idea come from to make this the new F-word? Not that I don't like it, I find it amusing."
It's straight out of the original series. I dropped many other terms from the old show like "centon" (a unit of measurement) and "yahren" (year) because I felt they distracted from the mood I was trying to create and they sounded a bit silly to my ear. There was something elegantly lovely about "frak," however. There's nothing like being able to say my favorite four letter word on TV over and over again and I salute Glen Larson for giving the joys of frakking up, frakking off, not giving a frak, and frakking-A to the masses.
"I love the smoking doctor! Does he have a name? Isn't sickbay a little small considering the size of Galactica?"
I love the doctor too. The character's name is Major Cottle and I think we're only seeing one part of one Sickbay on the ship. It's worth keeping in mind that while Galactica is an enormous ship and was built to be manned by a very large crew, that she had only a skeleton complement on board at the time of the Cylon attack. That explains in large part why we see so few officers and why people like Kara are pressed into service in roles other than their primary one. There are probably several (unused) Pilot Ready Rooms aboard Galactica and possibly other Sickbay facilities as well. Dr. Cottle is our only physician onboard, but if she were fully staffed, Galactica would probably have a large medical staff and would have a sizable hospital facility.
"Why does the doctor smoke?"
Because smoking is cool. Don't let anyone tell you different, kid.
Seriously, we're showing people doing what people really do and not all of their choices are smart ones. We smoke, we drink, we have sex with the wrong partners -- we make lots of bad choices and some of them we do knowingly and in full cognizance of the risks and consequences. Dr. Cottle obviously knows the risks associated with smoking and he elects to do it anyway -- that's his choice.
I'm also frankly tired of all the anti-smoking p.c. crap that we're bombarded with these days and I decided that this was a world without all that. Call it my one sop to the idea of an idealized society, the notion that adults can make informed choices and not be nagged to death or run out of public spaces for making choices that others may not like or agree with.
"What is the rank structure? It doesn't seem consistant with the Navy."
The rank structure is derived from the original series. I didn't want to change Commander Adama to Captain Adama or Colonel Tigh to Commander Tigh, so I elected to simply embrace the co-mingled nature of the original rank structure. For our internal purposes, we've decided that the ranks are indeed a mixture of naval and army nomenclature and are basically as follows:
Officers --
Admiral
Commander
Colonel
Major
Captain
Lieutenant
Lieutenant (junior grade)
Ensign
Enlisted --
Master Chief Petty Officer
Chief Petty Officer
Petty Officer (1st, 2nd Class)
Specialist
Deck Hand
Recruit
Just to complicate matters further, there are also Marines aboard Galactica which conform more closely to the traditional enlisted Marine ranks, with Sergeants, Sergeant-Majors, etc. Unresolved is the question of whether the Marine officers would also adhere to the mixed rank structure (which sounds odd) or if they are strictly army equivalents (which makes no sense given that the "Navy" ranks seem oblivious to there being any such distinction). Aren't you glad you asked?
"Please do something about the consumables questions; fuel, food, ammo, clothing etc., where is this stuff coming from?"
Water is addressed in... uh, "Water." Fuel is addressed in "Hand of God". Other consumables will be addressed in the second season.
" Will we see the mess hall and other part of the ship such as the main Kitchen where all the meals are prepared."
I'd like to. It's a question of budget; there has to be a story point or scene so cool that we just have to build this set. The Head (bathroom to you lubbers) was built in the pilot specifically so we'd have it around during the series.
"was this the first show to ever show a Bathroom on a space ship?"
It's ground-breaking TV, baby. Talk about reinventing the genre.
" Please show more of the blue collar guys keeping everything in check on the other ships. Guys that would have clocked out and gone home had the holocaust not happened. Not really a question sorry."
We have plans for this in the second season. Cally, for instance, never planned to stay in the service and her enlistment was nearly up at the time of the attack.
"Minor question: was Galactica ever re-commissioned? As I recall, the ship was decommissioned right before the Cylon attack. It'd be nice to show the ceremony if they ever get a free moment. "
It's an interesting point. Might be something to play at some point, but more really as an "Oh, I haven't thought about it, but..." kind of thing.
