Great teaser, huh? I guess that's something you learn when you write television! Anyhow, there will be zero spoilers here, but since Aaron Douglas went public with his reaction to Ron Moore's script for the season four ender (which viewers probably won't see until sometimes in 2009), I figure it's okay to chime in and say...
It's simply... amazing. The sort of script where, when you finish, you just fall back in your chair in a daze, then call anyone in the loop and spend hours talking about how satisfying and powerful and (pick superlative of choice)... usually I would be a little mindful of raising expectations or succumbing to excessive hyperbole, but that's not going to be a problem here. Of course, I've seen what's coming up for the rest of season four, and I think it's all mighty powerful stuff (not to mention exciting, heart-breaking, "etc."), but to know it all culminates in something so remarkable... well, the bar for great television just got notched up another level. No kidding.
If that doesn't whet your appetite, nothing will... me, I'm on pins and needles waiting to see the first dailies!
-- Mark Verheiden, on Ron Moore's BATTLESTAR finale script
Tonight’s live Doctor and Mrs. Who Radio Show claimed to have even more scoopy news from their inside sources this week. The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan called into the show to confirm she is hearing some of the same things from her own BATTLESTAR GALACTICA sources. The Doctor says that he has heard:
For reasons that were similarly voiced by a production source to SyFy Portal recently, it does seem possible that CAPRICA could get a 10-12 episode order before the pilot film actually airs. The two-hour film (considered a “back-door pilot”) will need to be shot and shown to the network before any decisions are made. IMHO, it would be interesting to see if Sci Fi Channel could have the courage of their conviction and do what many other cable networks do: greenlight the whole darned series.
The contracts with Ron Moore and the rest of the BSG writing/producing team have now been signed to make all three TV films after Season 4 is wrapped. If the required cast are available, the first film could go into production this summer once season 4’s finale is done shooting. However, all bets are off at the moment about cast and crew availability for these films, and the scripts cannot be created without knowing which characters are available. Nothing has been written yet. Meanwhile, if there is a SAG strike this summer, shooting might be delayed.
No official announcements about any of this have happened yet. More as it develops.
For those of you outside the United States, the preview scene from the next episode, "Sine Qua Non" is now on YouTube:
And here's the "What the frak happened on BSG" recap for "Guess What's Coming To Dinner" also posted to YouTube by scifistorm.
Scifi.com has posted part two of their fan q&a with Edward James Olmos. (h/t crazyvictoria on the Live Journal Battlestar Blog.)
Musician Scott Ian of Anthrax has updated his official Battlestar Blog with his thoughts on "Guess What's Coming For Dinner". Scott also talked to his friend Aaron Douglas who had just read the final scripts of Battlestar Galactica written by Ron Moore. Aaron told Scott the finale is "Frakking awesome!!! Best stuff Ron has ever written!! It will blow your mind. I just finished reading them and I am fighting a fruitless and losing battle with my tears. It is amazing... I have to shoot now after lunch and I am teary."
Aaron is not the only member of the BSG team to have that kind of reaction, so I think it's safe to say we all have something to look forward to seeing on the air.
Also, gammaraychick let us know in a comment and on the Battlestar Blog which episodes are being submitted to the Television Academy for Emmy consideration:
Best Actor: Edward James Olmos - Sine Qua Non
Best Actress: Mary McDonnell - Faith
Best Supporting Actor: Jamie Bamber - Sine Qua Non Michael Hogan - Sine Qua Non James Callis - He That Believeth in Me
Best Supporting Actress: Tricia Helfer - Guess What's Coming to Dinner Grace Park - Guess What's Coming to Dinner Katee Sackhoff - Six of One
(Link to GoldderbyForums) http://tinyurl.com/5uguqd
Looks like Sine Qua Non is going to be an important episode for Adama, Tigh, and Lee.
Thanks to the lovely fans pennyfeline and larsfarm77, we can peep this (sort of spoilery) Canadian ad for the next ep, "Sine Qua Non":
Wow. This Brings to mind something ep writer/producer Michael Taylor said back in November:
Interviewer: Regarding the episodes you wrote, or any other episodes this past season, what details did you see in the finished episodes that surprised and/or delighted you?
