Post Game Reports

BSG creator Ronald D. Moore, writing on his blog from the set in Vancouver, reported that he hasn't had time to do a podcast for the season 4 premiere yet. Though he hopes to have it out to us later in the week. Click here to see a set photo Ron took while directing the first ep filmed after the strike ended.

Composer Bear McCreary updated his blog, with detailed exploration of the musical choices he made for the season debut, and how a new theme he calls "The Final Four" Theme will be utilized as the season develops.

Anthrax's Scott Ian updated his BSG blog with his reaction to He That Believeth in Me, and he quotes from a text message conversation he had with Aaron Douglas after watching the show that reveals some interesting adlibs for the early scene when the Chief is imploring the nuggets to get in their vipers.

BSG co-exec writer-producer Mark Verheiden updates us all on what's new in Battlestar land on his blog:

Posting has been light the last few days because I've been spending much of my time on set, helping make sure episode "415" is as chock full of Battlestar goodness as possible. Things are rolling along extremely well and as usual the cast and crew is doing a superlative job turning my scribbles into high drama. It's strange to think this probably won't actually air for months and months, long after I've vacated my palacial NBC/Universal office...

Reviews of Battlestar Galactica's season 4 opener, He That Believeth in Me are showing up...

Alessandra Stanley in The New York Times writes:

Earth, not space, is the final frontier of “Battlestar Galactica.”

The galaxy-wandering survivors of an apocalyptic attack begin the fourth and last season of this Sci Fi Channel wunderseries where they left off: with the faint but improbable hope that one of them has found the lost, mythical home planet.

....The multitude of exegeses and theories devoted to major plot twists and minor details attest to the series’s enduring egghead appeal. But “Battlestar Galactica” also provides plenty of spicy sex and Space Age violence. It’s science fiction for viewers who don’t particularly care about science and prefer their fiction veined with allusions to fact.

Tim Goodman in the San Francisco Chronicle notes:

It seems hard to imagine as it enters its fourth - and final - season tonight, but "Battlestar Galactica" remains the best drama nobody seems to be watching. Well, the loyalists are watching - and they are crazy for the sci-fi series that was "reimagined" from the cheesy late 1970s series into a minimalist, dark, ambitious wonder.

"Battlestar Galactica" is a sci-fi series perfectly suited for people who normally don't like science fiction. That's because it has never been a big-budget production and it forced the show's creators, writers and actors to improvise the ways they told stories. In short, they got creative and found a way to be better than they likely would have been with more money. Instead of pyrotechnic effects, the emphasis is on the writing; the acting, which is raw but nuanced; and the direction, which must be nimble as most scenes are shot inside a cramped spaceship.

...But what really separates "Battle- star Galactica" from most dramas, not just sci-fi series, is that it has a fearlessness in tackling big issues. War, race, religion, gender equity and, particularly this season, personal identity (and what it means to be human, or not) have been prevalent from the start. You just don't see that very often - anywhere.

...There are many small and wonderful dramatic accomplishments in the underappreciated gem that is "Battlestar Galactica," but perhaps the most enduring is that what was conceived of as an epic space adventure has turned into a finely detailed, intimate drama. By avoiding the overblown pomp of traditional sci-fi material, the series can focus on the circumstances of the human condition. It's a brilliant genre twist that more people need to discover.

Alan Sepinwall wrote:

A friend of mine who also got to see this one in advance complained to me that very little happened to advance the developments from the last 15 minutes or so of season three. We don't have any further details about the origins of the Final Four (or the identity of the Final Fifth), nothing significant on the nature of Starbuck's survival, etc.

And I see what she's saying, to an extent. Very little in "He That Believeth In Me" moved the stories forward, save maybe us getting more details about the religious cult that rescued Baltar from the angry mob. But my friend's complaint reminded me of some of the few negative comments I heard about this season's "Lost" premiere, from people who felt that it spent an hour reiterating things we had learned in the last five minutes of the previous season. My retort, then as now, is that sometimes plot has to take a backseat to character. If we don't care about the people involved in these crazy stories and how they're responding to the events as they unfold, how can we care about the events themselves? The "Lost" premiere was about the emotional response to the mind-blowing revelations of the previous cliffhanger, and that's primarily what "He That Believeth In Me" has on its agenda

Writing for TV Squad Keith McDuffee observes:

Speaking of Starbuck, I was somewhat surprised that we got a decent scene of her going over all possibilities of who or what she is so early; I would have expected it to happen sometime later. Is she a clone? Did Cylons alter her mind? Did she eliminate all the possibilities we can come up with ourselves? If so, is the answer in one of them or is it something we just can't yet fathom? I think some of our astute readers are correct in thinking she is the oracle, not Roslyn. Well, at least she is now, with the painful headaches she's getting as they drift further away from Earth ... or, at least, so she says.

Liz Lacy on TV with meeVee provides a BSG season 4 scorecard on the premiere and notes:

I have to say that the Gaius as religious leader plotline is a thing of pure genius, it's so easy to see him making things up one minute and then fervently believing his own BS the next. I imagine he can convince himself of just about anything that's going to keep him wading hip-deep in hot acolytes.

Marc Bernardin in Entertainment Weekly and Steve West in Cinema Blend provide detailed recaps of He That Believeth in Me.

The Houston Chronicle's Tubular blog provided a live Twitter-ing of the season opener, while io9 lived blogged the show.

Also, TV Squad recently posted casting information adding more detail about the spin-off series, Caprica, that Kristin at E Online reported on last week, revealing many spoilers for the pilot episode of the potential series.