"Major question: it looks like discipline hasn't really improved on the ship in the first few episodes. In some ways, it's getting worse. Adama didn't help matters at all in "Litmus" when he essentially declared himself to be above the law. "
Security and discipline are definitely problems on Galactica and they're not going away. The ship was far from the best of the best at the time of its retirement and the people on board weren't either. The discipline was lax and many procedures had been allowed to fall by the wayside. Now, this ship and its crew are forced to operate far above what they considered to be the norm and it's not an easy transition for any of them.
This was a deliberate creative choice. It's one thing for the finest ship, with the finest crew to deal with the end of the world and a long flight from a relentless enemy, it's quite another when you were just a bunch of people trying to get by. I find it a more challenging and interesting environment to tell stories in and I find these people more heroic in their actions just by the nature of the obstacles they have to overcome in their day to day existence.
"The question I would really like to see addressed is how to reconcile the underlying quest of Battlestar Galactica with actual scientific plausiability. The quest of Battlestar Galactica is to find Earth, the 13th Colony. However, it is a basic and well-substantiated tenet of science that human life here on Earth evolved slowly from a primate ancestor. Attempts to deny evolution based on the notion that human kind deserves a far more worthy origin than what evolution details, are a diservice to the pursuit of scientific truth and endeavors in our own world. There was always that reactionary sense to the original series, which drove it away from a secure standing as *science* fiction. How will the new series avoid this pitfall?"
I don't have a direct answer for this question yet. There are a couple of notions rolling around in my head as to how we reconcile the very real fact of evolution with the Galactica mythos, but I haven't decided which approach to take. However, it was a fundamental element of the orginal Galactica mythos that "Life here began out there..." and I decided early on that it was crucial to maintain it.
"My boss at my place of employment has a father named John C. Agathon who was the radar navigator of a B-24 Liberator bomber that was shot down in WWII. He spent some time running from the nazi's and hiding in farm houses until he finally managed to make his way to friendly territory. Oh and I double-checked with my boss and his father DID sustain a leg injury related to the crash.
It could just be a coincidence, but it's one hell of a coincidence. "
It is one hell of a coincidence.
"Its highly unlikley that episodes 1 thru 13 were filmed in chronological order. Can you tell us in which order they were filmed in. This might give the veiwers a little more insight as to how the cast bonded over the shooting schedule as well as explain how some preformances might be rigid in certain episodes and become more flushed out in others."
Actually, the episodes were all filmed chronologically. You're probably confusing the production order with how individual episodes are filmed, which is not chronological. Scenes within an episode are often filmed out of sequence for efficiency, i.e. shooting all the CIC scenes, then all the Hangar Deck scenes, then all the Colonial One scenes, etc.
"How did you come to decide upon Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell for their roles? This kind of project seems somewhat out of their typical genre - did either have second thoughts about taking on the project?"
Eddie and Mary were actually the archetypes for the characters when we were developing the series. David Eick and I used to sit around and talk about what kind of actors would play Adama and Laura and we always talked about these two Oscar level actors as our dream duo for the series, but we never really thought we'd get them. They've told the story themselves of why they decided to do the project, but in essence, they really responded to the pilot script and saw a lot of potential in the characters so they went for it, to our everlasting gratitude. |
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02-24-2005 11:54 PM
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Whidden
KANSAS LAW DOG
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February 24, 2005
Accepted Error
Someone recently asked:
"In the mini series, when the Cylon fighters are approaching Colonial One (just before Lee saves the day with the EM pulse), Roslin refuses to run and leave the other civilian ships to their doom... Yet she articulated no alternative plan.
What was she hoping to do? It just seemed as though she planned to sit there and hope for the best, refusing to budge from the principle of not leaving defenseless people behind, even if that meant her own virtual suicide.
It was an odd moment, she had been so decisive and clear headed up to then, and after that.
What were her motivations, did she even have a plan? I still find this moment a little jarring and hard to explain away.
I guess it does serve as a contrast to her later decision to leave Cammy etc behind.
Thanks for your insights into this issue."
Can we talk? Let's be honest here. The show is not perfect. There are compromises made all the time; some for budgetary reasons, some are for political reasons, some are for no reason at all except that the writer could not, or would not, make the changes necessary to resolve a story point.