Taylor: One moment comes to mind: I was in the editing room, watching one of our talented editors assemble a rough cut of a single scene. Not a huge scene, just a relatively brief but quietly powerful scene between Adama and Tigh (you’ll see it in Episode 8, “Sine Qua Non”). What struck me is that while the dialogue was relatively simple, these two actors brought so much to it that the smallest looks and gestures carried immense weight. It made me realize anew how, after four seasons, these characters have accumulated so much history and nuance. As embodied by actors like Edward J. Olmos and Michael Hogan, they are wrenchingly human. Less characters than people I have now spent years with, and who still surprise me.
Guess What's Coming to Dinner - BSG - Fan Trailer from nnaylime
There have been varied of reaction to Guess What's Coming To Dinner. Maureen Ryan in The Watcher for the Chicago Tribune says:
I don’t typically have time to watch a particular episode of television more than once.
But I watched last Friday’s episode of “Battlestar Galactica” two times in a row.
...Director Wayne Rose did a very cool job of shooting inside the damaged Cylon base star. The intermittent lights that flashed all over the broken ship made for some beautiful screen pictures. And as Alan Sepinwall pointed out, the final sequence, in which Athena’s opera-house visions and present-day search for her daughter were intermingled, was a case study in terrific directing and editing.
Then there’s Gaeta’s song, which stole the show. It was beautifully sung by Alessandro Juliani, who plays the long-suffering Gaeta and, according to “Battlestar” composer Bear McCreary’s blog, has had opera training (should we ponder the possibility of “Battlestar Galactica: The Musical”?).
Wow. Just wow. This is the kind of episode that reminds you -- as if you needed a reminder -- why this is one of the best shows on TV, and why it’s must-viewing every week. How everyone is at crosspurposes and misunderstands everyone else even as they’re trying to find common ground: fantastic.
The Six [Natalie] talking to the Quorum has got to be one of the most thrilling scenes the show has ever come up with.
“We’ve changed but the humans haven’t,” Six [Natalie] says to the other rebels, but the rebel Cylons have changed to become more human. Does she really expect the humans to change to become more Cylon? Maybe she does...
And then who kills the Six? Athena. A Cylon. Wow.
...I love the score under this episode, toward the end, when Roslin and Baltar go to visit the hybrid on the base ship: it’s more plaintive and almost melancholy than the score usually is, the drums and the strings and the wordless vocalizing. Really beautiful.
So that's what happens when you unplug one of those things and plug it back in. Hybrids, apparently, really are like computers; if you don't shut them down properly, you can't be surprised when they behave erratically on restart.
There were a lot of nicely done scenes and elements in this episode—I particularly like Roslin and Baltar together, which it now looks like we may get more of than they bargained for. And there are all manner of implications to the Cylon rebels' decision to become mortal. (Although really: making the entire resurrection process vulnerable in one central hub? Wouldn't robots understand the need for redundant systems better? Ah, well, dramatic convenience.) Not to mention the anxiety among the Four that they're about to get fingered by D'Anna.
We're getting to the good stuff now. This episode of Battlestar really ramped things up, and for the first time this season, truly reminded us that the show was heading towards the end game.
Len Neighbors for Athens Exchange praises Battlestar Galactica's complex writing:
It's been compelling for the whole season, complicated and beautiful. I think what's going on is that people are unaccustomed to processing television, or media of any kind, that deals with religion on more than the bumpersticker level. We've gotten used to complicated relationships (see The Sopranos or Studio 60), complicated plots (see The Wire, and then watch it again), and complicated mysteries (see Lost, and then wonder if something is really a mystery if even the writers don't know how it ends), but television, and especially science fiction television, doesn't deal well with religion.
Sure, science fiction arcs often include religion. Usually, religion motivates a monster, or the crew encounters a strange religion, or a show deals with the conflict between science and faith. But what's happening on Battlestar Galactica is utterly different from these situations. The Colonial Fleet is in the middle of a honest-to-goodness culture war. Human civilization is teetering on the edge of oblivion, and they're arguing about polytheism.
The odd thing is that it works. It's some of the most compelling science fiction I have ever watched, and the fact that they constructed a world in which this is believable and sustainable over this many episodes floors me.... For the first time, we're stuck in the same place the characters are: picking a side to believe in as a matter of faith.
