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Author	Topic: The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed)
Vaderize03 Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Oct '99	Date Posted: 7/7 1:08pm Subject: RE: The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed) - Date Edited: 7/7 1:12pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Vaderize03
	Some interesting stuff from Aaron Douglas on the final five: here Enjoy. EDIT: This goes with my theory that the five were either created by the Lords of Kobol, and/or the series' conclusion will involve what's left of the Fleet encountering the Thirteenth Tribe, and discovering that they are either a) all "final five" type cylons, or b), and I think this one is more likely, a blend of humans and "final five" type cylons, the natural endpoint of the "cycle" that is starting up again with Hera and now Tyrol/Cally's baby. The Thirteen Tribe will be what saves the survivors from the Cavil cyclons in the epic final battle, and the humans will face what is the final annihilation of "pure" humanity as they will end up being assimilated into the tribe with their human/cylon blends, finally blurring the lines between what is human and what is Cylon. Just my theory, although how it all fits together (what started it all, how does Earth fit into all this, where do the Colonials really come from, etc) is anybody's guess. Peace, V-03 -----signature----- "Bring your pretty face to my axe....." B-O-H-I-C-A !! (that was funny DM!) "I'm what Willis was talking about"
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Ulkesh2 Title: Book Club Leader Evansville, IN Registered: Oct '01	Date Posted: 7/11 6:28pm Subject: RE: The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed)
	Looks like the manga comics company TokoyoPop will do a B-star-G based anthology in March 2009. This B-star-G anthology is based on the Sci-Fi Channel version of B-star-G. The title I think was Shades Of New Caprica. Or something like that. Sounds frakkin kewl! -----signature----- The Avalanche Has Already Begun. It Is Too Late For The Pebbles To Vote. - Kosh the Vorlon Hey Rocky Watch Me Pull A THEORY Out Of My Hat The Butler Did It - and the butler is a CYLON I'd Rather Be Bantha Tipping
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Ulkesh2 Title: Book Club Leader Evansville, IN Registered: Oct '01	Date Posted: 7/22 7:12am Subject: RE: The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed)
	Check out Aint It Cool News! First FULL preview teaser for BG prequel - Caprica - is up! Looks saucy! -----signature----- The Avalanche Has Already Begun. It Is Too Late For The Pebbles To Vote. - Kosh the Vorlon Hey Rocky Watch Me Pull A THEORY Out Of My Hat The Butler Did It - and the butler is a CYLON I'd Rather Be Bantha Tipping
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Leto II Registered: Jan '00	Date Posted: 7/27 9:42pm Subject: RE: The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed)
	Rather spoiler-intensive advance peek at the Season 4.5 promo trailer. -----signature----- "Pronouncing the first 'r' in 'February' is like making a homemade seaQuest DSV uniform -- it's a crime against breeding, taste, intelligence, and humanity itself; and very few people appreciate the effort." -- Lore Fitzgerald Sjoberg
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Leto II Registered: Jan '00	Date Posted: 7/29 3:05pm Subject: RE: The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed) - Date Edited: 7/29 3:07pm (3 edits total) Edited By: Leto II
	And it turns out that the series finale won't be the only Season 4.5 episodes to get "super-sized." David Eick talked about 4.5 getting longer: The second half of the fourth and final season of Sci-Fi Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica promises fans a number of extra-long, jam-packed episodes as it works toward the climactic finale, executive producer David Eick told fans at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 26. In a subsequent interview, Eick told Sci-Fi Wire that producers have been "able to convince the network to let us air... long episodes -- [to] take single episodes and make them double episodes... [and to take] double episodes and make them quadruple episodes." Eick added: "Our episodes are always...long, and we're constantly getting into the editing room with 10, 15, sometimes 20 minutes of material that you can't get into an episode." With just a half-season remaining, Eick said, "the story has become so critical in order to realize the arc of the series that we can't just cut stuff out and save it for later or push it 'til next year, the stuff we're used to doing. It's all got to be there." Which probably means more extended broadcast cuts on the way, among other things, similar to "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II." Originally, Season 4.5 was going to be 10 hours. Then by adding a third hour to the series finale, it grew to 11 hours. So, if the finale gets a fourth hour to air, we'll be seeing 12 hours in the season's back-half, for a total, 22-episode fourth year. -----signature----- "Pronouncing the first 'r' in 'February' is like making a homemade seaQuest DSV uniform -- it's a crime against breeding, taste, intelligence, and humanity itself; and very few people appreciate the effort." -- Lore Fitzgerald Sjoberg
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Darthkat76 Registered: Mar '07	Date Posted: 7/30 1:28am Subject: RE: The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed)
	Leto II posted: Rather spoiler-intensive advance peek at the Season 4.5 promo trailer. -----signature----- http://www.myspace.com/darthkat76 Go Cubs!