Such is The Case of Laura Roslin and the Incoming Cylon.
The above writer's observation is absolutely correct. Laura, by all rights and all sensible reasoning, should not obstinately stay when it's known for a fact that a Cylon missile is incoming, probably has a nuclear warhead and oh, by the way, she has no armament aboard her ship that would allow her even the remote chance of a possible last-minute, brilliant tactical move which might theoretically prevent the destruction of her ship and her presidency. Her refusal to leave, to Jump away from the impending, obvious threat can be interpreted as an irrational flaw in her character, a case of emotion trumping intellect, or it can be more correctly interpreted simply as a flaw in the script, an accepted error that the writer chooses to ignore in favor of other competing interests of character and plot which take priority in a given moment.
In this case, I felt that the dramatic moment required that Laura make a committment to staying with her people, and to her nascent fleet, heedless of the consequence and resolute in her decision, even though it meant her certain doom. It was her instinctive response to the situation, her id's judgement, so to speak, that I was interested in, as well as the simpler plot device of having Lee swoop in and save them at the last moment just at the point you'd forgotten he was even there. Neither impulse is wrong, per se, but the error is in my choosing not to expand the moment and its aftermath in order to play out her realization of just how stupid a choice that was.
If, at some point following the resolution of the crisis, Laura realized that she let her emotional reaction to the situation lead her into making a bad decision which was only saved by the providential intervention of Lee, then the scene would've accomplished everything I had hoped for in the moment as well as providing Laura with a character-building scene where the new president's first major decision nearly got them all killed. It would've been a way to both emphasize her fallibility and the fact that she can't afford to lead with her heart any longer. Her subsequent decision to leave the sublight ships behind, abandoning them to their destruction by the Cylons, would've also been informed by this experience and had a richer, even more textured component to it.
In the end, it's not a fatal error in the script, and the moment passes by without comment for the most part, but it is something that nags at me whenever I see the sequence and which, frankly, bothered me at the time. So why didn't I fix it? A variety of answers present themselves, from time pressure to budgets, but the truth is, I knew that the emotional, dramatic moment would carry the audience through the scene and that people would be more invested in watching Lee take out the Cylon missile than in examining Laura's decision-making, so I opted to leave it alone rather than make the necessary page cuts and possible budget cuts needed to accommodate additional beats on this one point. It was probably the correct decision in the end, because the moment works and you move on as you're watching the show. However, being a television writer means not only having to make compromises and less than perfect decisions all the time, but as an additional penalty you get to always be reminded of the errors you've accepted when you watch the final product.
Good catch by an attentive member of the audience.
Damn you. |
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03-13-2005 10:27 PM
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Whidden
KANSAS LAW DOG
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March 04, 2005
Thank you, Harlan Ellison
There are people you do thank and people you should, and it occurs to me that now is a good time to finally move a man who had a great influence on my life out of the later category and into the former. That man is Harlan Ellison, one of the greatest speculative fiction writers this country has ever produced and a legitimate legend in his own time. Ironically, it’s not his writing which influenced me, his stories nor his style, although I was an avid reader of his work, notably “Chasing the Nightmare” “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” “Harlan Ellison’s Watching” and “The Glass Teat.” In truth, the man influenced me in two encounter which seemed trivial at the time, but which turned out to have been pivotal moments in my life as a writer.
As readers of this blog know by now, I was a born and bred Trek fan growing up in the mid 1970’s, watching the show in strip syndication and always on the lookout for the odd piece of merchandising that might find its way into my neighborhood bookstore. But growing up in a small town in central California, I’d never had the opportunity to come anywhere near that legendary gathering of geekdom – the convention. So it wasn’t until I was a freshman at Cornell in 1983, that I had my first chance to pay for the privilege of sitting in a badly lit auditorium and listen to panel discussions on the feasibility of interstellar travel and marvel at just how many people had the time and resources to construct their very own Gorn costumes, complete with universal translator at the college in Stony Brook, New York.