After a string of relatively contemplative episodes, Battlestar Galactica’s seventh episode of its fourth season, “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner?,” zips along with verve, finding little time for the character moments the last few episodes have been filled with, and concluding with one of the show's better cliffhangers. Written by Michael Angeli and directed by Wayne Rose, the episode must have been manna to fans who’ve been distressed by some of the more philosophical stones the show has overturned this season, especially one that made such excellent use of the entire cast. While there are a few points where the plot takes easy shortcuts instead of doing something more complex and interesting in the interest of time, the episode is another strong one for a season that is shaping up to be one of the show’s best.
How can it be expressed? All one could have hoped for and more. Guess What's Coming to Dinner blew the doors off! BSG is going exactly where I'd hoped and in strange and amazing ways ... and Gaeta's Lament - unexpected, bold, strangely beautiful (in that Bronze Age sort of way) ... and portentious.
Okay, thank you. That was my reaction for a total of twelve hours after seeing the episode. I’m not usually one of those ‘let’s e-mail and instant message everyone on the internet’ kind of people after an episode of this show, but Friday night I was calling people I’m sure don’t even watch. It was that good.
It’s very much like a chess game between the Humans and the Cylon Rebels, played out on several levels. And like a chess game, the true intrigue and fascination is not in the checkmate, but in the quiet and delicate movements long before the endgame. Because this season is more serialized than ever before, the nuances require careful attention.
So did you see last night's new episode of Battlestar? This one, called Guess What's Coming to Dinner? was written by the amazing Michael Angeli, and I think it's one of the strongest episodes ever. Suspense, chills and singing!
In celebration, I'm going to use a line from his draft to demonstrate one of my favorite writing techniques. Check this out:
INT. GALACTICA - CORRIDOR Athena, frantic, wild-horse eyes, bolts down another part of the corridor, no sign of...
ATHENA HERA! HERA!
I've talked about this before, and this is a great example. And I'm not even talking about the stunning description of Athena's "wild-horse eyes".
See what he did structurally? By creating a sentence that bridges over the change in formatting ("...no sign of Hera"), he's making the inherently choppy structure of a script read more like prose, like a short story. This reader-friendly technique can be part of making your spec script feel enjoyable, not just as a description of a good potential filmed product, but in itself. Angeli's scripts are always literary objects in their own right and if the Battlestar scripts are ever published, I encourage you to devour them.
On her blog, Jane also details how she wrote the scene in Escape Velocity where Chief Tyrol becomes emotionally unhinged with Adama at Joe's bar.
She recently got back from Vancouver where they were filming an upcoming BSG episode she wrote, and has some other great tips and observations for screenwriters here.
Her Vancouver adventures also took an interesting turn... to find out how she ended up back in L.A. with a FedEx package of Ringo Starr's clothes, and how she dropped them off at his residence, you'll want to check this out.
Wired has posted this interview with Ron Moore -- as well as the much longer full transcript version here. Some choice bits below.
On CAPRICA
Wired: What's the deal with Caprica? What's the schedule now?
Moore: It's busy. Caprica is going. We're in pre-production. We have a director. They're starting to cast right now.
Wired: Are you going to show-run?
Moore: Well, it's just a pilot for now. There's no order for a series, so there's nothing to show-run. There's just a pilot to produce, and I'm one of the producers. The script has been written for two years, so there's not a lot of heavy lifting on the page.
On VIRTUALITY
...Virtuality is a pilot that's been ordered by Fox Broadcasting and that Mike Taylor and I wrote. Were prepping that as we speak as well. We don't know where it's going to shoot, but it'll probably start shooting in July. And that's a two-hour, and well see when and if they order it to series.
On avoiding geekdom by accident
Wired: So, you described yourself as a fan of the original Star Trek series. Were you a geek as a kid? Is this the stuff that you did for fun?
Moore: I grew up in an interesting environment. I grew up in a small town called Chowchilla, California, which was about 4,500 people, and the way I grew up was in a town that was small enough where I could be a member of the marching band and the quarterback of the football team. I could love Star Trek and still be accepted as one of the jocks. I could really live in both worlds because everybody kind of did. It was just small enough.
I grew up with a big interest in a lot of nerdy stuff, but it didn't marginalize me in my peer group, and I was involved in a lot of other things, too. So it was sort of surprising to me when I left that environment and went into the big outside world, and people were like, marching band is like the geekiest of the geek, and I'm like, Well, really, because it wasn't in my town. And, you know, You're a Star Trek fan? Oh my god, You're such a nerd. I'm like, Well, but I was the quarterback!
Wired: You should have led with that.