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Vaderize03 Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Oct '99	Date Posted: 7/30 5:17am Subject: RE: The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed)
	DVD'll be even longer ! -----signature----- "Bring your pretty face to my axe....." B-O-H-I-C-A !! (that was funny DM!) "I'm what Willis was talking about"
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Leto II Registered: Jan '00	Date Posted: 7/30 11:56am Subject: RE: The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed)
	Spoiler report regarding D'Anna's final fate in the last several episodes. (Scroll down a bit to read it.) -----signature----- "Pronouncing the first 'r' in 'February' is like making a homemade seaQuest DSV uniform -- it's a crime against breeding, taste, intelligence, and humanity itself; and very few people appreciate the effort." -- Lore Fitzgerald Sjoberg
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RX_Sith Title: Monopoly host Registered: Mar '06	Date Posted: 8/4 6:28am Subject: RE: The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed)
	Talking 'Battlestar Galactica's' finale, 'Caprica' and the 'Battlestar' TV movie with Ron Moore. (from The Chicago Tribune) Here are the parts about Battlestar Galactica: On Sunday, after the TCA panel on one of his new shows, “Caprica,” I talked to “Battlestar Galactica” executive producer Ron Moore. We talked a bit about “Virtuality,” his mid-season pilot for Fox, about “Caprica,” which is a “Battlestar” prequel movie that could become a series. We also discussed a proposed “Battlestar” TV movie, which, Moore said, won’t air until after the series finale. (At left are Paula Malcolmson and Eric Stolz as Amanda and Daniel Greystone in "Caprica.") First up, here are all the newsy things from the interview with Moore (and also from a short interview with Sci Fi president Dave Howe). This bullet list is followed by a transcript of my talk with Moore. Unless otherwise noted, what’s in this list came from Moore. * The proposed “Battlestar Galactica” TV movie would take place during the time frame of previous seasons, but it would air after the series finale. * Howe said the final episodes of “Battlestar” will begin airing in January. * The final set of episodes will be at least 11 hours long, and the series finale will occupy three of those hours. However, there’s a chance that the series finale could expand even more. * The “Battlestar” series finale will definitely expand on DVD. Regardless of the length of the finale that airs on Sci Fi next year, an even longer cut will be released on DVD. * UPDATE: There will be Webisodes before the second half of Season 4, the network announced on its Web site. Moore mentioned that there would be Webisodes, but for various reasons, I wasn't sure they were still going to happen. (Thanks to Erica for the tip.) * Fun fact: Howe doesn’t know who "Battlestar Galactica's" final Cylon is. “Actually, no,” he said when I asked him if he knew. "I don’t want to know, because if I know, then I’ll blab it out to somebody like you.” * Fun fact 2: Moore has watched way too much of the syndicated series “Cheaters.” Anyway, here’s an edited and slightly condensed version of my July 20 talk with Moore. MR: The final set of episodes of “Battletar Galactica,” that will total 11 hours? RDM: Yeah, it’s 11 hours. MR: Dave Howe said the final episode itself could be two or three or four hours. Can you clarify that? RDM: [The finale] started as two hours. It was always meant to be two [hours long]. It was going to be episodes 21 and 22, in terms of production [for production purposes, Season 4 episodes were numbered 1 through 22, with the standalone movie “Razor” as the first two “episodes” of that 22 hours.] Then we wrote it and prepped it and realized that it was much bigger than two [hours] and went to the network and studio and said, “Look, to do this justice, we probably need it to be longer than two. Would you be willing to do that?” And they had to crunch all their numbers and they loved it too, and they came back and they said, “Yeah, we’ll do three [hours for the finale].” But we haven’t cut it together, it’s being cut together as we speak. We’re way long, as usual. I don’t know what that means -- if there’s a possibility it goes to four [hours], do we keep it at three? It’s hard to say until you see it. So I think he’s being honest when he says we don’t quite know yet because none of us know, even the director hasn’t seen it. We just know there’s a lot of footage right now. MR: So at this point it’d be safe to say… RDM: It’s 11 hours… MR: Airing next year. RDM: And the finale of the show is the last three of those 11 hours. MR: And that could expand? RDM: Theoretically. MR: Maybe on DVD it could expand? RDM: We do know that for DVD, there will be a longer cut. DVD is interested in a longer cut, there will definitely be a longer version of the finale for DVD. But how much longer…. MR: And how much of that will actually end up on air… RDM: Yeah, nobody knows yet. MR: Well, that’s cool, I want to see the series finale that you guys want to put out. RDM: Yeah. The vision of what it could be. But you know, [Sci Fi] wants that too. It’s sort of a [wrangle] for them, because we haven’t gone to them and said, “Oh, we