I do remember wandering a dealer room for the first time, pondering the cost of a fan-produced Phaser II, and seeing a screening of “The Dead Zone” but what really stuck with me, what ultimately had a far greater impact on me than anything else was when Harlan Ellison took the stage and began to read a piece he’d just written to the gathered. The piece was about a recent incident in the nation’s capitol which had garnered coast to coast live coverage in that period of embryonic cable overkill. A man had driven a van which he claimed was filled with explosives to the base of the Washington Monument and threatened to blow it up unless there was an end to the nuclear arms race. Police snipers ultimately shot and killed him and discovered that he had no explosives.
Harlan’s piece that day in Stony Brook condemned not the disturbed man in the van, but the actions of the police who killed him and more broadly condemned us all for focusing more on his empty threat of blowing up a piece of stone than to the very real threat of nuclear holocaust he wanted to end.
It was not a popular sentiment. Fans, heretofore fawning and sycophantic to Harlan’s every word and bon mot, began to boo and hiss, some even yelling obscenities at the stage. To be sure, I shared the feelings of most in the audience. I felt that the police had acted in a mostly responsible way, that they had no way of knowing whether or not there were really explosives in the van and that his death was regrettable, but ultimately of his own making. But what struck me that day was not the political sentiment Harlan expressed, but his willingness to say something in public that was unpopular, to challenge the assumptions of his most devoted followers and his blunt refusal to back down in the face of their outrage. He gave not an inch, refusing to bow to the rising tide of anger in the audience and continued to read his essay in full knowledge of the fact that it was probably going to cost him more than one book sale at the dealer table later that day.
I remember being confused, angered, and somewhat disappointed by what one of my literary heroes had stood up and said. “How could he think that?” I said to myself and shook my head at what seemed like an inverted moral stance. I never read the piece itself, and to this day I have only the vaguest memory of him reading it out loud, but what struck me then and what sticks with me to this very day is the image of a writer standing on principle in the face of overwhelming disapproval. Harlan had made a career, admittedly, of being the skunk at the party, of saying things he knew would piss people off, but never for the easy shock value. He had an opinion and he wasn’t afraid to state it, regardless of the consequences to his book sales or how it made him look in polite society. I can still picture him standing on that stage and shouting against the ocean rearing up against him and it still challenges me to be the kind of writer willing to say the thing that no one else wants to hear.
The man had guts.
The second encounter occurred years many years later after I had become an established writer and had been invited to participate on a panel at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills along with several much bigger names, including J. Michael Straczynski and… Harlan Ellison. It was the first time I’d met the man and in all honesty, I was too embarrassed to say very much, to him lest I start to gush, so satisfied myself with a simple “Hello, I love your work” and then we went into the panel.
Now, this panel occurred at a very particular moment in my career. I was working on “Roswell” as an executive producer, but I was deep into preproduction on the ill-fated pilot I’d written for a series based on Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonriders of Pern” books. It had been a difficult and unhappy development process, but we were only five days away from the first day of principal photography. A major problem had arisen, however. The network had commissioned another writer to rewrite my draft over my objections and in my opinion, had eviscerated everything that I loved about the project. I didn’t want to shoot that draft and they did. As I drove into the parking lot of the Museum I learned via a cell phone call from my agent that a critical conference call with the network was scheduled to take place the next morning which would determine the fate of the entire project, and when I took my seat on the panel I was frankly distracted by the thought that my very first pilot, my very fist shot at running my own series was in serious jeopardy of coming to ruin right before my very eyes unless I “played ball” as they like to say.
The panel discussion was fun and interesting and after a while I forget my Pern problems and simply enjoyed being on the same stage with some legendary figures of the genre. At the end, the final question was put to all of us was “Do you have any advice for young writers starting out?” It’s a familiar question, and to be honest, I have a stock response, (which I will someday bore readers of this blog with when I really need material) and I gave it in my usual inimitable fashion, congratulating myself on having held my own throughout the night.
But when the question came around to Harlan, he leaned forward into the microphone, and with all the passion and ferocity I remembered so well from that convention stage in Stony Brook he said:
“Don’t be a whore!”