On religion in BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Wired: There's a lot of religion on the show. Are you religious?
Moore: I was raised Catholic, and I'm a recovering Catholic now. I became interested in various Eastern religions, and now I've sort of settled into somewhat of an agnosticism and sort of a general interest in the subject. I think in the show I felt it was a part that was really noticeably missing from the Star Trek universe. Gene Roddenberry felt very strongly that by the 23rd and 24th centuries that all the major religions had vanished and it was all regarded as superstition. That was his view of the future. I just never quite bought that. I thought, that's part of who we are, it's part of what it is to be human, to seek to answer the questions of: Is this all that I am? Is there nothing more? What happens after you die? It didn't seem like that was going to go away.
So I sort of felt its absence in the Star Trek universe, and then felt like that was something I would really portray in Galactica. And then as the Cylons became human-looking, when we decided that they would look like us, it just raised a whole host of issues that went in this direction: How they thought of themselves, why they wanted to kill humanity, that they saw themselves as humanity's children but felt they could never really come into their own until they had killed their parents. Already You're dealing with these metaphysical and physical arenas.
And then there was that moment in the miniseries where I just saw on the page that had Number Six say "God is love" to Baltar and one network executive just seized on it and said that's a great thing, I'm just shocked, you should play more of that. I just took the chance and went with it — decided that that was going to be a big part of the show, and the show just lent itself to it.
On watching TV
Wired: What do you watch for pleasure?
Moore: I watch a lot of Seinfeld. I'm trying to think of what I have TiVo'd. I watch The Colbert Report, a lot of news programming. Charlie Rose. I got into Breaking Bad. That is a really challenging, interesting show. I watch Robot Chicken, which I think is one of the best comedy shows in the last 10 years.
Wired: It's safe to say they love you, too.
Moore: I was very surprised. I didn't even know my guys were doing that episode last season. I just was watching my Robot Chicken, and all of a sudden all my actors showed up. I called them up, I was like, what the fuck? No one told me! What's this, you guys?
I used to really like The Boondocks. That was very daring.
On his blogging and podcasting and so forth
Wired: You've been committed to those other forms...Webisodes, the blog, the podcasts. What's the importance of those?
Moore: Now I think they're almost expected. Now they're part of what it is to do a television show, especially in this genre. This genres fans are very connected to their computers, to all these multiple platforms, and they look for it. They're there to be served, so why wouldn't you serve them? We're planning webisodes for this season. My podcasting will continue, albeit depending on how quick I am about it, it'll happen. The blog is more — I don't know what to do about the blog. I go back to the blog. I created my own blog. I do it in bursts, and then I fall away from it. I find myself without a lot to say sometimes, and that's a fatal flaw in the blogosphere evidently. You're supposed to say something whether it's of value or not.
Wired: The fatal flaw is that people do it anyway.
Moore: Yeah, I just don't have a lot to say. I don't have a topic for a blog, so I don't write one till I think of something or the mood hits me. But I think it's great that these things are all out there and available, and certainly any project I do from now on will take advantage of these platforms.
On directing for the first time
Moore: It was tremendous. It was an amazing experience. I approached it with a fair degree of fear, like, wow, I've never done this, do I know what I'm doing? Will I look like an idiot? And I just tried it. But I have a cast and a crew that made it easy for me, and I enjoyed it, and I directed something that I'd written. It was a thing I'd never done, which is, you write a script and you play the movie in your head as you write it. At least I do. And one of the first things you have to lose in this business is that movie, because it's never going to be that way. You write the scene and envision them coming in camera left and sit down on this line, and then you watch the dailies and they come in camera right and stand through the whole thing. You just have to let go of that. You're handing your script over to other people who interpret it and realize it, and when you're directing, you can realize that. You can make the film I'm trying to make in my head. And yet you're still free to play around with it and the actors bring stuff and change stuff, and there are still surprises. But you can actually create what it is you're trying to achieve. That was great. I really enjoyed it, it didn't freak me out. I was calm. I made my days. I saved money.
I liked it. I liked being the guy who had to answer all the questions. I liked people coming up constantly and asking, should it be this or should it be that? It's that. Should we go here or there? Go there. Why are we doing this? This is why were doing this. What does this line mean? This is what the line means. Do you need coverage on this guy? No, I don't need coverage. I liked that. It was energizing and fun.