need four hours.” MR: Ask for six and see what they say. RDM: Exactly. MR: Were any of them familiar with “Battlestar”? RDM: I don’t think so. They just seemed to like the script. I always liked the script and I was disappointed when I thought they weren’t going to pick it up. That was two years ago and it seemed like it was never going to get off the back burner, and it seemed like it was a wasted opportunity because I always liked it. I read about it in TV Guide, that they were interested again. MR: So what about this “Battlestar” TV movie that I’ve heard about? [I posted stories about this movie earlier, here and here.] RDM: As far as I know, it’s going to happen. I don’t think they’ve made a formal announcement yet. [Mo here: That’s an understatement. Sci Fi has thus far denied the existence of the movie. When I asked Howe about it, he smiled and said, “I couldn’t possibly comment.”] We are working on a script. They’re putting the deals together, They haven’t got it all done, nothing’s been signed on the dotted line. They want to do it, they signed off on the story, we moved forward on a script. We don’t have a start date, we don’t have a cast set. It feels like it’s going to happen. I think something dramatic would have to happen to make it not happen. But it’s not nailed down yet. And it will be one as opposed to three. MR: And ["Battlestar Galactica" co-executive producer] Jane Espenson is writing it. RDM: Jane’s writing it. MR: And [Edward James Olmos, who plays William Adama on "Battlestar"] is directing it. RDM: Yeah. MR: Will he be in it too? RDM: Oh yeah. MR: Can you talk about who would be in it? RDM: Well, no, we’re still trying to work the deals through. MR: Can you talk about a time frame of when it takes place? RDM: It’ll be a la “Razor,” it’ll won’t be contemporary to where the fourth season is. And it definitely won’t take place after the finale. So it’s going to be back in time, in earlier seasons. I can tell you it will look at the earlier seasons from a different perspective. MR: Perhaps a Cylon perspective? RDM: Perhaps. MR: Would it be shooting in August if it goes forward? RDM: I think we were talking about the end of August or perhaps September. It depends on how quickly all the pieces come together. MR: I would love it if it was Saul Tigh’s Big Tigh-lon Adventure. RDM: So would Michael Hogan. MR: How do you approach these things? With “Razor” you had Admiral Cain and the Pegasus, that seemed like a natural thing to focus on. Was this another idea you’d always wanted to do? RDM: No, the studio and the network said they were interested in doing another one, because “Razor” had been successful. They came to us and said, “Creatively, would you be interested in doing another one?” I kicked it to the writers’ room, and said, “Hey, if we’re going to do one, what would it be? What do you think?” And I left them alone and they came back and pitched me the idea and I said, “That’s great! I like that. That’s not just ‘Oh, let’s do more “Battlestar,” that’s a story we never told and that’d be worth doing.” MR: “Razor” functioned somewhat as a bridge between two seasons, would the new film work that way? RDM: We talked about that and ultimately realized, no. The story we were constructing would not fit in between the two [halves of Season 4]. We felt it was more satisfying to watch this piece once you saw how “Battlestar” ended and you knew all the revelations and the mysteries. Then you could kind of tell this story a little more easily, instead of trying to hide secrets and things. MR: So this would have to air after the series finale? RDM: I think so. MR: I guess I had been assuming it might air in the fall. RDM: I think we would be hard-pressed to do that in any case. Just on a production timetable. The whole concept of doing these things is to release them on DVD almost immediately thereafter and DVD requires a three-month advance master [print of the film]. Just with the production schedule alone, I don’t know how we could get them a master. I don’t think that was ever in the cards. MR: So it’ll air after the series finale. RDM: I think so. Nothing’s set in stone. MR: But it’s more satisfying as a story if you know everything that was in the series finale. RDM: Yeah. MR: Indeed. As far as Webisodes, are they still happening? RDM: Yes, they haven’t shot them yet, they haven’t made the announcement yet. They haven’t locked down the cast. [laughs] I’m not sure what they do in business affairs, but they haven’t locked down all these contracts yet. But yeah, there’s an intention to do them, 10 of them. MR: Who wrote them? RDM: Jane, I believe, wrote them. [Mo here: Jane Espenson co-wrote them with "Battlestar" writer Seamus Kevin Fahey. UPDATE: The SciFi.com site announced the Webisodes would debut before the second half of Season 4. I'll try to find out exactly when -- a logical guess would be October or November.] MR: Where are you spending most of your time these days, with these various TV projects going? RDM: It’s really day by day. I was in the office one day this week and in the morning I had a “Virtuality” budget meeting, I went from there to a “Galactica” playback session and a “Galactica” visual effects session. I spent the rest of the day in the “Caprica” writers’ room talking about future story lines. [Mo