The world quite literally spun around me under the hot lights and it felt as though the Universe was conveying a message directly to me. It was so simple. “Don’t be a whore!” Don’t write crap because they pay you well. Don’t put your name on something that you know will suck. Don’t sacrifice whatever integrity you have as a writer for a check.
The next day, during the infamous conference call, there came the point my agent had warned me would come, when I either played ball and went with the script I knew in my heart was terrible or my beloved pilot was going to die, and when that moment came, Harlan’s words rang in my ears like the church bells above Quasimodo’s head.
“Don’t be a whore!”
I wasn’t. The project died. And I have been grateful to Harlan Ellison ever since.
I do not have the mastery of the English language Harlan does, I do not have his brilliance or his gift for story-telling, but I’d like to think that I’ve been inspired by the fire that burns so brightly in his soul and that it’s given me at least some of the courage I was lucky enough to see in person on two separate stages.
So thank you, Harlan. Thank you for being one of the most influential men in my life and thank you for giving me something to aspire to. |
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03-13-2005 10:29 PM
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Whidden
KANSAS LAW DOG
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March 12, 2005
Q & A
"Hello, Ron. I have a question about Baltar you ought to answer. One of the things I liked about the original series was the way Baltar did all his chair-swiveling. Boy, he sure looked evil way the frak up there on that big pedestal. And then Lucifer or some other Cylon would come in, and there would be those big, dramatic polytonal chords, and then Baltar would slowly swivel around in his chair to face whatever had come into his room because before they came into his room, he was facing a wall, or something off screen-- who knows what was there. I'm sure there's been a lot of speculation about it. But you see, when you made the new Baltar the way he is-- that is, a non-- chair-swiveller, I didn't think the show could work at all. You've got to have a chair-swiveller in it, and there hasn't been one-- until now. Just as I'm getting used to Callis NOT being a chair-swiveller, there he is at the end of "Tigh Me Up" SWIVELING IN HIS CHAIR! Well, I must say I was very pleased with that, and so now I must ask: Was James Callis's chair-swiveling scene a tribute to John Colicos's chair-swiveling?"
Chair-swiveling is an old and honorable avocation for any accomplished and self-respecting villainous personage. How could its inclusion be anything but a loving tribute?
"Ron, I was just wondering if you were at all influenced by the posts you read on the message boards."
I'm interested in how people respond to the show and I suppose on some level it must influence me in some way as I go about writing and producing the series, but I'm not sure in what quantifiable way. I mean, I know there are large cadres out there with strong feelings for and against the Baltar/Six story, the Caprica story, Starbuck, etc., but I can't honestly say that anything I've read has caused me to change any of those elements one way or another. I basically just try to tell the best story I can according to my own lights and hope that the rest of you agree.
"My question to you would be this; How do you view Fan Fiction? Is it something that you dislike, especially now that it is starting to be created with what could be called, your reimaged Battlestar Galactica Universe, or do you encourage people to express themselves (with in limits) like Gene did with with the fan fiction for Star Trek? Is it something that writers are able to glean potential story elements from or should the fans just leave the stories to the writers of the shows? Where would you draw the line on fan fic for Galactica."
As far as I'm concerned, fan fiction (that is, fiction written for fun, or non-professionally) should feel free to go in whatever direction it feels like going. If you want to write a story about Starbuck being Adama's illegitimate daughter and how she's carrying on an illicit affair with Laura following an accident which flings them across time and space to the Ponderosa Ranch, be my guest. It's certainly no further out there than the K/S stories in Trekdom which detailed the sexual and romantic liasons between one James Kirk and one Mr. Spock.
If you're inspired by this series and these characters and you want to turn that inspiration into artistic expression, I've proud and hope you enjoy the process. (And it should go without saying that there is a very bright and bold line between writing for fun and writing for profit and only the foolish would care to mess with NBC-Universal's legal department.)
"Quick question, not actually BSG-related. In your recent post in your blog you mention that you grew up in Central California. I was just wondering if you'd care to share which town. I grew up in Merced, myself..."
I was a neighbor of yours. I grew up in Chowchilla.
"There are a lot of references to Republican Rome in BSG, in everything from the names Gaius and Valerii to the Religion to the democrato-militaristic govennment. Has this been done on purpose, or is it just a lot of coincidences?"