My son came with me. He's 9, and he sat on the set next to me for, like, four days and I couldn't pry him off that set. He sat there with his headphones and just lived in it, loved it, and I could kind of see the show through his eyes, and it was precious.
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Thanks to those of you who made it to the Paley Center panel tonight here in New York. A good time was had by all.
After the event, the Whedonesquers and I went out for some drinks and some laughs. Seemed only fitting.
Some more CAPRICA casting news today: Polly Walker, who played Atia in HBO's ROME, has joined the cast to play Sister Clarice Willow. The Hollywood Reporter describes the character as "the gracious, eloquent and duplicitous high priestess and headmistress of the Athena Academy, a private religious school." What a wonderful choice.
THR also reports that Katee Sackhoff has signed on to appear in four episodes of FX's NIP/TUCK in its sixth season. She will play Dr. Theodora "Teddy" Lowe, "a new doctor who challenges Sean (Dylan Walsh)."
For everyone out there wondering why "Guess What's Coming To Dinner" is not on Hulu yet: looks like Hulu has posted a schedule. It reads:
"Guess What's Coming for Dinner Part 1" Airs 5/16/08 - Available on Hulu 5/25/08
"Guess What's Coming for Dinner Part 2" Airs 5/30/08 - Available on Hulu 6/7/08
"Sine Qua Non" Airs 6/6/08 - Available on Hulu 6/14/08
"The Hub" Airs 6/13/08 - Available on Hulu 6/21/08
These titles and air dates are not all correct (take a look at SciFi.com for the accurate list), but you get the idea. Lag time, bbs. Lag time. One assumes the lag is the same for SciFi Rewind.
Although I am neither gamer nor lesbian, the BSG-lovin' grrls of Lesbian Geek in Australia asked me for an interview (was it something I said?)...and I obliged. They have also recently posted about BSG crossing over with both THE X FILES and THE L WORD.
We fans paying close attention have known about the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA season 4 webisodes for a few months now. Mo Ryan confirmed this week that this new set of webisodes will bridge the 4.0 and 4.5 episodes. No airdates for the webisodes or 4.5 has yet been announced.
Now comes news from Jamie Bamber that he and James Callis will be directing the webisodes, which begin shooting in the next month.
While speaking on the live internet radio show TV Talk with Shaun OMac this past Friday, Bamber mentioned that he and Callis are each directing 5 of the 10 web shorts. He also covers his feelings on the "pressure-cooker environment" on the battlestar, Lee in season 4, performing with Mary McDonnell this year, that infamous Towel Scene, what is going on with TV drama right now, and a film he's hoping to do called MINEVILLE. (Bamber's interview starts 18 minutes into the program.)
Huge shoutout to asta77 at Bamber News for the tip.
Due to popular demand, G4 Network has posted two more videos from the "Music of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA" concerts in LA last month, this time full videos of entire songs. BSG composer Bear McCreary also notes on his blog that all the video from the concert - including the hilarious "documentary" film screened at the shows -- are candidates for inclusion as extras on upcoming BSG DVD sets:
We are in the process of putting together a video of the complete concert and the documentary we premiered. Fear not. You will all get a chance to see this thing. I don’t know how yet… maybe I can convince Universal to include it on the Season 4 DVD, maybe we’ll release it online, maybe I’ll burn DVDs myself and leave them at bus-stops. But, it will get out there, I promise!
In all seriousness, though… some enthusiastic noise from the fan community will really help get this concert footage on the Season 4 DVD. So, if you want to see this, help out by drumming up some support online.
Sounds like something worth writing to NBC Universal's TV on DVD department about...doesn't it?
Meanwhile, for whatever reason, apparently fandom still has not stepped up to give enough pre-orders for production of this cool FedCon DVD set to commence. Come on now, fans of Mary McDonnell, Jamie Bamber, Michelle Forbes, Nicki Clyne and Leah Cairns...send in those pre-orders! They are pretty close but not there yet.
Maybe this will encourage you to take the plunge: the DVD producers have now got a site up (bilingual English/German) with clips of their high-quality interview footage from the con.
All you need to do is send a pre-order email, committing to pay a measly $30/20 Euros for 6 hours of footage! And remember to mention if you want NTSC or PAL DVD format.
[Can I get that BSG lounging robe that James Callis is wearing above, at the same shop where Lucy Lawless found her BSG "Frak Me" hotpants? Are these on the NBCU online store yet?]