here: Though “Caprica” has not gotten a series order, two additional scripts have been ordered and several former “Battlestar” writers are breaking those stories with Moore.] The toughest thing is writing. When you’re trying to write one of these pieces, then I need to kind of carve out time and focus on just this. “I can’t talk to you about ‘Virtuality’ right now, I’m trying to write the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ finale.” That’s when it gets tough, because they still need an answer. I still need to sort of shift my brain over and talk about that and then get back into the script. When I’m not writing, when I’m just producing and it’s putting out fires or making decisions or giving notes or doing post [production], that’s simpler for me. When you work in episodic television as a producer, you’re used to working on multiple episodes anyway. You’ve always got something in prep, something shooting and something in post. You’re multitasking, you’re jumping between different problems all the time. It’s when you’re writing, that’s when it’s hard. MR: And speaking of the series finale, you’re happy with how that came out? RDM: Very pleased with it. It came together all at once and it was a strange experience. In the writers’ room, we spent the first day [of breaking that episode] in a lot of difficulty, a lot of frustration. We sort of knew what the plot was, we knew the action story, we knew the plot of the finale. We spent that whole first day just struggling with the mechanics of the plot, how you got from A to B. We were spinning our wheels. I went home and I was in the shower and I had this “Duh” moment – the show was never about that. That’s not why I love the show. It’s not about the plot. I went into the writers’ room the next day and wrote on the big dry-erase board, “It’s the characters, stupid,” and the writers laughed and we all sat back and said, “Who gives a [expletive] about the plot? Let’s just talk about these characters.” MR: And what happens to these people. RDM: Who are these people, how do we want their stories to end, what is it really about? Once we did that, it all broke free. And then it was, “OK, this is what the finale is about.” And the plot was simple, the finale has a fairly simple through-line to it. But it’s really not about that. It’s really about these people you’ve taken this journey with and what the end of their stories are going to be. So then I went off and wrote it. I didn’t write an outline this time. I had the basic cards in some sort of grouping and I went home with that. I pitched the network and the studio on the story and they loved it. I started to write it, and I wrote it sort of very organically. I’d write a scene, write what the next scene should probably be, then the next scene, the next scene. I just kept doing that and never went back. Just wrote it in one pass. I finished my rough draft on a Friday and it was at 130 pages. I spent Saturday cutting 20 pages out and I turned it in Sunday and just waited to see what the reactions were. I went up to Vancouver and I started getting feedback kind of quickly – everyone wants to read the finale. I was very not emotionally engaged with it, truth to tell. It was [a case of,] “I just have to write this,” and I was having to balance “Caprica” and “Virtuality” and getting really annoyed when everybody was interrupting me. I was just like, “Leave me alone, I’ve got to write this.” So I didn’t really have the time or space to get involved with [the finale.] [NOTE from Mo: There is a different version of this section of the interview below. I'm not sure if what Moore said here was spoilery, but on the off chance that it was, I’ve taken it from this spot and placed it below.] Then I started hearing the actors were saying, “I was on the plane and I was crying and the guy next to me didn’t know what was wrong with me.” People were having these emotional responses, it was like, everybody was having this intense emotional reaction to it. And was just like, “Oh geez. Well, this is good.” But it still wasn’t hitting me. It hit me when I was sitting in the pre-production meeting for the finale with all the department heads. The first assistant director goes through the script, you’re going through each scene, [and for example, he says,] “OK, we’re in CIC and Adama is there and Tigh is there and we need a stunt player.” It’s very businesslike, talking about how we’re going to make this. It’s essentially walking you through the script to see what it’s about. And I’m sitting there, and we got to the end, and he started going through the last 10 pages, and I started to cry [Moore got choked up at this point, and his eyes got misty.] I was sitting there and it was… it was very…. it was hard. It was really the end. MR: How many years of your life was this project? RDM: Let’s see, it was 2002, so six years. Six and a half. MR: At some point I’d like to talk to you about what you learned about making TV in that time. Maybe you could come up with a textbook for aspiring showrunners. RDM: I don’t know how to do what I do. I don’t. I can teach people things I’ve learned about how to manage people and how to make the machine work efficiently. And I can teach people things like, “Here’s a trick in a script to set this up here and pay it off