The original series used elements of various ancient civilizations and I wanted to continue that element, but I didn't feel that the Egyptian motif, which they used predominantly, would be particularly resonant in this series. Greco-Roman influences were also present in the orginal, and I felt that Roman influences in particular would have resonant value given today's American society both in the republicanism (lower-case) and in the portrait of a culture that had ascended to a certain plateau, had driven its enemies from the field, proclaimed itself the guardian of truth and justice and yet was still prey to the same frailties and failings of all other human endeavors.
"If we go too far with this are you prepared to deliver Captain Kirk's 'Get A Life' speech?"
I should be so lucky as to watch you guys get to that point.
"Twelve cylon models and twelve Olympian gods seems too much of coincidence to me. Is there any connection? "
And Twelve Colonies. Coincidence....?
"I would like to know, what happened to the group of people left behind with Helo, from the mini.
Also, during times of conflict, the military often calls upon the old retired service members. It would be interesting, to see some old time Viper pilots in the seats.
In this conflict, everyone is a participant. I would think it to be a good ideal to have everyone trained up for military duty. "
The fate of the people left behind on Caprica and the other Colonies was a grim one and we'll be dealing more with that next season. With fewer than 50,000 survivors, it's always going to be a judgement call as to which occupations and avocations are represented in our fleet. This very issue came up when we first started talking about "Act of Contrition," where the question of the availability of pilots, and specifically old Viper pilots, came up in the writers' room. I felt that I didn't want the old pilots sitting around for us to capitalize on and that I wanted to be very careful when we had a story where we "happened" to find the very skills we needed in the survivor population. The press corps, for example was established as being aboard Galactica in the opening of the pilot, so the continuation of them in the fleet felt plausible and reasonable to me while also allowing us to play certain elements of media and culture in the show.
"Are there any plans in the pipeline to recruit authors and release a series of BSG v2.0 books? Of Particular interest would be the first Cylon war."
Books are in the works and the Cylon Wars are part of the possible subject matter.
"Tangentally, will the BSG bible ever be streamlined and built for public release? (perhaps as a companion to the series?)"
Possibly. A lot of the background information on the characters is starting to come out in both Seasons One and Two, so there might come a point where I'd let the bible be put out there for public consumption.
"I am aware that you intend to addressthe logistical problems the fleet suffers, however, do you intend to explore indepth the consumable production vs consumption directly. Considering the tonnage dictated by Baltar in one of the episodes one would think that every possible space would be converted to hydroponic grow ops (of the legal variety)? There seems to bee an awefull lot of wasted space on some of these ships."
This has always been in the back of my mind and I'd like to bring it up in the show at some point. (And they're probably growing the illegal variety too.)
"Could you please explain the writing process for an extra season stroy arc if you don't know if you are going to be signed from one season to the next? hopefully the Sci Fi network will come to there senses and offer a multi year contract. "
I just proceed as if it were already a done deal. I wrote the miniseries as a pilot for a series, without ever considering how to cover my bases if it didn't get picked up and I wrote the Season One finale as a cliff-hanger without any backup plan whatsoever if we didn't return.
Sometimes you just gotta roll the hard six.
"What are your thoughts on the decision to aire BSG in the UK before North America? I personally think the the pirating of the episodes is hurting the ratings."
I think, on balance, it was very positive for the show. Despite the pirating and file-sharing of the shows from the UK, which may or may not have depressed ratings slightly, I think that the UK exposure and earlier critical response helped to build momentum and interest for the series premiere in the US. I'm happy it worked out the way it did.
"Are you still working with Zoic for design work?"
Absofrakkinglutely. |
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03-13-2005 10:30 PM
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HECK!