there. This is how that story is usually done, don’t do that. Shift it this way.” I can’t teach somebody how to write. You can’t teach somebody how to be a musician. People ask me all the time, how do I write and where do I get ideas. I really have no [expletive] idea. When I was writing the finale, I just wrote what I thought [was] obvious. “He has to say this. It seems obvious to me that the next scene has to be that.” And it seems like, of course [one character] would say this. What else would you do? [I've put the version of this sentence with the character's name at the end of this post.] MR: It feels like a logical sequence. RDM: It feels like a logical sequence. My wife said, we were with the actors in Vancouver and I left the room and she told me that they immediately turned to her. They were saying, “Is Ron up at three o’clock in the morning all the time? Is he crazy?” She’s like, “No. He works from 10 to 6.” She said, “He’s like a bricklayer – brick, brick, brick, swoosh [of concrete across the top], brick, brick, brick, swoosh.” And it’s kind of true. I just do what I think is logical. MR: But what you keep doing with your show, especially with the finales and mid-season finales, is messing with our heads, but in a good way. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, it’s something a few shows do really well. I’ve been thinking about how hard it is to mess with people’s expectations in a way that they don’t feel cheated. You feel surprised, but not cheated. RDM: I like that. I feel like the audience is very smart. I think we all grow up with the three-act structure since childhood, it’s in fairy tales and stories. We all kind of understand how stories generally play out and usually what beginning, middle and end means. I like being able to take the audience down what seems like a familiar path for a moment, or longer than a moment, but actually, without their realizing it, I’m telling this other story and then you surprise them. As long as they feel, at the moment of surprise, they don’t feel cheated and go, “Oh, that makes sense too, I just didn’t see it.” That’s the joy of it. Then you’ve really got them and they really want to see what happens next. It’s all about not doing the expected thing. It’s about laying in something else and setting it up. MR: Well, you did that in [the mid-season finale, “Revelations”]. I was up all night trying to figure it out and watching it again and going, “What!” It was one of the best episodes you guys have done. RDM: I really liked it a lot. It played well. It was very strong and very surprising. I liked the idea that we were going to subvert the expectation that you’re not going to get to Earth until end of the series. No, we’re going to do it right now. And really play the emotion of, “We’re home! We did it!” Really play that and yank the rug. And then go to black. MR: And Bear [McCreary’s] score – that was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard. RDM: It’s beautiful. Bear is another one passed over by the Academy [for an Emmy nomination]. He really does tremendous work on the show. MR: So when we pick up again with everyone on Earth. This husk of whatever it is… RDM: They’ll still be there. MR: So, happy times? RDM: You can imagine. They’re having barbecues. They’re living the life. “We’re home! It’s all ours! All ours!” The last 10 are nothing but a big party. MR: Was it emotional to wrap the show for good? Were you on set that day? RDM: I was on set. It was emotional. It was strange because the finale is so big, truth to tell we still have some pickup scenes still to go back [and film] and second-unit and all this kind of straggling stuff to do. Even as we were shooting on the last day, we shot until 3:30 a.m., we would wrap an actor, you know, “Jamie Bamber, wrapped on the series,” everyone would come to a stop, people come in, there’s hugs and kisses and tears and goodbye. And then Jamie’s like, “I’ve got to go do second-unit now.” And he goes across to the other soundstage. And that kept happening. It was ending but not really ending. There was a sense at the end of it, when we really wrapped, called “wrap” on the series, we had champagne, and then I went out to the camera truck. [Director of photography] Steve McNutt and [cast members] Tahmoh [Penikett] and Grace [Park], there was Scotch on the camera truck and we watched the sun come up. And we knew it was the end. Even though we have the movie and Webisodes and scenes [to pick up] and stuff, we all knew that the series life that we knew was over. That particular group of people who made the series will never be together again. People will scatter to the four winds. That family, that group of people, is gone. The life that we knew of a continuing series, that is now over. There was a real sense of finality on that score. MR: Was it sad or was it like, “It’s time to do this”? RDM: It was both. It was sad and everybody was mourning it, but there was also a sense that it was time to get off the stage. Everyone was happy to be ending it the way that we were. Everyone felt a great sense of satisfaction about this last story. We all felt like, “That’s really the way the show should end.” Discuss. -----signature----- Chief of Staff - The SWC Rebel Scum
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