Bluto
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BSG is on the cover of TV Guide this week, here's the article from their website:
Hard to believe it, but the sci-fi series that surprised everyone with its dramatic quality and addictive story lines is already gearing up for a two-part season finale (March 25 and April 1 at 8 pm/ET). Pick up the newest issue of TV Guide for a look behind the scenes of Galactica and the next season's spoilers (who can wait until July?). Here, four of your favorite space wanderers reveal what they hate and love about making the show, and what almost kept Adama from joining the crew. — Ileane Rudolph
Katee Sackhoff
Sure, playing a sci-fi hero takes stamina and agility, but playing a Battlestar Galactica pilot also takes a strong stomach and a steel butt, according to Katee Sackhoff, who plays top-gun Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. And claustrophobes, don't even bother. "The Viper scenes are bad," says Sackhoff, who spends hours filming in the fighter's cockpit. "You're in this small place in a hot rubber suit and a helmet, and the cockpit is closed. Plus, there's air rushing on your face putting you to sleep, and you're on your butt forever!" But being stuck in the Cylon Raider vessel is even worse. "I'm in this sweaty suit, on my belly, and there's gross slime all over the ship that gets in everything. It takes three washings to get it out of your hair." And it got worse, she recalls, "I had to put one of those veins that's supposed to drive the ship in my mouth. I already had the flu from [being cold while shooting] scenes on the planet where I was downed, and then I had to put those slimy things in my mouth! It was like, do a scene, throw up, do a scene, throw up."
Mary McDonnell
When it comes to Colonial One, the plane that houses her character President Laura Roslin, Mary McDonnell wishes she could exert some executive privilege of her own. "I've got to believe that Air Force One is better than this plane," she complains. "This plane is the bane of my existence. The ceilings are so low that they can't light it well. I said, 'It's a good thing [Laura] has cancer. C'mon, you're putting a middle-aged woman in high-definition video in a plane that's too small to light. Why don't you just shoot me in the foot?'" Her solution: "Take the damn roof off." On the other hand, she can't wait to film scenes on the Battlestar set. "I remember saying to Eddie Olmos one day, 'I look so good when I come to your house. The colors are earthy and the lighting is wonderful. We all look so good there, and I'm stuck on a white, cold, empty airplane."
Grace Park
There's one particular benefit gained with her double roles, says Grace Park. "I get two love interests," brags the portrayer of pilot Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, who's unaware she's really a Cylon robot, and her Cylon twin, also known as Sharon. Do the guys give her a hard time about her extracurricular double-dipping? They're male, whaddya think? "Aaron Douglas (Chief Petty Officer Tyrol) will get all hurt and betrayed," she says with a laugh. "Seriously. When I'm with Tahmo Penikett (Karl "Helo" Agathon), Aaron looks at me from the corner of his eyes and says things I probably shouldn't say, like, 'Two-timing *****!'" Not surprisingly, the two actors have pressed Park to compare their kissing skills. "Aaron asked me after an interview about that," she recalls. "I said, 'I told them that you're a great kisser! The best kisser, better than anyone I know.'" True? The girl ain't talking.
Edward James Olmos
If Star Trek went to war with Battlestar, who would win? If Edward James Olmos were the referee, there'd be no contest. After his first science-fiction project, 1982's Blade Runner, the veteran actor had no interest in doing any more. He even turned down two roles beloved by sci-fi fans everywhere: Khan, the crazed warlord played by Ricardo Montalban in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek: Voyager's Captain Janeway, eventually turned into a female for Kate Mulgrew. "I had no desire [to do more science fiction], until I read the Galactica script, which made me get involved," he says. "But I told them, if they showed one four-eyed monster or alien, I was going to faint on camera, and then I'd leave the show. I don't want to be in that form of theatricality. They said, 'No, it's a dramatic series, as dramatic as West Wing or NYPD Blue.' It's a different genre."
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03-19-2005 09:18 AM
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Whidden
KANSAS LAW DOG
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More Ron Moore blog:
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April 01, 2005
A Debate Worth Having
There's an interesting thread on the Galactica message board here at SciFi.Com entitled: "Human Rights abuses in the Show" The central question debate therein, concerns whether or not Kara was justified in torturing the Cylon prisoner in "Flesh and Bone" as well as some of the other practices and methods we've seen the officers of Galactica use, such as the interrogation of Valence in "Colonial Day."
Not only is this a (by and large) intelligent and thoughtful debate on a serious topic, it also brings up a question I'm often asked -- namely what are the politics of the show and what is its political agendat? The quick answer is that the show doesn't really have a political agenda in the sense that it's neither liberal nor conservative in the way those labels are thrown around in the sound-bite era of demagoguery that currently passes for political discourse in this country. One would be hardpressed to say that watching Laura Roslin break her word to a prisoner and then kick him out an airlock would be advancing a progressive, liberal agenda, or that Adama questioning his society's worthiness to be saved is somehow indicative of a conservative bias.
I certainly have my own political views and it would be disingenuous at best to say that there's some kind of firewall between my beliefs and those portrayed on the show. I'm the head writer -- my views and thoughts are on life are on display every week, including my political predilections. However, I don't see the show as a platform to advance my political belief system or my own views on morality. I do see the show as an opportunity to raise questions in the minds of the audience and ask them to think, which is something of a rariety in these days when politics seems to be about stoking emotionalism and finding simple-minded slogans to stand-in for actual answers to complex problems. ("Culture of Life!" "Right to Die!" "Ban Smoking!" "The Ownership Society!")
Galactica is both mirror and prism through which to view our world. It attempts to mirror the complexities of our lives and our society in turbulent times, while at the same time reflecting and bending that view in order to allow us to extrapolate on notions present in contemporary society but which have not yet come to pass, i.e. a true artificial intelligence becoming self-aware and the existential questions it raises. Our goal is to examine contemporary culture and society, to challenge (and sometimes provoke) our audience, but not to provide easy answers to complex problems.
I firmly believe that what Kara Thrace did to Leoben in "Flesh and Bone" was wrong. I believe that a society which employs torture on the defenseless captives in its custody has crossed a bright shining line that civilized people should not cross. Likewise, I think that Laura Roslin promising a man freedom only to kill him in the end is abhorrent to the ways in which I want my president to behave. However, I also understand why each of them did what they did. I understand the emotional, psychological and moral quandries which can lead two moral, good people to take such ghastly actions. And, in the end, I also believe that it was true to who characters really are, and that trumps everything else.
Would I personally behave the same way in similar circumstances? I hope not, but neither am I so confident of my own immunity to the pressures felt by an interrogator charged with finding a nuclear weapon or to the enormous weight sitting on a chief executive trying to protect her citizenry that I can say I would absolutely have made the more "moral" choice.
Was it wrong for Adama to dissolve a legally constituted judicial tribunal in "Litmus" simply because he sensed it becoming a witch-hunt or was he actually protecting the larger concepts of justice? Was it right for Lee to shoot down a civilian ship knowing full well that it was probably filled with innocent human beings or was he making a pragmatic choice to protect the greater number in the fleet? Is Tyrol a fool for protecting Sharon or is he honoring the most fundamental human emotion of all -- true love?
These are the debates that I hope you have among yourselves, your families, your friends. I want the show to provoke you into thinking about the times you live in and the choices that are being made all around you every day. In a time when the President of the United States actually asserts that he has the power to arrest without warrant and detain indefinitely without charge or appeal, any citizen (indeed any person on the face of the Earth) simply by designating them as an "illegal combatant," we should all be engaged in a vigorous and energetic debate about who we are as a people and as human beings and exactly how we do intend to respond to the very real threat posed to this nation and to the foundations of liberal democracy posed by people capable of, and willing to, fly airplanes into buildings.
I hope this show makes you think. I hope this show makes you question the moral choices that are being made in your name and by your representatives. I hope this show angers you at times and makes you outraged at the actions that good people like Kara and Laura sometimes take. But the show is not a polemic; our aim is not to screech and demagogue these issues in search of facile answers. Good people can make bad, even horrific decisions, just as bad people can make noble, even righteous ones. Balancing civil liberties with security is a complicated, difficult gymnastic act which defies the easy, pat answers typically served up by an hour of episodic television.
If the show does have a single, consistent point of view, it is probably best summed up by something Lincoln said during his second inaugural address:
"With malice toward none, with charity for all..."
Think about that. Debate the meaning of that simple idea. For that, more than anything else, expresses this show and the politics behind it. |
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04-10-2005 03:24 AM
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Whidden
KANSAS LAW DOG
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So totally awesome... it's a great show.
hey whidden, we need to get into the book forum and talk shop about the DT series. particularly book VII!! 